Existential-dialogical rendition of the motive death of the loved one in the poetry of I. Franko, Lesya Ukrainka, V. Svidzinskij

Abstract

The topic of death is one of the main in both philosophy and poetry. Existential philosophy proposed a number of partly contradictory explanations for this phenomenon. A founder of the existentialism Martin Heidegger emphasized the individual character of death, the impossibility of adopting its experience for Another, because death is always “mine”. Being before death (Sein zum Tode) is an existential, in other words an existential trait of presence. Gabriel Marcel noted to the author of “Being and time” the detraction of a problem of other person’s death, the death of a loved one in the term Sein zum Tode.

The experience of lyrical hero (heroine) in losing their loved one is a traditional motive in the world poetry. For example, recall the “Metamorphoses” by Ovid, connected with it a poem of R.M. Rilke “Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes”, a collection of poems “Il Canzoniere” by Petrarch, particularly its part “In death of Madonna Laura”.

In the lyric poetry of Ivan Franko, Lesya Ukrainka, Volodymyr Svidzinskij this motive also sounds very expressively and originally – in emotional, philosophical and poetical view.

I. Franko in the collection of poems “Withered leaves” tells the story of a lyrical hero who “saw the love” three times, and he puts a motive of girl’s death in the third part. The poet discourses upon the unity of death and art, the tendency of the united (”songs like bells”) at the end of the first poem, but in the next one it is crucial.

I. Franko describes in details a psychological state of a young man who is startled by a premature death of a girl, author’s view is focused on the inner world of lyrical hero – it’s a bell that tolls in him. Antithetic, contrast of images is the main stylistic trace of poetic phrases in which vividly collide girl’s beauty and the immobility, the desire and the coffin, dreams and their crashing, the temple and its destruction.

The event in the external space (the death of the beloved) impressive internal space  of lyrical hero - its destruction. Devastated inner space is left blank is full of different contents: instead of light, dreams and temple the pain is dominates. Unexpected paradoxical conclusion "No. I dead" suddenly everything makes clear up to the lyrical  hero. The status of the slain man's grief is really close to death: aversion of environment, external insensibility, feeling close to the afterlife – its signs. The special mysterious proximity sense of the death of beloved to a unique experience of "my death", the experience of which, according to the philosophy of the founder of existentialism, M. Heidegger, cannot exist in principle found expression in the poetry of Ivan Franko.

The motive of the loss of the beloved in the poetic version of Ivan Franko is the story of untapped love, expressed the feeling on which lay a shadow of death. The perception of the death of another important human as its own expressed literally and explained to the poet-researcher and the depth of the poet-psychologist.

Intimate lyrics of Lesya Ukrainka are close to active denial of the death of beloved, preached by G. Marcel. Lyrical heroine determinatly doesn't give  her  friend  to  the  death. The poetess described the love on the brink of death and its ruthless threshold. In the world of Lesya’s poetry a woman cannot imagine a separation with a friend and fights for his life on his threshold of death when the evil spirit had already come in the space of life on its victim. In the verses, written after the burial of the comrade, the value of inseparable "Me" and "You" is stored, acquiring new meanings and forms.

Feeling of love, which became beyond the threshold after the funeral is remonstrative, the lyrical heroine left alone in this world, destroys the threshold that separated darling, with her destiny creates a common space where they are forever together. The development of the presence of the deceased beloved from the image to the existence of that amazingly exactly matches the theory of G. Marcel, we observe in diptych of Lesya Ukrainka "I saw you were leaning to the ground ...," "It could happen and the second miracle ...". Symbols mastership, music of poem, staginess characterize the stylistic options.

In the poetry of Lesya Ukrainka there is a special drama highlight of complexity lifetime relationship with beloved person. In the analyzed poetry of I. Franko this relationship did not even began because of imminent death of girl, in Lesya Ukrainka’s poetry, as in V.Svidzinsky’s, heroes lived complicated love stories, each of them contained something dramatic. The contradictions that have marked relations, have left their mark in the posthumous feeling.

In the fate of V. Svidzinsky were many personal deprivations which reflected in the images and motives of his lyrics, especially in cycles "Mortalia" and "Memory of Z. Svidzinskoy". V.Svidzinsky’s poetry with the theme of death of beloved person has poetic visions, dreams, weeping, tales, charms, memories. In the poetic philosophizing prevails not consolidation of death as tragic and insurmountable end which maim the inner world of the living (as in Franko’s) and not active negation of friend’s death (as in Lesya Ukrainka’s), but the adoption of secret - asking about it, the intuitive touch to it through the artistic image. Poet understood not the mystery itself (it is inconceivable), but that it gives us - the love. His artistic concepts "Precious forever love," "Dream of love knows no end" in unison of H.Marsel’s thinking about continuity of love and come into conflict with rational truths which lyrical hero does not deny: "I know, everything dies", "You are not present in the Earth".

Inextricably combining love with eternity, Franko, Lesia Ukrainka, V.Svidzinsky get the value basis what H.Marsel called as the debate soul. Each of the authors created the original story of the tragic love; each lyrical hero finds his way out of solitary existence in front of threshold, the output - the free choice of individual secret depths of human existence.