CATECHETICAL LYRIC POETRY OF ANNA POPOVCHUK

Abstract

The article presents a comprehensive analysis of a selection of poems by the contemporary Ukrainian poet Anna Popovchuk as an integral corpus of catechetical lyric poetry. The relevance of the study is determined by the growing interest in spiritual poetry within modern literary studies and by the need for a more precise conceptual apparatus that would allow scholars to describe texts in which poetic language performs not only an aesthetic but also a formative spiritual function. While the concept of spiritual lyric poetry is widely used, it often remains too broad to adequately characterize texts that model the experience of faith as a dynamic inner process rather than a declarative expression of religious belief. The aim of the article is to clarify the concept of catechetical lyric poetry through a text-centered analysis and to reveal the functional and structural organization of a poetic corpus that models the spiritual path of the lyrical subject. The study focuses on the poetics and internal dynamics of Popovchuk’s poems, particularly on the role of the motif of silence as a central integrative principle of catechetical poetic discourse. The methodological framework of the research combines close reading, poetic analysis, and functional-structural interpretation of the corpus. In addition, the study employs hermeneutic interpretation of spiritual motifs within the broader horizon of the apophatic tradition and contemporary theories of spiritual poetry. Such an approach makes it possible to consider catechetical lyric poetry not merely as a thematic variant of religious literature but as a specific poetic model oriented toward the formation of spiritual experience. The results of the research demonstrate that Popovchuk’s poetic corpus forms a coherent structure representing successive stages of a spiritual path. These stages include vocation and attentive listening, the experience of doubt and existential boundary situations, prayer as a form of spiritual practice, apophatic deepening, and the incarnational integration of spiritual experience into everyday reality. Each group of poems performs a specific catechetical function, contributing to the formation of a unified poetic process in which the lyrical subject gradually acquires the capacity for inner listening and responsible spiritual choice. Special attention is devoted to the motif of silence, which functions in Popovchuk’s poetry not as a stylistic device or emotional pause but as a fundamental poetic principle that regulates speech and establishes the ethical limits of poetic language. Silence appears as a poetically modeled state of inner listening in which the lyrical subject consciously restrains speech, recognizing the primacy of the Logos and the limits of human expression. In this perspective, silence becomes both an epistemological and ethical category that protects spiritual experience from rhetorical simplification. The study concludes that catechetical lyric poetry can be understood as a distinct poetic model in which the text performs the function of inner spiritual guidance. Unlike didactic religious poetry, it does not communicate doctrinal knowledge directly but organizes the experience of faith through a poetically structured path of listening, doubt, prayer, silence, and existential choice. The proposed operational definition of catechetical lyric poetry allows the phenomenon to be conceptualized as a specific form of spiritual poetic discourse relevant for the analysis of contemporary Ukrainian literature and for interdisciplinary dialogue between literary studies, theology, and philosophy of culture.