The triad Faith — Hope — Love as a symbol in the lyrics of the representatives of the 1960s generation — Bulat Okudzhava and Yevhen Sverstiuk

Abstract

The inquiry is focused on two poems of the Sixties Poets: “Three Sisters” by B. Okudzhava and “Faith — Hope — Love” by Ye. Sverstiuk. They are united by the symbolic image of a triad of Christian martyrs. The aim of the study is an interpretation of texts, associated with a common cultural tradition, as well as an indication of differences in the development of national cultures of the former USSR, that cause further divergence in the modern mentality of citizens in the country that had divided. The research adheres to comparative hermeneutic methodology. Problem Statement. Personalized images of Faith, Hope, Love in the poem by B. Okudzhava appear before the lyrical hero as the most important principle of his personal existence at the time of ordeal. They express the ethical foundations of life; their faithfulness justifies the poet, who feels indebted to life and his contemporaries. The poem by Ye. Sverstiuk “Faith — Hope — Love” reveals a profound social and historical connotation in the light of memoir evidence about the tragic fates of Ukrainian dissidents of the 60s. The motif of the tragic inevitability of choice on the Via Dolorosa is the main one in its figurative and semantic structure. The results of the study. In comparison with Okudzhava’s song, the symbolic parabolic plane in Ye. Sverstiuk’s verse is more tangible and more clearly connected with the religious tradition. Lyrical voice of the Ukrainian dissident is woven from echoes of no everyday cultural text in Soviet Ukraine — from hagiography, from the persecuted and the underground church life, from the insurgent poetry of World War II, from banned journalism fighters for national revival. Ukrainian dissidents saw their mission differently than their contemporaries in Russia, hence there is the deep meaning of the sacred images of martyrs of the triad, and prayerful spirit, and tragic pathos in the poems by Sverstiuk which are devoted to the dissidents.