“A CASSETTE HAS A DOUBLE BOTTOM...”: FOR THE INTERTEXTUAL PARADOXES OF BORIS AKUNIN

Abstract

The article is devoted to the case of the “second” intertext on the example of the novel “Before the Apocalypse” by B. Akunin. The “first” intertext in this case is the novel by U. Eco “The name of the Rose”, and the author explicitly hints on it by devoting his text to Umberto Eco and making a play with a reader using the plot, the hinting on it and the details of the investigation of the crime.At the same time there exist another layer: the order of the deaths of the old believing orthodoxies and the circumstances of their death practically letter by letter follows the poem “Three dead men” (1918) by N.S. Gumilev. Since the author doesn’t use the evident hints on Gumilev’s poem, we can not say surely which type of interrelation of the texts is presented in “Before the Apocalypse”: the conscious ciphering of the second layer of intertext “for the knowing” or the spontaneous using of the text by other author which is not conscious for the author himself.

Keywords

• Акунин
• Гумилев
• Эко
• интертекст
• парадокс
• аллюзия
• интертекстуальный мотив
• семантическая перекличка