MEMORY AS THE CATEGORY OF FICTION IN ROMAIN GARY`S NOVEL «THE KITES»
Abstract
Humanity has always thought about memory, its features, its role and significance in an individual’s life and society. However, in the 20th century much more attention was paid to this characteristic of human mind in science and art than before, besides, the interpretations of this concept have become quite changeable and diverse.
At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century in the scientific field, memory was viewed as a purely personal, individual act of recollection (A. Bergson, Z. Freud), however, later the theories of collective memory and the memory of entire groups and nations appear (M. Halbvaks, P. Nora, I. Assman). Due to the tragic events of the 20th century history and the gradual passing away of its witnesses, the subject of memory also becomes popular in art, especially in literature.
The purpose of the article is to determine what place in the artistic basis of Romain Gary's «The Kites» the category of memory occupies, what meaning it carries and in what varieties it is used in the novel.
The relevance of the article is due to the fact that since 2018 Romain Gary's novel «The Kites» has been included in "Foreign Literature" curriculum of secondary education as one of the optional works, and the theme of memory is only mentioned but not thoroughly studied in the existing critical articles.
Having carried out the research, we may conclude the following:
1. Memory as a characteristic of human mind and a socio-cultural phenomenon becomes the object of close attention of both scholars and people of art in the twentieth century.
2. Such interest to the above-mentioned phenomenon was caused, firstly, by the peculiarities of the historical process in the 20th century, full of disastrous events that people tried to forget as a traumatic experience; secondly, by the emergence of new concepts of memory in philosophy and psychology.
For Romain Gary and the heroes of his novel «The Kites», memory is a pledge of active citizenship of a person, a source of threat to his existence and an erroneous perception of reality, lack, weapon and a source of strength in the fight against evil, a pledge of peace and harmony, sense of life and redemption from non-existence and a path to eternity for a certain person.
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.32620/gch.2019.2.07
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