부산대학교 도서관

The appropriation of biblical and classical myths in the first works of Salvador Espriu, from Israel (1929) to Antígona (1939), responds to the author’s basic worries on those years and it evolves according to those concerns. Besides, the opposite ideas of light and restlessness are references to explain the work of mythological remaking and, in general, the studied works and the evolution existing among them. So it is shown in the analysis of these texts: Israel (particularly, the introductory “Portada” and the chapters dedicated to biblical characters of Jael, Ruth, Eli, Abigail, Abisag, Solomon and Jezabel); Aspectes (particularly, the preliminary prose and the stories “Auca tràgica i mort del Plem”, “Novembre. Diada de difunts”, “Orestes” and “Neguit”, in which the myths of Judith, Hephaestus, Orestes and Nausicaa/Ulysses are remade); Ariadna al laberint grotesc (particularly, the preliminary prose about Ariadne, and the stories “Psyche”, “Nabucodonossor” and “Mirra”); the play Fedra, a version to Catalan from the homonymous Spanish work of Llorenç Villalonga; the “nouvelle” Fedra, which is a re-elaboration of the previously refered work, and Antígona (the version of 1939, published in 1955). The analysis considers the classical, modern and contemporany literary tradition associated to each myth, as well as the contaminations applied by the author with works of the Catalan modernists (especially Joaquim Ruyra, Víctor Català and Joan Maragall) or from the universal literature (especially Edgar Allan Poe, but also Gabriele D’Annunzio or Ivan Turguénev). The methodology of this analysis is the theory of transtextuality established by Gérard Genette in Palimpsestes (1982), in which this critic sets up a typology of the modifications that an author can make on the previous texts of reference. This typology is useful to understand the extent and the orientation of the re-elaborations of Espriu. In addition, a study is made on the autor’s thematic obsessions, especially in two critic moments in the construction of his works. On the one hand, the “nouvelle” Fedra can be read as a synthesis of the themes of the Espriu’s prose of the thirties: the universal decadence, the love as a domination and as a mirage, the aim that persecutes itself, the shynthesis of opposites, the image of the Sun and the survival in the company of art. On the other hand, in the tragedy of Antígona, some of these subjects are revisited but some new ones are also developed, which will be very relevant in the farther development of the works of Espriu: the fratricidal war, the compassion, the absolute power and the love to the city.