The novels of Bohdan Melnychuk: the edges of the tragical

Abstract

This article describes peculiarities how tragic is implemented in Bogdan Melnychuk novels based on stories from „Meridian through heart and village‟ cycle and documental novel „Bells of 1920th‟ which all are a part of a „Court without a justice‟ collection. Among the main features of tragedy are: tragical conflict with an unpredictable ending (most often it is sudden and sometimes meaningless death); characters‟ tragical images, whose inner world is deformed and split under the external circumstances; tragical mistake and fault motives unfold, with a directly related motive of tragical punishment; existential motives, with a basic binary opposition „life-death‟, when death is introduced as punishment, fatum, from here comes the motive of human tragical predestination and fate inevitability. Tragical mood of each novel is marked, enhanced with tragical symbolic images (ex. steep bank, ice, slab, which have both direct and metaphoric meaning and are at the same time the names of the novels „Steep bank‟, „Ice‟, „Slab‟), artistic details, mythologems. Special attention is dedicated to artistic details (visual and audio) which depicts heroes tragical sympathy their inner turmoil. Significant semantic meaning is given to the water mythologem tragic context, which is implemented by the system of artistic invariants (river/pond, rain, ice, wet snow, hoar-frost, dew, tears (as an incarnation of the greatest sufferings, grief and pain) etc.) which very often have a mortal meaning in the novels. Well symbol is a very important element related to water mythologem which gets archetypical edge meaning, transition from life to death. Analyzed novels give the reason to claim that B. Melnychuk has a very strong sensation of human tragic being in the world, which makes him use expressionist means to depicto the tragedy and makes him closer to Stephanic writing style.