대상/사물의 변증법: 『행복한 날들』의 소품들

Abstract

Characters in Samuel Beckett’s works are absorbed in speaking of numerous objects and are always keen to develop their stories into an inventory even in his late works where possessions are reduced to an unnameable voice. Among Beckett’s oeuvre, Happy Days, written in 1961, is the work that epitomizes the passionate obsession of objects and the narrative as an inventory of possessions. In this play, middle-aged Winnie brings out a series of objects from a black bag that she holds dear. She goes on to talk about each object purely to pass the dreadful present time. What is central to the play is the relationship between props and the hysterized female protagonist. The thesis shall approach the issue by reflecting on the simultaneous dialectic of object/thing manifested by the props. This dialectic summons the irreducible excess of the feminine body and discloses the failure of semiotic saturization. The sharp tension between the intelligible and the unknowable reveals the feminine at the limit which is neither here nor elsewhere.