THE TEXT OF ‘UNCOMFORTABLE’ MESSAGES ABOUT THE WAR — VALERY PUZIK’S PLAY "LET’S BELIEVE"

Abstract

The subject of analysis in this article is Valery Puzik’s play "Let’s Believe", which is a distinctive example of combatant drama about the war. This text is being subjected to literary analysis for the first time. The playwright himself regards drama as a form of writing that allows him to describe his own wartime experiences, in contrast to his prose works, in which he primarily seeks to record the events of the war. The relevance of this study stems from the fact that, as this is a play characterised by artistically honest, accurate and skilful dialogue, its analysis may be particularly important for Ukrainian families who have loved ones at the front; as a result, they often lose their bearings in civilian life and, within family relationships, their shared values.

The aim of this article is to explore the system of aesthetic and psychoanalytical parallels between the front line and the home front, which, in the play "Let’s Believe", are centred on the characters ‘He’ and ‘She’, members of a young family torn apart by war. The methodological framework for interpreting the play is based on the dissociative defence mechanisms of the human psyche in a traumatic reality, as identified by D. Kalched; in seeking refuge from this reality, consciousness becomes fragmented and avoids integrating these fragments into a single whole. The very dialogical nature of the play can be seen as the playwright’s attempt to recreate a new type of relationship within a young family, which the war (the ‘daemonic force’ in the text) has split into two worlds that, under the new circumstances, cannot coalesce into the familiar ‘We’, for the war has intensified the inner feelings of each half of this split unity, creating a fragmented world for both characters. The geographical distance, which in peacetime could have been quickly bridged, is transformed by the war into an insurmountable barrier. The war introduces many new challenges into the lives of both characters and inspires the development of a different psychological experience – one of distance, uncertainty, injustice, fatalism and the forced acceptance of a complicated reality.

The preservation of the characters’ sense of self – He and She – amidst a family torn apart by war undergoes a certain evolution in their communication: from the ability to talk about everything and share their deepest pain to emotional ups and downs and moments of silence, from the fragmentation of the world around them to attempts to piece together at least some fragments into a single picture, with a mutual realization that, in the context of war and «parallel worlds» at the rear and on the front lines, the picture can no longer, under any conditions or circumstances, come together into a harmonious whole.