Człowiek zraniony : dwa tematy Szekspirowskie

Abstract

Concentrating on Coriolanus and Titus Andronicus as the source of the material the essay deals with the theme of the wound as the incarnated sign. The wound is explicated on the level of philosophy and semantics. In the former the wound becomes a metaphysical fissure alienating man from the original unity with the world and originating language; the latter tries to see the wound as an inscription on the human body. In Shakespeare’s anthropology the man is inevitably „a radically wounded man”, as all he does and says originates from the wound, the gap between the man and the world, the thing and the sign. A different approach towards the wound demonstrated by the Roman citizens and Coriolanus is the pivotal point in the tragedy. While the citizens understand the wound in terms of a sign in a nonis-ological system where it has to be commented upon by another sign, and thus emphasize the rhetorical and institutional character of the sign, Coriolanus conceives of the sign as of only a trace of the object denoted and reduces it to the status of the existential gesture. Similarly, in Titus Andronicus the fate of the protagonists of the play, when interpreted semiotically, underscores the concept of the sign as a trace of presence. The sign turns out to be only a history, a writing, a record of not so much the object indicated but of histories told by other signs.