POÉSIE DE LA GUERRE MODERNE : TENDANCES DE DÉVELOPPEMENT À LA LUMIÈRE DU GENRE POETIQUE ET DE LA SPÉCIFICITÉ THÉMATIQUE
Authors: Попова_Бонналь Т. 
Published: January 2024

Background. From the first day of the war, on February 24, 2022, Ukrainian poetry gained a new impetus for development. The actualization of this type of creativity isdriven, on the one hand, by the experience of the tragic moment because such poetry often emerges in the immediate aftermath of war events, and on the other hand, by the expected therapeutic effect of poetic words. Social media platforms played a significant role in the dissemination of amateur and professional poets' verses, providing people with moral support and the opportunity to uplift one another. It is worth conducting a comprehensive literary analysis of the representative poetics of contemporary Ukrainian literature to understand the conceptual changes in Ukrainian society's consciousness, experienced by current war.

Purpose. The aim of the study is to explore the poetic specificity of contemporary network poetry about the war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine.

Methods. The article predominantly employs the method of mapping, supplemented by structural-analytical, descriptive, and typological techniques.

Results. In the article, the poetic features of network (mostly amateur)  poetry about the realities of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine are mapping. Nearly 90% of  the poems are written in Ukrainian, while other languages used by amateur poets include Russian, English, French, and Spanish. At first glance, the verses of  contemporary amateurs may appear somewhat primitive in the literary sense, but they exhibit sincerity, honesty, and poetic exploration, with attempts to construct their own rhymes and rhythmic patterns, often flavored with a sense of "folkness" (colloquial language). The gender specificity of the poems is predetermined by the dominance of works by female authors, as the specificity of wartime often positions women as observers and emotionally involved parties through their familial or professional connections with men on the front lines. The gender aspect of amateur military poetry reveals a predominance of prayer-like verses in various forms, such as prayers for peace, prayers for loved ones, prayers for Ukraine, prayers for the fallen, prayers for children, and prayers of despair. Additionally, the analyzed layer of poetry includes genres such as meditation, chronicle-like poems, lullabies, and satirical verses. The military lyrics, predominantly created by male soldiers, exhibit severity and depict the harshness of trench life, abound with images of relentless death, celebrate friendship and brotherhood, and often convey psychological and physical  aversion to acts of violence. Some of these poems take the form of messages addressed to mothers or loved ones. The collection of amateur military poetry written during the spring of 2022 revolves around the chronotope of the Ukrainian wartime, depicting cities and towns ravaged by the war. At times, it narrows down to the space of a native home, either intact or ruined and abandoned, emphasizing the motif of displacement and the image of refugees. Many poems express emotional negativity towards the enemy/enemies, namely Russians, "Russian nationalists," or "orcs." In terms of form and style, the analyzed works combine subjective forms of inner monologue with folkloric clichés and intertextual references to the works of Taras Shevchenko. In terms of versification, the dominant forms are quatrains with alternating rhymes or rhymed couplets (which aligns this poetic  tradition with folk songs), with the number of stanzas ranging from two to five or six. Occasionally, free verse or futuristic stanzas with monosyllabic exclamatory sentences are encountered.

Discussion. War poems have become a social phenomenon through their dissemination on social media and internet resources. They serve the function of societal and personal therapy and meditation, psychological relief, and evoke an atmosphere of prayer, akin to both Christian and pagan prayers, particularly to Orphism with its closeness to peasantry and belief in soul purification. They embody a belief that the power of art, poetic words, and music contributes to peace. The layer of war poetry becomes stronger and more diverse every day, thus requiring its curator and researcher.