FEATURES OF MARYNA HRYMYCH’S NOVEL “KLAVKA”

Abstract

The paper examines literary features of Maryna Hrymych’s novel “Klavka” (2019). The variety of methods used in the work is interesting for literary analysis. These are the use of the historical background with a detailed description of the realities of the time; introduction of the writers’ personalities as characters; continuation of the urbanistic “Kyiv” theme using contemporary toponyms; urban folklore; a hero multi-narrator; quoting the poetry of that time in order to create a flavor of the writer’s life, etc. Hrymych uses the literary form of the novel to show the acts of harassment of writers in the era of Stalinism. The plenum of the Union of Writers of Ukraine, organized in 1947, aimed to criticize prominent Ukrainian writers of that time: Maksym Rylskyi, Yurii Yanovskyi, Ivan Senchenko, and others. This action had a tactical goal but strategically, Ukrainian literature was doomed to complete assimilation and “denationalization” along with the physical destruction of the writers. The documents confirming this process have not been made public yet, so Hrymych presents them in the form of quotes or transcripts made by the main character, the secretary of the Union of Writers. The novel has the passages of scholarly content, which play an important role. The writer presents an analysis of literary works of the cult of Stalin era. Being unable to accept these works, modern readers tend to completely reject them. Maryna Hrymych provides a way to perceive these writings by acknowledging that the authors wrote them on state orders, but they tried to do it masterfully by using various literary techniques and presenting their individual style. The genre affiliation of the novel is ambiguous. “Klavka” can be perceived both as a historical novel, as a “novel about a profession” (a parody of similar works of that time), as an urban novel, and a documentary prose. A variety of techniques and methods used in the novel allows talking about “Klavka” as a postmodern work.