Laughter as a Manifestation of Freedom: Means of Creating the Comic in the Poetic Language of Ivan Svitlychnyi

Abstract

The article examines the main techniques and devices used to create comic effects in the poetry of Ivan Svitlychnyi. It emphasizes that laughter becomes a form of resistance to the system, and his prison lyrics lack a pathos of tragedy. Contrast serves as a pervasive device for generating the comic on all levels. Elevated, bookish vocabulary typical of the classical sonnet genre is juxtaposed with prison slang and lowered, coarse colloquial elements. The collision of stylistically diverse units within the closest context gives the poetic text particular expressiveness. The author frequently incorporates colloquial phraseology, whose stylistic markedness enhances the comic tone in its various manifestations; overall, the skillful play on set expressions contributes to the creation of sarcastic and satirical effects. Enantiosemy, antiphrasis, and allusion are techniques used to convey direct authorial evaluations. At the syntactic level, the mechanisms of comic expression are highlighted through antitheses, rhetorical questions and exclamations, gradation, amplification, fragmented syntax, short sentences, and dialogization of the narrative – all of which create emotionality, invectiveness, and polemical nature of the poetic phrase. It is emphasized that the key concept of FREEDOM in I. Svitlychny's poetry has an ambivalent nature, depending on whether it concerns the personal dimension of the lyrical hero's spiritual freedom, even behind bars, or the choice of those who opt for "freedom" in a totalitarian society. The concept of FREEDOM is correlated with the equally ambivalent concept of SILENCE, in terms of its semantic content: оn the one hand, silence is seen as submission to the system (compliance); оn the other hand, silence represents forced silence as a form of resistance against the system. Deep semantic irony also arises from the intertextual interaction with the reader, with references primarily to the poetics of Shevchenko’s socially critical and denunciatory works. Svitlychny masterfully succeeds in deploying the comic spectrum, ranging from irony, self-irony, and humour to scornful sarcasm or trenchant political satire and grotesque.