Dovzhenko: Apocalypse. War through the Eyes of a National Prophet

Author

Trymbach Serhiі

a senior research fellow of the Screen, Stage Arts and Culturology Department of M. Rylskyi Institute of Art Studies, Folkloristics and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, a corresponding member of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine).

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/my-orcid?orcid=0009-0004-0885-4083

Dovzhenko: Apocalypse. War through the Eyes of a National Prophet

Abstract

The article is about the creative heritage of film director Oleksandr Dovzhenko during the Second World War and the role he chooses for himself, the role of the national Prophet. At first, Dovzhenko has shown a restrained optimism regarding the historical fate of Ukraine and Ukrainianhood in the vicissitudes of the tragic confrontation of peoples and political systems. His perception of the world is consistent with the format of the national ideology, formed during the liberation struggles of the early 20th century. It is about a national reflection in a pan-European scale, which is in no way fixated on the idea of self-affirmation of the nation. It has been also a norm for Dovzhenko, so it is not surprising that he thought of himself and his work in global terms.  Since the beginning of the war, the artist has refused to work in the cinema, preferring the Word, which is charged with a program of transformations and blockages of tragic cataclysms. Dovzhenko writes Ukraine on Fire the film story, which reproduces the song-romantic image of the people overcoming all the terrible cataclysms of the wartime. The story is criticized by Stalin as a nationalist work, one that exposes the very foundations of the Soviet state system to revision. The ban of Ukraine on Fire coincides with the news of the death of Dovzhenko’s father during the German occupation and his idea of the death of Ukraine. Father blamed Stalin for that death. Dovzhenko takes on apocalyptic assessments of the war as the cause of the death of Ukraine, its people, and its culture. He perceives the war as a systemic sin of the Bolshevik regime headed by Stalin. Nevertheless, the artist finds resources for revival in the people – at the level of clan and family life, where many ritual and magical tools for the renewal of the nation have been developed. The motive of the immortality of the family is connected with the belief in the Renaissance resources of the ancestral, national body. It is the family that is almost the only guarantor of the self-preservation of the people’s body and spirit. A clan that, sensing the possibility of imminent doom, gathers together. Together near the native house, in the garden, which is the Paradise abode, to find common words of incantation, prayers that conjure and drive away death, destruction – of the family and the people.

Keywords

apocalypse, prophet, word, war, people, clan.

References

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