War as an Apocalypse: Literary Techniques of the Representation of Military Experience in Ukrainian Prose About the First World War

Abstract

The article analyses how the writer’s military experience аffects the artistic images in his literary work. In particular, the apocalyptic motifs have been investigated, because the biblical legend about the imminent arrival of the apocalypse is one of the most famous and, probably, the most popular in society.
The prophecies about the end of the world get attention every time during major wars, terrible world catastrophes, great social upheavals etc. The First World War, which was the first upheaval of such a scale in the 20th century, was one such event. The relevance of the study is determined by the fact that, despite the existing studies devoted to Ukrainian works about the First World War, the texts of combatant writers were not analysed for apocalyptic imagery. The subjects of the study were the works of K. Polishchuk, O. Makovei, and O. Turianskyi. It is argued that the motives of hopelessness, despair and misunderstanding, for what and for what interests ordinary soldiers are fighting, have been were common to all writers. They perceive the war as the end of the world. The leading problems of the works of these writers are the general dehumanization of society, which allowed a bloody slaughter, and the deviation of an individual personality, which is broken by a traumatic war experience. The images that represent individual characters of the apocalyptic myth in the analysed works can be transformed into a dragon, a fury or an angel of death. Their purpose is the destruction of the world. And, therefore, each person can make a choice about what his life will be. This optimism is not preserved in the analysed texts of K. Polishchuk and O. Makovei. Their works are characterised by absolute pessimism. Humanity is not capable of a positive choice, it is doomed, because it constantly prefers the death instinct, according to Z. Freud. On the other hand, in O. Turyanskyi’s novel, man and humanity do win over the terrible dehumanizing reality. And the world still has hope for further revival.