Recreation of Chernobyl trauma in Svetlana Aleksiyevich's Chernobylʹskaya molitva

Abstract

Little has been written about the literary methodology of the contemporary Belarusian writer Svetlana Aleksiyevich. The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the aesthetic manipulation of factographic content in Svetlana Aleksiyevich's Chernobylʹskaya molitva aids Aleksiyevich in her stated goal of creating a "closer approximation to real life," while secondarily positioning Aleksiyevich within the literary background of Belarusian and Soviet dissident writers of documentary prose and providing an in-depth analysis of the narrative structure of Chernobylʹskaya molitva. At the heart of the methodology of Chernobylʹskaya molitva is a bifurcated structure I call "literary traumatic space," which is a modification of Michael Rothberg's concentrationary space as described in Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation. The emotional impact of Aleksiyevich's Chernobylʹskaya molitva is greatly increased through multiple representations of irreconcilable trauma (as portrayed in "literary traumatic space") positioned one against another within the text.