Interlitteraria

Between Wounds and Witness: Memory and the Relational Fabric of Repair

Leena Käosaar — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This editorial examines trauma as a multidimensional phenomenon – psychological, cultural, political, and embodied – that profoundly shapes individual lives and people’s sense of connection to shared histories. Situating the discussion within contemporary global crises and scholarly debates, it draws on key concepts from trauma theory, including Caruth’s understanding of trauma as “unclaimed experience”, Hirsch’s postulation of “postmemory”, and van der Kolk’s work on embodied trauma. Emphasising relationality, it explores how trauma circulates across generations and geographies, mediated through storytelling, witnessing, and affective transmission. It reflects on the limits of dominant Western frameworks and highlights the need for culturally situated approaches that account for diverse historical and social conditions. The special issue it introduces brings together scholars who explore the representation and repair of trauma through literature, testimony, historical sources, and aesthetics, foregrounding the role of narrative in fostering connection, resilience, and ethical responsibility in the face of rupture.

Abissology: Traumatic Memory in Esther Kinsky’s Novel Rombo (2022)

Marko Pajević — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In her book Rombo (2022) Esther Kinsky traces the devastating earthquakes in north-east Italy in 1976 on the basis of natural and cultural observations and the memories of those affected. Earthquakes suddenly open up chasms that shake our certainties. They are caused by underground displacements and collapses of so-called abissi, that is, abysses or cavities in the rock. In structuring her novel, Kinsky quotes writings from abissology, a branch of early geology, and subtly draws connections between nature and the human condition. The chapter explores this primarily through the representation and role of memory and emphasises how the text works with fragments, linking observations of nature, photographs, (partly) fictitious memory logs and reflection, science and folklore. How do people deal with the traumatic experience of the abyss? How does trauma shape our understanding of life and the world? How does memory serve to draw a parallel between the mountain interior and the human? The interplay between remembering and forgetting plays a decisive role in this process and gains clarity in the abissi. The abissi can also be found allegorically in people’s memories, where they harbour important signs of life and experiences. The trauma locked away in these cavities continues to have an effect and can suddenly have a destructive impact. If we ignore it, it will destroy us when we are shaken. If we track it down, we can emerge anew from the collapse. Kinsky’s Rombo is therefore a plea to pursue the abyss, the trauma, and to translate the traces of life it contains into a conscious form.

The Authenticity of Trauma and Depression in Drama: A Clinician’s View of the Possibilities of Art

Merilin Jürjo — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Trauma and depression often go hand in hand. Depression can develop without traumatic events, but with trauma there are almost always depressive episodes. Going through trauma is dreadful, but the real challenge is to live with the memories. That is where depression, flashbacks and anxiety come into focus. Depression and PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) are treated by psychotherapy and antidepressants, but culture can add a lot to the coping and comprehension processes and to dealing with disorders. Specifically, drama can mirror and help to create a narrative, showing different ways to solve difficulties. In addition, theatre can be a place for discussion or to bring up stigmatised topics. It is more and more essential to destigmatise and share information, but also to find and integrate new interventions into psychotherapy to help patients.

In my paper I have three main goals. First, I compare and show how drama can portray particular symptoms of trauma and depression. For this I use plays by renowned English playwright Sarah Kane (4.48 Psychosis) and young Estonian playwright Heneliis Notton (Emesis), and symptom lists and descriptions from ICD-10 (International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision). Second, I show psychological processes of reception and how they can offer possibilities to work through traumatic events and comorbid disorders, and to learn about them. Third, I offer examples of how drama can be used in therapy or be part of so-called psychoeducation. As I work as a psychologist, I would like to offer an insight from the perspective of psychotherapy and demonstrate the role of art in healing.

Healing Echoes: Collective Trauma and Public Narratives in a Divided Homeland

Andreas Athanasiades — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article explores the transformative potential of public storytelling in healing collective trauma, drawing on the case study of the author’s mother, a Cypriot refugee’s experience following the 1974 Turkish invasion. It examines how the shift from private to public narration of traumatic memories can facilitate healing by creating a collective witness and enabling projective identification as a form of communication and psychological change. The study employs an autoethnographic approach, analyzing personal narratives and audience responses to public testimony. It argues that public storytelling allows for a reimagining of traumatic experiences, fostering a new, more resilient collective self, comprised of individual fragments. This process is likened to kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, symbolizing the potential for trauma survivors to emerge stronger through communal healing. The article engages with trauma theory, drawing on concepts like missing witnesses and collective selfhood, to elucidate the mechanisms of intergenerational trauma transmission and communal healing. It posits that public narration can transform personal trauma into historical trauma, creating a shared psychological framework that enhances group cohesion and preparedness against future threats. While acknowledging the limitations of generalizing from a single case study, this research contributes to the evolving discourse on trauma theory by highlighting the role of public narratives in trauma resolution. It suggests that focusing on present and future-oriented storytelling, rather than past-fixation, can promote resilience and adaptive coping strategies in post-conflict societies. The findings have implications for understanding the interplay between individual and collective trauma healing, offering insights into potential therapeutic approaches that harness the power of public testimony and communal support in addressing historical traumas.

Trauma and Healing in Zef Pllumi’s Live to Tell Trilogy

Edlira Macaj — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Humanity has periodically faced tragic events, with studies seeking to explain each case. History has shown that wars, pandemics, and totalitarian regimes can brutally take the lives of innocent people. They also leave lasting trauma for survivors, making the healing process lengthy. A totalitarian regime is an overcontrolling government that interferes unnecessarily in citizens’ lives. It deforms, alienates, and destroys individuals. The Live to Tell trilogy written by Franciscan priest Zef Pllumi, who was imprisoned for twenty-five years, attests to these shocking facts and the consequences of prolonged persecution on a person’s life, and in this way represents society as a whole. Zef Pllumi was a survivor of the Albanian ‘Gulag’ who courageously reconstructed the history of persecution, specifically that of religious missionaries during the dictatorship that took hold in Albania from the end of the Second World War until 1990, in a confessional narrative. The trilogy is factual and analytical evidence, encompassing historical, documentary, reflective, analytical, and descriptive discourses. Categorised as documentary literature, this trilogy simultaneously presents facts and fiction to the reader. Above all, it affirms Zef Pllumi’s human mission and desire to survive under extreme conditions, fuelled by faith in God and love of life. This historical and memoirist trilogy offers an alternative perspective on Albanian history during the communist regime. “Live to Tell”, written in the Geg dialect of northern Albania, serves as a liberating confession of the true story of religious persecution. It aims to heal personal and collective trauma by revealing truths that were never acknowledged by the state at the time. The healing process requires the strength to remember and not forget the past.

Detached Holocaust Memory: The Lithuanian-American Community’s View of the Holocaust in the First Decades after the Second World War

Akvilė Naudžiūnienė — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In the decades immediately following the Second World War, the Lithuanian-American community in the United States exhibited a complex and often contentious relationship with Holocaust memory, characterised by divergent interpretations of Jewish-Lithuanian relations and events during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania. This complexity arose largely due to the heterogeneous nature of the diaspora, combining earlier waves of economic migrants with postwar refugees who directly experienced the trauma of wartime violence and Soviet occupation. The earlier migrants viewed Lithuanian Jews primarily through the lens of localised coexistence, without first-hand knowledge of wartime atrocities, whereas postwar immigrants’ perspectives were shaped by direct exposure to both Lithuanian independence and the atrocities of the Holocaust. Initially, Holocaust discourse in this community was fragmented and reactive, emerging mainly in response to the testimonies of Jewish survivors, rather than from introspective community dialogue. From the late 1940s, Lithuanian-American newspapers revealed a significant ideological polarisation, from cautious attempts at reconciliation to aggressive ethno-nationalist deflections of Lithuanian complicity. Unpublished literary manuscripts by Lithuanian émigrés, preserved in diaspora archives, further demonstrate the nuanced ways Lithuanian-American writers approached these traumatic memories, ranging from empathy and moral reckoning to antisemitic stereotypes and ideological defensiveness. This paper investigates early Lithuanian- American narratives about the Holocaust, highlighting the notable tension between acknowledging Jewish suffering and preserving Lithuanian national identity, often constructed through narratives of collective victimhood under Soviet rule. Through an analysis of press material and émigré literature, this study identifies an initial reluctance to confront complicity alongside early forms of the preservation of cultural memory, reflecting broader East European trends in postwar Holocaust representation. Ultimately, the analysis underscores how the Lithuanian-American Holocaust memory was less an internal reckoning than a negotiation shaped by external pressures and competing historical narratives.

Albanian Lyrical Poetry and the Healing Process after the Fall of the Communist Regime

Marisa Kërbizi — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Albanian literature is considered to be a domain of epic genres. The reason is strongly related to the historical and social context in which art and literature were developed. Having the ideological function as the main reason why most literary works were written, made epic genres strongly connected with the narrative of the nation and national awareness. From the Albanian Renaissance onward, epic poetry and later short stories and novels were the main genres that represented Albanian literature.

This dominant model became very oppressive during the totalitarian re- gime. Albanian literature was forced to enter the confines of socialist realism. Poets who could not comply with its schematic formula were condemned, imprisoned, and even executed. Lyrical poetry became almost obsolete during the communist regime in Albania, going by the number of books published. Moreover, the desperate call for freedom (personal and artistic) of the lyrical poets became the main indictment in the communist prosecutors’ files. Although in quantitative terms the epic genres represented the dominant model of literary development, the repression shown towards lyrical writers is strongly related to the involvement of the state in the creation of a fake narrative and a fake identity for Albanian literature.

After the fall of the totalitarian regime, there was a sudden development in lyrical genres in Albanian literature. Lyrical poetry became one of the most important means of defining the huge emotional abyss that communism had brought into Albanians’ lives. The remaining part of the literary work of the executed poets such as Lazër Shantoja (1891–1945), Trifon Xhagjika (1932– 1963), Genc Leka (1941–1977), Vilson Blloshmi (1948–1977), Havzi Nela (1934–1988), etc., was published after the fall of the communist regime (1991). This literary corpus, together with the poetic work of imprisoned poets such as Isuf Luzaj (1913–2000), Arshi Pipa (1920–1997), Zef Zorba (1920–1993), Pano Taçi (1929–2012), Jorgo Bllaci (1938–2001), Frederik Rreshpja (1940– 2006), Visar Zhiti (1952), etc., represented a new face of Albanian literary identity, which for the first time was strongly connected to poetry.

The main goals of this paper are to analyse the changes that happened in Albanian literature after the fall of the communist regime, present the transformation of the Albanian literary system, and highlight the importance of poetry in acting as a self-healing mechanism. Lyrical poetry became the voice of the national trauma in which Albanians were deeply involved. Through writing and reading lyrical poetry about the living hell of the communist period, poets transformed their wounds into an intense dialogue between the present and the past.

Traumas Caused by Racism in Kashmeera Lokuge and Hyppe Salmi’s Novel Ilmatilaa

Flóra Várkonyi — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The article examines Kashmeera Lokuge and Hyppe Salmi’s migration novel Ilmatilaa (Airspace 2021) as trauma fiction. I will examine the target text with the help of trauma studies in literature, racism studies and emotion studies. The subjects of my analysis are the racism-related traumas of the main character and first-person narrator of the novel Shehani, a young woman who moved to Finland from Sri Lanka as a teenager. I investigate her emotions caused by experiences of racism, and also pay attention to her other reactions to racism. I examine whether the novel has the typical thematic and linguistic features of trauma fiction. In the analysis of the depictions of racism, I use some concepts from sociological racism studies that describe different forms of the phenomenon. The emotions Shehani experiences, evoked by racism against her, will be scrutinised with the help of emotion studies. I approach the emotions as being formed in interaction with, and as linked to, social injustice, and as and functioning as adaptive tools. In Lokuge’s and Salmi’s novel, detailed depiction of the racism experienced by the narrator, as well as her emotions in response to it, awaken the reader’s empathy and increase their understanding of the social phenomena of racism and being a migrant.

Alan Garner’s Rāmāyana

Simon Brodbeck — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article is a study of Alan Garner’s retelling of the Rāmāyana, which was published in short-story collections in 1969 and 2011. The first part of the article compares Garner’s version with the version from which he worked, and on that basis discusses and attempts to account for his adaptation strategies. The second part of the article discusses the final paragraph of Garner’s Rāmāyana, which is taken directly from his source and promises rewards to whoever receives or disseminates the text. This paragraph had a profound effect upon Garner when he first encountered it, and serves as a key to his retelling and his career.

The Phenomenon of Memory in Leonardas Gutauskas’ Novel A Wolf-Teeth Necklace and Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time

Eglė Keturakienė, Iveta Montvydienė — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This study explores the phenomenon of personal memory as human experience in two modernist novels: Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and A Wolf-Teeth Necklace by Leonardas Gutauskas. Using the phenomenological approach of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edward Casey, Gaston Bachelard and Paul Ricoeur, the article aims to discuss the various interpretations of memory and its effect on human existence. Proust’s prose provides one possible context for analysing Gutauskas’ novel, confirming that no literary phenomenon is born in an artistic vacuum. A typological comparison between In Search of Lost Time (1913–1927) and A Wolf-Teeth Necklace (1990) is also possible due to the cultural influence of Proust as a person and artist on Gutauskas’ writing. Both authors dedicate a great deal of attention to the theme of living personal memory, which belongs to the subjective reality of human experience. Both protagonists demonstrate how closely their sensory memory is linked to childhood living spaces (Combray for Proust’s character and Vepriai in Gutauskas’ case), attributing a privileged meaning to human existence. In both novels, childhood experiences re-emerge through sensory memories, such as the indelible scents of hawthorn (Proust) and water lilies (Gutauskas). Taking on the meaning of sacred closeness (Communion), these familiar sensations embody the protagonists’ spiritual, sensory and emotional relationships with their loved ones. The reflective narratives of Proust and Gutauskas revolve around the living memory of the main characters’ mothers and grandmothers – their true spiritual home. Both authors also focus on the subject of memory as aesthetic vision, with sunlit images of stained-glass windows emerging as living sensory memory in the childhood recollections of the protagonists. The effect is further reinforced by each of the writers exploring the phenomenon of objects as symbols in their novels. Proust and Gutauskas’ characters see books as corporeal things and believe that reading, a corporeal process, can bring back the past. Reflections on previous experiences also extend to the relationship between life and art: both Proust and Gutauskas’ protagonists are introduced to the world and magic of beauty (art) by their grandmothers. In Proust’s writing, sensory memory is transformed into art, saving the main character from meaningless existence, as only literature can keep the past alive and ensure continuity. The same is true for Gutauskas’ novel, where sensory memory morphs into an intense creative search and rescues the protagonist. This highlights the harmonising efforts of both characters/narrators to turn life into art and literature. Both Proust and Gutauskas acknowledge the power of art to immortalise the memory of those close to us.

El proceso místico en Cómo me hice monja (1993) de César Aira

Juan Pablo Patiño — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The aim of the paper titled The mystical process in César Aira’s Cómo me hice monja (1993), is to show how Cómo me hice monja by César Aira playfully emulates a mystical discourse. Analyzed from this perspective, the apparent dispersion and strangeness of the anecdotes narrated, the language used, and the title of the novel are framed in a structure that corresponds to processes described in mystical texts according to the studies carried out by Bernard McGinn, Michel de Certeau, Juan Martín Velasco and Michel Hulin, among others. From this point of view, the novel can be interpreted as a game that reflects a series of mystical experiences that culminate in an ascension.

Le critique et le romancier

Samuel Bidaud — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Qui, du critique ou du romancier, est le plus libre ? À l’origine de cette question se trouve un roman, La saga de Youza, du Lituanien Youozas Baltouchis. Pour moi qui rêve d’écrire le livre que je porte en moi, il m’a fait comprendre la difficulté que j’éprouverais à être romancier. Pour quelle raison ? Parce que le romancier est contraint d’accepter l’ambiguïté, là où le critique a au contraire la possibilité de stabiliser un sens. Expliquons-nous.

About the Authors

About Authors — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

About the Authors

Front Matter

Editors — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000