ABSTRACT

While Yannis Skarimbas's Mariambas was praised as a pioneering sample of modernist writing, at the same time it was dismissed as an anarchic collage of other texts which lacked structural organization and originality. Intertextual play fulfils a structural purpose, in that it reveals the completion fallacy of the intertext. In order to assimilate the intertext, the literary work needs to fill in the gaps that create their difference. Several critics, including Andreas Karandonis and Tellos Agras, immediately recognized Knut Hamsun's Mysteries behind the basic plot structure of Mariambas. Mariambas not only plays with the narrative speed of Mysteries, but also attempts a subversion of its signs. Whereas Nagel possesses certain real qualities, regardless of the fact that he tries to hide them for his own reasons, Mariambas on many occasions creates a false positive impression of himself. Many elements that are more sparingly used in Mysteries are insistently repeated in Mariambas to the extent that they lose their significance.