Емма Андієвська: портрет в інтер’єрі доби
Authors: Hnatiuk Myroslava 
Published: September 2020

The article deals with the worldview and aesthetic principles behind the creative work of Emma Andijewska, which were discussed during a telephone conversation with the author of this article. We analysed the specifics of her creative laboratory, reflections on the place, role of the writer in modern life, and peculiarities of artistic writing. The author’s individuality appears on the background of the historical era in various forms of inter-textual and intra-textual relations. The key concept of analytical discourse is autometatextuality. The unifying principle of building an image of personality and an image of reality is an aesthetic element where a fiction text and a document form a natural unity. The narrative on creative practices reveals a personal history of one of the most prominent figures of modern times, a “woman of the era” (as she is often called), writer and painter Emma Andijewska. She was born on March 19, 1931 in Stalino (now Donetsk). Due to her serious illness, the family moved to Vyshhorod (1937), and later to Kyiv (1939), where they faced the beginning of the war. In 1943, the NKVDists (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs of the USSR) killed her father, a famous chemistinventor, so that the Germans could not use his inventions. Fearing reprisals against the entire family, her mother took her young children and went across the military front, under the cannonade, to the West. At the age of twelve, Emma Andijewska came to Germany, where she attended a German boys’ school. In 1957, she graduated from the Ukrainian Free University with degrees in Philosophy and Philology while defending a master’s thesis on The Causes of Fundamental Issues in the Newest Ukrainian Metric in front of Volodymyr Derzhavin. The same year, with her family, she moved to New York, where in 1959 she married a literary critic, essayist, and writer, Ivan Koshelivets, with whom she lived until his death. After the marriage, the couple returned to Munich, Germany, where Andijewska still lives. For a long time (since 1959 to 1995), she worked at Radio Liberty as an announcer, screenwriter, producer, and editor of the Ukrainian department. Despite the forced isolation from her native land and impossibility to visit Ukraine for a long time, throughout her life Emma Andijewska has preserved a devoted, fervent love for the language, culture, and history of her native people and put all her strength and energy into the self-sacrificing and faithful service to them. Thanks to her art, Ukraine is known and respected all over the world, and her paintings are stored in the leading museums across all continents. She is open to the world and the world is open to her. The literature works of the great Ukrainian have been translated into many languages and even their general list is impressive. More than forty poetry books, three novels (the fourth is being written), several books of short stories and tales, more than seventeen thousand paintings – they are all created by Emma Andijewska. The polyphonic art of the artist and writer impresses with unique energy and the discipline of mind, where every word is worth its weight in gold. Its magic relies on a deep intellectual sense arising from powerful spiritual potential.