Text as “Other Possibilities” in the Modernist Novel Bramble Sprout by Lena Eltang (An Analysis of the Protagonist's Diary)

The aim of the article is to analyse the motive of the text/letter, a recurring motif in Lena Eltang's prose, as “other possibilities” by means of the methodology of hermeneutics and narratology; to reveal Eltang's concept of writing and correlation of text, consciousness, and reality. This research gives a more precise idea on the specificity of the modern modernist prose of a particular author. The material of the research is the first novel by Lena Eltang, an emigrant writer of the fourth wave: Bramble Sprout. In order to observe the recurring motifs in her prose, the novels The Stone Maples, Other Drums, and Cartagena were analysed. The research was carried out, first of all, based on works by M.M. Bakhtin, Yu.M. Lotman, M.L. Gasparov, M. Mikheeva. The basic research methods were the analysis of the subjective organisation of the text, the semantic and semiotic analysis, the motif analysis. The research went as follows. The novel's aesthetic nature, which specified the poetic means of the expression of the author's position, was determined. The theoretical basis of the analysis of motifs in modernist prose was identified. The novel Bramble Sprout was analysed. The research allowed drawing a number of conclusions. Eltang interprets the connections of life and text in the tradition of romanticism and modernism, by placing the “point of view” of the carrier of mythological consciousness, a madman/genius/prophet (Moras), in the centre of the narration. The ego-text of the “writer” encompasses the world's cultural experience and simultaneously represents a poetic statement. The text performs lifecreating projective, and compensatory functions; it is an alternative to social existence. Different relationships with oneself and with others, different variants of I are experienced in the text; that is, “other possibilities” are realised. The protagonist's escapism is caused by his greater trust to the text, rather than to the chaotic, uncognisable and aggressive social reality. Therefore, communicating via the text for Moras is a safer, more psychologically comfortable way to approach the Other than physical/social contact. But the semantics of the text as “other possibilities” in the novel is ambivalent: it connects the meanings of completeness and emptiness, of the space and chaos, of pleasure and pain, of escapism and intentions towards the Other, of life and dying. The writer's attitude is ambivalent: to strengthen the consciousness and to destroy the found meanings as searching for them is a course of life, and approaching knowledge coincides with disappearing. A person disappears but his/her text remains; this text is a “possibility” to prolong “I” if the text meets with the Other (reader and co-author), who is capable to understand and continue this text.

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