Phenomenon “Oneself as Another” in Ukrainian-Armenian Mutual Reflections

Abstract

Philosophic phenomenon “Oneself as Another” with its projection upon the sphere of culture, literature particularly, is central in the paper. The goal of the article is to realize the phenomenon as the living experience of the authors of different epochs and national traditions on the example of the Ukrainian-language recitations of the ancient poetical collection of the Armenian poet Naapet Kuchack made by Ihor Kalynets.

Methodological basis of the research was chosen the conceptions of self-identity of the main phenomenologists of the 20th century, M. Heidegger, H.-G. Gadamer, P. Ricoeur, combined with ideas of the inner world of ethnicity (which is fixed by myth, common ancestors, common memory, language, elements of culture) by A. Smith and The authors of the study use the following methods: genetic-contact (when analyzing the reception of works); typological (when highlighting echoes and parallels not caused by the process of contacts or borrowings); cultural-historical – in order to outline the broad historical background of the genesis and the development of the analyzed artistic phenomena; biographical – in order to understand the influence of artists’ lives upon the process of their creativity.conceptions of ethno-symbolism by A. Armstrong.

Analysis of the airens from the collection “Entering the Garden” was carried out taking into account broad contexts – temporal, cultural, national, religious (Christianity, Islam, Sufism, Eastern mysticism), in connection with the traditions of ancient folk singers starting with Naapet Kuchack and ending with Sayat-Nova as well as in connection with the Ukrainian discourse of the sixties, in particular the creativity of S. Parajanov, in which the space of Ukrainian and Armenian cultures are overlapping.

The main attention is paid to the peculiarities of the airen genre, its main varieties are analyzed – love airens, wandering airens, reflection airens; in the broader sense – the tradition of the oriental miniature and its representation in the Ukrainian culture space. Emphasis is placed on the commonality of semantic fields of images, metaphors, themes and motifs.

The conclusions state that the similarity of the common human experience of artists-in-exile, artists-sufferers, as well as the concordance of worldviews of authors of different nationalities and generations becomes the main reason for similar images,
motifs and themes in their works. In the process of such reflections, the idea of “Oneself as Another” is crystallized, which involves mutual echoes as reverberations not only at the level of individual personalities, but also at the level of multinational genres, different eras and cultures in general.