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The Artistic vs the Useful Opposition in Nataliia Kobrynska’s Prose Texts

Some of Nataliia Kobrynska’s prose texts refer to the modernist motif of beauty that opposes materialistic and pragmatic world. The symbolic language of “The Hebrew Child” relies on the beautiful vs the useful opposition, given that this text is about the uselessness of beauty rather than about Hinda’s greed. In this mostly realistic sketch, the influence of aestheticism (the self-sufficiency of beauty) and decadence (the fragility of beauty) is sufficiently tangible. In “Liebesahnung,” Kobrynska in a specific way experiments with the unconscious work of memory and desire. The picture here is a trigger both for actualizing Denys’ monomania, obsession with the pictured girl, and for launching of his memory mechanism. Protagonist’s hallucinatory visions are structured according to the matrix of artwork – since Denys imagines his dream as an artwork, it remains distant. In contrast to male narratives with similar plots, the object of aesthetic appropriation in Kobrynska’s text is not a real woman but a portrait that has no real prototype. The real and the imaginary are clearly separated: the protagonist’s obsession with the beautiful woman in the painting is in fact an aesthetic experience, and an attempt to extrapolate the male phantasm to a real experience remains fruitless. In “The Creature”, the principle of reality is manifested through the concept of an honest and morally consistent job for the protagonist. On the contrary, blacksmith’s art is an exception, some kind of anomaly. Within the conventional attitudes, this anomaly works as an escape from reality; it is immoral in all senses – not only as a result of blacksmith’s alcoholic inspiration, but also as his refusal to remain within socially appropriate roles and norms. Accordingly, the process of creation is treated here as a rebellion and a break with a conventional worldview. To sum up, Kobrynska is extremely sensitive to fin de siècle aesthetic searches; on the stylistic level, realist, symbolist, impressionist, aestheticist, and even decadent elements are entwined in her prose texts.