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.
Elena G. Belousova (Fri,) studied this question.