Existencial experience of death in the Ukrainian and English prose works of the interwar decades

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of death as an existential phenomenon. The topicality of the research is due to the lack of comparative studies of the problem. Its aim is to comprehend the existential of death in the prose of the Ukrainian and English authors of the interwar decades. The research is made on the material of the works by V. Pidmohylny (“Ostap Sheptala”, “A Story without a Title”) and the novel “Honor” by M. Mohyliansky, “The Painted Veil” by S. Maugham and “To the Lighthouse” by V. Woolf. The subject of the study is the philosophical reflections of the characters as subjective thinkers, in the plane of which the authors’ visions of death are actualized. Theoretical and methodological basis is the concepts of the representatives of the existential philosophy (S. Kierkegaard, M. Heidegger, K. Jaspers, A. Camus), in which death is seen as the basic existential of human existence. The main heroes’ attitude to death is considered in the plane of distinguishing of death as an event and as a boundary situation or a phenomenon of death and a phenomenon of mortality. In the course of the study, it was found that an important prerequisite for acquiring thanatological experience by the personages is ‘the death of Another’, which gives rise to a sense of guilt, inducing the personages to active actions. For Ostap Sheptala, Horodovsky, Kitty, Mr. Ramsay, a direct meeting with the death of close people means a boundary situation in which the existence of their own finitude is revealed, which is the main factor in their becoming as individuals as well as in gaining freedom. Instead, in the images of Kalin and Walter, who are in the captivity of their own ambitions, the perception of the ‘death of the Other’ is represented as an objective fact. Their suicide is a consequence of despair, caused by the awareness of their own weakness, which leads to a rejection of oneself. The last is considered as one of the forms of evasion from death. Common for the characters as the spokesman for authors’ views is the state of alienation and loneliness caused by the dehumanization of post-war reality. Prospects for further studies are seen in the study of the problem through the prism of archetypal criticism, as well as the expansion of the arsenal of investigated works.