Departures and returns: cultural identities, historical traumas and personal paths in Susan R. Suleiman\u2019s Budapest Diary

Abstract

This paper studies Budapest Diary (1996), a cross-genre autobiographical work by Susan Suleiman, a renowned Hungarian-born scholar in comparative literature. Suleiman’s life writing offers particularly interesting reading possibilities; it allows us to study recent theoretical issues from historical traumas to multicultural and multi-linguistic identity constructions. My paper focuses on how Suleiman examines her past as a literary critic and expert on the modern novel, how her theoretical background as a comparatist formed and fashioned her autobiographical project. A close reading of her Budapest Diary reveals not only the generic patterns, the narrative and poetical means borrowed from her literary formation but also theories that enable the author to analyze her past, the social, cultural and historical determinations manifested in her life story. My interpretation devotes special attention to the image of Eastern-Europe developed in Suleiman’s autobiographical work. I analyze the way the work of the author, who returned to her homeland as an adult, seeks not only to find the reasons for burying the past burdened with collective historical traumas, but also tries to discover the regional components of identity, of the cultural otherness of East-Central Europe. The paper aims to show how collective and personal stakes are intertwined in the difficult process of reacquiring her Hungarian past in the light of her relationship with her parents (especially with her mother), and that of the history of Jewish people in Eastern Europe during the 20th century.