IDENTITY IMPLICATIONS: «FROM THE COUNTRY OF RICE AND OPIUM» BY SOFIIA YABLONSKA

This article is one of the first scholarly attempts to analyze the creative work of Ukrainian filmmaker and traveler Sofiia Yablonska-Uden. For the first time in the Ukrainian and the world literary studies, identical implications are analyzed in the «From the Country of Rice and Opium» by S. Yablonska. The purpose of the article is to highlight the complex nature of identity issues in travel literature. In terms of identity, the journey performs two fundamental, closely interconnected tasks: knowledge of the other and self-knowledge. Hermeneutic approaches are used in the article. The main results can be summarized as follows: 1) the journey has its own time-spatial dimension, consisting of two disproportionate moments: preparation for travel and travel itself, and begins literally and symbolically with the overcoming, or the crossing of the border; 2) the intention of the trip contains an identity challenge that affects the preparation, organization, realization of the travel, the way and the content of documenting impressions; 3) such parameters of travel as an accident, an adventure, a game which formed the world of traveler's impressions, are subordinated to the identity problem in the given work; 4) the essay character of the book makes it possible to talk about implications as a response to an identity challenge. The book of travel essays «From the Country of Rice and Opium» of S. Yablonska-Uden is a sample of a successful combination of the business and private aspects of travel, intentions of knowledge and self-knowledge, poetry and faculty; learning about another people and countries, the writer learns a lot of things about himself. Travel literature is an important study object of Ukrainian writing, which opens the prospects for further interdisciplinary studies. The study of travel literature, an identity issue, is extremely relevant both for the development of Ukrainian society and for the formation of optimal responses to the challenges of our time. Keywords travel, travel literature, identity, identical implications, time-space disposition.