INTERTEXTUAL OPTIONS AND MODIFICATIONS

Intertextuality is a literary theoretical term with seemingly new paradigmatic poststructuralist and semiotic features. despite it’s various uses a certain imprecision and lack of clarity in its usage is noticeable. This is due to several factors amongst which are the following: the fact that there are several modifications and even kings of intertextuality in the history of literature, the fact that intertextuality is a literary and semiotic phenomenon which has undergone changes in form and function in its history, the fact that attitudes and consciousness of it have varied from epoch to epoch, from poetics to poetics, the fact that there are several different terms which refer to the phenomenon of intertextuality and finally the fact that there is not only terminological but also methodological variety. Intertextuality is an immanent linguistic, artistic, literary and semiotic phenomenon whose presence can be traced even in ancient times, cultural and literary works. However, as a defined literary theoretical term, as a category of poetics and a theoretical and critical parameter it has been in use since the 20’s and the 30’s of this century under different designations: dialogue, intersubjectivity, contact between texts, contextuality. These terms were used by Mikhail Bakhtin and Valentin N. Voloshinov in their philosophy of language and literature, in their philosophy of language and literature, in their sociological, anti-formalist, “semantic-aesthetic” poetics and methodology (Volochinov/Bakhtin 1980:106).

The belated reception in Europe and worldwide of the literary theoretical and methodological innovations of Bakhtin’s Leningrad sociological and semiotic circle had additional and manifold influences and effects on the more recent investigations in the field of literary theory. What has, from the 60’s on, been called intertext, intertextuality and interliterariness by French structuralist, semioticians and hermeneuticians, essentially corresponds to the Bakhtin term dialogue. Bakhtin defines the dialogical character of the literary text as a predisposition for “any text to live only insofar as it relate to other texts (contexts). Only in the sphere of this contact of texts is lit the light which illuminates both forward and back and which admits the given text to dialogue . It should be noted that this contact is a dialogical contact between texts (enunciation), and not a mechanical contact of ‘oppositions’. Interpretation of texts unaided by reference to other texts but only by means of extratextual actual reality appears in analyses which are purely biographical, vulgar-sociological and causal(...) and in depersonified historically. The real understanding of literature and theory of literature is always historical and personified. Finally, there are no limits to dialogical contact (Bakhtin 1975). Bakhtin also points to the fact that in the so-called “ dynamic model of communication” the word, the enunciation, and the text are understood as replicas of the word, the enunciation and the texts which exclude experience of other units of meaning.” (Bakhtin Outside this interpretative context it is difficult to grasp the sense of any literary work. The novel as a literary form is based on the dialogical principle and the polyphony of language and thus distinguishes itself from the epic, i.e. from the poetic utterance which is immanently monological and topological (Volochinov 1981: 181-215).

There are certain indications that the Bakhtin-Voloshinov-Medvedev’s concept of the dialogical character of the enunciation and the artistic discourse and, later, the textual and semantic theory of Y. M. Lotman, were influenced by the theoretical notions of A. Potebnya, published in 1862 in his study thought and Language (Potebnya 1976). Potebnya points to the dependence of the meaning of artistic works and even of the world themselves on the recipient. He founded the theory of literary communication and reception which would be further elaborated by other theoreticians, Bakhtin being among the first. Renate Lachman concludes that literary texts can be classified into monologically and dialogically coded texts which are furthermore mutually correlative. Dialogical texts can be divided into several subtypes, “which mark different modes of communication” (Lachmann 1981) according to the way of coding (mimetic, allegorical, symbolic), according to the level of innovation (defamiliarization, breaking of the canons, or their exclusion), according to metatextuality and intertextuality ( “in the sense that the text refers to other texts by way of allusion, parody, plagiarism and that it has recourse to older aesthetic forms of communication” (Lachmann 1981: 94) anticipating the significance of this type of aesthetic communication, Potebnya refers to it as “productive memory”.

Mutual memory and reference of texts in aesthetic and literary communication is an old phenomenon in literature. There even existed a certain theoretical awareness of this whish is evident in the distribution models of intertextual events in different systems of literary expression, among various types of texts and textual practices. As regards medieval Latin literature, we would point to the researches of the renowned medievalist Paul Zumthor, who came to the following conclusions: “The text is to a certain degree a memory of the past but an eternalized one”; “history embraces the texts, whereas the text encompasses history” (Zumthor 1971: 31). Intertextuality in the Middle Ages meant inclusion in one text, poetics or epoch, of citations, epigraphs and lines from other texts. According to Zumthor there are two practices of intertextuality specific to poets who used vernacular languages (written or spoken) as opposed to poets who wrote in Latin: for example, the technique of versus cum auctoritate according to which each stanza begins or ends with a line borrowed from a classical author. This technique is used by literary texts in Latin while the vernacular texts use sayings, proverbs or sentential when they articulate the text. As regards the intertextual features of Byzantine literature one may consult the research of Sergey Averintsev (Averintsev 1982) and for medieval Russian literature, that of Dmitri Lihachov. The later, for example, emphasizes the close relationship between literary genres in old Russia such as between various systems of “literary and folkloric” genres, between “literature and other fields of art ( especially music and painting), literature and science, literature and various types of bureaucratic literacy” (Lihachov 1972: 53). Mixed genres are a phenomenon characteristic also of medieval literature and not a recent phenomenon characteristic also of medieval literature and not a recent phenomenon seen for the first time in 19^th century Romanticism. The dialogue between genres and the conventions of their coding is also characteristic of postmodern literature, thus it too has its own tradition, pattern and continuity in the history of literature. The system of literary conventions is a process and not a uniform and closed act. Therefore, the most recent phenomena and today’s texts can be read in a meaningful and particular context from the past.

Regarding the different types of intertextuality in 20^th century literature we will refer first to the comparative analysis of the writer and literary theoretician from Zagreb, Pavao Pavlichich in his essay “Modern and Postmodern Intertextuality” (Pavlichich 1989: 33-50). Starting with the thesis that “postmodernism has a special sense of the past”, while “modernism attempts to break with the past”. Pavlichich defines two types of intertextuality which differ on three levels:

Firstly, on the level of the object of intertextual reference the modernist work reaches back to some concrete work from the past from different medium. On the other hand, the postmodernist work establishes a relationship with something more general, it refers to a genre, an epoch or a literary convention (thematic, stylistic).

Secondly, the intertextual relationship develops on the level of form in the process of which for the modernists “ the intertextual dialogue is achieved in the form of citation, allusion, polemic, travesty, parody”, and the text which is referred to remains recognizable, whereas the postmodernists “accept genre of other conventions followed by the old texts” and to this end they use “pseudo-citations and mystification”.

Thirdly, on the level of stylistic procedure, “the aim of the modernist establishment of intertextual relations is to enrich the new text with meaning, whereas the aim of the postmodernist establishment of these relations is to relate the new text to already existing meaning:. The modernist focus of attention is the new text, and the postmodern focus is the old. He elaborates this on the basis of a comparative analysis of J. Joyce’s Ulysses and U. Eco’s The Name of the Rose. Postmodernism disperses the illusion of the autonomy of literary works and emphasizes their historicity and contextuality. The postmodern writer recognizes anew literary genres, considers the literary text an open text, intertext, transforms it into metatext, gives it not only the world, but also a role of interpreter and self-interpreter. The world in the postmodernist works is included in literary combinations as if it itself is a literary work.

When discussing “the text” and the semiotic dimensions of the text-work, the theory of literature and especially literary semiotics , foreground the intertextuality, “plurality”, historicity and dialogic character of literary texts and place them in the framework of an informational and communicative chain of relations, influences and contacts (Michael Reffaterre 1983: 107-146). Vladimir Biti rightly observes that “the fate of the notion of intertextuality cannot be separated from the fate of other notions springing from the intellectual climate of France in the 60’s.

In considering the causes of resistance to intertextuality in the European Balkans, V. Biti concludes that “internal restrictions which characterize internationalism form the constitutive characteristics of intertextualism”. He views the intertextual and pan textual phenomenon in correlation with its opposite methodology of contextuality and offers an axiological way out: the surpassing of traditional epistemology and the contradiction of concepts, the overcoming of traditional methodological antagonism and exclusivity, a certain anthropological projective ideology, the bringing of “otherness” into play, i.e. into the system of interpretation of semiotic and literary phenomena or at least into the attempts to reconcile the contradictions (Paul de Man 1992: 127-156). In that sense he concurs with Paul de Man’s thesis of separation in Bakhtin’s dialogical concept which he also discovers in the theory of Friedrich Nietzche and which he calls “Apolonian-Dionysian” (Biti 1992).

“The issue of the intertext and the phenomenon of intertextuality concerns those manifold and multilateral connections between any text and the context and is now among the most crucial questions to be answered when approaching literature”, says Zoran Konstantinovich (Konstantinovich 1987: 26). In his Introduction to the Comparative Study of Literature Konstantinovich contemplates the interliterary relationships in the light of comparative literary methodology. Interliterarity is achieved in the form of intertextual positions and correlations and opens up new possibilities for comparative literary studies. “Due to the existence of the contact which might be deceptive, one can arrive at false conclusions about unilateral influences. Therefore, in the course of analysis we should dedicate ourselves primarily to the analysis of text and answer the question in what elements of the text can the presence of another literature or another author be seen or, more precisely, in what way dialogue is established between them. Thus, we should get a picture of the form and intensity of certain contacts, of the changes which some phenomena and genetic complexes used as sources could have gone through before finding themselves integral parts of the text with a specific which they accomplish in it “ (Konstantinovich 1984 :65). Konstantinovich classifies these elements in the following groups: reminiscences, impulses, congruencies and filiations 9 including literary borrowings, adaptations, variations or paraphrase). Konstantinovich gives many examples of such phenomena in literature. He also offers an adequate apparatus for analysis of intertextuality or “a relationship of a literature with other literatures” (Konstantinovich 1984: 82). The interliterary contact between texts reveals the “multilateral nature of the reception processes”. Along with interliterarity he draws a parallel with the interliterarity and points out the distinctions which exist among the cognate phenomena called archetext (“deep structures in the text”), intertext (“text-dependence on context”), metatext (“used to illuminate another text”) and paratext (“which is parallel to the given text in the form of author’s notes”) (Konstantinovich 1986:63).

The emphasis on the text in literary theory can lead to what the Prague structuralists called “actualization” of the text and displacement of meanings of the original text “mostly under the influence of the context” (1986: 26). This mutability of the work which is a result of the different constitution of the text, Hans Robert Jauss calls “alterity”. It is by means of such focusing on literature that certain limitations in some critical methods are avoided and a closer contact and complementarity is achieved (structural, semiotic, hermeneutic, anthropological, comparative, historical, formal) (Kravar 1983: 114-197).

The intertextual understanding of literature requires the establishment of a two-way relationship. The first one faces the literary text in relationship to other texts: a) literary (either from the oral or from the written tradition), b) non-literary which are more or less detectable and identifiable. The second, however, is the one which places the literary text in relationship to a separate sing system from the sphere of culture, history and reality. In this second case there is a relationship between literary text and “text” (context) in a semiotic sense. That is to say, this “text” can be any semanticized language of historical origin: legend, myth, belief, collective symbol or any symbolical reference to the past. That could be a taboo, cult, ritual, ethical or other political, ideological and religious convention.

Any form, sign or text on which history, civilization or culture have left their mark as regards mankind of its intelligence, its moral and spiritual structure, enters into the play and system of semiotic interpretation of literature. This approach provides a freer, more open but also a more responsible evaluation of literary facts and diminishes the risk of closed, formal understanding of literature. Any literary text has its intertextual and extra textual dimensions the unity of which produces a semantic and aesthetic substance. It is a dialogic creation, a polyphonic structure and information, a complex sign and a world full of meaning and significance. Its meanings can be actualized, related and assimilated. They are predetermined to exist dynamically throughout history, to have durability, to revitalize themselves and the world around them.

Viewed in this way, literature conquers the whole sphere of human culture and freely communicates with the global “system of systems”, departs from it and returns to it. In such semiotic context, literature and all its parts - text, fact, genre, proceed, convention – become not only historical but also historic, intertextual categories. They are not only subject to change and alternation but they also actively influence history and its course, function and value.

Intertextuality differs from literary influence and passive acceptance of inherited literary influence and passive acceptance of inherited literary authorities, models and values. It is a specific phenomenon in literature. It could be said that even influence belongs in the domain of intertextual relationships, but only as a form with a minimum level of dialogism. Even in cases of influence between two authors there occurs a relationship between two works, two textualities, such that there is necessarily a hierarchy in their interaction. Thus, it is possible to indicate not only the source of influence (the author, the work, the model), but also the passive position of the one establishing the intertextual relationship. That is to say, the text, poetics, author which is influenced takes over certain given proceed and is accomplished in the shadow of the selected pattern, source. In this case there is a relationship between a text-pattern and another text, which gravitates towards or is incorporated into the original text. Intertextuality does not mean total anonymity of the original text. In fact, the degree of anonymity is utterly irrelevant. Firstly, we are not always dealing with a work-to-work relationship. Often this relationship is established between a work and a principle, convention, genre and code. In the intertextual relationship it is not always an authorial creation that should be indicated as source or correspondent. The literary work establishes a dialogue with other works but also with other types of “texts”. Therefore, when talking of an intertextual dimension in a concrete text, one should emphasize the type of intertextuality in question. The analysis of intertextual correlations ends with an explicit or implicit indication of the text – correspondent. In the intertextual contextualization of texts, from whatever epoch or stylistic formation, it is possible to indicate the other correlative text or context. In such cases it is even possible to discern its explicit incorporation into the new text (epigraph, collage, montage, quotation, copy, facsimile). However, the form in which one text is present and at work in another is of secondary significance and has a formal character only. It becomes an essential element only insofar as the active interrelationship between two or more texts is fore grounded. So, far the intertextual structuring of the literary text of essential importance is the active, dialogic, specific and critical relationship of one text to another, of one system to another: literary, non-literary, social, cultural, historical, anthropological. Besides this high degree of re-creative power which by definition belongs to the literary intertextuality, the influence primarily means the passive position of one text in contrast to the active role of the other. In the process of influence one text appropriates and transfers features from another text without transforming them in accordance with a new goal of its own.

Intertextuality means a conscious communication between at least two texts and two textualities, between one text and one context. There are more different types and degrees of intertextuality: Hellenic, medieval (oral and written); classical and mannerist, modernist, postmodernist; novelistic, dramatic and lyrical; implicit and explicit; genre, stylistic, conventional etc. There are also more criteria for classification of intertextual correlations between literary and non-literary texts. A dominant feature links them all: the active twofold and manifold confluence between texts, between text and context. This dialectical relation called intertextuality provides an impetus for the creation of new texts, and, moreover, for the evolution of the literary system. In the intertextual dialogue each text preserves its autonomy and wins a latent autarchy. The originality of the new text is therefore not indifferent toward tradition, history and convention. On the contrary, it is actively critical of them: it modifies, challenges, disrupts, parodies, ionizes or re-evaluates them. It acts independently of them, but correlates with them. Intertextuality makes a con-text of every text, a discourse of every utterance. Intertextuality is an attempt to view internal and external literary structures integrally. It is a synonym for the historicity of the text: the literary work not only belongs to history but also appropriates it to itself. The literary text symptomatically incorporates all specific signs of history with its rich but contradictory contents into its own world. Therefore, the text belongs to history and history to text. Literature is a contextual phenomenon, a historical and correlative system. Intertextuality is modified through history but what remains unchanged is a thread which bears witness that the literary process is dialogical and that every authentic text is a part of a wider linguistic, cultural and historical order. Every text belongs to a context, to a intertextual structure of relationship.

Translated from the Macedonian by Zoran Anchevski

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INTERTEXTUAL OPTIONS AND MODIFICATIONS

Intertextuality means a conscious communication between at least two texts and two textualities, between one text and one context. There are more different types and degrees of intertextuality: Hellenic, medieval (oral and written); classical and mannerist, modernist, postmodernist, novelistic, dramatic and lyrical; implicit and explicit; genre, stylistic, conventional, thematic. There are also more criteria for classification of intertextual correlation between literary and non-literary texts. A dominant feature links them all: the active twofold and manifold feature between texts, between text and context. This dialectical relation called intertextuality provides an impetus for the creation of new texts, and, moreover, for the evolution of the literary system. In the intertextual dialogue each text preserves its autonomy and wins a latent autarchy.

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