THE HOLIDAY MOTIF IN E. RUGE’S NOVEL “IN ZEITEN DES ABNEHMENDEN LICHTS”

Abstract

The article deals with the artistic functionality of the holiday motif in the novel “In Zeiten des abnehmenden Lichts” by Eugen Ruge. The holiday motif is traditional for the family novel (T. Mann, J. Roth, H. Broch, H. Böll) and is associated with the image of home, family traditions and intergenerational relationships. Continuing the traditions of the classic family novel, E. Ruge gives to the motif of celebration the new meaning, making it a way of authorial reflection on the problem of the correlation of individual, family and cultural memory. In contemporary research, the Jubilee is seen as a form of cultural memory in which the past of the collective is represented. Wilhelm Powileit’s jubilee (October 1, 1989) becomes the key episode in E. Ruge’s novel, in which the events of the family history and the history of East Germany are juxtaposed. Presented from the perspective of all the central characters in the novel, the episode reflects the mismatch between the external ritual and the inner state of the characters. The motif of the holiday allows, on the one hand, to demonstrate the crisis of the Umnitzer-Powileit family, the alienation of the generations from each other. On the other hand, the meaninglessness of the jubilee ritual is linked to the imminent sunset of the GDR. The crisis state of the Umnitzer-Powileit family and of German society is conveyed by the poetics of theatricality, characteristic of Ruge’s novel as a whole.