IVAN KOCHERHA’S WORK AS A PRETEXT FOR LIUDMYLA KOVALENKO’S DRAMA “KOVALCHUKY”

Abstract

The article analyzes the intertextual connections between Liudmyla Kovalenko’s drama “Kovalchuky” and the creative work of Ivan Kocherha. The relevance of the study is related to the insufficient examination of this work in Ukrainian literary scholarship and the need to expand understandings of creative transformations in Ukrainian drama of the first half of the twentieth century. The main focus is placed on identifying character-related and genre-stylistic parallels between the drama “Kovalchuky” and the philosophical drama “Masters of Time”. The purpose of the article is to clarify the specific features of borrowings from the works of Ivan Kocherha in Liudmyla Kovalenko’s drama. The theoretical and methodological framework of the study is based on genetic-contact and comparative-typological methods, as well as on the theory of intertextuality. As a result of the research, it is demonstrated that Ivan Kocherha’s dramaturgical legacy plays a decisive role as one of the key pretexts for the play “Kovalchuky”. The image of Volodymyr Nepytaillo in Liudmyla Kovalenko’s drama reveals a typological affinity with Taratuta from Ivan Kocherha’s philosophical drama “Masters of Time”. Within the plot structure, these secondary characters perform the function of dynamizers of the action, illustrating models of human behavior under conditions of historical ruptures caused by wars, revolutions, and national liberation struggles. They share such traits as adventurousness, practicality, the ability to adapt to changing circumstances, as well as similarities in social status, profession, manner of speech, and hedonistic worldview. The genre analysis of the drama “Kovalchuky” demonstrates its synthetic nature, combining elements of melodrama (the dominant genre component), vaudeville, satirical petty-bourgeois comedy, and the drama of ideas. The dominance of melodramatic poetics results in schematic characterization, a clear opposition between positive and negative characters, simplified conflict resolution, and an enhanced role of artistic conventionality. Taken together, these features provide grounds to view Liudmyla Kovalenko’s drama as the result of a conscious orientation toward Ivan Kocherha’s genre and aesthetic model, and her first dramatic work as an attempt to master the principles of the “well-made play” and to realize the idea of national unity within the genre frameworks of mass culture.