Mythopoetics of Borys Liatoshynsky’s 1910–1930s: the wagnerian context

Abstract

The mythopoetics of Borys Liatoshynsky’s work is a little-researched phenomenon by modern musicology. Meanwhile, the “projections” of the myth, the outlines of the mythological plot, image, and motive, woven into the artistic plan, open new horizons for understanding the author’s concepts. The myth appears to be the key to deciphering the depths of interaction between the author, the work, and the character. Given that Liatoshynsky’s artistic ideas of the 1910s–1930s were modernistic, his artistic concepts have absorbed almost all the leading phenomena of European music of the first half of the twentieth century. They became the basis for the further development of Ukrainian musical culture. Without resorting to mythopoetics it is impossible to understand them in their diversity, complexity and contradiction. Mythopoetics, in the context of Liatoshynsky’s explorations, is manifested through the reflection of other European cultures, passionary personalities, and the realization of the myth of the hero in the works. This can be seen in the symbolistic chamber works of the 1920s, in operas in which the hero’s sacrifice acquires the epic scale of Greek tragedy, and in symphonic works whose characters are characterized by the duality of interpretation of the good and the evil. Wagner’s projections in the works of Borys Liatoshynsky of the 1910s and 1930s can be traced in two ways. On the one hand, due to the mythopoetic symbolism of the intentions of the Ukrainian composer, the kaleidoscopic discreteness of symbols-images-myths, obtained from the work of Scriabin, a consistent Wagnerian. A deeply tragic attitude showed itself to be an alienated imagery of concepts during an attempt to heal the traumatic experience of the First World War and the Civil War. On the other hand, the Wagnerian version of the heroic myth became basic for Liatoshynsky and was used in opera and symphonic concepts. This confusion of the myth, its symbolic and tragic context, was traumatically reflected in the fate of his Second and Third symphonies, and in its general form is embodied precisely in opera ideas