Lukyanenko Oleksandr, PhD in History

Denysenko Kyrylo, second year-student of Poltava Language center “European choice”

“HYSTERICAL” AND SELF-EXHAUSTED: DEPRESSION AS AN OBJECT OF TARAS SHEVCHENKO’S CREATIVE WORK

Taras Shevchenko’s heritage shows the colorful picture of the Ukrainian everyday life. Love and betrayal, death and marriages, war and philosophical calmness of the Ukrainian village are shown on the pages of “Kobzar”. The ethnographic elements of Ukrainians’ life, religion, and socio-political conditions of people’s life got in the circle of attention of Kobzars’ creativity researcher. Our task is to find out the specifics of depression’s reflection in the works of T. Shevchenko.

Let’s analyze the first poem from the complete works – “Prychynna” (“Hysterical woman”) [1, P.15-17]. Ballad’s name itself is a Ukrainian traditional name of the mentally ill person [2]. Madness is potentially not treatable severe mental illness. During the time of Shevchenko, the term “madness” covered a number of mental disorders with different symptoms. Among the signs of that illness a potentially known to poet, were painful cramps, but Kobzar has bypassed their description.

Our interpretation of main heroine’s hallucinations symptoms is polysemantic. She was haunted by poterchata (the souls of unbaptized children) who lured her into the swamp, and by mermaids, who brought her to death. On the one hand it's a blatant imitation of folklore. On the other hand, they are the images that came from girl’s mind under the influence of a mental disorder. Most likely “poterchata” are visual and auditory pseudo hallucinations (perception of objects that do not exist in reality). Mermaids can be visceral hallucination. This is a type of hallucinations in which a person is convinced that some living beings influence her health from the inside. In our case, the little mermaids affected the operation of the mad woman’s heart.

The poet brightly describes such feature as somnambulism (“Something white is wandering”). Sleepwalking seems quite logical and appropriate symptom, but the patient does not know the reasons for this going and does not control it. Shevchenko describes the girl in a state of sleep-walker, “that the girl is walking / and does not know (because Hysterical) / That she is doing such.” Most likely the events with madwoman happened between midnight and 02:00 am, when statistically there are facts of sleepwalking (“For, you see, walking at midnight / was sleeping and looking out / for young Cossack”). Sleepwalking person can cause herself physical damage such as our heroine did. Somnambulists often overcome the obstacles that they had not omitted in adequate condition.

The girl from Shevchenkoʼs poem is likely to overcome a fear of heights, “[She] sees – [something] is flashing, / Something is climbing the top of the trunk / to the very edge”. People at sleepwalking can equally speak and be silent. In our case, the ill woman does not speak, “She is still going without saying a word”. Searching the causes of insanity showed an attempt to explain madness with Plato's method of casting the spell: “So the fortune teller has made / [for the girl] to mourn less...”. Although the most likely cause of mental illness may be the stress from love and also moral and psychical exhaustion from waiting for beloved one.

The patient began to feel a the pain in the heart standing at the top of the tree (“at the very top on the branche / stood, the heart was aching”). Probably, it was angoni pain because the pain was searing. Possible causes of its appearance indicate angoni pain: the need to increase blood flow (overcoming height resulted in heavy physical load); emotional disturbance (sorrow for a Cossack). The development of girl’s disease already down under the tree point on angoni pain: “little mermaids round the oak / waited in silence; / took her , poor wretch, / And tickled her to death”. Most likely, it is a figurative description of myocardial infarction, whose characteristic symptom is angoni pain. The girl died of non-violent (physiological) death. The immediate cause of death is myocardial infarction and the main cause is severe mental illness.

There is mention about another death in the poem – Cossack’s death, who found his bride under the oak. He's gone mad because his girlfriend was dead. His mind could not withstand such a shock, and he ended his life by suicide (“laughed boisterously, sped up, / And [hit] in oak with his head”). The death of a Cossack is an example of a demonstrative suicide. This demonstrative (pseudo-) suicide was committed in a state of affect. The reason for the suicide was the death of a loved one. Suicide was committed, despite the moral canons of that time: Orthodoxy prohibits further burying of suicide at the common cemeteries. Cossack was in a state of raptus according to the systematization of the emotional states by Professor Borys Mikhailov [3, P.69]. It is an attack of acute arousal, which may occur under the action of some passion flowing rapidly and often leads to suicide.

Next four works, written in 1838, are called “Thought”. For better orientation we will distinguish them according to the first line. We think that all works were written in melancholia (depressive) state. Work “Water flows in the blue sea...” [2, P.17] describes the state of Cossack’s mind, who left Ukraine and moved to a foreign country. Immigrant has clearly expressed depression. The author shows that the body is functioning normally, and the reason of patient’s state is in the brain activity (“Cossack’s heart is playing, / And the thought is saying...”). The presence of the ideas of guilt in lyrical hero’s mind is noticed (“Where are you going without asking? With whom have you left / Father and old mother / and young girl”).

Among other symptoms is pessimistic vision of the future (“None to cry, / None to talk with”). A possible reason for this is the disappointment in life abroad (“There are other people in foreign land - / It is hard to live with them”), the collapse of illusions (“I Thought that fate would be met, - / but woe was befallen”); and the inability to arrange his own family (“Cossack was searching for his destiny / And there is no fortune”). The apparent apathy and reluctance to take steps to resolve the situation strike eyes (at least the fear to come back: “Cossack is crying – well-trodden ways / Have Overgrown with thorns”).

Let’s analyze the second “Thought” (“Tempestuous wind, tempestuous wind!”) [2, P.18]. In the essay is given the description of the young girl’s feelings that is dying for a beloved one, whose destiny in a military campaign is unknown. Throughout the work heroine tries to achieve empathy with the beloved. She is more eager to empathize with him (“When he cries – and I cry / When he doesn’t – I sing”). Despite the love as the main leitmotif of the work, it is dominated by a pessimistic vision of the future (“When black-browed perished – so and I die”). The girl is acting under the influence of anxiety, and under pointlessness of experiences. Anxiety often turns into the fear. Suicidal thoughts are clearly expressed against this background (“I will go to look for my honey, / I'll drown my sorrows”). She wants to repeat the fate of the perished Cossack (“I’ll sink at the bottom of the sea. / I’ll find him, nestle up, /The heart will become rigid”). Wish of death prevails over the desire to live, because the girl in love tends to repeat death of her darling in all possible variations: drowning (“I'll drown my misfortune, / I’ll become a little Mermaid”), self-exhaustion to death (conversation with the wind and the desire to follow him).

In General, this episode reminds ritual suicide of wife after her husband’s death in ancient times of polytheism. In the pre-Christian era the woman followed the dead man in the fire of ritual rook, committed ritual asphyxiation, or was buried directly in kurgan (tumulus). The heroine of this work tends to be near the body of the beloved (“Then bring my soul to where my dear; red guelder-rose/ Put on the grave”). The objective of this “reunion” in conjunction with “hedonistic” desires of protection of loved one (“It will be easier in the foreign field / for orphan to lie”) is purely selfish – to feel again the lost sense of happiness (“ I’ll find him, nestle up, /The heart will become rigid” or “And in the flower. And in the guelder-rose / I’ll bloom above him”). The poem shows that the girls has a sleep disturbance, her nights are a struggle with emotional fluctuations (“in the evening I’ll grieve / And in the morning I’ll cry”). It's all bright symptom of folding major depressive disorder or depression.

The third poem of the series “Thoughts” “It’s Hard and difficult to live in the world...” describes the life of Cossack-orphan [2, P.18]. The first lines of a work point to a protracted depression. A long self-pity is an indication of it (“It’s Hard and difficult to live in the world / To the orphan without the kinsfolk”). One reason for this is a keen sense of loneliness (“Nowhere to lean”), that drives a man to commit a suicide by drowning, in order to avoid needless and aimless wandering about the Earth (“I’d drown young, / Not to sick the world”).

The whole verse reminds the suicide death note: it describes a conversation with a potential lover and is a description of the causes of potential suicide. Among them is poverty (“It’s good for that rich: / People know him / And if they meet me - / Like don’t notice”). Simultaneously, is made apparent the negative attitude of the Cossack to the upper class. In addition to belonging to marginalized members of society contributes to enhanced irritability and anger in a state of depression. This explains clearly negative characteristic of the young nobleman as “thick-lipped”.

Cossack-orphan is in a state of utter despair, which is a symptom of depression. His asthenic emotional state indicates the disappointment in the future bright fate (“One’s fate wanders in the field - / Collects the spikes; / And mine lazy bone / wanders somewhere overseas”).The bullying of sweetheart is called the incitement to suicide in this “poems-farewell letter” (“the Girl [... ] / at me, an orphan / Is laughing, is mocking”). The patient, frankly afraid to make a step to suicide, uses usual in such cases tactics of emotional blackmail of the girl (“And I shall go on edge of the world... / In the strange side / I’ll find a better or perish, / As the leaf on the sun”). The departure of Cossack in a strange land is shown by the author as a departure from the world in “worldly monasticism”: “Cossack went yearning, / no one left alone”.

However, the last lines indicate the depressed emotional state orphans-immigrant: “it's Hard-it's difficult to die / In a strange land!”. Nothing is actually said on the death of a Cossack: “Was looking for destiny in a foreign field / And there he perished. / Dying, was watching where the sun was shining...”. The death is not illustrated by poet. However, the expression “perished” emphasizes unnatural event - it was premature, forced or causation, which can mean the implementation of promises to bring himself to death by self-exhaustion in case of impossibility to find the fate across the sea. So, the push to potential suicide of Cossack-orphans can be called a complex of reasons: loss of social life, unrequited love and loneliness, which together have generated a depression.

Literature

1. Шевченко Т. Г. Кобзар. – Х.: Школа, 2012. – 352 с.

2. Словник української мови в 11 томах. – Т.8. – К., 1977. – С.98.

Михайлов Б. В. Соматизированные депрессии в общесоматической практике // Здоровʼя України. – 2008. – №7/1. – С. 68-70.