Corneliu Irod – Ukrainian Writer from Romania (Creative Work Overview)

Abstract

The essay surveys the works written by C. Irod, one of the leading contemporary Ukrainian writers of Romania. The main attention is paid to his trilogy of novels “The Feast” and stories that vary in thematic features and stylistics, some of them belonging to a particular type of short prose works – allegoric pieces called “blunder stories”. Considering main themes and ideas of C. Irod’s works and focusing on peculiarities of their literary interpretation, the researcher intends to represent the originality of the writer’s prose heritage, to determine his role in developing the genre of the modern novel and renovating flash fiction in Ukrainian literature of Romania. To achieve this aim, the researcher adds a comparative aspect and refers to the major development patterns of the world novel of the 1960s–1980s, in particular, focusing on such a remarkable feature as ‘new epics’. The themes and issues of the works by C. Irod have been compared to those in the works by Romanian writers, in particular D. R. Popescu. It is noted that C. Irode’s stories have the inherent connection with the flash fiction of the Ukrainian masters – H. Tiutiunnyk and Ye. Hutsalo. The essay follows correspondences in themes and literary technique that relate the Romanian writer to the mentioned Ukrainian authors. The essay also informs about C. Irod’s achievements in the Цeld of literary translation. In particular, he worked over translation of T. Shevchenko’s “Diary”, as well as the book “Taras Shevchenko’s life” by P. Zaitsev. The researcher also gives some details concerning C. Irod’s translations of the tales “When the animals could talk” and “Mykyta the Fox” by I. Franko, the stories written by H. Tiutiunnyk and some pieces in poetry and prose by junior Ukrainian authors.