КОНЦЕПТ КРАСИ У РАННІЙ ТВОРЧОСТІ В. ВИННИЧЕНКА

Abstract

The article reveals the specifics of artistic manifestation of the beauty concept based on V. Vynnychenko’s early works. This is due to the presence of a number of search lines in the writer’s interpretation of aesthetic and to a significant number of works representing current issues. Beauty is defined as a fundamental component of life in the works by V. Vynnychenko and several author’s plots of its comprehension are revealed. Firstly, it is found that in writer’s early works the characters experience a crisis of faith, emphasize the relativity of absolute truth and Christian ethics, rethink the concept of sin and sacred Christian commandments («Love your neighbour as yourself», «Do not deceive», «Do not kill», and «In the sweat of your brow, eat your bread»), professing dual moral standards and the idea of «benevolent selfishness». The writer places material values into the center of existence instead of spiritual Christian ones. The former acquire absolute status and most importantly are able to ensure the realization of the fundamental goal – to maintain vitality in the project of «fullness» of earthly existence. It is emphasized that in his early works, V. Vynnychenko substantiates the concept of «life-as-a-market», where you can get financial or moral compensation through «selling/buying/exchanging» valuables, among which female beauty is one of the fundamental values. The analysis confirms the idea that woman’s beauty and love are mercantilized due to the devaluation of spiritual values, they lose their ideal metaphysical essence and are transformed into ordinary goods and vital cycle of values components. That is closely connected with the problems of «exchange-purchase-sale» of the values, money cynicism and the interpretation of the family as an economic contract (the case of the story «The Poor People», dramas «Bazaar», «Young Blood», «Crucified»). In V. Vynnychenko’s art world, several search lines are connected with the category of beauty, particularly the problem of coordination of bodily, physically expressed female beauty with spiritual beauty in the context of «exchange of values». The author also experiments with the concept of free marriage, which is considered an alternative to an unhappy family as an economic project.