Mythopoetic Factors in Formation of Early Modernist Discourse in Ivan Franko’s Long-Form Prose (1876–1884)
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2025-12-02
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Alfred Nobel University
Анотація
The article analyzes Ivan Franko’s long-form prose of 1876–1884 from the perspective of mythopoetics, which played an important role in shaping the writer’s early modernist aesthetics. In the author’s stylistically diverse texts, a high degree of reflexivity is observed, which opened the way to mastering the mythological codes of collective memory and contributed to the formation of a synthetic individual creative method, one manifestation of which was Franko’s concept of the “whole man.”
The aim of the article is to reveal the significance of mythopoetic structures (images of folkloric or archetypal types, cultural codes, plot-compositional models, etc.) in the formation of the modernist discourse of Franko’s early long prose. From this aim arise the following objectives: to analyze the influence of mythology as a dominant factor on the processes of shaping the early modernist artistic discourse in the novel Petriis i Dovbushchuks, as well as in the so-called Boryslav Dilogy (the novels Boryslav Laughs and Boa Constrictor); to determine the relationship between the writer’s modernist experiments and the synthetic features of his individual creative method; to highlight the impact of mythological semantics on the representation of the theme of the leader; to characterize the interaction of mythopoetic topoi with the binarity of artistic images and techniques of plot construction; to outline the mythological parameters of the chronotope and their influence on the plot-compositional structure and the genre-stylistic features of Franko’s long-form prose of 1876–1884.
The implementation of these objectives required the use of the following methods: mythopoetic, receptive-interpretive, and hermeneutic.
The analysis of Franko’s long-form prose of 1876–1884 provides grounds to claim that the appeal to diverse mythopoetic structures (images of folkloric or archetypal types, national cultural codes, etc.) and their poetological manifestations (artistic conventionality, fantasy, the unreal, philosophical ideas, cyclical and parabolic techniques of plot construction) played a decisive role in the formation of the modernist discourse of Ivan Franko’s early long prose.
It has been revealed that mythopoetic factors influenced the innovative style-shaping already in his first romantic novel Petriis i Dovbushchuks, which manifested itself at various levels of the text.
The image of Dovbush is represented as an immortal forefather, an eternal wanderer, whose timeless presence in the Carpathian region ensures unity among the descendants of two feuding families. In the scene where the 119-year-old Dovbush appears to his heirs, there is a mythological gesture reminiscent of the sacred symbolism of a mandala, which urges the bewildered descendants to cease their struggle over “bloody money.” In this episode, the real and the timeless interact to such a degree that cyclical mythopoetic factors become decisive in the chronotope of the novel. This is evident on multiple levels of the artistic structure of the text, particularly through plot techniques such as retrospection, prospection, the creation of a detective intrigue, an open ending, and the overcoming of conventional plot structures. Mythological syncretism is also observed in the genre structure of the novel, which partially includes elements of heroic epic, historical ballad (duma), parable, and fairy tale. Among the important structureforming elements of the text is the type of imagery based on oppositions such as good/evil, light/darkness, divine/demonic, spiritual/material, which establish a sense of binarity in the fictional world.
In Franko’s realist major prose dealing with the Boryslav theme (Boa Constrictor and Boryslav Laughs), a similar type of genre structure is observed, where the author’s idea of the people’s guide is revealed more strongly through a social lens. In the description of the “just war” in Boryslav, a lofty ideal contrasts with the real methods of its implementation, resulting in the ideological conflict in Boryslav Laughs acquiring a mythologized context characteristic of naturalism. The image of the Boryslav land combines opposing ideas: the joy of Boryslav’s social awakening and the foreboding demonic laughter of a city on the verge of collapse. In analyzing the concept of laughter, its grotesque nature is characterized as being based on a web of binary oppositions (good/evil, real/unreal, laughter/snickering, etc.). In the naturalistic discourse of the Boryslav Dilogy, the repetition of horrifying grotesque death images is noted (ruin, fire, an underground monster, day of reckoning, etc.), the dominant one being the image of the boa constrictor. This image is rich in biblical and mythological reminiscences, including ouroboric ones.
The ideological conflict of the works acquired a mythologized naturalistic context precisely through the depiction of Boryslav as a living organism that balances on the boundary of polar visions – from the titular image of laughter to the final apocalyptic guffaw.
The analysis of Ivan Franko’s prose of 1876–1884 revealed the writer’s artistic tendency toward the implementation of mythological topoi, the most striking example of which is the representation of the problem of the popular leader, associated with biblical and mythological figures such as Moses, the Wise Old Man, the Trickster, and the Serpent-Temptor. The artistic structure of these texts is dominated by a poetics of binary images immersed in the transcendent, as well as elements of psychoanalytic confession of the characters and the repetition of terrifying, grotesque, deathly images. The identified plot-compositional features create an impression of a cyclical chronotope, mythologizing it and modifying the generic and stylistic characteristics of the works.
Given the frequent intersections of the mythological and the unconscious in Franko’s synthetic creative method of 1876–1884 – which significantly anticipated both the development of theories of the unconscious and the formation of early modernist discourse in Ukrainian literature – we see promising prospects in a comprehensive study of the psychoanalytic dimensions of Franko’s artistic legacy and their influence on the emergence of Ukrainian modernism as a mature phenomenon.
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Ключові слова
mythopoetics, early modernist discourse, synthesis of the individual creative method, long prose, folkloric and archetypal images, genre structure, composition, chronotope, міфопоетика, ранньомодерністський дискурс, синтетизм індивідуального творчого методу, велика проза, образи фольклорного й архетипного типів, жанрова структура, композиція, хронотоп