Representation of Psychic Trauma in Ukrainian Modernist Prose
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REPRESENTATION OF PSYCHIC TRAUMA IN UKRAINIAN MODERNIST PROSE by Daria Polianska A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies University of Alberta © Daria Polianska, 2019 ii Abstract Trauma is unspeakable and hard to comprehend. Thus, it is through the artistic expression of the internal and external conflicts caused by traumatic events that we can come to a deeper understanding of trauma. I consider three Ukrainian texts about WWI and the Revolution of 1917 as important literary testimonies of a people’s traumatized psyche. Therefore, this dissertation focuses on the representation of psychic trauma in works by Osyp Turians'kyi, Mykola Khvyl'ovyi and Borys Antonenko-Davydovych. I discuss how these authors write about subjective traumatic experiences as having roots in social life. To do that, I perform close readings of their texts from the perspectives of modernist styles, I employ the analysis of narrative modes for presenting consciousness (Dorrit Cohn) and I explore the role of literary dreams and dreamlike states in indicating the protagonists’ psychological breakdown. I claim that modernist writers depict the shift from conscious to unconscious states of mind, revealing the invisible effects of collective political and ideological pressures on a person’s consciousness. I suggest that by presenting the personal trauma of their protagonists’ through daydreaming, hypnagogic imagery, hallucinations, and madness—as well as dreams per se—these writers delineate the collective tragedy of the Ukrainian nation during war and revolution. Ergo, this study considers the relationship between psychological, stylistic and narrative aspects of trauma prose as well as the literary devices used by the writers. The analysis of artistic ways to represent traumatic experiences aids in recognizing the transhistorical impact of trauma as well as the connection between past events and their effect on the realities of the present. iii For my mother and father, Larysa and Andrii. iv Acknowledgments A number of people helped me to complete this project. My sincere and immeasurable gratitude goes to my supervisor Dr. Oleh Ilnytzkyj who worked with me from the very beginning. He supported my ideas and maintained high standards for me as a scholar. His comments and guidance throughout every step of the way helped make researching and writing a pleasant endeavour for me. I have been honoured to work with my co-supervisor Dr. Natalia Pylypiuk, who supported me greatly throughout the program and whose timely suggestion that I befriend the best companion a researcher can have—“Discipline!”—definitely kept me on track. Her feedback and advice helped me to thematically connect my chapters together. I am grateful to Dr. Donald Kuiken for assisting me in understanding the connection between dream theory and literature. I am thankful to Dr. Alla Nedashkivska and Irene Sywenky for their encouragement and comments. I also extend my thanks to Dr. Natalie Kononenko and Dr. Peter Holloway for their recommendations and support. I am indebted to Dr. Jeanette Bayduza for her assistance and kindness. I am grateful to my friend and colleague Dr. Shanna Mumm, who helped proofread some excerpts for me. I owe my sincere gratitude to my husband Rahul Patel for his ongoing support, patience, encouragement and advice. His question “How much did you write today?” kept me intact with my writing conscience. I am very grateful to my dear friends Ievgeniia Vincent-Zhelezniak, Romain Vincent, Sergii and Natalia Sukharovy, who helped me tremendously throughout my studies. Finally, my heartfelt gratitude and appreciation go to my family and friends in Canada and in Ukraine, and especially to my parents who are my inspiration and example. v Note on Transliteration The Library of Congress transliteration system for Russian and Ukrainian words is used throughout this study. Diacritical marks and ligatures are omitted. To distinguish the soft sign in Ukrainian from the possessive case in English I used the stroke mark (') and the apostrophe (’) respectively. The names of famous writers (e.g., Tolstoy, Dostoevsky) are left according to their largely accepted spelling. vi Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Note on Transliteration v Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1. Trauma in Literature or Literature in Trauma ............................................................. 10 1.1. European and Ukrainian modernism .................................................................................. 10 1.2. Trauma theory: the nature of trauma and responses to it ................................................... 16 1.3. Representation of trauma in the modernist text ................................................................ 21 1.3.1. Varieties of dreams, dreamlike states, and trauma ................................................ 22 1.3.2. The effect of defamiliarization .............................................................................. 33 1.4. Dorrit Cohn’s narrative modes for presenting consciousness in fiction ............................ 37 Chapter 2. A Narrative of Human Suffering. Osyp Turians'kyi’s Testimony to WWI: ............... 48 Poza mezhamy boliu ..................................................................................................................... 48 2.1. Background ........................................................................................................................ 48 2.1.1. Biographical note ................................................................................................... 53 2.1.2. Reception of the novel ........................................................................................... 56 2.2. Poza mezhamy as a trauma novel ...................................................................................... 58 2.2.1. The use of expressionistic strategies to delineate trauma ...................................... 65 2.2.2. Dorrit Cohn’s modes for narrating consciousness ................................................. 70 2.3. Trauma and hallucinations ................................................................................................. 76 2.3.1. The collective unconscious and the mother archetype .......................................... 78 Chapter 3. Perpetrator Trauma in the Context of Early Ukrainian Communism: ........................ 85 Mykola Khvyl'ovyi’s Short Story “Ia (Romantyka)” ................................................................... 85 3.1. Ukrainian national communism and Bolshevism .............................................................. 89 3.2. Mykola Khvyl'ovyi and the Communist Party ................................................................... 93 3.3. The Literary Discussion ..................................................................................................... 97 3.4. “Ia (Romantyka)”: “I am a Chekist, but still I remain a human being” ........................... 101 3.4.1. Symptoms of a traumatized psyche ..................................................................... 103 3.4.2. Modes for presenting consciousness ................................................................... 108 3.5. Psychic trauma of a dissociated self ................................................................................. 112 vii Chapter 4. Killing the Other as Killing the Self: The Nature of Psychic Trauma in Borys Antonenko-Davydovych’s novel Smert' ..................................................................................... 128 4.1. The psychological novel .................................................................................................. 146 4.2. Modes for presenting consciousness in Smert' ................................................................. 150 4.3. The guilty conscience of a dreaming perpetrator ............................................................. 156 4.4. The narrative of trauma in Smert' ..................................................................................... 162 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 175 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................ 181 1 Introduction Trauma by nature drives us to the edge of comprehension, cutting us off from language based on common experience or an imaginable past Bessel Van der Kolk The catastrophic consequences of the Great War (1914-1918) exceeded all expectations that it would be a short conflict. Instead, the war spread internationally, causing a “ripple effect” around the world (Winter 1:11). For about fifty months, the world’s great empires were at war. Because the war spawned revolutions, its actual end is hard to define.1 Even though the Armistice of 11 November stopped violence along the Western Front, in Eastern Europe the Great War was transformed into a series of civil and revolutionary wars: “The sudden withdrawal of German and Austrian-Hungarian troops left a power vacuum. Ukraine and Belarus became battlefields in the Russian civil war; in the Baltic region Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians [...] defended their countries against the