Emptiness Effect, or What Lost Symbols Say (on the Basis of the Drama Seven Steps to Golgotha by Oleg Goncharov)

Bible themes and story lines have always been of interest in Ukrainian lit­erature. In recent decades, creative rethinking of biblical codes and symbols has taken place, especially in themes connected with questions of faith, truth, prophecy, sacrifice, kindness, malice, etc. The contemporary Ukrainian writer Oleh Goncharov gives coverage to this issue in his drama Seven Steps to Gol­gotha. This article deals with the problem of a biblical symbol, experiencing alienation, losing its own symbolic meaning, and creating emptiness. This emptiness, however, is only visible because a new meaning replaces it, gains another meaning, and becomes a new symbol. Phantasmagoria—the genre of the play chosen by its author—makes it possible to use various approaches and experiments, to organize the plot’s chronology, to justifying the characters’ actions, and arrange a story line, in particular.