Between Loneliness and Selfhood: Dimensions of Existential Rootedness in H. Pahutyak's Sunset in Urizh

Contemporary literary studies increasingly turn to liminal states as sites where individual self-discovery takes on particular intensity. H. Pahutyak's intellectual prose presents an authorial mythopoetic model of the world, grounded in a synthesis of the real and the fantastic, that enables reflections on the liminality of human existence. The writer's poetic universe is organised around the opposition between rootedness and existential homelessness.

Within this tension, the human being appears as part of a larger metaphysical whole. Spatial images such as the home, homeland, land, garden, and forest in her texts cease to function merely as the background to events and instead acquire ontological status as markers that define the character's spiritual axis. Through interaction with these topoi, the author models her protagonists' movement from the threat of depersonalisation toward the recovery of authentic being, grounded in ancestral memory and culture.

In Pahutyak's narrative strategy, rootedness emerges not as a static attachment to place but as a dynamic process of self-definition that resists entropy and spiritual amnesia. By affirming the idea that the individual has a natural need for connection with meanings that transcend the self, the writer regards conscious "belonging" as a guarantee of autonomy and authentic selfhood in a world marked by chaos and alienation. Such an approach enables consideration of the phenomenon of rootedness as a foundational category that structures the writer's artistic world, opening broad perspectives for analysing her prose in the light of ontology and the mythopoetics of literary texts.

Scholars have repeatedly turned to H. Pahutyak's oeuvre, noting both the philosophical depth of her prose and the distinctiveness of its mythopoetics. M. Ilnytskyi points out the author's conscious aspiration to discern in her own life and writing the traces associated with her lineage, "its roots as a sign of transition from kin to nation" [Ilnytskyi, 2023, p. 688]. Such markers of local identity are often embodied through a system of symbols and mythologemes, which becomes the subject of H. Boshkan's analysis, who systematises the author's mythic world, in which local legends and demonological images function as carriers of collective memory and the continuity of cultural heritage [Boshkan, 2014].

By contrast, O. Holnyk explains the writer's inclination to create fantastic loci as a response to the crisis of contemporary culture, the hallmark of which has become "the loss of sensuousness and sensitivity and, as a consequence, the total loneliness of the human being" [Holnyk, 2015, p. 139]. The ontological dimension of the writer's work is also explored by I. Bila, who interprets protagonists' escape into utopian spaces as a consequence of self-alienation [Bila, 2011]. However, in the existing reception, the phenomena of rootedness and alienation have generally been examined separately. What remains outside scholars' attention is the dialectical correlation between these states: to date, rootedness has not been interpreted as a key mechanism for reconstructing the integrity of the individual self.

Methodological foundation. The study adopts an interdisciplinary approach: a synthesis of ontological and phenomenological methods conceptualises rootedness and alienation as existential dominants; the hermeneutic method combined with mythopoetic analysis decodes the work's imagery, including the sacred locus of Urizh, the symbolism of opyrs, and liminal states; elements of the psychoanalytic method interpret oneiric visions and repressed fears; and an ecocritical approach considers the role of landscape in constructing existential belonging to the world.

The problems of alienation and rootedness belong to the philosophical conceptual sphere and appear as interdependent poles of human existence. Alienation is generally understood as an ontological rupture between the individual and the world, manifested in apathy, crises of meaning, and social isolation. Existentialist philosophers — M. Heidegger, A. Camus, J.-P. Sartre — regarded it as a consequence of uprootedness and the absurdity of being, while M. Seeman interpreted it as a multi-component phenomenon associated with powerlessness and depersonalization. T. Adorno linked it to the crisis of subjecthood in modern literature, arguing that literature itself must be "alienated" — difficult and fragmented — to bear truthful witness to this condition [Adorno, 1997].

Rootedness, in turn, received systematic attention through K. Jaspers' stress on relations with the "Other," J. Ortega y Gasset's role of circumstance, and Heidegger's homeland as the primordial locus that shapes the authenticity of creative work. S. Weil defined it as a basic spiritual need; E. Fromm distinguished regressive rootedness (binding to past and tradition) from progressive rootedness (creating new bonds through responsible choice and fraternity). C. Wampole relates the metaphor to continuity, authenticity, and connection with nature, while T. Tsymbal distinguishes local and global dimensions of existential rootedness.

The concept of the self is grounded in the idea of the human being as a creature who, in Ch. Taylor's formulation, "is a being of the requisite depth and complexity to have an identity… (or to be struggling, to find one)" [Taylor, 1989, p. 32]. Existential philosophy accords the self, above all, an ontological dimension: not a stable core of the psyche but a processual structure of being realised in concrete forms of human existence. The study draws on Heidegger's Dasein — "being-there" — a mode of existence for which its own being becomes an object of reflection.

In Heidegger's system, the self is not given in advance as a completed essence; it is formed through self-understanding within the everyday world of interaction. Dasein is characterised by the capacity to question its own existence, to experience anxiety in the face of "Nothingness," and to become aware of its own finitude. At the same time, this possibility is often muted, since the individual tends to dissolve into the impersonal social environment — the second fundamental category, Das Man, where selfhood is reduced to a social role and genuine self-understanding recedes to the periphery.

The transition from an inauthentic to an authentic mode becomes possible through limit situations — encounters with anxiety, loneliness, or the threat of losing meaning. Seen in this light, rootedness appears not merely as a spatial or cultural category but as an existential form of self-formation, a mechanism of protection against alienated existence and a path toward affirming an integral selfhood.

The events unfold within the hermetic topos of Urizh, a space that emerges as an active narrative locus of ambivalent status: for some characters a "place of power" and source of vital energy; for others a destructive primordial element that catalyses spiritual disintegration. At the centre lies the inner drama of a married couple whose relationship collapses due to mutual emotional exhaustion and the incompatibility of their strategies for engaging with the world. The conflict is deepened by a mystical element — supernatural opyrs, chthonic beings that embody external chaos and mark liminality and the dichotomy of being.

The narrative is realised through alternating monologues of two unnamed protagonists, the Man and the Woman. The refusal to use anthroponyms is an ontological marker that emphasises the universality of the conflict and foregrounds the characters' existential depersonalisation. By contrasting patriarchal and matriarchal, rational and intuitive modes of perceiving the world, Pahutyak lends the work a complex metaphysical dimension in which rootedness is assigned the role of a key to inner salvation.

One of the defining characteristics of the Man is rational detachment and a tendency toward distance. In the novel, this solitude appears not as the result of a spiritual quest but as a destructive form of alienation, shielding the protagonist from any encroachment on his vulnerable selfhood. He consciously minimises social contacts, and legitimises his coldness toward his wife.

His wife's genuine self-sufficiency provokes his latent irritation, since his selfhood — unlike hers — requires external legitimisation and public approval. This exposes his cult of pseudo-autonomy: behind his fear of losing freedom there in fact stands "a paltry sense of superiority and self-infatuation, which he cherishes above all else" [Pahutyak, 2016, p. 23]. He perceives the prospect of divorce as an ontological defeat and the collapse of the illusion of control over his own being.

The trajectory of the "superfluous man"

By the end of the work, the Man emerges as the one "whom no one pities." His alienation intensifies from emotional apathy to a complete sense of helplessness. He sustains his fragile self-esteem through the role of "protector" and stereotypical gender assumptions: "Men leave women, but women do not leave men — no way!" [Pahutyak, 2016, p. 34]. This crisis is conditioned by the dominance of the "mode of having": he evaluates his significance in terms of possessions and social success, intensified by an inversion of the patriarchal model — it is the Woman who owns the house and the land.

The "freedom" he proclaims is a simulacrum masking existential disorientation. As Sartre insisted, true freedom "can be truly free only by constituting facticity as its own restriction" [Sartre, 1956, p. 495]. The Man's "uncontrolled" freedom degenerates into flight from responsibility — above all from responsibility to himself — leading to existential homelessness, dehumanisation, and final nihilism.

In the novel's resolution, the opyrs do not simply take the weaker one, but the one who has finally capitulated to emptiness and ceased to struggle for his own selfhood. His physical death becomes the logical retribution for the choice he has made — or rather, failed to make.

The Woman perceives the world through images, myths, and belief in the supernatural. At the beginning of the work she is in a state of profound apathy: a rupture with her inner "Self" leads to a loss of vital energy and a strategy of minimal resistance. Her inner dichotomy is reflected in a division of being into two planes — a routine, grey reality and a vivid, mythological oneiric space.

The oneiric space deconstructs the image of the Man: the dream in which he appears as an opyr threatening to devour her dismantles what he disguises in reality as "rationality" — his drive for total control and emotional consumption of his partner. The recurring vision of a gigantic grey sphere that engulfs her visualises a profound existential dread of depersonalization and dissolution into nothingness, rooted in an early childhood experience of finitude.

Overcoming alienation

In contrast to the existentially broken Man, the Woman demonstrates a capacity to withstand the chaos of life. Her roots are found in Urizh, a sacralised space that provides, in Taylor's terms, the "frame or horizon" within which the self determines what is good, valuable, and obligatory [Taylor, 1989, p. 27]. Her bond with the environment deconstructs the patriarchal opposition that conceives nature as passive matter; her closeness to the earth affirms her self-sufficiency and sovereignty.

Her refusal to flee with the Sailor proves the Woman's final transition to genuine autonomy, where freedom becomes not a movement "away from" but a movement "toward" herself. Her transformation culminates in the metaphorical act of "shedding skin": "My thoughts were set free again, because they had enough space" [Pahutyak, 2016, p. 59]. Thus she affirms her transition from alienated loneliness to authentic selfhood — a form of ontological rootedness that grants being both meaning and spiritual maturity.

Despite their divergent worldviews, both protagonists are united by a condition of existential thrownness and inner disorientation, made visible through their relationship with Urizh — a personified narrative locus endowed with subjecthood and "a consciousness of its own." If the Woman feels its irrational pressure ("This village is like an opyr itself. It haunts you to the end of your days" [Pahutyak, 2016, p. 47]), the Man perceives it as a sinister system ("You think a village is just a gathering of people? It's an organism" [Pahutyak, 2016, p. 53]).

For the Man, living in the settlement is a forced compromise. He describes his existence as "circling around the orbit of Urizh," where the greatest fear is of finally falling "onto this treacherous little planet" [Pahutyak, 2016, p. 16]. Unrootedness does not become the equivalent of freedom but turns his life into an inert suspension above a world that remains foreign to him: "Urizh buried me as if in a grave" [Pahutyak, 2016, p. 44].

The Woman's relationship with Urizh develops in the opposite direction, grounded in ontological belonging. She identifies the locus with the mythologeme of the egg — "I live within this egg… and I nourish myself on what it feeds me — silence and dreams" [Pahutyak, 2016, p. 12] — consonant with Bachelard's concept of the house. Her sense of rootedness reaches metaphorical kinship with the landscape: "…my bones are the stones on Mount Laska and the house with the terrace from which you can see the sunset in Urizh" [Pahutyak, 2016, p. 23].

The opyrs serve as the trigger of this boundary situation. Their chthonic nature — the possession of "two souls" — mirrors the protagonists' inner dichotomy. Each projects inner fears onto the other through suspicions of vampirism, perceiving the other as a predator striving to annihilate the Other to assert the self. This confrontation with the uncanny demonstrates the impossibility of continued existence in inertia. In the novel, the process of inner restructuring is symbolised by rain — the archetype of water marking both the end of the old world and the precondition for a new beginning.