Individual and cultural trauma in Varlam Shalamov’s narratives

Gulag-survivor narratives tend to combine individual and communal concerns, which are sometimes artistically amalgamated. The relationship between them can be further understood with the help of trauma studies, though the application of the concept of trauma to Gulag literature is not unproblematic. This paper focusses on signs of trauma in Shalamov’s stories “The Seizure”, “On Tick”, and “The First Tooth”, the latter showing how individual trauma blends with collective/cultural trauma associated with the loss of confidence in communal identity. These are versions of the cultural trauma of Russian intelligentsia, stemming from enforced departures from its humanistic ideals.