Information about the author:
Alla A. Strelnikova
Alla A. Strelnikova, PhD in Philology, Associate Professor, State University of Education; Senior Researcher, A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature, Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya St., 25a, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2887-7678
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Abstract:
The article examines the issues of commemorative culture — individual, family, collective memory — in the novels of the German writer E. Ruge “In Times of Fading Light” (2011) and “Metropol” (2019), that consist a unique saga dedicated to the history of one family and spanning more than half a century of German and Soviet history. The space of memory in the novels absorbs the personal and supra-individual memories of the characters, the life of the GDR and the USSR during particular historical periods. The article is based on the works of researchers in the field of “memory studies”, such as M. Halbwachs, J. Assmann, A. Assmann, Yu.M. Lotman, M. Hirsch, and considers the functions of the characters’ memory, the patterns of transformation of personal, communicative memory into collective one. The article traces how Ruge’s own biography and the peculiarities of his family history, closely connected with the GDR and the Soviet Union, allow the writer to create a memorial space in which these countries are connected by many common threads and memories. In turn, this memory space is also capable of influencing the cultural memory of readers. The article contains interviews with the writer, clarifying his views on literary creativity and the Past. Considerable attention in this work is given to artistic detail and symbols, which materialize memories. Ruge sees his creative literary task in reconstructing and artistically comprehending the Past.