Chapter Тема війни і миру в сучасній українській поезії

Abstract

The Perception of War and Peace in Modern Ukrainian Poetry. Ukrainians are going through a very difficult, traumatic, catastrophic experience. Contemporary Ukrainian poetry about the war, for instance, is closely connected with the themes of women and childhood during the war. The tragedy of mothers who stayed with their children in Ukraine or went abroad to save their children is sometimes depicted in a folk-poetic style or acquires an interpretation close to the biblical one. There is a tragic, mythologized, figure of a warrior woman, and a widow. There are also poems that express the feelings and experiences of Ukrainians during the war, their psychological trauma and transformation, and the horrific experience of being physically present at war. Like most Ukrainians after February 24, 2022, the poets are acutely aware of the war against Ukrainian identity and language. The invasion of Ukraine has greatly accelerated the process of national self-identification, as evidenced by the poetry. Most Ukrainian authors are not interested in the war as such, but in the human being at war: at the front and in the rear. An individual person, his or her suffering, pain, trials, emotions, feelings, traumas, struggle, love, and death have become the main object of depiction. The heroes of Ukrainian contemporary poetry are ordinary people who were destined to defend their homeland and become warriors; they are also civilians in the rear and evacuated, suffering from the cruel burden of war but finding the strength to resist stress and fatigue.