ESCAPISM AS A WAY OUT “OVER THE EDGE” IN THE PROSE OF UKRAINIAN WRITERS OF THE MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify the features of the specifics of the artistic expression of escapism as a form of resistance toSoviet unification based on the prose by Yu. Yanovskyi, O. Dovzhenko, O. Honchar.

Methods. The article applies a combined technique based on elements of hermeneutic and semiotic analysis, the methodof typological comparison of literary facts. The authors also used the toolkit of structural analysis.

Results. It has been established that during the socio-cultural situation of the middle of the twentieth century, when the developmentof literature was going through politicization, excapism was a specific strategy of self-identification, a form of national and culturalmanifestation of a number of artists. The authors emphasized that the leveling of national differences and the eradication of aestheticpluralism led to the forced transfer of mental markers to the margins and forced mid-twentieth-century artists, who were constantlythreatened with various punishments for deviating from the party and government, to balance between official, ideological requirementsand their own creative potential to achieve consonance. The circumstances of the monopoly position of socialist realism, the dictatesof the norms of creative behavior, the lack of conditions for self-reflection of the artist led to the fact that artistic cognition of the culturalenvironment, the outline of mental boundaries and semantic matrices of the nation were not possible. This kind of context allows us toconsider escapism in these works not only as an escape from the problems of reality, but also as a way to transform the world.

Conclusions. The study revealed that due to the presence of artists in the conditions of neutralization of the pro-Ukrainian partof the population, the escapic vector of works allowed to “slip” beyond the socialist-realist canon. Forms of expression of this tendencyin the prose of Yu. Yanovskyi, O. Dovzhenko, O. Honchar were orientation to previous historical eras, excursions into the past, accentson cultural national codes. Specific features of artistic modeling of reality in the works “Four Swords” by Yu. Yanovskyi, “Ukraineon Fire” by O. Dovzhenko, “Man and Weapon” by O. Honchar are the appeal to folklore, the rise of national values, the expressionof basic ethno-national features in subtextual layers. Such an emphasis on mental matrices undermined socialist realist guidelines,showed opposition to the official artistic tendency, allowed the authors to identify national self-identification and to form appropriatevalues in the recipients.