The specifics of detective intrigue in Lena Eltang’s neo-modern novel “Cartagena”
DOI: 10.23951/1609-624X-2025-6-146-155
The analysis of Lena Eltang’s “Cartagena” is made taking into account the works on the transformation of the detective novel under the influence of modernist aesthetics. The modernist novel is based on postclassical “philosophical metaphysic” (M.A. Mozheyko), which leads to the rejection of traditional detective categories (the search for and affirmation of the truth, the restoration of an objective picture of the incident and justice). The article raises the problem of defining the aesthetic nature of the analyzed novel and distinguishing between (neo)modernism and postmodernism, characterized by the use of similar techniques (play, intertextuality, polysemy of images), but for the expression of fundamentally different worldviews. The detective intrigue is built in the novel through a narratological strategy of “calling out” the voices of focalized characters, each of whom gives a fragmented, subjective and different version of events, while changing over time. In addition, the images of the characters of “Cartagena” are endowed with ambivalent semantics and combine opposite meanings: victim and investigator, murderer and victim, detective and murderer. To create a detective intrigue, L. Eltang uses various techniques of disrupting communication between the narrator characters (incorrect attribution of authorship, substitution of the addressee, untimely receipt of information, error in determining the fictional or documentary nature of the text). The novel lacks the framework of a conceptualized narrative, but the first and last entries belong to Marcus, who explains his idea of creating a novel about the investigation of a series of murders that occurred at Briatico. This allows us to interpret “Cartagena” as a meta-novel, which focuses on the plot of the writer’s birth and formation, the process of creating a fictitious text based on a detective investigation. The specifics of the development of detective intrigue, the themes of the artist’s relationship with the surrounding reality and the “melting down” of reality into text, the reflection of the epistemological possibilities and limitations of man in comprehending reality, techniques that reveal the subjective worldview prove the modernist nature of “Cartagena”.
Keywords: L. Eltang, contemporary literature, (neo)modernist detective story, neomodernism, detective intrigue, error motive
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Issue: 6, 2025
Series of issue: Issue 6
Rubric: RUSSIAN AND WORLD LITERATURE
Pages: 146 — 155
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