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Exile In Language, Peter Baker

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Saint-John Perse's poem Exil (1941) represents a deep meditation on the nature of "writing" as subsequent critical theory has developed that term. Though the poem seems to present a "signature" at the end, it may be that the poet through giving in to a radically different signifying practice is in some sense not the signatory of the text. The archaic setting and difficult-to-resolve cultural matrix from this perspective become means of examining the co-originary origins of thought and language. Close analysis of textual patterns reveals a composition practice based on anagrammatic patterning. This kind of questioning of language in the …

Text As Locus, Inscription As Identity: On Barbara Honigmann's Roman Von Einem Kinde , Marilyn Sibley Fries

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Barbara Honigmann's Roman von einem Kinde (1986) constitutes the author's attempt at narrative self-definition. In this and other regards, it is similar to Christa Wolf's Kindheitsmuster (1976; Patterns of Childhood, 1980), with which it is briefly compared.

Honigmann's slim collection of stories, conceived by her as "sketches for self-portraits and landscapes," depicts the absolute isolation ofthe female Jewish narrator in the GDR and her search for community (Heimat) via language. Simultaneously, it records that narrator's desire to identify "places of transition," "boundaries at which conditions change" without fixing these in a static prison of text. The narrator-mother …

The Writer's Identity As Self-Dismantling Text In Julien Green's Si J'Étais Vous. . ., Robert Ziegler

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Written between 1944 and 1946, Julien Green's novel Si j'étais vous . . . is one of the author's most fantastic and enigmatic texts, having generated interpretations ranging from the Freudian to the theological. Yet certain central features of the text have not yet been addressed and may lead to a different approach, one focusing on the problem of the writer's identity in his works. Despite the fact that his literary efforts are unsuccessful, Fabien is shown as being a writer like Green himself, but more importantly, he is a character in another writer's fiction. As metatext, Green's novel describes …

Ekphrasis, Intertextuality And The Role Of The Reader In Poems By Francisco Brines And Claudio Rodríguez, W. Michael Mudrovic

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Ekphrasis, the verbal representation of visual art, affords a singular perspective on a discrepancy between the general conception of intertextuality and its practical application. Francisco Brines's "Museo de la Academia" ("Museum of the Academy") and Claudio Rodríguez's "Hilando" ("Spinning") both contain the description of a painting. Each poet achieves diverse effects with a different handling of the respective paintings, yet both come to surprisingly similar conclusions with regard to the poetic act. Brines's depiction of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian supplies a limited amount of information that dovetails neatly with the use of metaphor and metonymy. Rodríguez's use of synecdoche …