The dissertation is devoted to the definition of the problematic and genre specifics of Oleksa Hai-Holovko's documentary fictional prose. The object of the research is the memoirs "Duel with the Devil", "Along the Deadly Road", "For Them Bells did not Toll", epistolary and diary works by O. Hai-Holovko. The dissertation investigates the main trends in the development of O. Hai-Holovko’s documentary fictional prose, characterizes the peculiarities of the poetics of the writer's non-fiction work, and clarifies the role and significance of factual literature in the national literary process.
The creative work of the Ukrainian diaspora writer Oleksa Hai-Holovko is studied as an important, full-fledged component of the domestic national literary process of the 20th - early 21st centuries. The emigrant author developed his talent in the genre of fiction and documentary fictional prose, literary criticism, translation and journalistic creative work. The problems of its acquisition in the realm of words are focused on the causes and consequences of Ukrainian statelessness, the tragic fate of fellow tribesmen who suffered genocide from the Russian-Soviet colonizer (civil and national oppression, famine, repression), on their uncompromising and enduring struggle for their own freedom and independence. The writer became a chronicler of a difficult era, an eyewitness to the heinous crimes of the Communist-Bolshevik government.
The dissertation clarifies the difficult path of O. Hai-Holovko's creative development. He made his debut as a poet with the collection "Assault Ballads" (Kharkiv, 1934), which received favorable reviews from fellow authors O. Vlyzko, A. Lyubchenko, P. Panch, V. Svidzinskyi, P. Tychyna, Geo Shkurupii. The artist's literary activity increased after moving to Kyiv (1935), where he published the collections of short stories "Svitannia" (“Dawn”) (1936), "Ten Novels" (1937), but due to total repression, mass extermination under the Stalinist regime of progressive Ukrainianism, this early prose work of his remained almost unnoticed by literary criticism. A new collection of poems "The Bugler" was published in 1942 in Lviv, where the writer moved in search of creative and life freedom. Soon in Germany, while living in camps for displaced persons, he wrote the poem "Kokhaniiada", with which he gains a literary name and the support of authoritative researchers of the artistic word S. Andrusyshyn, V. Derzhavin, E. Malaniuk, V. Svaroh, Gr. Shevchuk (Yu. Shevelyov).
It has been established that the Canadian period (1949–2006) was particularly fruitful in the creative life of the writer. He is notable for his fiction and documentary fictional genres, public, literary-critical, translation, journalistic, etc. activity. In order to inform progressive humanity about the Soviet genocide in Ukraine, he writes the autobiographical memoirs "Duel with the Devil" (1950), "Along the Deadly Road" (1979, 1983, 2001), "For Them Bells did not Toll" (1987); effectively realizes himself as a master of epistolary and diary. Two of his novels were published in English in Winnipeg (Canada): "Duel with the Devil" (1986), "For Them Bells did not Toll" (1993).
However, a considerable corpus of the writer’s "Canadian" texts has not yet reached the reader, it is preserved as a manuscript in the Central State Archive-Museum of Literature and Art of Ukraine. Likewise, the following works did not receive a proper professional evaluation: the novels "Tyrolean Rhapsody", "Prologue", "My Thoughts flowed...", "But Staying in a Nazi Prison..."; the plays "Stars in the Mist", "Nerve Knots", "Sisters"; poetry collections "Iron Cohort", "New Poems"; literary and critical articles and essays "Ukrainian Writers in Canada", "Cluster of Immortals", "Prickly Laughter", "New Formation"; journalistic speeches and reports; translations of poems by Canadian poets B. Carmen, V. Mac-Donald, T. Sanders; epistolary; diary.
In the dissertation the non-fiction works by O. Hai-Holovko are studied as a meta-genre phenomenon for the first time. It was established that they are able to function independently and at the same time acquire genre recombination. Within the limits of this or that specific form of content, other geneological varieties are freely manifested. The writer's memoirs are the most open to such compositions: in the memoirs there are various inserted fragments – case documents, fiction texts, folklore elements, etc. We notice text insertions in his epistolary and diary.
It is proved that genre interchangeability is one of the defining features of O. Hai-Holovko's documentary fictional prose. This process takes place thanks to the stylistic techniques of allusion, application, periphrasis, reminiscence, collage and mosaic techniques. The newly created non-fictional components testify to the full existence of the "text within the text" and are perceived as a complete artistic and compositional integrity.
