Intertextuality
When the lyrical „I“ describes his diurnal rhythm, he mentions to spend every day 1-2 hours in the library to read Boswell and accents that he never read him in Dublin.
James Boswell is born in 1740 in Edinburgh and was a lawyer, diarist and author. He is most famous for his biography of Samuel Johnson as well as other elaborate journals for which he spent much time in his life.
It is interesting to note, that his name has passed into the English language, where it’s a term for a detailed observer.
Relating to this we found a quotation of a British writer who was the highest paid author in the world in the 1930s.
“Never condemn the author, who has such a sharp eye for an amusing occurrence, who appreciated ingenious phrases and who got the talent to reproduce the atmosphere of a scene and the vitality of a conversation.”
„Man verachte nicht den Schriftsteller, der ein so scharfes Auge für die amüsante Begebenheit hatte, der geistreiche Formulierungen schätzte und das seltene Talent besaß, die Atmosphäre einer Szene und die Lebendigkeit einer Unterhaltung wiederzugeben.“
– W. Somerset Maugham
Hypothesis
As we concerned with the intertextuality a thought comes up to our mind. We had the idea, that Boswell could be the ideal of Ita Daly, because she also tries to reproduce the atmosphere of a scene as exactly as possible. This hypothesis is supported by the fact, that the narrated time in the short story is much shorter than the narrating time.
(André)
