Memory and Oblivion in the Novel Chagin by Evgeny Vodolazkin and the Problem of Personal Identity

This paper considers memory and oblivion in the novel Chagin by Evgeny Vodolazkin as ways of preserving or losing personal identity. To study the problem of memory and oblivion, cultural-historical, structural, and comparative methods are used. Specific properties of the hero’s memory – photographic and stereotypical, mechanisms of memory and oblivion – are revealed in their representation in the novel. The relationship of memory and oblivion with fiction and creativity is considered: how overcoming the automatism of memory contributes to the deepening of perception and the development of the hero’s creative abilities. Motives that correlate with the motive of memory are analyzed – love, guilt, crime and punishment, sin, repentance and atonement. The ambivalent nature of memory and oblivion is revealed. Memory can become not only a gift, but also a curse, punishment for sins, and oblivion – salvation and liberation. It is concluded that oblivion is not so much opposed to memory as compared: one without the other threatens us with an existential catastrophe. Oblivion is regarded as the highest good, becoming the basis for and an effective way of gaining personal identity: correcting the mistakes of his youth, at the end of his life the hero recreates his true biography.