MEMORY, TIME AND THE SPACE OF HOME IN THE PROSE OF TAUFIK KARIMOV

Abstract

The creativity of contemporary Kazakhstani writer Taufik Karimov represents a unique artistic space in which personal memory, family history, the fate of generation, and cultural memory of a nation are combined into a unified system of images and motifs. In the represented works of the writer – "Grandfather Makabka," "A Drawing from Childhood", "Hello, My Home...", "Whistle in the Night," "Rain," "On the Nymphenburger Canal", "Once Upon a Festive Evening...," and "Impossible Tenderness and Pain..." – referring to the past becomes not just a means of reproduction of biographical events but also a crucial artistic principle for understanding human existence.

One of the defining characteristics of T. Karimov's prose is the autobiographical basis of the narrative. The author draws on his own childhood, parents, home, familiar places, historical events, and everyday realities of the past. However, the autobiographical nature of his works goes beyond the mere recording of facts. Experiences are transformed into artistic reality, where specific details acquire symbolic meaning, and individual lives become part of a broader historical and cultural experience.

In this regard, the story "Grandfather Makabka" is particularly significant. Already at the beginning of the narrative, childhood memories emerge as a return to a special space, designated by the author as "the world of childhood" [1, p. 13]. The character’s awakening from sleep is accompanied not so much by the recording of a specific event but by a sense of returning to a lost time. The summer landscape, the sounds of nature, insects, grandmother, tea, and conversation in the native language gradually shape the atmosphere of a child's world.