Anthropological Dimensions of War in the Works of Natalia Kobrynska

Abstract

In the article, Nataliia Kobrynska’s anti-military prose is analyzed in the context of an anthropological approach, which makes it possible to shed light on the “human and war” issue in a wide anthropological range. In particular, aspects of collective and individual emotions of war, gender issues, Christian anthropology, trauma of loss, motive of escape, national memory and archetypes, psychology of murder, children's perception of war are considered. This involves the biographical context of the writer herself, who witnessed and fell victim to the war, personally experiencing all its horrors and describing them in her works.The artistic description of war is dominated by N. Kobrynska’s expressionist worldview, depictions of the phenomena of mental and physical pain, borderline states of existence, ontologization of death, cordocentrism, motives of the end of the world, phantasmagoric visions of mutilation, deconstruction of the human body. The writer demonstrates the war-induced transformations in both public and individual consciousness that the new frontline experience has brought to an individual. It is particularly evident in the psychology of her characters, as the author notes the deformation of human values, when, on the one hand, a person adapts to war, experiences emotional atrophy, becomes inert to murder, and on the other hand, the same person gains new experience – the struggle for new vital meanings, mercy towards one's neighbor, exalted prayerfulness, ritual veneration of heroes, waiting for relatives to return from war. The anthropological dimensions of the phenomenon of war are dominated by the humanistic guidelines of the writer.