Switching to the Ukrainian language as a factor of hystorical memory restoration (on the example of Volodymyr Rafieienko’s novel “Mondegreen”)

Abstract

The article focuses on the language and artistic senses of the novel “Mondegreen. Songs about Deaths and Love” by Volodymyr Rafieienko. The author was born in Donetsk; by 2014, he used to write his books in the Russian language, had them published in Moscow publishing houses, and was honored with prestigious Russian literary awards. In 2014, after Donetsk got occupied by the Russian troops, Rafieienko moved to Kyiv and switched from Russian to Ukrainian as the main idiom of his creative self-expression. “Mondegreen” is the writer’s first novel that he wrote in Ukrainian; therefore, numerous language and psycholinguistic transformations, depicted in the book, are of great interest to both readers and linguists. The article analyzes the main features of the novel’s language, particularly the usage of synonymic lines, specifications, quotations, word games regarding the characters’ names and toponyms, etc. In the main protagonist’s memories, the landscape of his native Donbas remains nameless. It visibly contrasts with the depiction of Kyiv: there, all the places that the character visits have their modern names, including local districts, streets, shops, and cafes. It is a symbolic representation of the refugee’s small homeland — the territory alienated from the est of the state by enemies’ aggression and disappearing from the map of Ukraine. The novel’s main storyline relates to the new linguistic and historical experience that Habinsky (the author’s alterego) acquires thanks to the Ukrainian language. Therefore, this research sheds light on the dominant idea of the novel: it demonstrates the importance of the mother tongue in the restoration of the individual’s connection with their ancestors, especially in the context of the nation’s historical memory and Ukrainians’ tragic experience during the 20th century. Keywords: code-switching, word play, citation, linguistic memory, historical memory.