Μορφές του χιούμορ στην υπερρεαλιστική ποίηση του Νίκου Εγγονόπουλου και του Ανδρέα Εμπειρίκου

The present article deals with humour in the surrealist works of Nikos Engonopulos and Andreas Embirikos. The first part provides a methodological framework based on classical views of authors such as H. Bergson, L. Pirandello, S. Freud, and A. Breton. In addition, the basic forms of humour are specified. The classification is based on the work of the Czech literary theoretician V. Effenberger and is complemented by the characteristics of black humour as identified by M. Winston. In the second part of the article, examples of humour from the works of Engonopulos and Embirikos are analyzed. I quote examples based on plays on words, poems using surrealist metaphors, and parodies of tradition literary forms (texts of an ecclesiastical or informative character), which surprise and amuse by their unusual combination of traditional forms and non-traditional content. The irony and the auto irony with which the poets identify themselves with mythical (Neoptolemos) or historical (Ermolaos, Bolivar) heroes are directed against the uncritical adoration of tradition, national heroism, and the conventional values of bourgeois society. The humour of both authors belongs to the category of absurd humour; black humour occurs only rarely in a moderate form (absurd black humour) without the intensive morbid character known from works of French or Czech authors.