Story “Beauty and Force” by V. Vynnychenko and prose by M. Gorky. Poetics and typology of individual styles

Abstract

The paper focuses on the functionality and style characteristics of the authors’ expressive means. It shows differences in the literary handling of similar subjects at the level of forms and functions of pictorial-like images, narrative presentation of action, the integrity of plot and composition in the works. The analysis proves the style originality of the Ukrainian aspiring writer. Gorky’s bright pictorialism with a tendency towards impressionistic images and enthusiastic evaluation connects his narration to the codes and toposes of a higher, elite culture, open to aesthetic contemplative perception and intellectual reaction to the action of a work. While Vynnychenko’s model revises or even rejects external picturesqueness as an attribute of national realistic style. This feature gets a universal ontological dimension, and the verbal representation of scenes approaches to the reality of the potential reader’s world. The internal action in Gorky’s works is characterized by reflection that stays in line with the literary tradition of the rational interpretation of a character and the logical development of a plot leading to the disclosure of existential truth. Vynnychenko, using emotionally perceptible plastic tools of naturalistic psychologism and minimal narrative rhetorical devices, appeals to universal anthropological experience.