The artistic demythologization of socialist paradise in Vasyl Stus’s poem “Here is the sun, said the man with the cockade on his hat”

Abstract

The article is devoted to analyzing the poem «Here is the sun, said the man with the cockade on his cap» from the self-published collection «Merry Cemetery» by Vasyl Stus through the prism of mythocriticism and intertextual approach. The work studies the artistic features of deconstructing the mythologeme of the «socialist paradise,» identifies the dominants of the creative worldview of Stus, the poet, analyzes the artistic techniques of debunking the aesthetics of the socialist paradise in poetry, and presents ways of comparing the impulses of the creative space of the work and the author’s thoughts with his literary and journalistic heritage. The author compares the text of poetry and biblical stories, identifies the dominants of the author’s reinterpretation of religious narratives, and traces the specifics of their artistic transformation. The author emphasizes the eloquent images and details and analyzes the problem of escape from paradise and its debunking as a repressive utopia. The analysis of the work in the broader context of Ukrainian and world literature (works by Hryhoriy Skovoroda, Taras Shevchenko, Vasyl Barka, Ivan Bahrianyi, George Orwell, etc.) allows us to trace the general trends of literary demythologization of the Soviet myth and its debunking as a repressive utopia. It is established that the author embodies his idea of Soviet reality as a «world in reverse.» The poetics of the work are based on grotesque irony and semantic contrast, which contributes to the destruction of official narratives. For example, the semantics of the sun, a traditional symbol of life and rebirth, takes on an ironic and sometimes tragic connotation. “The Man with the Cockade is the embodiment of the regime’s repressive machine, which manipulates mass consciousness using mythologies of light and truth. By choosing an allusion to the creation of the world in the biblical Book of Genesis, Vasyl Stus successfully demonstrates an anti-myth – a reality without ideological makeup: the Soviet paradise is hell.