The thesis proposes an analysis of the representation of Christian axiology in the selected Ukrainian prose works of the 1920s – 1940s by Borys Antonenko-Davydovych, Ivan Bahryany, V. Domontovych (Viktor Petrov), Mykhaylo Ivchenko, Mykola Khvylyovy, Yuriy Kosach, Mykhaylo Mohylyansky, and Valeryan Pidmohylny.
The first decades of the 20th century in Europe and in Ukraine were a period when Christian worldview and Christian values have been gradually declining. Such a decay was a complex phenomenon that encompassed the philosophical notion of the “God’s death”, the crisis of church authorities, the atheistic propaganda in the Soviet Union, and the totalitarian regimes and their effort to subvert Christian values. In the context of cultural and literary studies one may speak of an attempt to reinterpret the main concepts of Christian axiology in response to the historical challenges of the respective period.
The Ukrainian authors of the 1920s addressed various concepts of Christian axiology despite the fact that Soviet propaganda has consolidated its efforts in spreading a materialistic worldview during the 1920s–1930s. It is in this context that the literary works of Borys Antonenko-Davydovych, Mykhaylo Ivchenko, Mykola Khvylyovy, Mykhaylo Mohylyansky, and Valeryan Pidmohylny are analyzed in the second chapter of the proposed work.
This was the main topic of Khvylyovy’s novella “Myself (Romanticism)” (1924). The protagonist of the story is a new type of hero who can be called a perpetrator under a mask of tragic hero – one whose consciousness is torn between the traditional Christian morality represented by hero’s mother and the new utilitarian morality represented by the three members of the “New Sanhedrin”, namely, the revolutionary military court. There is also a third party – the so-called “zahirna communa” (“behind-the-mountain commune”) – a utopian concept of an imminent future. The image of the “commune” can be regarded as a “phantasm” in psychoanalytic terms. The story’s narrative can be interpreted as an opposition between “God-seeking” and “God-building” – a struggle in which “God-building” finally gains victory over “God-seeking”. The protagonist’s hesitations between two poles of morality finally come to an end, as he takes part in the execution of the group of nuns, which presumably includes his mother. The aggressive model of “God-building” is best represented by the figure of Doctor Tagabat – a true revolutionary executioner who knows no mercy or moral hesitations. The historian Ivan Lysyak-Rudnytsky called such a type “a devil-like preacher”.
In case of “Myself (Romanticism)” the protagonist finds himself overwhelmed by the “God-building” which is maintained by the phantasm of “behind-the-mountain commune”. In other novellas, however, the protagonists are closer to “God-seeking”. The stories to be mentioned here are “Kimnata ch. 2” (“Room ch. 2”, 1922) and “Sentymental’na istoriia” (“A Sentimental Story”, 1928). Here, the female protagonists are searching for the transcendent in a materialistic environment of the post-revolutionary city. The heroines are trying different patterns of “God-seeking”. In “Room ch. 2” the female protagonist, Vivdya, addresses the old woman from a village, Horpyna, who becomes a kind of a live icon for Vivdya. Horpyna feels like an alien in the city and finally decides to go back to the village. Vivdya’s pursuit for the transcendent is doomed to failure, and this failure in God-seeking leads her to self-destruction.
Much the same collision is used in “Sentymental’na istoriia”. The female protagonist of the story, Bianca, tries to get adjusted to the reality of the post-revolutionary city and tries different models of God-seeking: pantheism, reading the holy and philosophical books, and finally gaining Christian experience of addressing the God using the icon and a place for the worship. Bianca’s friend comrade Ulyana is murdered by her husband comrade Be, and the heroine finds herself incapable of helping her. This is a turning point in Bianca’s search for the transcendent: the heroine destroys her place for worship, throws away the icon, and goes to the satirical image of clerk Kook to lose her innocence. Such an epilogue can be seen as a failed search for the transcendence in a post-revolutionary world.
