Intertextuality as a Form of Literary Memory: the Poetry of Ivan Slamnig

Frequent usage of intertextual procedures is one of the recognizable characteristics of Slamnig’s poetic opus. The author appropriates intertext from Croatian, as well as other literary traditions, most notably from literature of the western literary canon, but sometimes also reaching for more distant poetic traditions, such as the Japanese or Chinese ones. His dialogue with various foreign literatures can be studied as a specific form of literary memory, i.e. the » storing« of the former literary traditions and texts in his own texts, which is implemented through the act of writing and which should be reactivated in reading and interpreting his poetry. This paper analyses the basic procedures of Slamnig’s memory of the world literature (literary quotations; genre and metric quotations; allusions and reminiscences of other texts and authors), and, at the same time, tries to consider the extent to which the possibility of recognizing his intertextual sources can be considered as a precondition for the reception of his poetry