HANDWRITTEN EPIC WORK OF THE EARLY VYACHESLAV MEDVID’ (1970s)

Abstract

The article analyzes epic works (fragments, sketches, stories, the shot novel “Completely Military Maneuvers”), as well as the play “Bomb, or Responsible Person” of the early stage of creativity (1970s) Shevchenko Prize winner Vyacheslav Medvid’ (Born in 1951), which were not published for various reasons and remained in the manuscripts of the writer and therefore remained out of the attention of researchers. This works fit into the context of the writer’s biography, his work as a librarian in Uzhhorod, service in the army, moving to Boyzrka and Kyiv, in the context of intellectual and cultural communication. Some of the manuscripts are impressionistic reflections of the surrounding world and their own perception of this world, which are very close in genre to “sketches”, “drawings”, samples” of the late nineteenth – early twentieth centuries. Also through most works is the motive of determining their own path, choosing a writing profession. An analysis of V. Medvid’s unpublishes works of the 1970s gives grounds to assert that from text to text the author’s narrative skill grew, a range of problems, methods of imagery, stylistic features, and chronotope were developed, which would later form the basis of the writer’s idiosyncrasy. V. Medvid’s manuscripts, which preserve further author’s corrections and edits, make it possible to trace the formation of idiosyncrasies, a critical attitude to written texts, and persistent purposeful activity to improve them. Most often, the corrections were reduced to the removal of unnecessary, according to the writer, segments of the text, especially close to journalistic interpretive self-explanations. To a large extent, this correlates with the desire to write in accordance with the technique of “iceberg”, which testified to the great interest of V. Medvid’ in the work of E. Hemingway, V. Faulkner and others. The short play is written in the vein of absurdist drama, which was little known and not tolerated in the USSR. The writer did not make serious attempts to publish the manuscripts in the decades, believing that they had not yet reached the proper level of skill.