The Green Wedge in the Context of the Liberation Struggles of 1917–1921: Identity and Meaning in the Artistic Version of Maksym Butchenko (novel “Woman in the Darkness. The Green Wedge”)

Abstract

The article first analyses the novel by the modern Ukrainian writer Maxym Butchenko in terms of highlighting the current existential problems of the Far Eastern diaspora of Ukrainians of the Green Wedge in the dramatic time of Ukrainian history during the Liberation Movement 1917–1921 years. The author emphasizes the importance and relevance of studying the mentality and lifestyle of the diaspora of Ukrainians of the Green Wedge. The artistic collisions of the novel “Woman in the Darkness. The Green Wedge” are considered in the context of historical and cultural (V. Chornomaz, D. Shurhalo) and artistic and aesthetic (O. Bondareva, M. Vaskiv, V. Krykunenko) sources. The novelty of the research is marked by the use of the methodology of existential analysis developed by the founders of existential psychology Ludwig Binswanger (dasein-analysis — being-in-the-world) and Victor Frankl (existential analysis — logotherapy) as a kind of synthesis of philosophical and psychological approaches to understanding the meaning of human existence. For the first time, such concepts of humanistic psychology and psychiatry as "existential anxiety", "existential vacuum", "rumination", "sensehorizon", etc were involved in the analysis of the protagonists’ characters and behavior, and the productivity of their literary application was confirmed. A kind of phenomenological analysis of the direct data of the characters’ experiences and life experience, the correlation of unstable identity and the meaning of human existence in the crisis conditions of the multi-front, radical social changes and uncertainty, which in general is indicated in the work by the cross-cutting metaphor of “darkness” as narrowing and even loss of semantic horizons, is carried out. Based on the example of the relationship between the protagonists of the work, Tetiana and Andriy Polovko, V. Frankl’s thesis was confirmed that in hopeless situations, in the power of circumstances that cannot be changed, the sensedominates over identity, the sense that defines human being-in-the-world, always comes first.