LEXICO-STYLISTIC ASYMMETRY IN THE CONTEXT OF SOUTH SLAVIC RECEPTION OF UKRAINIAN BAROQUE TEXTS (BASED ON THE TRANSLATIONS BY S. BAKACHICH)

Abstract

The article examines the analysis of lexical-semantic and stylistic asymmetry emerging in the process of translation of Ioannikii Haliatovskyi’s Ukrainian Baroque prose, produced by the 17th-century Athonite hieromonk S. Bakachich for South Slavic Orthodox readers. The study focuses on the text of the Marian miracles collection, which is included in the appendix to the Kyiv edition of Haliatovskyi’s book “Kliuch Rozumiennia” — “Kazania prydanyia do knyhy “Kliuch razumiennia” nazvanoi” (Kyiv, 1660), and its manuscript translation performed by S. Bakachich. The subject of the study is identified as the lexico-stylistic transformations and asymmetric correspondences arising in the process of transmitting the Ukrainian Baroque text into the linguistic-cultural tradition written tradition of South Slavs of the period under study. The study draws on the manuscript fifth (Venetian) autograph of S. Bakachich from the second half of the 17th century, which belongs to the Giuseppe Praga collection and is kept in the Oriental fund of the National Library of St Mark in Venice (Marc. MS. Or. 297), as well as the early printed book of the 1660 Kyiv edition of the appendix to Haliatovskyi’s “Kliuch Rozumiennia”. The study employs the comparative-textological method, transformational analysis, contextual-stylistic analysis, and the linguocultural approach. The paper analyzes examples of lexico-stylistic asymmetry manifested in the translator’s deliberate avoidance of reproducing specific Old Ukrainian elements, including Polonisms, Latinisms, vernacular idioms, and metaphors. It is established that, to compensate for this asymmetry, Samuil Bakachich employed the strategies of stylistic substitution, demetaphorization, and confessional adaptation, replacing locally marked Baroque expressions and loanwords with established high-register liturgical formulae, biblical phraseology, and lexemes of the Byzantine-Orthodox tradition deeply rooted in the Orthodox Balkan cultural environment. The analysis demonstrates that this approach enabled the translator to bridge differences between the two linguistic systems, neutralize Western and vernacular influences present in the Ukrainian Baroque original, elevate its stylistic register, and successfully adapt the Baroque narrative to the traditional ecclesiastical literary tradition and the South Slavic post-jer orthographic tradition of Slavia Orthodoxa.