Archetypes, plots, and images of old Ukrainian mythology in the lyrics of Yurii Darahan

Abstract

The relevance of the study is due to the need for a detailed analysis of mythologemes in Yurii Darahan’s work for a sufficiently deep reading of his texts. The subject of the study is the archetypes, plots, and images of Ukrainian mythology in his lyrics. The study aims to find out the conceptual and aesthetic significance of Ukrainian mythological plots and images in Darahan’s artistic picture of the world. Using the methods of mythocritical (archetypal) and intertextual analysis, autobiographical and descriptive methods the author examines all of Yurii Darahan’s published poetry, including the collection Sahaidak (“Quiver”, 1925), and texts outside the collection published in periodicals. Thus, mythologemes — the smallest semantic units of the text that refer to the old Ukrainian mythology — were distinguished, and their influence on the essence of the author’s poetic texts and their role in his artistic picture of the world was revealed. As a result of the study, the following archetypes, plots, and images of old Ukrainian mythology in Darahan’s poetry were identified: the sophisticated and deep archetype of the Great Mother, the productive and inspiring archetype of the Defender (the image of an ideal person), a wide range of solar images, images of mediators, the concept of the Genus, motifs of synergy of the elements and sacrifice, as well as images of old Ukrainian gods. Ukrainian mythology enables him to reveal his vision of the world, reflect on basic ontological categories, and form the basis of his artistic picture of the world; through its distinctive archetypes, images, and plots, he seeks to actualize national memory, identity, and the collective unconscious. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that it allows us to deepen the interpretation of Yurii Darahan’s texts and to develop the mythocritical (archetypal) method of text analysis through the prism of national mythology, which is relevant for the study of the Prague School poets and the literary process of the 20th–21st centuries.