MEMORY, TRAUMA, TEXT: CONTEMPORARY MEMOIR LITERATURE BASED ON THE WORKS OF YEVGENIYA KONONENKO «THAT CRAZY YEAR» AND SALMAN RUSHDIE «KNIFE. MEDITATION AFTER AN ATTEMPTED MURDER»
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32782/2522-4077-2025-215-16Keywords:
memoirs, autobiography, comparative literature, memory, traumaAbstract
The article offers a comparative analysis of Yevheniya Kononenko's “That Crazy Year” (2023) and Salman Rushdie's “Knife. Meditation After an Attempted Murder” (2024), which depict traumatic experiences against the backdrop of global historical events. Yevheniya Kononenko's memoirs reflect the author's traumatic experiences caused by the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war and the dramatic struggle for the life of her terminally ill daughter. Salman Rushdie's memoir and philosophical book demonstrates the author's reflections caused by an assassination attempt, numerous knife wounds, and a long rehabilitation period. The form of memoir prose chosen by the authors confirms its relevance in the contemporary literary process, as it plays an important role in exploring private, sociocultural, and historical contexts. The confessional texts of Yevhenia Kononenko and Salman Rushdie focus both on traumatic experiences and on the radical changes in life caused by tragic events. For Yevhenia Kononenko, this is the collective traumatic experience of war, which correlates with personal tragedy; for Rushdie, it is physical and existential drama caused by violence. For both authors, turning to memoir prose became a way of rethinking events and values, as well as a method of taking control of their own traumatic experiences. Salman Rushdie sought to “respond to violence with art,” while Yevgenia Kononenko sought to bring order to the chaos of war through a chronological presentation of material. Special attention is paid to the use of intertextual references as a means of argumentation and reflection on existence. Yevheniya Kononenko uses the eighth verse of the third chapter of Ecclesiastes to emphasize the “different modes of existence” of times of peace and times of war, while Salman Rushdie uses a quote from Samuel Beckett about irreversible changes after “yesterday's misfortune.”
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