Tragovima smrti u romanu Aleksandra Hemona Projekat Lazarus

Abstract

The paper is based on the constitution and semantic stratification of the motifs of death in Alexander Hemon's novel Project Lazarus. The novel intertwines two narrative currents: the first one deals with Jewish immigrants at the beginning of the 20th century, while the theme of the second narrative is the emergence of the first, that is, VladimirBrick, who a hundred years later tries to investigate and record the death of Lazarus using so-called mapping, that is, by revisiting the places where Lazarus resided. The intention is to discover the truth about the murder of the Jew, but in the end, it remains variable, arbitrary, and relative. The meaning of death, that is, the meaning of the murder of Lazarus Averbuch, was explored with the help of Saussure's distinction between the sign and the signified, although the signified was in a Derridean sense postponed and constantly supplemented with new meanings. The novel is a world of always delayed meaning, in which truth is incomprehensible. The death of a Jew who dies under unexpected circumstances transformed into an assassination attempt. The victim thus becomes a murderer, and all the arguments that contribute to that are based on the social-ideological-ethical-religious context. Identity marked and recognized in death (as dead) is an area of flourishing semantic meaning/signification. The paper also deals with the establishment of the Lyotard schism, from which it will follow that the Jewish side had suffered injustice that cannot be proven. The semantic potential is realized through the play of center and margin, hierarchy and difference, sign and signified, guilt and innocence, truth and lies, faith and doubt, stable and delayed.