TEXT AS PALIMPSEST: ANTHOLOGY OF TRACES AND POETICS OF THE INVISIBLE IN ANSELM KIEFER’S ART
DOI: 10.23951/2312-7899-2022-3-53-72
The article examines the theoretical issue of the palimpsest by looking at the art of the German neo-Expressionist painter Anselm Kiefer. In the context of semiotics and cultural semantics, the palimpsest is a new text written over the erased previous version, with the old meaning shining through the new. In an attempt to provide a semantic description of the palimpsest, the author finds crucial tools for its study in the notions of the stratification and intensity of the palimpsest as a multi-layered hybrid text, in which the logical structure of the text forms the basis for convergence of various microtextures and authorial utterances. Palimpsest texts have a certain narrativity of their own: it turns the reader or viewer towards finding textual references and quotes, searching for traces of the invisible and accounting for other existing discourses – thus revealing links between text and subtext, the visible and the invisible, form and content. The textual space of the palimpsest moves along a certain trajectory and features a certain kind of anaphora, as a combination of semantic constructs which differ in their level and structure. The author sees the palimpsest both as a research method which harks back to hermeneutics and to interpreting traces of past culture. At the same time, the palimpsest remains an artistic device. The narrative logic mandates removing layers of superimposed texts, one by one in a fixed order. The article focuses on studying such tropes as “trace”, “labyrinth”, or intertext. In the study of visuality in the palimpsest texts by Anselm Kiefer, the author emphasizes the morphology of artistic texts and shows how the verbal context can be interpreted on various structural levels, and how allusions and reminiscences can be discovered in the depths of the text, and the topoi of cultural memory can be marked. In the analysis of Anselm Kiefer’s Varus (1976) and Margarete (1981), the author concludes that, throughout the many decades of his work, Kiefer polemically assaults the nationalist rhetoric. He deals with important historical events and topoi of the traditional German mythology, trying to find true examples of heroic past and reconstruct the historical truth. Textual layers, seen as multiple borrowings, allusions and reminiscences, open the door into a new space of visual optics and interpretation zones. The mythologem of the palimpsest is closely linked to the narrative and its features, where textual references and direct quotes reveal new connections, which previously remained invisible.
Keywords: palimpsest, Postmodernism, trace, intertextuality, visible/invisible, Anselm Kiefer, German mythology, cultural memory, Holocaust, Paul Celan, hybrid text
References:
Barthes, R. (1994). Ot proizvedeniya k tekstu [From work to text]. In G. K. Kosikov (Ed.), Izbrannye raboty. Semiotika. Poetika [Selected works. Semiotics. Poetics]. Translated from French. Progress.
Barthes, R. (2020). Say Tvombli [Cy Twombly]. Translated from French. Ad Marginem Press, Muzey sovremennogo iskusstva “Garazh”.
Binder, A. (1997). Die Meister aus Deutschland. Zu Paul Celans Todesfuge. Germanica, 21, 51–71.
Biro, M. (2003). Representation and Event: Anselm Kiefer, Joseph Beuys, and the Memory of the Holocaust. The Yale Journal of Criticism, 16(1), 113–146.
Celan, P. (2013). Stikhotvoreniya. Proza. Pis’ma [Poems. Prose. Letters]. Ad Marginem Press.
Derrida, J. (2000). O grammatologii [On Grammatology]. Translated from French by N.S. Avtonomova. Ad Marginem.
Derrida, J. (2013). Golos i fenomen i drugie raboty po teorii znaka [Speech and Phenomena, and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs]. Aleteyya.
Duve, T. de. (2014). Imenem iskusstva. K arkheologii sovremennosti [In the name of art: Towards an Archaeology of Modernity]. Translated from French by A. Shestakov. HSE.
Eco, U. (2020). O zerkalakh i drugie istorii. Realisticheskaya illyuziya [On Mirrors and Other Stories. A Realistic Illusion]. Book 1. Translated from Italian by A. Golubtsova and L. Kats. Slovo.
Fokkema, D. (1984). Literary History. Modernism and Postmodernism. John Benjamins.
Foucault, M. (2003). Nitsshe, genealogiya, istoriya [Nietzsche, Genealogy. History]. Translated from French. In V. Kaplun (Ed.), Nitsshe i sovremennaya zapadnaya mysl’ [Nietzsche and Contemporary Western Thought]. Letniy sad.
Genette, G. (1982). Palimpsesty: literatura vtoroy stepeni [Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree]. Translated from French. Nauka.
Genette, G. (1998). Prust-palimpsest [Proust as Palimpsest]. In Figury. V 2-kh tomakh [Figures. In 2 vols] (vol. 1, pp. 51–63). Translated from French by E. Vasil’eva et al. Izd.-vo im. Sabashnikovykh.
Gilmour, J. C. (1990). Fire on the Earth: Anselm Kiefer and the Postmodern World. Temple University Press.
Greimas, A-J. (2004). Strukturnaya semantika: poisk metoda [Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method]. Translated from French by L. Zimina. Akademicheskiy proekt.
Kiefer, A., & Dermutz, K. (2010). Die Kunst geht knapp nicht unter. Anselm Kiefer im Gespräch mit Klaus Dermutz Mit Abbildungen. Suhrkamp Verlag.
Kolyazin, V. F. (2019). Tsikl “Nibelungi” Ansel’ma Kifera — dialog s simvolami istorii [Anselm Kiefer’s Niebelungen as a dialogue with symbols of history]. Khudozhestvennaya kul’tura, 2(30), 312–325.
Kristeva, J. (2013). Semiotika: issledovaniya po semanalizu [Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art]. Translated from French by E.A. Orlova. Akademicheskiy proekt.
Marion, J.-L. (2010). Perekrest’ya vidimogo [The Crossing of the Visible]. Translated from French. Progress- Traditsiya.
Meier, C. (1992). Anselm Kiefer. Die Rückkehr des Mythos in der Kunst, Diss. Essen: Verlag Die Blaue Eule.
Parfenov, V. N. (2013). Vernul li Var legiony? Yubiley bitvy v Tevtoburgskom lesu i raskopki v Kal’krize [Did Varus bring back the legions? The Jubilee of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest and the excavations in Calcrise]. In A. Kh. Daudov (Ed.), Mnemon. Issledovaniya i publikatsii po istorii antichnogo mira [Mnemon. Research and Publications on the History of the Ancient World] (is. 12, pp. 395–412). St. Petersburg State University.
Sauer, M. (2012). Faszination Schrecken. Zur Handlungsrelevanz ästhetischer Erfahrung anhand Anselm Kiefers Deutschlandbilder (pp. 29–41). Bühl/Baden.
Schütz, S. (1998). Anselm Kiefer. Geschichte als Material. Arbeiten 1969–1983. Diss. Aachen. Köln.
( 1.38 MB ) 
( 1.36 MB )
Issue: 3, 2022
Series of issue: Issue 3
Rubric: ARTICLES. ‘OPTICS’ FOR VISUAL DOMINANTS IN NEW PRACTICES OF THE VISUAL
Pages: 53 — 72
Downloads: 897