Semiotics of Ukrainian and English intellectual novels in "Man is a commodity" context

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SEMIOTICS OF UKRAINIAN AND ENGLISH INTELLECTUAL NOVELS IN “MAN IS A COMMODITY” CONTEXT

Khairulina Nailia,

Candidate of Philological Sciences, Lecturer of English Language of the Luhansk State University of Internal Affairs named after E. O. Didorenka, Sievierodonetsk, Ukraine.

Dmytrenko Victoriia,

Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor of the Kryvyi Rih State Pedagogical University, Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine

The period of the late nineteenth - early twentieth centuries is a time of crucial events in the life of mankind, a day of reassessment of existing values and principles, the formation of a “new” morality, the desire to get happiness at any cost. The artistic model of “life is a fair” is clearly manifested in the works of Ukrainian and English literature, based on the social orientation of those times.

The mainline in the mechanism of functioning of the “life is a fair” model is the semiotic constant “man is a commodity”.

In the concept of “man is a commodity”, the authors see characters in works, who independently sacrificed certain human benefits (beauty, health, reputation, dignity, family) in order to achieve the most secret goal: to be young and beautiful forever, to get rich, to achieve success despite the circumstances, etc.

Thus, the objective of the article is to study the peculiarities of the artistic model “life is a fair” in Ukrainian and English intellectual novels, and analyze all the possible stages of characters' degradation in the context “man is a commodity”.

The goal implies the following tasks: to identify the context “man is a commodity” as a world-modeling beginning in the works of Ukrainian and English literature; to find out the author's strategies for the creative implementation of the main components of the claimed model; to analyze typological approaches and individual-author features of creation of “life is a fair” model .

The theoretical basis of the study is provided with the works, devoted to the structural and semiotic literary analyzes (Y. Lotman (4), Y. Kristieva (2) and the artistic features of the works of O. Wilde and V. Pidmohylnyi (J. McMaster (13), N. Bernadska (1), M. Levchenko (3), G. Shton (10), M. Tkachuk (9)). The following research methods are used in the study: comparative typology ( lies in definition of common and distinctive features of the representation of the “life is a fair” model in Ukrainian and English literature), historical (the study of socio-historical conditions of the literary process of the second half of the nineteenth- early twentieth centuries in Ukraine and Great Britain), artistic-semiotic (contains active involvement of strategies of poetic and structural analyzes in the process of realization of the set tasks).

Results of the research. The nodal “nerve” of the “life is a fair” model is the process of transforming a person into a living commodity; the characters are sold to the cruel world, and then deeply disappointed because of it.

The constituent “man is a commodity” in each work is manifested in its own way. Thus, the concept of “man is a commodity” is vividly embodied in the novel “Misto” (“The City”, 1928), the author of which enjoyed the high authority of an intellectual writer, brought up in the spirit of European and national classics, with a philosophical deepening into the knowledge of the world and man.

The work by V. Pidmohylnyi proves that the writer continued the traditions of Russian classical literature, the poetics of which was based on attention to man, the manifestation of good and evil in it. V. Shevchuk justly remarks: “As a writer, V. Pidmohylnyi leads, of course, from V. Vynnychenko, who is especially noticeable in the stories of his first book” (Levchenko, 1963: 74). Close attention to the citizens, in particular the poor social stratum, to the gender problem, interest in frank psychological analysis - all these thematic aspects bring together the works of V. Pidmohylnyi and V. Vynnychenko. However, it was only V. Pidmohylnyi, who plunges deeper into the complex, contradictory, and imperfect world of human existence and human relations, the world of the intellect, psyche, and soul.

So, the writer's short prose introduced new themes and problems into Ukrainian literature of the 1920s. With a fresh plot rhythm, the fate of the 25- year-old young man Stepan Radchenko arises, in which complexes of good and evil are constantly fighting, who, for the sake of personal approval, is even capable of making human sacrifices (the tragic fate of his girlfriend Zoska). But in fact, Stepan Radchenko turns himself into a commodity, “sold” himself to the city for the sake of social status, material achievement, and urban comfort.

It should be noted that the novel by V. Pidmohylnyi “Misto” does not have the task of glorifying the beauty of the capital. The writer presents the lives of his heroes in a big city not in order to show the geographical location or economic life, but in order to show the evolution of the heroes' personality, their rise, and fall.

Stepan Radchenko is a vivid example of such a gradation, a rather pragmatic person who has clear goals in life and is ready to sacrifice his own principles for the sake of victory.

Pragmatic heroes are practical people, sober-minded, firmly aware of what they want from life, and rarely doubt that they will be lucky. They aim at success, direct their views to the future, and consider their own activities to be determinative in it. As a rule, such heroes are firmly convinced that a person creates his own life, material wealth for himself only.

The problem of duality between soul and body is discussed in the frank dialogue between the heroes of the novel “Misto” by Stepan Radchenko and the poet Vyhotskyi, in which the latter expressed his opinion: “In our country, nature destroys itself. One of the branches of earthly evolution will end here, and no one will come after us, no supermen. We are the last link in a chain that will unfold, perhaps more than once on earth, but in other ways and in other directions. The brain is the main enemy of man” (Pidmohylnyi, 1991: 367).

For the first time “having sold himself' to Tamara Vasylivna Hnidykh (having entered into an intimate relationship with her), Stepan feels victory over himself. For a young man, these relations are regarded as a kind of trophy “the possession of this magnificent, higher than him, a daring woman could strengthen his spirit, convince the will, as happens after victory, that the hero himself shows his value” (Pidmohylnyi, 1991: 331). But it should be noted that in the relationship Stepan - Tamara Vasylivna one can observe a clear realization of the “life is a fair” model on the part of both heroes. So, for Tamara Vasylivna it was important to “buy” pleasure and affection from a young man, for Stepan it was an acquisition of personal experience and selfconfidence: “Slowly devoting the guy to the secrets of love, she taught him to appreciate the kiss, which until now seemed to him an insignificant toy, and all the intimate weaving of thirst that humanity has developed during the Stone Age until now, and Stepan, quickly freed himself from the book swaddles that enveloped his mind” (Pidmohylnyi, 1991: 376).

In O. Wilde's novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, the man as a commodity is the central character of the work. In the beginning, the reader is presented with a handsome young man “with his finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair; all the candor of youth was there as well as all youth's passionate purity. One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world” (Wilde , 1979: 38).

O.Wilde, using the example of Dorian Gray, showed how a person with an “angelic” appearance can be filled with a devilish essence. Sated with pleasures and carnal pleasures, he took on the poison of permissiveness, which became salvation and destruction. It was this pleasure that turned Dorian Gray into a commodity, an immoral living organism that brought only suffering to everyone. The hero, striving to have eternal beauty and youth, made a bet not so much with the devil as with time. Stopping, time gave a chance to live without losing its visual appeal, and the mistakes of life, pain, and all the horrors committed by Dorian's syndrome affected not in him, but in his portrait.

O. Wilde creates a philosophical introduction to his novel “The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim ...” (Wilde, 1979: 4). The paradox of the artist's life model is revealed not only in the epigraph, in the novel Lord Henry is repeatedly surprised by the extraordinary way of thinking of the artist Basil “What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain your reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you” (Wilde , 1979: 10).

Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian Gray, and Basil Hallward are perceived as characters very close to O. Wilde. Lord, like the author of the novel, has a passion for paradoxes, a tendency to discuss and play an intellectual game, the rules of which have entered the history of English dandyism. Dorian inherited from O. Wilde his spectacular appearance, the ability to arouse interest in himself, capture, actively act, interacting with other people. And the artist is a kind of reflection of the author's artistic “I”, who reveals himself in serving beauty, beauty, tireless search for the ideal and conscientious and responsible creative work aimed at translating it into works of art.

The first two sections of the novel are devoted to the dialogue between the three designated characters, which determines the range of issues that will be artistically resolved in the work. O. Wilde, as he expresses his own thoughts, projects onto the characters his own points of view concerning beauty in life and art, the ratio of life and artistic modes of human existence.

For Lord Henry, a portrait is a beautiful thing, the contemplation of which gives aesthetic pleasure. His attitude to a work of art is quite consumerist. It is Lord Henry who speaks about fame, the envy of other masters to the artist, for him a portrait is an occasion for vanity and complacency, which he perceives as a well-deserved reward for the creator of beauty. Henry Wotton seeks to take possession of the portrait, introducing the topic of money, buying, and selling into the conversation. When he fails to buy a portrait by Basil for money, he tries to subdue the original, to subdue his curiosity to the life of Dorian.

Dorian Gray, being more influenced by Lord Henry, never thought about what the soul's own harmony is. In pursuit of eternal beauty, he, without hesitation, “sells” himself for pleasure: “If it were I who was to be always young and the picture that was to grow old! For that, for that, I would give everything! I would give my soul for that”

It was the commitment of the artist Basil to the young Dorian that became the basis for the creation of the portrait, which later played a decisive role in the lives of both. For Basil Hallward, this portrait was part of his soul. Without hesitation, he spoke about this to Lord Henry: “... every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion ... I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul” (Wilde, 1979: 15).These words confirm that Basil Hallward really appreciated the harmony of life, the artist was clearly aware of what he could sacrifice for the sake of success in art. He did not turn himself into a commodity.

Becoming a hostage to his fate, Dorian Gray is not even aware of the mental suffering that awaits him. The experienced Lord Henry tells the young guy that the principle of the “life is a fair” model rules the world: Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing” (Wilde , 1979: 42).

At the same time, the artist Basil tries to prevent Dorian's immoral lifestyle, tirelessly repeating to the young man: “If one lives merely for one's self, one pays a terrible price for doing so. I should face in remorse, in suffering, in ... well, in the consciousness of degradation” (Wilde , 1979: 167). The text indicates the presence of the “life is a fair” model in the work, emphasizing that in life one must always pay for material goods.

At the end of the novel, Dorian no longer has the power to live in fear. The young man, despite the fact that he is already over forty, decides to get rid of the portrait by cutting it with a knife. But he does suicide, regretting all his actions. Dorian Gray paid the price of his own life for the opportunity to achieve his goal.

So, the leading dominant of the functioning of the “life is a fair” model is the process of transformation of a person into a living commodity, the characters sell themselves to the cruel world, and then suffer severely because of this.

The works under consideration are united by a key storyline, which openly demonstrates the moral degradation of the main characters, their gradual “transformation” into a commodity when they are ready to do anything for the sake of material well-being. These demo vectors are represented by the names of Stepan Radchenko and Dorian Gray.

It should be emphasized the skill of Ukrainian and English writers in the implementation of semiotics not only of the philosophy of life, but also of the so-called secondary elements, such as the semiotics of clothing, color accompaniment, aroma, and interior design.

The involvement of artistic and semiotic analysis proves the existence of the “life is a fair” model in the prose works considered.

pdmohylnyi wilde ukrainian english intellectual novels

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