Skovorodynstvo: an Alternative Lifestyle and Subculture (Between Baroque and Romanticism)

Abstract

The article examines the Skovorodynstvo as the socio-cultural trend of the educated class of followers of philosophical views and, most of all, the lifestyle of the traveling philosopher. The Skovorodyntsi imitated the features of the lifestyle of Hryhorii Skovoroda and combined their everyday nonconformism with other trends of their time, had an influence on the Ukrainian national movement and formed a kind of subculture. The Skovorodynstvo can be divided into two trends: popular, among the general public (as an interest in the figure of a folk philosopher, an “old man”) and intellectual (actually a subculture). Skovorodyntsi intellectuals found themselves in literary work, discovering or propagandizing the ideas of the Skovorodynstvo, as well as giving the image of the skovorodynets. This movement included such leading Skvorodyntsi and initiators of the Ukrainian cultural and national revival as Ivan Kotlyarevsky, Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovyanenko, Kharkiv romantics, Cyril and Methodius Brothers and their followers. Skovorodynstvo as a subculture was expressed in the following notable features: belonging to the existing tradition of the wandering way of life in Baroque Ukraine; a break with career strategies; tendency to self-analysis; inseparability of life from the expressed ideas; allegorical perception of the world, mysticism; interest in other ethical movements; pantheism; belonging to free intellectual activities; neglecting of certain established social conventions, which manifested itself both in public attitude and in the preaching of reasonable hedonism (“Epicureanism”), naturalness as opposed to civilization; creative work. Between 1790 and 1850, the Skovorodynstvo remained as a marker of the alternatives, and became a tradition that enriched later alternative socio-cultural trends.