Studia Litteraria Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis 10 (2015), z. 4, s. 275–297 doi:10.4467/20843933ST.15.025.4584 www.ejournals.eu/Studia-Litteraria zeszyt 4 KRZYSZTOF BAK Uniwersytet Jagielloński w Krakowie e-mail:
[email protected] Om ikonoklasmen hos Birgitta Trotzig Abstract On Brigitta Trotzig’s Notion of Iconoclasm The Swedish writer Birgitta Trotzig (1928–2011) defi nes her own process of literary creation in interart terms as a translation of pictures into verbal signs. She often comments on the in- tersemiotic diffi culties involved in this transformation by referring to the Byzantine iconoclas- tic controversy. Using Trotzig’s notion of the iconoclastic controversy as a starting point, the present article investigates her understanding of the picture-word-transformation problems. The line of argument comprises fi ve stages. In the fi rst stage, the main issue of the article is presented and specifi ed. In the second stage, it is argued that previous critical approaches to Trotzig’s Byzantinism in most cases have been based on misleadingly anachronistic and mainly Occidental categories. In the third stage, the Byzantine iconoclastic controversy is related to the distinctive character of the theological thought of the Eastern Church. In the fourth stage, the Byzantine iconophile and iconoclast theories are applied to Trotzig’s literary works. A close reading of a representative prose poem of hers, “Teologiska variationer” (“Theological vari- ations”), demonstrates that her works unequivocally support the icon theology of the icono- dules. In the closing fi fth stage, Trotzig’s notion of the Byzantine iconoclastic controversy is reconstructed on the basis of her essays and interviews in which she explains her own as well as other authors’ intersemiotic diffi culties.