Treść książki
Przejdź do opcji czytnikaPrzejdź do nawigacjiPrzejdź do informacjiPrzejdź do stopki
3.Drama,TheatreandNarrative
15
hilist,destroyerorviolatorofliterarytraditionforitsownsake.Rather,
theyarewriterswhokeenlyfelttheHrealist”failureofliterature,espe-
ciallyinthewakeofWorldWarII,andstrivedtoreinventitbymeansof
specificnarrativedevices.
30Drama,TheatreandNarrative
Gombrowicz’sandBeckett’snovelsaresimilarintermsoftheirnarra-
tivestructure.Theyareallnarratedbyautodiegeticnarratorswhouse
complexembeddingconstructiontorelatepastexperiences.Thenarra-
torsareself-conscious,theycontrolthestorytellingprocess,andthey
drawattentiontotheactofstorytelling.Thedominantnarrativedevices
inGombrowicz’sTrans-Atlantyk,PornografiaandCosmosandBeckett’s
Molloy,MaloneDiesandTheUnnamableare:monologicity,concurrency
andorality.Innarratologicalnomenclaturetheyarenotonlyconsidered
asanti-narrativebyChatman,GérardGenette,ShlomithRimmon-Kenan,
andothers,butalsoassignsofdramaticsemanticsinnarrative.Thatis
whyIcallGombrowicz’snovelsHdramatic.”
ThesametermcannotbeappliedforBeckett’snovels.Although
Molloy,MaloneDiesandTheUnnamablearedramaticbecauseofthe
qualitativeidentitytoTrans-Atlantyk,PornografiaandCosmos,thereis
asignificantquantitativedifferencebetweenGombrowicz’sandBeck-
ett’snovels.Concurrency,monologicityandoralityareemployedinafar
largerdegree.ThisismanifestlypresentintheshiftofwhatJanuszSła-
wińskicallsthesmallandlargesemanticfigures.Sławińskiassertsthat
thelargesemanticfigures,suchasplot,characters,spaceandtime,are
quintessentiallyepicfeatures,whereassmallsemanticfigures,word,
wordblocksandsounds,arequintessentiallypoetic(metaliteraryfunc-
tion)[1967:20-30;seeBolecki1982:5-11].Thisshifttosmallsemantic
figuresinBeckett’sworks,especiallyinTheUnnamable,violatesprose
fictionsemanticsbynotonlyforegroundingthetellerbutalsoaccentuat-
inghisactofnarrating.IcallsuchsemanticsHtheatrical”foritgenerates
meaningonawordand/orsentencelevelinaclose,localandsynthetic
readingwithanexplicitemphasisonthenarratingsubject,asopposedto
theconventionalepicsemanticsconstitutedinalarge-scaleincremental
progressionofactionfromamainlyexternalviewpointofanextrinsic
narrativesubject.
