МОТИВ ВОСКРЕСЕНИЯ И ИНТЕРТЕКСТУАЛЬНОСТЬ

Introduction

Mythology gives the best evidence of its interconnections to literature, which is the most suitable territory for keeping myth alive [1, P. 58]. According to Hermann Broch, the precedent of every narrative expression is myth, and this conclusion also relates to Barthes’ statement that myth is the very Word itself. In this context, we can refer to many prominent literary works that are created upon many myths and ballads.Thematic research is one of the most productive when it comes to comparative analyses as great universal themes such as death, love, freedom, etc. can be noted in different literatures and the thematic and conceptual meeting point is of interest to a comparatist of literature.

Among the various comparative approaches to literature, the arguments of the Russian school are of importance to this paper. In its method of comparison, the Russian School has put great emphasis on the study of folklore, by dismissing the theory of the migration of myths and motifs, and by focusing on what they evaluated as typological analogy. Based on this postulate, myths in folklore did not manage to migrate due to the impossibility of communication between various communities existing in the world, but they created similar motifs that are related to the common sociologic and psychological background of these communities.

The perception of myth based on every culture is of particular importance when it comes to the myth of resurrection as it is this myth that shows the various degrees of sociologic and psychologic similarities among various cultures. Hence, Buzzati’s The Cloak, Bürger’s Lenore, Petrushevskaya’s Incident at Sokolniki–Petrushevskaya and ‘Konstandini e Doruntina’ as a popular ballad, although each one pertains to a different nationality (Italian, German, Russian, Albanian), all display a special communicative system, oftentimes closely related to one-another, especially due to the permeation of the myth of resurrection which is of importance to contemporary comparative studies.

Methodology

This paper employs the comparative method, being one of the most special and attractive methods of interpretation.

Discussion

According to the French researcher Natali Pige-Gros, intertextuality is the movement through which a text rewrites another text (the previous text writes the current text),and intertextuality rewrites all literary texts [2, P. 15].Buzzati is one of the authors that seems to employ Pige-Gros’ idea, by making use of the fantastic, the surreal, the mystic, thus making his texts take on the model of an intertext. At the same time, we can refer to the statement by the American researcher, Jonathan Culler, who says that intertextuality is less a name for a work’s relation to particular prior texts than an assertion of a work’s participation in a discursive space and its relation to the codes which are the potential formalizations of that space [3, P. 2].

In order to argument the previous statements, this paper will discussBuzzati’s The Cloak which is an interrelation between the mystic and the fantastic that are present in the work as a premodel or archetype. The clear and concise style of this story is supportive argument to Buzzati’s style, the idea that the more fantastic the subject, the simpler and concise the style.

The story begins with Giovanni’s return home, which initially seems to be a physical return. Through concrete sign such as the sword and the beret, the reader can perceive that Giovanni is a soldier who is returning back home. Here, the reader can clearly form his first vision: the return of the soldier. Yet the story takes a turn when the mystical element suffuses the protagonist. All pale and determined not to remove his military coat, Giovanni manages to embody the cult of the mysterious and the unexpected, both of which become part of the plot: He made a quick and involuntary movement to defend himself, grasping his coat, as if scared of it being taken away [4, P. 49-50]. This description in The Cloakis delineated through two reflexes, as happiness and longing felt by the mother, the brother and the sister, but as dread and pain felt by Giovanni. It is exactly this contrast which puts this situation into question which then expands and deepens as we read on. The black silhouette lingering outside and waiting for Giovanni is another segment added to this contrast. What can this black silhouette be? The reader, who is now unified with the plotline and on the same position as Giovanni’s mother, cannot seem to understand this clearly.

The unexpected revelation of Giovanni’s wound will become a turning point for clarification and explanation. The black silhouette, the buttoned coat, Giovanni’s dread, the pain expressed in his eyes, all turn from a mysterious aspect into a mystic and fantastic aspect. The resolution and the ending of the story both signify death, an inevitable sign. Death is also discovered as a pact with the man who is in search of the final farewell.

-       Man’s bargain with death

Haruki Murakami says that death is not the opposite of life – rather, it is a part of it. In literature, this theme is present everywhere. As such, its relation to myth is quite powerful. Being a story that places at its center man and death, connected through a mystic-fantastic relation which makes use of a possible mythic foundation, The Cloak’s path towards communication with other works of this nature is wide clear. This is due to the source which it uses, which in fact is the source for many themes that deal with resurrection. In Jonathan Culler’s view, reading a poem as literature means relating it to other poems, i.e. comparing and emphasizing the method which relates it to the method of other poems [5, P. 43]. Here, Culler is addressing the aspect of intertextuality.

As the resurrection motif is quite an early one and is directly related to the early cultural creation of man, its presence can be observed in many works, depending on authorial concepts and purposes.Thus, the famous poem Lenore (variations: Leonore, Ellenore) by the German author Bürger, similar to Buzzati’s The Cloak, deals with the fantastic and the horror, as two main elements that constitute the concept of death. Lenore has had a clear and evident influence on ballads written after it, thus creating an intertextual thread. It has powerfully spread from Scotland to Poland and Russia, from Scandinavian countries to Italy. A knight on a black horse, accompanied by his lover, has later turned into a new poetic power, producing various differing variants of the original story.

The story follows the end of the Battle of Prague, the protagonists being Lenore and her fiancé, William. When soldiers start returning to their homes, Lenore is not able to find a possible reason for her lover’s absence, and blames God for this injustice. The story becomes more complex as it starts using the element of horror. At midnight, a stranger that looks like William, knocks on her door and asks Lenore to send her to their marriage bed. The authorial description in this section is horrific: Lenore, horrified, asks William why his horse is moving at such a fast pace and the gloomy answer is that “the dead travel fast”[6, P. 38].The ending follows the contrast between sunrise and the couple that arrives at their marriage bed, which is nothing but a great graveyard. Sunrise, symbolizing life, and the grave, symbolizing death, in harmony reflect the law of nature, i.e. the process of life and the process of death.

This motif has also been used by the prominent Russian author, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, in the story Incident at Sokolniki. The subject resembles that of Lenore, especially the initial section, which is as mysterious and horrific as its ending. A young man is killed at war in Russia, but is not properly buried, and thus appears to his wife. In a particular moment, he asks her to go to the woods in order to take the clothes that he had buried during the war. Soon after the process of digging is over, Lida cannot find her husband in the woods and she goes back home terrorized. The ending is grotesque. And in her dream her husband came to her and said, “Thank you, Lida, for burying me” [7, P. 32]. In The Cloak, the wound is a sign by which we identify death; in Lenore this sign becomes the grave, the eternal residence of death, whereas in Petrushevskaya’s story death is dictated by a dream in the form of an illusion, in order to reveal the author’s view that life itself is an illusion.

Meanwhile, in Albanian literature, the ballad of Konstandin and Doruntina, known in other variants as Kënga e Dhoqinës, Konstandini e Garentina, Kënga e HalilGarrisë, etc. is a renowned motif of the resurrection of the brother in order to bring back the sister who has married far away from home. This ballad celebrates the cult besa (Alb.), i.e. of the given word, to the sanctity of promised words of which the curse can follow you in this life as well as the next one. According to literary critics, the reiteration of this motif in the novel “Kush e solli Doruntinën” by Kadare denotes the beginning of a new historical epoch.

Results

The function of the code

Konstandini e Doruntina, an Albanian ballad, and Lenore, a German ballad, both express the message that a man gives to other men. The former initiates the cult of the given word, as an ethical unwritten agreement, whereas the latter denotes the cult of faith in God, the concept of blasphemy, as well as its consequences. Both ballads indicate ideas that pertain to the early development of Man firstly as individual consciousness and then as social and cultural consciousness. The promise given in the Albanian ballad is defined at the very beginning of the work: I promise you, mother, that whenever you wish to see Doruntina, either for mirth or for mourning, I myself will bring her to you [8, P. 32]. Thus, the code for a given promise as well as the acceptance and its application must be in accordance to one-another, or else the final act with which the story is accomplished, the ethics of the work, will be absent.

On the other hand, Lenore makes use of an element that is missing in Konstandini: punishment.

If in the Albanian ballad, the given promise embodies the culture of national pride of the character, in Lenore, this turns into a punishing aspect. Conforming to the functional code of the ballad, the character (i.e. Lenore) gets what she deserves – punishment, death:

Half dead, half living, the soul of Lenore

Fought as it never had fought before[9, P. 13].

Therefore, in both cases, the ballad has the code which either functions as a definite, unchangeable code, or else as punishment.

Buzzati’s The Cloak and Petrushevskaya’s Incident at Sokolniki make use of the relation of these codes, not in their first variant but as ideas that promote authorial concepts. It is the cult of resurrection that manifests in both stories, as a sort of an intertext that employs a previous model. This model in such a theme is mainly in the form of the ballad, as is Konstandin and Lenore. Thus, both stories are subject to a plot that is well-known and acceptable for the reader, yet, as they are incorporated by authorial perspectives, they are recontextualized and thus equipped with new expressive powers.

Conclusion

If The Cloak, Lenore, Incident at Sokolniki and Konstandin are to be placed within a framework, certain joint conclusions may be reached:

•      In all cases, death is the motif that delineates all plots. This motif is surrounded by mystic-fantastic elements that reflect the foundation of another previous model.

•      In four cases, the protagonist is in a hurry: Giovanni at the shadow that personifies death, William at the grave, Petrushevskaya’s character at the grave, and Konstandin and his sister hurry back home, so that he can rest in peace afterwards.

•      All protagonists in these fantastic journeys successfully complete their missions. Thus, William takes Lenore to make her his eternal wife, Konstandin returns Doruntina home to keep his promise, Petrushevskaya’s character manages to get a proper burial, and Giovannii manages to give his farewell to the family in order to go back to death.

•      The horse, presented in these works as a mysterious animal, brings all characters to their destinations and then takes them away, always in a great speed (in three cases, except for Petrushevskaya’s story)

•      The vividness of the colors of nature out of which the color black dominates; resembling the night which forewarns the unexpected and the dreadful is another amalgam that unites the narration of these works which, although distinct in form (short story, poem, popular ballad), are also close when it comes to content and ideas; all merge the previous (popular) model with the authorial one.

Such similarities between these myths are interesting approaches to the idea of the movement of the motif of a myth throughout different geographical spaces and its ability to provide elements which then become main characteristics of these spaces. This paper exemplifies cases that deal with the same motif; as that motif expands in various geographic spaces, it also gains specific characteristics and meaning. Burger’s Lenore manifests its power of the given word, the power of desire and waiting as a punishing concept which becomes a moral message which states that blasphemy brings terrible consequences that in turn give a fatal punishment to the protagonist, Lenore. It must be observed that German myths are various, but they are also quite contradictory. This contradiction or this transformation of the myth of the given word, as expressed in this ballad, occurs specifically due to a general existing event. Yet, what characterizes these three works is the meaning of unresolved issues. Giovanni returns home because he cannot die without giving his farewell to his mother. The situation of unresolved issues is what makes all protagonist go back to finish their missions: mission of farewell in The Cloak, mission of punishment in Lenore, mission of the given word in Konstandini and Doruntina, and the revelation of the truth towards a peaceful death in Incident at Sokolniki.

Based on Thomas Mann’s statement that myth is the foundation of life; it is the eternal scheme, the devoted formula in which life flows as it reproduces its characteristics out of the subconscious [10, P. 371], we may conclude that myth and literature are old comrades and that their presence inevitably denoted reciprocal concepts and interrelations. The connection between myth and literature is reciprocal. Myths offer transcendental characteristics and literature helps in keeping myths alive by explaining particular aspects of life to the younger generations [11, P.45].

Further contemplation of these statements leads to the assumption that the relation of this motif to other cultures comes as a result of the communication of myth with that which is natural for mankind. The attempt at understanding the concerns of all men becomes the subject of literature’s broader horizon, which then helps in creating newer paths for mankind.