The Symbol of the Sunflower in the Work of the Ukrainian Warrior Borys Humeniuk

Since the occupation of Crimea, Borys Humeniuk fought on the front lines of the modern Russian-Ukrainian war, and is considered missing. The poet mythologizes reality, elevating the specific experience of war to timeless universals. This is facilitated by the anthropomorphization of things and the plant world, their symbolization. Among these symbols, a special place is occupied by the sunflower, which appears in the poetry and paintings of Humeniuk. The aim of this scientific research is an analysis of Humeniuk’s poetry “Last year, a sunflower grew in this field” in connection with his paintings “Sunflowers” (2021, oil paints), from the series ‘Flowers of Donbas’” (2022, acrylic). The focus is on the question of what meanings the poet fills this symbol with, how he organizes the poetic space around it (chronotope, statics, and dynamics of the plot), and against the backdrop of which Ukrainian- and foreign-language texts he develops his interpretation of the sunflower. The following methods were used in the research process: structural-semiotic, hermeneutic, and comparative. As a result of the analysis, it was revealed that the sunflower forms a reminder of the Sun as light (and life), and also an understanding of the presence of a shadow (the threat of death, destruction). The duality unfolds in the alternation of dynamic scenes with static ones, and in the dual interpretation of sunflowers in their connection with military realities (sunflowers-warriors and sunflowers-children, recruits) and the idea of beauty as psychological and physical stability (sunflowers-warriors stand beautifully on prostheses).