Bohdan Ihor Antonych’s psycho-bibliography: between maternal and paternal worlds

Abstract

The article deals with Bohdan Ihor Antonych’s art phenomenon, in particular the factors and trends of his creative evolution. The psychoanalytical approach is helpful in revealing concealed psychical frameworks in the author’s (art) consciousness, and also the key role of Maternal and Paternal archetypical figures in Antonych’s artistic world and writing technique as well. According to the purpose of considering the evolution of B. I. Antonych’s works through the prism of his lyric subject’s Oedipus attraction to Maternal and/or Paternal figures, the concept of “psycho-bibliography” has been proposed. In this concept, the notions of “psychobiography” and “bibliography” are combined. As an experimental literary study field psycho-bibliography assumes projecting the artist's psychical evolution onto his oeuvre, in particular, onto the periodicity of the publication of his books. Despite the harmonious relationships in Antonych's family, his works have shown a confrontation with the Paternal figure caused by his challenged separation from the Maternal figure. Both lead to deep internal conflicts in the writer’s psyche. In the article, it has been defined the specifics of the Paternal and Maternal semantic codes’ implementation in the poetics of B. I. Antonych, has been deciphered the poetic code of their symbolization, as well as characterizes the mental fluctuations expressed in the lyrics between Maternal and Paternal figures as the basis of an alternative interpretive strategy of the artist's work. The B.-I. Antonych's debut collection "Greetings of Life" (1931), despite the dominant motives of travel, youth, and sports, contains a number of poems on the topic of creativity as a dangerous but inevitable vocation for the lyrical subject. For him, creativity is associated with maternal power. He perceived his own devotion to it as a betrayal of the parental authority. As a symbolic compensation for this "sin", the collection "Great Harmony" (1932-1933) has been written. "Great Harmony" is marked by the dominant motives of trust in God and his Guidance, by which the parental archetype is guessed. In the poetics of the next collection, "Three Rings" (1934), the maternal archetype is actualized again. The priority of maternal energy is expressed through the symbolic triad "Night"-"Nature"-"Song" ("Creativity"). The lyric hero is ready to dissolve in the maternal substance, although it can reinforce his fear of confrontation with the parental world, as well as the fear of losing himself in the maternal one. The yearning to reduce this fear had caused a compensatory attraction to the paternal substances Logos, Law, and Order - in the next collection "The Book of the Lion" (1935). The balancing of maternal and paternal energy determines the poetics of the last B. I. Antonych’s collections "Green Gospel" and "Rotation" (both were published after the author’s death in 1938). The motive of death as the end of the life cycle characterizes the resolution of the mental conflict and the completion of the poet's / his lyric subject’s psychical evolution. The psycho-bibliographical approach of rereading Antonych’s oeuvre expands its interpretative field. In the article, contrary to numerous Antonych’s biography studies, there is an attempt to explain the strange logic of noticed author’s mental and art “ambiguity”.