(RE) WRITING PRACTICE IN MAGDALENA, SU PASIÓN, BY MIRIAM DÍAZ

Abstract

The T’Nazas group presented Magdalena, su pasión in the Xth Theatre Provincial Festival, Salta, 2004, in which other nineteen groups also participated. The jury, when declaring the winners of the Festival that would be able to participate in the Theatre Regional Festival of west-north Argentina, said that they recognized the merits of the play, but they had not selected it because the part referring to María Magdalena, the biblical character, “is a textual copy of Fuegos by Marguerite Yourcenar, Alfaguara Edition, May 1995, pages 73, 74, 75, 78, 81, 82, 83, 85, from the chapter titled Magdalena o la salvación by the French author”.

The purpose of this paper is not to argue about the jury’s decision, but to contribute to elucidating the particular type of writing that can be recognized in the text written by Miriam Díaz. It belongs to what is called “the new Salta dramatic art”, in which some features –like collage composition, marked intertextuality, self-reflection, and ‘poeticity’, appear repeatedly. All these characteristics are evident in Magdalena, su pasión, but we focus now on the particular type of intertextuality that we identify as rewriting.

Magdalena o la salvación, poetic prose included in Fuegos by Marguerite Youcemar, is neither the only hypotext nor the most important one of Magdalena, su pasión: by means of a subtle “threading”, some fragments carefully chosen from La última tentación by Niko Kazantzakis and El Evangelio según San Mateo by José Saramago are included. The analysis of this triple textual “weaving” shows that the rewriter has carried out an integral and “on line” reading of the three hypotexts that, when they take shape in the scene, impregnate –not only with words- the non verbal sign systems of the scenic text. Therefore, the rewriting process is evident not only on the textual surface but also on the deepest levels of meaning.