YHU Scientific Journal, Vol 10, p63-71, 2024
THE MOTIVE OF DEATH AND THE SEARCH FOR LIFE IN “KOLYMA TALES” BY VARLAM SHALAMOV
Marianna Baloyan
Yerevan Haybusak University, Changchun University, China
Submitted 10.05 , Accepted 26.06
DOI: 10.61484/29538181-sj.10.24-11
Abstract. The article studies the work of the Gulag prisoner Varlam Shalamov, his “Kolyma Tales”, his memoirs, letters, etc. It shows the psychology that unites Shalamov’s prose and the book by Viktor Frankl, who survived Auschwitz. In “Kolyma Tales” the writer shows how in the conditions of camp life the humanity in a person degenerates and the animal beginning prevails; how a person, who finds himself in the camps, loses the ability to feel, to ask, to ask, inside everything is scorched, devastated, complete indifference to everything, only external force, as Shalamov notes, could bring a person out of this indifference, take him away from the slowly approaching death. The work explores the phases of the psychological reaction of a person who found himself in the camp, highlighted by Frankl, and examines exactly those reactions of prisoners, and not all of them, as not everyone is able to go through it and not everyone is marked by this or that psychological reaction, inner experiences that maintain in people the desire to live, faith in life. Keywords: Shalamov, Gulag, Frankl, death, prisoner, purpose of life, Kolyma.
Abstract. The article studies the work of the Gulag prisoner Varlam Shalamov, his “Kolyma Tales”, his memoirs, letters, etc. It shows the psychology that unites Shalamov’s prose and the book by Viktor Frankl, who survived Auschwitz. In “Kolyma Tales” the writer shows how in the conditions of camp life the humanity in a person degenerates and the animal beginning prevails; how a person, who finds himself in the camps, loses the ability to feel, to ask, to ask, inside everything is scorched, devastated, complete indifference to everything, only external force, as Shalamov notes, could bring a person out of this indifference, take him away from the slowly approaching death. The work explores the phases of the psychological reaction of a person who found himself in the camp, highlighted by Frankl, and examines exactly those reactions of prisoners, and not all of them, as not everyone is able to go through it and not everyone is marked by this or that psychological reaction, inner experiences that maintain in people the desire to live, faith in life. Keywords: Shalamov, Gulag, Frankl, death, prisoner, purpose of life, Kolyma.