Based on the analysis of the texts by the Hungarian writer Péter Esterházy Harmonia cælestis and A simple story comma a hundred pages − the fencing version (Jednoduchý príbeh čiarka sto strán − šermovacia verzia), the study reflects on the character/specifics/possibilities of the idea of postmodern historiography that the historical novel as a form of articulating the past contributes to the creation of collective memory. The first novel is understood as a text that elaborates cultural and communicative memory (J. Assmann), the second is approached from the perspective of narrative social psychology (J. László). Possible postmodern answers to the question are found in the structural choices of narratives based on historical material.
The article is concerned with moral dilemmas connecting with literary and historical creation of the past. The goal is to reveal the differences between the practice of traditional historical study and telling the story. Both historiography and literature primary purpose is to understand the past. Historiography concentrates on rational motives of human activities, looks for causes and results. Historian is interested in the relationships between individual and community. Literature is less reductive, tries to discover the world of ideas and emotions of human being, explains his dreams and fears. The changes in contemporary historiography (narrative turn) offered a new vision of the past and established a new/old relationship between academic history and historical novel. Using two examples, well known books of German and Hungarian writers, dealing with Nazi and Communistic past, author try to examine what are the advantages and disadvantages of literary discourse on history.
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Texts that attempt to mediate the author’s own experience with death illuminate the basic problem of autobiographical writing: the impossibility of fully verbalizing an authentic experience and the limits of relatability of such an experience through language. The article focuses on two works by contemporary Hungarian writers that thematise the specificity of an autobiography written at the final point of a life’s journey. Saját halál (2004; Eng. trans. Own death, 2006) by Péter Nádas (b. 1942) relates the experience with clinical death, while Hasnyálmirigynapló (2016; „Pancreatic Diary (Excerpts)“, 2017) by the late Péter Esterházy (1950–2016) documents the author’s process of dying. Based on the idea that autobiography not only restores the face and the experience of the author but also transforms it (Paul de Man), the article investigates how autobiographical text restores and deprives/disfigures the author’s own experience with death. Simultaneously it considers the interdiscursive meaning of these (autobiographical) testimonies.
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