It starts from the well-developed term which is theater of the absurd associated with the exact period within the history of modern drama and pointing to a set of particular plays written in the mid-20th c. were time and setting are commonly ambiguous or undefined, characters are often metaphorical or archetypal, dialogues are repetitive and ridiculous and general effect on the audience is visceral. Then through the chain of the arguments coined and possible precursors found it attempts to introduce the notion of the absurd as being basic for any theoretical outline of what matters for the “literature with the elements of the absurd”. At the same time it attempts to uncover merely literary identity of the absurd drama and to take it somewhat apart from the philosophical position of existentialism. The study emphasizes a long legacy of the absurd in the European literature and theater tired back to the Ancient times. It elucidates actualization of the absurd in the first half of the 20th c. revealing its literary, philosophical and historical contexts.

The author inquires into multiple strategies to understand the notion of “the absurd” in European literary scholarship and then comes to his own proposal: he inserts the category of the absurd to the basic aesthetical categories of tragic, comic and tragicomic. Marking out the concept of the absurd vs the tragicomic the author discloses a special aesthetical effect which reaches far beyond of the mentioned categories. He draws its immediate inspiration from Mykola Kulish's plays, points to this effect, sketches poetical peculiarities of the works intended towards this effect and gives it semiotical explanation.

The study employs the idea of literary genre to look at the aesthetics of the absurd. Literary texts with the elements of the absurd have been interpreted in the discourses of tragedy, comedy and tragicomedy. Therefore, the author discloses rapprochement and in-depth difference between basic aesthetical categories and, essentially, the absurd. And while not many researchers share this view absurd drama is interpreted here as a separate genre guided by the particular aesthetical principle.

Subsequent chapter develops the question how does the usage of the elements of the absurd in Mykola Kulish's dramas influenced their genre character. “Pathetychna sonata” is read as a (non)tragedy, “Myna Mazajlo” is read as a (non)comedy with an assumption that both tragic and comic in these texts undergone deconstruction. The author argues that “Narodnyj Malakhij” should be read as a tragedy, drama, comedy and tragicomedy at once.

The dissertation delineates key elements of the poetics of the absurd and traces how they work thematically and structurally on the level of fable, plot, characters, speech, and modality throughout Mykola Kulish's plays. It defines ideological misbalance as a basic poetical principle in the works of Ukrainian play writer; this misbalance stops the audience from possibility to look at the world with any assumption of purpose and to choose one ideological strategy upon the other since each of the multiple employed strategies has a potential to destroy all the rest. This marks most of Mykola Kulish's plays. The author deploys some other elements of the poetics of the absurd, for instance: cycled fable, reduced characters, paradoxical space and distorted communication.

The study illuminates peculiarities which distinct Mykola Kulish as a precursor of the classical Western European theater of the absurd.

Key words: absurd, drama of the absurd, principle of the absurd, semantic rupture, tragical, comic, tragicomical, aesthetics category, play.

Размещено на Allbest.ru