Genre-aesthetic moduses of the novel in verse.

Abstract

The genre peculiarities of Roman Pastukh’s satiric novel in verse “Thunder” (если это как фамилия, то “Grim”) (2002), which has the sarcastic, critical pathos and denunciative tone, are studied in the following article. The emphasis is put on the mysticalness of the character of Ivan Grim, the hero of UPA, who personifies the undying spirit of the Ukrainian people, he is resurrected and he reveals all social issues in independent Ukraine, with particular pain he talks about how the posterity neglects both “places of memory” and “heroes” (P. Nora).

The novel in verse (“Grim”) consists of four parts, “journeys”, which are made by the hero of UPA, he makes his journey around all the instances of Ukrainian government, from countryside, district, regional to national, to the President to certify his person, to get the certificate to live in Ukraine. The satire of the novel is focused on the negative spread of the bureaucratic despotism and injustice through the repulsive depiction of morbid phenomena in the life of the country, and the assistance in their overcoming by means of sarcasm, irony, grotesque. The work was written in 2002, but problems covered in it then are actual today. The author mocks both social and human defects of the government, proves that moral-ethic norms form not a man with a new type of consciousness, but a mass consumer, who is typologically similar to the social phenomenon of the “soviet man”. As a conclusion – unwise actions are indifferent to the past and the national memory.

Author’s individual novelty, constructive features of the satire are defined in the article alongside with the typological comparison to T. Shevchenko’s poem “Dream” that has been made.