THE DIARY GENRE IN THE WORKS OF MARIA MATIOS: TYPOLOGY AND POETICS

Abstract

Purpose. The purpose of the publication is a systematic observation of the artistic assimilation of genre features of diarіstics in works Maria Matios “Diary of the Executed”, “Private Diary. … Maidan. War…”, aimed at a special study of the variability of the interaction of documentary and artistic types of writing, the dominance of one or another of them and, accordingly, the formation of original poetics of narrative systems.

Methods. For this purpose, aesthetic and historical-comparative research methods are used.

Results. In the article for the first time the diary segment of the work of the modern Ukrainian writer, laureate of the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine Maria Matios is thoroughly investigated.

Conclusions. As a result of the analysis of the texts, it was concluded that the genre features of the diary are the construction of the text as a series of notes that date events from the life of the “I”-narrator, as well as their chronicity, discreteness, сontents and formal diversity, conceptual unprogrammability, subjectivity, etc. At the same time the artistic core of the works is acute conflicts of socio-psychological and civic and political type which model a plot, build a system of characters and gives the text more or less aesthetics.

“The Diary of the Executed” is an artistic and epic work created on the model of fictionalized female diary; actually a novel in which the diary is both an artistic image, and an architectural principle, and a compositional and stylistic technique, which in a memoir-receptive way organizes disclosure of the topic (self-knowledge and self-formation of a woman’s personality through diary writing-reading). The work has a distinct melodramatic character, emphasizes private story on a gray background of general existence and through an essayistic mosaic of thoughts and states asserts the power of a woman’s consciousness over her subconscious.

“The Private Diary. …Maidan. The War…” is a typical literary diary, actually a diariush which testifies to the active presence of its author – writer, politician, cultural and public figure, woman (daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, colleague and friend), person – Maria Matios in stormy present of Ukraine. From a formal point of view it is a kind of documentary-artistic meta-genre – a novel-chronicle which fixes the events from 30 November 2013 to 5 July 2015 through the prism of personal perception and direct involvement of the narrator in them. The work has a powerful problematic and realistic background, expressive essayistic and reporting narrative; at the same time its aesthetics provides the artistry of speech, techniques of composition, poetic descriptions, etc.

The development of the genre of diary in the creativity of M. Matios reflects her literary evolution.