Der Habsburger-Mythos als Moment einer regionalen Identität Galiziens? : (Beispiele aus der zeitgenössischen ukrainisch-galizischen Literatur)

Abstract

This essay demonstrates that the Habsburg myth, which Claudio Magris originally linked to Austrian literature, also plays an important role for contemporary Western Ukrainian literature as a way to underline the specific regional consciousness of writers like Yuri Andrukhovych, Tymofi Havryliv or Taras Prokhas'ko. In the essays of Andrukhovych, the poems of Havryliv, and in Prokhas'ko's novel Neprosti, however, the various elements of the Habsburg myth are not used in order to glorify the culture of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, but they are confronted with a specific ironical and deconstructive notion of writing. As a result, the texts of the Western Ukrainian writers mentioned before do not intend to simply restore a former state of cultural values in a pure nostalgic manner, but rather use the Habsburg myth as a literary device of a distinct regional way of writing. This becomes especially clear in comparison with the essays and stories of the Polish writer Andrzej Stasiuk, who does not pay any attention to the Habsburg myth.