“The future will belong to a strong, muscular knight...”

Types of masculinity in the poetry of Borys Homzyn of the 1920s and 1930s

Abstract

The subject of analysis in this article is the representation of masculinity types in B. Homzyn’s poetic heritage with the aim of identifying their role in shaping the author’s vision of the standard of masculinity. To achieve this goal, the study aims to identify various types of masculinity in the poet’s works and to explicate their correlation with the artist’s worldview and ideological stances. The research employs comparative-historical and textual methods, along with elements of masculinity studies.

The relevance of the article stems from an insufficient level of development of masculinity issues in Ukrainian literary criticism, particularly in the context of B. Homzyn’s work. It also addresses the need to understand national ideals of masculinity concerning the contemporary challenges facing Ukraine.

The results of the study reveal that the types of masculinity in B. Homzyn’s poetry serve as key markers for differentiating male images and reflecting the author’s worldview. Positive types, such as King Arthur, the true warrior, the state-building warrior, the warrior-creator, and the strong, muscular knight, embody ideals of strength, nobility, and an active life stance. These ideals were characteristic of the Visnykivtsi artistic environment, which sought to form a new Ukrainian — unbreakable and ready to repel any aggressor. In contrast, negative images (the pale man, “knights”, the slave) represent passivity, decadent moods, and the degradation of the male principle. Through these diverse types of masculinity, B. Homzyn not only created psychologically expressive male characters but also conveyed his own philosophical and aesthetic convictions, which resonated with the ideological guidelines of the Visnykivtsi writers.

In the context of modern Russian aggression against Ukraine, the Visnykivs’ki ideals of courage, spiritual strength, and unwavering will to victory, articulated in B. Homzyn’s works, acquire particular relevance. The heroic deeds of contemporary Ukrainian defenders, who demonstrate unyielding resilience in the struggle for national identity, represent a prophetic vision of the future captured in B. Homzyn’s poetry, where the defining archetype is the “strong, muscular knight”. The construct of masculinity formed in the poet’s work is not only historically relevant but also conceptually consistent with the modern phenomenon of heroism of the Ukrainian nation.