Strophe and Rhyme in Vasyl Pachovsky’s Poetic Collection «Scattered Pearls»

The article under study presents the analysis of Vasyl Pachovsky’s collection «Scattered Pearls» (1901) in terms of strophe and rhyme. The aim is to offer a brief overview of certain literary judgements on strophe and rhyme in the poet’s first book (judgements by B. Bunchuk, E. Balan, N. Mushyrovska), as well as includes the speculations on these two phenomena in «Scattered Pearls» in the works by O. Kaminchuk, N. Naumenko, and others. The authors apply the statistical method of regarding strophe and rhyme in V. Pachovsky’s poetry. This approach makes it possible, firstly, to objectively trace the evolution of the poet’s versification; secondly, it is a good material for comparisonwith similar data on the works of other poets. As a comparative material, the article briefly presents statistical material in the collections that preceded «Scattered Pearls» by I. Franko, P. Karmansky, and B. Lepkyi, as well as a description of strophe and rhyme in Western Ukrainian poetry of the late XIX century. Sources of the article. The analysis of 116 poems of V. Pachovsky’s first collection has revealed that the poet used only strophic forms (monostrophic – 98.3 %, multistrophic –1.7 %). In monostrophic poems, nine types of strophes (trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, heptameter, octameter, nonameter, decameter, dodecameter) have been attested. Among them, prevail hexastrophic, pentastrophic, and tetrastrophic ones, whereas the rest of the strophes are present in only one or three poems. The poet presented five methods and twenty- seven schemes of rhyming (taking into account the combination of different rhyme schemes, the number is considerably higher). Conclusions. The comparison of these data with similar statistic material on the poetic works by I. Franko, P. Karmansky, B. Lepkyi in the late XIX century (in particular, Western Ukrainian poetry of that period) naturally reveals the following common features: dominance of strophic poems, significant predominance of monostrophic poems, approximately equal proportion of tristrophic, pentastrophic, heptastrophic, nonastrophic, decastrophic, and dodecastrophic works. The proportion of tetrameters with paired rhyme was similar.There are also certain differences: a much smaller number of multistrophic, tetrastrophic, and octastrophic works, the absence in V. Pachovsky’s works of bistrophic stanzas in monostrophic poems, as well as solid stanza forms, and vice versa – a significantly higher percentage of hexastrophic poems. Most of the identified differences can be explained both by V. Pachovsky’s attraction to folklore, literary and song forms (e. g., T. Shevchenko) and strophe- rhyme structures of other poets (e. g., H. Heine), and by the poet’s personal versioning preferences