«Arsenal» by O. Dovzhenko:Selfdestructive Split of Artist
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31548/philolog2021.01.054Abstract
Abstract. Olexander Dovzhenko's works reflect a complicated and contradictory process of artistic practice in totalitarian conditions. Social, cultural and political factors had a significant influence on the creative vision of O. Dovzhenko. He was in conditions of increasing ideological pressure and political regulation of creative activity, so the artist had to suppress his own aesthetic principles. O. Dovzhenko had to obey the government and to be corresponded for external requirements.
The purpose of research is to find out the social, cultural and political factors of influence on creative vision of artist; to comprehend the problem of internal conflict of creative personality and its reflection in a filmscript «Arsenal».
Results of research. Oleksandr Dovzhenko's "alternative response" to the ideological and political project of the Soviet government had been observed in his early artistic achievements, for example films "Zvenyhora", "Earth". We can see another "variant response" with approach to the official version in "Arsenal" (1929). The artist's behavior was on the verge of balancing. On the one hand he accepted the official ideology, but on the other hand O. Dovzhenko had internal denial caused by the nature of the national mentality. This is an inevitable source of internal conflict. The psychological intrapersonal conflict of O. Dovzhenko as a film director had been provoked by both internal and external facts.
Dovzhenko was able to show many different accidents from the beginning of World War I to the times of the revolution and liberation struggles in 1918 in the screenplay "Arsenal". This screenplay is full of tragedy tellings about the soldiers’ return home from the front, about the confrontation between the Haidamaks, who cooperated with the Central Rada and the front-line soldiers supported by government.
The author's interpretation of Ukrainian revolution, the national struggle, with a specific satirical aspect from the standpoint of the Bolshevik Party can be investigated. O. Dovzhenko renounced of his past. The author had to maneuver between ideology and creative impulses, readiness to submit to an external authority and national feelings. But anyway, O. Dovzhenko found a possibility to show dramatic pages of Ukrainian history through the prism of class categories and tendentious coverage of national liberation struggles in the film "Arsenal".
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