Types of Allusions in Bohdan Tomenchuk’s Poetry About the War

The paper examines allusions in Bohdan Tomenchuk’s poetry collection “Embroider, Mother, a bulletproof vest.” The various types of allusions are grouped based on their functions (activation of historical memory, adherence to literary tradition, text-structuring), themes (historical, mythological), and typology (ranging from nominal and quotation-type to associative). An attempt was made to differentiate the concept of allusion from quotation and reminiscence, while also juxtaposing it with intertext and intertextuality for comparison. In the poet’s texts about the modern Russian-Ukrainian war, the references to literary works are accompanied by numerous allusions to historical reality. These are references of the nominal type (topographical or proper names connected with certain historical events in the reader's mind). The author's distinctive approach involves overlapping different types of allusions, namely those of historical and literary nature, as well as historical and mythological. Behind a direct allusion, an associative one may emerge, linking to a text from a different time period through shared words, phrases, or thematic aura. The involvement of allusion in Tomenchuk’s poetry often occurs on the basis of the allegation (the new text ‘absorbs’ the previous one, without entering into a controversy with the original text). In this case, we deal with intertext (a text within a text). When an allusion entering a new text gets engaged in a dialogue with the original text, we deal with intertextuality as a process of textual interaction. By involving an allusion, the author makes it an element of the structure that serves as an impetus for the reader to navigate within a receptive context, searching among known texts relevant for interpreting the allusion while disregarding distant ones. Intertextuality engages cognition here. Sometimes allusion is not just an element of a structure but a structural principle, and it is proper to name it a structuring allusion. Various allusions in B. Tomenchuk’s poetry make it possible to fit the widest range of emotions and thoughts in a small textual space, to integrate the new experience of war into a broad historical and literary canvas with a biblical and mythological background.