«Проклятий антихрист»: стереотипізація єврейської ідентичності в романі «Михайло Чарнышенко, или Малороссия восемьдесят лет назад» П. Куліша

Abstract

The article aims to study the representation of Jewish stereotypes in P. Kulish’s first novel “Mykhailo Charnyshenko, or Little Russia Eighty Years ago” (written – 1842, printed – 1843) in the characterof the Cossack Colonel Anton Kryzhanovsky. The literary image is considered in a three-dimensional plane: the attitude towards the Jewish converts during the events described by the writer in the 2nd half of the 18th century, as well as information known from historical sources and new facts from modern sources about Colonel A. Kryzhanovsky, and, finally, correspondence of historical truth with modeling of the literary image in the novel “Mykhailo Charnyshenko, or Little Russia Eighty Years ago”. The article traces how the writer used the historical sources known to him and how the widespread ideas about the Jews of that time found a place in his novel. Colonel Anton Kryzhanovsky, who is the only prototype of a real historical person in P.Kulish’s novel, is devastatingly described in the anonymous treatise “History of Ruthenians or Little Russia” and fully corresponds to the literary image in the text of the novel. The article shows how P. Kulish, using the completely false information of the “History of Ruthenians or Little Russia”, repeats the factual errors of the treatise author, since its text combines information about the conversion of Anton Kryzhanovsky’s father with the historical fact of the recruitment of Ukrainian “Holsteinians” by Colonel Anton Kryzhanovsky. However, the same inaccuracy can be traced in the works of Ukrainian scientists of the 19th century, for example, the historian-genealogist O. Lazarevsky and the historian D. Miller. The paradox of Kryzhanovsky’s image in the novel lies in the fact that being a consolidating character for others and an impetus for the unfolding of events, he almost always remains aloof as if deliberately emphasizing his mysteriousness and insidiousness, which are reinforced by a characteristic portrait. P. Kulish ignores the real history of the conversion of Jews in the Cossacks when with a change of religion yesterday’s Jew became a “Cossack’s friend” and had all the prospects for successful integration. In his first novel, P. Kulish produces the mythologeme of a Jewish convert, who selfishly and deliberately integrates into the Ukrainian Cossack community and gradually emancipates himself to the extent that he obtains a high military position thanks to the patronage of the Russian Emperor Peter III and irreparably harms the Cossacks, who are trying to balance thoughts about the glorious past and the present colonial time. However, this author’s position is at odds with real historical facts, including biographical data about Cossack colonel Anton Kryzhanovsky.