If on a Winter’s Night Chico Buarque… Apology for plagiarism in "Budapest"

Abstract

The work of Chico Buarque, considered in the extraordi­nary variety of its expression, reveals since the beginning a peculiar ability to weave an intense dialogue with the works of other au­thors. Depending on the critical perspective employed, this feature can be praised as an admirable vocation to intertextuality, or stig­matized as a regrettable tendency to plagia­rism. Through a comparative reading of Chico Buarque’s third novel, Budapest (2006), and Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller (1979), the essay proposes a reflection on the idea of plagiarism highlighting how the uncon­trolled and unpredictable dialogue between books, writers and readers is one of the most precious and mysterious resources for literatu­re.