Sketch

The narys (sketch) is an artistic-publicistic genre on the border of literature and journalism that gives a prompt, documentarily reliable depiction of real events, people, and social phenomena, combining factuality with artistic imagery and authorial judgment. One distinguishes the portrait sketch (about a person), the problem sketch (about a social question), and the travel sketch (impressions of a journey). The sketch demands accuracy of fact and at the same time the expressiveness of artistic generalization. In the world tradition the genre is represented by the travel and social sketches of many writers. In Ukrainian literature the sketch was fruitfully developed by Ivan Franko (social sketches about the life of the workers of Boryslav), Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky (travel sketches), Yurii Yanovsky, and Oles Honchar; the genre was important in the publicistic writing that documented social life and human destinies.