ПРАВДА И ЛОЖЬ МЕМУАРОВ

Abstrakt

The author of the present study deals with the contemporary state of memoir liter-ature based on the analysis of some recent Czech and Slovak memoirs. The prob-lem of contemporary memoir texts is connected with the position of the memoirist in the society, his courage and openness. In the past the author dealt with the chronicle and the novel-chronicle and with the whole layer of genres situated on the boundary of fiction and nonfiction (diary, essay, reportage, column, memoirs etc.). His typology of the memoir literature is based on the three-level structure (theme, structure and genre, narrative strategy). He prefers to call contemporary memoir literature because its structure is very heterogeneous, and the fear of the memoirist, his anxiety and aversion to express too radical views lead to soft focus, uncertainty, evasiveness, the lack of clear opinions – there are the characteristic features of contemporary memoir literature as a reflection of the state of the world and the man of the second decade of the 21 century. These features are being demonstrated at the works written by Czech and Slovak writers, significant personal-ities of culture, politicians, artists etc. The postmodernist understanding of virtuality and uncertainty, ambivalence of the truth and the lie reflect the pressure of contem-porary world as rationally inexplicable and generally incomprehensible in the sense of the knowledge of the principles of its construction and functioning which is asso-ciated with the problem of the evident and hidden power. In such a world the human being feels alone and lost.