Across the Bridge

Olha Kobylianska, a renowned Ukrainian novelist and master of modernist prose, left behind a rich and diverse literary legacy. Her novella «Across the Bridge» was not an immediate creation, as the author hesitated for a long time about how to convey personal experiences without revealing her own emotions. Perhaps this is why she entrusted the story of this complex love-conflict to a male character, presenting it in the form of diary entries that seemed to restrain passions. There are few such entries in the novella, but they are not necessary. Instead, the author masterfully paints a palette of moods and thoughts, revealing the depth of feelings and the inner world of the main characters — Mania Obrynska and Bohdan Oles'. Their path to each other lies across a bridge, which in this touching novella simultaneously symbolizes a barrier, a union of opposites, and human life itself.