Przebudzenie z melancholii. Projekat Lazarus Aleksandra Hemona

• Authors: Sabina Giergiel

Title variants

EN

Awakening from the melancholy. Projekat Lazarus of Aleksandar Hemon

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The focus of the text entitled Awakening from the melancholy. “Projekat Lazarus” of Aleksandar Hemon is an exploration of the existence of the main character Vladimir Brik. Adopting Zygmunt Freud’s terms (like melancholy, mourning, loss), the author shows dichotomous division of the main character’s life. The first part is an unreal, sleepy life and it characterises Brik’s life in the United States. He is involved in asystem of socially behavioral pagadigms — “phantasmats” (the theory is presented in the work of Roland D. Laing) which he subconsciously supports trying to adapt to his American family’s expectations. The second part of his life is defined as aware, authentic, and conscious. It begins on the cemetery in Kiszyniow where Brik experiences an explosion of despair, and decides he would not come back to America. Kiszyniow’s graveyard is one of the last stops in his travel following the steps of Lazarus Averbuh (a Jew immigrant to Chicago on whose life and death Brik had planned to write anovel). The Brik’s travel seems to be ajourney to self-knowledge with its climax on the Kiszyniow cemetery. The term “loss” (which is conected with melancholy) is related to the loss of homeland, relations with ancestors and afeelling of being out of place.

Keywords

EN

experience, melancholy, dream, loss, awakening, self-knowledge, duality, despair, memory, appearance

• Publisher: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wroclawskiego
• Journal: Slavica Wratislaviensia
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 155
• Pages: 59-68

Contributors

author

Sabina Giergiel

• Uniwersytet Opolski, Polska