Mapa pamięci w ujęciu pokoleniowym: wymiar ukraiński

Abstract

The author attempts to reconstruct the map of collective memory in generational perspective. The article focuses on two novels – Oksana Zabuzhko’s The Museum of Abandoned Secrets and Lina Kostenko’s Memoirs of a Ukrainian Madman. It is important to notice that generational memory is an expression of a symbolic experience and its re-evaluation. The national identity in Zabuzhko’s novel is represented as the memory of the war generation which has lost its heroism in the context of Soviet propaganda. Kostenko’s novel, on the other hand, focuses on the generation of the 1960s. Currently, we can find three generations in the Ukrainian society, which construe the memory of the past in different ways. This provokes one to make efforts to consolidate fragmented memories and find common values which will be recognized collectively. The juxtaposition of the selected novels demonstrates how different the images of individual and collective memory in contemporary Ukrainian literature are and can trigger further reflection on the selective nature of memory in literature.