«Утрачена связь времен, связь культур…» – память об Осипе Мандельштаме в жизни и творчестве Варлама Шаламова

Abstract

The author of the article reflected upon the unique role that an illustrious acmeist poet Osip Mandelstam played in the life and work of Varlam Shalamov, a representative of the socalled labour camp literature. The author analysed and interpreted the picture of the poet as well as the sub-texts of this picture in Shalamov’s story Sherry brandy in the broad context of his essays and correspondance with Mandelstam’s widow (Nadezhda Mandelstam). The author concluded that the issue of memory is the key to understanding Shalamov’s view of Mandelstam. This issue comes to the forefront of the writer’s theoretical work in which the postulate of bringing the author of the volume Stone back to the common memory was put forward on numerous occasions. The lives of Mandelstam and Shalamov are the examples of exterminating the great authors of the Soviet literature, which, in the period of Stalinism, could be compared to a laboratory where numerous experiments on “mass amnesia”, that is wiping out the unwanted artists and theis works from the collective consciousness, were conducted. The author also concluded that the artistic vision of the last moments of Mandelstam’s life presented in the story Sherry brandy is in fact a phylosophical reflection on the sense of being a poet. It was also concluded that the work of the poet is a centre in wchich the past, the present and the future of culture come together. The transformation and actualisation of the senses from its past (for example motives, characters, plots, values) takes place in the works of the artist, which are the present of culture, thus giving them a chance to be remembered thanks to drawing from their abundance in the future. The poet is, therefore, the source and creator of cultural memory and the durability of his works determines the immortality of his thought.