A Postcolonial Reading of Lesia Ukraïnka’sOrhiia

Abstract

Lesia Ukraïnka’s Orhiia [The Orgy] (1913) is traditionally read as an anti-colonial allegory for Ukraine’s subjugation to Russia, an approach supported by Ukraine’s history and Ukraïnka’s biography. Such readings highlight the plight of the male hero, whose aesthetic ideals are inextricable from his loyalty to his nation. The aim of the present article is to offer a new interpretation that focuses, rather, on the marginal characters previously dismissed as “cultural renegades,” who aligned themselves with Russian culture. Grounded in postcolonial feminist theory, this close analysis reveals the tensions between national loyalty and sterile parochialism and between cosmopolitanism and aesthetic integrity. By placing Ukraïnka’s Orhiia in the Second-World context, the article invites further inquiry into Eastern- and Central-European modernist drama that re-enacts important aspects of these nations’ colonial experience, particularly the effects of the imperial male gaze on colonial women artists.