Клио и мнемозина в дилогии Михаила Осоргина

Abstract

The concepts of history and memory are treated as the subject foundation of Mi- chael Osorgin’s dilogy written in emigration in the first half of the 1930s and devoted to the historical cataclysms of the 1900s – the 1910s starting with the First Russian revolution of 1905–1907 through the First World War, the October 1917 coup to the Civil War that followed it. History is understood by the author in both the existen- tial and moral perspectives, while memory is mostly presented through its functional paradigm as an instrument of registering, preserving, and reviving facts of outer / inner life; a way to escape the horrible present, a means of myth making; a curse, etc. The male and female protagonists of the dilogy choose the parts of a “witness” and a “maker” of history respectively, each of them bearing the responsibility of his / her choice.

Keywords

• memory
• history
• time
• authenticity
• functional paradigm