The Sameness of the Ageing Self: Memory and Testimony in 20th-Century Russian Narratives of Ageing

Although ageing has become an important issue in the arts and humanities, there is a striking lack of coverage of old age and ageing as represented in Russian literature. This paper highlights a theme constantly recurring in Russian narratives of ageing: the memory of the past and a witness's testimony as constitutive of the identity of the narrated self.The article provides analyses of 20th-century Russian women's prose in which memory and testimony play a decisive role for the ageing protagonist and her sense of self. Drawing on Paul Ricœur's concept of “narrative identity”, this paper aims to show that, in these texts, age identity is constructed around the notion of “having remained the same” and that this, notably, applies to the intersection of ageing and gender.