VIACHESLAV MEDVID’S WORKS AS A FAMILY-AFFINED HISTORY OF UKRAIHE

Abstract

In the article there is an interpretation of contemporary Ukrainian writer Viacheslav Medvid’s works, primarily his novels ‘Stones Collectors’ and ‘The Blood through the Straw’, as a family-affined history of Ukraine of 20–21 centuries. V. Medvid’s works don’t have external traits of traditional historical genres (presentation of concrete well-known events of a past, biographies of famous personalities etc.), but they contain such immanent features of historical novel as ‘entrance into the present’, in other words it is an interpretation of history from a standpoint of contemporaneity, a historiosophical understanding of the past, the present and prospects of a development in future. Narratively the works of V. Medvid are dialogues, in which every speech is wide monologue tale of character-‘voices’ from villages of Polissya and Steppe in Mykolaivshchyna in a form of very long sentences (each one for several pages). The author absolutely avoids any publicistic touches into texts of his works, any explanations of the way we should understand one or another utterance
of the ‘voices’. On a ground of reminiscences of villagers, through presentation of family and affine histories, little by little a wide picture of Ukrainian village history for the last century, its way of life, kinds of activities ant attitude to labour, and the most important — to its culture and mindset — is created. Interviews with
the writer help to interpret his works by accenting on a fact that a village, family from a village and genus is a basis for Ukrainian nation, its culture and outlook, but there is a danger of their absolute distraction, and as a result, there is a danger for self-sufficient existence of whole Ukrainian nation.