Gombrowicz and Signs: Semiotics as a Literary Method
Włodarczyk, Hélène
Gombrowicz and Signs: Semiotics as a Literary Method - 2003.
13
In 1967 Witold Gombrowicz declared “I was a structuralist before anybody else” ( La Quinzaine littéraire, 1, V). By creating and manipulating signs (metasigns superimposed on words) Gombrowicz designs his own universe, his grotesque cosmos made up of “junk” because what is important is form not sub-stance, relations not things or beings. But as an intellectual contemporary of Wittgenstein, Gombrowicz went far beyond Saussurian structuralism because meaning is not for him merely a relation between signifier and signified but mostly depends on the usage that is made of signs and of course on those who use them. It is in interactive semiotics that the strength of Gombrowicz’s works lies (we attempt to show this in a few examples from his novels).
Gombrowicz and Signs: Semiotics as a Literary Method - 2003.
13
In 1967 Witold Gombrowicz declared “I was a structuralist before anybody else” ( La Quinzaine littéraire, 1, V). By creating and manipulating signs (metasigns superimposed on words) Gombrowicz designs his own universe, his grotesque cosmos made up of “junk” because what is important is form not sub-stance, relations not things or beings. But as an intellectual contemporary of Wittgenstein, Gombrowicz went far beyond Saussurian structuralism because meaning is not for him merely a relation between signifier and signified but mostly depends on the usage that is made of signs and of course on those who use them. It is in interactive semiotics that the strength of Gombrowicz’s works lies (we attempt to show this in a few examples from his novels).
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