Literary Mask (Persona)

A literary mask (persona) is a conventional, invented image of a speaker in whose name the author conducts a narrative or lyric utterance, deliberately not coinciding with them. The mask allows a writer to speak in 'someone else's voice' — to distance themselves ironically, conceal their own 'I,' test another worldview, or create a comic, satirical, or stylizing effect. The literary mask is akin to the ancient theatrical mask and the concept of the 'persona' (Latin persona — mask). A classic example is the image of the beekeeper Rudy Panko, the invented 'publisher' of Nikolai Gogol's 'Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.' The mask is the basis of role lyric, literary mystification, and heteronymy (Fernando Pessoa wrote under the names of invented poet-'heteronyms'). In Ukrainian literature, a vivid comic-satirical mask of the 'village sage' was cultivated by Ostap Vyshnia.