Ο Ραγισμένος Καθρέφτης του Μοντερνισμού και η Πρώιμη Νεωτερικότητα του Δημοσθένη Βουτυρά

Abstract

Please note: this article is in Greek. The cracked mirror of modernism and manifestations of early modernism in Demosthenes Voutyras’ prose: Focusing on “Sickly Life”, this paper examines narrative and linguistic disorder in Voutyras’ prose as the signs of an early modernism. Voutyras’ prose broke with realist modes of representation as developed by the premises of the 19th century ethographia and the persistent demand for realist verisimilitude during the first two decades of the 20th century, in Greek literature. His narrative deals with the extremities of an unsettled subjectivity on the verge of psychological collapse as it comes in terms with external reality. Accordingly a naturalistically detailed world, which stimulates the subject’s perception causing long journeys into his inner self, renders the subject’s response to the external world conterminous with his own theatre of consciousness. Thus the mirror of representation cracks in order to reveal the multi-levelled and multi-perspectival dimensions of subjectivity and reality. Voutyras expands time, transcends space and violates language in order to give a more pervasive and penetrating engagement of the outer with the inner reality. Consequently the modernist bias of his text is examined through the modernist treatment of time, identity and language. The theories of Lacan, Kristeva and Nikolaides are employed in order to tackle the eerie and uncanny imagery and the linguistic upheaval in Voutyras’ writing. Το