Means of Character Portraying in Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky's Literary Works
Authors: Markulyak Larysa Vasylivna ,   Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University
Published: December 2022

The article examines a portrait as a means of creating a character in the works of Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, an outstanding Ukrainian writer of the fin de sièclе period. It is traced that an important category of poetics is the portrayal of a character. It helps to better understand the writer's intention, to reveal his creative individuality, to understand the problems of prose. Various types of portraits are identified, and the features of portraying in the novels of M. Kotsiubynsky's works are analysed. It is proved that the portrait is an emphasis on the anthropocentrism of fiction. The significance of portraing in the context of the formation of the character's image is clarified. The author of the article believes that Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky was one of the first among the modernist writers to feel the need to search for new approaches in the depiction of artistic images in order to create not only his own world, but also an integral paradigm of the Ukrainian cultural space. In the end, the research helped him develop his own holistic and unique style, a creative manner in which the writer translates the vision angle from a blind reflection of reality into the psychology of his characters. This work of M. Kotsiubynsky went beyond the realism discourse, absorbing the main features of neo-romanticism. It is traced that the neo-romantic stream of the story is more expressive with the ethnographic part, which is complemented by the portraits of the characters. It is due to the ethnographic portrait that the mental characteristics of the characters are reflected. In the story “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” M. Kotsiubynsky skilfully uses an ethnographic portrait, supplementing it with a psychological one, which helps to strengthen the mental features of the characters, to create vivid images. It has been proved that it is the character's portrait as a component of the human image that acquires special significance in the repertoire of Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky's works. It helps to better reveal the nature of the character and to better understand the nature of his actions. At the same time, M. Kotsiubynsky goes beyond the limits of ethnographic descriptiveness: he is interested in the soul of a person and human nature in general, therefore the writer resorts to a combination of ethnographic features of a portrait with its psychological manifestations. It is proposed to consider a portrait as a means of expressiveness in revealing the ideological content of a prose work. The role of the artistic detail is substantiated, which emphasizes the semantic content of the psychological portrait on the one hand, and, on the other, it enriches the ethnographic gamma of the writer's prose. It is traced that the use of contrast creates a dynamic that serves the emergence of a cohesive image. Portrait descriptions are not only plot elements, but are full-fledged components of the work. It has been established that the image of the writer himself also appears through the portrait characterization of the characters, so the representation of a work of art occurs through the prism of the artist's individual perception.