Kawadias' and Μutis' Freighters: Intertextuality and Intersemiosis In Different Literary Traditions but Common Forms of Life

In: Chinese Semiotic Studies, Band 2, Heft 1, S. 141-147

Abstract

Abstract
The mariners of the 20th century, travelling around the world and working in multinational and multicultural environments, have been the vehicles'of a particular ideal of globalization. Their experiences and rare knowledge, which constitute-and expressed through-forms of life composed of similar language games (social discourse, argot and maritime terms) are registered in different literary traditions and collective imaginaries. The semiotic systems, where significations of maritime everyday life are embodied, are the product of procedures of condensation and expansion of meanings, which are to be found in maritime literature. This paper aims at examining on the one hand the intertextuality in Alvaro Mutis' Abdul Bashur, Dreamer of Ships, the Colombian novelist who lived in several countries of the world and in Nikos Kawadias' poetry, the Greek poet who travelled all over the world, and on the other hand the semiotic modalities that construct the maritime semiosphere in different literatures. Methodological tools to be used are Wittgenstein's philosophy of language on forms of life, Fontanille's and Zilberberg's comments on this theory and on Lotman's semiosphere and Aristotle's Poetics. The universality of maritime semiotic systems in the literature to be presented is going to prove that social and professional groups develop common practices and idioms independently of national contexts and represent a very fine example of globalization-and of course-before our post-modem era.