The Images of Childhood in Yevhen Soya’s Creative Work before and after 2022

Abstract

This article explores the evolution of the images of childhood in the poetry of Yevhen Soya (Yessoya in social media) before and after 2022. The analysis draws on both published and unpublished poems, including material from the author’s social media and personal archives, and considers the biographical context, the generational experience of millennials, and the sociocultural shifts following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In Soya’s earlier work, childhood emerges as an idyllic and sacralized chronotope, characterized by nostalgia, the motif of the “eternal present,” and a turn inward toward personal memory and introspection. However, after 2022, this image undergoes a notable transformation, acquiring dimensions of trauma, existential rupture, and a longing for inner restoration. Particular attention is paid to Soya’s poetics as a generational voice of Russophone post-Soviet millennials, who face a sudden transition from a deferred or prolonged adolescence into a traumatized adulthood marked by the collapse of utopian visions of the future. His poetry thus becomes a testimony to the shifting lyrical gaze shaped by historical catastrophe, while the poet himself emerges as a representative of a new, generationally inflected perspective on memory, vulnerability, and resilience. Methodologically, the study draws on Bakhtin’s chronotope theory, while also referencing the works of Valerie Sanders, Henry Jenkins, and scholars, who wrote about childhood in poetry, such as Natalia Ryabtseva and Nadezhda Tropkina. This approach allows for the positioning of Soya’s poetry within both post-Soviet Russophone literary trends and a broader European literary tradition that interrogates the sacred and symbolic dimensions of childhood.