Instructive allegory as structural principle of novel «Sign of Sabaoth» by Oles’ Uliyanenko.

Abstract

In the article expressionist bases of the artistic world are investigational in a novel Oles’ Uliyanenko «Sign of Sabaoth». A reflection and comprehension of problem of activity of orthodox church under patronage of imperial power (Moscow patriarchy) takes place by a literary parabola. Original orientation on an instructive allegory (character, parable) requires the proper structural principle of construction of work: deviation from a basic row (subject, time and space) on purpose to go back to him from position of moral-philosophical comprehension. Facts about «perversion» and «corruption» of representatives of Moscow patriarchy and reaction on arrival of Pope Ivan Paul II to Ukraine in 2001 collected by the writer is artistically structured as paradoxical unity, combination of incompatible: orthodoxy as zoon (ugly, mortal) and greko-catholicism as spiritual (wonderful, eternal) church. The author states the novel was modeled on the principles of world creation of expressionistic work of art as a paradoxical unity of spiritual and animal, beautiful and ugly, the eternal and the perishable. The novel “Sign of Sabaoth” is defined by critics as “novel-treatment”, “novel-release” and “novelwarning”, because of expression of extreme individual and collective evil. In the case of “Sign of Sabaoth” main subject-figurative rows are formed by spatial coordinates: unnamed administrative suburban area that geographically belongs to the capital – Kyiv – is perceived as a separate reality in the novel, but it accumulates events and their participants in such way so they exist regardless of other, wider world. Local art space components of the novel function of character formatting actions and deeds of the characters, their characteristic worldview, portrait characteristics correlated with spatial coordinates.