Abstract
In her drama Cassandra (1903–1907) Lesia Ukrainka pays considerable attention to language and demonstrates its two defi ning forms and functional paradigms. One of them is language that appeals to the essential components of being. It is language that refl ects human existence in all its acuity and fullness of appearance. This language is complex and diffi cult to understand, but is the only real language of the age of modernism. Another language is superfi cial, appealing not to the depths of life and universal categories, but to temporary human needs and aspirations. Its task is to identify the ways and means of achieving a desired goal. Such language is manipulative, because its speakers tend to hide their personal interests under claims of the common good. Also, in the drama, Lesia Ukrainka innovatively raises a number of questions related to the internal laws of world development, the processes of human cognition, the functioning of language, and the understanding and interpretation of the word. The formulation and presentation of these issues demonstrate the clear modern attitude that the writer professed and embodied in her drama.
Highlights
Critics have repeatedly spoken about the modern essence of Lesіa Ukrainka’s dramatic poemsand revealed thisessence from different pointsof view
The drama Cassandra was written during 1903–1907, and it reflected in the figurative word the latest approaches to understanding the nature of language and human thought, which would be crucial for the philosophy, aesthetics, and sociology of the twentieth century
In his article “The Diversity of Languages and Understanding of the World,” Gadamer notes that in twentieth century Western philosophical thought there was a “kind of linguistic turn,” which consisted of an orientation on language, a realization of its extreme importance in reflecting the surrounding world and thought processes
Summary
Critics have repeatedly spoken about the modern essence of Lesіa Ukrainka’s dramatic poemsand revealed thisessence from different pointsof view. Tamara Hundorova considers Cassandra in the context of the crisis of rationalism and the manifestation of a new ontology of the modernist word She sees in the drama a manifestation of the anti-rationalist communicative gap in the cultural and spiritual situation of the fin de siècle, when the power and truth of rational discourse are lost, and the spontaneously intuitive, deep power of irrational, chaotic, disordered law of necessity, destiny, and language breaks through.[10]. The researcher points to the hermeneutic problem revealed in the drama – “understanding the inadequacy of the spoken and perceived word.”[14] Aheieva emphasizes the important ontological status of the word, which, manifesting itself, “in of itself makes real essence.”[15] She points to the concept of death revealed in the drama, which by its manifestation affirms the “ethical absolute” of the main character. My task will be to comprehend the problems of the ontology and hermeneutics of the word in the relevant philosophical and aesthetic discourse; as well as to show the depth and modernity of their reflection in the text of Cassandra
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