Polyphony as a form of representation of women's memory of war in the documentary-artistic prose of S. Alexievich: based on the example of the novel "War's Unwomanly Face."

The article offers a unique perspective on the structural polyphony of Svetlana Alexievich’s novel "War Does Not Have a Woman's Face." After studying scientific works in this field, we concluded that contemporary literary studies have developed two main vectors for researching the phenomenon of polyphony as a key compositional principle in Alexievich's work. The first is linked to the tradition laid down by the "pioneers" of the "novel of voices" genre in Belarusian prose – A. Adamovich, V. Kolesnik, and Y. Bryl. The creative method of these writers is based on tape recordings of oral testimonies, woven into a documentary-artistic fabric akin to a montage film. The second vector is based on recognizing the originality of Alexievich's innovative solutions. Within this vector, researchers focus on polyphony as a means of representing collective memory, recreated in a cyclically culturally conditioned form. In this article, we propose a psychological study of the polyphonic organization of the novel "War Does Not Have a Woman's Face," concentrating on the psychological aspects of the phenomenon of memory in connection with the specifics of women’s recollections. The work demonstrates that human memories are characterized by fragmentarity, asynchronicity, and heterogeneity. Yet, the aggregate of disparate memories forms a coherent structure of individual and collective past. A similar pattern is found in the compositional organization of the novel, where mosaic polyphony relates to the internal mechanisms of memory functioning in its dynamic and nonlinear nature. Furthermore, we propose to explore the female voice in greater detail, which has long remained a marginalized element in the national cultural memory of war. By restoring women's right to speak, Alexievich not only expands the boundaries of documentary-artistic representation of the polyphonic structure but also transforms the very understanding of historical experience and the human fact. The perspective for analyzing the polyphony of the novel, as highlighted in this study, opens new possibilities for comprehending its genre nature, harmoniously synthesizing artistic and documentary principles.

Svetlana Alexievich, polyphony, documentary art prose, works about war, female voice, oral document, non-fiction, Great Patriotic War, women's memories, phenomenon of memory