Concept of Memory and National Image of the World in Literary Texts of Alexander Kahn

Abstract

A fairly common trend in the global literary process is when writers - representatives of their nation and their culture - live outside their historical homeland. The search for answers to the most important questions of our time and the challenges of globalization in relation to the ethnocultural world concern each of them. A. Kahns work reveals how opposition of ones own versus the other conveys the national image and national attitude. The principle of equality and recognition of the other as an equal to oneself is the basis of dialogue. Novels and essays by A. Kahn are largely autobiographical and aim at understanding the path of the compatriots, their mission on earth. The path of national literature in the mind of A. Kahn is from the literature of despair through the literature of longing and overcoming to the endless great literature of a great heart.

Keywords

• ethnic identity
• artistic time
• memory
• history as a myth
• concept home
• dialogic poetics
• essays
• collective trauma