Authors

Discussion

Dmytro Yesypenko's presentation explores how contemporary Ukrainian authors employ epidemic metaphors to underscore the profound and lasting impacts of war. In his analysis, Yesypenko examines works by prose writers and dramatists such as Serhii Martyniuk, Natalia Blok, Bizhan Sharopov, and Artem Chapay, who use images of disease to vividly portray the trauma and societal transformations inflicted by the Russian war against Ukraine. These authors’ narratives reveal how war acts as a contagion, affecting not only the immediate participants but also subsequent generations, suggesting a metaphorical infection that reshapes both cultural identity and individual lives.

The presentation frames these narratives within the contexts of historical pandemics and the recent COVID-19 crisis, linking these public health catastrophes with the widespread devastation caused by war. By drawing on both historical and modern crises, Yesypenko illustrates how Ukrainian literature uses disease motifs to critique cycles of aggression that extend well beyond the past decade. In these literary works, war is depicted as an epidemic-like force that permeates the boundaries between past and present, personal and collective experience, becoming a recurring ailment that disrupts and redefines Ukrainian culture.

The analysis also highlights Serhii Zhadan, an iconic Ukrainian poet whose work conveys a sense of perpetual crisis. Zhadan’s poetic language serves as a bridge, connecting current experiences of displacement, conflict, and instability with historical hardships. Through Zhadan’s verse, war is depicted as a transmissible disease embedded in collective memory—a reminder of traumas that persist over generations, revealing how historical suffering reverberates through contemporary Ukrainian identity.

 Yesypenko’s presentation ultimately sheds light on the thematic richness of these epidemic and war metaphors, showing how Ukrainian authors use them to interrogate not only the present conflict but also the enduring psychological and cultural scars of Ukraine’s tumultuous past.