About the author:
Elena M. Boldyreva, DSc in Philology, Professor, Institute of Foreign Languages, Southwest University, China, 400715 Chongqing, Baybay region, Tyanshen st., 2.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2977-7262
E-mail:
Abstract:
The paper examines various oppositions of autobiographical models of Bunin and Proust and the difference between the mnemonic actions of the autobiographical subjects of Bunin and Proust, whose ars memorativa principles are an ambivalent combination of rational efforts and ‘involuntary memory’. For Bunin the memory is an instinctive-irrational entity that ensures the integrity of the subject and the ontological essence of the reality of his consciousness, while for Marcel Proust it is an tool, which when stubbornly used allows to structure the reality of the past and overcome the state of epistemological uncertainty painful for Proust (but blissful for Bunin). Where Bunin stops in an indistinct, incomprehensible delight in front of the mystery and unpredictability of life, Proust is uncomfortable with the inability to clearly identify the phenomenon or impression and analytically decomposes memory into components, inventing ‘mnemoforming’ and ‘mnemosaving’ technologies. The author concludes that, unlike Proust, whose modernist project exposes numerous processes of interaction between reality and consciousness, memory and creativity, Bunin’s autobiographical discourse is characterized by a fusion of life and creativity in the organic fabric of the memorial ornament.