| Abstract: | Iurii Klen, one of the leading Ukrainian writers of the thirties and forties, produced perhaps his best short story “Pryhody Arkhanhela Rafaila” Adventures of the Archangel Raphael, 1948] in the last year of his life. This article is an analysis in the light of a discourse within modernism concerning tradition, and argues that it is a key to understanding the writer’s evolution. Although Klen rejected the militant Bolshevik avant-garde, during his years in Germany he was seduced for a time by fascist avantgarde attitudes and adapted them to a nationalist modernism before breaking with this current in the forties. Klen’s story demonstrates a rejection of the radical social and cultural experimentation of Bolshevism and Stalin’s rule. In its respect for the human values of the European heritage, it can also be read as a rejection of Nazism. |
