Motyw choroby i dysfunkcji w powieści Marii Matios Słodka Darusia
The motif of illness and dysfunction in novel by Maria Matios Sweet Darusia

Summary/Abstract: The text concerns the subject of the disease in Ukrainian literature based on the novelby Maria Matios Sweet Darusia. The novel was published in 2003, has received manyawards and is one of the most famous Ukrainian novels of the last decades. Many Ukrainianliterary scholars have written about this novel, including Sofi a Filonenko, Jaroslaw Holoborodko, Nila Zborowska and Tamara Hundorowa. Maria Matios analyzes in SweetDarusia an illness as a metaphor for social and cultural phenomena.In the fi rst part of my paper, I analyse the metaphor of a disease and dysfunction inUkrainian literature. The second part of the text is about a disease as a consequence of thetraumatic experience of the heroine, in which Maria Matios illustrates the problems ofmemory of the Ukrainian nation. Diseases, dysfunctions, and pathological states are quitepopular motifs in the Ukrainian prose of the independence period. They appear, amongothers, in the texts of Yuri Andrukhovych, Stepan Procuik, Oksana Zabuzko, Yuri Gudz,and Yuri Izdryk. All mentioned authors combine a state of disease with the mental, politicaland economic condition of post-Soviet society. In Ukrainian prose, the disease isa posttraumatic symptom, manifested in both the individual plan – in the hero’s body andpsyche – and also with a broader, over-individual dimension, allowing to diagnose thecondition of post-totalitarian space residents. In the novel Sweet Darusia, physical suff eringand illness of the main character is an image of a historical trauma experienced bytotalitaria n society. The illness in this novel is the starting point for self-refl ection and thestimulus to construct new identifi cation, basing on what is individual, human, intimate butoften painful and diffi cult to accept.

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