GENRE AND COMPOSITIONAL FEATURES OF THE REPRESENTATION OF PHYSICAL AND MENTAL TRAUMA IN MARIA MATIOS` NOVEL “MOMS”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31471/2304-7402-2025-22(81)-67-82Keywords:
Maria Matios, contemporary Ukrainian literature, trauma of maternal loss, narrative, artistic and imagery system, architectonics, metaphor, Drama novel «Moms», body expression, iconotropism.Abstract
The article explores the latest work of the contemporary Ukrainian writer Maria Matios – «Moms». The objective of the study is to examine how, through narrative strategy realized in compositional mastery and in the specificity of artistic imagery of the work, the author transforms her own traumatic experience into the discovery of therapeutic possibilities.
To achieve the set purpose, the authors resorted to the methodology of trauma studies, developed in the works by P. Ricoeur, T. Bilchevsky, G. Agamben, D. La Capri, P. Sztompka, D. Alexander, H. Arendt, K. Erikson, Karut, and Sh. Felman. They also employed various interpretative method- ologies, including psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, receptive aesthetics, inter- pretative, and structural approaches.
The work of the writer chosen for the study is distinguished by a special composition, a specific narrative structure due to the inclusion of the author’s personal traumatic experience in the artistic fabric. «Moms» is a real «way of breaking the silence» (A. Matusiak) and a narrative practice of overcoming the repressive effects of trauma; it is notable for its emotional and figurative component, as well as for its genre specificity (the author’s definition of
«drama in six acts») and architectonics. The common theme here unites six separate parts, two of which form a circular frame and unfold according to the musical principle of lyrical prose composition. The plot is realized in the stories of five mothers, not only different in social status, time of trauma-loss, and openness of their inner world to the reader, but also united by the trauma of losing their dearest ones – their sons.
The specificity of the composition of the work lies primarily in the fact that each part of it – a separate short story – has its own structure of a com- pletely independent, complete literary text, while the architectonics of the en- tire work is characterized by an orientation towards enhancing the emotional and figurative, lyricized component combined with the plot. Each of the short stories has its own time and space frame (while in «Mom Veronka» it is lim- ited to one day, the chronotope of the short story «Mom Mykhailyna» covers the period «between 1952 to 2015»). Moreover, certain fragments of one nov- el have their own specific model of chronotope (the climactic episode in
«Mom Mykhailyna» clearly resembles the «The Way to Calvary»; «Mom Si- donia» contains an allusion to the «Virgin’s walk in agony»). The time-space framework of the whole novel unfolds in the final chord via the allusion to Michelangelo’s «Pietà» to the dimensions of eternity. The space of memory in Maria Matios’s work is marked with «mnemonic marks»: the locus of the cemetery, the image of a candle, the White Dove, a viburnum bush, and tow- els on the crosses of unmarked graves.
The main compositional technique in the novel used by the author to re- veal the theme of maternal loss both during the Ukrainian Insurgent Army’s liberation struggle against the moscow invaders and in the current war waged against Ukraine by russia is contrast, which is manifested in composi- tional elements, narrative strategy, and the lexical coloring of dialogues. Contrast also serves as the main principle of developing the internal mono- logue-stream of consciousness of the protagonists, which reproduces the depth of the pain experience. The analysis of the psychological modeling of the work’s figurative system reveals the disclosure of trauma through the use of elements of expressionist poetics («Mom Mykhailyna»), onirism («Mom Maria»), emphasizing the state of altered consciousness, suffocation, and the contrast between screaming and whispering. The artistic world of Maria Matios’s novel is also full of speaking signs and symbols.
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