Marsel Proust, V. Domontovych and Yaroslav Ivashkevych: Music that Generates Love

The article describes the interaction of national literatures on the material of two volumes of the epic “In Search of Lost Time” by Marcel Proust, the novel “Without Foundation” by V. Domontovich, and the story “Dreams” by Yaroslav Ivashkevich. The object of study is the motif of a musical work associated with love lines in the analyzed texts. Within the methodological framework of comparative studies, theories of intertextuality, intermediality, and biographical method, the study attempts to explain how Marcel Proust depicts the influence of music on the state and feelings of a hero; how a musical motif from a Proust novel was borrowed by V. Domontovych and Y. Ivashkevich, modified, and introduced into their literary texts. In Proust’s novel the plot element is a phrase of the composer Vinteuil. The music phrase gives birth to Swann’s love for Odette without his will. At the structural level, the mark of music is imposed on a woman’s sign, and in the character’s consciousness, these signs cannot be distinguished. In the novel “Without Foundation,” V. Domontovych introduces Karol Shimanovsky’s Second Sonata, which becomes the reason for the emergence of love between Rostyslav Mykhailovych and Larysa Solska. The author uses Proust`s method of recollection by association and supplements it with synesthetic images. Y. Ivashkevych’s story “Dreams” is dedicated to the early Ukrainian period of the Polish writer’s life. The author enters into the text a reference to M. Proust. The center of the story is Richard Wagner’s song “Die Träume” and the story of its appearance, which becomes a factor in the plot of the work. In all these analyzed texts human sensitivity to music is also important as is the musical image itself. Research on the musical image in the works of M. Proust, V. Domontovych, and Y. Ivashkevych shows the powerful interaction between French, Ukrainian and Polish literatures and their thematic and figurative affinity.