Myths in the Poetic World of Lina Kostenko: Projections of the Aesthetic Ideal
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31548/philolog14(1).2023.07Abstract
The article analyzes the intertextual connections of Lina Kostenko's work (in particular, her novels "Marusya Churai" and "Notes of the Ukrainian samashedshego", as well as individual poems) with world myths - ancient, biblical and literary. Such intertextuality gives rise to an artistic world where the individual and the collective, the human and the divine, the everyday-practical and the unspeakable-unexplainable, the national-historical and the eternal, the material and the spiritual, the rational and the irrational, interact.
Allusive echoes of the texts of the Ukrainian poetess with the ancient Greek myths "Orpheus and Eurydice", "Hyacinthe", myth about the androgyne, biblical myths about St. John the Forerunner, Lilith and Eve, literary myths of Dante, M. Kotsyubynskyi are analyzed. All these myths are based on moral and philosophical maxims: love, creativity, immortality, beauty, responsibility, memory, integrity, compatibility of souls, dignity, spirituality, and chivalry, which are signs of the author's aesthetic ideal. The myth enriches her poetry with cultural codes that are most fully and adequately revealed only in the light of universal, not socio-historical or class criteria.
It is proven that in the novel "Marusya Churai" Lina Kostenko created an alternative vision of the image of the poet, an important point of which was the position of "artist and love". Imitating Dante's myth about the journey through hell, Lina Kostenko in the novel "Marusya Churai" presents her vision of hell during her main female character's journey through war-torn Ukraine and sets her own priorities in matters of "sinfulness" and punishment of her characters. The article also examines the philosophy of androgynism interpreted in the poetess's work as a spiritual union of lovers and the poetess's attitude to the gender concepts of "strong man" and "strong woman". The interpretation of Lina Kostenko's work in a mythological way will contribute to the awareness of her universal sound, which is not subject to temporal and political changes.
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