MEMOIR LITERATURE- literature in the genre of memoirs (French mémoires, from Latin memoria memory), a type of documentary literature and at the same time one of the types of “confessional prose.” It implies notes-memoirs of a historical person about real events of the past, which he happened to be an eyewitness. The main prerequisites for the work of a memoirist are strict compliance historical truth, factuality, chronicity of the narrative (leading the story along the milestones of the real past), refusal to “play” with the plot, conscious anachronisms, deliberate artistic techniques. These formal features bring memoirs closer to the diary genre, with the significant difference that, unlike a diary, memoirs imply retrospection, an appeal to a fairly distant past, and an inevitable mechanism for re-evaluating events from the height of the experience accumulated by the memoirist. in memories The story of my contemporary(1954) expressed the ideal aspirations of a memoirist in this way: “In my work, I strived for the most complete historical truth possible, often sacrificing to it the beautiful or striking features of artistic truth. There will be nothing here that I haven’t encountered in reality, that I haven’t experienced, felt, or seen.”
In terms of their material, reliability and lack of fiction, the memoirs are close to historical prose, scientific-biographical, autobiographical and documentary-historical essays. However, what distinguishes memoirs from autobiography is their focus on displaying not only and not so much the personality of the author, but the historical reality surrounding him, external events– socio-political, cultural, etc., to which he was involved to a greater or lesser extent. At the same time, unlike strictly scientific genres, memoirs imply the active presence of the author’s voice, his individual assessments and inevitable bias. Those. One of the constructive factors of memoir literature is the author’s subjectivity.
Memoir literature is an important source of historiography, material for historical source studies. At the same time, in terms of the actual accuracy of the reproduced material, memoirs are almost always inferior to documents. Therefore, historians are forced to subject event facts from the memoirs of public and cultural figures to critical verification with available objective information. In the case when a certain memoir fact finds neither confirmation nor refutation in available documents, the evidence about it is considered by historiography as scientifically valid only hypothetically.
The persistent features of memoirs as a form of literature are factuality, the predominance of events, retrospectiveness, immediacy of evidence, which in no way ensure the “purity of the genre.” Memoirs remain one of the most fluid genres with extremely fuzzy boundaries. Memoir signs do not always indicate that the reader is dealing with memoirs. So, on the first page of S. Maugham’s book, endowed with all the above-mentioned features Summing up(1957), the author warns that this work is not a biography or memoir. Although his gaze invariably goes back to the past, the main goal here is not to recreate the past, but to confess artistic faith, summing up the results of half a century of literary development. The genre of Maugham's book is not a memoir, but an extended essay.
In the 19th century, as the principle of historicism developed, memoir prose, which had already reached maturity, was conceptualized as an important source of scientific and historical reconstructions. Attempts to abuse this reputation of the genre immediately make themselves felt. Pseudo-memoirs and various memoir hoaxes arise. These tendencies are especially clearly noticeable in works devoted to purely mythologized figures of history and already completed cycles of the past. As a consequence, annoying historical misconceptions are possible in works based on unfounded memoir sources. Thus, D.S. Merezhkovsky in his sketch about A.S. Pushkin from the cycle Eternal companions(1897) he built the entire concept of the poet’s work on the notes of Pushkin’s friend A.O. Smirnova. However, after several years it became clear that these memories were entirely falsified by her daughter, O.N. Smirnova. Another example is memoirs. St. Petersburg winters G. Ivanov, dedicated to recreating the atmosphere of the pre-revolutionary years of the “Silver Age”. There is reason to consider it a literary text based on conventional literary techniques. The literature of the Russian post-revolutionary emigration, in which memoirs generally played a particularly significant role, provided, along with masterpieces of prose in the genre of memoirs, many examples of mystified and falsified memoirs (the fake “diary” of the maid of honor of the Empress Alexandra, the patroness of G. Rasputin A.A. Vyrubova, etc. ).
In the literature of the 19th–20th centuries. Purely works of fiction with a fictitious plot are often styled as memoirs. The purpose of such a technique can be different: from recreating the atmosphere of time through the genre ( Captain's daughter(1836) by Pushkin, where the use of the memoir genre in Pyotr Grinev’s “Notes” - one of the main forms of literature of the 18th century. - acts as a stylization technique “for the Catherine era”) to give the text special sincerity, authenticity, compositional freedom and the illusion of independence from the “will of the author” ( Netochka Nezvanova(1849) and Little hero(from unknown memoirs) (1857) by F.M. Dostoevsky).
Often, autobiographical works are indistinguishable from memoirs in their literary qualities. But these genres can also pursue different goals. Autobiography is more easily subject to fictionalization and transition to literary fiction. So, in autobiographical trilogy L.N. Tolstoy Childhood (1852), Boyhood (1854), Youth(1857) memories are subordinated not to the actual memoir, but to the artistic task - psychological research of character and creative understanding of philosophical categories important for the author (consciousness, reason, understanding, etc.). For this reason, in terms of genre, Tolstoy's trilogy is closer to a novel than to memoirs.
Directly opposite cases are also possible. So, in Family chronicle(1856) and The childhood years of Bagrov the grandson(1858) by S.T. Aksakova, the main character appears under a fictitious name, which is natural for fiction. However, the author’s task here is purely memoiristic: the resurrection of the past and its “atmosphere”, a true memory of the past. In terms of genre, both books belong specifically to memoir literature. It is no coincidence that openly memoir-documentary Memories(1856) by Aksakov are perceived as a direct continuation of the dilogy about Bagrov.
The mobility of the memoir genre is also facilitated by its stylistic variability. The narration here can also be noted for the colorfulness of artistic prose ( Childhood(1914) and In people(1916) M. Gorky), and journalistic bias ( People, years, life(1960–1965) by I. Ehrenburg), and a strictly scientific justification of what is happening (parts 5–7 Of the past and thoughts(1852–1867) A.I. Herzen). The precariousness of the border between memoirs and artistic, journalistic, and scientific genres was determined in Russian and Western European literature by the mid-19th century. This was greatly facilitated by the crisis of romanticism and the strengthening of a new aesthetics aimed at imitation of reality in its social concreteness - the aesthetics of realism. V.G. Belinsky in the article A look at Russian literature of 1847(1848) already records this genre amorphousness of memoir prose: “Finally, memoirs themselves, completely alien to any fiction, valuable only to the extent that they faithfully and accurately convey actual events, memoirs themselves, if they are masterfully written, constitute, as it were, the last facet in the field of the novel, closing it with himself.”
An unsurpassed example of mature and at the same time extremely complex in terms of genre, multi-component memoir prose - Past and thoughts Herzen. As the author's plan was realized, this work turned from notes about a purely personal, family past into something like a “biography of humanity.” Here, a deliberate fusion of genre features of memoirs and journalism, “biography and speculation,” diary and literary portraits, fictional short stories, scientific facts, confessions, essays and pamphlets. The result is a literary form that, in the author’s words, “doesn’t lace up anywhere and doesn’t pinch anywhere.” The hero of the book is not the author himself (as in ordinary, one-dimensional memoirs from the point of view of the genre) and not contemporary history (as in historical chronicles), but the most complex process of eventful and spiritual interaction between the individual and society in a certain era. Herzen’s book went beyond the natural boundaries of memoir prose itself and became the most important programmatic text of the era “ critical realism"in European literature. It is characteristic that Western criticism could discern an even broader historical and literary significance behind this text. So, a review about the author White and doom in one of the issues of the London newspaper “The Leader” for 1862 concluded with the conclusion: “Goethe could see in it a clear confirmation of the theory of a future universal literature.”
In the first half. 20th century in the era of the so-called “the end of the novel,” when literature was experiencing a crisis of traditional conventional forms and switched to the border between fiction and document, a series of synthetic texts appeared ( No change on the Western Front(1929) E.M. Remarque, Life in Bloom(1912) A. France, The noise of time(1925) by O. Mandelstam, later in line with the same tradition - My diamond crown(1978) V. Kataeva et al.). In them, the memoir principle is included in the organic nature of fiction. Historical material, the real life of the author, is transformed into a fact of art, and stylistics is subordinated to the task of producing an aesthetic impact on the reader. On the maturity and completeness of the process of “adoption” of memoir prose by fiction of the 20th century. evidence of the parodic use of its laws in the genre of the novel ( Confessions of adventurer Felix Krul(1954) T. Mann).
The measure of the historical content of memoirs and the very type of their practical use as sources by various humanities disciplines largely depend on the personality of the author. If a memoirist is a bright and extremely significant person for history and culture, then the focus of interest in the reader’s and research’s perception of his text is inevitably focused on the author himself. In this case, historical material fades into the background. A striking example of an essay of this kind is Ten years in exile(1821) Madame de Stael, an outstanding woman of the era, one of the brilliant writers and cultural figures of romanticism. A sample of memories of a different type was left by the Duke of Saint-Simon. His Memoirs(published in 1829–1830) are valuable primarily for small facts, details that meticulously convey the atmosphere of court life in Paris during the last twenty-five years of the reign of Louis XIV and the regency period. As a result, the memoirs of Madame de Staël are the object of attention primarily of literary scholars, while the memoirs of Saint-Simon are the object of attention of historians. Since the 1940s, thanks to the researchers of the “Annals School” (L. Febvre, F. Braudel, J. Le Goff, etc.) historical science is experiencing a surge of interest in the memoirs of unremarkable and non-public people. Their writings (of the type: “notes of a German miller of the mid-17th century,” “notes of a middle-class London merchant of the early 18th century,” etc.) help restore the objective history of everyday life, identify certain social stereotypes that fix the characteristic, standard, and not exceptional. Memoirs of this kind are an important source of the history of civilization and historical sociology.
Memoir literature traces its origins to Xenophon’s memories of Socrates (4th century BC) and his Anabasis(401 BC) - notes on the military campaign of the Greeks. Ancient examples of the genre, which also include Notes on the Gallic War of Julius Caesar (1st century BC), are impersonal and tend to be historical chronicles. Christian Middle Ages ( Confession(approx. 400) Bl. Augustine, The story of my disasters(1132–1136) P. Abelard, partly New life (1292) Dante and other monuments) brings to the genre a developed sense of the narrator’s inner self, moral introspection and a repentant tone. The emancipation of personality and the development of individualistic consciousness during the Renaissance, clearly reflected in Life Benvenuto Cellini (1558–1565), prepared the flowering of memoirs in the 17th–18th centuries. (Saint-Simon, Cardinal G. Mazarin, J.-J. Rousseau, etc.)
In the 19th–20th centuries. Memoirs of writers and about writers are becoming one of the leading genres of literature. Thus, literary memoirs proper are formed; J.-W. Goethe, Stendhal, G. Heine, G.-H. left their memories. Andersen, A. France, R. Tagore, G. Mann, R. Rolland, J.-P. Sartre, F. Mauriac and others.
In Russia, memoir literature dates back to Stories about the Grand Duke of Moscow(mid 16th century) Andrei Kurbsky. An important milestone in the formation of personal self-awareness in Russian literature is autobiographical Life(1672–1675) Archpriest Avvakum. Vivid monuments of Russian memoirs of the 18th century. – The life and adventures of Andrei Bolotov(c. 1780), Handwritten notes of Empress Catherine II(published in 1907), Notes(published in 1804–1806) E.R. Dashkova, Sincere confession of my deeds and thoughts(1789) D.I. Fonvizina. The rapid development of memoir literature in Russia in the 19th century. associated with the memories of N.I. Turgenev, Decembrists I. Pushchin, I. Yakushkin, M. Bestuzhev, writer N. Grech, censors A. Nikitenko, E. Feoktistov, writers I. S. Turgenev, I. A. Goncharov and others . Factual details in descriptions of literary life of the 2nd half. 19th century The memoirs of A.Ya. Panaeva, N.A. Ogareva-Tuchkova, T.A. Kuzminskaya are valuable. The social situation of these years is reflected in Notes of a revolutionary(1899) P.A. Kropotkina, On life path (published in 1912) A.F. Koni.
The revival of memoir literature, associated with a series of memoirs about the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary era published in the USSR and in emigration, occurred in the 1920s–1930s. (memoirs of K. Stanislavsky, V. Veresaev, A. Bely, G. Chulkov and others).
A new surge in memoir literature in the USSR, caused by " Khrushchev's thaw", begins in the mid-1950s. Numerous memoirs are published about writers who did not quite fit into the structure of Soviet ideology: V. Mayakovsky, S. Yesenin, Yu. Tynyanov, etc. Numerous memoir essays by K. Chukovsky, A Tale of Life (1955) by K. Paustovsky, collections of memoirs about E. .Shvartse, I.Ilf and E.Petrov. The “Literary Memoirs” series, founded by the publishing house “Khudozhestvennaya Literatura” in the 1960s, publishes the memoirs of A. and P. Panayev, P. Annenkov, T.P. Passek, collections of memoirs about N.V. Gogol, M.Yu. Lermontov, V.G. Belinsky, L.N. Tolstoy, F.M. Dostoevsky.
Since the late 1980s, materials have been published about the artistic life of the “Silver Age” and the memories of representatives of the Russian emigration ( On Parnassus of the Silver Age(1962) K. Makovsky, On the banks of the Neva(1967) and On the Banks of the Seine (1983) by I. Odoevtseva, A calf butted heads with an oak tree(1990) A. Solzhenitsyn, Italics are mine N. Berberova and others), previously unpublished.
Since the early 1990s in Russia, an avalanche of memoirs has been published from the pens of contemporary political and cultural figures, many of which are more a fact of social life than literature itself.
Vadim Polonsky
Literature:
Gennadi G. Notes (memoirs) of Russian people. Bibliographical instructions // Readings at the Imperial Society of Russian History and Antiquities at Moscow University. 1861, book. 4
Pylyaev M.I. Notes of Russian people// Historical Bulletin, 1890. T. 39
Index of memoirs, diaries and travel notes of the 18th–19th centuries. M., 1951
Annotated index of memoir literature. Part 1, M., 1985. Part 2, 1961
Cardin V .
Today is about yesterday. Memoirs and modernity. M., 1961
Katanyan V. O writing memoirs // New world, 1964, № 5
Elizavetina G. Formation of the genres of autobiography and memoirs // Russian and Western European classicism
. Prose. M., 1982
Literary Memoirs of the 20th Century: An Annotated Index. 1985–1989. M., 1995. Parts 1–2
Memoirs differ from chronicles of modern events in that in them the author’s face comes to the fore, with his sympathies and dislikes, with his aspirations and views. Very often belonging to persons who played a prominent role in history, sometimes covering a significant period of time, for example, the entire life of the author, often connecting important events with little things Everyday life, memoirs can be historical material of primary importance.
The Oldest European Memoirs
Classical antiquity knew only two authors of memoirs - Xenophon and Caesar. France was considered the true birthplace of memoirs in the 19th century. The first experiments in this area date back to the 13th century. Villehardouin's naive notes on the Latin Empire still stand on the border between memoirs and chronicles, while Histoire de St. Louis“ (about ) is rightfully considered an example of historical memoirs.
France (XVI -XIX centuries)
The number of memoirs especially increased during the era of the revolution (memoirs of Necker, Besanval, Ferrier, Alexandre Lamet, Lafayette, Madame de Stael, Campan, Barbara, Billot-Varenna, Dumouriez, Madame Roland, Mirabeau, Mounier, Barera, Camille Demoulin). Even executioners, for example, Samson, wrote memoirs then.
Many of the memoirs of that era that appeared with the names of famous figures are fraudulent. This kind of forgery was widely practiced by Soulavie, whose collections have therefore been superseded “Collection des mémoires relatifs à la revolution française”(30 vols., Paris, 1820-1830) and some other publications.
Even more numerous are memoirs dating back to the Napoleonic era. Almost all of Napoleon's generals and many other people left notes. Especially great importance have memoirs of Bignon, O'Meara, Constant, Lavalette, Savary, Duchess d'Abrantes, Marmont, Eugene Beauharnais, Madame de Remusat, Talleyrand.
Later, memoirs were written by Carnot, Broglie, Chateaubriand, George Sand, Guizot, Marmier, Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt.
England
Rich in memoirs and English literature, in which they, however, acquire significance only from the era of Queen Elizabeth and even more from the time of the internal wars of the 17th century. For the reign of Charles I, the memoirs of James Melville and the Scotsman David Crafoord are of particular importance. The most important works of this kind are collected in the edition of Guizot, “Collection des mémoires relatifs à la revolution d’Angleterre”(33 vols., Paris, 1823 et seq.).
Of the memoirs of later times, the most outstanding are the notes of Bolingbroke and Horace Walpole. In England, as in France, the literature of memoirs had reached, by the end of the 19th century, dimensions that were barely accessible to review.
Germany
Poland
Russian memoirs
In Russian literature, a number of notes begin with “The History of the Book.” Great Moscow about the deeds that we have heard from reliable men and that we have seen in our eyes,” the famous Prince Kurbsky, which has the character of a pamphlet rather than history, but important as an expression of the opinion of a well-known party.
The Time of Troubles gave rise to a whole series of narratives from contemporaries and eyewitnesses of the Troubles, but with a few exceptions, these works cannot be considered simple-minded records of what was seen and heard: in almost all the legends there appears either a biased point of view, or influences from which the simplicity and truthfulness of the author’s testimony suffers. Not to mention the works that appeared even before the end of the Troubles (the story of Archpriest Terenty), journalistic features are not alien to the two largest narratives about the Troubles - Vremennik by Ivan Timofeev and “The Tale of the Siege of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery” by Abraham Palitsyn. In both works, the desire to expose the vices of Muscovites prevails. society and with them explain the origin of the unrest; Depending on such a task, there is a lack of chronological connection, gaps in factual testimony, and an abundance of abstract reasoning and moralizing.
The later works of eyewitnesses of the Troubles, which appeared under Tsars Mikhail and Alexei, differ from the earlier ones in their greater objectivity and more factual depiction of the era (“Words” by Prince I. A. Khvorostinin, especially the story of Prince I. M. Katyrev of Rostov, included in Sergei’s chronograph Kubasov), but in them the presentation is often subordinated either to conventional rhetorical devices (notes of Prince Semyon Shakhovsky, dating back to 1601-1649), or to one general point of view (for example, the official one - in the manuscript attributed to Patriarch Philaret and depicting events from 1606 until the election of Michael as Tsar).
Therefore, as a historical source, those few works that deviate from the general literary template and do not go beyond a simple ingenuous presentation of events are of greater importance. This is, for example, the life of the teacher. Dionysius, Archimandrite of the Trinity-Sergius Convent, which in 1648 - 54. was written by Trinity cellarer Simon Azaryin, and the cellarer from Moscow added his memories. Dormition Cathedral Ivan Nasedka (cf. S. F. Platonov, “ Old Russian legends and stories about troubled times as a historical source", St. Petersburg, 1888; the texts of the legends are printed. by him in the published archaeographic book. Commission "Historical Library", vol. 13). The works of Kotoshikhin, Shusherin (life of Nikon), Avvakum (autobiography), and Semyon Denisov bear the character of notes or personal memories.
Peter I
Alexander II
Of the numerous memoirs about the era of Alexander II, the notes of N.V. Berg (on Polish conspiracies), Count Valuev, N.S. Golitsyn (on the abolition of corporal punishment, in “Russian Antiquity”, 1890), A.L. Zisserman are of particular importance (Caucasian memories, in the “Russian Archive”, 1885), Levshin, Count M.N. Muravyov, P.N. Obninsky, N.K. Ponomarev (“Memoirs of the mediator of the first call”, in “Russian Antiquity”, 1891, no. 2), N. P. Semyonova, Y. A. Solovyova, gr. D. N. Tolstoy-Znamensky.
Literary Memoirs
Literary memoirs of the 19th century are very numerous. These are the notes of S. T. Aksakov, P. V. Annenkov, Askochensky, Bodyansky (in the “Collection of the Society of Amateurs Russian literature", 1891), N.P. Brusilova (in "Historical Vestn." 1893, No. 4), Buslaeva, book. P. A. Vyazemsky, A. D. Galakhov (in “Historical Vestn.” 1891 No. 6 and 1892 No. 1 and 2), Herzen, Panaev, Golovacheva-Panaeva, Grech, I. I. Dmitrieva, V. R. Zotov (“Historical Vestn.”, 1890), M. F. Kamenskaya, Kolyupanova, Makarova,
Memoir literature
Memoir literature 1. Scope and composition of the concept. 1. SCOPE AND COMPOSITION OF THE CONCEPT.- M. l. (from the French memoire - memory) - works of writing that consolidate in one form or another the memories of their authors about the past. Sometimes approaching fiction, in particular, for example. to such genres as family chronicle (see) and different kinds historical fiction, M. l. However, it differs from them in the desire to accurately reproduce a certain area of reality. Unlike fiction, works of memoir literature carry exclusively or predominantly cognitive functions without any special artistic attitudes. However, it is sometimes extremely difficult to draw a clear line between them and fiction. Neither “The Diary of Kostya Ryabtsev” by Ognev, nor “Confessions d’un enfant du siecle” by Musset with the works of M. l. are not. But already in Dickens’s “David Copperfield” or especially in S. Aksakov’s “Family Chronicle” we find a huge number of autobiographical realities, which form the basis of literary and artistic treatment. Feedback is quite possible here - in the monuments of M. l. There may be, to one degree or another, a desire for artistic expressiveness. Thus, the memoirs of an Italian adventurer of the 18th century. Casanova is no stranger to the techniques of the gallant adventure novel of the Rococo era, and the memoirs of the Decembrist N. A. Bestuzhev are written in a clearly idealizing everyday manner, following the models of the classical biographies of Plutarch. The combination of the aspects of “reliable” and “fiction” in a memoir creates enormous difficulties for a biographer of a writer or a researcher of his work (a classic example of this fusion is Goethe’s “Dichtung und Warheit”). The proportion of the relationship between both elements can vary extremely greatly: the elements of fiction, almost completely dominant in Stern’s “Sentimental Journey,” fade into the background in Karamzin’s “Letters of a Russian Traveler,” an elaborate diary written by Karamzin during his trip to the West. Europe; This work stands at the border between artistic and literary works. The latter often turns out to be deeply fruitful for literature: for example, “Chapaev” by Furmanov, being an artistic generalization of a certain period and corner civil war, at the same time retains greater degree closeness to reality, which undoubtedly increases the reader’s attention and contributes to the success of the work. 2. CLASS DETERMINITY OF MEMOIRS GENRES.- In literary studies of the past, attempts have been made repeatedly to establish the general formal characteristics of literary fiction. These attempts were not in any way successful. Features characteristic of memoir works of some eras cease to be mandatory in other eras; the products of some class groups are radically different from works that express a different class ideology and serve a different class practice. The Lefovites cultivated M. l. for its “factuality” in contrast to fiction, supposedly based on “fiction”. It is not difficult to discover the fictitiousness of this division: memoirs very often embellish reality, depict it from a certain angle, and outright distortion of facts. Smirnova’s “Notes” do not cease to be a fact M. l. because they contain a lot of unreliable and downright erroneous things. 3. ISSUES OF RELIABILITY M. L.- The documentary form of M. l., the apparent “ingenuousness” of her narration does not, however, serve as a guarantee of its veracity. Memoirs suffer the usual fate of testimony, even in the absence of malicious distortion of reality; the author's class position, his worldview affect both the choice of facts, their coverage, and the conclusions from these facts; orientation of M. l. cannot but serve certain purposes of class practice. Tatishchev also took this point into account when determining the degree of reliability in Count Matveev’s report about the Streltsy revolt: “Sylvester Medvedev, a monk of the Chudov Monastery, and Count Matveev,” he says in his “Russian History,” “described the Streltsy rebellion, only in legends of the passions very they disagree and are more disgusted, because Count Matveev’s father was killed by archers, and Medvedev himself took part in that rebellion.” The idea that the study of M. l. does not require special proof. can be scientifically fruitful not only adjusted for the personal bias and direct interest of the authors (similar to those noted by Tatishchev), but first of all, subject to the disclosure of the specific historical class purposefulness of the memoirs, which fully retains its important role in cases where the author acts as a “third-party observer.” Memoirs, like any other literature of class society, serve ideological and political struggle with one class enemy or another. In this regard, references from the book. Kurbsky’s focus on “reliable men” does not prevent us from perceiving his notes as a sharp political pamphlet in his struggle with Ivan the Terrible or, more broadly, in the struggle of one group of landowners against another, which seized power in the Moscow state. 5. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MEMOIRS.- Memoirs, as a source of information about the life of a particular era, provide important material on the history of literary life. We know a number of notes devoted to literary life or reproducing the most interesting moments from the life of a particular literary artist. These are eg. notes of the brothers Goncourt, George Sand, Chateaubriand and others. In Russian. we have an extensive literary history that has significant historical and literary value. Here we must keep in mind, along with the notes of the artists themselves, words, such as. Pushkin’s diary, Fet’s “My Memoirs”, etc., as well as notes from those who, due to the nature of their activities, had the opportunity to observe literary life closely from its daily, everyday side, which is not very accessible to the general public. Thus, N. I. Grech, the author of “Notes on My Life” (2nd ed., St. Petersburg, 1886, last - M., 1928), had the opportunity, as editor of the “Northern Bee,” to provide a lot of information on the history of Russian artistic words and journalism (in particular, about the activities of censorship), although he often deliberately distorted them. A. V. Nikitenko (“My story about myself and what I witnessed in life”) reveals many interesting episodes from the activities of the Censorship Committee, of which he was a long-term member. Memoirs of A. Panaeva (see), ex-wife I. I. Panaeva, and then Nekrasov’s common-law wife for 15 years, contains a lot of information not only about the personality and literary work of Nekrasov, but also about a whole galaxy of writers with whom she had to meet or about I heard a lot from friends. 6. MAIN HISTORICAL MILESTONES M. L.- After all that has been said above, it is clear that studying the social nature of M. l. It is most convenient to use the material of specific memoir genres that have historically developed in a specific class style and have a certain ideological content. So, in the very fact of increased gravitation towards M. l. In general, the class orientation of literary formations can already have an effect. The attraction to the individualistic type of memoirs on the part of A. France (“Little Pierre”, “The Book of My Friend”, etc.) cannot but be connected with the passivity and passionism of his work, and through this creativity - with passive role, which the group of middle bourgeoisie that put it forward, cut off from direct participation in production and in the economic struggle, must have realized that it was becoming more and more hopeless (see France). However, from the repeatedly observed fact - the dual use of the same literary material- it is clear that even in its general form, interest in M. l. cannot be interpreted in isolation from the place it occupies in the concrete situation of the class struggle.
2. Class determination of memoir genres.
3. Questions of reliability of M. l.
4. Techniques for examining M. l.
5. The meaning of memoirs.
6. Main historical milestones of M. l.
Quite diverse genres of M. l. often intertwined with each other. The primary and, in a certain sense, the most primitive form of M. l. is a diary - daily or periodic entries by the author, outlining the events of his personal life against the background of the events of contemporary reality (the latter, however, is not always necessary). The diary represents the primary form of M. l. - there is no general perspective of events here, and the narrative is based on the molecular connection of the records, united by the unity of the person presenting them, the system of his views. An example of this type is the recently published “Diaries” of M. Shahinyan. Memories or notes are a more complex and frequent form of M. l. Here the author gets the opportunity to look back from a perspective, cover a larger period of time and analyze its events from the point of view of a certain ideological concept. There is less randomness in memories; they contain much more elements of selection and screening out events. The third form can be considered an autobiography, shorter than memoirs in scope and covering the most important and turning points in the history of a person (memories can tell about reality in general, but for an autobiography it is necessary to find the personality at the center of the story). An autobiography is often written for special reasons - e.g. a writer reviewing his creative path(see the collection of autobiographies “Our first literary steps” by N. N. Fidler, “Writers about themselves”, Edited by V. Lidin, etc.). An autobiography dedicated to certain, especially turning-point events in the life of a writer, is often also called a confession (cf., for example, “Confession” by L. Tolstoy, written by him after a creative turning point in 1882, or the dying “Author’s Confession” by Gogol). This term, however, is not entirely defined, and for example. Rousseau's Confessions are more of a memoir. If the center of gravity is transferred from the author to persons with whom he was connected in some way in the past, a form of biographical memories arises. These are eg. memoirs of N. Prokopovich about Gogol, Gorky about L. Tolstoy, which do not provide a complete scientific biography, but provide the most valuable material for it. Finally, if memories of a loved one are written in connection with his death and under its direct impression, we have the form of an obituary.
It must be noted that this classification is schematic and in itself does not determine the genre essence of a particular work by M. L., although it brings us closer to revealing this essence. Study of forms of M. l. must be specific: only then will typological analysis be saturated with specific class content and give us a complete understanding of the essence of those socio-political tendencies that define this or that genre of literary fiction. Abstract study of M. l. outside the processes of class struggle that create it is absolutely fruitless.
Timeless features do not define the being of a literary form; the form and content of the cut are determined by the interweaving of specific socio-historical conditions. In such memoirs as “Bolotov’s Notes,” on the one hand, and “The History of My Contemporary” by V. G. Korolenko, on the other, there is nothing in common except the desire for the most truthful depiction of the past, a desire manifested in different contents and different forms in two representatives of different classes in two deeply different historical eras. Studying memoirs outside their specific class context inevitably leads to idealistic abstractions.
Being a specific form of manifestation of certain styles, memoir genres are determined in all their features by the same socio-economic conditions that determine styles, and serve the same goals of class practice. The memoirs of S. T. Aksakov, created by a representative of landowner Slavophilism, differ significantly from the memoirs of I. A. Khudyakov, a representative of the revolutionary raznochinstvo, who expressed the interests of the revolutionary peasant democracy of the 60s. Aksakov’s memoirs (“Family Chronicle”, “Childhood of Bagrov’s Grandson”) depict the everyday idyll of a noble estate of the late 18th and early XIX centuries, idyllically interpreting even the ugliest aspects of this life (“good day” of the landowner, including kicks to the servants), give a picture of the upbringing, life and training of a nobleman-boy in the conditions of an established, calm, prosperous estate life, highlighting as a necessity the cruelest bullying of serfs (grandfather’s “sin” and other episodes). Aksakov’s memoirs are a genre telling about family estate life noble nest the end of the 18th century - they idealize the bygone world, to which the Slavophile landowner gravitated with his social cult of the ancient landowner system. Thus, the artistic memoirs of S. T. Aksakov in the class struggle performed the political function of protecting noble estate land ownership at the time of the intensification of the revolutionary struggle against feudalism in Russia, when it had been brewing since the late 50s. The revolutionary situation wrested the “liberation of the peasants” from serfdom.
The memoirs created by the revolutionary democrat and Karakoz resident I. A. Khudyakov are different. I. A. Khudyakov - representative of the avant-garde of revolutionary populism of the 60s, supporter political revolution in the interests of the peasantry and the “people” in general. Undoubtedly sharing the views on the asceticism of a revolutionary and the “severe discipline of personal life” common to the entire Ishutin circle, he gave his memoirs different stylistic and genre features than the representative of landownership. The memoir genre of I. A. Khudyakov, reflecting the socio-political life of the era of the 60s, is an expression of “the second stage of the revolution - the raznochinsky or bourgeois-democratic stage,” according to Lenin. If the landowner-memoirist poeticized his past, his childhood and youth, the revolutionary commoner regarded this past as an irreparable evil. “Our life,” Khudyakov states in the preface regarding his upbringing, “remained broken and broken and was filled with a number of physical and moral sufferings.” I. A. Khudyakov recognized the benefits of “autobiographies, frankly written,” the character of which he imagined as follows: “Real life is always more instructive than fictional; and in this respect well-written biographies are always more instructive than novels.” In an essay about his life, he “omitted those particular details that could have been a godsend for a novelist or artist,” and gave an image of “his unsuccessful struggle with the most severe obstacles to the achievement of the human ideal.” The author's class position and worldview determine the specific historical features of this memoir genre.
Differentiation of memoir genres also exists within a single class style. The memoirs of S. I. Kanatchikov “The History of My Life” and A. E. Badaev “Bolsheviks in the State Duma” are works by representatives of the working class, created almost simultaneously during the era of the construction of socialism (1928-1929). While there is a unity of class consciousness and class experience between these two memoirists, their memoirs represent different genres. “The History of My Life” by S. I. Kanatchikov is a social and everyday memoir, the memoirs of A. E. Badaev are socio-political. S.I. Kanatchikov paints a picture of the gradual growth and transformation of a village boy into a conscious worker, proletarian. Against the background of hard working life in the factories of Moscow and St. Petersburg, the process of formation of a young proletarian, a conscious fighter for the interests of the proletariat, in conditions of capitalist exploitation, the path of his cultural growth and political development and the fight against capitalism are shown. The memoirs of A. E. Badaev reveal the political struggle of the Bolshevik faction in the State Duma in the last years before the revolution of 1917. They describe the revolutionary events recent years existence of the monarchy and show how the activities of the faction were reflected in the revolutionary struggle of the working class and how, in turn, certain moments of the mass labor movement were reflected in the work of the faction. These two memoirs give different aspects of a single class experience. Since the authors, representatives of the same class, paid attention to different aspects of reality, they created different genres within the single style of proletarian literature. Nevertheless, these are genres of one class experience - representatives of proletarian socialism.
Each memoirist shows only those facts on which his class consciousness is concentrated, grouping and interpreting the facts from his own class position in the interests of the class struggle. The social and class interests of the author of the memoirs are determined, for example. the fact that A. Galakhov, a representative of the reactionary nobility of the 40s, speaking in his memoirs about 1825, did not say a word about the Decembrist uprising. On the contrary, A. I. Herzen, who belonged to the “generation of noble landowner revolutionaries of the first half of the last century,” in which “despite all the fluctuations between democracy and liberalism, the democrat still prevailed” (Lenin), gave an enthusiastic assessment of the Decembrist uprising as ideological fighters against tsarism, infecting their descendants with their example.
Class consciousness and class interests, while determining the themes of memoirs, of course also determine the memoirist’s point of view on the phenomena depicted, on their coverage and interpretation. From here it is clear that the same phenomenon (event, person, fact of literature or journalism) in the memories of representatives of different social groups receives not only a different assessment, but also a different presentation of the sequence of the event or a different retelling of what was heard and seen. L. Tolstoy, in the memoirs of his like-minded people, receives the traditional iconographic appearance of a sentimental sage and non-resistance to evil. In the memoirs of M. Gorky, he is shown as a living person with bright features of contradictory psychology, through which Lenin saw a man in master Tolstoy. The question naturally arises, whose portrayal of L. Tolstoy is the most truthful, the most reliable, i.e., objectively historical? The memoirs closest to objective truth will be those that reflect the criticism and worldview of the advanced, revolutionary class of a given era. Gorky's memoirs represent the highest degree of objectivity in the knowledge and depiction of L. Tolstoy, while the memoirs of the Tolstoyans do not provide a correct reflection of reality. Highest degree The memoirs of proletarian revolutionaries also represent an objective historical knowledge of reality in comparison with the memoirists of other groups (classes) who have gone to those active now. The revolutionary practice of the advanced class provides the most true, accurate and deep knowledge of phenomena.
The difference in class tendencies, determined by the difference in the class experience of different class groups (classes), creates deeply different and opposing genres of literary fiction. Single genre M. l. does not exist. The genres of literary fiction arising on different and opposing class foundations. different and opposite in both primary and secondary characteristics.
The class orientation of memoirs reduces their objective-cognitive function, usually if it comes from reactionary classes, exploiting classes interested in covering up the contradictions of reality. And vice versa, the consistent partisanship of representatives of the revolutionary classes increases the objective-cognitive value of their memoirs. In this regard, the highest level is represented by the corresponding records of proletarian revolutionaries, leaders of the working class, whose revolutionary practice, historical tasks and ultimate goals form the real basis for the most profound and accurate knowledge of the surrounding world. This is Lenin’s final brochure about the Second Congress of the RSDLP (“One step forward, two steps back,” 1904), which is a kind of “memoir” of one of the participants in the events. This work remains unsurpassed to this day as the pinnacle of a truly scientific and truly objective, with all its partisanship, understanding of one of the most important stages in the development of the international labor movement. It is enough to compare with this Leninist Bolshevik, genuine authenticity the subjectivist distortion and vulgarization of historical reality by L. Trotsky in his book “Mein Leben” (My Life) in order to see the completely opposite cognitive significance of M. l., the class orientation of which follows the line of class interests of the bourgeoisie and counter-revolution.
When assessing autobiographical entries, in addition to all of the above, one should keep in mind that these entries are often compiled with the explicit purpose of self-justification and self-defense of their author. The most detailed and extremely factual at first glance notes of the Decembrist D.I. Zavalishin, when compared with a number of historical documents, turn out to be very unstable in their supposedly documentary-accurate statements, especially regarding the behavior of Zavalishin himself in the case of December 14: the noble pose of the author of the notes is completely discredited a series of protocol records, sealed with his signature, and a report from the investigative commission. Even in cases where the author sets himself the special goal of exposing himself, one should not succumb to the emphatically sincere tone of such self-exposure. In “Confession,” Rousseau uses this effective motive of extreme frankness more than once in an actorly manner.
But notes from the author are of particular value to a literary historian. great artists words and provide rich material not only for studying the writer’s biography, but also for studying the creative personality of the writer (memoirs of J. Sand, Mme de Stael, the diary of the Goncourts, the memoirs of Goethe and others - in the West, the diaries of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Bryusov, memories of M. Gorky - with us). In such works we often find direct indications of the writer’s intentions and the creative history of individual specific works. In addition, in addition to cases of direct instructions, records acquire a new and special meaning in the context of creative history, in which vital material is reproduced in documentary form, which was found in the same author and another reflection - artistic. From this point of view, the memories of M. Gorky, collected in his books “Childhood”, “In People”, “My Universities”, etc., are of great value. A comparison of the persons depicted here and the events depicted with the first early works of the same Gorky provide excellent material for judgments not only about the creative process, about the emergence work of art, but also about creative method, O artistic style writer, about his class attitude to the material of life.
M. l. can further provide abundant historical material not only for literary research, but also for the literary artists themselves. It is known that when creating War and Peace, Tolstoy made extensive use, along with general historical research, of the memoirs of contemporaries of the era he depicted. Memoir materials often provide much more scope than scientific works on history for studying the everyday nature of the era, the psychology of individuals, etc.; M. l. sometimes speaks more to the writer’s imagination and provides more resources for the concrete embodiment of it artistic images. That is why the authors of the so-called. “historical” novels willingly resort to memoir sources. Anatole France, in the novel “The Gods Thirst,” depicting the Great French Revolution, and in the collection of short stories “The Mother-of-Pearl Casket,” dating to the same era, reproduces a number of episodes borrowed from the extensive M. l.
Often and much wider use of M. l. - when an artist borrows from someone else’s notes all the plot material and type of his work. This is how many stories and novellas of Soviet literature arose, dedicated to the era of the civil war. As a typical example of the use of one of these memoirs, one can point to Vsevolod Ivanov’s story “The Death of the Iron”, the plot of which is based on the memories of the Red commander L. Degtyarev, but the transmission and coverage of the facts have been changed.
Due to the fact that most of the notes are not directly prepared for publication and are made public only later, the value of the material presented in them increases, since it is less subject to distortion by the official censorship of the author at the time and to the correction of the preliminary secret censorship of the author himself. Because of this, in M. l. Such details have reached us that they hardly penetrated or did not penetrate at all into the press of their time. In the notes of A. S. Pishchevich, for example. we find many facts that the author had the opportunity to closely observe as a dragoon during the reign of Catherine II and then in the civil service under Paul I; Many of these facts reveal for us the details of officer and bureaucratic life at that time, and report on all sorts of “everyday” abuses in the service. It is not surprising that memoirs preserved from the effects of contemporary censorship, when made public in subsequent eras, arouse particularly suspicious attitudes on the part of censors. Thus, Bolotov’s memoirs, dedicated to the 18th century, were significantly distorted in the first edition, published after the author’s death: in subsequent editions it was necessary to restore missing episodes from the manuscript, sometimes depicting representatives of the bureaucracy, officers and clergy in an unattractive light, even against Bolotov’s wishes. Naturally, the greatest scope for studying M. l. as a monument to past life and historical conditions arises when state power passes into the hands of other classes that are not interested in “concealing the secrets” of a class that has already disappeared from the scene.
The October Revolution especially contributed to the revival of literary literature, which relates to the past and reveals what, under the conditions of this past, could not be revealed earlier. Whole line memoirs of revolutionary figures have been made public over the past few years, providing enormous material on history revolutionary movement in Russia, on the history of political parties and internal party disagreements, revealing the specific situation of the class struggle (memories of Lenin by N.K. Krupskaya, A.I. Elizarova, - V.N. Sokolova (“Party card No. 0046340”), N. Nikiforova ( "Ants of the Revolution"), etc.).
At the same time, in connection with the heightened sense of historical responsibility of our revolutionary era, the “latentness” usual for most memoirs turned out to be radically revised: the recording of what is happening in the revolutionary struggle is now made, in a number of cases, not in the leisure time of old people, and certainly not in in any case, not for distant descendants, but in the process of struggle, for contemporaries, for comrades in the same struggle. Most memories of Lenin are of this nature; Such a goal dictated the organizational work to record and record memories of the activities of the Red Army and began on the initiative of Gorky, “History of Factories and Plants.”
In this situation M. l. creates a number of specific class genres. History of the genre evolution of M. l. has not yet been written, nothing has yet been done to study individual memoir genres from the point of view of their class characteristics, but it is still possible to note some groups of memoir works with a fairly obvious social-genre nature. “Comments on the Gallic War” by Julius Caesar, which combines a number of purely military, political, ethnographic, geographical and other information about Gaul, the circumstances of its origin and, most importantly, its general tendency - to get to know the conquered country and contrast it with the idea of Roman statehood - serve an expression not only of the expansion of the slave state in the era of its heyday (1st century BC), but also of the military-political strategy of Julius Caesar that grew on this soil, who brilliantly took advantage of the class and tribal contradictions of the Gauls in the interests of the Roman state. “Confessions” of St. Augustine (IV-V centuries AD), interpreting theological problems from an individual psychological point of view, telling about attacks of unbelief, religious doubts and hesitations, about the temptations of worldly life, finally designing itself in a style not intended for theologians , but for secular readers - is the result of the economic decline of the large-landowning class of the Roman Empire, whose interests were expressed by Augustine, and the peculiar literary and ideological “decadence” associated with this decline.
Geoffroy de Villegarduin's notes on the crusade, in which he himself took part, are typical of the feudal era. The feudal-church ideology of the ruling classes finds expression here primarily in the fact that Villehardouin tries to portray as a Christian feat the openly predatory campaign of the “crusaders” of 1202, which caused confusion even in the minds of his contemporaries; for the “holy army,” instead of fighting the “infidels,” as it was supposed to, entered into an agreement with the Venetian Republic and plundered the lands of the Christian East in order to form a new Latin empire on the ruins of Byzantium. The subordination of all historical and historical-everyday material cited in Villehardouin’s notes to the high theme of “serving the Lord,” disdain for fact as such, and replacement of analysis of facts with generalized declarations about them characterize literary design these notes.
The era of the liberation struggle of cities against the feudal lords is vividly reflected in the memoirs (“De vita sua”) of the French theologian-historian Guibert of Nogent (XI-XII centuries), hostile to the rising burghers, but already absorbing the influence coming from the emerging urban culture. Guibert studies closely surrounding reality(expressive descriptions of the history of the Lanskaya commune, his childhood, youth, etc.), life interests him in itself, he gravitates towards everyday sketches, etc.
The memoir part of Dante's "New Life" in his biographical comments to the sonnets and canzones dedicated to Beatrice, gives the theme of ideal-mystical love for a woman, familiar to the late Middle Ages, in a new, individualistic version, thereby reflecting that general individualism, which became more complex in Dante's work the traditional ideology of the feudal nobility in the context of the growth of trading cities.
The autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, a most characteristic work of the era of growth of capitalist relations in the 16th century, can be completely opposed to medieval memoirs. In the distinctly individualistic approach to facts, in the cultivation of colorful, life-saturated material, in the absence of lifeless, abstract, life-leading reasoning, not just the personal disposition of the artist-adventurer Benvenuto Cellini is revealed, but the ideology of the young bourgeoisie of the Renaissance, its willfulness and healthy epicureanism.
In Germany, the era of the Reformation and religious wars creates the form of political memoirs (notes of Charles V, autobiography of G. von Berlichingen, etc.), often turning into a pamphlet (see).
In Spain, which became in the XVI-XVII centuries. great colonial power, a group of memoirs appeared written by participants in the conquest (notes and memoirs of Columbus, Pizarro, Diaz, etc.). These memoirs are usually descriptions of travel to unknown lands, the life of exotic countries, and the exploits of Spanish weapons. They are imbued with the spirit of adventurism, Catholic missionary work, and admiration for the heroism of the conquerors.
Memoirs of the era of Louis XIII and Louis XIV in the choice of depicted facts, in the cultivation of little things related to court life and the royal person, and in connection with this in the microscosm of the very manner of depiction - one of the most visible literary manifestations of the courtly aristocratic environment of the 17th century. The most characteristic example can be the memoirs of Duke Saint-Simon, who speaks with equal significance about the major political events of that time, and about court intrigues, about the worldly appearance, about the manners of the king (cf. the memoirs of Louis XIV’s favorites Montespan and Maintenon, the gallant “Memoirs” Duke de Grammont", written at the beginning of the 18th century by A. Hamilton, as well as from earlier - “Memoirs” by Brantome, depicting the history and morals of the court of Charles IX and his successors).
We find similar types of memoirs in Russia, but, due to the general lag in the Russian historical process, only starting from the 18th century. (notes of Catherine II, Prince Dashkova, Yu. V. Dolgorukov, F. N. Golitsyn, V. N. Golovina and many others).
Decomposition absolute monarchy was reflected in the character of Casanova’s memoirs (18th century), on the entire ideology of this international adventurer expressed in them, on the entertaining epicureanism of the playmaker, on the theme consisting of court, social and love intrigues, flavored with Kabbalistic charlatanism, on the main tendency towards amusing entertainment in choice of facts and presentation. Other trends permeate the memoirs of the ideologists of the rising bourgeoisie. Voltaire's memoirs disavow the old order; Rousseau (Confessions), Goldoni and Goethe, recounting their life stories, create a monumental biography of a representative of the rising third estate, growing into a central figure of the last century.
The French Revolution revives the genre of political memoirs (notes of Lafayette, Mme. de Staël, Mirabeau, C. Desmoulins, Madame Roland and many others), distinguished for the most part by a clearly expressed party orientation and passionate attitude to issues social life.
"Memoirs of a Parisian Bourgeois" by Dr. Veron, published in mid-19th c., and in the subject matter, which leads to a restaurant, to the stock exchange, to the editorial office, and in the nature of the presentation, designed not for readers who understand at a glance, belonging to a certain closed circle, but for a wider, “democratic” reading mass, they show ideology and interests of the bourgeoisie in the era of the heyday of industrial capitalism.
Russian M. l. XIX century Along with the secular and literary notes of Smirnova and Kern, he gives family and political memoirs of the Decembrists and people close to them (notes of M. A. Bestuzhev and others). The character of these memoirs is connected - in the first group - with the noble character of Russian literature of the early 19th century. and - in the second group - with the noble-bourgeois nature of the December uprising. The mood of the revolutionary-democratic intelligentsia late XIX V. manifest themselves with the greatest strength and completeness in the memoirs of Kropotkin, Morozov, Vera Figner, M. Frolenko and a number of others.
Soviet literature, critically using the best traditions of revolutionary memoirs, sharpens their agitation and organizing role. At the same time, in connection with the increasing interest in revolutionary and generally “social” topics, a curious feature is observed in the very process of creating memoirs: memories are now often written down from the words of peasants or workers who do not have special literary skills and aspirations, and sometimes are completely illiterate, but keep I have a lot in my memory that may interest the Soviet reader. For example, it is built on such records. The book “The Serf Grandmother” by T. Ferapontova, published by Guise in 1926, contains a retelling of the true memories of the peasant woman M. I. Volkova about the times of serfdom. Behind Lately For the purpose of such records, special expeditions began to be organized (recording the memories of Ural workers about October revolution, made by S. I. Mirer and V. Borovik (“Revolution”, 1931), the story of the old collective farmer Vasyunkina about her life, recorded by R. S. Lipets, etc.).
Typological differentiation of M. l. must be carried out not only vertically, but also horizontally, that is, not only in connection with the historical change of social formations and the dominance of various classes, but also in connection with their existence and struggle in the same era. It is enough, as an example, to contrast Remarque’s book of military memoirs “All Quiet in the West” and Furmanov’s combat memoirs in his books “Chapaev” and “Mutiny”. In the first case, we have before us a petty-bourgeois pacifist writer serving the class interests of the bourgeoisie, in the second we have before us a proletarian writer and revolutionary fighter who knows how to reveal the social meaning of individual military episodes and not only shows the way out, but also agitates for it.
In conclusion, it is necessary to once again strongly emphasize the enormous political role of memoirs. Very often, under the guise of an objective “chronicle of events,” the memoirist defends an incorrect, harmful belief system. Such are, for example, the famous memoirs about February Revolution A. Shlyapnikov, Menshevik and anarcho-syndicalist interpretation of the history of the revolution, etc. Political memoirs represent a naked weapon of class struggle. This requires increased vigilance in this area. Bibliography:
Pekarsky P., Russian memoirs of the 18th century, Sovremennik, 1855, No. 4, 5, 8; Gennadi G., Notes (memoirs) of Russian people, Bibliographical instructions, “Readings in Imp. about history and ancient history. Russian at Moscow univers.", 1861, book. IV; Pylyaev M.I., List of the most important memoirs and notes left by Russian writers and public figures and still not yet made public, “Historical Bulletin”, 1890, I; Chechulin N., Memoirs, their significance and place among historical sources, St. Petersburg, 1891; Mintslov S. R., Review of notes, diaries, memoirs, letters and travels related to the history of Russia and printed in Russian. lang., vol. I, II-III, IV-V, Novgorod, 1911-1912.
Every person strives to leave a mark on this world. For some, it is important to continue the family line, raise children, seeing a part of themselves in them. Other people, especially those who are gifted in literature, prefer to write essays and diary entries throughout their lives, which ultimately become the very embodiment of their lives. In this article, you will learn what memoirs are, what types there are, and whose memoirs are the most popular.
Etymology of the word
A French word with Latin origins, mémoire literally means “memory.” There are also such interpretations of meaning as “think”, “remember”. Indeed, memoirs are memories embodied in writing. The process of writing such works requires the ability to think, analyze one’s own actions - to reflect. Only reflection helps a person grow spiritually. For many professional writers It is important to “inscribe” your own personality into literary works. Artists also used this technique, inscribing themselves, their friends and contemporaries into their own paintings. An example is Raphael Santi's painting "The School of Athens".
History of literature
The fashion for such creations did not arise a year or even a century ago. The French classical writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries knew well what memoirs were. According to the written recollections of famous Frenchmen, these days they put theatrical performances, they are no less relevant in their problems than several centuries ago. Memoirs were written by courtiers, servants of kings, and even mistresses of rulers.
It is amazing that such texts were read more by residents of the French provinces than by Parisians, and after the French king weakened print censorship, the memoirs were distributed in thousands of copies not only in France, but throughout Europe. Prominent ladies at the court of Marie Antoinette also wrote such works; these writers had to endure the most severe trials of revolution, imperialism, and emigration. The extremely popular notes of court ladies at that time gave rise to a powerful fashion for this genre.
What is a memoir?
Memoirs are a collection of personal memories, a kind of chronicle, in the events of which the writer himself took a direct part. They can describe not only events, memorable days, but also people who the author met throughout his life or a specific period of time. Often these works have the character of documentary reading; they also have a claim to being the primary source of truth.
Historians often turn to memoirs and analyze the biographies of iconic historical figures, trying to see the relationship between events in public and personal life. However, it is worth noting that not all of them can be truthful; on the contrary, each such work has a share of fiction, with the exception of memories of the war written by ordinary people. As a rule, strong emotions such as fear, anxiety, pain of loss are conveyed by a person as sincerely as possible.
Russian memoirs
Representatives of the upper classes also became interested in the French fashion for memoirs back in the pre-Petrine era, but, unlike European writers, Russian writers collected these author's notes into collections about Russian people and Russian life. After the collections, periodical author's magazines began to appear in Russia, which also published memoirs with attribution, and less often - anonymous ones. Thanks to these works, foreigners, and even the Russian people themselves, were able, from century to century, to better understand the extraordinary mentality and culture of our people.
IN Soviet time the memoirs lost their popularity, and if they were published, it was in single copies, underground. Censorship did not allow overly frank, critical and satirical essays. And there were reasons for this, but still, many writers managed to preserve their works and their publication during the Thaw could only be compared with the declassification of state-important matters - such a strong public resonance was created by these works.
Memoirs of war
Literary creativity in the twentieth century was to some extent marked by the era of war autobiographies. One of the most famous names among the pilots of World War II is the name of Alexander Ivanovich Pokryshkin, a pilot of the Red Army Air Force. His memories of the war are reflected in his memoirs "Know yourself in battle. Stalin's Falcons against the Luftwaffe aces. 1941-1945." The author of these works accounted for 59 enemy aircraft. The head of the Guards Aviation is also the author of his own military tactics. This is why Pokryshkin’s records are so important - he was part of the local leadership, he knew everything about the special operations courageously carried out by the Red Army soldiers.
Books-memoirs telling about the events of the war are endowed with vivid descriptions of air battles, deep reflections on a person’s place in war, his behavior and the revelation of his own essence. In war, according to Pokryshkin, a person learns his own edges of the possible. What is a memoir for a front-line writer? This is, first of all, a way to reflect all the worst things you have experienced on paper and finally allow your mind to forget the horrific images of war.
The meaning of the word MEMOIRS in Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language
MEMOIRS
memoirs, units no, m. (fr. mеmoires).
1. A literary work in the form of notes about past events in which the author was a contemporary or participant (lit.).
2. One of the names of printed works of scientific institutions (obsolete).
Ushakov. Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language by Ushakov. 2012
See also interpretations, synonyms, meanings of the word and what MEMOIRS are in Russian in dictionaries, encyclopedias and reference books:
- MEMOIRS in Statements of famous people:
- MEMOIRS in the Dictionary One sentence, definitions:
- a book about the life that the author would like to live. ... - MEMOIRS in Aphorisms and clever thoughts:
a book about the life the author would like to live. ... - MEMOIRS in the Dictionary of Literary Terms:
- (from the French memoire - memory, recollection) - a type of epic literature: a chronicle and factual narration on behalf of the author, in which ... - MEMOIRS in the Big Encyclopedic Dictionary:
(French memoires - memories) a type of documentary literature, a literary narrative by a participant in social, literary, artistic life about events and people whose contemporary ... - MEMOIRS in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
(French memoires, from Latin memoria - memory), memories of the past, written by participants or contemporaries of any events. Created based on personal... - MEMOIRS V Encyclopedic Dictionary Brockhaus and Euphron:
(French: M?moires), notes from contemporaries - narratives about events in which the author M. took part or which are known to him from eyewitnesses. ... - MEMOIRS in the Modern Encyclopedic Dictionary:
(French memoires - memories), a type of documentary literature, a literary narrative of a participant in social, literary, artistic life about events and people whose contemporary ... - MEMOIRS
[from French memoires memories] 1) a literary work in the form of notes about past events in which the author was a contemporary or participant; 2) ... - MEMOIRS in the Encyclopedic Dictionary:
ov, units outdated or iron. memoir, a, m. 1. Notes about past events made by a contemporary or participant in these events. Write … - MEMOIRS in the Encyclopedic Dictionary:
, -ov. Notes, literary memories of past events, made by a contemporary or participant in these events. Military m. II adj. memoir... - MEMOIRS in the Big Russian Encyclopedic Dictionary:
MEMOIRS (French memoires - memories), a type of doc. lit-ry, lit. narration of a social participant, lit., art. life about events and people, contemporary... - MEMOIRS in the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedia:
(French M emoires), notes from contemporaries? narratives about events in which the author M. took part or which are known to him from ... - MEMOIRS in the Complete Accented Paradigm according to Zaliznyak:
memoirs "ry, memoirs" rov, memoirs "ram, memoirs" ry, memoirs "rami, ... - MEMOIRS in the Popular Explanatory Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Russian Language:
-ov, plural only. 1) A literary work that narrates in the form of notes on behalf of the author about events of the past, a participant or witness of which... - MEMOIRS in the Thesaurus of Russian Business Vocabulary:
Syn: memories, ... - MEMOIRS in the New Dictionary of Foreign Words:
(French memoires memories) 1) autobiographical notes; memories of events and persons of the past directly or indirectly involved in the life of the author; ... - MEMOIRS in the Dictionary of Foreign Expressions:
[ 1. autobiographical notes; memories of events and persons of the past directly or indirectly involved in the life of the author; 2. mouth scientific... - MEMOIRS in the Russian Language Thesaurus:
Syn: memories, ... - MEMOIRS in Abramov's Dictionary of Synonyms:
cm. … - MEMOIRS in the Russian Synonyms dictionary:
Syn: memories, ... - MEMOIRS in the New Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language by Efremova:
pl. 1) A literary work that narrates in the form of notes on behalf of the author about past events in which he was a participant or witness. ... - MEMOIRS in Lopatin's Dictionary of the Russian Language:
memoirs, ...