THE TRAUMA OF WAR IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINIAN LITERATURE

Abstract

The article is devoted to the literary interpretation of the Russian-Ukrainian war, reproduced in the author's texts of recent years. Given that the hostilities are still ongoing, the experience of this war by its participants and observers is changing, as well as the interpretation of this war experience. The fundamental problem of the global, national Ukrainian, and individual dimensions of the Russian-Ukrainian war have been and continue to be reflected in works of art, which indicates a dynamic process of cultural reflection on the trauma of war. The article focuses on the peculiarities of the evolution of the literary reception of such a historical event as the Russian-Ukrainian war, its understanding through the prism of past memory, culture, and socio-political realities. The authors of the article distinguish two most distinctive stages of the cultural reception of the war: the collective dimension of the war and the individual dimension of the war. It is important to emphasize the traumatic experience of both the characters of veteran prose and Ukrainian society as a whole. The article attempts to trace how the war is reflected in art, particularly in literature. The authors conclude that the war was initially presented as a consequence of the conflict of post-totalitarian memory in Ukrainian culture, then as a social national trauma, and finally as an individual trauma at the level of individual fate and experience, which is realized in veteran prose, which is the focus of this study. The article notes that the reasons for the emergence of veteran prose that belongs to the individual dimension of war are more likely to be the need for reflection than the desire to write a work of fiction. According to the authors of the article, this is why many works are not fully fictional, they are very close to documentary, and their genre emphasis is similar to diaries or memoirs.