Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) was an Italian modernist writer and playwright who enriched literature with questions of modern identity as it relates to the contradiction between human consciousness and reality. Pirandello pondered questions of art and reality, mask and essence, life and form, and the fragmentation of a personality. In his works, he also foresaw what would later constitute the base of existential philosophy. The reception of Pirandello’s works in Lithuania has been limited, in part because of the small number of his works translated into Lithuanian – only a dozen short stories, two plays, and a novel. The first more or less systematic and thorough introduction to the play wright and his works took place in 1934, when the Italian writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his “bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage.” A few articles on Pirandello’s creative principles appeared in the Lithuanian press. A Lithuanian poet, Kazys Binkis, translated the beginning of Pirandello’s play, Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore (Six Characters in Search of an Author, 1921), and a writer, Kostas Korsakas, edited a book consisting of five novels, Pirmoji naktis (‘First Night’). A Lithuanian translation of his novel, Il fu Mattia Pascal (The Late Mattia Pascal, 1904), and two plays, Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore and Enrico IV (Henry IV, 1922), came out during the Soviet period. All translations were accompanied by a foreword containing basic biographical details about and introducing Pirandello’s cultural, literary and creative life. Although Pirandello gets attention in Lithuanian university textbooks, no academic paper about him or his works has been published yet. [...]

Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird dem Problem nachgegangen, wie das Verhältnis zwischen dem Erzähler und der Hauptfigur - dem preußischlitauischen Pfarrerdichter Kristijonas Donelaitis (1714-1780) - in den fünf Novellen von Heinz-Jürgen Zierke (geb. 1926) dargestellt wird. Die theoretischen Einsichten des französischen Narratologen Gėrard Genette über die Nähe und Distanz des Erzählers zur fokalen Figur bilden den Ausgangspunkt des Beitrags. Phänomene der Interfiguralität, oder der Metalepse, als besondere Formen der Intertextualität, wenn der Autor und seine fiktiven Figuren auf der gleichen Ebene mitagieren und eine doppelte Fiktionalität schaffen, werden im Beitrag erläutert. Schlüsselwörter: Interfiguralität, Position des Erzählers, diegetische und mimetische Darstellungsmittel.