Artistic representation of historical images in the novel “Love in the Baroque style” by V. Danylenkо

Abstract

The relevance of the study is determined by the need to characterize the role of historical figures who act in the modern artistic text and contribute to a better understanding of the philosophical concept of the work. The subject of the study is Volodymyr Danylenko’s novel “Love in the Baroque style” and the peculiarities of the author’s interpretation of the historical figures, which are included in the plot of the modern novel. The purpose of the article is to reveal the peculiarities of the activity of historical images in V. Danylenko’s novel “Love in the Baroque style”, to characterize their role in the realization of an artistic idea. The problem is that the artistic reproduction of the activities of historical figures in the novel contributes to a better understanding of the events that occur in the fate of the main characters of the work, which are fictional. This is not a historical novel, but in the plot structure, it has many historical facts and characters acting under circumstances, unusual for them, because it is not their historical era that is reproduced, but rather the era’s consequences, and the work thus acquires the features of a postmodern reproduction of events.

As a result of the study, a generalization was made that V. Danylenko refers to different historical eras of our country: from the time of Kyivan Rus, in particular, the novel mentions events related to the baptism of the state by Volodymyr the Great, the Cossack era (mentions of Ivan Mazepa, Danylo the Apostle, Kyrylo Razumovsky), and to the history of the 20th century. Some episodes and figures are mentioned in the novel casually, in the context of a story about the history of a building or a street, while others are presented in greater detail in the context of the history of the country’s development.

Mystified stories about historical figures in the novel intrigue the reader, and captivate with an unexpectedly logical addition to the main storyline. Images of famous historical Ukrainian figures, and representatives of other states — their activities are one way or another centered around Ukraine. It is proven that V. Danylenko connects each personality to the history of Ukraine and architectural objects of Kyiv. It is concluded that each character is revealed to the reader in a new author's vision and understanding of their actions. A characteristic feature of historical stories is their reflection in the traditions of magical realism with Gothic elements. The author emphasizes the decisive influence of mystical events and characters (a demon, a fortune teller, a mysterious stranger, a statuette, etc.) on the future fate of a historical personality. Creating the effect of a “know-it-all”, the writer sees a certain mysticism in their fate, and his imagination and fantasy make it possible to embody unreal events in the realistic background of the novel.

The prospects of the research of reflecting the historical figures’ activities in modern novels are the study of modern works of art in the context of intertextual analysis, the philosophical understanding of the reasons for using the characteristics of different historical figures of different time spaces in the plane of the text.