THE SPECIFICS OF MANIFESTATIONS OF ARCHETYPES FROM THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS IN THE WORKS OF LI BAI

Abstract

Background. Psychoanalysis has long been established as a method of literary studies, with the concept of the archetype being particularly exploited. However, it is not as widely applied to Chinese literature, especially in Ukrainian literary studies, where such explorations are still limited. Moreover, in numerous studies concerning other literatures, we notice that the term 'archetype' has been significantly devalued, diverging from the original meaning intended by its 'father,' C. Jung. Therefore, it seems necessary to more clearly define the concept of the archetype by returning to its origins – the works of C. Jung – and to test the claim of its universal meanings (derived from the formulation of the collective unconscious, i.e., common to all humanity) using the material of Chinese literature. Accordingly, the formation of ideas about the archetypes of the collective unconscious in Chinese literature was adopted as the goal of this research, and from this goal, tasks were formulated, such as identifying the archetypal basis of specific poems by the Chinese poet Li Bai and clarifying the universal and culturally specific forms of their manifestation.

Methods. To identify the archetypal basis of Li Bai's poems, the psychoanalytic method and the method of interpretation were used, while the cultural specificity of the manifestations was determined using the methods of etymological analysis of the characters (that signify key lexemes for creating the corresponding images) and the method of conceptual analysis, which allowed for the identification of culturally specific information in the concepts that generated the archetype-manifesting images. The material of the study included two poems by Li Bai—'Spring Thoughts' and 'Drinking Alone under the Moon.'

Results. As a result, it was found that in the poem 'Spring Thoughts,' the archetype of the Anima is manifested in the image of a woman; however, the marker of this female image is the pronoun 妾, which contains a connotation of subordination, indicating a Chinese cultural specificity of this image. In the poem 'Drinking Alone under the Moon,' two archetypes are activated—the Old Man and the Self; the first is associated with the image of the moon, and the second with the image of the shadow. In this case, the image of the moon is perceived in its function as entirely universal, while the shadow contains cultural specificity, related to the depiction in the corresponding character of a massive building as the source of the shadow, which, in light of psychoanalysis, can be interpreted as indicating vertical development, inherent to the Self archetype.

Conclusions. The archetypal foundation in the selected poems was identified, and both universal traits and cultural specifics were traced in the corresponding images. The identification of archetypes was carried out solely based on the classical definitions of this concept by C. Jung, so the results of this research are expected to be applicable both for deepening the understanding of Li Bai's poems and for refining the concept of the archetype.