“I’M BECOMING AN URBANIST, I CAN’T DO WITHOUT THE CITY…” (city and man in the poetic discourse of the XXth century)

Halyna SІUTA,
Doctor of Philological Sciences, Senior Researcher of Department of stylistics, language culture and sociolinguistics of Institute of the Ukrainian Language of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine,
4 Hrushevskyi St., Kyiv 01001, Ukraine;
E-mail: siutagalia@gmail.com
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3273-1644

 

Heading: The city in Ukrainian linguoculture: the echo of generations
Language: Ukrainian

 

Abstract
The image of the city is relevant for the national linguоculture in its various genre-style and aesthetic varieties. Ways of its verbalization in different poetic texts testify to the dynamics of Ukrainian artistic thinking.

Since the end of the 19th century, the theme of the city in Ukrainian literature has been developing with significant intensity, while the interpretation of the village as a bearer of established ethnocultural stereotypes is gradually losing its relevance.

As a result, a new urban type of worldview and the corresponding urban picture of the world with a nuclear macroconcept of the city are formed. These changes are correlated with the transformation of approaches to the linguistic description of the city, the shift of emphasis from the typical for classical literature depiction of urban landscapes, typical or unique urban topos to large-scale reproduction of multidimensional socio-cultural urban text. At the same time, the problem of the relationship between the city and man (the attitude of man to the city, the influence of the city on man, etc.) remains invariably central.

The world of the city in the poetic discourse of the XXth century is an environment of a new multifaceted human life (geographical / industrial / educational / informational / social / domestic / personal space). And in this world is formed different from the traditional patriarchal, socio-psychological type of personality. The life of this personality can be harmonized with the life of the city or opposed to it.

The interpretation of the city as an artificial space, not harmonized with human life and nature, is a logical continuation of the traditional for Ukrainian literature opposition “village / nature – city”. In the paradigmatic development of the key concepts of this opposition the signs of spiritual – unspiritual, natural – artificial, traditional – modern, national – denationalized are contrasted.

Important realization of the image of the city – its display as a space of immorality, mechanized-pragmatic, destructive environment, where there is a moral degradation and depersonalization of man. The general picture of such a negative display of the city is complemented by poetic descriptions of human existence in urban space, which are dominated by senses ‘indifference’, ‘loneliness’, ‘confusion’ and so on.

The positive aspect of the relationship between man and the city, human life in the city is observed in the context of verbalization of the motive of human integration into city life, when a person feels an organic part of urban space.          

   Keywords: poetic language, poetic text, urban discourse, image of the city, image of a man.

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