Father Figure in Vasyl Stus’ Lyrics

Abstract

Background. Literary study of Vasyl Stus’s lyrics doesn’t deal with conceptual meaning ofthe lyric’s hero psychical reactions to the realities of the world correlated with father’s andmother’s figures. Intimate and personal sense of relationship between a son and a father depictedin Vasyl Stus’s poems extrapolates on the different things, defines civil, patriotic and religiousfeelings. Though this sense destroys the “iconic” image of the poet it discovers worldview’sgrounds of the author’s consciousness, expends the opportunities to the interpretation.
 Purpose. The specificity of art presentation of the father’s figure embodied inautobiographic image of the father, in the images of the totalitarian leaders and God in VasylStus’s lyrics is studied.
 Methods. The question of the reflecting consciousness in lyrics concerns the field of theanthropological literary. The methodical complex of psychoanalysis is effective for the coverage ofthe mechanisms of the author’s consciousness’s emergence. The basic literary methods such asanalysis of images and motives, structural and semantic analysis need to discover artrepresentation of relationship between a son and a father in Vasyl Stus’s lyrics.
 Results. Ambiguous relationship with the father’s figure according to the son’s Oedipuscomplex is expressed in Vasyl Stus’s lyrics. Autobiographic image of the dead father complementedby son’s feelings of love, sad, shame, remorse is presented in the Stus’s poem “One hundred blackdogs have barked. One hundred dogs…”. Son’s feelings of love and respect are extrapolated for theimage of Stus’s friend I. Svitlychniy in the poem “I can’t do without Ivan’s smile…”. It’sremarkable, that sharply negative lyric hero’s attitude to totalitarian leaders, particularly toYo. Stalin, is implemented within the Cruel Father archetype and very often is transformed intoanti-colonial, dissident motives in Stus’s poems. Ambiguous relationship between lyric hero andGod in Stus’s collections “Creativity Time”, “Palimpsests” demonstrates such type of son’sOedipus complex as Christ Way and Prodigal Son’s Way leaded to submit to God-as-father orLucifer’s Way opposing His Power.
 Discussion. Father’s figure expresses wide autobiographic, civil, religious meaning in VasylStus’s lyrics. Ambiguous son – father relationship bases on the Oedipus complex, archetypes Fatherand Son and correlates with moral and ethic, patriotic and religious believes of the author’sconsciousness. Psychoanalytic view on Vasyl Stus’s lyrics expends its interpretative field.Keywords: Vasyl Stus’s lyrics, lyric consciousness, figure of a father, Oedipus complex,son – father relationship.