Mälukultuur ja moraalne tunnistus: Teise maailmasõja mäletamine Bernard Kangro Tartu-romaanides / Memory Culture and Moral Witness. Remembering the Second World War in Bernard Kangro's Tartu novels
In: Methis: Studia Humaniora Estonica, Vol 10, Iss 13 (2014, Jg. 10 (2014), Heft 13
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Zugriff:
This article deals with how remembering the Second World War is conveyed in Bernard Kangro’s last three Tartu novels, The Stone Bridge (1963), The Black Book (1965) and Whirlfire (1969). The Second World War is a memory topos that has, more than anything else, divided the memory politics of European countries. If memory politics in Western Europe is focused predominantly on condemning Nazi crimes, primarily the Holocaust, then Eastern Europe, in addition to the legacy of Nazism, has to deal with the additional criminal legacy of Communism. To bridge the gap between Eastern and Western European nations’ collective memories, discussions started in 1990 about the European memory that should help form the basis for a unified European identity. In the opinion of Jan-Werner Müller, European memory assumes one of two processes. The first is linked to unifying the stances toward memory politics of various European nations; the second with unifying the contents of various collective memories. Although Kangro’s last three Tartu novels are among the peripheral works of Estonian cultural memory, they nevertheless deal with themes that have become relevant in the twenty-first century, on the one hand linking collective memory and national memory politics, and on the other hand, addressing the concept of European memory. Using Kangro’s Tartu novels, I first analyse the problematic aspects of national memory politics as they relate to remembering the Second World War in Estonia. Secondly, I point out the implicit criticism in the Tartu novels of the more inflexible and homogenizing form of European memory. For this I focus more closely on the formative stories of three characters – Benno Maran, Naatan Üirike and Juku Leebram. Benno Maran is one of the narrating voices in these novels, together with an anonymous narrator, an italicized narrator from a different time, and another character, named August September. Quotes from Benno’s diary dating from the days of the Russian and German occupations Russian and German occupations ...
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Mälukultuur ja moraalne tunnistus: Teise maailmasõja mäletamine Bernard Kangro Tartu-romaanides / Memory Culture and Moral Witness. Remembering the Second World War in Bernard Kangro's Tartu novels
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Autor/in / Beteiligte Person: | Hollo, Maarja |
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Zeitschrift: | Methis: Studia Humaniora Estonica, Vol 10, Iss 13 (2014, Jg. 10 (2014), Heft 13 |
Veröffentlichung: | University of Tartu and Estonian Literary Museum, 2014 |
Medientyp: | academicJournal |
ISSN: | 1736-6852 (print) ; 2228-4745 (print) |
DOI: | 10.7592/methis.v10i13.1306 |
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