Ilia State University
Master of Comparative Literary Studies, Doctoral student in the Literary Studies program
Tbilisi/Georgia
Nino_bokuchava@iliauni.edu.ge
Abstract
Zaira Arsenishvili was known to the Georgian public during her lifetime primarily as a screenwriter and musician rather than as a writer. The conceptual foundation of her prose is a critical rethinking of the Soviet past. Notably, Arsenishvili began working on her anti-Soviet texts as early as the 20th century, effectively writing “for the drawer” — producing works that exposed the system long before they could be openly received. Their reception, in many ways, is unfolding before our eyes in the 21st century. Since a comprehensive study of Arsenishvili’s prose still lies ahead, this report represents another step in that direction.
This report aims to demonstrate, based on the theoretical framework of cultural memory studies, that Woe is Life: Kakhetian Chronicles by Zaira Arsenishvili can be understood as a Fiction of Memory — more specifically, as a Communal Memory Novel (German: Der Kommunale Gedächtnisroman) as defined by Birgit Neumann. The report draws on several key concepts from memory studies as its theoretical framework, including Communicative and Cultural Memory developed by Aleida and Jan Assmann, the Rhetoric of Collective Memory proposed by Astrid Erll, and Birgit Neumann’s typology of fictions of memory.
Woe is Life: Kakhetian Chronicles is distinguished by its focus on communal voice, in which acts of memory — remembering and storytelling — are directed toward the construction and reinforcement of a collective “we-identity.” In the novel, the shared memory of those oppressed and excluded by the Soviet system, and violently silenced in 1962, resonates within a semantically charged space: the basement. This space becomes the site of a symbolic confrontation with repressed memory, fundamentally opposed to the dominant narrative of official memory and its associated public spaces. The mnemonic community — the marginalized minority — endows its memory with “counterpowers,” thereby contributing to the creation of counter-memory. Within this framework, the Soviet Revolution, the Soviet system itself, and the individuals associated with it emerge as sources of trauma. This trauma is conveyed through artistic tropes, including the biblical dragon, the whale, and the malaria-carrying Anopheles mosquito.
In the novel, storytelling functions as a therapeutic tool through which the actualization of the past becomes part of a struggle for public recognition. Significantly, it is through communicative memory that the construction of a collective we-identity takes shape in the text, enabling the successful overcoming of temporal distance and preserving continuity with the past. At the end of the novel, when the granddaughter fulfills her grandmother’s wish by writing a novel about their shared past, communicative memory is transformed into a medium of cultural memory. In this way, fragile and time-bound communicative memory evolves into a more stable and enduring form of remembrance — cultural memory. The present moment is therefore of crucial importance, since without memory there can be no true knowledge of the self, while the preservation and protection of memory becomes the foundation for the stability of identity.
Keywords: Zaira Arsenishvili, post-Soviet Georgian literature, fictions of memory.