Одеський текст у творчості І. Микитенка: повість «Вуркагани» (1927) і п’єсa «Кадри» («Світіть нам, зорі») (1930)

Abstract

Modern assessment of personality and creativity of Ivan Mykytenko, the Ukrainian Soviet dramatist of 1920-1930s, is extremely controversial. He is known primarily as the author of plays, which are currently popular culture of the Soviet period. However, his early prose of the 1920s does not fit into these canons. The beginning of his literary creativity was associated with Odessa. The novel „Vurkahany” now undervalued and forgotten, touching themes that have become extremely popular in the art of the twentieth century. They are solitude of the artist as „the Other”,madness as retribution for creative talent, a tragic alienation, physical inability to human survival in brutal pragmatic society, tragedy of creative person who by birth is not like the others. However, it is interesting also as one of the first in the new Ukrainian literature attempts, after the dramatic poem by Lesya Ukrainka V pushchi, to enter to the art of the twentieth century theme – madness as retribution for creative talent. Written almost simultaneously with the „Narodnyy Malakhiy” by M. Kulish and „Sanatoriyna zona” by M. Khvylovy this story was also one of the first explicit images of madhouse – one of the most popular topos in the culture of the twentieth century. But I. Mykytenko’s novel is especially interesting as a unique attempt of Odessa historical text topoekfrazys, it delivers an unforgettable historical topography of the southern city, becoming a full-fledged character in this narrative. This is not the image of the city, not the city topos but urban text system which is presented in many outstanding works. Category City text as overtekst, despite its considerable uncertainty and some objections to its existence, continues to be explored not only as the capital but also provincial texts, including the material of Ukrainian topos. In order to move into the category of urban text from the topos image, a few conditions need. It is the whole unity of the general semantic and structural features, the main among which is the unity of content guidelines – the idea of spiritual content. By its structure the city text includes the substrate elements of the natural landscape, urban topos and city architecture, urban myths, monuments, arts, social and spiritual ideas of the characters and a common local urban dictionary. These elements are clearly presented in the Odessa text. First we need to define the common spiritual idea, which combines Odessa text. Although this idea may change over time, but as about 1920, we have offered to use the local historical jargon and call it „Odessa Mama”. It is this spiritual sense which unite the works by Ivan Mykytenko written on Odessa material. In Odessa text there is an antinomy between Odessa, „mother”, and the capital, „father”, to which the heroes sooner or later break out from the „mother”. However Odessa text never existed as provincial but always occupied an intermediate position between the local historical capital and the provinces.