MYTHOPOETICS OF HALYNA PAHUTIAK’S SHORT PROSE

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Novels and novelettes dominate among Halyna Pahutiak’s literary works. The most popular works of this writer are the novels “The Servant from Dobromyl”, “Urizh Gothic”, the collection of novelettes “The Notes of the White Bird”, “The Heavenly Dressmaker” and others. The author confessed in her interview: “I am really more inclined to write big compositions <...>. It is explained by the fact that it is more difficult to write one original story than a novel”. Even her first book contains not short prose but novelettes “The Children”, “The Novelette about Maria and Magdalena”, “Lialechka and Matsko” and the novel “The Philosopher’s Stone”. H. Pahutiak’s short prose is represented by stories and novellas and sometimes it is not easy to differentiate between them. For instance, in the selected works “The Sunset in Urizh” such compositions as “You will be Burnt by the Sun” and “The Mystery of the Heaven” are characterized by a detailed narrative manner combined with unexpected and intense plots, which are inherent to novellas. The cycle “Seven Novels” corresponds to the rules of the genre manifesting such attributes of a novella as “laconism, economy of portraying and expressing means”. H. Pahutiak’s literary works are characterized by aesthetics of the irrational, fantasy, intuitive and dreamlike, therefore she is strongly influenced by gothic literature. But it is necessary to stress that traditional attributes of gothic prose – deserted old houses, blighted areas with forests or bushwood – in H. Pahutiak’s prose always acquire the features of psychoanalytical symbols and semantics of archetypes. Concentration of mythopoetic characteristics in H. Pahutiak’s novellas and short stories is as high as mythological intertexts are distinct in her novelettes and novels.