Linguistics of intertext. Quotations in Julio Cortázar’s fiction (based on the material of the Spanish language)

Ryzhakov Vadim Sergeevich ORCID: 0000-0003-2661-5065 Assistant, Department of Theory and Practice of Translation and Communication, Moscow Pedagogical State University 119991, Russia, Moscow, Malaya Pirogovskaya str., 1, building 1 vadimryzhakov@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

The linguistic personality of the Argentine writer of the 20th century, Julio Cortazar, is distinguished by its originality, which is manifested in the incessant search for innovative means of expressing the author's individuality in texts. At the same time, the originality of the style extends both to the plan of content and to the plan of expression of the writer's works ^[27]. This feature of the author's work is due to the writer's belonging to postmodern aesthetics, which is a dynamic system in a state of constant development and renewal due to the inclusion and semantic transformation of foreign discursive elements ^[20]. Thus, works of art created within the framework of the postmodern aesthetic paradigm represent representative material for the study of various manifestations of the phenomenon of intertextual interaction ^[12].

Despite the fact that certain techniques for establishing intertextual connections have been known to the compilers of texts since ancient times ^[31], this phenomenon began to be actively studied in science only in the second half of the 20th century thanks to the activities of the French scientist Julia Kristeva, who proposed the term "intertextuality" for its designation in 1967 ^[23]. It should be noted that the emergence of the theory of intertextuality and the subsequent surge of research activity in this field during the above period can be considered a consequence of increased interest in the possibilities of the principle of text generation and meaning formation by including elements of previously created works in their own composition by postmodern authors who created in the middle of the twentieth century ^[21].

The rapid development of the theory of intertextuality leads to the formation of many points of view regarding the essence of the phenomenon under study and the emergence of a situation of lack of uniformity in the theoretical framework devoted to the problems of intertextual interaction. In our opinion, the coexistence of non-overlapping and to a certain extent contradictory descriptions of the phenomenon of "intertextuality" at this stage complicates research work both on a theoretical and practical level. This fact makes it necessary to precede each individual practical study by clarifying exactly what the author means by the concept of "intertextuality" in it ^[6].

The results of the study

To distinguish the existing definitions of the concept of "intertextuality" according to "broad" and "narrow" approaches, we studied the data of cognitive sciences, and also conducted an experiment aimed at identifying the features of interpretation of objective, implied by the author intertextual inclusions in the texts of non-verbal sign systems ^[7]. As a result of applying the methods of cognitive and semiotic analysis, we concluded that "broad" and "narrow" approaches to understanding the phenomenon of intertextuality do not describe the same phenomenon differently, but speak of two phenomena that differ from each other: on the one hand, the property of human thinking manifested in any conscious act, including text generation, which consists in programming new actions based on the previously acquired experience of the individual himself or other people known to him; on the other hand, a special stylistic technique of explicit borrowing by the author of elements of other people's texts into his own composition ^[8].

The essential difference between the two phenomena described above lies in the degree of awareness of the person of the process of reproducing previously performed actions. So, in our opinion, the first phenomenon is characterized by the automatic attraction by an individual of various amounts of information stored in consciousness about similar situations, while the stylistic technique of intertextual borrowing is an intentional act of cultural activity fully realized by the author, aimed at meaning formation and exerting a certain influence on the addressee by explicitly alienating the authorship of one or another element of action containing borrowing.

Thus, it becomes clear that the statements of researchers of the literary heritage of Julio Cortazar regarding the observed high intertextual density of the texts of the writer's works as one of the leading features of his idiostyle ^[19] relate to the increased frequency of the writer's use of the textual borrowing technique. In support of this idea, it is necessary to cite the key idea of proponents of "broad" approaches to describing the phenomenon of intertextuality, indicating the total presence of the first phenomenon in all conscious human actions ^[22]. In other words, "broad" intertextuality will be inherent in any text of any author equally.

Due to Julio Cortazar's considerable interest in the possibilities of accepting intertextual borrowing in literary texts, the author's works represent the optimal material for studying various aspects of its use in this discursive system.

It should be noted that during the analysis of existing practical works on intertextuality, we have revealed a relatively low level of development of the linguistic aspects of the implementation of the studied technique. At the same time, in our opinion, data on the possible forms of existence and structure of intertextual inclusions could be of interest to authors who feel the need to use such units in their own textual creations, including translational ones.

An intertextual analysis of the selected corpus of texts (artistic prose works by Julio Cortazar) revealed that the technique under study is implemented in texts through the use of intertextual units that have two forms of existence – quotation and allusion. In modern science, there are ideas that these two types of intertexts mainly differ from each other in the length of the intertextually borrowed fragment. So, N.A. Fateeva refers to quotations as borrowings with a length of at least two lexemes. The scientist calls single inodiscursive elements representing entire sources of borrowing in the receiving text allusions ^[10]. In addition, it should be noted that various types of material can be subjected to intertextual borrowing: lexical and grammatical sequences, components of the plot and plot, elements of style, ideological and figurative component ^[3].

The application of the component analysis method to the description of intertextual units selected in the texts of Julio Cortazar's novels made it possible to establish that units of this type differ in discursive bilaterality, at the same time complexity of structure and integrity, targeting ^[8].

Discursive bilaterality is expressed in the fact that, being a part of the author's text, the intertextual unit represents a fragment of another discourse in it. The structural complexity lies in the presence of integral elements in intertexts-quotations (a sequence of borrowed units of another text and attribution), as well as additional components (a verb connecting attribution with the borrowed text, an author's comment, means of graphic and punctuation marking of citation). Attribution refers to mandatory elements, because it indicates in the text the alienation of authorship and the presence of borrowing, as well as establishes a connection with its source, thereby distinguishing intertextuality (explicit borrowing) from plagiarism (implicit borrowing).

The targeting of intertextual units is due to the fact that their semantics, consisting of the direct meaning of the composite units and the connotation of the precedent phenomenon to which the intertext appeals ^[9], creates the subtext of the work ^[5], the decoding of which is available only to a certain type of addressee ^[26] familiar with the implicit connotative meaning of the precedent phenomenon implied by the author, underlying intertext.

In the course of studying the linguistic properties of intertextual units found in a selected corpus of texts, we described a number of varieties of quotations of lexical and grammatical material. The present study is devoted to the description of this particular type of intertextual units due to their high frequency of use by Julio Cortazar in prose fiction.

The first type of intertextual units-quotations of lexical and grammatical material, highlighted by us on the material of the selected corpus of texts and proposed for consideration in this article, are literal quotations accompanied by attribution. As an example of such a quote, we propose to analyze the intertext from the novel Los Premios (1960):

«- En despedida a mi querido hermano y a su simp?tica novia, les voy a cantar el tango de Visca y Cad?camo, Mu?eca brava.

<…>

- Che mad?m que parl?s en franc?s

Y tir?s ventol?n a dos manos,

Que cen?s con champ?n bien frapp?

Y en el tango enred?s tu ilusi?n...

<…>

- Ten?s un camba que te acamala

Y veinte abriles, que son diqueros...

<…>

- Te llaman todos mu?eca brava

Porque a los giles mareas sin grupo...

<…>

- Pa mi sos siempre la que no supo

Guardar un cacho de amor y juvent?...» ^[17].

In this intertextual unit, the literally borrowed lexical and grammatical sequence is marked with full attribution in the preposition ("el tango de Visca y Cad?camo, mu?eca brava"). As you can see, the source of borrowing the analyzed intertext is the verbal text of the vocal tango. In other words, the source is a polycode text. This fact is emphasized by the author, who indicates in the attribution, along with the name of the poet, the name of the composer. In addition, the low semantic inclusion of individual lexemes of the borrowed sequence in the receiving context allows us to consider the analyzed verbal quotation as an allusion to the musical text of the source indicated in the attribution. Thus, the intertextual unit in question, formally representing a literal attributed quotation-allusion, is an example of intermediality in the artistic discourse of Julio Cortazar ^[1].

Verbal lyrics become a frequent source of literal citation for the writer. At the same time, along with Spanish-language quotations, the author introduces intertextually borrowed lexical and grammatical sequences in his own texts in languages other than the main language of the work and, consequently, from the language of the target addressee. This fact serves as another argument in favor of the fact that such quotations perform the function of allusions to non-verbal texts in the artistic discourse of Julio Cortazar and serve the needs of intermediality ^[2].

The following proposed intertext, found in the novel Divertimento, is also a literal attributed quotation of the verbal text of the song. However, unlike the previous example, in this case the writer borrows a foreign language text:

«- I gotta right to sing the blues, I gotta right to moun and cry – nos inform? Lena Horne. Todos la quer?amos bastante entonces, y o?mos la canci?n de punta a punta. El Cuyano pas? bajo el puente de Avenida San Mart?n, y o?mos sus pitadas de desollado vivo. Jorge se enderez? en el sof?, r?gido.

- Hembra de plesiosaurio recibiendo un enema de vitriolo – dijo, y se volvi? a acostar–. He’s got a right to spit his steam – murmur? como so?ando» ^[14].

It should be noted that the analyzed intertext is marked with partial attribution in the postposition, which indicates the name of the performer of the musical work-the source of the citation, and not its authors, which, in our opinion, confirms the dominance of the intermediate nature in this unit.

In addition to the above quote, the fragment in question contains a pun ("He's got a right to spit his steam"), playing off the phrase "gotta right to do sth" repeated in the quote.  Despite the obvious semantic involvement of the pun lexemes in the context of the work, the foreign-language plan of expression of this statement limits the possibility of its interpretation for readers who do not speak the language in which it is composed. This fact demonstrates one of the attitudes of postmodernism, which consists in the optionality and multivariance of interpretations of individual units of a postmodern work of art ^[25].

In the literary texts of Julio Cortazar, literal quotations from foreign sources are reproduced not only in the original language, but also in translation into Spanish. In our opinion, in such cases, attention should be paid to whether the lexical and grammatical sequence is directly borrowed from the official translation (see the epigraph to the story El perseguidor, literally quoting a fragment of the canonical translation into Spanish of the Revelations of John the Theologian [see 16]) or whether the intertextual inclusion is created directly by the author by translating a foreign text into the main language of the work (see the epigraph to the story Anillo de Moebius, which is a quote from the novel by Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector Perto do cora o selvagem (1943), officially translated into Spanish only in 2002 [see 13]).

Noteworthy for the Russian-speaking reader is the epigraph to the novel Los premios, which is a literal quote from the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "The Idiot":

«?Qu? hace un autor con la gente vulgar, absolutamente vulgar, c?mo ponerla ante sus lectores y c?mo volverla? Es imposible dejarla siempre fuera de la acci?n, pues la gente vulgar es en todos los momentos la llave y el punto esencial en la cadena de asuntos: si la suprimimos se pierde toda probabilidad de verdad.

DOSTOIEVSKI, El idiota, IV, 1.» ^[17].

As you can see, this quote is marked with full attribution, which is in postposition and graphic italics.

Julio Cortazar's appeal in his first novel to the legacy of F.M. Dostoevsky is evidence of the influence exerted by the classic of Russian literature on the formation of the writer's identity of the Argentine postmodernist ^[28]. It should be noted that the work of F.M. Dostoevsky also served as a source of inspiration for a number of other representatives of Argentine literature. Thus, in the works of Roberto Arlt and Ernesto Sabato, one can trace the presence of similarities on the motivic and thematic levels with the writings of the great representative of Russian thought ^[4]. In addition, Ernesto Sabato, who was fond of painting, created a portrait of F.M. Dostoevsky. Also, this Argentine writer in his autobiography noted in a special way the influence that the novel "Crime and Punishment" read in his youth had on his worldview and future creative views ^[29].

Another confirmation of the importance of F.M. Dostoevsky's figure in the Spanish-speaking linguistic culture is the fact that during the twentieth century over a dozen different translations into Spanish of the source of the analyzed intertext – the novel "Idiot" were performed. The last of the translations was published in 2021, and the earliest was published in 1914 in Buenos Aires ^[11].

The following fragment of Rayuela's novel is notable for the fact that, according to our ideas, it contains a number of intertextual units of various types:

«Wittgensteinianamente, los problemas se eslabonan hacia atr?s, es decir que lo que un hombre sabe es el saber de un hombre, pero del hombre mismo ya no se sabe todo lo que se deber?a saber para que su noci?n de la realidad fuera aceptable. <...> Pero el higi?nico retroceso de un Descartes se nos aparece hoy como parcial y hasta insignificante, <...>. Por si fuera poco, un sueco acaba de lanzar una teor?a muy vistosa sobre la qu?mica cerebral. Pensar es el resultado de la interacci?n de unos ?cidos de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme. Acido, ergo sum. Te ech?s una gota en las meninges y a lo mejor Oppenheimer o el doctor Petiot, asesino eminente. Ya ves c?mo el cogito, la Operaci?n Humana por excelencia, se sit?a hoy en una regi?n bastante vaga, entre electromagn?tica y qu?mica, y probablemente no se diferencia tanto como pens?bamos de cosas tales como una aurora boreal o una foto con rayos infrarrojos» ^[18].

Due to the fact that this article is devoted to the lexical features of intertextual quotations, the key unit of analysis of this fragment will be the statement "Acido, ergo sum", characterized by us as a transformed quote of Rene Descartes' philosophical statement of high precedent Cogito, ergo sum, forming a pun in the receiving text. Intertextual borrowing is marked with italics and partial attribution-indicating the author's name in a non-contact position.

Attention should be paid to the use of the name of the author of the borrowed statement in attribution with an indefinite article. In our understanding, such a feature foreshadows the transformation of the original plan of expression of the borrowed saying in the intertext, which causes a language game. In addition, the analyzed attribution is semantically divorced from the actual quotation and interacts at the semantic level with the statement containing the Wittgensteinianamente occasionalism based on the precedent anthroponym. This occasional adverb, in our opinion, is also an attribution of the statement "los problemas se eslabonan hacia atr ? s", which we consider as a summarized quotation. At the same time, due to the change in the plan of expression and the curtailment of the plan of the content of this quotation, textual analysis does not allow us to establish correspondences with a specific work by Ludwig Wittgenstein in order to consider it the direct source of the analyzed intertext-the summarized quotation. The name of Rene Descartes enters into semantic interaction with this statement through the phrase "el higi?nico retroceso de", which is a periphrase of the italicized element of the quotation.

In continuation, we suggest considering the following example of intertext-quotes from the novel Examen:

« Acordate de San Agust?n cuando se le muri? el amigo: “Yo no lloraba por ?l sino por m?, por lo que hab?a perdido”» ^[15].

As you can see, the intertextual unit in question is marked with both attribution and syntactic means (quotation marks, colon), i.e. it has all the characteristics of a literal quotation. However, during the textual analysis of translations into Spanish of the works of Blessed Aurelius Augustine, we did not find such lines. Thus, it can be concluded that this statement is a summary statement by Julio Cortazar of the contents of the fourth book of the Confessions of St. Augustine, in which the author tells about his own feelings caused by the death of a friend. Therefore, the analyzed intertext is also proposed to be classified as a summarized quotation. In addition, the intertext expression plan created by Julio Cortazar reveals stylistic similarities with the text of the translation of the philosophical work of Blessed Aurelius Augustine into Spanish, performed in the 30s of the twentieth century by monk Angel Custodio Vega [see 30]. Thus, the analyzed intertextual unit can also be considered as an example of intertext-style borrowing.

In the artistic prose texts of Julio Cortazar, it is not uncommon to use unattributed literal quotations. Since attribution is considered by us as a key element of an intertextual unit, indicating that a particular fragment of the author's text belongs to a different discursive system, unattributed quotations contain other elements that allow the reader to recognize the presence of intertextuality and establish a connection between borrowing and its source.

A classic example of an unattributed literal quotation is a foreign-language utterance in the following fragment of Rayuela's novel:

«– Perchance to dream – murmur? Etienne que habr?a rumiado las variantes a raz?n de una por pelda?o» ^[18].

In our opinion, the foreign-language plan of expression of an utterance is a potential evidence of its foreign-textual origin. Textual analysis of this statement confirmed that it is borrowed from the famous monologue of Hamlet from the play of the same name by William Shakespeare. This monologue has a high precedent and is represented in world culture by its first lines "To be, or not to be". In our opinion, semantically, an utterance with exactly such a plan of content was meant by the author in the receiving context. Thus, the less well-known lines of the source can be considered an allusion, representing his most recognizable statement in the text of the novel. In other words, for the semantic interpretation of this fragment, it is necessary to decode the intertextual communication encrypted by the author.

It should be noted that the tragedy "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare is a common source of intertextual borrowings in the text of the novel Rayuela. So, in the following fragment, the writer uses a quote of high precedent from this source, which does not need to be marked and accompanied by attribution to establish intertextual connections by the reader:

«S?, esto es como el negativo de la realidad tal-como-deber?a-ser, es decir... Pero no hag?s metaf?sica, Horacio. Alas, poor Yorick, ?a suffit. No lo puedo evitar, me parece que est? mejor as? que si encendi?ramos la luz y solt?ramos la noticia como una paloma» ^[18].

Thus, it can be assumed that the statements found in the text, which do not need to indicate the source of their borrowing due to their high precedent, serve as a kind of non-contact attribution for less recognizable quotations from the same donor text.

The following fragment of the novel Divertimento contains a vivid example of an unattributed and otherwise unmarked quotation of lexical and grammatical material:

«Cada vez que alguien se toma del brazo y echa a andar es la marea, la vuelta dolorosa, las canciones tontas para llorar, el cuarteto de Borodin, la muerte de Platero, T? nos ves, Platero. Platero, ?verdad que t? nos ves?» ^[14].

In the analyzed intertextual unit ("la muerte de Platero, T? nos ves, Platero. Platero, ?verdad que t? nos ves?"), despite the lack of traditional attribution, the element that allows identifying the source of borrowing is a precedent proper name, representing in the quotation the name of the character in Juan Jimenez's novel Platero y yo Platero donkey, which, in turn, as we see, appears in the title of the source text. The quote itself reproduces a statement that is repeatedly repeated in the final chapters of the novel (La muerte and Nostalgia) [see 24].

Conclusions

The implementation of the stylistic technique of intertextual borrowing by the author of elements of other texts is carried out by including intertextual units, which can be carried out in the form of quotations or allusions. Intertextual units-citations are structurally complex formations consisting of borrowed material and attribution. Various materials can be borrowed: lexical and grammatical sequences, style elements, storyline, etc.

Quotations of lexical and grammatical material can be presented with the preservation of the original plan of expression or with the rejection of such. In the artistic prose works of Julio Cortazar, there are literal quotations from both Spanish-language and foreign-language sources. In the case of referring to sources whose original language differs from Spanish, the writer literally quotes lexical and grammatical sequences both from directly foreign-language texts and from their translations into the main language of the work. At the same time, translations of sources can be either full official or their own partial ones, prepared by the writer specifically as part of the creation of the main work.

Lexico-grammatical quotation with the rejection of the original plan of expression can be based on the mechanisms of transformation or summarization. In transformed quotations, the borrowing author makes single changes to the original statement, approximately preserving its length. In the summarized quotation, the author seeks to abbreviate the outline of the content of the borrowed text through his own plan of expression. At the same time, the changes made by the author at the level of the expression plan may also affect the original content plan. The distortions that arise in the intertext often do not allow us to establish an accurate connection between it and its specific source in the absence of full attribution.

Consequently, in many cases attribution is the only component of the intertextual unit that allows identifying the source of borrowing. Thus, borrowings with zero attribution must have pronounced other characteristics to distinguish them from plagiarism. Such characteristics include the accuracy of reproduction of the borrowed statement with its high precedent; the mention of the source within the same text as the unattributed quotation; the presence in the directly quoted text of elements that represent the donor text in the addressee's mind.

These conclusions were made during the analysis of the artistic prose writings of the postmodern writer Julio Cortazar and may differ in relation to other discursive systems. To date, the theoretical framework devoted to intertextuality issues has not accumulated significant information about the linguistic properties of intertextual units of various types. Such data could serve as practical guides for compilers of texts who feel the need to use the technique of intertextual borrowing in their own textual creations, including those created in the context of translation.