На основі зіставного аналізу тексту твору і джерел, залучених у процесі
його написання, доведено, що образ гетьмана в романі спирається на передмодерну й романтичну історіографічні традиції, у яких зникала межа між вимислом і документальністю (що пояснює, зокрема, важливість
«Історії Русів» та «Запорізької старовини» Ізмаїла Срезневського в інтертексті роману). Цілі сторінки є переказом-палімпсестом історичних праць, присвячених Хмельницькому, передовсім Миколи Костомарова та Михайла Грушевського. Поетика роману Загребельного поєднує соцреалістичні, модерністські й (прото)постмодерністські елементи, і звернення до первинних і вторинних джерел, використаних у тексті, дає змогу побачити принципову неоднозначність ідеологічного змісту твору.
In the novel “I, Bogdan” ‘historical authenticity’ is achieved through intuitive, romantic penetration
of the author/narrator into the ‘nation’s spirit’ — and through the citatory narrative
on the verge of cento, which the narrator emphasizes time and again. The fictional, subjective
image of the hetman is presented as the only true one. The author of the novel follows
two historiographical traditions, within which the fiction is not just authentic but real and
true — of course, if consistent with existing narratives. These are premodern and romantic
traditions. Unsurprisingly, Zahrebelnyi is happy to use the texts created both in the premodern
framework (fragments of “Cossack chronicles”) and in the framework of (pre)romanticism
(“History of Ruthenians”; “Zaporozhian Antiquities” by Izmail Sreznevskyi). These texts are
‘created’ and not ‘falsified’, because for their authors the reconstruction of the possible was
not falsification but only filling gaps. For the author of the novel “I, Bogdan”, as well as for
the romantics, the criterion of truth is compliance with the national spirit. Researchers have
repeatedly noted that the novel creates the combined voice of the ‘hero-author’: it is the voice
of the people themselves, on whose behalf his representative can speak.
Zahrebelnyi, when using historical sources, often turns to the palimpsest technique,
rewriting or simply quoting without reference studies on Ukrainian history, especially by
Mykola Kostomarov and Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, making certain ideological changes, and
sometimes radically inverting the meaning of the quoted passages. Hidden intertext, therefore,
may deny the explicit ideology of the text. It is obvious that the ‘encyclopedia of the
model reader’ of the novel was much larger than the ‘encyclopedia’ of the empirical Soviet
reader. So, in fact, the only possible ‘model reader’ was the author himself. This is a very
modernist notion, and at the same time, the illusion of complete clarity on a superficial level
moves Zahrebelnyi’s book closer to the poetics of postmodernism.
