The Voice of the Mother's Secret – the Secret of the Mother's Voice: Acoustics of Memory in David Albahari's novel Bait

The essay analyses the role and character of the mother in the novel Bait by David Albahari. The focus of the analysis is placed on the relation between the narrator, the mother, and the mother's voice from tape recorders. Within this framework, the relationship between narration, language and memory is considered. The mother's figure and the representation of her voice are of fundamental importance because they represent the mother tongue torn from the native environment. Therefore, through Bergson's and Hjelmslev's philosophical and linguistic concepts, maternity and mother tongue are bound to the experience of eradication. This line of argument is associated with literary memory studies, and, starting with Deleuze and Guattari, it is shown that through narration the mother and son exchange the relationship of birth for that of becoming. The mother no longer represents the haven for the birth of a story, but her motherhood, on the contrary, is built on resistance to narrative reification. Mother tongue, on the other hand, is built on highlighting the materiality of the voice, irreducible to the transparent means of conveying meaning.