Одеська тема в творчості Михайла Світлиці

Abstract

In the article it is told about the book of essays by M. Svitliza Odessa’s essays. Its genre peculiarities are analysed. The author depicts the figures of new and old Odessa, studies their differences by contrast principle the way M. Svitliza sees them. Such types of Odessa people as real, outstanding and infinite are shown. By creating an image of Odessa, the author often calls it either ‘The Perl of Black Sea’, or the southern beauty, or untypically freewheeling, or ‘his’ territory. The analysis of collection „Odessa’s essays” has shown that the texts of Svitliza are full of such forms of irony, as irony denial and epic irony. Often on the base of this appear interesting and unexpected images, which fill up the author’s essays, as, for example, „torn out years” or „philosophy of Privoz”. Sometimes this irony is far from humour, as in the depiction of Greek Square, where the accent is made not on the architectural features, but on the renewal of the square in the XXI century, which according to the author, spoilt the charm of the city centre. Thanks to the accurately picked words for the description of special atmosphere, it is easier to imagine the space, the publicist is describing. However, in most of the cases the author is an optimist, and his irony is oriented on the critics of everything immovable, for example, on the struggle with the stereotypes; his irony can be called ‘epic’ that is ‘an objective subjectivity’. In the collection Odessa’s essays the city Odessa is shown to be a peculiar universum, topos-environment that is able to influence person and form their consciousness. The collection is straightly divided into two parts. Compositional slimness of the book shows the author’s reasoning of placing the elements, the existence of ‘conception’, the principles of uniting the texts, which is a definite sign of the collection’s quality. The image of the city is created both in fictional and publicistic manner. The works of Svitliza are also both documental and fictional. The publicist in his essays contemplates and makes the reader think the same way. And this is not only the wish, good intentions of the author – this is the result of goals, set by the author – to create his own image of Odessa in time and place distance, to show the unique attitude to the city that will always remain for the author ‘his’ city.