The article deals with the interaction of literature and fine arts from the point of intermediality. The ways of decoding of visual images in the novel about the artist, in correlation “friend vs foe” in ecphrasis, in the novel “Ukrainian nights” by J. Yenzheyevych have been traced. The influence of Polish, Ukrainian and Russian cultures on the process of Shevchenko’s national identity has been revealed. The features of anti-colonial discourse, particularly the exposure of imperial thinking, the displacement of the center and the periphery in the author’s and the protagonist’s artistic orientations in Polish writer’s novel about the Ukrainian poet have been distinguished
