Paraniuk, D. , Tychinina, A. Therapeutic potential of prayer in the narrative structure of Ernest Hemingway’s short prose.

Abstract

The article analyzes the therapeutic potential of prayer and the hierophanic imagery matrix employed in the narrative structure of Ernest Hemingway’s short prose (1899–1961). The relevance of the study is stipulated by the focus of contemporary literary studies on crisis states and post-traumatic forms of literary activities (testimony) resulting from a radical shift in the episteme caused by war. The analysis covers the texts with a pronounced religious component, in particular those that contain a transitive plot, a sacred imagological matrix, elements of biblical personospheres, or even implied fragments of confession, life, or prayer, since such texts are capable of facilitating a cathartic effect and enabling the recipient to rediscover a transcendent center. This has determined the choice of an appropriate analytical perspective – namely, the application of Mircea Eliade’s methodology of the “camouflage of the sacred”, which relies on describing the ways in which transcendent reality is implicitly embedded in the profane and presupposes that the recipient possesses experience in symbolic interpretation necessary for identifying hierophanies in a desacralized world. In this respect, the spiritual (religious) experience of artists who were participants in combat acquires particular significance.