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Abstract:

The article examines the features of the representation of memory in the novel “Valsarb” (2023) by the contemporary Belarusian writer Helena Pobyarzhyna. In the artistic canvas of the novel, the existence of memory becomes a significant experience. At the level of micropoetics, it is introduced by special means and techniques (memories, dreams, fixation of details, synecdoche, thematic parallelism). The places of memory in the space of the city of Valsarb, where the action takes place, are cemeteries (memorial) and streets. At the level of macropoetics, memory finds expression in the subjective manner of narration (the Ich-Erzählung technique). Thanks to the introduction of images of ghosts and spirits who tell the heroine their stories of the last moments of life, both the architectonics of the work (rhythmization of the narrative) and the spatio-temporal continuum (combination and superposition of different time levels) are complicated. The existential mode of reading the novel is also predetermined by the motifs of loneliness, melancholy, mortality, cultural and historical memory.

Keywords: chronotope, memory, Helena Pobiarzhyna, streamofconsciousness.