HRIHORIY SKOVORODA: HIDDEN DISCOURSES OF PERSONALITY AND CREATIVITY
Authors: Abramovych S. ,   Kamianets-Podіlskyi Ivan Ohiienko National University
Published: February 2023

The article deals with the creativity and specialties of Grigoriy Skovoroda. It seems, that we have already known everything about Skovoroda, although there are a lot of unclear questions concerning his personality and significance, and even trying of new myths. Some important aspects of the philosopher's personality and his private life remain unclear. And to this day there is either unjustified "Russification" or, conversely, a sharpened "Westernization" of the wandering Ukrainian sage ‒ up to the search in his spiritual position for signs of either Lutheran Pietism or Freemasonry. In addition, the inertia of colonial consciousness has not been completely overcome here, within which the peoples of the USSR must have had in their "glorious past" titanic figures on the scale of Aristotle, Virgil or Dante. And Skovoroda, our unconditional classic, is still somewhat hypertrophied in the spirit of the style of the totalitarian era, which dreamed of "greatness". Therefore, the aim of this study is a certain re-emphasis of some established views on this notable personality, his sociopsychological position and philosophical and literary heritage. The article gives an analysis of the problems of the historical role of free genius and the limitations that the epoch and social demand objectively impose on it. This, in turn, gives grounds to some extent to reconsider and refine the traditional assessments of the philosopher's legacy. To do this, the author uses the possibilities of the traditional biographical method, combining it with elements of the imagological approach and, to some extent, psychoanalysis. This article reports the results of a study of the dramatic contradictions between the role chosen by the philosopher and his real actions. Skovoroda realized the ideal of an ascetic removed from life with difficulty, constantly curbing his difficult and conflicting character and trying to sublimate living and sinful feelings into the plane of spiritual communication with the object of his passion. The article is of interest to the situation of deep loneliness of this sage ‒ on the verge of trickster’s. He does not fit into the Enlightenment, as he remains in fact a religious didactic, and his position is typologically related to the work of the Polish Jesuits of the eighteenth century, who turned the attitudes of Enlightenment philosophy into a way of catechesis. On the other hand, seeking to imitate Christ Skovoroda did not create his own teaching, he limited to the presentation of common places of religion and philosophy. Bypassing, in the spirit of the teachings of Epicurus, the difficulties of life's struggle, Skovoroda chose the easy path of popularizer, used, in the conditions of the then "language chaos", unpretentious "surzhik" and so on. The article is of great help to understand that the philosopher has become really needed by the Ukrainian people as a codifier of traditional religious truths. And this happened at a time when Ukrainians were made mass illiterate and instilled in the region the spirit of secularization. But his historical role is limited by this, because he did not fit deeply into either the Russian or Western European cultural paradigm.