The issue of memory in the novel "Midnight's children" by Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie is a British-American novelist of Indian origin. He was born in a rich Muslim family in Bombay in 1947, almost at the same time with of independence of India. Bombay is a special city, like Babylon, melting pot, where a lot of cultures, languages and traditions are mixed. The childhood in Bombay had great influence on the way of Rushdie's thinking. Moreover, at the age of 14 Rusdie left India and moved to Britain. He graduated from Cambridge University specializing in History. Then he worked at a newspaper, advertising agency and theater, but he did not succeed in any of those kinds of activity. His first novel, Grimus, a part-science fiction tale, was generally ignored by the public and literary critics. Borderline condition of Salman Rusdie should have some crisis symptoms, which may be overcome using the process of "Reminiscence". The novel "Midnight's children" seems to be such a process. The novel is mostly autobiographical and it contains bright picture of the Indian and Pakistani history of the second half of the 20 century. Besides, this text includes a huge stratum of mythology. Using conceptions of P. Nora, M. Halbwachs and B. Averin we can make a conclusion that a human being may remember not only his sensory experience but also imagination and even overstep the limits of personality. The following incident is in favor of the fact that the story of the "Midnight's children" became a part of the author's memory: 20 years after the completion of the novel Rushdie with his son visited Bombay and passing through the sites of his childhood he was telling about events, which had happened not with him, but with the characters of the novel. According to I. Koznowa it is necessary to distinguish between the archaic memory and the memory of modern society. At first, the archaic memory is collective, spontaneous as circular time functions. The past is unchangeable and sacred. The contemporary memory to the large extend is subjective, deliberate and specially organized, thus time is linear. Certainly, Salman Rushdie is a bearer of the contemporary memory but in the novel "Midnight's Children" he attempts to show the peculiarities of the archaic memory. It is personified in the character of the boatman Tai, nobody remember his age, even Tai himself. Tai saw the mountain's birth, remembered Alexander the Great and Isa, who was not crucified "indeed" but moved to the Himalayas to spend the rest of his life. Salman Rushdie tries not to write a history, but to perform an act of "Reminiscence". The book "Midnight's Children" is not about the past, it is about the present, first of all about things, which form the author as a personality at the moment of writing.

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