Word and memory of Ivan Drobnyi

Svitlana YERMOLENKO,
Academic of the NAS of Ukraine, Professor, Dr. Sci. (Philol.), Head of the Department of Stylistics, Culture of the Language and Sociolinguistics, Institute of the Ukrainian Language of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine,
4 Hrushevskyi St., Kyiv 01001, Ukraine;
E-mail: svitlana.yermolenko@gmail.com
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9916-4915

Heading: STYLE AND MEMORY
Language: Ukrainian

Abstract

The author of the article explores the individual linguistic style of Ivan Semenovych Drobnyi, a writer of the Sixties from Cherkasy region, in particular the language of his poetic texts. It is determined that the poet’s style represents the linguistic aesthetics of Ukrainian literature of the second half of the twentieth century, and the stylistic feature of I. Drobnyi’s language thinking reveals the connection of verbal associative images with realities, phenomena of Ukrainian nature, history of the native land, environmental problems and the inner world of a person in love with his land.
There is a renewal of traditional poetic metaphors (the book of nature). The poet reads the book of the farmer, and compares the grains of poetry to the golden grains of the field. A conversation with nature always ends with a clear aphoristic thought that reveals broader, sometimes unexpected connections between words and concepts that acquire symbolic meaning. The contexts of aestheticization and symbolization of such individual linguistic images as rainbow, rain, willow, path are highlighted, the associative field of which is expanded by the author with the concepts of modern reality. The author interprets the meaning of the original poeticized image of winter crops as a symbol of the dying and resurrection of nature. The tradition of the Ukrainian poetic word combines the concepts of the rainbow and the Dnipro, but only in the poetry of Ivan Drobnyi the entire rainbow is «according to Vasyl Symonenko».
The author emphasizes the simple, uncomplicated rhythmic and intonational structure of the poem, the song folk rhythms in the poetry of I. Drobnyi and at the same time records the transitions
in it from the high poetic word to the lyrical confession, from philosophical reflections to evaluative, witty statements filled with colloquial phrases.
The article concludes that the poetic language of the Cherkasy region writer Ivan Drobnyi is a grateful source of research on the problem of STYLE AND MEMORY. With his lyrical texts, the poet draws attention to the richness of the Ukrainian literary language, makes us think about the historical variability of the lexicon of human civilization and about eternity, the value of the fundamental connection between man and the «eternal writings» of nature. His philosophical reflections on the agricultural culture of Ukrainians, the history and nature of his native land, often embodied in a perfect aphoristic form, enrich the vocabulary of linguistic and aesthetic signs of Ukrainian culture, and actualize precedent names and precedent lexemes, phrases of the Ukrainian language. Ivan Drobnyi’s individual style preserves the memory of the folk style of Ukrainian poetic language, which organically combines the linguistic aesthetics of folk songs and the philosophy of folk conversation.
Key words: writers of Cherkasy region, Ivan Semenovych Drobnyi, philosophy of the poetic word, “writings of nature”, connection of generations, metaphors, linguistic and aesthetic signs
of culture, aphoristic language thinking, history of the region, folk song symbols, word and time.

REFERENCES
Drobnyi, I. (1988). The blue tree of the Dnipro (Blakytne derevo Dnipra. Poezii). Kyiv (in Ukr.).
Drobnyi, I. (1996). A pear in the middle of the field (Hrusha sered polia. Poezii). Cherkasy (in Ukr.).
Drobnyi, I. (2009). A house made of quinoa (Khata z lobody. Avtobiohrafichna povist. Literaturoznavstvo, portrety, kraieznavstvo). Cherkasy: Vidlunnia-Plius (in Ukr.).