Abstract

Beyond the veil of a sophisticated intellectual divertissement, Kuki Shuzo’s The Structure of Iki reveals the self-same spectre that haunts Western thought; namely, the limits of representation. The research conducted in this essay begins with this intersemiotic and intercultural conjunction, where we encounter Boutroux’s concept of contingentism, and proceeds to explore the aesthetic problem of representation as it relates to the different theoretical and poietic levels through which the symbolic order is articulated. This is a path that leads from Kuki’s discourse, seemingly confined to Japanese culture, to the poetics of Eugenio Montale and Giorgio Morandi.