ОМОВЛЕННЯ ОБРАЗУ ЖІНКИ В ПОЕЗІЇ ІРИНИ ЖИЛЕНКО

The work of the famous Ukrainian poetess I. Zhilenko is marked by the dominance of universal, family values in particular, which to some extent ousted her work to the periphery of the literary process of the second half of the twentieth century.
The poetess verbalizes several hypostases of a woman (woman-wife, woman-mistress, woman-mother, woman-poetess, woman-grandmother), demonstrating the dynamics of female status according to the periods of life. To verbalise these images, I. Zhilenko uses various linguistic and poetic means, including phonetic (alliteration), lexical (diminutive, folk poetic, vulgar vocabulary, slang vocabulary, contextual antonyms, negative comparisons), units of expressive syntax, uses biblical allusions and transformations of biblical phraseologisms. The vulgar vocabulary used along with the diminutives, which are means of self-characteristics, do not acquire a negative connotation, but, on the contrary, actualize the meanings of ‘love’, ‘care’ and ‘self-denial’ when it comes to the image of a woman-mother.
In portraying an elderly woman-mother, the poetess actualizes the meanings of ‘loneliness’, ‘indifference’, associating her age with a warm autumn, which is warmed by the presence of a loved one. I. Zhilenko portrays a lonely woman mourning for the late husband with elements of a language game based on homonymy, emphasizing the corresponding meanings of ‘loneliness’, ‘limits of communication’, ‘sadness’, ‘crying’, and ‘end of life’.