“Aeneid” by Anatolii Bazylevych: Picturesque Mythologization of Poem by Ivan Kotliarevskyi

Abstract

The article analyzes 120 drawings by A. Bazylevych, the outstanding Ukrainian artist of the 20th century, created for the editions of “Aeneid” by I. Kotliarevskyi in 1969 and 1970. The subject matter is a look at the drawings in the status of a picturesque author’s myth. The skill of ‘visual intelligence’ of the artist is demonstrated in the picturesque original reading of the poem by  Kotliarevskyi as a phenomenon of the Baroque with expressive literary methods of ‘image turning’ that contributed to this process and acquired the significance of historical and literary classics. The assumption as for the artist’s mastering of the Baroque concept of Chyzhevskyi that was popular in the 1960s as well as the single-stage development of the Italian-Ukrainian culture of laughter (according to M. Bakhtin) and appreciation of picture poesis (poetry as painting, according to L. B. Alberti) are suggested. This interaction lined up the picturesque myth of Bazylevych through the artistic transformation techniques of ‘image turning’, burlesque travesty of ‘booklore’. This produced the formation of the mythological image of Aeneas as a ‘black knight’ (in the edition of 1969) in the traditions of Western European literature. The view of life through mythological red colour founded by the legendary book cover reveals the content of the ‘red Aeneas’, being signified with red clothing items, shoes, and above all the red Cossack heraldry on the flag, combining Aeneas with Trojan-Cossacks, representing the ‘red world’. Aenei-myth is considered as a Cossack Sorcerer due to the suffix specificity of H. Cohen and physical plastic with folk content that unite the Trojans-Cossacks with the gods.