THE PROBLEM OF "OVERCOMING THE PAST" IN JOGANNES BOBROWSKI’S PROSE
The prose of this writer cannot be called historical as the authenticity of the time coloring is not his element. The roots of I. Bobrowski’s historical fiction are found in the philosophic-esthetical experience of German educators - Klopshtock, Gerder and Gaman. His thoughts coincide with Gerder’s ideas of creating a universal history of all nations and ages and universal human values of each national culture. In his prose, I. Bobrowski keeps up the traditions of the previous epoch in the 20<sup>th</sup> century. Sarmatia is a kind of poetical and geographical space for Johannes Bobrowski, where he argues with the reality. Since the beginning of the 1960s, first in poetry, later in prose, I. Bobrowski has made a quest his theme, “telling” about his personal experiences in a series of stories and in the novels “Levin’s Mill” and “Lithuanian Claviers”. By connecting the past, present and future, through the link of times, the writer comes to the conclusion about the logic of the historical process and about the harmfulness of forgetting the lessons taught by the past to the present. The consciousness of his characters, who honor the memory of ancestors never forgetting their history, reflects the understanding of German history in the epic works of the writer. The fates of the writer’s prosaic characters are connected with a part of “unsurmounted past” of German history (unlawful actions against the Roma people, the law of population transfer, the selection of the German race and an attempt to humiliate other people who feel like outsiders in the Kaiser's Reich). The result of this policy is "the principle of negative integration", present in Neymyul’s (rural) routine and essential for the formation of the German "special path," which is doomed to failure.