VISUAL METAMORPHOSES OF KHARKIV IN YURII SHEVELOV’S MEMOIRS “I – ME – TO ME... (AND AROUND)”

Abstract

The purpose. The article analyses the peculiarities of creating a visual image of the city of Kharkiv and its spatial and temporal metamorphoses in the book by Yurii Shevelov “I – me – to me… (and around)”. Research methodology. The research is based on a combination of comparative, historical, contextual, and intermediate methods. Results. It is noted that the author’s memory is predominantly visual, which is why the past is recorded in the form of slides: a general panorama of the city, buildings, citizens, everyday scenes, etc. Compared to the “Kharkiv texts” of writers of the 1920s and 1930s, the Kharkiv visualized by Yu. Shevelov has its own peculiarities. They are determined not only by the genre nature of the text, but also by the mentality of the authors. For people from small provincial towns or villages, the metamorphosis of the big city was perceived with delight. For Yu. Shevelov, Kharkiv was his hometown, which he had known since childhood, so his attitude towards the city was different – personal and partly subjective. It has been established that the “memory slides” in Yu. Shevelov’s memoirs can be chronologically categorized into periods that align with significant historical events which prompted visual transformations of the city: 1914–1917; 1917–1921; the twentieth anniversary of Kharkiv as the capital of Soviet Ukraine; the post-capital period prior to the war, particularly 1931–1936; the years of German occupation; and February 6, 1943 – marked as the “day of farewell” to the city forever, serving as a counterpoint in the lives of both the author and the city. Conclusions. The principle of visualization used in the memoirs is proposed to be classified as photographic. On the pages of the memoirs, Kharkiv appears through the prism of the metonymic gaze of an observer who seems to be “holding” a camera. The images captured by his “camera” are clear, without subjective distortion. However, in some places, to capture the metamorphoses that took place with the city, the author uses an “easel” instead of a “camera”, which makes his “pictures from the past” emotionally coloured. The study of the peculiarities of visualization of other cities of Ukraine and the world by Yu. Shevelov is mentioned as one of the promising areas for further research.