THE SPECIFIC OF GENRE NATURE OF THE BOOK «SINGING CRADLE MADE OF WILLOW» BY YE. HUTSALO

The article is devoted to analyzing synthetic genre variety which was realized by Ye. Hutsalo in the book «Singing cradle made of willow. Occupation frescoes». Collection’s pieces of writing are connected by a common theme: life’s histories by residents of Ovechache village which fell into the epicenter of World War II; by common heroes: old women Lykora and her little grandson through whose perception’s prism the reader looks at the world; by pictorial and expressive means. Almost every short story is a complete formal-semantic unity, which is easily perceived outside the general context. For social background depiction Ye. Hutsalo shows the events that have long been silenced – forced collectivization and Holodomor of 1932–1933, for showing the occupation reality – the Nazi pogroms of the Jewish population, problems of collaborationism, etc. The main character of frescoes is not more than five or six years old but the narrative form of the story bifurcates: we look at the world not just by little child’s eyes but by an adult person’s too who retell and analyze his childish feelings. The small size of written pieces, in the most cases linear plot with long exposition and rising action and rapid, often unexpected culmination and resolution gave ground to accent at the proximity of the fresco with varieties of the novella (plotless novella, a novella of mood, novella memory-based, novella-landscape). Parable-like poetics, philosophical enthusiasm, synesthesia, impressionism and expressionism features, based on a combination of painting and literature characteristics, lyricism, figurative expressiveness, the richness of artistic means are defined as the dominant features of the collection’s pieces. Immersions in folk art, appeal to the inner world of the common person, attention to the changing children’s world are the features that connect the writer’s book with the Sixtiers.