ARTISTIC MODEL OF “REVIVAL” OF HISTORICAL MEMORY IN THE NOVELOF DOKIIA HUMENNNA “THE GOLDEN PLOW”

Abstract

The article considers the problem of historical processes in Ukraine, systematization of scientific approaches to knowledge of the history of Ukraine. It has been found out that in the novel “The Golden Plow” by Dokiia Humenna the defining parameters of the image of a person and the world are revealed. The article also briefly covers the reception of historical novels in the modern science of literature. The analyzed novel is created in two planes - rational philosophy and historiosophy, when the author through the mouths of the characters sometimes reflects on historical processes and the rootedness of a person in the transcendent basis of the sacred world. It is proved that the writer by artistic means recreated the historical events of the past with a projection on the present, raising current issues of the national inner world of the main characters. Having chosen the historical background as a basis, the prose writer thus opened a perspective for self-knowledge of the national spirit. Dokiia Humenna’s literary work, her historical prose with Ukrainian themes is well inscribed in the world cultural and historical processes.

D. Humenna’s historiosophical novel “The Golden Plow” violates the idea of leveling the creative personality in a totalitarian one-party state. It has been revealed that young researchers of the past Haina and Mykola are under the influence of the energy of searching for Slavic roots. The artistic model of the “revival” of historical memory is reproduced by the author in the image of the searcher Mykola Madii. Having read in Herodotus’s “History” the name of Prince Madius, the scientist decided to deepen and improve his knowledge of the Scythian state, which, according to Herodotus, stretched from the Danube to the Don and the same distance from the Black Sea coast to the north. The main idea of the work is embedded in the actions and thoughts of the characters - to love their homeland, to hold fast to the mother country, their family and people. D. Humenna’s individual comprehends the process of self-realization of a new generation of intellectuals. The researchers, despite the official prohibition on choosing the topic of their dissertation on Ukraine’s past, still remain true to their idea, and have become even stronger on the basis of national identity. The central characters in their soul prefer to live in the ideal independent Ukraine, where creativity will grow into joy, where the man of labor, the state and the Universe will form a solid foundation on which will stand a monument to the creator of Good and Justice on earth.