HALYNA PAHUTYAK’S SHORT FICTION AS COMPOSSIBLE TEXT

Abstract

The article studies the possibility of perceiving Halyna Pahutyak’s short fiction as an artistic unit. The study is significant as it delves into the author’s distinctive writing style, which is defined by magical realism. As a result, it is pertinent to explore how female existence and narrative are portrayed in modern Ukrainian prose. By utilizing scientific methods such as psychoanalytic, gender, archetypal, and mythopoetic, the study seeks to identify Halyna Pahutyak’s short fiction as a ‘compossible’ text. A system of interconnected motives, problem-thematic integrity and a common concept of women’s existence interconnect the short fiction into a shared universe paradigm. The primary motifs are existential motives of choice, loneliness, death, and the search for identity. These motifs are supported by religious, philosophical and mystical motifs about women’s existence in two-dimensional space and three-dimensional time. The motif of otherness is dominant in the interpretation of female existence. The image of a woman in Halyna Pahutyak’s short fiction is of a character who experiences the trials of motherhood and marriage and either loses or finds her paradise. She chooses her role, which is often opposite to the stereotypical roles of women in the patriarchal ‘male’ model. The thematic and semantic resonance of the writer’s transfictional storytelling manifests as certain storylines continue or expand beyond the boundaries of one novel; in the presence of recurring characters or double characters who ‘travel’ through the textual space; in the addition of new nuances to the archetypal and mythological images that form the intertext of short fiction. The conclusion about Pahutyak’s transfictionality is the author’s variant of psychoanalytic prose about the woman’s existence. This woman unfolds in real or unreal topoi in the synopsis of searching for her identity and defining herself as the Other. A deeper exploration of artistic representations of female experiences and narratives in the author’s short stories shows great promise.