THE “WHITE AND BLACK” MOTIF IN UKRAINIAN LITERATURE AND ART OF THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

Abstract

The article analyzes the dualistic motif of «white and black» as one of the most productive in Ukrainian literature, fine arts and cinema of the early twentieth century. An attempt is made to interpret this motif in the works of Ukrainian film directors, artists, and writers. It is proposed to interpret the motif of «white and black» as a manifestation of ambivalence and intermedia potential of the artistic search of an individual artist and significant for the cultural atmosphere of the time. The contrast between the darkness of the past and the bright future becomes the central object of black-and-white Ukrainian silent cinema (D. Vertov, O. Dovzhenko). This idea is realized in the suprematic compositions of K. Malevich in 1915, the works of graphic artists (M. Zhuk), the texts of writers (V. Vynnychenko, M. Zhuk, P. Tychyna). It was found that the peculiarity of the symbolism of white and black in the drama of V. Vynnychenko and the panel of M. Zhuk is the inverted semantics of the visual series. White for V. Vynnychenko, his hero, and M. Zhuk becomes the quintessence of the cold, pure, eternal. Instead, black symbolizes life on earth, the joy of creativity, a warm heart and warmth of soul, self-sacrifice and love. V. Vynnychenko in his drama brings this idea to the extreme: white and black become sacred symbols of non-existence / death and being / life, because the child’s life was placed on the altar of art. The dynamics of the comparison of white and black in P. Tychyna’s poetry is rooted in the deeply archaic layers of the worldview of the Ukrainian people, and therefore, it is projected on the traditional archetypal matrix of perception of good and evil. In the work of K. Malevich, as a representative of the avant-garde trend in fine arts, the motif of white and black is realized through the prism of revolutionary foreboding, through the absolutization of the contrast between two worlds, new and old, symbolizes the rupture of civilizations and times. It is established that the motif of «white and black» enriches not only individual works, but also the entire systemic space of Ukrainian culture of the early twentieth century, which is characterized by the search for new means of expression and ethical guidelines, experiment, syntheticity, contrast.