RECEPTION OF GOGOL’S MOTIVES IN “THE MIRGOROD FAIR” BY OLENA ZVYCHAINA

Abstract

The article deals with the forms of reception and interpretation of Gogol’s motives in the essay “The Mirgorod fair” by the writer-emigrant Olena Zvychaina (1902–1985). The work was written up to the twentieth anniversary of the Holodomor in Ukraine and was published simultaneously in two publishing houses, in Winnipeg and Munich, which showed the conceptual importance of the essay in the creative work of the author. The aim of this study - the specifics of the reception of M. Gogol’s work by Olena Zvychaina in her essay “The Mirgorod Fair”. The emigrant writer leaned away from the romantic and cheerful atmosphere of “The Sorochinsky fair” by Gogol and revealed a creepy picture of the hungry existence of the Ukrainian peasantry, set on the brink of death by anti-human power. Olena Zvychaina deliberately introduces an allusion comparison of her work with Gogol’s, using the method of antithesis: in the polyphony of the nineteenth century fair, she opposes the deaf human humor of the half-dead people who came to exchange the last valuable things (shirts, towels, tablecloths, etc.) for bread. The main hero of the essay, the fat and humble grain grower Mikhail Semenovich Samodin brought for sale the incredible beauty of the plague from the dowry of his grandmother, that is woven in the days of Gogol. After exchanging a family relic to bread, he died before he returned his home. The final picture of a clear lunar night contrasts sharply with the grief and death depicted in the essay by Olena Zvychaina. This article reports the results of reminiscences with Gogol’s texts. They are at the level of titles, hidden citations, allusions, hints, and journalistic appeals to Gogol. Olena Zvychaina is not limited only to the debut novel from “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”, referring also to the story “May Night or Drowned”, to works from the collection “Mirgorod” (“The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich quarreled”, “Starosvitsky landowners”), to “The Dead Souls”. Gogol’s works allow the author to satirically depict the contemporary reality of her, to reveal her inhumane character.