Abstract
This article examines Carlos Ruiz Zafón's novel The Shadow of the Wind through the lens of the philosophy of memory and the concept of symbolic immortality, illustrating the artistic embodiment of the philosophical ideas of Pierre Ricoeur, Jacob Assmann, Carl Gustav Jung, and other thinkers. The book is a mirror through which reading appears as an act of self-knowledge and dialogue, prolonging the author's existence in the reader's mind. Central attention is paid to the leitmotif «we exist as long as we are remembered», revealing memory as a condition of existence – the only possible form of love and fidelity capable of resisting death. The dual nature of memory is analyzed: both its salvific power and its destructive hypostasis, when memory, enclosed within itself and not shared with another, becomes a prison and wounds those unable to let go of the past. Special attention is given to the concept of «living language», realized in the metaphor «dead languages do not exist» and in the poetics of the novel, where Barcelona itself acts as the custodian of memory. Symbolic immortality is achieved in the unity of memory and words, and culture, language, and love for it appear as the true sources of life. The novel fulfills its own postulated principle: a book, imprinted in the reader's memory, continues to exist in their consciousness, independent of the author, of time, of the fate of the paper volume. «The Shadow of the Wind2 is a metaphor for memory itself, which, like a shadow, haunts us, shaping our existence, giving it depth and dimension inaccessible to the pure physiology of existence. The novel's ending closes the circle – the light of memory drives away the darkness of nonexistence.
Keywords
Carlos Ruiz Zafon, novel «The Shadow of the Wind», memory, «living language», symbolic immortality.