'Call up your memories...wake them from the dead, and wake yourself, too': Memory and Mortality in Dostoevsky's Uncle’s Dream

• In Event: The Vanishing Self: The Politics of Forgetting in Russophone and Balkan Literatures and Film

Abstract

I analyze Dostoevsky’s novella Uncle’s Dream as a narrative centered on memory, its loss, and the potential — or impossibility — of revival through recollection. I argue that in Uncle’s Dream, memory loss is closely tied to death, where a preoccupation with the past foreshadows impending end. Unlike Dostoevsky’s other early works, where nostalgia offers solace, Uncle’s Dream portrays the tragedy of those already dead to the present. The ephemeral nature of memory — “Everything dies, Zinochka, even our memories!” — is linked to the inevitability of death that follows its loss.

Author

• Leah Plekhanova