The article analyzes the significance of historical memory in the context of personal experiences of the heroes of the literary works of Solo Bellow and Yuri Trifonov. The question of comprehension of the lived years with elements of the analysis and first of all self-analysis is considered. Particular attention is paid to times of hardship – wars, revolutions, personal tragedies. The authors dwell on the importance of "the right moral choice", on the detrimental effect of "wrong choice". It is proved that the novels "Mr. Semmler's Planet" and "The Old Man" are in approximately the same plane of cultural and historical understanding of reality, the main characters have similar qualities and their general irritation with modernity is relative regardless of different countries (USA and USSR). In modern Ukraine, the problem of overcoming the totalitarian past is quite relevant. Ukrainians have gained a traumatic experience of counteraction and adaptation, comprehension and forgetting, condemnation and justification of certain historical events of the twentieth century. Turning to the literary works of the second half of the twentieth century allows us to better understand the nature of contemporary phenomena, to learn from the useful experience of intellectual writers in trying to "reconcile with reality", to overcome the inertia of oblivion and to find basic values of human existence. human layer. Sol Bellow and Yuri Trifonov were able to describe their main characters quite accurately – they are old, "locked in their memories". Only the past remains their "true" reality, but at the same time they have to live in a "present" alien to them. Continuation of their biological life does not satisfy the main characters of the analyzed works - they try to convey their memories or thoughts to the younger generation. But here they encounter a conditional wall of misunderstanding, a wall of alienation. The considerations and feelings important to them have mostly lost their relevance and turned into rudiments. Only a small part of the information about the past can be perceived only within the framework of interest in the fate of prominent personalities with whom the main characters had to intersect.
THE IMPORTANCE OF HISTORICAL MEMORY IN HUMAN FATE (ON THE MATERIAL OF THE NOVELS "OLD MAN" BY YURI TRIFONOV AND "PLANET OF MR. SEMMLER" SOLA BELLOU)