A Karamazov from the steppes: intertextuality and post-colonial cultural hybridity in Mykola Khvyl′ovyi’s Val′dshnepy

Mykola Khvyl′ovyi is one of the most representative personalities of early Soviet Ukrainian literature. However, owing to the national ideas and anti-colonial tendencies he expressed in his pamphlets, critics have tended to privilege his polemical writings at the expense of sustained analysis of his prose fiction, particularly its intertextual construction and narrative strategies. This article interprets Khvyl′ovyi’s unfinished 1927 novel Val′dshnepy (The Woodcocks) from a post-colonial perspective, shedding light on the duality of Khvyl′ovyi’s reflections on Ukrainian (and Soviet) nationality and culture. Focusing on Khvyl′ovyi’s extensive use of intertextuality, the author analyzes his complex dialogue with different cultures, which are simultaneously taken as models and deconstructed. In particular, the article examines Khvyl′ovyi’s engagement with Fedor Dostoevskii and Gustave Flaubert, who function not only as intertexts but also as emblematic representatives of two prestigious cultural models – Russian and French – through which the novel negotiates questions of cultural authority and dependence. This analysis illuminates Khvyl′ovyi’s narrative construction, consisting of an irreducible layering of meanings that can be adequately understood only through a “polyphonic,” post-colonial perspective.