Martyrdom as a Spiritual Choice in Lesya Ukrainka's Verse Drama ‘In the Catacombs’

Abstract

The article deals with Lesya Ukrainka’s verse drama ‘In the Catacombs’ from the perspective of martyrdom from the perspective of martyrdom as one of the central dimensions of the Christian worldview. The aim of the study is to investigate the phenomenon of martyrdom as a spiritual choice, to identify the peculiarities of the artistic interpretation of Christian values in the poem, to analyze different models of understanding freedom, sacrifice, and service to God, and to determine the role of the biblical text in the work under consideration. The research employs hermeneutic, historical, intertextual, axiological, and reception-based methods to interpret the text within the context of the Christian tradition, to examine the work through the prism of early Christianity and the writer's modernist worldview, to identify the interrelations between the literary and biblical texts, to investigate the system of Christian values represented in the poem, and to reveal different models of the characters’ perception of martyrdom. The main conflict of the drama is the opposition between two models of freedom and two types of spiritual choice: freedom understood as liberation from social enslavement and freedom understood as liberation from sin through unity with Christ. It is proved that the cause of the ideological conflict is the neophyte’s literal perception of biblical symbolism, which prevents him from grasping the spiritual meaning of the concepts of ‘servant of God’, ‘Christ’s yoke’, sacrifice, and martyrdom. The paper demonstrates that the final opposition between Christ and Prometheus represents two different types of sacrifice: the Promethean one, associated with rebellion against external authority, and the Christian one, based on love, obedience to the will of God, and readiness to bear witness to faith even at the cost of one’s own life. Martyrdom in the poem is interpreted as the highest testimony of faith rather than as a pursuit of heroism or self-sacrifice for the sake of an idea. It is proved that the neophyte’s misunderstanding of the nature of Christian martyrdom determines his spiritual choice and his departure from the Christian community. Through the system of characters and biblical symbolism, Lesya Ukrainka reflects on the problems of freedom, sacrifice, obedience, and spiritual responsibility, combining the history of early Christianity with a modernist worldview. The writer interprets martyrdom not as passive suffering but as an active witness to truth, love, and fidelity to Christ, which constitutes one of the key semantic centers of the dramatic poem.