History as Trauma: Death, Violence, and Loss in the Poetry of Taras Mel’nychuk

Abstract

The paper examines the liaison of key motifs and ways represented in the poetry of Taras Melnychuk through the concepts of trauma and violence. Body, home, and language are the main constituent elements of the indigenous space, and their dramatic destruction is a crucial motif in Melnychuk’s poetry. On the one hand, the poet appeals to the holistic, consistent, formulaic language of folklore and mythology as to a mirror of an idyllic and non-fragmented world. On the other hand, dismemberment and fragmentation conceptualized as an act of violence committed against holistic language become the only way of describing the perverse and violent world in circumstances with no language for its expression at all.