NATURAL AND CULTURAL LANDSCAPES IN THE CRIMEAN CREATIVE WORK OF MYKOLA CHERNYAVSKY

Abstract

The article deals with the studying spatiality and the system of national spaces in Ukrainian literature. It focuses on the work of Mykola Chernyavsky, a representative of Ukrainian literary modernism, a victim of Stalinist totalitarianism. The main attention is paid to the understanding of the writer’s work, which was the result of his trip to the Crimea in the summer of 1927 for the sanatorium treatment. This trip is interpreted as an example of a modernistic pilgrimage, with its attraction to the discovery of a new space, which becomes a lever of self-discovery, and a means of self-identification.
The non-fiction text of Mykola Chernyavsky, which was preserved in his diary entries, is analyzed for the first time. It is proven that the writer’s notebook became the protext of the author’s further artistic searches in poetry and prose. The Crimean routes of the author recorded in his documentary records, are traced.
The main artistic toposes can be devided into three groups topos: natural (sea, mountains, vegetation), social (populations, sanatoriums), ethno-cultural. Despite the dominant imperial discourse in Crimea, which was preserved in the post-revolutionary period, the author discovers the world of the Crimean Tatars, finds areas of popularity of Ukrainian culture, reflects on its achievements and prospects on the Crimean Peninsula.
The poetic cycle “Crimea” (1927-1928) by Mykola Chernyavsky testifies to the originality of the author’s artistic visions, his intensive use of toponyms, with the help of which he expresses the uniqueness of the Crimean space. In the novel “Under the Black Flag” (1928), the writer introduces the inner text – short story “Iphigenia in Taurida”, which becomes an artistic version of the writer’s diary, resorting to gender inversion: the female protagonist acts as an observer in it.
The conclusions emphasize the cartographic originality of the writer’s Crimean work, the sacralization of the region's landscape, its utopian aura, which can cause catharsis in pilgrims. Arguments are given that Mykola Chernyavsky’s work is a worthy contribution to the literary geography of the modernist era, in particular, the richness of the author's marinist images is emphasized.