Moloda Muza

'Moloda Muza' (Young Muse) is a literary grouping of Ukrainian modernist writers that operated in Lviv from 1906 to 1909 and became one of the first centers of early Ukrainian modernism in Galicia. The group oriented itself toward the newest European currents — Symbolism, Decadence, 'art for art's sake' — defending the artist's right to aestheticism, individualism, and the cult of beauty and mood, as opposed to the utilitarian-populist view of literature. To 'Moloda Muza' belonged Petro Karmansky, Vasyl Pachovsky, Bohdan Lepky, Stepan Charnetsky, and Ostap Lutsky (author of the programmatic manifesto). Despite its brief existence and a certain imitative character, 'Moloda Muza' played an important role in the renewal of Ukrainian poetic language, the broadening of subject matter, and the assimilation of European aesthetic experience, preparing the ground for the further development of modernism in Ukrainian literature.