Existential Dialectics in the Novel “Love of Neighbor” by Mikhail Nebylyak

Mykhailo Nebyliak’s work played a major role in the development of Ukrainian literature, namely, in the development of the Ukrainian novel in Romania. The novel “Love of Neighbour” is a highly artistic work, which reveals the categories of existentialism, and the issue focuses on the theme of human impotence before the destructive force of war. The research interest in the chosen problem is explained by the fact that the initial period of Ukrainian novels is represented by Mykhailo Nebylyak, who in his works covers the life of the Maramures region during the Second World War and the postwar period. It is Mykhailo Nebyliak, as a diaspora representative, who has the palm of supremacy in writing a Ukrainian novel, and it should be noted that this is done in pure literary language, and the style is marked by a highly artistic manner. In fact, it is a unique experience of starting Ukrainian literature at a high level, which later found its continuation in the work of subsequent generations of writers. Therefore, a deep and full study of the general context and specifics of the Ukrainian novel requires a careful study of the development of this genre in the diaspora. This will give an opportunity to fully assess the artistic value and scale of the contribution of the novice artist, who set the tone and creative direction of the development of the Ukrainian novel in Romania. The novel «Love of Neighbor» is a work about working peasants who suffered the Second World War, the change of power, as well as the indirectly mentioned period of postwar famine and the beginnings of collectivization. Subsequently, the work extends the boundaries of the description to the city where some of the characters moved. The whole work is imbued with motives of experience, anxiety, which is characteristic of existentialism. The characters are depicted in a constant struggle with themselves, death, conscience in “borderline” situations. The characters constantly want to take responsibility for what is happening in the world, reflexively ponder the question – what they have done wrong in the past. At times we encounter quite closely the “stream of consciousness”, but in a somewhat modified form, albeit with the preservation of its inherent fragmentation (existentialism). The author’s main methods of existence are fear of death, rebellion, demoralization, doom (either the war will kill, or the post-war famine will take away life, or collectivization will take away the last chance of survival. Dialectical self-knowledge of the characters is mainly due to alienation, and the pangs of conscience in it. The most typical author’s feature is the image of the alter ego of the character, which, acts as a kind of splitting of the personality in the minds of the characters, and interestingly, the main figures could not overcome these manifestations.