LES TANYUK’S DIARY-ARCHIVE AS A DOCUMENT OF ITS ERA: GENRE AND COMPOSITIONAL DISTINCTIVENESS AND PROBLEMATIC ISSUES

Abstract

The article examines Les Tanyuk’s diary writing from the perspective of understanding the diary as one of the key texts in the artistic-documentary prose of Ukrainian Sixtiers. The study focuses on the peculiarities of the diary’s formation, as well as the accumulation within its structure of non-authorial texts and various non-literary insertions during the period from the Khrushchev “Thaw” to the establishment of an independent Ukrainian state. Particular attention is paid to the fact that diary texts form a multilayered megatext that unites heterogeneous material within a single diary discourse. This provides grounds for interpreting their genre nature as a diary-archive.
The events in the diary are presented through retrospective scaling with a projection toward reinterpretation and objective scholarly analysis. The author is directly involved in the events recorded in the diary, acting either as their creator or as an inadvertent observer. His entries are dated, vary in subject matter, are grouped in a seemingly chaotic manner, and are united into a single diary meta-genre according to a mosaic principle. This form of diary serves as an informative source on the history of everyday life and as an important tool for research in the humanities.