Between a Word and Voice: the Auditory Space of “Tale of the Sanatorium Zone” (“Povisit pro Sanatoriinu Zonu”) by Mykola Khvylovyi

Abstract

In the second half of the 20th century, writing was studied as a modernist fluid and perpetual practice on the marches between philosophy, psychoanalysis, and literature studies. French philosophers Roland Barthes and Yulia Kristeva paid attention to the material characteristics of writing. This article defines some theoretical aspects of such an interdisciplinary analysis of writing and its potential in Ukrainian modernist literature. Mykola Khvylovyi’s writing has special tactile, visual, and auditory features, which can be revealed if we involve some theoretical and methodological formations on the border of philosophy and literature studies. It will be possible to nuance the strategies of creating characters as «bezhruntovni romanyky».

The aim is to analyze the auditory space of Povisit pro sanatoriinu zonu by Mykola Hvylovyi and its effects on the strategies of creating characters as the «bezhruntovni romanyky».

The theoretical and methodological foundation is Mladen Dolar’s theory of voice, based on Lacanian and Freudian types of psychoanalysis. The article also involves the theory of tragedy by Jacques Lacan and the theory of writing and its materiality by the French philosophers Julia Kristeva, and Roland Barthes.

The auditory space of Povisit pro sanatoriinu zonu was examined through the psychoanalytic theory of voice. The two extremes are highlighted, specifically, the mute desire for death and the clamor of life. The main character anarkh finds himself surrendered to the mute drive of death on the other side of the tragedy, thus he remains without a ground in the conventional flow of life and its materiality. The specific nature of the voice as a psycho-physical phenomenon complements the conceptual field of «groundlessness» as a fundamental existential principle of subject in Mykola Hvylovyi’s modernist writing.

The theoretical foundations for analyzing the category of writing and its material aspects in Ukrainian modernism were outlined. The auditory aspect of the materiality of Mykola Khvylovyi's writing was explicated.