Палімпсести культури, або концепт творчості як самостворення у прозі Валерія Шевчука

Анотація

У статті досліджено концепт творчості як самостворення в контексті барокової ідеї митця-деміурга у прозі Валерія Шевчука. Творчість письменника розглядається як постмодерний палімпсест, крізь який «просвічують» різні культурні фрагменти: численні цитати, алюзії, асоціації, «уламки» інших текстів, концепцій, знаків, значень і кодів.

The article explores the creativity concept as self-creation in the context of the baroque idea of the artist-demiurge in prose by Valeriy Shevchuk. The writer’s creativity is seen as  a  postmodern palimpsest the various cultural fragments is «shining through»: numerous quotations, allusions, associations, «fragments» of other texts, concepts, signs, meanings and  codes.

The theme of creativity and formation of cultural in Valeriy Shevchuk's prose becomes the main subject of writer's musings. At that, this topic is not limited to the depiction of  the  psychology of the creator, but achieves the ontology and axiology of creativity generally, that is the philosophy of creative act as self-creative. And it is realized by the ways of the culture itself: endless borrowings and repeats, quotations and self-citations, allusions and reminiscences, doubling of the code, and using the structure of «text in text». So  Shevchuk's prose appears as a «text of culture», a palimpsest. The author is a master of  creating the illusion of cultural esotericism in his own texts. His work is a text iceberg, and  it reads differently at different levels. An array of cultural allusions, signs, meanings, and associations never opens fully and thus gives the impression of secret writing, cryptotext of culture.

Baroque, its ontology and axiology, aesthetics and poetics are the keys for reading for  Shevchuk's texts. A number of Baroque concepts are through ones in the prose of  the  artist. It deduces that postmodernism of writer has the neo-Baroque essence. In  particular, it is confirmed by the concept of creativity as self-creation and the idea of  the  artist-demiurge. Shevchuk explores a person's existence in culture, his or her existence in culture, the philosophy of creation and the psychology of perception of cultural values. His character is a «creative man» who emerges first of all as a subject of culture. According to  Shevchuk, the only possible being is an existence in culture. The being outside of culture is impossible (in Shevchuk's model of world), because only through it the human life becomes meaningful. The origins of image of a «creative person» by Shevchuk arise out of the Baroque idea of the artist-demiurge, which is a well-founded alternative to the postmodern slogan «death of the author».

The main motif that is manifested in most of Shevchuk's works is a semantic couple – a  hero and a text. The last one must either be created or reproduced to self-define and  achieve inner integrity, to comprehend own life and to fill it with meaning, to realize own complicity in cultural formation and in the sphere of the spiritual values, that is, to eternity. And the eternity is the higher purpose of man, which is an opposition to nothingness. This motif is analyzed in the novels «On a Humble Field», «The House on the Mountain», «The  Path in the Grass», «Three Leaves behind the Window», «The Eye of the Chasm», and  the tales «The Begginning of Horror», «To the Dragon's Jaws».