Жанрово-стилевое своеобразие украинской народной думы и вопросы ее современного изучения

Abstract

Among the epic genres of Ukrainian folklore, duma occupies a special place. Genetically connected with such traditional genres as bylina (epic story), lamentation, spell and other earlier varieties of folk oral poetry, it spreads mainly in the 17th and 18th centuries. However, later, it continues to exist in folklore and actively influences the literary process that can be vividly observed in the works by Taras Shevchenko and other writers of the 19th century. Contemporary authors productively employ and develop characters, motifs and style profoundness of this ancient genre. Genesis of duma to our time remains an actual problem. Its persistence in the tradition of Kievan Rus culture has been pointed out by M. Maksymovych, M. Hrushevsky and other researchers. The poetics of dumas, particularly their artistic structure, has been explored quite substantially, although this research is far from exhaustive. What strikes one’s eye right from the first acquaintance with dumas is the non-strophic composition. This uninhibited verse flow, as if not limited by anything, distinctively echoes an unceasing flow of life. Resembling the dynamics of recreated highly dramatic events, it contributes to emotional expressiveness, as well as to meditative reflections of their poetic comprehension. At the same time, F. Kolessa, followed by other researchers, noticed more or less detached periods (tirades, fragments) of this generally free non-strophic flow. These periods clearly represent a specific structure of such verse. They principally have quite an appreciable prosodic tint in a musical text, and also their own specifics in a verbal text. This specificity — primarily by the example of concrete works — is expected to become the subject matter of thorough research. A subtle combination of long and shorter lines, alternation between diverse regular rhythms and no less diverse rhythms of a free, often queer nature — all this gives a particular vividness to the texts of dumas. These are the evidence of that uniqueness, which was discussed by T. Shevchenko in regard to Ukrainian duma, and to which many researchers drew our attention. However, this unquestionable uniqueness doesn’t contradict the genetic and typological bond of Ukrainian folk dumas and world epic tradition.