Identity Fractures and Recoveries in the Novel “Woldemar” by Oleg Serebrian

Abstract

This article analyzes the itinerary of the recognition of personal identity in the context of an existential, ontological collapse of the protagonist Woldemar. His memories and grandmother Martaʹs letters, placed face to face like mirrors, narrate and constellate the events of his life, elucidating the cause of the crisis and identity uncertainty of the adult Woldemar. By discerning the guiding depths of consciousness, several doors of the dark past and several layers of trauma are opened: of parents, grandparents and the entire Bucovina annexed to the USSR. In this way, the hermeneutic investigation captures the cause of the identity fractures of the protagonist, the artistic ways of recovering the values and human essence, the contradictions between the maternal imagos and the figure of the father (grandfather), the ideological conjuncture of blurring the personality, the condition of the individual in a totalitarian society. At the same time, is investigated the importance of saying memories and recollections through writing, as a way of resisting the individual to the totalitarian system. Through logos takes place the ontological refoundation of the protagonist, the recovery of self-awareness, his individuality and his being value.