摘要
Gudmundsson＇s Angels of the Universe （Englaralheimsins, 1993） stages a poetic psychodrama weaving Shakespeare＇s characters Richard IlI and Macbeth into the lives of the first-person narrator Paul and his friend Viktor who are undergoing intensive drug treatment at the Klepp hospital in Reykjavik. Viktor starts impersonating Richard III prior to the treatment at Klepp. While enrolled at an English university he assumes the physical and mental guise of Richard, memorizing whole scenes from the play and speaking lines out loud. At some point his perfect English shifts to perfect German as he merges Richard III with Adolf Hitler in his mind. Viktor thus turns the two despots into what Rene Girard in his work Deceit, Desire and the Novel calls the mediator. Girard explores ＂triangular＂ desire in Cervantes＇ knight-errant Don Quixote whose mediator Amadis chooses the objects of the knight＇s desire. With Dostoyevsky external mediation becomes internal mediation whose main features are impotence and alienation. Viktor exhibits these symptoms as a negative, inverted form of the mediator has usurped his personality while relegating the objects of his desire to the background. There are no objects any more. He is alone. The article aims to disclose the complex cultural and sociopsychological reasons for exclusi6n and to explore the poetic dimensi6n of the novel, indicating thst poetry is capable of transcending the limits imposed by society.
