Довгопола Карина Богданівна, студентка магістратури Київського національного університету ім. Тараса Шевченка «Individual depiction of historical events in the context of P. Zagrebelnyi’s novel «Miracle»

 

 Довгопола К. Б.,

студентка магістратури

Наук. кер. – к. філол. н., доц. Дяченко С. І.

Київський національний університет імені Тараса Шевченка 

THE INDIVIDUAL DEPICTION OF HISTORICAL EVENTS IN THE CONTEXT OF P. ZAGREBELNYI'S NOVEL «MIRACLE»

 The historical context in Ukrainian literary works has become one of the most pressing issues for researchers in recent decades, as period of the second half of the 80's and early 90's of the twentieth century is characterized by a certain thaw in historical and political terms. Researchers and writers have begun to raise questions and topics that during a particular period were under ideological control. During this period, such techniques as symbolism and imagery are widely used in the literature that help to illuminate the problems of human existence. Introduction of different types of conditional reflection of reality, for example, symbol, artistic or hypothetical image attaches special importance to their works and creates an auxiliary factor in revealing the essence. In the context of prose of recent decades the work of Pavlo Zagrebelniy possesses distinctive features. The scale and atypicality of the epic narrative, the disclosure of political and moral reasoning, a comprehensive view of history and author's awareness are characteristics of the writer's work, which will be considered in details on the example of the historical novel «Miracle» by P. Zagrebelnyi.

It should be noted that some contemplations about the artistic and figurative issues in the historical novels of P. Zagrebelny are expressed in the investigations of such researchers, as N. Bilyk, V. Donchyk, L. Novychenko, M. Slaboshpytsky, V. Fashchenko, S. Shakhovsky, etc.  In particular, V. Fashchenko believes that: «Pavlo Zagrebelnyi is especially attracted by three spheres of human activity: military-patriotic, state-historical and production-creative» [11, p. 33]. Besides, O. Kuhar-Onyshko revealed the individual style of the novelist in the article «Formation of the writer's style», which was later included in the monograph «Individual style of the writer: genesis, structure, typology»: «P. Zagrebelny's style is very dynamic. The writer feels confidently depicting the working environment and cyber scientists, he is close to the problems of the modern village and the history of Kievan Rus. Each time in a different stylistic key, in a different tone leads the story» [6, p. 18].

However, the problem of the author's approach of history depiction in the novel «Miracle» has not been analysed as the subject of the holistic study yet. In particular, there was no detailed and thorough study of the image of the St. Sophia's cathedral of Kyiv as the bearer of the historical foundations and individual identity of the Ukrainian people, although scholars have repeatedly referred to this image in the context of ideological and thematic analysis of the text.

Thus, the urgency of this article is defined due to the lack of a holistic research in Ukrainian literary studies of the historical basis and its direct author's coverage  in the work of P. Zagrebelnyi «Miracle».

The aim of the article is to consider and analyze the key features of the author's method of depiction of history in the novel «Miracle» at the compositional, plot and figurative levels, taking into account subsidiary techniques in the reproduction of the ancient times.

It is necessary to outline the primary author's methods of depiction historical events in the novel: chronicle form, three-dimensional construction of the novel for a comprehensive study of evolution of amazing construction, and insertion of the author's hypothesis to fill the blanks of history, to find answers to emerging questions and motivate results.

As already stated, the events of the novel «Miracle» unfold within three time periods, namely the X-XI centuries, 40's and 60's of the twentieth century. According to the time shown, the plot of «Miracle» consists of three plot planes, in each of which separate events take place, separate characters act. The plot planes are united by a common spatial image of Sophia Cathedral which is involved in the main events. For this reason, the central place of this artistic image was marked. The role of the image is not just about the national shrines stolen during the war by scientists of the german occupation, but also about the protection of the origins of statehood and culture of Kievan Rus in the ancient cradle of Eastern Slavs.

Another significant feature of the historical presentation in the novel is that the story and plot events are presented in the form of a chronicle, which models the literary work as projection on the historical basis of the novel and creates the preconditions for the assertion of the author's historical authenticity of the outlined artistic facts «Year 1965. Spring. Kyiv» [3, p. 260]. Obviously, the main example was the famous historical manuscript called «The Tale of Bygone Years», therefore such type of narration creates an impression of retelling of accurate historical events «In the year 6616...» [8].

Also, it should be mentioned that the author pays significant attention to the construction of St. Sophia Cathedral, which, permeating the centuries and absorbing the spiritual experience of those who built statehood of Kievan Rus, brings future generations faith in their people, in their land, confidence in the immortality of a nation that has such shrines. The image of Sophia is a real image of an amazing architectural monument of the reign of Yaroslav the Wise, built, according to the artistic version of P. Zagrebelnyi, by a talented master Sivook, who is a collective image of talented artists. Consequently, in the novel the historical basis and artistic fiction interwine. In order to understand the main causes of the extraordinary and grandeur cathedral, the author introduced the artistic image of the master, chief architect who worked on the project. The architectural monument still has preserved beautiful examples of painting of that time. Let's remember the main mosaic of Oranta, which is placed in the central part of the internal cathedral. The novel describes in detail the dialogue of the master, who provides the motivation of a particular way of mosaic creation, because the different angles of view can reflect variations of picture [3, p. 567]. Accordingly, it can be noticed in the modern cathedral that from one position Oranta stands straight, from another side the figure seems to be on knees, and from the third point of view it stands half-turned. These qualities prove uniqueness of this masterpiece and the author conveys this fact in his novel.

The question of selection of colors, paints and ornaments, which are not quite typical for that standards of church tradition and do not fit into the canonicity, is examined in the novel. During the description of decoration of the temple and the process of creation, it is stated: «Now something like a plant was born in him; as plants - flowers and leaves, he now lived and spoke to people only in colors,and everything for him was invested in the language of color, he began his death in creation again, floated through the tips of his fingers on his mosaics, unseen colors, he would like to catch in color and show people everything in the world: maiden singing, bird's flight, twinkling stars from the clear sky and the sun» [ 3, p. 320].

Simultaneously, the image of the real historical person Yaroslav the Wise fades into the background. In contrast, the author does not underestimate his achievements and merits, but tries to find out a person who brought to life the idea of the ruler, a master who possessed a great talent and copnstructed such miracle of humanity.

In spite of the fact that historically all grand achievements were attributed to rulers, P. Zagrebelnyi tended to his own reconstruction of historical events. For this reason, the author introduced Sivook in order to analyze the questions of the existed historical facts and offer individual points of view.

Thus, although the central historical event was the construction of the cathedral, but in the center of the artistic historical narrative is the creator of the cathedral.

To sum up, P. Zagrebelnyi demonstrated outstanding author way of history representation, implementing historical facts of different epochs and personal hypothesis in order to observe the complex chain of past events and find the answer to several questions due to document gaps. 

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