Existential Dependency of Love Theme in the Poetries of War (on the materials of the anthology «Among the Sirens»)

Abstract

The war that was started by Russia against Ukraine reveals the existential features of itself. It is directed against the idea of the Ukrainian State and the right of the Ukrainian people to determine their existence. The topic of war is the most stressed and actualized in the Ukrainian poetry of the last decade, especially after 24^th February 2022. The theme of love is as important as the theme of war because the phenomenon of love forms the foundation of human worldview, realizing of self and perception of Other. This phenomenon is not only able to grant the meaning to the human existence, but it also able to shape the goal for human existence, in order to this goal goes beyond the elemental life in order to be embodied in the dimension of eternity.

The actuality of research was provoked by the need to consider the meaning of existential dependency of the theme of love in the Ukrainian poetries that are written after the full-scale Russian invasion into Ukraine. The larger part of these works was included to the important anthology of poetries “Among the Sirens”. The authors of its book are 59 Ukrainian poets. They outlined the testimonies about meaning of love as a phenomenon that is able to give the importance to the human being in the time when the idea of being itself becomes fragile.

The subject of research was the phenomenal image of love that is revealed in the poetries by K. Kalytko, H. Kruk, S. Zhadan, K. Mykhalittsyna, P. Korobchuk, M. Savka, and I. Shuvalova.

The problem of research was outlined by the necessity to analyze and explain the key axiological features of images of the love phenomenon, and its meaning in the poetry of war because the border situation of war is able to demoralize and provoke the ethical edges to be blurred. Also it is able to set the ideas of human negation instead of ideas of humanity. In the times of these axiological perturbations, the poetry becomes the medium that broadcast the moods of society or the core of national ideology, but it also keeps the true human values by its mission of testimony about humanity in trouble times.

The methods that were applied in the research are typological, hermeneutical, comparative, intertextual, and gender perspective.

According to the results, it was established that the theme of love in the anthology “Among the Sirens” is provoked by war as a borderline situation. It was determined that in the analyzed poetries the phenomenon of love reveals via the different types of love that were singled out by the Ancient culture and transformed by the Christianity. These types of love are eros (erotic and romantic), philia (friendship and love to the work), storge (care), agape (charity, love as an obligation) that were singled out.

These types of love were revealed by the authors via the poetics and motives of every single situation that were elucidated. These types absorbed the features of the love as a maturity, the love a sympathy, the love as a testimony, the love as a faith, the love as affection, the love as a humility, the love as a care, the love as a presence, the love as a reconciliation between “self”, the love as a rage and the loathing to the enemy that was transformed to the love as a longing to save the most important (children, family, one`s own Ukrainian identity, Ukraine itself). The analyzed works evidenced that images of men and women are depicted as defenders in the same way. There it meant that the saving is not only the weaponized defense from enemy, but also there it was told about emotional and existential defense that is articulated often insufficiently and that is why it remains invisible because of the daily and trivial character of it. This emotional defense reveals via the daily care, faith, affection, and presence.

The existential dependence of the theme of love in the poetries of the anthology “Among the Sirens” was analysed firstly. According to the research, it was determined that the typological and axiological specifics of theme of love are connected to the humanistic tradition that derives from the Ancient times and they are also revealed in the text of the Bible on the different levels.

The perspectives of the further exploration could be perceived in the analyzing of the different aspects of the another authors` works that are collected in the anthology “Among the Sirens”. The perspectives of the further research also could be discovered in the examination of the phenomenon of love correlation with the others phenomena such as faith, hope, fear, anxiousness, pain, and loneliness.