베케트의 ‘ghost’: 목소리를 위한 수사법:텔레비전극 What Where를 중심으로 = Beckett’s ‘ghost’: A Trope for the Voice in What Where

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Beckett called What Where a “memory play” and, on this premise, I discuss the play as a visual icon that contracts some aspects of his life and writing career in abstract terms. In the first place, I relate the so-called ghostly quality of his works to Paul de Man’s discussion of prosopopoeia as a trope for the voice. Thus, Bam, Bem, Bim, Bom are ghosts or personas that haunted the closed space of his brain, dramatized here as a rectangular playing area, at various stages of his writing career.
Next, I analyze three different versions of What Where: two for the stage and one for the TV screen. As he rewrites the text for TV, the body of the actors is gone except for the faces and these fragmented faces are transformed into blurred images against the black background on screen on the brink of dissipation. Last stage versions retain the one dimensional, visual art quality of the screen version achieving the pure image even with the corporeal body of the actors. I discuss the aesthetic quality and power of these pure images.