“General Face-hitting”: The Travel in Time and Space

Abstract

The article under studies traces the formula of “general face-hitting” from the poem “The Dream” (“U vsiakoho svoya dolia...”) by Taras Shevchenko in the world’s socio-political and folklore-literary contexts. It analyzes Ivan Franko’s essay “Reasons for Evaluating Taras Shevchenko’s Poetry”, where this catchphrase has been used for the first time, as well as describes some dramatic facts from the life of the court Russian poet Vasily Trediakovsky. Special emphasis has been laid on the concept of supreme violence in the history of dictatorial regimes (on the examples of the works of various genres by foreign authors). In particular, fictional and documentary evidence of characteristic abuse of subordinates during the reign of the Empress Anna Ioannovna, as well as numerous cases of assault by the Russian Tsar Peter I and the Prussian King Frederick William I have been revealed. Some expository episodes that remind of a grotesque scene of a brawl are regarded in the History of the Ruthenians, in oriental parables, in the works by Voltaire, Alexander Pushkin, Alexander Herzen, Valentin Pikul, Peter Aleshkovsky, Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak, and others. The relevance of this disgusting phenomenon, inherent in any totalitarian system, has been outlined.