Binary of Draft and Final Manuscript: to the Question about the Psychology of Lesya Ukrainka's Work

Abstract

The article deals with the peculiarities of Lesya Ukrainka's creative process, which are manifested in her work on draft manuscripts. There is proposed idea that explains the peculiarities of the writer's manuscripts noticed by textologists. It is argued that the binary of the draft and the final manuscript is a formed binary of the irrational and the rational, which
allowed different sources of the creative process not just to conflict and force to choose one or the other, but to be attracted and repelled at the same time. In Lesia Ukrainka's dramatic works, the binary nature of the creative process manifests itself in intense agonies, verbal competitions, emotional and intellectual at the same time. Just as Lesya Ukrainka's characters collide in exquisite agony, emotions and reason, conscious and unconscious, Ego and Super-ego, feminine and masculine, tender and courageous, personal, intimate and universal, collide in the writer's inner world.

The idea of the article is also illustrated by a fragment of work on the drama "Stone Master", a draft of which is almost twice the volume of the final text. One of the removed fragments of the drama, a great dialogue between Anna and the Commander, is considered and commented on. From a formal and substantive point of view, the fragment is perfect. Its removal is explained by a conscious author's instruction: to hide in the subtext the biographical origins of the work, to give to the experienced universalism. Emotionally dependent on the experience, the writer always finds an intellectual way to mediate it.