memory

On the terrain of psychology, the weather can activate involuntary memory and play the role of Proust’s madeleine. Identical meteorological circumstances are able to awaken the lost memory (“and then it was raining”). Thus memories seem to gush out of the picture of weather. The paper discusses some discursive strategies of the text (repetitions, variations, recurring motifs, disseminations) related to weather, as well as a number of more discrete intuitive or deliberate autotextual dominances and preferences for a particular season, type of weather or atmospheric phenomenon that form an invisible aura and lend a certain tonality to one’s work.

The article examines Samuel Beckett’s absurdist drama “Waiting for Godot” through the lens of autocitation, repetition, and shifting context. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s notions of the instability of meaning and context, as well as Radosvet Kolarov’s concept the analysis emphasizes the absence of internal memory within the fictional text itself. The first and second acts are approached as autonomous yet mutually reflective textual units, connected not through logical continuity but through rhythmic repetition with variation. This structural pattern evokes a sense of circularity and stasis. The transformations observed in the characters of Pozzo and Lucky are interpreted as metatextual gestures that undermine the linear progression of events. Meanwhile, through the erasure of memory and the constant recurrence of identical actions, Vladimir and Estragon appear trapped within the closed boundaries of a chronotope of waiting. In this way, the play presents memory not as a source of meaning, but as a mechanism of deferral.

Предлагаме на вниманието на научната общност блок материали, подготвени в памет на литературоведа доц. д-р Румен Шивачев (1958–2022). Чрез него ние, колегите на учения от Института за литература на БАН, бихме искали не само да засвидетелстваме своето отношение към преждевременно напусналия ни колега, но и да отдадем дължимото към неговото научно творчество, като синтетично го представим пред научната и културна общественост.