FOREIGN LAND AND A FOREIGNER IN ASKOLD MELNYCZUK’S NOVEL "WHAT IS TOLD"

Abstract

The article examines Askold Melnyczuk’s novel "What is Told". It focuses on the concept of the foreign land and the identity of a foreigner. The author used the theoretical approach of Yu. Kristeva that deals with the peculiarities of the foreigner’s worldview and her/his attitudes to the new surroundings. Yu. Kristeva considers that patience and humility determine the existence of newcomers. At the same time, their inner world is full of melancholy and longing for the idealized in their imagination abandoned land. The author of the article considered different types of geographical spaces: the mythologized town of Rozdorizzhya, where the identity of the main characters was formed, camps for temporarily displaced persons and the New World.
 The space of ancestors and the space of the new land are in opposition in the imagination of the main character Arkadyi. America is a technology while left behind the village in Polissya region is a deep province. The idea of a foreign land as a locus of freedom and self-realization changes after the characters arrive in the United States. Only the habitus of the Ukrainian community remains safe and understandable for newcomers. The identity of a stranger and the bitter realization of deprivation cause constant characters’ inner anxiety. They seek recognition at the individual level as well as at the collective level. However, America prefers to absorb the diversity of collectivities and creates a new community based on them.
 In Melnyczuk’s novel, a foreign land remains strange to Ukrainian migrants. After many decades of living in the new territory, they still dream of the abandoned Rozdorizzhya, which in their memory has become almost an image of paradise. An offspring of migrants born in the United States is integrated into the new reality. Bo Voroh does not feel melancholy and longing for the country from which his parents come. It exists for him as a myth or fiction, which his mother and father cannot abandon.