The ‘One’s own — Alien’ conflict in Lesia Ukrainka’s dramaturgy: ethnic-national and worldview aspects

Abstract

The paper focuses on the specific features of the ‘One’s own — Alien’ conflict in the dramatic works by Lesia Ukrainka. The majority of her dramas and dramatic poems were written on the basis of foreign cultural phenomena, including the Ancient Greek, Biblical, and other topoi and images. Foreign cultural realities are aimed at the actualization of both the entire context of Ukraine and the writer’s autobiographic discourse in a recipient’s consciousness, forming the imagological paradigms ‘One’s own — Alien,’ ‘Me — Another’. Upon involving the imagological theories, the author of the paper traces the development of dialogue between various cultural realities in Lesia Ukrainka’s dramatic works. This allowed elucidating the peculiarities in the artistic representation of the exotic topoi of different countries as the significant feature of Neoromantic and, in general, Modernist discourses, which were basic for Lesia Ukrainka’s writing. The textual analysis of Lesia Ukrainka’s dramas reveals the specific features of unfolding the ‘One’s own — Alien’ conflict, first of all, on the ethnic-mental level, epitomized in the ‘conquered — conqueror’ collision of the plays “Babylonian Captivity”, “Over the Ruins”, “Orgy” and “Boiarynia”. The other dimension is the worldview and religious level, mostly realized through the collision ‘Antiquity — Christianity’ (“In the Catacombs”, “Rufinus and Priscilla”, “Martian the Lawyer”, and others). It is proved that the ‘One’s own — Alien’ conflict deepens the problems of the works and serves as a way to reveal the essential characteristics of the heroes. The paradigm of the mentioned conflict highlights the borders of the national and personal identities, emphasizes axiological concepts and active ideas, fundamental for Lesia Ukrainka’s dramatic works, such as the tragedy of misunderstanding, the need for constructive dialogue, the necessity of choice, the search for spiritual and national freedom, the meaning of sacrifice, and the role of art.