"HISTORICISM" OF THE NEW EUROPEAN DRAMA (LESYA UKRAINKA – B. BRECHT – Y. KOSACH)

Abstract

The article deals with the development of the historical theme in drama, the stage of the new drama traced on the examples of Lesya Ukrainka’s plays "Boyarynya", 1910, B. Brecht’s "Mother Courage and her children", 1939, Y. Kosach’s "Action about Yuriy the Victorious", 1947. The first collection of these different texts under one slogan ensures the scientific novelty of research. The purpose of the research: to trace the development of the historical theme in the modernist drama of the 20th venture and outline the problematic aspects of the concept of historicism of the new drama. The analysis of three dramas allows us to make a conclusion about the historicism of different aesthetics systems, romantic, realistic and modernist.  A romantic story is, in fact, the metanarrative of national history, which is written with the aim of producing a national one identity, elevation of national culture. Realism focuses on displaying modernity, indifferent to historical topics, but gives authors of historical topics a lot of image means necessary for the effect of authenticity. Modernism in the displaying of historical events is miscellaneous. It is important to highlight the symbolist, expressionist and surrealist methods of mediating historical material.  Most of Lesya Ukrainka’s dramas are historical or mythological subjects belonging to the genre of symbolist drama, in which the price of the choice is realized between private and public, which every person makes in any era. B. Brecht’s Epic / expressionist theater is a unique story that goes on and on. The playwright forces the viewer to look at the story consciously and critically, not emotionally, to see it through the eyes of a playwright who has already gone through his path of self-awareness. Surreal the picture of history is painted by Yuriy Kosach: his historical event is also distanced, but looks like a labyrinth in which a person wanders and blindly chooses between good and evil. It is always a story appropriated by the author.