Death in the plot of Russian memoirs of the 18th century

In this article, plots of Russian memoirs of the XVIII century are considered from the point of view of identification of semantic and situational variants of the mortal component which should be attributed to the mandatory components of the memoir plot. The material of the research are autobiographical texts of the 18th century. The specifics of the image and understanding of death in the memoir text consists in the following: death is both event-related and non-event-related. This largely depends on the degree of "in-clusiveness" (event-related, emotional) of the author in the situation described. In the first case it concerns people significant for the memoirist (parents, spouse, state "man", etc.) whose death is important in the personal story the author is telling. The plot situation "the death of the ruler / monarch" in a series of memoir plot situations involving death stands out. It is as frequent in the memoirs of the 18th century as situations involving the death of close relatives, which is understandable: personal biography is perceived as part of history, because one's own fate often depends on the will of the monarch. Memoir plots essentially implement the general cultural tendency to overcome death and fear of death. The genre intentionality itself contributes to this, not only because the author leaves memories about himself (his contemporaries, friends) in the form of text, but also because memoirs can not fix the memoirist's death, it is not and can not be in the context of a memoir narrative, death is out of sight of the self-observing author. Death in memoir writings is not assessed, since this event is a natural property that does not depend on the will of man. This concerns, first of all, natural death as a logical outcome of life. Death as a result of an illness is perceived in a similar way: everything is in God's hands. This death is not assessed from the ethical point of view, but is experienced emotionally. This concerns, first of all, death of parents, on the one hand, of course, recognized as inevitable; on the other hand, experienced as a totally unexpected event. Natural death in the old age, even though experienced as tragic, is recognized by the authors of memoirs as a regularity and predetermination, violent or sudden deaths are perceived as a violation of the natural order of things. Another feature of the image of death in memoir texts of the 18th century is that natural death is usually fixed, experienced by the author, but not represented, that is there is no description of the moment of death (even if the author witnessed it, e.g., Lopukhin at the death of his father): the dead body and funeral details are not described. But unnatural death (execution or casualty) is usually portrayed, if not in great detail, with reference to specific details. As a component of the memoir plot, death has a great semantic and situational variability and, being the center of a vast semantic field, is ontologically close to its opposite - the birth. First of all, this connection is ensured by a special sense of time in memoirs, a combination of the transient and the eternal.

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