LANDSCAPE IN CONTEMPORARY WAR FICTION: TOPOGRAPHICAL AND ARTISTIC SPECIFICITY

Abstract

The article analyses the topographical and artistic specificity of the landscape in contemporary military prose. The interdisciplinarity of landscape research is defined: as philosophy, geography, representatives of natural and exact sciences, anthropologists, historians, cultural studies, and literary critics. The main trends in the development of landscape theoretical concepts, and their varieties are outlined: archaeological, aesthetic, historical, industrial/post-industrial, cultural, urban, folk, natural, memory, primitive, agricultural, sacred, sensory, poisoned, tourist, virtual, threatened, palimpsest landscape; the term “military landscape” is proposed in the article. We identified the most significant stages in the formation of landscape theoretical discourse. The most famous researchers are D. Angutek, O. Braichenko, M. Hrymych, D. Jens, D. Cosgrove, D. Lowenthal), D. Mining, C. Ryden, F. Sviripa, J.-F. Tuan and others. They noted that the Russian-Ukrainian war began ten years ago against the backdrop of the Crimean famous landscapes, and then in the Donbas agglomerations and the Azov Steppes; the full-scale invasion affected almost the entire territory of Ukraine. Today, the landscapes of Donbas and the Azov region are by the most violent battles. In this case, landscapes are a form of marking space, not the general space, but its particular specific segment. The landscapes of war in the first months of the ATO in 2014 and during the full-scale invasion are described in works of various genres: volunteers’ diaries (Roman Zinenko’s “Ilovaysk Diary” and Ihor Mykhailyshyn’s “Dance of Death. Diary of a Volunteer of the Donbas Battalion”), in the prose of Yevhen Polozii’s “Ilovaysk. Stories about Real People”, Saigon’s “Mud (Khaki)”, Yevhen Steblivskyi’s “Rage”, Valeria (Nava) Subbotina’s “Captivity” and many others.