Ent-Setzte Lektüren. Literarische Bildung und ästhetische Individualität in Antoni Tàpies' "Memòria personal"

Abstract

Summary: There has not been an exhaustive attempt to analyze the literary work of Antoni Tàpies. His Memòria personal (1977) in particular did not get the attention it merits as a poetic creation. The central thesis of our study is that Memòria personal has to be regarded not only as documentary text concerning Tàpies’ life, but also as a highly artificial arrangement of textual fragments. The listing of texts by famous authors that Tàpies not only read during his whole lifetime but also quoted in the Memòria personal, enables us to describe a large scale of intertextual levels. The spectrum of incorporated texts ranges from the mere mention of book titles and the literary insertion of work segments to highly elaborated forms of stylistic parody and pastiche. As a patchwork of extraneous literary elements, the supposed autobiography tends to disguise central episodes in Tàpies’ life. All quoted authors, works and genres such as Proust, Mann, Sartre and Wagner refer to a specific concept of incorporating existent former material, while its use in the text corresponds with Tàpies’ view on artistry. Art work becomes a means to transform reality itself by assembling its fragments in an act of individual craftsmanship, as may be seen in graphic work like Figura de paper de diari amb fils (1946). Thus, Tàpies’ use of intertextuality reflects a highly sophisticated view of world literature as a medium and material of aesthetic creation itself. [Keywords: Intertextuality; artistic material; autobiography; identity; literary camouflage; Proust; Thomas Mann; Sartre; Max Ernst; Leonardo da Vinci]