Sources and Structure of Valerian Pidmohylny’s Story Models

Abstract

Despite the fact that all the researchers recognize Pidmohylny as a master of prose, the issues of his technique are less often in the circle of scientists’ attention, than the issues of the subject matter. The subject of the offered research is the principles of story construction as a result of the aesthetic choice of the writer.

The purpose of the investigation is to observe the sources of influence and the specialties of the narration, especially in the construction of the stories, which corresponded to the literal pursuits of Valerian Pidmohylny. The object of research is his literature works and narrative practices of writers, positively evaluated by him, in particular the works of A. France and unanimists.  The methodological basis is the ideas of structuralism and narratology. As a result of the study, the following conclusions were made. Formed under the influence of A. France, V. Pidmohylny got from him not only irony and skepticism, but also a way of constructing a story, based not on reasons-causes relations, but on transformation and variation.  In his first texts, this type of organization of events is embodied using parallels and contrasts.  However, at this stage the writer was probably not satisfied with his technique.  His metacritical texts tell about his commitment to this problem and the search for like-minded people. These thoughts and work on the translations of the unanimists coincide in time with the work on the «Місто» (the City) and the improvement of the technique. Involvement of the mythological way of organizing the story to create secondary lines dynamizes the text, and their orderly location (sequential or oppositional) aligns the composition.  At the next stage, Pidmohylny subdues his technique to a philosophical theme, where the method of narration was probably a metaphor for content.  Storys that organize events on the principle of transformation and variation, more effectively reveal the inner world of a human, allowing the author to create a "story about people".

The conclusion about the predominance in Pidmohylny’s work of stories with ideological and epistemological type of construction and analysis of the dynamics of changes in the writer’s technique is the novelty of the study. Other aspect of it is the analysis of the features of the prose writer’s technique not only in the context of classical French literature, but also in the context of modern writers whom Pidmohylny had chosen for translation.