Intertextuality as a Reading Performance: Playful Citations in Yannis Skarimbas's Μαριάμπας

While the majority of Greek prose fiction writers in the 1930s attached themselves to a canon heavily influenced by European trends, Yannis Skarimbas, in his novel Μαριάμπας, shows an "irreverent" attitude toward such European influences by employing playful citation strategies. Skarimbas's novel renews its sources by means of bold montage and collage techniques, thus featuring an intertextual game which can be effectively described as a friction between different fictional worlds that compete to establish themselves. Four main intertexts of various genres, Knut Hamsun's novel, Mysteries; Pierre Louÿs's short story, "La Fausse Esther"; excerpts from the ancient historian Polybius (his account of the battle of Zama); and Shakespeare's play, Macbeth, interact and subvert each other in the text, which offers a commentary on the reading process by monitoring reading performances of both the author Skarimbas and his hero-double aspiring novelist, Mariambas.