LANGUAGE GAMES AND EXISTENTIAL CERTAINTY: WITTGENSTEIN AS A PROTOTEXT OF SARAMAGO'S POSTMODERN NARRATIVE

Abstract

The renowned Portuguese author José Saramago, in his postmodern novel The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1984) a work that exemplifies all the key features of his autopoetics, such as pronounced intertextuality, the revaluation of tradition and history, and the deconstruction of mythological layerssi - multane-ously develops a highly distinctive approach to language, particularly in relation to meaning and the limits of what can or cannot be expressed through language. Within this complex narrative structure, Saramago's philosophy of language emerges as one of the central narrative strategies through which the latent interplay between reality and fiction is explored, most notably in the dialogues between Ricardo Reis and the deceased Fernando Pessoa, culminating in Reis's final decision regarding the world to which he belongs. The influence of one of the most representative thinkers of the 20th century, Ludwig Josef Wittgenstein (1889-1951), is evident in the fundamental modeling pattern of this narrative structure. It is most clearly reflected in the concept of the so-called "language game" and the philosophical understanding of existential certainty. Accordingly, Philosophical Investigations (1953) and On Certainty (Über Gewissheit, 1984) can be regarded as proto-textual frameworks for this intellectual novel, offering interpretative perspectives through a multitude of symbolic codes which, on the phraseological level, reveal the contextual polysemy inherent in the protagonist's linguistic expressions.