IMAGES OF CHRIST AND THE VIRGIN MARY IN THE POETRY OF HRYHORII SKOVORODA AND WIRA WOWK

Abstract

The paper analyzes the images of Jesus Christ and the Mother of God in the poetry by Hryhorii Skovoroda and Wira Wowk. Until now, this topic has not been the object of scholarly research although the creativity of writers has many common features: aphoristic style, philosophical mood, and biblical figurative elements. The purpose of the paper is to characterize the specifics of interpreting the images of Christ and the Mother of God in the authors’ poetry. The analysis is based on the collections “The Garden of Divine Songs” by H. Skovoroda and “The Rosary for Christ”, “The Rosary for the Mother of God” by Wira Wowk.
 Peculiar in the reception of the figure of Christ in the poetry of both authors is its outer featurelessness and deep semantic content. H. Skovoroda used the concepts of ʻlifeʼ, ʻjoyʼ, ʻpure heartʼ and the biblical symbols of fire, stone, word, and grain; Wira Wowk preferred the symbols of word, light, heart, and ear of corn. Each author is characterized by the original interpretation of the biblical image of the Savior. He is embodied in the figures of a guest, an astronomer, a doctor hurt for human faults (poetry by H. Skovoroda) and a doctor, a heavenly gardener, a helmsman on Cheremosh (poetry by Wira Wowk).
 The image of the Virgin in H. Skovoroda’s work is less pronounced than the image of Jesus and is revealed only in three poems, while Wira Wowk dedicated three separate collections to the Virgin Mary. There are different symbolic hypostases of the Mother of God in the poems by H. Skovoroda, which have been singled out. Wira Wowkʼs interpretation of this image is characterized by such features as iconographic specification, biblical dynamics of unfolding, and symbolic content (images of the Winged Mother of God, the Mother Princess, Lilia, Oranta). The image of Mother Mary is common to both authors (Mary, Mother of Jesus — in Skovoroda’s poems and Mother of humanity, the world, and Ukraine — in Wira Wowk’s ones).
 Special attention has been paid to the biblical prototext in the poetic works by H. Skovoroda and Wira Wowk, important in the interpretation of the figures of Christ and the Mother of God, as well as to the moral and axiological depth of these images and their conceptual significance.