Daughter, stepdaughter, and daughter again: нow the main character of Yuri Yanovkyi's play changed with each edition of it

Abstract

Despite the fact that Yurii Yanovskyi's play The Prosecutor's Daughter has already attracted the attention of researchers, the main goal of scholars most oftenle was to analyze the final version of the work. The lack of thorough research about the history of the play makes this article relevant. Yanovskyi's archive provides a wealth material for research in general and about The Prosecutor's Daughter in particular. Within one research it seems more appropriate to focus on one of the major changes in the text. Therefore, the aim of this study is to analyze the transformation of the image of the main character of the play in different editions of the work. The subject of the research is the image of the main heroine of the play in different editions, and the object of research is the author's notes to the play, its variants, editions, and memoirs of Yanovskyi's contemporaries concerning his work. Such an analysis obviously involves the use of not only general philological research methodology but also methods of source criticism and textual criticism.

Research results. Despite the author's position by Yanovskyi and those scholars who also agree with it, this study shows that the play Day of Wrath, written in 1940 have to be considered as the first edition of The Prosecutor's Daughter because of the similarity of characters, beginnings, and even identities of certain dialogues. Three editions of the play have been identified, the first, already mentioned, written in 1940, the second edition created by Yanovskyi after the war in 1952, and the last edition, which in this study dates with the last authorial version of the play, published posthumously in 1956. The main problem in all editions is the involvement of a girl from a supposedly quite decent and wealthy family on a criminal way. In the first edition, the author vividly depicts the flaws in the character of family members, thus demonstrating that the criminal path is a natural result in the life of a girl who has no love or authorities in the family. The image of the main character in the first edition is not without flaws, but at the same time it is tragic. In the second and third editions, Yanovskyi embodies the idea of justifying children expressed in the note to the play. In the second edition, the image of the main character is idealized, the girl is so balanced and cold-blooded that she is able to resist an adult and experienced criminal who deceitfully involves children in criminal schemes. In the third edition, the main character portrays the pain realistically; she is confused and scared in front of an adult criminal. The author again shifts the emphasis to the shortcomings of her relatives, to the lack of attention on their part, due to which the girl finds herself alone with too difficult problems for her. The analysis allows one to see how the image of the main character has changed in different editions of The Prosecutor's Daughter. Given the wealth of material preserved in the Yanovskyi’s Fund, the analysis of such changes in this play and other plays presents a wide field for writers to explore. Such research would enrich the knowledge of Yanovskyi's individual creative approach, and would be an important contribution to the general study of Ukrainian drama of the Soviet era.