Self-Identification of the character in the modernist novel by Lena Etlang «Pobeg kumaniki»

Lena Eltang’s novel «Pobeg kumaniki» («Escape (Sprout) of the Brambles») is interpreted as a modern modernist prose that inherits the principles of the poetics of the «stream of consciousness» literature. The theoretical and methodological basis of the study was the work of A.A. Zhitenev, Ya.V. Soldatkina,
N.T. Rymar, T.L. Rybalchenko.
The self-identification of the main character in the novel by Lena Etlang «Pobeg Kumaniki» is complicated because of the absence of external supports of existence (home, communication with relatives, the name given to him at birth is not mentioned). Moras defines himself as a «guest» and a «ubiquist», that is, a person who can exist in different conditions, but this does not answer the question «Who am I?». The second thing that complicates self-identification is the inability to relate yourself to any particular «Other» (both in culture and in the environment), since situationally there are contradictory auto-associations with a variety of images from mythology and literature. The third challenge is the desire to combine not only different, but opposite (male and female, and depraved innocent, naive and wise, etc.). Pragmatism and the multidimensionality of identity, the desire to realize in my life «more options» (which gives the writing, creation of the text itself as others) that make the process of identity complex and unfinished. Another reason for the difficulty of identifying oneself is the limited epistemological possibilities and the inability of a person to take a position of «non-necessity» in order to see himself holistically. Eltang uses the Eastern parable of the cart, which illustrates the inability of a person to describe anything holistically, authentic to the essence of the described phenomenon. The main artistic principle of image-building in the novel is ambivalence, and the basic ideas are the «multiplicity of consciousness» and the incompleteness of a person’s self-identification in the course of life.