No abstract

No abstract

The article examines the specifics of the reader’s reception of Stanisław Lem’s novel Solaris in the context of indeterminacy, and the openness of the work to interpretation. The paper examines literary approaches to the formation of meaning in the process of reading this novel, in particular those implemented in Manfred Geier and Istvan Jr. Csicsery-Ronay works. Marie-Laure Ryan’s adaptation of the theory of possible worlds to literary analysis is employed as the methodological basis of my research. On the one hand, the effect of indeterminacy corresponds to the fantastic nature of the conditionality of Lem’s novel. Indeed, the key issue of the work – the encounter of humans with the unknown – requires the author to apply the potential of secrecy. On the other hand, this highly literary work (as well as Andrei Tarkovsky’s film adaptation) is endowed with multiple and ambiguous semantic codes that appeal to the depths of human consciousness and the unconscious. These codes cannot be interpreted unambiguously and, therefore, also provoke a state of uncertainty in the reader. In the textual actual world, semantic codes produce indeterminacy. They are linked to the essence of the single inhabitant of the Solaris, the Ocean, and phantoms created by it who visit the Station. In the novel protagonist’s Kris Kelvin personal world, the state of indeterminacy is associated with the existential essence of his relationship with his beloved Rheya and the problem of making contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. The surreal imagery of Kris’s dreams and visions provide for possible interpretations of the semantic codes of his world.

Science-fiction literature is one of the specific genre and meta-genre systems that are not yet represented by the bestsellers in the field of Ukrainian mass literature. There is a large number of writers and works of Ukrainian fiction genre but it is mostly represented by fantasy books of the writers of the "first row" who have become popular in other genres and remain in the public eye. Those are, such as Y. Vinnychuk, V. Yeshkileva, O. Zabuzhko, O. Irvanets, G. Pogutyak and others. Nevertheless, science-fiction literature in Ukraine can be considered as a full fledged independent branch of creative arts. It has its own tradition, which is rooted in the poetics of the Kyiv-Pechersk Pateric and in the chronologically closer epochs, represented by the names of V.