For those who have something interesting to tell, there is a relatively rare specialty - memoirist - who is it and why is it so remarkable - read on.

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Who are they?

Most often, not only writers, but also prominent politicians, and , just people who have something to tell. Anyone who can write their own life or the life of another person can become the author of a memoir.

What is a memoir?

Memoirs are understood as records of memories, various notes written by contemporaries of events or people. Facts may be presented regarding various types events in which the author participated, witnessed or knew people who participated in them.

The most important difference from ordinary fiction lies in the initial focus on some documentary presentation. This kind of document will pretend to be reliable and even objective.

Features of the work of memoirists

The authors of memoirs, unlike writers of various chronicles or fiction, put themselves in the first place, and the entire narrative is built on the basis of what they saw, felt, and experienced. At the same time, they express their Subjective opinion regarding the events described, the person or group of persons mentioned.

• Most often, people who are involved in art, sports, who managed to influence society, or who participated in historical events turn to memoirs.

It is for this reason that, with the help of memoirists, historians often succeed in recreating many events about which very little was officially known.

The peculiarity of memoirs is also that they can reflect a whole historical layer, with a description of little things known only to the author of the memoirs, which can help to recreate a certain picture of what happened at one time or another.

All this can be used by learned historians, for whom it is very important to obtain such information to fill in the gaps in big picture events.

Therefore, it is very important for a memoirist to describe as accurately as possible their feelings, experiences and what they see around them, what is happening in the world.

Since the very concept of “memoirs” suggests that it will be reasoning or memories of a specific person or a story about a person, a group of people or events, the person who describes all this needs to present everything consistently, without violating historical integrity.

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For some, memoirs - great way speak out, talk about your difficult creative or work path. For some, it is a way to earn extra money by taking advantage of what is at the zenith of fame.

As you can see, memoirs provide an opportunity for some to speak out, and for others to study a certain stage of history, focusing on the stories of contemporaries of those events.

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Memoirs differ from chronicles of modern events in that in them the author’s face comes to the fore, with his sympathies and dislikes, with his aspirations and views. Very often belonging to persons who played a prominent role in history, sometimes covering a significant period of time, for example, the entire life of the author, often connecting important events with little things Everyday life, memoirs can be historical material of primary importance.

The Oldest European Memoirs

Classical antiquity knew only two authors of memoirs - Xenophon and Caesar. France was considered the true birthplace of memoirs in the 19th century. The first experiments in this area date back to the 13th century. Villehardouin's naive notes on the Latin Empire still stand on the border between memoirs and chronicles, while Histoire de St. Louis“ (about ) is rightfully considered an example of historical memoirs.

France (XVI -XIX centuries)

The number of memoirs especially increased during the era of the revolution (memoirs of Necker, Besanval, Ferrier, Alexandre Lamet, Lafayette, Madame de Stael, Campan, Barbara, Billot-Varenna, Dumouriez, Madame Roland, Mirabeau, Mounier, Barera, Camille Demoulin). Even executioners, for example, Samson, wrote memoirs then.

Many of the memoirs of that era that appeared with names famous figures, forged. This kind of forgery was widely practiced by Soulavie, whose collections have therefore been superseded “Collection des mémoires relatifs à la revolution française”(30 vols., Paris, 1820-1830) and some other publications.

Even more numerous are memoirs dating back to the Napoleonic era. Almost all of Napoleon's generals and many other people left notes. Especially great importance have memoirs of Bignon, O'Meara, Constant, Lavalette, Savary, Duchess d'Abrantes, Marmont, Eugene Beauharnais, Madame de Remusat, Talleyrand.

Later, memoirs were written by Carnot, Broglie, Chateaubriand, George Sand, Guizot, Marmier, Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt.

England

English literature is also rich in memoirs, in which they, however, acquire significance only from the era of Queen Elizabeth and even more from the time of the internal wars of the 17th century. For the reign of Charles I, the memoirs of James Melville and the Scotsman David Craford are of particular importance. The most important works of this kind are collected in the edition of Guizot, “Collection des mémoires relatifs à la revolution d’Angleterre”(33 vols., Paris, 1823 et seq.).

Of the memoirs of later times, the most outstanding are the notes of Bolingbroke and Horace Walpole. In England, as in France, the literature of memoirs has reached end of the 19th century centuries of dimensions barely visible.

Germany

Poland

Russian memoirs

In Russian literature, a number of notes begin with “The History of the Book.” Great Moscow about the deeds that we have heard from reliable men and that we have seen in our eyes,” the famous Prince Kurbsky, which has the character of a pamphlet rather than history, but important as an expression of the opinion of a well-known party.

The Time of Troubles gave rise to a whole series of narratives from contemporaries and eyewitnesses of the Troubles, but with a few exceptions, these works cannot be considered simple-minded records of what was seen and heard: in almost all the legends there appears either a biased point of view, or influences from which the simplicity and truthfulness of the author’s testimony suffers. Not to mention the works that appeared even before the end of the Troubles (the story of Archpriest Terenty), journalistic features are not alien to the two largest narratives about the Troubles - Vremennik by Ivan Timofeev and “The Tale of the Siege of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery” by Abraham Palitsyn. In both works, the desire to expose the vices of Muscovites prevails. society and with them explain the origin of the unrest; Depending on such a task, there is a lack of chronological connection, gaps in factual testimony, and an abundance of abstract reasoning and moralizing.

The later works of eyewitnesses of the Troubles, which appeared under Tsars Mikhail and Alexei, differ from the earlier ones in their greater objectivity and more factual depiction of the era (“Words” by Prince I. A. Khvorostinin, especially the story of Prince I. M. Katyrev of Rostov, included in Sergei’s chronograph Kubasov), but in them the presentation is often subordinated either to conventional rhetorical devices (notes of Prince Semyon Shakhovsky, dating back to 1601-1649), or to one general point of view (for example, the official one - in the manuscript attributed to Patriarch Philaret and depicting events from 1606 until the election of Michael as Tsar).

Therefore, as historical source Of greater importance are those few works that deviate from the general literary template and do not go beyond a simple, ingenuous presentation of events. This is, for example, the life of the teacher. Dionysius, Archimandrite of the Trinity-Sergius Convent, which in 1648 - 54. was written by Trinity cellarer Simon Azaryin, and the cellarer from Moscow added his memories. Dormition Cathedral Ivan Nasedka (cf. S. F. Platonov, “ Old Russian legends and stories about troubled times as a historical source", St. Petersburg, 1888; the texts of the legends are printed. by him in the published archaeographic book. commission " Historical library", vol. 13). The works of Kotoshikhin, Shusherin (life of Nikon), Avvakum (autobiography), and Semyon Denisov bear the character of notes or personal memories.

Peter I

Alexander II

Of the numerous memoirs about the era of Alexander II, the notes of N.V. Berg (on Polish conspiracies), Count Valuev, N.S. Golitsyn (on the abolition of corporal punishment, in “Russian Antiquity”, 1890), A.L. Zisserman are of particular importance (Caucasian memories, in the “Russian Archive”, 1885), Levshin, Count M.N. Muravyov, P.N. Obninsky, N.K. Ponomarev (“Memoirs of the mediator of the first call”, in “Russian Antiquity”, 1891, no. 2), N. P. Semyonova, Y. A. Solovyova, gr. D. N. Tolstoy-Znamensky.

Literary Memoirs

Very numerous literary memoirs XIX century. These are the notes of S. T. Aksakov, P. V. Annenkov, Askochensky, Bodyansky (in the “Collection of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature”, 1891), N. P. Brusilov (in “Historical Vestn.” 1893, No. 4 ), Buslaeva, book. P. A. Vyazemsky, A. D. Galakhov (in “Historical Vestn.” 1891 No. 6 and 1892 No. 1 and 2), Herzen, Panaev, Golovacheva-Panaeva, Grech, I. I. Dmitrieva, V. R. Zotov (“Historical Vestn.”, 1890), M. F. Kamenskaya, Kolyupanova, Makarova,

The meaning of the word MEMOIRS in Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language

MEMOIRS

memoirs, units no, m. (fr. mеmoires).

1. Literary work in the form of notes about past events, of which the author was a contemporary or participant (lit.).

2. One of the names of printed works of scientific institutions (obsolete).

Ushakov. Dictionary Russian language Ushakov. 2012

See also interpretations, synonyms, meanings of the word and what MEMOIRS are in Russian in dictionaries, encyclopedias and reference books:

• MEMOIRS in Statements of famous people:
  
• MEMOIRS in the Dictionary One sentence, definitions:
  - a book about the life that the author would like to live. ...
• MEMOIRS in Aphorisms and clever thoughts:
  a book about the life the author would like to live. ...
• MEMOIRS in the Dictionary of Literary Terms:
  - (from the French memoire - memory, recollection) - a type of epic literature: a chronicle and factual narration on behalf of the author, in which ...
• MEMOIRS in the Big Encyclopedic Dictionary:
  (French memoires - memories) a type of documentary literature, a literary narrative by a participant in social, literary, artistic life about events and people whose contemporary ...
• MEMOIRS in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, TSB:
  (French memoires, from Latin memoria - memory), memories of the past, written by participants or contemporaries of any events. Created based on personal...
• MEMOIRS in the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Euphron:
  (French: M?moires), notes from contemporaries - narratives about events in which the author M. took part or which are known to him from eyewitnesses. ...
• MEMOIRS in the Modern Encyclopedic Dictionary:
  (French memoires - memories), a type of documentary literature, a literary narrative of a participant in social, literary, artistic life about events and people whose contemporary ...
• MEMOIRS
  [from French memoires memories] 1) a literary work in the form of notes about past events in which the author was a contemporary or participant; 2) ...
• MEMOIRS in the Encyclopedic Dictionary:
  ov, units outdated or iron. memoir, a, m. 1. Notes about past events made by a contemporary or participant in these events. Write …
• MEMOIRS in the Encyclopedic Dictionary:
  , -ov. Notes, literary memories of past events, made by a contemporary or participant in these events. Military m. II adj. memoir...
• MEMOIRS in the Big Russian Encyclopedic Dictionary:
  MEMOIRS (French memoires - memories), a type of doc. lit-ry, lit. narration of a social participant, lit., art. life about events and people, contemporary...
• MEMOIRS in the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedia:
  (French M emoires), notes from contemporaries? narratives about events in which the author M. took part or which are known to him from ...
• MEMOIRS in the Complete Accented Paradigm according to Zaliznyak:
  memoirs "ry, memoirs" rov, memoirs "ram, memoirs" ry, memoirs "rami, ...
• MEMOIRS in the Popular Explanatory Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Russian Language:
  -ov, plural only. 1) A literary work that narrates in the form of notes on behalf of the author about events of the past, a participant or witness of which...
• MEMOIRS in the Thesaurus of Russian Business Vocabulary:
  Syn: memories, ...
• MEMOIRS in the New Dictionary of Foreign Words:
  (French memoires memories) 1) autobiographical notes; memories of events and persons of the past directly or indirectly involved in the life of the author; ...
• MEMOIRS in dictionary foreign expressions:
  [ 1. autobiographical notes; memories of events and persons of the past directly or indirectly involved in the life of the author; 2. mouth scientific...
• MEMOIRS in the Russian Language Thesaurus:
  Syn: memories, ...
• MEMOIRS in Abramov's Dictionary of Synonyms:
  cm. …
• MEMOIRS in the Russian Synonyms dictionary:
  Syn: memories, ...
• MEMOIRS in the New Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language by Efremova:
  pl. 1) A literary work that narrates in the form of notes on behalf of the author about past events in which he was a participant or witness. ...
• MEMOIRS in Lopatin’s Dictionary of the Russian Language:
  memoirs, ...

MEMOIR LITERATURE- literature in the genre of memoirs (French mémoires, from Latin memoria memory), a type of documentary literature and at the same time one of the types of “confessional prose.” Involves notes-memories historical person about real events of the past, of which he happened to be an eyewitness. The main prerequisites for the work of a memoirist are strict compliance with historical truth, factuality, chronicity of the narrative (leading the story according to the milestones of the real past), refusal to “play” with the plot, conscious anachronisms, deliberate artistic techniques. These formal features bring memoirs closer to the diary genre, with the significant difference that, unlike a diary, memoirs imply retrospection, an appeal to a fairly distant past, and an inevitable mechanism for re-evaluating events from the height of the experience accumulated by the memoirist. in memories The story of my contemporary(1954) expressed the ideal aspirations of a memoirist in this way: “In my work, I strived for the most complete historical truth possible, often sacrificing to it the beautiful or striking features of artistic truth. There will be nothing here that I haven’t encountered in reality, that I haven’t experienced, felt, or seen.”

In terms of their material, reliability and lack of fiction, the memoirs are close to historical prose, scientific-biographical, autobiographical and documentary-historical essays. However, memoirs are distinguished from autobiography by their focus on displaying not only and not so much the personality of the author, but the historical reality surrounding him, external events - socio-political, cultural, etc., to which, to a greater or lesser extent, to a lesser extent he was involved. At the same time, unlike strictly scientific genres, memoirs imply the active presence of the author’s voice, his individual assessments and inevitable bias. Those. One of the constructive factors of memoir literature is the author’s subjectivity.

Memoir literature is an important source of historiography, material for historical source studies. At the same time, in terms of the actual accuracy of the reproduced material, memoirs are almost always inferior to documents. Therefore, historians are forced to subject event facts from the memoirs of public and cultural figures to critical verification with available objective information. In the case when a certain memoir fact finds neither confirmation nor refutation in available documents, the evidence about it is considered by historiography as scientifically valid only hypothetically.

The persistent features of memoirs as a form of literature are factuality, the predominance of events, retrospectiveness, immediacy of evidence, which in no way ensure the “purity of the genre.” Memoirs remain one of the most fluid genres with extremely fuzzy boundaries. Memoir signs do not always indicate that the reader is dealing with memoirs. So, on the first page of S. Maugham’s book, endowed with all the above-mentioned features Summing up(1957), the author warns that this work is not a biography or memoir. Although his gaze invariably goes back to the past, the main goal here is not to recreate the past, but to confess artistic faith, summing up the results of half a century literary path. The genre of Maugham's book is not a memoir, but an extended essay.

In the 19th century, as the principle of historicism developed, memoir prose, which had already reached maturity, was conceptualized as an important source of scientific and historical reconstructions. Attempts to abuse this reputation of the genre immediately make themselves felt. Pseudo-memoirs and various memoir hoaxes arise. These tendencies are especially clearly noticeable in works devoted to purely mythologized figures of history and already completed cycles of the past. As a result, annoying historical misconceptions are possible in works based on unsubstantiated memoir sources. Thus, D.S. Merezhkovsky in his sketch about A.S. Pushkin from the cycle Eternal companions(1897) built the entire concept of the poet’s work on the notes of Pushkin’s friend A.O. Smirnova. However, after several years it became clear that these memories were entirely falsified by her daughter, O.N. Smirnova. Another example is memoirs. St. Petersburg winters G. Ivanov, dedicated to recreating the atmosphere of the pre-revolutionary years of the “Silver Age”. There is reason to believe it literary text, based on conditional literary technique. The literature of the Russian post-revolutionary emigration, in which memoirs generally played a particularly significant role, provided, along with masterpieces of prose in the genre of memoirs, many examples of mystified and falsified memoirs (the fake “diary” of the maid of honor of the Empress Alexandra, the patroness of G. Rasputin A.A. Vyrubova, etc. ).

In the literature of the 19th–20th centuries. often stylized as memoirs works of art with a fictional plot. The purpose of such a technique can be different: from recreating the atmosphere of time through the genre ( Captain's daughter (1836) by Pushkin, where the use of the memoir genre in Pyotr Grinev’s “Notes” - one of the main forms of literature of the 18th century. - acts as a stylization technique “for the Catherine era”) to give the text special sincerity, authenticity, compositional freedom and the illusion of independence from the “will of the author” ( Netochka Nezvanova(1849) and Little hero (from unknown memoirs) (1857) by F.M. Dostoevsky).

Often autobiographical works in their literary qualities they are indistinguishable from memoirs. But these genres can also pursue different goals. Autobiography is more easily subject to fictionalization and transition to literary fiction. So, in autobiographical trilogy L.N. Tolstoy Childhood (1852), Boyhood (1854), Youth(1857) memories are subordinated not to the actual memoir, but to the artistic task - psychological research character and creative understanding of philosophical categories important to the author (consciousness, reason, understanding, etc.). For this reason, in terms of genre, Tolstoy's trilogy is closer to a novel than to memoirs.

Directly opposite cases are also possible. So, in Family chronicle(1856) and The childhood years of Bagrov the grandson(1858) S.T. Aksakova main character appears under an assumed name, which is natural for fiction. However, the author’s task here is purely memoiristic: the resurrection of the past and its “atmosphere”, a true memory of the past. In terms of genre, both books belong specifically to memoir literature. It is no coincidence that openly memoir-documentary Memories(1856) by Aksakov are perceived as a direct continuation of the dilogy about Bagrov.

The mobility of the memoir genre is also facilitated by its stylistic variability. The narration here can also be noted for its colorfulness literary prose (Childhood(1914) and In people(1916) M. Gorky), and journalistic bias ( People, years, life(1960–1965) by I. Ehrenburg), and a strictly scientific justification of what is happening (parts 5–7 Of the past and thoughts(1852–1867) A.I. Herzen). The precariousness of the border between memoirs and fiction, journalistic, scientific genres was defined in Russian and Western European literature by the mid-19th century. This was greatly facilitated by the crisis of romanticism and the strengthening of a new aesthetics aimed at imitation of reality in its social concreteness - the aesthetics of realism. V.G. Belinsky in the article A look at Russian literature of 1847(1848) already records this genre amorphousness of memoir prose: “Finally, memoirs themselves, completely alien to any fiction, valuable only to the extent that they faithfully and accurately convey actual events, memoirs themselves, if they are masterfully written, constitute, as it were, the last facet in the field of the novel, closing it with himself.”

An unsurpassed example of mature and at the same time extremely complex in terms of genre, multi-component memoir prose - Past and thoughts Herzen. As the author's plan was realized, this work turned from notes about a purely personal, family past into something like a “biography of humanity.” Here, a deliberate fusion of genre features of memoirs and journalism, “biography and speculation,” diary and literary portraits, fictional short stories, scientific facts, confessions, essays and pamphlets. As a result, this arises literary form, which, according to the author, “doesn’t lace up anywhere and doesn’t pinch anywhere.” The hero of the book is not the author himself (as in ordinary, one-dimensional memoirs from the point of view of the genre) and not contemporary history (as in historical chronicles), but a very complex process eventful and spiritual interaction between the individual and society in a certain era. Herzen’s book went beyond the natural boundaries of memoir prose itself and became the most important programmatic text of the era “ critical realism"in European literature. It is characteristic that Western criticism could discern an even broader historical and literary significance behind this text. So, a review about the author White and doom in one of the issues of the London newspaper “The Leader” for 1862 concluded with the conclusion: “Goethe could see in it a clear confirmation of the theory of a future universal literature.”

In the first half. 20th century in the era of the so-called “the end of the novel,” when literature experienced a crisis of traditional conventional forms and switched to the border between fiction and document, a series of synthetic texts appeared ( On western front no change(1929) E.M. Remarque, Life in Bloom(1912) A. France, The noise of time(1925) by O. Mandelstam, later in line with the same tradition - My diamond crown(1978) V. Kataeva et al.). In them, the memoir principle is included in the organic nature of fiction. Historical material, real life the author is transformed into a fact of art, and stylistics is subordinated to the task of producing an aesthetic impact on the reader. On the maturity and completeness of the process of “adoption” of memoir prose by fiction of the 20th century. evidence of the parodic use of its laws in the genre of the novel ( Confessions of adventurer Felix Krul(1954) T. Mann).

The measure of the historical content of memoirs and the very type of their practical use by different humanities as sources largely depend on the personality of the author. If a memoirist is a bright and extremely significant person for history and culture, then the focus of interest in the reader’s and research’s perception of his text is inevitably focused on the author himself. In this case, historical material fades into the background. A striking example essays of this kind - Ten years in exile(1821) Madame de Staël, outstanding woman era, one of the brilliant writers and cultural figures of romanticism. A sample of memories of a different type was left by the Duke of Saint-Simon. His Memoirs(published in 1829–1830) are valuable primarily for small facts, details that meticulously convey the atmosphere of court life in Paris during the last twenty-five years of the reign of Louis XIV and the regency period. As a result, the memoirs of Madame de Staël are the object of attention primarily of literary scholars, while the memoirs of Saint-Simon are the object of attention of historians. Since the 1940s, thanks to the researchers of the “Annals School” (L. Febvre, F. Braudel, J. Le Goff, etc.) historical science is experiencing a surge of interest in the memoirs of unremarkable and non-public people. Their works (by type: “notes of a German miller of the mid-17th century,” “notes of a London merchant mediocre beginning of the 18th century." etc.) help to restore the objective history of everyday life, to identify certain social stereotypes that capture the characteristic, the standard, and not the exceptional. Memoirs of this kind are an important source of the history of civilization and historical sociology.

Memoir literature traces its origins to Xenophon’s memories of Socrates (4th century BC) and his Anabasis(401 BC) - notes on the military campaign of the Greeks. Ancient examples of the genre, which also include Notes on the Gallic War of Julius Caesar (1st century BC), are impersonal and tend to historical chronicle. Christian Middle Ages ( Confession(approx. 400) Bl. Augustine, The story of my disasters(1132–1136) P. Abelard, partly New life (1292) Dante and other monuments) brings to the genre a developed sense of the narrator’s inner self, moral introspection and a repentant tone. The emancipation of personality and the development of individualistic consciousness during the Renaissance, clearly reflected in Life Benvenuto Cellini (1558–1565), prepared the flowering of memoirs in the 17th–18th centuries. (Saint-Simon, Cardinal G. Mazarin, J.-J. Rousseau, etc.)

In the 19th–20th centuries. Memoirs of writers and about writers are becoming one of the leading genres of literature. Thus, literary memoirs proper are formed; J.-W. Goethe, Stendhal, G. Heine, G.-H. left their memories. Andersen, A. France, R. Tagore, G. Mann, R. Rolland, J.-P. Sartre, F. Mauriac and others.

In Russia, memoir literature dates back to Stories about the Grand Duke of Moscow(mid 16th century) Andrei Kurbsky. Important milestone in the formation of personal self-awareness in Russian literature - autobiographical Life(1672–1675) archpriest Avvakum. Vivid monuments of Russian memoirs of the 18th century. – The life and adventures of Andrei Bolotov(c. 1780), Handwritten notes of Empress Catherine II(published in 1907), Notes(published in 1804–1806) E.R. Dashkova, Sincere confession in my deeds and thoughts(1789) D.I. Fonvizina. The rapid development of memoir literature in Russia in the 19th century. associated with the memories of N.I. Turgenev, Decembrists I. Pushchin, I. Yakushkin, M. Bestuzhev, writer N. Grech, censors A. Nikitenko, E. Feoktistov, writers I. S. Turgenev, I. A. Goncharov and others Factual details in descriptions of literary life of the 2nd half. 19th century The memoirs of A.Ya. Panaeva, N.A. Ogareva-Tuchkova, T.A. Kuzminskaya are valuable. The social situation of these years is reflected in Notes of a revolutionary(1899) P.A. Kropotkina, On life path (published in 1912) A.F. Koni.

The revival of memoir literature, associated with a series of memoirs about the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary era published in the USSR and in emigration, occurred in the 1920s–1930s. (memoirs of K. Stanislavsky, V. Veresaev, A. Bely, G. Chulkov and others).

A new surge in memoir literature in the USSR, caused by the “Khrushchev Thaw,” began in the mid-1950s. Numerous memoirs are published about writers who did not quite fit into the structure of Soviet ideology: V. Mayakovsky, S. Yesenin, Yu. Tynyanov, etc. Numerous memoir essays by K. Chukovsky, A Tale of Life (1955) by K. Paustovsky, collections of memoirs about E. .Shvartse, I.Ilf and E.Petrov. In the series “Khudozhestvennaya Literatura,” founded by the publishing house “Khudozhestvennaya Literatura” in the 1960s, Literary memoirs» the memoirs of A. and P. Panayev, P. Annenkov, T.P. are published. Passek, collections of memoirs about N.V. Gogol, M.Yu. Lermontov, V.G. Belinsky, L.N. Tolstoy, F.M. Dostoevsky.

Since the late 1980s, materials have been published about the artistic life of the “Silver Age” and the memories of representatives of the Russian emigration ( On Parnassus Silver Age (1962) K. Makovsky, On the banks of the Neva(1967) and On the Banks of the Seine (1983) by I. Odoevtseva, A calf butted heads with an oak tree(1990) A. Solzhenitsyn, Italics are mine N. Berberova and others), previously unpublished.

Since the early 1990s in Russia, an avalanche of memoirs has been published from the pens of contemporary political and cultural figures, many of which are rather factual public life than literature itself.

Vadim Polonsky

Literature:

Gennadi G. Notes (memoirs) of Russian people. Bibliographical instructions // Readings at the Imperial Society of Russian History and Antiquities at Moscow University. 1861, book. 4
Pylyaev M.I. Notes of Russian people// Historical Bulletin, 1890. T. 39
Index of memoirs, diaries and travel notes of the 18th–19th centuries. M., 1951
Annotated index of memoir literature. Part 1, M., 1985. Part 2, 1961
Cardin V . Today is about yesterday. Memoirs and modernity. M., 1961
Katanyan V. O writing memoirs // New world, 1964, № 5
Elizavetina G. The formation of the genres of autobiography and memoirs // Russian and Western European classicism. Prose. M., 1982
Literary Memoirs of the 20th Century: An Annotated Index. 1985–1989. M., 1995. Parts 1–2

What is "Memoir"? How to spell given word. Concept and interpretation.

Memoirs memoirs (from the French m?moires - memories), a literary narrative of a participant in social, political, literary and artistic life about events, witnessed or actor whom he was, about the people with whom he came into contact. Memoirs are a type of documentary literature and at the same time one of the types of confessional prose (autobiography, confession), adjacent to historical prose, essay, biography. Memoirs can contain the memories of an ordinary person about his “ordinary” life, conveying the flavor of a certain era, thoughts, feelings, attitudes and expectations of “average” people of a particular time, of a particular social, age, psychophysiological or age status. In this regard, memoirs belong to genres bordering between literature proper and everyday letters and diaries not intended for publication. The origin of memoirs is associated with the memoirs of Xenophon (c. 445 - c. 355 BC) about Socrates and the “Notes on the Gallic War” of Julius Caesar (100 or 102-44 BC). In further literature, “The History of My Disasters” (1132–36) by P. Abelard, “New Life” (1292) by Dante, “Poetry and Truth from My Life” (1811-33) by J. V. Goethe, “Confession” ( 1766-69) J. J. Rousseau, “Ten Years in Exile” (unfinished, published in 1821) J. de Stael; in Russian literature - “The Past and Thoughts” (1855-68) by A. I. Herzen, “Captured Work” (1921-22) by V. N. Figner, “People, Years, Life” (1961-65) by I. G. Erenburg, V. P. Kataev’s trilogy “Holy Well” (1966), “The Grass of Oblivion” (1967), “My Diamond Crown” (1978); “On the Banks of the Neva” (1967) and “On the Banks of the Seine” (1983) by I. V. Odoevtseva, “Through the Eyes of a Man of My Generation” (published 1988) by K. M. Simonov, “A Calf Butted an Oak Tree” (1990) A I. Solzhenitsyn. A special place among memoirs is occupied by notes and memories of prominent statesmen, including the Russian Empress Catherine II, the head of the English government during the 2nd World War, W. Churchill. Stable features of the genre: factuality, eventfulness, retrospectiveness, immediacy of the author's judgments, picturesqueness, documentary. An indispensable property of memoirs is their subjectivity in the selection of facts, in their coverage and evaluation; A common method of artistic characterization is a portrait. Memoirs are an irreplaceable source of information about the events of the past, tastes, morals, customs, a system of aesthetic and spiritual values, and an important tool for literary, socio-historical and cultural studies. Memoirs in their “pure” form can be identified with works of fiction of a memoir nature (“ Pedagogical poem", 1933–1936, A. S. Makarenko), often with “encrypted” characters (“My Diamond Crown” by V. P. Kataev). There are known hoax memoirs (the fake “diary” of the lady-in-waiting of the last Russian Empress A. A. Vyrubova). In the 20th–21st centuries. memoirs in the form of memoirs, sketches, fictional dialogues, polemics “retroactively”, diary entries etc. – one of the most relevant genres. In Russia, this is the so-called “camp” literature, which carries not only the truth about the tragic pages of the latest national history, but also a powerful charge of social and political exposure: “ Steep route"(1967-80) E. S. Ginzburg, "The Gulag Archipelago" (1973) A. I. Solzhenitsyn, "Plunge into Darkness" (1987) O. N. Volkova, " Kolyma stories"(1954-73) V. T. Shalamova and others. Memoirs include collective collections of memories, united either by the community of authors (profession, age, nationality, biography, ideological, artistic and aesthetic affinity), or by the object of memories (memories of contemporaries about A S. Pushkin, memories of participants literary movement imagism).

Memoirs- MEMOIRS, Tsov. Notes, literary memoirs about past events, made by a contemporary or teacher... Ozhegov’s Explanatory Dictionary

Memoirs- (French Memoires), notes from contemporaries - narratives about events in which the author M. took part... Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron

Memoirs- (French memoires, from Latin memoria - memory) memories of the past, written by participants... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Memoirs- MEMOIRS, memoirs, units. no, m. (fr. mеmoires). 1. A literary work in the form of notes about the past... Ushakov’s Explanatory Dictionary

Memoirs- pl. 1. A literary work that tells in the form of notes on behalf of the author about the events of the past, ...