276
www.amazoniainvestiga.info ISSN 2322- 6307
DOI: https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2023.64.04.28
How to Cite:
Pecherskyh, L., Levchenko, N., Shestopalova, T., Boiko, S., & Khachaturian, K. (2023). The category of the transcendental in the
ukrainian postmodern novel. Amazonia Investiga, 12(64), 276-281. https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2023.64.04.28
The category of the transcendental in the ukrainian postmodern novel
Категорія трансцендентного в українському постмодерному романі
Received: April 3, 2023 Accepted: May 25, 2023
Written by:
Lubov Pecherskyh1
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1377-4462
WoS Researcher ID: ABK-0308-2022
Nataliia Levchenko2
https://orcid.org/0000- 0002-7535-6330
WoS Researcher ID: GRY-6609-2022
Tetiana Shestopalova3
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0687-5225
WoS Researcher ID: IQS-5530-2023
Svitlana Boiko4
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0541-0215
WoS Researcher ID: AAX-6277-2020
Karine Khachaturian5
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4131-1836
WoS Researcher ID: AFG-3215-2022
Abstract
The forms of artistic embodiment of aspects of
the category of the transcendent in the texts of
Ukrainian postmodernists are the focus of this
article which are studied through the analysis of
the characters’ worldview, the identification of
dominants and meanings of human existence,
and the correlation of the vision of the category
of the transcendent in the novels with modern
spiritual concepts. The most striking authorial
concepts of the transcendental in Ukrainian
postmodern prose refer to the relationship
between the human and divine planes of
existence, the mechanisms of transforming
inspiration into a literary text, the irrational
nature of creativity, the concept of reincarnation,
ritual as a way of accessing the realm of the
transcendental and the understanding of
«nothing» concept.
Key words: postmodernism, genre,
transcendental, irrational nature of creativity.
1 PhD in Philology, doctoral student of the Leonid Ushkalov Department of Ukrainian Literature and Journalism, H. S. Skovoroda Kharkiv
National Pedagogical University, Ukraine.
2 Habilitated Doctor of Philology, Professor in Leonid Ushkalov Department of Ukrainian Literature and Journalism, H. S. Skovoroda
Kharkiv National Pedagogical University, Ukraine.
3 Habilitated Doctor of Philology, Professor, Head of Ukrainian Philology and Intercultural Communication Department, Petro
Mohyla Black Sea National University, Mykolaiv, Ukraine.
4 PhD in Philology, Senior lecturer of O.M. Beketov Kharkiv National University of Urban economy, Ukraine.
5 PhD in philosophy, teacher of Ukrainian language and literature of Kharkiv Avto-Transport Applied College, Ukraine.
Pecherskyh, L., Levchenko, N., Shestopalova, T., Boiko, S., Khachaturian, K. / Volume 12 - Issue 64: 276-281 / April, 2023
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Introduction
The categories of the transcendental are eternal
components of human consciousness and part of
the subconscious, since they have been integrated
as collective attitudes since primitive times and
preserved as part of folklore, religion and sacred
teachings (Scott, 2003, p. 448–449). The
category of the transcendental lies between
religion and philosophy, but it has vivid
manifestations or evidence of inclusion in the
author’s worldview in the plane of literary texts,
including Ukrainian postmodern prose of the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
The categories of the transcendental include
«questions concerning space, time, and the
possibility of reaching eternal reality», images of
«God, human nature, or tribal and cultural
knowledge given in divine revelation», «the
image of universality», etc. (Scott, 2003, p. 449).
The social changes of the late 1990s in Ukraine
and the radical change in the society’s outlook
led to the fact that postmodernism marks the loss
of unconditional faith in scientific rationality,
while the irrational becomes an integral part of
life. The new state of the society was evidenced
by the popularity of esoteric teachings in Ukraine
in the 1980s and 1990s, such as reiki,
transcendental meditation, NLP, qigong and
yoga, psychedelic practices, mantra chanting.
Most of these doctrines are based on the
assumption of the existence of thought vibrations
and take transcendental philosophy as their
starting point. To varying degrees, these concepts
have found their audiences and have had a
significant impact on the worldview of Ukrainian
society as a whole, forming at least a willingness
to accept this type of philosophical concept.
At present, there is a noticeable convergence of
literature and philosophy: in particular, there is a
widespread view of philosophy as an art of
thought expression, and philosophical texts are
increasingly being presented in the form of
literary genres, such as parables, essays, stories,
novels, etc. (Gurbanska, 2019, p. 47). As Richard
Bach, an American writer whose work is
associated with flying and flying in a
metaphorical context, wrote in his «Messiah’s
Handbook», «the only way to convey some truths
is through the language of a fairy tale» (Bach,
2008, p. 12). As it was mentioned, «<...> in the
twentieth century postmodernity ruined neo-
mythological opposition between the text and
reality, declaring that the text does not reflect
reality but creates a variety of new realities,
which are not sometimes interrelated or
interdependent» (Levchenko 2021, p. 99), and
the categories of the transcendental are widely
involved in the creation of these new realities.
The art of postmodernism in the context of
general entropy and the statement of the
incompetence of worldview concepts shows the
search for meaning-making potential in exotic
religions and philosophical doctrines that contain
the idea of the possibility of centring human life
around a certain idea or concept and give
meaning to human life. The postmodern novel
actively explores the problematics of the
transcendental, the category finds artistic
embodiment in the worldview of the characters,
the events of their lives, and in some texts,
completely independent concepts of the
transcendental are formed that capture the
imagination and testify to the search for
worldview dominants in the sphere of meaning,
purpose and ways of human existence.
«Each of your texts, – notes Yuriy Izdryk,
speaking about the place of the category of the
transcendental in the novel as a large genre, is a
projection of your mental structure, which was in
a certain state when you created this text <...> in
such a huge array of prose speech, there is always
an ideological aspect <...> in this projection,
there is also a sector that is responsible for
ideology in every person. For ideology, for
worldview, for the interpretation of God.
Because everyone has a place for God, and man
fills this place with something» (Nesterovych,
2014). «I will be frank, – admits L. Deresh’s
character, I have always considered myself a
hallucination catcher and treated even the
smallest vision with the respect it deserves. I
cherished a special openness to all kinds of
clouds of consciousness....» (Deresch, 2007,
p. 189). Yuriy Izdryk’s protagonist reflects:
«People of our time lack a philosophical
approach to life – they perceive everything in a
simplistic and pragmatic way, not feeling the
complexity of the universe» (Izdryk, 2010,
p. 71). Reaching the limits of the transcendence
is also possible through engaging in destructive
practices: the protagonist of the novel by S.
Zhadan feels like «a river flowing against its own
course» (Zhadan, 2007, p. 181).
The purpose of this article is to clarify the forms
and varieties of manifestation of the category of
the transcendent in postmodern novelism on the
example of the works by Yu. Andrukhovych,
S. Zhadan, L. Deresh, Y. Vynnychuk, and
Yu. Izdryk.
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Theoretical Framework
The categories of transcendence and mysticism
have been paid attention to in their studies by
C. Spurgeon (Spurgeon, 1995), E. Underhill
(Underhill, 1911), L. Levy-Bruhl (Levy-Bruhl,
1994), C. Duprel (Duprel, 1904), M. Eliade
(Eliade, 2001) and others. In order to determine
the nature of transcendence, to which the hero of
the text aspires or joins, it is offered to identify
textual parallels with certain contemporary
spiritual concepts.
Methodology
The intertextual method was used to determine
the polyphony of the analysed texts, in particular
the category of the transcendental in the
postmodern novels. The method of receptive
aesthetics allowed us to outline such definitions
of the category of the transcendental in Ukrainian
postmodern novels as emotional nature of artistic
perception, literary creativity, in particular, the
issue of sources of reception and creative
inspiration, as well as to draw some parallels
between literary texts and authorial concepts of
the transcendental at the level of powerful
reception. The hermeneutical method of the
study involved the principles of ambiguity,
parallelism, paraphrase, and two-level
completeness of meanings in the plane of the
spiritual parabola of the transcendental.
Results and Discussion
Late twentieth-century novels reflect esoteric
doctrines and concepts, artistically embodied by
the authors. The concept of the «Law of
Attraction» is the most widely represented, with
various interpretations in the texts. One can find
evidence of the concept of unpredictable chance
(based on the book «The Black Swan» by
N. N. Taleb (Taleb, 2010)): «I was afraid that
chance was taking advantage of us all the time
and every day. I would like to do something
against it» (Andrukhovych, 1996a, p. 18). To
define the essence of the concepts expressed in
the literary texts, we will cite some parallels with
one of the well-known texts of the channeling
direction (channel as a way of connection to the
«universal mind», an immense storehouse of
information that has existed since the birth of the
Universe), a book by N. D. Walsh
«Conversations with God. An Unusual
Dialogue» (Walsh, 2001). Yu. Izdryk writes:
«<...> he only had time to feel the acute joy of the
player and the physiological sense of harmony,
well known to the creators» (Izdryk, 2010,
p. 155). In the work by N. D. Walsh we find: «I
wish the whole process of life to be a feeling of
constant joy, of ongoing creation, of infinite
expansion and complete completeness in every
moment of the present» (Walsh, 2001, p. 53).
The hero of the novel by L. Deresh «asked
himself in a chorus: «Who are we?» And we
answered that we are an infinite number of parts
of the whole, bliss, knowledge of bliss, and love
from knowledge. And we understood that we are
the fullness of wisdom and that this wisdom is
eternal, one and in everyone» (Deresh, 2012,
p. 192–193). N. D. Walsh writes: «And It
decided <...> that each part, being less than the
whole, would be able to look at the rest of It and
see the same greatness <...>. My divine intention
in dividing Me was to create sufficient parts of
Me so that I could know Myself in sensations
<...>. And thus I endowed each of the
innumerable parts of Me (all My spiritual
children) with the same power to create that I
Myself have as a whole» (Walsh, 2001,
p. 13–15). L. Deresh writes: «Whoever seeks the
Tree finds the Earth. He who seeks the Earth
finds Water. He who seeks Water finds Fire. He
who seeks Metal finds Wood. He who seeks God
finds himself. He who seeks himself finds God»
(Deresh L. 2012, p. 58). And N. D. Walsh
underlines: «My purpose in creating you, My
spiritual offspring, was that I could cognise
Myself as God. I had no other way to do this than
through you. Thus, it can be said <...> that My
purpose for you is that you should know
yourselves as Me» (Walsh, 2001, p. 16). The
outlined parallels determine the worldview
vectors of the writers and clearly demonstrate
compliance with the concept of N. D. Walsh.
In the postmodern prose of the 90s, there are
attempts to create a concept of influence on the
sphere of the transcendental. Yu. Vynnychuk in
his novel «Tango of Death» builds the concept of
recalling previous lives by a person through
listening to the music performed in a special way
(Vinnychuk, 2012, p. 101–102). In the novel
«Jacob’s Head» by L. Deresch, the concept of
reincarnation is based on a «Tibetan source»
(Deresh 2012, p. 30–31). The novels of the 1990s
and 2000s show attention to ritual as a way of
approaching the realm of the transcendental for a
specific purpose: absolution (Izdryk, 2010,
p. 269), transition to another state,
transformation, sacrifice (Andrukhovych,
1996b), purification (Izdryk Yu., 2010, p. 313),
and obtaining the necessary knowledge
(Vinnychuk, 2012, p. 195). One of the magical
components that appears in some texts is the
sacralised image of voice or singing
(Andrukhovych, 1997, p. 123).
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Transcendence into oneself is one of the defining
features of Yuriy Izdryk’s work: «...the need for
a philosophical look inward is my defining
feature» (Izdryk, 2010, p. 180–181). In one of his
interviews, the writer points out: «As soon as you
realise that everything around you is actually
inside you, you realise to what extent your whole
life, and everything in the world, depends on you.
And then you realise that God’s greatest mercy is
in your freedom...» (Nesterovych, 2014). The
concept of «here and now» is important to the
writer, it is at the centre of many teachings that
involve movement towards the level of the
absolute. Awareness of oneself in a certain
temporal and spatial constant is the initial and
final moment of meditation, the moment of
«grounding» – restoring connection with reality
after contact with the hypostases of the absolute.
Yuriy Izdryk’s characters often use superhuman
abilities, thus shifting the narrative towards
mysticism (dividing into three ravens for easy
pursuit of Okru, moving out of the body by the
power of imagination (Izdryk, 2010, p. 45–46),
invisibility to the mirrors and cameras (Izdryk,
2010, p. 55), the author invents strange properties
of things: the standing of freshly poured sand as
a «dune wall» (Izdryk, 2010, p. 309) contrary to
the laws of physics, «transcross» as an image of
a high-tech device, a set of elements with the
property of actual immateriality (Izdryk, 2010,
p. 110–111).
The novel transforms the philosophical concept
of Nothing, which captures the absence, non-
existence of a certain entity, or the absence,
negation of being in general: «...by the mere
effort of my constant willlessness, a hexagonal
nothing was kept at coordinate zero, which did
not stand out from the cramped surrounding
space. I will not say that this was the first nothing
I had seen, but it looked the most disgusting,
unacceptable, unbearable» (Izdryk, 2010,
p. 305). This category is an important part of the
transcendental, since, according to the Christian
religion, angels and the visible universe were
created from nothing; in Hinduism, nothing is
associated with the absolute, which existed
beyond the opposition of the existing and non-
existent.
Although S. Zhadan’s character states: «I do not
believe in memory, I do not believe in the future,
I do not believe in providence, I do not believe in
heaven, I do not believe in angels, I do not
believe in love...» (Zhadan, 2007, p. 219), in his
dreams, the images of his friends are transformed
into images of angels (Zhadan, 2007, p. 189).
V. Stibal writes about the relationship between
the planes of existence of humans and angels in
her book «Thetahealing: Advanced Level»: on
the Third Plane «we learn to live in a physical
body and control our thoughts, and where we are
given a chance to come to the realisation that we
are an integral part of All That Exists» (Stibal,
2008, p. 197). According to V. Stibal, the cycle
of learning on the third plane of existence is
connected with overcoming dysfunctional
human programmes, which is the reason for the
appearance of a person in the world, after which
he or she has a chance to return to the fifth plane
of existence. The «angels» in the above fragment
of S. Zhadan’s novel carry a metaphor for the
transcendence of the spiritual essence beyond the
human (the characters of the novel mirror the
images of angels and «beat each other up» – the
dream in the novel, like the dreams of an ordinary
person, processes information or a situation lived
during the day). However, the characters are not
yet able to complete their destructive
programmes. In this, S. Zhadan, perhaps
unconsciously, unfolds the metaphor of «being
stuck in the background of life», the
impossibility of a different life, of reaching
higher spiritual horizons.
Speaking about the stimulation of creative
activity by chemical substances, Yu. Izdryk
points out: «If we are talking about me not as an
author, but as a human being, I do not like any
states of altered consciousness» (Pyrkalo, 2005).
For the writer, the moment of creating a text is
completely irrational, more powerful than
intellectual potential, it is not a principle of
obligatory daily work: «This feeling is similar to
the so-called 'revelation', when the essence of the
world or some phenomenon is revealed not as a
result of study and analysis, but simultaneously,
as a complete picture. Here, it happens with
every single word, with phrases, with the order of
words in a sentence, with a combination of
sentences in a paragraph or stanza, and so on. In
what you feel in such moments, there is a lot – I
think the vast majority – that is completely
incomprehensible, unconscious <...> these
incredible, mysterious, cosmic, latent
connections between words and their meanings,
which are actually the meaning of every
worthwhile text. For me, this feeling is a
universal method of text creation. This, in fact, is
what is called inspiration – when you see a
complete picture of verbal intertwining and
undertake, to the best of your ability, to capture
them and show at least some fragment of this
complete picture to the others» (Nesterovych,
2014).
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In his understanding of the mechanism of
transforming «revelations» into «corpora of
texts» Yu. Izdryk is close to the concept of
artistic creativity outlined in E. Gilbert’s famous
bestseller «The Big Magic». As the writer
explains, she has devoted her entire life to the
service of creativity, trying to understand how it
works, and all the hypotheses she has found are
completely based, in Gilbert’s terminology, on
magical thinking. «I mean the supernatural, the
mystical, the inexplicable, the fantastic, the
divine, the transcendental, the extraterrestrial»,
the author states (Gilbert, 2017). According to
E. Gilbert, ideas, including plot ideas, heroes,
styles, and the language of future books, are
energy forms of life that also inhabit our planet.
Ideas are driven by one aspiration: to be
embodied – of course, through interaction with a
person who brings the idea to material reality. An
idea, according to the writer, sends universal
physical and emotional signals of inspiration,
signs that remind you of it, and it will not leave
you alone until it captures your attention in its
desire to be embodied. E. Gilbert writes not
exclusively about writer’s inspiration, meaning
any creative work. The topic of the irrational
nature of creativity, entering the sphere of the
transcendental in the process of creating
(reading, receiving, accepting) a text is similarly
presented in the work of L. Hyde (Hyde, 2007,
p. 295).
Conclusions
The outlined tendencies and certain parallels
between literary texts and author’s conceptions
of the transcendental testify to their powerful
reception and comprehension in the texts by
Yu. Andrukhovych, S. Zhadan, Yu. Izdryk,
L. Deresh, and Yu. Vynnychuk, as well as to their
significant genre-forming potential as a marker
of the genre component of the spiritual novel, the
novel of transcendence, and the novel of search
within the diffuse genre definitions of
postmodern novelism.
Among the concepts of the transcendental
actualised in the texts or ideologically close to
them are the following: transcendental
meditation, tetahealing, the law of attraction,
reincarnation, L. Hyde’s gift theory,
N. N. Taleb’s theory of unpredictability,
E. Gilbert’s theory of creativity, etc.
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