POPULAR LITERARY WORKS IN THE INTERTEXT OF UKRAINIAN LITERATURE OF THE 1920S

Abstract

There is a typical division of "donor" texts into "nuclear", "precedent", and "weak" in the intertextual studies. This article proposes another approach: the explication of the intertextual space with taking into account the principle of hierarchy (prototexts belonging to "high", "popular" or "mass" literature). In the intertext of Ukrainian writing of the 1920s, "high" ("elite") literature is presented by various intertextems from the works of George Gordon Byron, Charles Baudelaire, Giovanni Boccaccio, Paul Verlaine, Knut Hamsun, Heinrich Heine, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Dante Alighieri, Charles Dickens, Adam Mickiewicz, Guy de Maupassant, Francesco Petrarca, Miguel de Cervantes, and others. While few proto-texts of mass culture ("lubok literature", "urban folklore") accompany reflections on the problem of a mass reader education. The purpose of the article is to analyse the specifics of popular literature (belles-lettres) representation in the context of Ukrainian writing of the 1920s. The object of the study is the works of writers who worked in the territories of "under-Soviet" Ukraine. Numerous intertextems that redirect us to the so-called "formula fiction" (detective, adventure, historical, fantasy novels) were found in the intertextual space of Ukrainian literature of the 1920s. Classic examples of the detective story (Sherlock Holmes by Conan Doyle, novels about Nat Pinkerton) become prototexts not only in detective stories and adventure literature, but also in the works about revolutionaries, psychological and satirical prose. Facultative associative series are formed around the "invariant core" – the image of a detective able to investigate the most difficult cases. Allusive anthroponyms Sherlock Holmes, Nat Pinkerton become markers of detective-adventure literature with a clear plot and acute conflict, and sometimes they are identified with pseudo-heroics, primitive aesthetic taste. Adventure literature in the context of Ukrainian literature of the 1920s is presented by Edgar Burroughs, Louis Boussenard, Daniel Defoe, Joseph Conrad, James Fenimore Cooper, Thomas Mayne Reid, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Intertexts from "Robinson Crusoe" are mostly related to the exoticism of a desert island, adventures, the existential feeling of loneliness of a man in the world, the contrast of dream to daily routine. The novels of Mayne Reid and F. Cooper are traditionally associated with heart-breaking adventures, literature for the masses. Conrad and Stevenson are presented in O. Vlyzko's "Ballad of the Myopic Eldorado" as sea glorifiers. In the works of V. Domontovych and V. Vrazlyvyi, the stereotype of adventure literature as a field of children's reading is relayed. Historical fiction in the context of the literature of the 1920s is associated with the names of Alexandre Dumas and Walter Scott. Their works are perceived as patterns of literature for undemanding readers where heroic, pathetic style, romanticized past are emphasized. Intertexts from the works of science fiction writers Herbert Wells and Jules Verne were found in the writings of Ukrainian authors. The images of Morlocks, the Invisible man, and dystopian motifs are borrowed from the novels "Time Machine" and "Invisible Man". Jules Verne is mentioned as popular literature for children and teenager’s founder. Despite the prescriptions of "proletarian criticism" perceiving popular literature as a harmful simulacrum that distracts readers from the struggle for a bright future, fiction occupies an important place in the intertext of Ukrainian literature of the 1920s.