아도르노와 베케트 - 『엔드게임』의 미메시스적 계기에 대하여 = Adorno in Beckett: The Mimetic Moments in Endgame

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

  What quality of Beckett"s literature made Adorno have an idea to dedicate his entire Aesthetic Theory to Beckett? Earlier on, he also dedicated an extended study of Beckett"s play Endgame to Beckett. This paper tries to solve this enigma through close reading of Adorno"s Aesthetic Theory paying special attention to the concept of mimesis, one of his major aesthetic categories.<BR>  For Adorno, all authentic mimesis is that of utopia, Since the nature uncontaminated by nature-domination of instrumental reason does not exist any more, artworks can only point toward the possibility of a nature which "is not yet" by determinate negation of "what actually is", implying determinate criticisms on what is and has been. Artworks can only express this utopian negativity by a configuration of materials which already contain history sedimented within them.<BR>  In terms of practical theory of art, the ideal mimesis should pursue the nonsignificative language. Thus, for Adono, the expression of artworks is the non-subjective in the subject, or to put differently, art is the imitation of an objective expression remote from (subjective) psychology. Seen in this way Beckett"s Endgame does not copy any specific individual nor any specific historical event. The play conveys through expression what caused the decline and catastrophe of history and subject and yet, it does this not through the meaning of their dialogues. Rather, it acquires objectivity through non-discursive means such as regressive language, stage images and historical allegories. This kind of nonrepresentational affinities to the objective reality are dramatized and portrayed through the clownish subjects-characters who are not subjects-individuals but "the protohistory of subjectivity." Although Endgame is historically mediated, the expression, or the spirit that has guided the formal procedure of the construction, is far removed from the one that has inspired the official realism(Lukacs) or didactic literature(Brecht). The abstract quality of Beckettian mimesis proves the workings of material imagination of the author as well as an assimilation to the spell of objective reality which in their immediacy fail to articulate the essential(the truth content).