The artistic space of Olha Derkachova’s poetic world: from the Sacred to the Profane

Abstract

The aim of the article is to thoroughly analyze the poetry collection of Olha Derkachova, «They Know Something More Than Us», as a new phase in the author’s creative journey. Over the past two years (2023–2024), the author has smoothly transitioned from small and large prose to poetry. The article examines the clear contrast between two artistic spaces – the sacred and the profane. The first includes, above all, the multi-meaningful image of the fish, from biblical, symbolic, and mythological to the embodiment of creative principle, as well as the skillful use of sacred imagery, details, and strokes from the Old and New Testaments, transforming them for today’s complex era. The second theme is the war, as well as the boundary between the natural, extraordinarily diverse and rich, and the human, with the sparse attributes of wartime. The author’s ability to skillfully present the horrors of the current war is studied based on her use of folk-song foundations (the song «The Cuckoo Flew and Began to Coo») in the eponymous poem. The poetess’s mastery of rhythm and stanza structure is demonstrated by an analysis of her poetic work «Slowly, Slowly, S…lowly». The research methodology involves hermeneutic, specific-historical, and reception aesthetics methods. The practical significance of the article is that its results can be used when reflecting on Olha Derkachova’s poetic creativity, as well as when studying the Ukrainian poetic process of the first decades of the 21st century.