Artist’s Psychophysiology in Disposition to Style (Case Study of Lesia Ukrainka’s Biography Materials)

Abstract

Purpose of the study is to shed light on the role of psychophysiology in the creative process, namely, the style corrections connected with pathological changes in the artist’s organism, deviating from empirical-descriptive methods. Theoretical basis of the study implies the interpretation of the notions style and disease not in their narrow professional limitation but from the standpoint of expanding the parameters of these concepts to philosophical dimensions. Based on the principle of analogy, the research findings prove that non-mimetic creative process ("pure" action) manifests itself exclusively in connection with a human from a bodily viewpoint through anthropological mimesis, which can program the propensity to certain capabilities of the individual organism (both psycho-physiological and in its creative and stylistic manifestations). C. G. Jung was the first who pointed to the productivity of this method in his work "Theoretical Reflections on the Nature of the Psyche". The creativity phenomenon (and its most specific feature – style) reflects not only "pure" psychology and the intellectual and spiritual component but also its relation to the artist as a physical being. It, outside its belonging to and being conditioned by transcendent factors, includes a quantitative aspect related to the moment of intensity. The disease (quantitative-intensive indicator) acts to some extent as a stimulator of the production/change of aesthetic enzyme ("The Obsessed" by Lesia Ukrainka). In this context, the dialectic method is also effective because the subject of study cannot be comprehensively argued using naturalistic approaches only and requires (according to A. Losev) a semantic explanation too. The essence of it is the logic of contradictions. In this case, the antinomy of matter-spirit plays a conceptual role in the projection on the plane of word-formation. Originality of the research findings is in the expansion of the causal relationship range of the creative process, namely the inclusion of the factor of psycho-physiological pathology into the system artist-work. This factor performs important stylistic functions. Conclusions. In contrast to scientific studies, where 1) style is analyzed separately (mostly in terms of text landscape description) and 2) the figure of the artist (mainly – in the parameters of empiricism, rarely – in psychoanalytic perspective), this study argues the need to correlate these issues, taking them beyond descriptiveness to avoid schematics and one-dimensionality.