Роман Лубківський: слов'янське небо в Європейському інтер'єрі

The article examines the translation activity of the poet, publicist, statesman, public figure, and diplomat Roman Lubkivskyi in the context of the philosophy of tolerance in a globalized world. The researcher emphasizes that the dominant principle in the field of literary translation is primarily the understanding of the Other: the poet/culture. Such interpretation of a foreign text  anifests itself at the intersection of two cultures, two national psychotypes, two authorial consciousnesses, and two reception models. It is crucial to perceive the boundary not as a barrier marked by the preposition “between”, but rather as an “interstripe” (O. Höffe), which calls for a third self – the translator’s Self – which must stand “above”: the text/event/author/sympathies/ambitions. Only with such an approach can a translator fulfill their mission – to build bridges of mutual understanding between different cultures and peoples. These principles of intercultural dialogue guided Roman Lubkivskyi.

His literary translation activity – a vast and multifaceted corpus of interpreted poetic texts – primarily encompasses the East European linguistic and cultural context, more specifically the oikoumene of the Slavic world: including Polish, Czech, Slovak, Croatian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Sorbian, Serbian, Belarusian, and other literatures. As a result, readers are familiar with such works by R. Lubkivskyi as Slavic Sky (1972), Manylights (1978), Slavic Lyre (1983); R. Lubkivskyi translated and compiled the works of Alojzy Pashkevich (Ciotka) (Ciotka. Selected Works: Dnipro, 1976), and a volume of selected works by Yanka Kupala (Dnipro, 1982), among others. His presence was also notable in collective anthologies, and the culmination of his translation work was the publication of Selected Works in Two Volumes. Volume Two. Translations (Kyiv, Dnipro Publishing House, 2015, 606 pages), which included translations from various Slavic languages.

The article highlights that the meeting of Slavic literatures at their “historical-literary crossroads” (after D. Chyzhevskyi) was usually modeled by R. Lubkivskyi through great personalities, synchronizing historical “characters” with key national issues. The “spirit of pan-Slavism” (Jan Kollár) in Lubkivskyi’s work is expressed in the unity of advocating for national and human dignity, and Slavic identity itself is not interpreted as separate exotic toponyms but as a majestic spiritual territory of mutual understanding and shared universal values.