Polish Studies of Kyiv: works of International scientific conference, Kyiv, 23-25 of May, 2018. / chief editor R. Radyshevskyi. – vol. XXXV. – Kyiv: Talkom, 2019. – P. 231-242.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17721/psk.2019.35.231-242

Nabytovych I.

BIBLE TOPICS IN THE HISTORICAL PROSE OF UKRAINIAN EMIGRATION

Abstract. In the article there are summarized innovative approaches to artistic mastering of Bible topics in creative work of Ukrainian emigration writers of 1920^th – 1970^th: Natalena Koroleva, Leonid Mosendz and V. Domontovych (Victor Petrov).

Ukrainian tradition of mastering Bible topics was interrupted by Russian occupation; it finds its bright artistic embodiment in artistic historical prose of Ukrainian emigration. This artistic experience enriches Ukrainian writing by mastering of Bible topics and motives via Bible stylizations, renaissance or creation of newly created new genre formations, contaminations of religious and historiosophical problems, searches of new narrative strategies of artistic mastering of the Holy Scripture.

The article traces the way biblical stylizations become a style-forming means in the Ukrainian prose of the XX century. Historical novels Quid est Veritas?(What is the Truth?) by Natalena Koroleva and The Last Prophet by Leonid Mosendz are the basic works of fiction wherein they, playing forming roles, become an important element in poetic language and style.

The way L. Mosendz uses bible stylizations in his novel The Last Prophet results in a special art amplification. The author conditionally expands his text’s sense by dint of bible stylizations and his allusive returning to the semiotic-semantic significance of the “base-text”. As the latter is the Bible (or, rather, the Old Testament), generating the said allusive amplifications, Mosendz’ novel, thus, sounds in several creative aspects. One of them is “filling up” the gaps in evangelical texts about John the Baptist’s life. Such “fillings up” occur both through the author’s fiction and his artistic reconstruction based on historical sources.

The transformed and adsorbed through bible stylizations elements of neoclassicism and neo-romanticism create in the stylistic palette of novel Quid est Veritas? that unique stylistic aura, which represents Natalena Koroleva’s experimentalist attempts both in the genre field (her attempt to create a Ukrainian historical epopee representing the epoch historically very remote from the artist) and in the stylistic domain. One more specific feature of Koroleva’s novel – its epic character – is also created by help of bible stylizations.

The allocation of the said stylistic macrostructures enables to present the general exhibitions of each of the author’s basic idiostyle elements.

Keywords: emigration literature, Bible topics, Bible stylizations, historical prose.

Information about author: Nabytovych Ihor, doctor of Science, professor of Departments of Ukrainian Philology, Insti- tute of Slavic Philology, University of Maria Curie-Skłodowska.