The Religious And Cultural Memory Of The White Guard

Memory is one fundamental physiological function of human being, and one important factor affecting people's life and mentality. A literary work is like a repertoire of memory, because it keeps the colorful human memory in special ways. Those literary works which reflects the memory of the age, permeates into the space-time structure of the whole world, has become a kind of witness to the world and the history.M·Bulgakov is a Soviet writer with great personality in literary world of 20th century. His work The White Guard describes the family life of an ordinary White officer during the Ukraine civil war in 1918. The novel doesn't have formulaic description of the white officer. Instead, it unfolds a picture of the life experience and feelings of ordinary people during the war to readers. As Bulgakov's first long-length work, The White Guard shows his thoughts on life and his memory about the special period of history-- the Ukraine civil war. This paper tries to analyze the memory element contained in The White Guard, probe the deep ideological content, and to explore the source of the memory of Bulgakov, by studying the chronotope of memory in this novel.The space-time of memory in The White Guard is fixed in the Ukraine civil war. The author describes the war marked with a lot of iconic memory elements, which become lots of vivid memory symbol that will bring readers into a memory of that special period. Dream, not only has a strong significance of literary aesthetics, but also is another important means to show the memory. Through the seven dreams in the book The White Guard, we could go in-depth understanding of the inner memory character of the Turbin family. The space-time conversion of the memory in dreams, and the description of various dreams including the daydreams showed the hero's mind in different aspects and angles. The memory of the Turbin siblings and the author roots in the religious and cultural memory hiding inside of their soil. The idea of Revelation became heavy spiritual shackles of Corbin siblings, and also made people in the war kept going to confess to seek spiritual salvation. The Blessed Mother-Sophia worship was a comfort and reliance of people in the war. Turbin's sister, Elena just appeared as this image. The religious and cultural memory not only had an influence on the hero's thoughts about the war and life, his attitude toward livelihood, but also guided Bulgakov's mind to create his own Revelation of soul.