Three major aspects of Volodymyr Yaniv’s life-creativity are described in the article: 1. biographical (his forma- tion as a creative person); 2. literary and art studies; 3. essayistic (author’s stories about the meetings with the perennial rec- tor of UFU). In parallel, there are “plots” about Volodymyr Yaniv as s historian of the church and Christianity, as a religious scholar, about his contacts with the Vatican, and in particular with His Beatitude Josyf Slipyj in the study.
We can trace the “odyssey” of a young ascetic of the Galician revolutionary movement for the statehood and the unity of Ukrainian lands. A separate vision in the life of V. Yaniv is the magazine “Student’s Way”.
He was fond of modern processes that took place in the cultural and artistic sphere. Studying poetry of European poets, poetry of Ukrainian creative youth, in particular B.-I. Antonych, V. Havrylyuk, O. Olzhych, poets of the Right-Bank Ukraine, Yaniv developed for himself the criteria for evaluating a literary work.
The Lviv weekly “Towards” and the month “Dazhbog” and, of course, the poetry of the “Prague School” were played a special role for Yaniv as a poet. The famous Polish writers, supporters of the so-called “Ukrainian school”, Severin Goshchin- sky, Alexander Fredro, Leopold Staff, Jan Kasprovich, Maria Konopnitskaya whose creativity, undoubtedly, also influenced Volodymyr Yaniv lived and worked in Lviv.
The ideological and thematic space of the poetry of Yaniv, in particular the collections “The Sun and the Lattices” and “The Foliage Fragments”, his prison poems, poetry about the Kruty heroes, are analyzed in the article. Lyro-epic creativity of V. Ya- niv in this thematic direction in her own way is biographical. The collection “Ways,” based on the scientific observations of the German, Polish and Czech theorists of psychoanalysis, is based on the ethno-psychoanalysis of the Ukrainian political prisoner.
V. Yaniv is a scientist, psychologist, ethnic psychologist of the Ukrainian “soul”, sociologist and literary critic, art critic, organizer of Ukrainian science and church-religious life, public figure, professor of the Ukrainian Catholic University named after St Clemens, the Pope in Rome. The sacred motives are an organic page in poetry, literary criticism and, in general, in the works of Volodymyr Yaniv.
The author used the bibliographic literature about the life and work of Volodymyr Yaniv, which, however, doesn’t allevi- ate his individual views.
Profesor Ihor Skoczylas (5 IV 1967 – 20 XII 2020)
