SUBJECT GROUP OF OXYMORONS WITH JOY / SADNESS SEMANTIC LOAD IN POEMS OF VASYL STUS

Abstract

Vasyl Stus is a brilliant representative of Ukrainian existentialism, a person of tragic fate. Emotionalism and complexity of his poetic manner, «obscureness» of verses to his contemporaries and even the majority of readers are neither escape from reality, nor deliberate inversion of reality, of which the poet was blamed by the Soviet critics; it is more of a creation of Stus’s own reality, search of new ways for Ukrainian literature to move forward. Finding a solution to the existential problem of meaning in the person’s existence, inner world, spiritual experience in relations with the world is the object of Vasyl Stus’s creative concept. Guided by philosophical tenets of existentialism, the poet’s persona is in search of his identity within it. This search causes horror, despair, and a sense of existential tragedy. Thus, the poet’s existentialistic nature has determined the figurative method of expressing his philosophy. V. Stus’s existentialism, the depth of his philosophical thinking are brilliantly expressed in conceptual polysemantic images that fill his poetry. The main ones among them are oxymorons. The existentialistic spirit in his poetry is manifested in the form of oxymorons, which we associate with the peculiarities of the poet’s tragic worldview and great capabilities of oxymorons for its expression, as well as with the features of his poetic style that are unusual for Ukrainian literature: reach after condensed and concentrated imagery; poetical reproduction of the emotional charge of facts; search for new overtones in the words to convey new emotional and psychological connotations. Poet’s use of oxymorons represents the hard way he went from contradictory worldview, internal disharmony, complex and unconventional worldview to all these internal conflicts being reflected in his extraordinary imagery. This present article deals with the subject group of oxymoronic imagery with the joy/sadness semantic opposition in the poetry of the Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus; analyzes the semantic connection of oxymoron with the peculiarities of the artist’s worldview. New figurative meanings acquired by the lexemes in oxymoronic expressions are the means used by the author to manifest his attitude towards reality.