ON THE CONCEPT OF MEMORY IN THE RUSSIAN CULTURE OF THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY (V. P. ZUBOV, M. I. TSVETAEVA, A. A. AKHMATOVA)

The article addresses peculiarities of perception of the category "memory" in the Russian culture of the first third of the 20th century as one of the basic categories of the national sphere of concepts. For a deeper understanding of this topic the author looks at the creative world of the scientist, religious thinker V. P. Zubov, artistic interpretations of A. Akhmatova and M. Tsvetaeva. For the purposes of the study two semantic spectra of the term are highlighted: memory-commemoration and memory-repentance. The paper displays little known pages from the diary of V. P. Zubov of the 1920s comparing them with literary texts of M. Tsvetaeva: appealing to the memory of ancestors by both the authors tends to the genre of commemoration, where the boundaries of death are transcended. In this view, special attention is paid to the unfinished poem of 1940 "Many of my, Oh, drinkers ...". M. Tsvetaeva makes the scattered ones United, the dead - existing, thus bringing them back to life. In the artistic world of A. Akhmatova theme of memory sounds somewhat different, which is proved through the analysis of "Requiem". While Tsvetaeva resurrects, Akhmatova buries, farewells. Both these commemorations, which became a certain feature of the culture of the 1920-1930s, are interconnected through the New Testament's antinomy of life and death. That is why during the analysis of A. Akhmatova's "Requiem" much attention is given to the intertextual links between the poem and liturgical texts of the Holy Week. Furthermore, the poem explores the topic of preserving memory as self-identity in the time of unconsciousness and oblivion, developed by A. Akhmatova.