The Semantics of Diary Writing and Reading in Lena Eltang's Novel The Stone Maples

The aim of the article is to show an authorial concept of diary reading and writing in The Stone Maples, the second novel of Lena Eltang, a modernist writer, an emigrant of the fourth wave. The research material is representative of Eltang's work as a whole. The analysis of this novel specifies the nature of a certain author's contemporary modernist prose. The research was carried out based on works by M.M. Bakhtin, Yu.M. Lotman, and M.L. Gasparov. The basic methods of research are the analysis of the subjective structure of the novel, semantic and semiotic analysis. The research course is the following: to determine the aesthetic nature of the novel which has caused the specific characteristics of poetic means of the author's position expression, to find theoretical bases of the analysis of diary narration in the text and to analyse the functions and semantics of diary writing and reading. As a result of the analysis, a number of conclusions have been made. Diary narration in The Stone Maples helps to disclose the inner life of the central characters: Sasha Sonly, the owner of a guest house, and Luellin Elderberry, her guest. The authors of the diaries are characters pulled together by the experience of losing relatives, the feeling of guilt before them; by “mythological” thinking, associative linking of the realities of life with the plots and images of ancient myths and world literature. Diary narration (autocommunication) and the content of the characters' diaries actualise the problem of the search of love and understanding, of overcoming isolation and loneliness. Eltang interprets Sasha's writing a diary (developing into a “book”, that is, a text assuming an addressee) and its reading by Luellin (his records, accordingly, become the diary of a reader) as a less injuring (unlike physical rapprochement) way to coexist with the Other. The woman assimilates to the text and the man to the reader. Diaryepistolary discourse allows Eltang to accent different aspects of the problem of the Other and I: I as the Other; I and Others; I and the Other. Diary writing includes the semantics of treatment (Sasha calls her diary “Herbal”, that is, a book of folk medicine recipes), of making up for losses, of a dialogue with the gone relatives, and also of a silent word, a refusal of external activity for an intensive internal work. It is the diary that reconciles with the reality which “turned its back on” one and allows one to preserve dignity, not to react with evil to the aggression of people around, not to go mad. Diary reading is interpreted as an intimate process of getting to know-taking possessionadmiring the Other. But the necessity of a diary is caused by the power of the past over the present, enslavement by the feeling of guilt and despair. The emergence of a desire to write a text for someone and to read someone's diary (that is, to comprehend their inner world) means to find hope, to step out of an autistic condition to the real rather than the invented Other who is silently (in the diary) calling for help, understanding, love.

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