„Jak pisarze pamiętają?” – teorie badań nad pamięcią a praktyka literacka

Abstract

Paraphrasing the title of Paul Connerton’s How Societies Remember, I ponder the questions how writers remember and whether the methodology of memory studies can be used by literary scholars to examine autobiographical works. In the first part, I discuss the concepts and theoretical approaches of such researchers as Maurice Halbwachs, Paul Ricoeur, Marc Augé, Paul Connerton, Aleida and Jan Assmann, Marianne Hirsch and Harald Welzer. In the second part, I analyze and interpret the examples taken from the so-called ‘personal documents’ by Jeremi Przybora, Leopold Tyrmand, Marek Hłasko, Jarosław Abramow-Newerly, Agnieszka Osiecka, Ewa Kuryluk, Agata Tuszyńska, Anna Mazurkiewicz and Monika Sznajderman. The paper focuses on both the ways of reviving memories in order to build an autobiographical narrative and the procedures used to conceal the repressed / forgotten elements of life.