The new season of creative meetings at Faculty of Philology and Journalism began with the presentation of a prose book by the writer Olena Lototska. The event was opened by Vice-Rector for Academic Work and Recruitment of Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University, Professor Yurii Hromyk. He introduced the special guest for a reason to the students and teaching staff, as a first thoughtful reader of the book who had analysed the features of Ms. Elena's language style and become the author of the afterword to the book «Angels in Necklaces».
Olena Lototska comes from Dubrovychchyna, Poland. Later, she was destined to relocate to the Crimea, where she lived in Yevpatoria for ten years, as she noted - a happy life. However, after the annexation of the Ukrainian Crimea by the russian occupier, Ms. Olena could no longer stay there and left for Lviv. After the aggressor's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, she joined the army and currently serves as a sergeant in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Although the protection of the Motherland does not contribute to creativity, the woman could not help writing and tries to actively realise herself in artistic prose. The spectrum of creative experiments in small genres is fairly wide: short stories, essays, sketches, images... The book presented in the student audience is already the author's second success. Before that, the collection «Today the Cuckoo's Calling» was published.
Olena Lototska sincerely shared her experiences and creative ambitions with Volyn students and lecturers. If the occupier had not launched a war against Ukraine, she would probably never have written her texts. The young author is convinced that one of the reasons for today's trouble is a too weak position in defending personal self, identity, uniqueness. Where the Ukrainians failed to defend themselves and where they were in the minority, we have occupation. For Olena Lototska, moving texts about her Polish compatriots, about their dreams and experiences, about ordinary Ukrainians burned by the war, about Volhynians who do not lose their optimism, became such a uniqueness...
The uniqueness of the writer's works is that many of them are written in the Middle Polish dialect, which she brought from her grandmother's native village. It was she who instilled a love for creativity, because she devoted her whole life to difficult, but unique work – haze weaving, embroidery, development of rural patterns. If you were to cover the road with grandmother's towels, it would probably be enough to cover the path from Dubrovitsa all the way to Rivne.
Philologists of Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University asked the writer many interesting questions. In memory of the meeting in Lutsk, Olena Lototska received the «hymn to Polissia» – two bilingual books of Lesya Ukrainka «Forest Song». The editions were prepared at the University by leading forest scientists – teachers of ZVO. These are texts with translations of the most famous extravaganza drama of our compatriot into Crimean Tatar and English.
Viktor YARUCHYK,
Head of the Department of Ukrainian Literature
