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Notes of a Hiob: Evgenia Ginzburg in a Dialog with Heinrich Böll

Thu, November 20, 3:00 to 4:45pm EST (3:00 to 4:45pm EST), -

Abstract

My paper will focus on how unofficial Soviet culture interacted with the West German discours of "memory and responsibility" in the late 1960s and 1970s. I would like to examine the transfer of the idea of “responsibility” and “dealing with the past” using the particular case of the dialog between Evgenia Ginzburg and Heinrich Böll. These two writers were linked not only by the personal contacts (they were well acquainted with each other) but also by the theme of totalitarian terror, which they both treated in the framework of religious repentance in a specifically Catholic sense. Ginzburg not only stylized her sufferings in the Soviet camps as a form of Christian atonement (mea culpa), but also directly adopted the symbolism of the double communion (sacraments) from Böll. Heinrich Böll, in turn, interpreted the "Travel into the Whirlwind" as a text about Christian temptation written by "a female Hiob" or "a female Lazarus". In my analysis, I want to find an answer to the question of why religious interpretations of guilt and responsibility are in such demand in cultures as different as Soviet and West German.

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