Kategorija pamćenja u Osipa Mandeljštama
The Category of Memory in the Work of Osip Mandelstam

Summary/Abstract: The author first shows that O. Mandelstam abandoned the metaphysical conception of memory, which was still advocated in early 20th-century Russian culture by V. Ivanov, P. Fiorenski and, to some extent, by A. Belyj. According to this conception, memory is ultimately reduced to the »vertical« connection of the human and the ideal. On the contrary, Mandelstam's conception of memory has a »horizontal« character, moving across the level of the historical world, which is ontologically always the same level, from the modern era to the beginnings of European civilization. Even when it touches on a mythical or religious content, it does not assume a »vertical« direction of movement, because, in Mandelstam's view, both mythology and religion were primarily facts of culture, rather than ways by which memory leads to the absolute. In the second part of the article, the author analyzes the relationship between Mandelstam's historical memory and his autobiographical memory and determines the ways in which each of these functions as an aesthetic category in the structure of the text.

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