“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind”: Reading Vladyslav Yerko’s Illustrations to Shakespearein Ukrainian

Darya Lazarenko; Yurii Cherniak

doi:10.18778/2083-8530.31.10

Authors

Darya Lazarenko New Bulgarian University, Bulgaria https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3253-4678
Yurii Cherniak Shevchenko Institute of Literature, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine https://orcid.org/0009-0003-8366-8734

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.31.10

Keywords:

Shakespeare illustration, Vladyslav Yerko, intersemiotic translation, Ukrainian culture, Yurii Andrukhovych, conceptual art, book design, Shakespeare reception

Abstract

The article comments on the intersemiotic translation of Shakespeare’s works in Vladyslav Yerko’s conceptual illustrations to Hamlet (2008), Romeo and Juliet (2016), and King Lear (2021), translated by Yurii Andrukhovych and published by the Ukrainian house A-BA-BA-HA-LA-MA-HA. The paper investigates the way in which Yerko’s richly symbolic visual narratives engage in dialogue with Ukrainian culture and history. Situated within a broader tradition of Shakespearean illustration, Yerko’s work exemplifies illustration as metatext. His imagery blends Renaissance allegory, surreal detail, and postmodern irony, reflecting influences ranging from Albín Brunovský’s art to Kozintsev’s cinematic Hamlet. The article demonstrates how Yerko’s visual interpretations, paired with Yurii Andrukhovych’s witty and provocative Ukrainian translations, create a multilayered conversation between Shakespeare’s England and contemporary Ukraine. By highlighting the dialogical nature of illustration as a form of adaptation and translation, the study contributes to ongoing discussions about the global afterlives of Shakespeare in new cultural contexts. Yerko’s illustrations reveal how visual arts reimagine the Shakespeare’s works as both Ukrainian and universal, reaffirming the vitality of printed books as sites of cross-cultural exchange, aesthetic reflection, metatextual play and deep reading.

Author Biographies

Darya Lazarenko, New Bulgarian University, Bulgaria

Darya Lazarenko, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures at New Bulgarian University. She also teaches Comparative Literature at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. She is a research associate of the Ukrainian Shakespeare Centre and a member of the European Shakespeare Research Association (ESRA). Her research interests include Shakespeare’s metatextuality, translations, theatrical and intermedial interpretations, and approaches to teaching Shakespeare in broader cultural contexts. Dr. Lazarenko is a member of the organising committee for the International Shakespeare Festival “Tracing Shakespeare” at New Bulgarian University, contributing to its academic and cultural programme. Her publications include research on Hamlet in Ukrainian cultural contexts, intertextual readings of Shakespeare in contemporary literature, and visual interpretations of Shakespeare in the digital age.
Yurii Cherniak, Shevchenko Institute of Literature, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

Yurii Cherniak is a PhD in Philology, Associate Professor, Research Fellow at the Department of Foreign Ukrainian Studies at the T. H. Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He is a member of the Ukrainian Shakespeare Centre and the European Shakespeare Research Association. Since the foundation of the journal Renesansni Studii (Index Copernicus) he has been a permanent member of its editorial board. He was an initiator of the All-Ukrainian Contest of Student’s Research and Creative Project and a member of its Jury. He is an author of over 30 articles on Shakespeare in Ukrainian Culture.

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