Form–Content Aspects of Paraphrases of the Psalms of David in Ukrainian Poetry of the 19th–20th Centuries

Abstract

The identification of form–content elements in the analysis of religious lyric poetry gives rise to such descriptors as “iconic,” “liturgical,” “prayer-like,” and “devotional,” which reveal the genre and semantic dominants of poetic works. In this regard, it can be confidently argued that these descriptors are unified by the etymology of the word religion – from the Latin religio, understood as the restoration of the syncretic bond between the human being and the surrounding world. This bond is embodied in such genres as the hymn, prayer, chant (canto), and psalm – forms that were originally realized in free verse but that, in modern literary traditions, may acquire metrical organization. The psalm is one of the festive genres of religious lyric poetry: on the one hand, it functions as a solemn act of glorification and praise; on the other, it represents an intimate dialogue between the believer and God, often articulated as a plea for spiritual and bodily healing, as well as deliverance from fear and malice. Accordingly, the article examines the poetics of paraphrases of selected texts from the Psalter, produced in the mid-nineteenth century by Taras Shevchenko (David’s Psalms, 1845) and Petro Hulak-Artemovskyi (1857), as well as in the twentieth century by Viktor Kordun and Stepan Sapeliak. It is demonstrated that all of these poets, while tactfully adhering to the spirit and letter of the biblical invariant, introduce distinct prosodic, imagistic, and thematic features characteristic of their individual styles.