The novel «Birds Leave Their Nests...» by Ivan Chendei, in which,
as the author claimed, there pulsed a «fanatical love for his native
Transcarpathia, and through it – a love for his native people...», immediately
attracted the attention not only of critics and literary scholars (at the time,
it was a rare occurrence for a newly published novel to become the subject of a
candidate’s dissertation, especially by a graduate student from Moscow) but
also of readers both in Ukraine and beyond.
Soon, the work was translated into Russian and published in the well-known
all-Union magazine Druzhba Narodov,
and later by the Molodaya Gvardiya
publishing house and in the periodical Roman-Gazeta
(with a circulation of over 2 million copies).
Based on the study of Ukrainian scholars’ works on the development of the
«socialist realism» novel of the 1950s–1980s,
particularly the «collective farm» and «production» novels, it is emphasized
that Ivan Chendei’s novel marked the «destruction» of established formulas and
initiated the emergence of a new poetics centered on the hero’s psychology,
worldview, and philosophy of life.
The article examines the critical reception of the Transcarpathian writer
Ivan Chendei’s novel «Birds Leave
Their Nests...» based on reviews in the press, particularly focusing on
Mykola Ilnytskyi’s evaluation in his review «Birds Gravitate Toward Their Native Nests» published in the
magazine Zhovten, as well as in
other articles, including «From Epic
to Epicness», «The Similarity
of the Dissimilar», and the collection of literary-critical essays «The Energy of the Word».
Ilnytsky’s reflections are considered in the context of discussions by
other contemporary critics and literary scholars (H. Avrakhov,
H. Syvokon, K. Volynskyi, Yu. Baleha, V. Marko,
V. Fedynyshynets, and others). It is emphasized that Mykola Ilnytskyi’s
views on Ivan Chendei’s novel were distinguished by the balance and
persuasiveness of his judgments, not only about this work but also about the
overall trends in the development of Ukrainian prose in the 1960s–1980s.
