Beckett's Silences and Late Modernity

貝克特的沉默與晚期現代性

齊東耿(Duncan McColl Chesney)

《NTU Studies in Language and Literature》 26期 (2011/12) Pp. 121-136

摘要

在本文中，筆者試圖建立理解貝克特作品中沉默論述的理論基礎。本文首先概要地重新檢視了古典修辭學中關於頓絕（aposiopesis）、默言（reticence）、與語句省略（ellipsis）的重要論述，並企圖將其定位為沉默論述中至關重要的修辭方法。為求本文之精要，筆者將不多著墨於此修辭傳統在美學、語言學、語用學發展歷史上的轉變，而是將這些修辭法放在阿多諾思想中關於沉默的現代主義討論脈絡中來加以討論，特別是後者對於貝克特戲劇與散文作品的論述。筆者將探討貝克特作品中對沉默的明顯嚮往（”Oh all to end!”）及其所伴隨的不可能性是如何表現出晚期現代性的美學問題意識。在阿多諾的美學思考中，此問題意識並不侷限於美學，而包含了二十世紀－特別是在奧斯維辛之後（after Auschwitz）－藝術作品必須解決的倫理、哲學問題。身為晚期現代主義傳統中的重要作家，貝克特在其作品中不斷地試圖接近此「不可能的沉默」。儘管文化主流的轉變至今不輟，晚期現代主義仍然在美學論戰中抱持著藝術作品具有解放與救贖可能性的信念，阿多諾奉獻其晚年正為了以理論確立此後期現代主義美學。（本篇論文為筆者所著、即將出版的貝克特研究專書的一部份）

關鍵字

貝克特 ； 沉默 ； 阿多諾 ； 晚期現代主義

並列摘要

In this paper, I lay the groundwork for understanding the gamut of silences in Beckett's work. I start by briefly reviewing some figures from classical rhetoric to pinpoint aposiopesis, reticence, and ellipsis as key figures for the discourse of silence. Skipping a great deal—for instance how this rhetorical tradition is transformed over the course of the historical development of aesthetics, linguistics, pragmatics, and so forth—I take up the issue again in the Modernist questioning of silence developed in the thought of Theodor W. Adorno, particularly with reference to the plays and prose of Beckett. I show how the desirability of silence (”Oh all to end!”) and its concomitant impossibility express an aesthetic problematic at the end of Modernity palpably felt by Beckett, as well as—through Adorno's thinking about the aesthetic—ethical and philosophical problems that twentieth-century art, particularly art ”after Auschwitz,” must grapple with. Beckett, ever approaching closer to an impossible silence, is the key figure in a late Modernist tradition that nonetheless holds fast, despite a changing cultural dominant, to the emancipatory or redemptive possibilities of the embattled aesthetic—which Adorno devoted his later years to theorizing.(This paper is a preview of a forthcoming book-length study of Samuel Beckett)

並列關鍵字

Samuel Beckett ； Silence ； Theodor W. Adorno ； late Modernism