| 1. |
- Olofsson, Kerstin, 1940-
(författare)
-
Utan minne inget liv : en analys av Valentin Rasputins "Avsked från Matëra" och Čingiz Ajtmatovs "Och dagen varar längre än ett sekel"
- 1988
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The point of departure for this dissertation is the interest in memory that has characterized Soviet cultural life during the 1970s and early 1980s. This theme is developed through an examination of the role of memory in two noted works of the period - Valentin Rasputin's Farewell to Matyora from 1976 and Chingiz Aitmatov's And the Day is Longer Than a Century from 1980. The chapter on Rasputin's work mainly treats the semantics of the novel in relationship to various aspects of myth and folklore. Mythical allusions serve to create a symbolic framework where Matyora, the island and village to be engulfed by water from a power plant's magazine, represents the entire earth. Through them Matyora appears as a world threatened by extinction, a world representing the lives of the nature and the human spirit. Opposed to this world is the "new life", death's shore; as in myth there is a struggle between life and death, good and evil. Memory is here above all shaped by the links to myth and folklore. In the chapter on Aitmatov's work, on the other hand, different connections between various temporal levels are shown to be of particular semantic significance; this is its most important means of shaping memory. One of the temporal levels is constituted by historical legends - they are stressed as being important as parables. But the main attention is not directed towards the remote cultural memory, as in Rasputin, but towards a level of individual memories, the immediate historical and political past - the Stalin era. The last chapter points out that the symbolic level, which exists in both works, is realized in different ways. Symbols in Rasputin are opposed to a number of connections to allegory in Aitmatov.
|
|
| 2. |
- Ouvarova, Svetlana, 1964-
(författare)
-
Metaistorija Bulata Okudžavy : Obraz dokumenta v romane Putešestvie diletantov
- 2009
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study examines Okudzhava’s depiction of the process of documentalization of the past as a defining feature of the novel Puteshestvie diletantov, giving reason to consider it a form of metahistory, or an artistic statement on the subject of historical knowledge. The image of the document plays a central role in the novel Puteshestvie diletantov. Through it, Okudzhava depicts the process of knowing and (re)creating the past, as well as the process of its deformation, supplementation and modification. In the form of a document, the past finds existence in time and space, finds its author and addressee, and becomes submerged in a constantly changing context. Okudzhava does not contest the truth of the past, but rather problematizes it, immersing the reader in its real element – the narrative one, permeated by the creative will of the individual. Within this element, two juxtaposed narrative streams stand out clearly: the fictional and the documentary, each shaping the picture of the past in different ways. By thematicizing the issue of documents as evidence, Okudzhava at the same time thematicizes the influence of narrativity on the process of our recreation of past events, as well as on the course of these same events. The act of compiling a document and the act of narration appear in the novel as the driving force of the action and are treated by the author of Puteshestvie diletantov as a fully fledged manifestation of human will in History. In this way, the metafictionality of the novel (its thematicization and problematization of various narrative forms) becomes the key to its metahistoricality (the thematicization and problematization of knowledge of the past, the composition of History), inasmuch as History itself is represented here in the form of a narrative stream.
|
|
| 3. |
- Grelz, Karin, 1961-
(författare)
-
Beyond the noise of time : readings of Marina Tsvetaeva’s memories of childhood
- 2004
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Although quite a few researchers have pointed to the significance of the childhood theme in Tsvetaeva’s work, no systematic analysis of her work has been done from this perspective. Nor have her childhood reminiscences been treated as a thematically consistent whole, but have rather been read as instances of the poet’s prose in general. The present study examines Marina Tsvetaeva’s memories of childhood in the context of her work and in the context of the cultural and political reality to which these reminiscences refer and in which they were written—i.e., Russia around the turn of the century and the Russian émigré world of 1930–1937.In the introductory investigation of the presence of the childhood theme in Tsvetaeva’s oeuvre, it is found that idealization of the naive, innocent state is a relatively constant feature and that the childhood memories can be read as a culmination of this set of motives. It is also stated that Tsvetaeva’s continuous striving in her poetry away from the world, out of time, is an integral part of the childhood thematics. This tendency is traced, in connection with the childhood theme, to the influence of writers of the late Russian Symbolist movement as well as to Boris Pasternak and Rainer Maria Rilke—all with roots in literary Romanticism. Childhood is moreover found to be something of a key theme that reveals fundamental differences in the relation to memory and language among the authors of Russian modernism. In Tsvetaeva' s case it is shown that her childhood memories contain the romantic essence of her aesthetics.The study also touches upon the symbolic and allegorical dimension of the texts—Tsvetaeva’s “otherspeak” in her prose. It is shown that the central scenes of these texts can be read as illustrations of an artistic and linguistic experience. In this regard the author’s narrative of childhood also appears to have been a suitable medium for articulating controversial aesthetic statements and taking a stand for an historical past and literary tradition that at the time seemed doomed to oblivion.
|
|
