lntertexts as Topoi of constant presence of memory within the here-and-now of the text: The case of George Heimonas

Abstract

Language is characterised by both its present and its memory. Memory is the cognitive reflection of the cultural and historical past and determines the present of language in the level of grammatical structure and that of linguistic terms (fossils). The power of language is found in the depth of the contents of memory. Within this framework the writer develops a creative relation with language, as proof of creative inscription. Consequently, the here-and-now of language is determined by the creative employment of memory, in which a decisive factor is represented by intertextuality (intertextuality according to Beaugrande and Dressler or transtextualite, according to Genette). Within the framework of modern Greek literature, George Heimonas (1936-2000) belongs to the most promiment and most creative writers, in whose work intertextuality becomes a complex and therefore extremely interesting phenomenon, in the following manners: (i) as citations (intertextuality according to Genette) of other texts within his own texts (texts by Heracleitos, Homer's Iliad, Aeschylus' Agamemnon, Sophocles' Electra, Euripides' Medeia and D. Solomos' Lambros. (ii) as intertexts in the dimension of hypetextuality (hypertextuality according to Genette ), that is in the relation that links Heimonas' texts and other previous texts; amongst them, Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes, the imaginative demotic song Of the dead Brother, the Celtic ballad of the 3th century under the title the Prophecy of Guenc Hlan. Such intertexts serve the structure and the aesthetics of Heimonas' text, within a completely new system of thematic information