Pitannâ lìteraturoznavstva

Balances of a Dual Spirit: Karl Emil Franzos

Oskar Ansull — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0200

The article is devoted to the work of the German-language writer of the second half of the nineteenth century Karl Emil Franzos (1848–1904), who originated from Eastern Galicia and grew up in Chernivtsi. He sought to balance his Jewish-German identity, striving to achieve a certain cultural synthesis. Aspects of this complex identity are especially evident in his biography and in some of his works – for example, in the essay Ein Culturfest (“A Festival of Culture”), written on the occasion of the founding of Chernivtsi University, and in the novel Der Pojaz (“The Jester”). Although after his death the writer did not avoid partial oblivion, he is considered a pioneer of German-Jewish literature in Eastern Galicia and Bukovyna. Today, representatives of this tradition include such well-known twentieth-century German-language authors as Rose Ausländer, Paul Celan, Gregor von Rezzori, Alfred Gong, Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger, Erwin Chargaff, Soma Morgenstern, and Joseph Roth. Franzos lived in Berlin for nearly twenty years, supported Russian Jews expelled from their homes by pogroms, and died in the capital of the Reich, where salon-style imperial antisemitism set the dominant tone. Through his work, Franzos pointed the way toward developments whose consequences the writer himself managed to avoid. His grave is located in what is probably the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe – Berlin-Weißensee. Attempts at a German-Jewish cultural symbiosis, even when they remained one-sided, were merely benevolent approaches to the necessary diversity that had functioned in the German-speaking world for centuries but for a long time failed to penetrate general consciousness.

On the Versification Peculiarities of Lesia Ukrainka’s Unfinished Translation of Giacomo Leopardi’s Poem “To Italy”

Borys Bunchuk, Valentyn Maltsev — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0200

The article presents a comparative analysis of the verse structure of the first stanza of Giacomo Leopardi’s poem “To Italy” (1818) and Lesia Ukraika’s unfinished translation of this stanza (1891). The article points out that the poet turned to this author and this particular poem, as G. Leopardi tragically raised in it the questions that tormented her. An examination of the first stanza of G. Leopardi’s poem by syllables took into account the phenomenon of syneresis (the contraction of syllables), which is so typical of Italian versification. It has shown that the first stanza is syllabic verse with free alteration of 11-syllable and 7-syllable lines within the stanza (11, 11, 7, 7, 11, 11, 11, 7, 11, 11, 7, 11, 11, 11, 11, 7, 7, 11, 7, 11), as well as with a specific pattern of feminine rhymes. The analysis of Lesia Ukrainka’s unfinished translation indicated that it was made in terms of syllabo-tonic versification. The meter of the translation is a heterometric dactyl (ranging from two- to six-foot lines). Almost 89% of the verses are dactylic; apart from them, there are also amphibrachic and dolnik lines. Half of the verses are five- or six-accented, which, together with the absence of rhyme and feminine endings, gives the text a hexametric aura. The article claims that Lesia Ukrainka has rendered the poem in terms of “hexametric sub-code”. She also employed the form of an irregular syllabo-tonic equivalent of ancient Greek hexameter (with deviations from regular meter, foot structure, and line endings) when translating a part of Homer’s “Odyssey” (1888). The meter of that translation was a heterometric dactyl (from four to eight accented lines) (91% of the verses). The remaining lines followed the rhythms of amphibrach, dolnik, or strictly accented verse. A similar structure (D4-7) was typical of Lesia’s translations of ancient Indian “Rigveda” hymns. In this way, she laid the foundation of applying hexametric rhythm in the tanslation of heroic and highly emotional works. The article emphasizes that in addition to syllabo-tonic “hexametric” rhythm, Lesia Ukrainka also paid due attention to the graphic structure of the original (alteration of longer and shorter lines). It is essential that like G. Leopardi, Lesia Ukrainka has created her own “canzone”, which was addressed not to Italy but to Ukraine – the cycle “Tears – Pearls”. The greatest number of parallels with G. Leopardi’s first stanza can be found in the first poem of the cycle “My Dear Homeland! My beloved Land!” (the address to her native land in the opening lines of both the translation and the original; rhetorical appeals to the heaven; the use of the imagery of chains and “terrible wounds”; the use of the exclamation “lele!”). The article also points to approximate versification similarity between the original and translation: both texts are built in trisyllabic meters. However, the translation is marked with the prevalence of dactyl, whereas the original is written in amphibrachs. It is apparent that Lesia did not aim for identical versification: it would have been too noticeable. Therefore, she chose different forms in three poems. It is highly recommended to study Lesia Ukrainka’s translation further in terms of lexicon, imagery, and sound patterning.

Transformation of the Image of Charon in I. Pavliuk’s Novel “I See You Are Interested in Darkness”

Kateryna Kalynych — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0200

The article examines the genesis, evolution, and poetic transformation of the mythological image of Charon in world literature from antiquity to the present day. The myth of Charon is analyzed as a universal transitional entity representing the boundary between being and non-being, going beyond the purely mythological function and becoming a dialectical resource for understanding existential problems. Considering myth as a dynamic semiotic system, the path of transformation of the image of the stern boatman is traced from its origins in the ancient Greek tragedies of Aeschylus’ “Seven Against Thebes” and Euripides’ “Alcestis”, where the psychopomp function is gradually personalized, to satirical demythologization in Aristophanes’ comedies and Lucian’s philosophical dialogues. Special attention is paid to the Roman tradition, in particular to the texts of Virgil’s “Aeneid”, Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”, and Apuleius’ “The Golden Ass”, where the image of Charon is endowed with grotesque and everyday features and becomes an instrument of criticism of human vices. Emphasis is placed on the Christian reception of Dante Alighieri, who integrates the ferryman into the moral-hierarchical model of Hell in “The Divine Comedy” as a strict executor of divine judgment. It is proven that in modernist and postmodernist literature, the figure of Charon is reinterpreted and finally transformed into a flexible intertextual construct. The example of R. Riordan’s “The Lightning Thief” shows a playful deconstruction of the myth, where the sacred ritual of death is adapted to the realities of contemporary mass culture. Particular emphasis is placed on I. Pavliuk’s novel “I See You Are Interested in Darkness”, in which the myth of Charon takes on a profound existential and ethical meaning. The author’s strategy of anthropologizing the image through the character of Kharyton Baaliuk, who acts not only as a guide but also as a moral mediator and “examiner” of the human soul. It is summarized that the modern interpretation of the image of Charon shifts the emphasis from the mechanical transportation of souls to the psychological salvation of the individual and the overcoming of inner darkness, which affirms this archetype as an integral code of humanity’s collective experience in understanding death, guilt, and the possibility of spiritual rebirth.

Chorals of Light and Darkness: Multiple Identities in the World of Contemporary Lithuanian Music

Jūratė Landsbergytė-Becher — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Lithuanian composers in their own way fulfil M. K. Čiurlionis’s (1875–1911) visionary oath: the creation of the world through the synthesis of arts initiated by waves of imagination, i.e., their works show a tendency to create an organic whole or universe that embodies the utopia of the eternal existence as the forgotten world of light of archaic myths and the fullness of its Baltic nature. An example of this is the universe of sutartinės (multipart polyphonic songs) created by Ričardas Kabelis (*1957) – the embodiment of Baltic mythology within the circle of eternity of musical sounds – the chorale of light of sutartinės, a vision of the endless humming sound of canon. This is the line of Baltic identity (“Sutartinė of the Mountain”, 2011–2016), deeply embedded in the perception of Lithuanian music. Meanwhile, as a counterbalance, we can identify the identity line of European historical drama by Kabelis’s former student Mykolas Natalevičius (*1985) through the Christian rising from darkness chorale, its variations, the interactions of hymns, and their dramatic development, which flow into images of historicism and sacredness. Here, we consistently move from early Christianity to the theme of Ukraine, which is deeply rooted in the modern thinking of Lithuanian intellectuals, complementing the European line – a new turn in the struggle between the shadows of darkness and light (Natalevičius’s chorale of the “Chorale of the Vanishing Light”, 2023). In this context, another expression of identity emerges in the works of Algirdas Martinaitis (*1950) as an exploration of ideas of the era, exemplified by his premiere of the work “Gija”, dedicated to Sakartvelo’s European journey, which is closely connected to Lithuania, and linking it to the musical significance of the name of the most distinguished Georgian composer of the 20th century, Giya Kancheli (1935–2019). “Gija” is also a meaningful Lithuanian word (Martinaitis is also a master of language), meaning a connection, a bond, a line of fabric – a leitmotif and a deeply penetrating paradigm of Ukrainian suffering into the existential depths of the Baltic and Caucasian origins. In this way, the multifunctional fabric of Lithuanian musical creation, revived in the current struggle of identities, unfolds with its ornamental lines, restoring to radiance the spaces of Europe that were once obscured by barbaric darkness.

Between Lethe and Memory. “The Story of a Life” by Aharon Appelfeld

Ariane Lüthi — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0200

From the opening pages of the autobiographical work “The Story of a Life” by Aharon Appelfeld (1932–2018), the body appears as a vessel of memory. These are predominantly fragmentary recollections – images, smells, or sounds – that emerge in fragments throughout the text. The body evokes associations with a suppressed past; it functions as a reservoir of fragmented memories. In the dialogue between culture, language, tradition, author, and reader, the text–space–body plays a central role as a link between Lethe and memory. A. Appelfeld, who was born in Chernivtsi in 1932, survived the Holocaust in the ghetto, then in a camp, and finally alone in the Ukrainian forests. He writes clearly, restrainedly, and uncompromisingly about the war, the Shoah, and its consequences. Having lost his home and his language, filled with fear and distrust, he periodically “listened” to his body. Such fragments, based on ruptured memory, are characteristic of the author’s oeuvre, whose life story revolves around language: his native German, the vanished Yiddish of the despised, and the Hebrew of his future in Israel. This is the story of an adolescent who slipped away from the languages he once possessed and in whose body war and oblivion took up residence. Lethe appears not merely as the negation of memory; it is not only an antagonist, but also a co-player. Appelfeld’s works describe the paradox of memory from which no one can escape and thus contribute to the formation of a multicultural consciousness.

The Birth of Identity Out of the Spirit of Language: Semiotic vs Symbolic in Jean Rhys’s “Wide Sargasso Sea”

Nadiya Polishchuk — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0200

The literary analysis of British woman writer J. Rhys’s novel “Wide Sargasso Sea” (1966) – as the subject of the present paper – is based on French literary scholar J. Kristeva’s concept of the differentiation of the semiotic and symbolic modalities of language as a source of the process of personal identification. The study of the poetical structure of the text made it possible to reveal and investigate the mechanism of the protagonists’ identity formation as a complex, long-term, dynamic process that arises as a result of dialectical fluctuations between the semiotic and symbolic aspects of the author’s writing. The pre-Oedipal speech of the subconscious, expressed in disorderly drives and impulses, connected with the maternal body and nature, constitutes the semiotic aspect of the identification process. In J. Rhys’s novel, it is realized in madness discourse, oneiric visions, and the natural world, which indicate the ambivalent essence of the female protagonist, Antoinette. Instead, the novel’s composition, based on the “grammar” and “syntax” of the symbolic aspect of the character’s identification, reveals the simultaneous presence of the semiotic in it. The narrative structure of the novel, marked by phenomena of discursive shifts, omissions, gaps, or repetitions, demonstrates the destruction of the symbolic and, at the same time, the subordination of the semiotic to it. It manifests itself at the level of narrative diversity and chaos, characterized by the variability and fluidity of central and secondary, male and female narrators and the shift in the perspective of their narratives, built on the principle of linearity, cyclicality, or zigzagging; nevertheless, it is founded on the rules of internal symmetry, proportionality, and binarism inherent in the narrative discourses of the text.

Variability of the Heroic Image in Antiquity and Middle Ages

Yurii Popovych — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0200

The revitalization of mythological consciousness in times of war dictates the necessity of a more detailed study of the hero figure. This image, despite certain constants, undergoes transformations depending on the cultural and historical epoch in which it manifests itself; therefore, a comprehensive analysis of contemporary heroism requires an exploration of its original forms. In earlier times, only gods were endowed with the status of heroes; however, over time, “demigods” began to appear, which are characteristic of ancient literature. It is the divine component of their genesis that enables superhuman feats that glorify the hero. To denote “glory,” the Greeks used the concept of kleos, which contains two divergent vectors: the first, centripetal, directed toward the hero’s personality, and the second, centrifugal, oriented toward the collective or ancestral. Kleos is embodied by Achilles, Heracles, Theseus, and other ancient heroes, while Odysseus represents the concept of nostos – the return home – which also testifies to struggle, or agon, inherent to many classical heroes. In contrast, the Roman version of the hero is characterized by a set of virtues known as Via Romana, the moral code of Roman civilization. Dignity, discipline, and piety – these qualities shaped the citizen of the state, whose life was to be devoted to it. A defining feature of the Roman hero is the awareness of a moral and social hierarchy, at the bottom of which is the soldier and citizen; above them, the patricians and consuls; still higher, the emperor and Rome as the center of the world; and at the summit, the pantheon of gods with Jupiter presiding over them. The knight, or the medieval variant of the hero, was likewise subordinated to a strict hierarchy, with the king above him, and above the king – God Himself. Its mimetic nature is crucial to understanding medieval heroics: Christian heroism centers on imitation of Jesus, who, like the demigods of antiquity, embodies the union of divine and human. His death gave rise to the cult of saints in Western civilization, including hero-martyrs who gave their lives for faith. Thus, it can be concluded that the medieval concept of the hero is a modified continuation of the ancient model, adapted to the spiritual and theological framework of Christian culture.

Mečislav Krhoun and His “Poetic Work of Yuriy Fedkovych” as a Multicultural Intersection

Ivo Pospíšil — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0200

The present contribution is based on the author’s previous texts about the work of the Czech specialist in Slavonic/Russian/Ukrainian/Belarusian studies, Mečislav Krhoun, especially about his extensive monograph “The Poetic Work of Yuriy Fedkovych” (Brno, 1973), and attempts to synthesize the personality of Mečislav Krhoun and to examine in more detail his epochal work, which has so far been known only fragmentarily even in Ukraine. The motivation for the contribution is also connected with the project of the Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University, specifically prof. Lidiia Kovalets from the Department of Ukrainian Literature and dr. Taras Kovalets from the Department of History of Ukraine, to translate this work into Ukrainian. The aforementioned colleagues contacted the management of Masaryk University in Brno and asked for help in finding the heirs of Mečislav Krhoun for copyright reasons. I was willing and able to help them in this and look forward to the result of their work. This contribution – unlike my previous ones, which were based on the examination of comparative contexts, personal contacts with M. Krhoun and knowledge of his entire philological work – is focused in more detail on individual chapters and partial aspects of the examination of Yuriy Fedkovych’s poetic work as an intersection of multiculturalism, since his purely national work is deeply permeated by the traditions of European culture and literature, and his Ukrainian-German biliterariness includes various stimuli from other national literatures, especially those of the Central European area. This is reflected in the chapters of Krhoun’s monograph examining the existing literature on Fedkovych, his German and Ukrainian origins, the genesis of his poetic work, his genre range, legendary poems, the poetry collections “Am Tscheremusch” and “Dyki dumy” and the last poems. Krhoun’s work is historically anchored in his complex life path, in his life story, but also in the time of the book’s publication, to which the then vice-dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Brno, Jaroslav Burian, had great merit. Krhoun’s methodology is based on internal and external thematological and versological comparative studies of a rather positivist nature, but at the same time, partly also in the spirit of formist and formalist schools; he pays considerable attention to the poetics of Fedkovych’s work, its genesis, cultural background, connection with the poet’s life destinies and especially with his biliterariness, which was largely determined by the state organization and cultural influences in which the territory of Bukovina, as a part of the Austro-Hungarian Cisleithania (Cisleithanien), which it shared with the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, was located. Fedkovych used this to create a broadly conceived work that draws on a considerable breadth of European poetry. The tendency towards synthesis, which runs like a red thread through Krhoun’s entire work, forces the author to use various approaches of literary criticism: in addition to the positivist-comparative method, there is also the poetological, biographical, and partly psychological method, which together form an inseparable whole. Krhoun’s monograph is an original and distinctive part of the Brno school of Slavonic literary comparative studies of Frank Wollman and his disciples. This is complemented by historical anchoring, i.e. a cultural-historical approach. Therefore, Krhoun’s monograph should be viewed with a high degree of sensitivity through the prism of Fedkovych’s time with its language and period contexts and not deprive it of this historicity, i.e. not forcibly modernize his poetic heritage, while at the same time respecting the historical background of the author of the monograph and his courage to publish, in a time that was not very favourable, a very open, deep and factually precise work that anticipated contemporary approaches with its multicultural vision and contributed to deepening knowledge of the work of the Ukrainian classic connected to a specific cultural area.

The Image of Biblical Garden in Time and Transnational Projection (Wells – Oates – Byatt)

Tetiana Potnitseva — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0200

The investigation focuses on a comparative analysis of three literary works of the writers of different time periods and different English speaking countries. The common thing in these works that defined this comparative approach is an obvious or indirect allusion to the Biblical myth about Eden – a paradise garden on the earth – and further development of its ambiguous interpretation started in the XVI the c. by an outstanding Netherland artist Hieronymus Bosch, the author of the famous picture The Garden of Earthly Delights. The aim is to reveal as the universal perception of the Biblical image as the embodiment of new accents of its meaning born in a certain time and due to certain problems. Such texts were chosen for the analysis: the short story by H. Wells “The Door in the Wall” (1906), the novel by an American writer J. C. Oates “The Garden of Earthly Delights” (1967) and the novel of a modern English author A. Byatt “The Children’s Book” (2009). Such a great century-sized range nevertheless shows with obviousness both the universal human value of the Book of Books and the lack of exhaustion of its meaning in any time. The ambiguity of the meaning “paradise garden on the earth” as well as the very possibility of its existence is stressed by each of the authors but in the context of one’s own time and one’s own views on a man and society. Thus, Wells in the history of his protagonist who once could manage to enter the “earthly Eden” conveys his own premonition of “being expelled from Paradise”, and his fantastic illusions about happy future of mankind and the possibility of building “the garden of earthly delights” being ruined. The theme of Paradise lost is a through one in the novel by J. C. Oates, but with its own “American” accent connected with the destruction of the very “American dream” – achieving material well-being and social status. The third work – the novel of the English writer A. Byatt “Children’s Book” as if incorporates the problems of Wells’ story ( he himself appears here both as a real person and as a fictional character Herbert Methley) and the social-feministic trend of Oates’ novel. Byatt gives her version of the Biblical myth with the symbolical ending of the way from Paradise to Hell her protagonists went on. The sad result of the reflection over the earthly Paradise destruction is defined by the historical event of the time – The First World War, that proved the illusory nature of “the garden of earthly delights”.

Yuriy Fedkovych’s Translation Activities in Terms of the XIX Century History of Translation in Bukovyna

Petro Rychlo — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0200

The first Bukovynian translators during the Austrian period were L. A. Staufe-Simiginowicz (1832–1897), who compiled two poetic translation anthologies, “Romanische Poeten” (1865) and “Kleinrussische Lieder” (1888), and J. G. Obrist (1843–1901), who in 1870 published a small brochure entitled “Taras Grigoriewicz Szewczenko: Ein kleinrussischer Dichter”, which was destined to become a milestone in the history of German–Ukrainian literary relations. The popularization of Shevchenko’s poetry was further advanced by K. E. Franzos (1848–1904) in his “cultural essays” “Die Kleinrussen und ihr Sänger” and “Taras Schewtschenko”, as well as by the translators V. Umlauff von Frankwell (1836–1887) and S. Szpoynarowskyj (1858–1909). The most outstanding Bukovynian poet and master of translation was Yuriy Fedkovych (1834–1888). In 1862, he published translations of seven Ukrainian folk songs in the weekly “Sonntagsblatt der Bukowina” and later turned to the poetry of German classics and Romantics. In the early 1860s, appeared his free adaptations of such German poems as Goethe’s “Erlkönig” and “Mignonlied”, Schiller’s “Der Alpenjäger”, “Die Bürgschaft”, and “Die Theilung der Erde”, Uhland’s “Der Sängers Fluch”, and Heine’s “Die Wallfahrt nach Kevlaar”, “Du hast Diamanten und Perlen”, and “Belsazar”. Another facet of Fedkovych’s translation activities manifested itself in his interpretations of works of world drama for the Lviv theatre “Ruska Besida” (a free adaptation of Shakespeare’s comedy “The Taming of the Shrew” under the title “How the Goats’ Horns Are Straightened”), the comedy “Der versiegelte Bürgermeister” by the German dramatist Ernst Raupach, and Rudolf von Gottschall’s tragedy “Mazepa”. Fedkovych also produced the first Ukrainian translations of Shakespeare’s tragedies “Macbeth” and “Hamlet”, completed in the early 1870s. In these works he remains closer to the originals, yet introduces Hutsul realia and phraseology into his translations.

Reinterpreting the Creative Legacy of Taras Shevchenko in Contemporary Network Poetry

Alla Sazhyna — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0200

The article carries out a comprehensive analysis of strategies for reinterpreting Taras Shevchenko’s creative legacy in terms of contemporary network poetry, particularly in the genres of micropoetry (“pyrizhky” poetry), visual poetry, and video poetry. It relies on the study of the concept of “cultural allotropy” (O. Chervinska), which explains the ability of the classical canon to preserve its internal stable “formula” while adapting to various digital “states”. The article also takes a detailed look at the intertextual strategies of desacralisation and humorous recoding of Shevchenko’s imagesin microlyric genres such as “pyrizhky” and “poroshky,” where irony, satire, and wordplaymake the classic relevant to modern everyday life. Particular attention is paid to the functioning of artificial intelligence (AI) as a tool for recreation and a mediator in the process of literary transformation. The example of the project “In Verse” proves that AI acts as an intermediary that transposes verbal text into visual and audio formats for the TikTok and YouTube platforms. This approach contributes to the popularisation of the canon, transforming “compulsory reading” into a relevant process of shaping the cultural awareness of young people. In addition, the article studies the synthesis of poetry and visual art in “calligraphic Petrykivka” (M. Sarkisyan), demonstrating the continuity of the national artistic code through the combination of text with folk tradition. Along with the positive aspects, the research highlights the risks of the digital environment, in particular the phenomenon of fake poetry, analyzing he mechanisms of manipulative use of Shevchenko’s name to spread pseudo-patriotic poems, which leads to vulgarisation and simplification of the classics. It is concluded that digital poetry is a dynamic tool for adapting literature to visual culture, but it requires recipients to increase their level of cultural literacy, as it carries risks of simplification and manipulation.

Chernivtsi, Itzik Manger, and Yiddish Literature in an Intercultural Context

Astrid Starck-Adler — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Chernivtsi, the capital of Bukovyna, has long been regarded as a multicultural (or, more precisely, multiethnic) and multilingual paradise. As a microcosm within the macrocosm of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, to which Bukovyna belonged until 1918, this region experienced a turbulent history – it was Austrian, Romanian, Soviet, and since 1991 has been part of independent Ukraine. During the period of the monarchy, Germans, Ruthenians (Ukrainians), Romanians, Poles, Armenians, Jews, and other minorities lived here, sharing one common feature: they struggled for their rights and for the recognition of their language. In 1908, it hosted the World Conference on the Yiddish Language, attended by prominent Jewish writers such as Yitskhok Leybush Peretz, Sholem Asch, and Avrom Reyzen. Chernivtsi gave the world German-language poets Rose Ausländer and Paul Celan. One of the most famous Jewish poets of the XX century, Itzik Manger (1901–1969), was also born here. At that time, Chernivtsi was an island of Western culture where German was spoken. Manger likewise began writing his first poems in German. Later he moved to Iași, Romania, which was the cradle of Yiddish theatre. The renowned performer of Jewish songs Velvl Zbarzher and the father of Jewish theatre, Abraham Goldfaden, were frequent visitors there. Manger developed his poetic creativity at the intersection of three cultures: German, Yiddish, and Romani. His favorite genre became the ballad, which he mastered even before the Catastrophe. His poetry collections “Shtern oyfn dakh” (“Stars over the Roof,” 1929) and “Lamtern in vint” (“Lamps in the Wind,” 1933) were later supplemented by only a few poems from the collection “Shtern in shtoyb” (“Stars in the Dust,” 1967). The Jewish “troubadour” Itzik Manger is a vivid example of multiculturalism. The inexhaustible source of his creativity was the Bible, as well as Greek and Germanic myths, which he transformed into points of departure for endless metaphors and metamorphoses.

Taras Shevchenko in the Space of His Readings: The Period of 1843–1847

Lidiia Kovalets — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0200

The article is dedicated to examining the reading experience of T. Shevchenko during one of the most vibrant stages of his creative history, the zenith of his poetic development and painterly self-expression – the “Three Years” period (1843–1847). This period unfolded mostly within the territory of a significant part of Ukraine, although also in Petersburg and occasionally in Moscow, in various social and educational environments. The article clarifies the reading interests of Shevchenko’s circle at that time and the extent to which they correlated with the poet’s own interests; what book collections and libraries he encountered during that period and the impression they left on him; and, finally, the nature of the artist’s encounters with texts and how he managed to even popularize his (literary) preferences, simultaneously developing his own view on the Ukrainian literary book and its exceptional historical and cultural mission. The sources of information naturally include memoir literature, the correspondence of Shevchenko and other individuals, observations of scholars, and other documentary literature on the subject. Access to the family libraries of the landed gentry, contacts with the intellectual elite of Kyiv, work in the Archaeographic Commission for the Study of Ancient Monuments, scholarly travels across Kyivshchyna, Volyn, and Podillia, as well as Shevchenko’s Moscow and Petersburg acquaintances, logically led to his discovery of books and periodical publications of various focuses – from fiction and belles-lettres to scholarly and documentary works on historical, theological, and ethnographic themes, and ethnology by Ukrainian, Russian, and Western European figures. A significant segment of such reading material, some of it rare, constitutes a new characteristic feature of Shevchenko’s reconstructed reading record, which, in turn, explains the uniqueness of the poet’s contribution to the development of the social sciences and humanities of the time. Moreover, the intertextuality of the prose written by the poet in exile, under conditions of severe restrictions on access to books, also stems from the “Three Years” period. Shevchenko’s preface to the unrealized 1847 edition of the “Kobzar” is also analyzed as the quintessence of the author’s reading and, simultaneously, civic convictions, and as a turning point in the intellectual history of Ukraine.

Therapeutic Potential of Prayer in the Narrative Structure of Ernest Hemingway’s Short Prose

Alyona Tychinina, Dan Paranyuk — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0200

The article analyzes the therapeutic potential of prayer and the hierophanic imagery matrix employed in the narrative structure of Ernest Hemingway’s short prose (1899–1961). The relevance of the study is stipulated by the focus of contemporary literary studies on crisis states and post-traumatic forms of literary activities (testimony) resulting from a radical shift in the episteme caused by war. The analysis covers the texts with a pronounced religious component, in particular those that contain a transitive plot, a sacred imagological matrix, elements of biblical personospheres, or even implied fragments of confession, life, or prayer, since such texts are capable of facilitating a cathartic effect and enabling the recipient to rediscover a transcendent center. This has determined the choice of an appropriate analytical perspective – namely, the application of Mircea Eliade’s methodology of the “camouflage of the sacred”, which relies on describing the ways in which transcendent reality is implicitly embedded in the profane and presupposes that the recipient possesses experience in symbolic interpretation necessary for identifying hierophanies in a desacralized world. In this respect, the spiritual (religious) experience of artists who were participants in combat acquires particular significance. Drawing on the works of Mary Claire Kendall, Alaimo O’Donnell, and Ali Zaidi, the article examines the influence of existential dimensions of faith (Catholicism) on the life and work of E. Hemingway, who repeatedly reinterprets sacred motifs within a (post-)secular context. The study is based on an analysis of the hermeneutic, receptive, and narrative potential of prayer and hierophanies in examples of his war-related short prose – “A Very Short Story”, “Soldier’s Home”, and “Now I Lay Me” – included in the collections “In Our Time” (1925) and “Men Without Women” (1927). The article also emphasizes the function of the sacred topos as a space of temporary protection from the traumatic reality of war. It regards Christian symbolism of labor, prayer, and the Kingdom of God, which reveals an existential rupture between the generation of parents (bearers of traditional religious values) and children whose ontological frameworks were destroyed by war. The motif of fishing is singled out as the one recoding the natural image of the fish into a hierophanic register and activates, in the consciousness of a competent recipient, biblical connotations of ichthyan archetypes and images of the apostles as “fishers of men” for the Kingdom of God (Peter and Andrew). The analyzed patterns of personal and communal prayer carry different functional meanings in terms of the cathartic-compensatory potential of the sacred. We conclude that prayer appears as: an act of living faith and a form of inner salvation; a means of self-soothing and controlling traumatic experience; an opportunity to experience the transcendent in a liminal situation; a “glimmer” that models a space of safety and stable support; and a mechanism capable of neutralizing war trauma. However, the effectiveness of prayer as healing is determined primarily by the individual’s inner demand – while in a state of existential crisis – for dialogue with God.

Time/Space Polyphony in David Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas” and Its Eponymous Film Adaptation

Aliona Matiychak, Nataliіa Nikoriak — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0200

The study examines the spatiotemporal narrative polyphony of David Mitchell’s metanovel “Cloud Atlas” and its cinematic interpretation in the eponymous film adaptation. It focuses on the specificity of the novel’s multi-layered narrative, constructed according to a palindromic principle in which six stories form a complex web of cross-references and causal relationships. In this way, the text becomes an experiment in genre and narrative design with “echo effect,” whereby each story reflects the preceding one and anticipates the next. The analysis traces how spatial and temporal modalities ‒ from the historical past to a post-apocalyptic future ‒ are interwoven into a unified philosophical network in which every choice shapes what is yet to come. Emphasis is placed on the role of reincarnation as a pervasive symbolic mechanism: the motif of the “comet-shaped birthmark” signifies the continuity of a single soul across its various incarnations, while the central ethical imperative of the narrative emerges as the responsibility inherent in individual choice. The novel’s musical metasymbol ‒ the Cloud Atlas Sextet ‒ functions as an artistic matrix mirroring the novel’s fragmentary yet structurally harmonious architectonics. Intermediality is treated as a foundational structural principle of the novel, with each of the narratives rendered through a distinct mode of textual representation ‒ journal, epistolary correspondence, manuscript, screenplay, holographic recording, or legend ‒ thus generating a multi-layered effect of “post-memory” and facilitating fluid transitions between historical epochs. The study also examines the linguistic stylisation that captures the ambiance of each period. In a comparative framework, the study traces the unfolding of the same ideas within the cinematic dimension. Filmmakers Tykwer and the Wachowskis employ the principle of parallel montage, which enables the simultaneous dynamism of the six narrative strands. The system of visual rhymes reinforces the notion of reincarnational affinities among the characters. The phenomenon of actor transfigurations, whereby a single performer embodies multiple roles across different eras, renders visible the metaphor of the soul’s continuity and the recurrence of ethical impulses. The discussion highlights that the film not merely adapts but re-envisions the novel’s architectonic design, constructing its cinematic counterpart as a kind of “pointillist mosaic,” in which the composition is generated through alternating segments unified by a musical leitmotif and sustained by visual parallels. It is also stressed that music assumes the status of a fully autonomous character within the adaptation, performing a crucial suggestive function by shaping the viewer’s “emotional amplitude” in the reception of events and characters.