TARAS AND LYKERA: A WELL-KNOWN STORY IN THE VERSIONS OF THE SHEVCHENKIANA NOVEL

Abstract

The article is part of a systematic research project on intimate and love discourses in Ukrainian literary Shevchenkiana, in particular in novel prose. It is noted that the creative interpretation of Taras Shevchenko’s relationship with Lykera Polusmak requires broader and more systematic studies despite the numerous documentary and memoir sources and artistic and documentary works about that relationship. It is noted that it is in the “great” prose, short stories and novels that the studied topic is most widely and diversely embodied, and certain evolutionary trends are traced in works written in different time periods. The article consistently analyzes the artistic embodiment of history in the novels of the 1960s (the novel by O. Ivanenko, B. Vadetsky), Vas. Shevchuk’s dilogy “Son of Freedom” (1980s) and a number of novels of the 1990s–2010s (the works of H. Tarasiuk, A. Tsvid, V. Chemerys, etc.). It is noted that the features of the artistic embodiment of the history of the relationship between Shevchenko and Polusmakivna were influenced, firstly, by the “addressability” of the work (O. Ivanenko’s novels are “for middle and high school age”), and secondly, and most importantly, by the creative freedom of writers (novels of Ukraine’s independence period). Special attention is paid to the interpretation of the studied history in Vas.Shevchuk’s dilogy “Son of Freedom”, where it is written out in an artistic way, with a deep psychologization of images and collisions. In the novels of the 2010s, writers resorted to fiction and conjecture much more widely in the embodiment of the theme, to the depiction of intimate and love pictures and scenes, but each of the authors in a special way. It is also pointed out a certain decrease in artistry in the latest novels, compared, for example, with the dilogy of Vas. Shevchuk, a certain excess of authorial subjectivism in fictional operations. At the same time, it is concluded that the analyzed novels have become a noticeable contribution to the entire Shevchenkiana and to the artistic comprehension of a specific story in the life of Taras Shevchenko.