«FOREST SONG» BY LESYA UKRAINKA: A MYSTERY GENRE MATRIX

Abstract

The article highlights the mystery dominants of the drama-extravaganza «Forest Song» by Lesya Ukrainka and the features of their artistic expression. The main literary views on the interpretation of the mystery as an ancient / pre-Christian and medieval / Christian genre are determined. It is found out that the mystical beginnings, especially in its ancient pagan understanding, are associated with the cyclical nature of reincarnations, the rotation of being, which forms the structural meaning of the «Forest Song» by Lesya Ukrainka. The seasonal structuring of artistic time in the drama «Forest Song» by Lesya Ukrainka leads to comparisons with the most ancient Greek Eleusinian mysteries. Also, the drama is brought closer to the archaic matrix of the classical mystery by the method of modeling the artistic space into two worlds: the sacral marked world of forest dwellers and the profane, often negative world of peasants. The category of sacrifice and multiplicity of death (its duality or cyclicity), the motives of rebirth, metamorphoses for changes as separate components of the paradigm of the classical mystery genre became the basis for creating the semantic level of the «Forest Song» by Lesya Ukrainka. It is traced that the drama of Lesya Ukrainka, like the ancient mystery, combines three origins: poetic, musical and painting. The image of the oak tree as a sacralized Tree of Life is also attributed to the mystery, with the destruction of which the balance of the relationship between nature and man was disturbed, harmony in the worlds was erased. In the dramatic work, all the main archetypal