The Archetype of the Bastard in Ševčenko's Poetry

Abstract

Three discoveries by Carl Jung have had a profound influence on literary criticism-the collective unconscious, archetypes, and anima. Apart from personal unconscious there is in everybody, according to Jung, a deeper layer of collective unconscious, from which consciousness has developed. contents of collective unconscious are known as archetypes.' Although these are unknown, they may be apprehended in our consciousness as primordial images or inborn forms of intuition, revealing certain typical symbols common to human race or to a certain culture. Ancient as they are, they may be modified by individual consciousness and by era in which they happen to appear. Yet another discovery was that of feminine element (anima) in unconscious of a man and of a masculine element (animus) in a woman. These complementary elements in human personalities are at same time archetypes. In a man the compelling power of anima is due to her image being an archetype of collective unconscious, which is projected onto any woman who offers slightest hook on which her picture may be hung.2 The effect of these revelations (clinical research has made it difficult to regard them as mere hypotheses) on our understanding of creative processes has been very far-reaching. An entire school of literary criticism in Western Europe and America followed these precepts. From pioneering work of English critic Maud Bodkin, Archetypal Patterns in Poetry, first published in 1934, to German Erich Neumann, American Philip Wheelwright, and Canadian Northrop Frye, to mention only a few, critics in West have used new approaches to literary analysis based to a greater or lesser degree on Jung's original discoveries. Frequently they use psychology merely as a point of departure for literary theory, and their criticism cannot be described as psychological. They deal chiefly with literature of West, advancing a new concept of literature as a reconstructed mythology.3 In Soviet Union Jung's influence has been negligible because his theories are regarded as reactionary. From time to time literary studies have appeared in Russian and other languages of USSR which have touched on some problems of interest to Jungian