| Abstract [eng] |
Figure Between Language and Visuality in Luigi Serafini's "Codex Seraphinianus" The study analyses Luigi‘s Seraphini‘s Codex Seraphinianus – an imaginary encyclopedia of a nonexistent world, written in asemic language. While from the perspective of images this work of Serafini is associated with surrealism and hallucination, it also raises question of meaning not only on visual level, but also on the plane of scripture and its possibility to be deciphered. By imitating the form belonging to an old codex tradition Codex Seraphinianus, itself being a relatively new creation (released in 1981), also permits its reader to question categorical position of science by flipping the reading principle: whilst not being able to understand the text, the reader is forced to „read“ surreal images and relive the childish experience that existed before the knowledge of alphabet. This study is one of the first consistent semiotic analyses of Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus. The research is composed by applying principles of the classical semiotic analysis by Algirdas Julius Greimas and other sources of literary criticism. The main focus of the study is a problem of figurativity and term „figure“ in relation with language and visuality. For this reason, the study is not only relevant to the field of literary, but also of plastic semiotics. In case of Codex, the term „figure“, understood as either lexicalization or description of plastic categories, appears as not sufficient to fully describe the object of the analysis – illustrations, and thus has to be amplified and use rhetoric figures in order to function. The main goal of the study is to reveal the principle of the formation of these visual metaphors, how they function as a description device and perform their rhetoric function, while also questioning the sufficiency of the term „figure“. At first, the term „figure“ in literary and plastic semiotics ir rewised, problem of asemy and encyclopedia are discussed. The research focuses on the transformation procedures that occur between recognizable classes of the world objects, relation between text and image and the need of rhetoric figures in order to describe the object of analysis. The problem of figurativity is summarized, rhetoric related semiotic analysis procedures are discussed, and the commentary on the object itself, its relation to the question of an author and science is raised. The results of analysis are depicted in two veridiction squares and are summarized by linking them to the problem of text and image in today’s world. The analysis of discoursive level allows discovering that the figure division used in traditional semiotics is invalid, because the transformations in figures undermine a priori division of the natural world, thus creating new entities. These new imaginary beings deny simple lexicalization and division into plastic categories, thus requireing rhetorical description, resulting in metaphor creation and revealing one of the principles in forming visual metaphors. The processes established between these new Codex‘ian world classes allows to discover the subject and with it reveal its virtual modalities, thematic role (writer), figures of time and space, that appear as traces of proccesuality. The subject also underlines the figure of blood-ink, in relation to which binary opositions of life and death, creation and destruction, memory and oblivion can be established. These oppositions lead to the question of author. The results of a discursive analysis show that Codex appears as critique to conventional science by raising works of art as legitimate sources of knowledge, questions the limits of text and image by using more than one mode of media in one figure, thus forming visual metaphors. |
