Arten und Funktionen intertextueller Bezüge in den Dramen Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewiczs

A main characteristic of St. I. Witkiewicz's dramatics is the extensive use of all kinds of intertextual references. The essay provides a systematization and description of this feature and ascertains some of its principal functions. The intertextual references in Witkiewicz's plays concern, firstly, conventional dramatic forms (genre designations, dramatis personae, speaking names, figure types, compositional techniques), secondly, group style features (Young Poland and European modernism, traditional Polish romantic and post romantic motifs, psychological drama devices, trivial literature routines), and, thirdly, individual style features and concrete patterns (Shakespeare, Strindberg, Wyspianski etc.). The essential functions of the intertextual abundance in Witkiewicz's plays are not only the customary ones (semantic enrichment, joy in playing with literature); they also are a means to make ideological statements and, most important, they fulfil a poetological function as a crucial device for the realization of what can be called a poetics of stylistic macaronic.