CHARACTERS DON’T NEED CLOSURE: A AVENTURA IMPRESSA E DIGITAL

Abstract

In Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921), Luigi Pirandello claimed that “he who has had the luck to be born a character can laugh even at death. He cannot die.” Even when executed by the author, characters can remain concealed among the letters, until they are awakened again. Their death is merely staged and never a synonym for a farewell. They can be rescued from oblivion through the act of reading. However, they can also be re-animated by other media and forms of expression. They are living proof that books are not self-enclosed objects. Every time characters extrapolate barriers made of paper, they shed light on a long-lasting dialog among different forms of representation.

Characters are not afraid of ambiguity. They can follow a linear chain of events, but they can also walk over uneven ground or face bifurcated paths. The notion of text as a whole has been undermined by electronic and print literature through characters. The construction of a rhizomatic narrative, the transgression of the boundaries between narrative levels, as well as the alteration of the contract between author and reader happened before the post-modernist novel. As for electronic literature, it is possible to meet an extension of this process. Due to the computer’s data-storage capacity and processing speed, as well as the division between interface and memory, it is possible to create dynamic characters that can autonomously alternate among positions and identities. In so doing, the text may show an emergent and unpredictable behaviour. This article aims to address the concept of closure through the summoning of several characters that have set sail on a print and digital adventure.