THEME "INSURMOUNTABLE PAST” IN RUSSIAN AND FOREIGN LITERATURE OF THE XX CENTURY

The article is devoted to the theme of "insurmountable past", which is inextricably linked with the theme of war. The authors of the article show how the tragedy of war is reflected in the personality of a person, regardless of his nationality and historical time, by the example of the creative work of writers of Russian and foreign literature. In the center of attention is the novel of V. Grossman (1905-1964)" Life and destiny "(1988) and the works of Gunther Grass (1927 – 2015) "Under local anesthesia" (1969) and "The Trajectory of the crab" (2002). Turning to the work of writers of different generations, different national mentality and different fate, the authors of the article actualize the spiritual and moral problems of literature about the war: the tragic circumstances of the war and their consequences in human life. Such a conceptual and problematic theme allows us to reveal both the commonality in its interpretation by Russian and German writers, and the originality of the position of each. Prose Grossman's war does not contain images of battle scenes, the conceptual component of the Russian writer includes a philosophical, symbolist, partly religious interpretation of the designated theme: war as evil, violence, fratricide, Apocalypse, death of the soul. Gunther Grass, using the techniques of postmodern narrative, reveals the changes in the mindset of the Germans after the Second world war: from a sense of guilt to a sense of irritation and the desire for revenge, which leads to the silencing, distortion, "simplification" of history, the substitution of the concepts of "criminal" and "victim". The article builds a convincing logical series in the context of the stated theme: if the Russian writer V. Grossman showed in his novel actually the origins and causes of the" insurmountable past " in man, the German writer G. Grass with his works warns of the danger of the revival of the spirit of fascism in modern United Germany. In the course of the analysis, the authors emphasize that in the literature of the XX century, the conflict caused by war does not disappear at the end of the war itself, and this is one of the deepest problems of life and literature of the XX century.