Świat po katastrofie. Motywy postczarnobylskie w powieści Очамимря Ołeksandra Irwańca i w dramacie Na początku i na końcu czasów Pawła Arje

Abstract

The subject of the article is the analysis of post-Chernobyl themes in the novel by Oleksandr Irwaniec Ochamimriya and in Pawel Arje’s play At the beginning and end of time. The Chernobyl disaster played a key role in the development of contemporary Ukrainian literature and culture. Chernobyl very quickly became a universal metaphor that have gone far beyond ecology and into a cultural and political context. In both works, the atomic explosion (taken literally by Arje, as the explosion of the No. IV reactor in Chernobyl and by Irvacek more vaguely as an explosion) is a key element of the plot, aff ecting both the fate of the characters and the shape of the surrounding reality. Although these works belong to two diff erent literary genres and showcase two diff erent conventions of presenting reality, they are connected by a post-apocalyptic vision of the world and the concept of a looping time. The heroes of both texts live in a time after the catastrophe, deprived of civilized goods and isolated from the rest of the world. In the novel by Irwaniec, this time after the catastrophe is a sort of “new medieval” with a decidedly pessimistic expression while in Arje’s drama the return to the pre-industrial worldview contains hope for fi nding traditional values. Both texts also address issues relevant to the modern post-Soviet society, but they do so in very different ways. Irwaneć uses grotesque, to deprive his characters of complexity, while Arje makes his characters deeply tragic and psychologically probable.