Injury by Chornobyl: a mental and physical addiction

Artistic models of addiction in the plays of Hryhoriy Shton and Pavlo Arie

Abstract

The relevance of the study is determined by the urgent need to reconsider the Chornobyl disaster in various arts. They are cinema, music, painting, and literature. The last provides an opportunity to present the connection between the macro-scale of the event and the micro-level of personal history. The problem of the role of addiction in the artistic understanding of Chornobyl as a nation's trauma is examined in the article. The subject of the study is the addictive behavior of the main characters in the analyzed plays. The goal is to analyze the poetics of artistic models of addictions caused by the Chornobyl disaster based on the material of two plays: «Canon» by Hryhoriy Shton and «At the Beginning and the End of Time» by Pavlo Arie. Psychological analysis, poetic, and modeling methods were used to achieve the goal. In the two plays, we see similar markers which point to addict characters – compulsive behavior, denial, loss of reality, and creating an alternative reality. However, playwrights choose different tools for constructing artistic models of addiction. Hryhoriy Shton gradually superimposes techniques on each other during the creation of the image of Antin. First, he uses flashbacks. Later the playwriter uses deliriums which are revealed due to artistic digressions. Also, the unique tool is hallucinations, which are not part of the structure of the text of the play, but whose consequences can be traced in the character’s actions. Instead, Pavlo Arie uses extended emotionally colored monologues in the construction of the image of Baba Prisya. The unique method of forming the image of a woman is the introduction of a surreal fictional story. The novelty lies in the analysis of the poetics of creating artistic models of addictive behavior and the expression of distinctive artistic approaches in reinterpreting the nature and consequences of the Chornobyl disaster depending on the generational affiliation of the playwrights.