ARCHETYPICAL IMAGES OF UKRAINIANS AS MARKS OF NATIONAL IDENTITIES IN THE POEM OF MYKOLA TOMENKO “WHEN BELLS WERE FLYING DOWN”

Abstract

This article is dedicated to the review and analysis of selected chapters of the “When Bells Were Flying Down” book by Mykola Tomenko and continues the scientific research of “Mother’s Work Record Book” tetralogy started in previous publications. The scope of M. Tomenko’s poetic heritage is significant, but it is this “Mother’s Work Record Book” written by the poet for three decades that has become his chef oeuvre. The tetralogy consists of four books: I – “Mother’s Work Record Book”, II – “When Bells Were Flying Down”, III – “Tragic Etudes” (The Holodomor. Genocide in Ukraine (1921– 1922, 1932–1933, 1937, 1947, 1949), and IV – “Mother, How We Loved You!” (Poems. Verses in Prose. Son’s Confession to Mother, Ukraine). In the article we keep on studying chapters of “When Bells Were Flying Down” Poem, namely “Straw sheaf”, “When Bells Were Flying Down”. These chapters, like the previously analyzed ones, reveal the tragic history of the Ukrainian people. The value of the poetic word is not only in the historically truthful fixation of the abuse and insult of the Ukrainian people by the Soviet system, but also in the figurative metaphorical system created by the author carved in the memory not through cold hard facts and dates, but through an emotional, imaginative reproduction of reality. It is true that these years under the Soviet power occupation can hardly be called reality or just life, іt was real hell. It is emphasized that Mykola Tomenko recorded and poetically reproduced the crimes of the Kremlin that occurred 90 years ago in the same way how their crimes during the full-scale invasion are recorded today through shelling, destruction, murder, violence, torture, filtering, mutilation. And today most scholars come to the conclusion that the crimes committed by the Kremlin in Ukraine in the 20th century remained unpunished, and as a result, the torturers have grown up again and are once again destroying our country. Thus, the analysis of this work is of high relevance nowadays.