Research On Problems Of Childhood Memory Literature By Russian Authors

The history of Russian literature from the 19^thcentury to the 1940s knows many outstandingwriterswhofocusonchildhoodmemory,forexample,LevNikolayevichTolstoy,AndreyBelyi,BorisLeonidovichPasternak,IvanAlekseyevich Bunin,Vladimir Nabokov and others.These writers lived in Russia in different time periods,belonged to different literary schools,including Realism,Symbolism,and Literature of Russian Emigration.But their autobiographical novels share the main motif,the motif of childhood memory.For a long period of time the Russian literary circle did not pay enough attention to the phenomenon of childhood memory as a mean of creating the central motif of the work.It was just in the 1980s that Western and even Eastern academic world simultaneously started to explore phenomena and problems of memory,historical memory,cultural memory,social memory,literary memory,moreover,this study influenced all fields of science,including psychology,anthropology,sociology,history,culture,literature,thus forming a new cross-disciplinary school.It also had an influence on Russian literary world,aroused great interest in research of memory performance.The difference from the western researchers was that Russians placed an emphasis not on cultural memory,but on literary memory,as well as,found new resources in their own literature.As a result,researchers found out that autobiographical novels of the above mentioned authors have a common peculiarity:they focus on childhood memory and use it as a main motif.In the course of the research of these works,they established that performance of human memory is a kind of physiological activity of human inner space and activity of consciousness.Memory recall is not just reappearing of life,experience,feelings,but also a mean of reconstruction of certain memories.“Literature is‘an outstanding art of memory recall'”.Memories expressed in literature are different from objective and truthful historical memory;different from cultural memory that takes original,lifeful,dynamic,visual,rich memories and change them into static,conceptual,monochromatic data;they have literariness of memories called literary memory.Literariness of memory explains how literature aims at mobilizing all literary techniques,use poetic language,various figures of speech,peculiar imagination,double space-time composition and symbolic metaphors to have imaginary,leaving no trace,changeable stream of memories slowly showing out,building materialized memory space.Literary memory is opposite to human memory,its marks of reconstruction,proportions,degree and methods are unattainable.Thus,literary memory in its nature is also an activity of consciousness,possesses intentionality.Literary memories viewed from position of scientific principles and memories viewed from position of ontology,they all represent activity of human consciousness,possesses intentionality,and provide theoretical basis for the forming the concept of phenomenological prose.As a matter of fact,the period of time Russian researchers started to explore phenomenological prose was the golden age of phenomenology and phenomenological aesthetics development.From the end of the 19^th century to the beginning of the 20century,created by Edmund Husserl,and developed by Gerhart Husserl?Martin Heidegger,Roman Ingarden and other scholars phenomenology penetrated to ethics,sociology,law,psychology,aesthetics,literature and art,while phenomenological method has become cross-disciplinary method.Phenomenology and aesthetics see“activity of pure consciousness”as the object of aesthetics,thus,using phenomenological method of“facing the fact itself”return to“life of realizing consciousness”.“Phenomenological method is a method of intuitive description”.Literary memory uses literary methods and techniques,memories becoming activities of consciousness through visual images turn into”life of consciousness”.Symbols initiated by phenomenology and used by literary memory turn to be a method.For the last few years Russian academic circles studying autobiographical novels were paying attention to person recollections,childhood recollections,collective recollections,cultural recollections as the main topic.How these recollections get into literature field,transform into literary recollections,in other words,how being medium for recollections literature makes recollection appear.Scholars found out that recollection in its nature is an activity of consciousness,possesses vivid intentionality,and has a certain similarity with phenomenological intentionality.There are many researchers tried to apply phenomenological method to discover the peculiarities of narration of autobiographical novels,as a result,there appeared such formulation as phenomenological prose.This formulation is not only rather precise,but also provides literary criticism with new kind of vision and method.Prose of the phenomenological prose in Russian academic circles seems tospecially point not the“prose”that is usually described within genre classification,but makes a general reference to literature,especially to novel,however,also not to be called general literature or general novel.Only artistic works that cover the problems of literary memory can be called phenomenological prose.Phenomenological prose takes the past of the hero and description of his present recollections to form a double space-time composition,chooses memory as the central topic.Leading narration through memory,thought experience and mental scheme of profound reconstruction of two or more kinds of souls belonging to different time and space,that meet,collide,converse,moreover making philosophical reflective judgment on existence,death,God and others,it reflects social memory of a group,national memory of a nation,cultural memory of a generation,even collective unconscious experience of mankind.Russian literature has a tradition to reveal human's rich,complicated,subtle thoughts and feelings and their thought experience.Lev Tolstoy can be called the master of this artistic technique.Thus,Russian writers enthusiastically explore literary memory;especially in describing performance of childhood memory.In the 18^thand 19^th centuries,childhood memories in Russian literature were mainly displayed through happy childhood memory of serfs and noblemen living in manor.Childhood memories in Tolstoy's works best exemplify this tendency.From the 1840s till the beginning of the20^th century was the period in literature when“happy childhood”transformed into“stolen childhood”,works were written in deep sentimental mood,illustrated by autobiographical novel?Kotik Letaev?by Andrey Belyi,Boris Leonidovich Pasternak's?The Childhood of Luvers?.After the 1930s immigrant literature returned to“happy childhood”,the reasons of it may include pogroms against Jews,The October revolution,the immigration of the majority of royal family,noblemen and intelligentsia who supported different political views.A lot of Russian people were forced to leave their homes,find shelter in other countries,and endure all the hardships of life;as a result,this gave rise to nostalgic feelings and homesickness.Restore happy childhood memory,long to return to peaceful and happy past,describe a burning desire to find lost home in the time of dramatical changes,from literary memory perspective it adds some colors to immigrant life that is full of pain,gives hope to people who desperate to come home.Psychotherapeutic value of retrospection of childhood memories in the works of Immigrant writers is beyond doubt.In brief,?Childhood?by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy,autobiographical novel?Kotik Letaev?written by one of the leaders of Russian symbolism and modernism Andrey Belyi,Boris Leonidovich Pasternak's?The Childhood of Luvers?,Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin's?The Life of Arseniev?,Vladimir Nabokov's novel?Speak,Memory?——all these works share the main motif of childhood,use double space-time composition,restore the whole process of formation of children self-consciousness,explore memories of different generations of Russian people and point out different features of cultural memory,use metaphors to make a reflective judgment on existence,death,spirit and the God.As phenomenological-aesthetic method successfully applied and concept of literary memory carefully analyzed,childhood memory can be seen as significant artistic model.