Parables in the poetry of dissenters and hermetists (using the lyrics of Taras Melnychuk and Vasyl Herasymiuk)

Abstract

In modern Ukrainian literary studies, the problems of generational dialogues and conflicts, the heredity and discontinuity of the literary process in Soviet and independent Ukraine, as well as the restoration of the authenticity and originality of lyrical writing, the peculiarities of generational experiences, are actualized. Scientists are interested in designing the encoding of images and symbols in the lyrics of resistance members, in particular, dissidents and hermeticists, representatives of two forms of dissent — open and hidden. The modelling of history and reality in the work of Taras Melnychuk and Vasyl Herasymiuk, two poets from the Hutsul Region, still seems exotic, as it does not declare any phenomenon, but retells it as a strange phenomenon, as a fate, as a molfarism, as hereditary, as exceptional and usual at the same time. The core of the resistance literature was the imagery of the poetry of several generations, in particular dissidents and hermetists, which stood out from the mass of poetry of the second half of the 20th century with its fairy-tale and parable imagery. This literature of the resistance movement is well characterized, but not qualified by modern sources. Very interesting in this sense is the design of symbols and codes based on the metaphorical processing of ethnicity (partially relict). The lyrics of dissidents and hermeticists are, in fact, a demonstration of open (extroverted) and hidden (introverted) forms of resistance to the regime — through a parable, a fairy tale, a myth. The national culture revealed by the two poets in the poems is a contemplative part of their Europeanness, and therefore embodied both in dominant images and in explanations somewhat similar to exegesis, creating a completely underground allegory. Taras Melnychuk and Vasyl Herasymiuk are two Hutsul poets who not only offered readers to model reality based on its exoticization, but also to implement ethnocodes, oddities and molfarism as a tool to fight against totalitarianism. This is a manifestation of the form of the authors’ stoic positions, and is not only perceived as an expression of the beauty of the Carpathians and the Hutsul region.