“THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME”: MYKOLA KHVYLOVYІ’S NON-CLASSIC SHORT STORIES AND THE CANONIC WRITER’S STYLE

Abstract

The paper analyzes Mykola Khvylovyi’s selected ‘non-classic’ small pieces of prose (“A Happy Secretary”, “The Last Day”). The writer was found to have resorted to a set of literary means and techniques that had previously proven effective in baring his views on the issues of the time. These include various types of stylistic repetition, antithesis, and irony as a way of criticizing ideological differences. A renewed emphasis is placed on the relevance of the colour blue in the writer’s works as one of the means of creating a stylistic contrast between the explicit context and the overtones that lie beneath it. The texts under study centre on the fate of the new Soviet man, diligent, industrious, and submissive, capable of a personal life but doomed to failure because of certain irrevocable obligations. The writer exemplifies the existential dilemmas his characters face by reinforcing the ironic aspects of the discourse. Narratological and architectonic features of the stories have been studied. The various types of chronotope have been distinguished – the everyday life, the socio-historical, and the road chronotope. The holistic view on the problem under study is due to a combination of cultural-historical, semantic-stylistic, comparative-typological, and descriptive-analytical methods. The findings are to prove useful to all those involved in: the study of the Ukrainian writer’s signature world-view; the issue of personality both in Khvylovyi’s fiction and some Ukrainian prose writers of the 20-30s of the twentieth century; the analysis of the Ukrainian literature of the first half of the twentieth century development; the studies on the perception of Khvylovyi’s works by literary critics and scholars; for experts in artistic anthropology and narratological analysis of Khvylovyi’s written works. It will also be relevant in pursuing the studies of both the writer’s late fiction and his mature pieces of work; studying the texts of the latter phase with regard to intertextual interaction (for instance, the short story The Inspector-General, 1929).