The genre features of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s memoirs

Abstract

The article justifies that A. I. Solzhenitsyn expands the potential of the memoir genre by synthesizing techniques of different genres and creating new ways of displaying History. The growing interest in the memoirs of the 20th century, in particular in Solzhenitsyn’s memoirs, in recent decades makes the research topical. Solzhenitsyn considers the truth of history as a priority, and the completeness of the material and polyphony of its presentation as necessary requirements. The research aims at presenting the originality of Solzhenitsyn’s memoirs. The objectives of the research include determining the nature of the memoir genres in Solzhenitsyn’s works, identifying traditional and innovative forms in them, as well as substantiating polygenre as a sign of the writer’s “new oeuvreing”. Simultaneous presence of not only the signs of traditional memoirs, but also documentary features, journalistic, fictional, speech genres, their overlapping and synthesis in the text is the main problem of Solzhenitsyn’s memoirs. In addition, Solzhenitsyn’s heritage can be interpreted as a metamemoir text, based on inextricably linked writer’s biography and Russian history of the 20th century. A separate aspect of Solzhenitsyn’s memoir lies in the analysis of the author’s image and the dialogue with the reader. All genre levels – compositional, problem-thematic, stylistic – are involved in the research. Solzhenitsyn’s memoirs were studied by the methods of comparative, immanent, intratextual analysis. The results of the research can be used to study A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s creative method and the memoirs as non-fiction. The major conclusions point to the consistency of Solzhenitsyn’s position, who does not move away from the word of truth, from the desire for Truth even in memoir genres.  

Keywords

• a. i. solzhenitsyn
• “the oak and the calf”
• “between two millstones”
• “memoirs”
• writer’s memoirs
• synthesis of genres
• literature and document