Disembodied Voice and Space in Beckett's Footfalls

Female characters in Samuel Beckett's drama started to appear as protagonists relatively late if compared to their male counterparts, and interestingly, those female characters usually experience a body loss and/or reduction. In Beckett’s later works, the body that is not seen and the words that are not spoken become an essential signification of his plays. One of those plays is Footfalls—in which an invisible mother performs only in the form of a voice. This play features two characters: a daughter whose name is May, and her mother whose body is not shown on stage. The two are having a conversation while May is repeatedly pacing on a straight, carefully calculated line, back and forth. The mother's voice can be heard from upstage. Her body is not shown, and she remains unembodied yet omnipresent.   

When the play is staged, the mother's voice represents her body; therefore, it is present for her. The voice becomes the extent to which the audience can only grab by using their hearing senses. When the mother speaks, the audience only focuses on her voice without seeing its physical appearance. According to Steven Connor, a voice without origin "emphasises the power of voice as utterance and effect over against its associations with presence and intention" (24). As her voice does not come from a visible exact source—a visible mouth or body, the mother's dialogue becomes more potent as all attention and senses are directed only towards the voice. In this sense, her voice becomes immune to the powers of the eye and the other cognitive functions associated with it. 

The mother appears as if her flesh dissolves and incarnates into a voice that occupies the stage. Her voice comes without a definite source or a body; thus it floats in the air and surrounds May as if it attends somewhere near her. She appears as if her body is exceptionally reduced—there is no physical representation left, but only a voice that remains on stage. Her voice seems to be mutilated from her body, and because of that, her existence becomes questioned: whether she is a real person or merely an illusion of her daughter. Despite this question, she brings a unique concept of a bodiless character that reflects an implication. Her interaction with May posits a fusion of a mother and daughter relationship, which is not physically shown but given through a voice. She, thereupon, attends the play through the voice that represents her presence and exists in the space where her voice is carried. When related to the space on stage, the mother's disembodied voice can be interpreted in two senses: 1) it inhabits the space, therefore, 2) her voice is space itself. 

Although her body is nowhere to be spotted, the mother is occupying the stage in front of and among the audience whenever she utters her dialogues. Her presence is dynamic and not only narrowed to a stage presence. In this sense, she does not exist only on stage, but anywhere as far as she can be heard, including among the audience seats. Her figure is not limited to a body that stands/sits/moves on stage and is wherever her voice can travel to. She is invisible, and her presence can be felt because she is actually there—among the air in which her voice inhabits. As her voice takes up space, it also transforms as space itself. Her voice is the locus where language is spoken and transferred from a mouth to the ears of those who watch (and listen). The voice, then, becomes a vocalic space that is actively and dynamically produced as the play goes on, especially when the mother speaks. Per Connor, vocalic space is where "differing conceptions of the voice and its powers are linked historically to different conceptions of the body's form, measure, and susceptibility, along with its dynamic articulations with its physical and social environments" (7). The mother's voice transforms into a space that is dynamically produced as the dialogues go on, and vocalises a situation that is not spoken or physically shown. 

Book as a Machine?: First Screening, A Digital Masterpiece by bpNichol’s

Steve McCaffery in his book titled Rational Geomancy: The Kids of the Book-Machine suggests that book is like a machine (p.60). The machine, according to him, stores information by arresting the flow of the speech conveying that information. It has capacity to alter function and affect the content of the fictional reality presented. When we apply this theory to bpNichol’s First Screening, his masterpiece, then, appears as a machine that provides a dozen of programmed and kinetic poems — only it is not in a form of book but in a metadata using Apple Ile. Its poems are displayed in an experimental presentation that was considered new when it was made.

When I opened First Screening using the Apple IIe emulator which is closest to the original data, I could not determine the sequential arrangement of the pages. The interface appears as if it is a unity of poems being continuously played and the only chance for me to stop reading is by pausing. When I paused, that is the only time for me to ‘breathe’ from reading and to comprehend the information given by these poems. If a machine that is in a form of a book or printed material works by picking up the book, opening the cover, reading it, and flipping through pages; then this piece by bpNichol (using the Apple IIe emulator) works by loading the file, reading, and pausing if necessary.

One of the poems in First Screening that caught my attention is “Contruction One”. This specific poem contains only two words which are ‘tower’ and ‘babel’. These two words are animated on screen into a visual that demonstrates construction as suggested by its title. The emulator displays the word tower that is being built into the image of a real tower, and by this, the readers are invited to build the tower with the word as well. When the readers read the first ‘tower’ word into the next ones, they are also building the image of the tower in their head—besides it being displayed on screen. Besides ‘tower’, the word ‘babel’ is also repeated and filled into the screen, which represents confused noise found in construction sites. In this poem, the readers and bpNichol through the screen are merging into simply a rhythmic process. BpNichol did not merely presenting a subject, but he is also inviting the readers to build the visual in their mind. The poem presents repetition of the two words and serves meanings by turning it into a visual. Through the animated visual, there is displayed a text that is not static, but moving into the image of what is represented. This repetition of words, according to  McCaffery, is called as insistence, which “means the words that would be the same but each writing would be a unique transciption” (85).

Note: You can access bpNichol's First Screening on http://vispo.com/bp/introduction.htm. To play the poem using the Apple IIe emulator, simply click the "Emulator Version" on the menu bar and follow the instruction. I highly recommend you experience reading bpNichol's poems by using this emulator. It feels really fascinating! You can also browse bpNichol's historiography on the website. Enjoy!

Cultural (Un)translatability in Kurniawan’s Man Tiger

Translating literary works from one language to another is never easy—especially when the two languages have huge different paradigms. Incommensurate modes of thinking and understanding under different paradigms would make it impossible to translate certain terms or phrases, that finally they are kept within the text without being linguistically transferred. This phenomenon in a context of broad translation is called as cultural untranslatability.

I encountered untranslatability when I read the English version of Eka Kurniawan’s Lelaki Harimau (Man Tiger). The English translation was done by Labodalih Sembiring, and I gotta be honest: it is one of the best translated Indonesian books that I have ever read. The book is beautifully translated without dismissing the figurative and poetical aspects. However, despite the splendid translation, I noticed that there are certain Indonesian terms which are kept as they are. They are not translated; and stand with the English language equally and, of course, proudly! Right after I read the first page, I found three Indonesian words that are left untranslated which are kangkong, mujair, and nila. The translator’s decision to leave out these words is interesting to observe, because, as a matter of fact, they all can be translated to English. Kangkong, for instance, is linguistically called as kale in English. Mujair (mujjair) and Nila (parrot fish) are the names of fish that are universally known and certainly have English translations. Renouncing them in Indonesian might appear to be a daring decision to some, because readers who do not speak Indonesian would have difficulties in understanding the text. Therefore, it is apparent that in this specific page, untranslatability is done deliberately. I would argue that cultural barrier and incommensurate paradigms are not the case. Instead, it is all a matter of preserving cultural values to maintain Indonesian unique characteristics.

Leaving the words kangkong, mujair, and nila reinforces the preservation of cultural values. The word kangkong, for example, when translated directly to English, means kale. However, kale as understood by the community that speaks and understands English is not the same with kangkong as known by the Indonesian people. They are of different kinds of plant, yet shares the same literal translation. Therefore, it can be agreed-upon that what is understood as kale in a universal context is not the same with the one in Indonesian context. It is better, then, to leave the word kangkong as it is—because it bears a nation’s understanding towards the word’s meaning. This understanding, then, can be classified as a cultural value.

Interestingly, this deliberate untranslatability adds to the beauty of the translated version of Man Tiger. By preserving the Indonesian words, there are values that bring along cultural and Indonesian unique characteristics. This preservation is important, especially if applied to Eka Kurniawan’s work, as he represents picturesque Indonesia in his narration.

Beyond the Sentence: Surrealism in Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World

When I read Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World, I was struck by the way the story unfolds human imagination and applies it ironically to the story's reality. The book provides a nonsensical story and delivers complex setting as well as characters. Keep in mind that it is a fantastical science fiction, which gives itself a permission to go as far out of logical boundaries as possible. I have always loved this kind of book—a literary work that suggests a complicated narration. Besides conveying a story, it also invites the readers, including myself, to dig into its meanings. I would come across a page, stop reading, and think about the part that I encountered for quite some time. I did not read only to know about the story, but also about what it was trying to tell me beyond the door of written sentences.

I came to understand that this literary work brings the idea of surrealism into life. To give you a big picture about surrealism, according to Freud, surrealism can be defined as an attempt to bridge reality and the imagination. Surrealists seek to overcome the contradictions of the conscious and unconscious minds by creating bizarre stories full of juxtapositions. Surrealists’ works tend to be strange and shocking, and so is this Murakami’s book. Its plot revolves around dreams, tautologies, conscious mind, and cognitive system. Rendering these ideas, the book is then presented as a complex wit that enforces the readers to think out of their comfortable zone. Instead of just telling about a detective and adventurous story, it inserts imaginative nonsense to the body of the narration. One thing is to be underlined: although imaginative, it is based on science and concrete philosophy.

Murakami applies surrealism by focusing on characters, discovery, and imagery in order to compel meanings—instead of relying on plot. I must say that this book's plot is linear. However, it does not have clear resolutions to the conflicts presented in the story. There is no resolution, for example, to the attack of INKlings towards the professor’s research experiment. The characters run away from them, but do not appear as if they seek a way to stop them. In the end, there is also no clear representation of how the story ends—whether the calcutec dies and the dreamreader enters eternity. The readers are served with a plot that they have to solve by analyzing the book’s meanings by themselves. Only by going through leaps in thinking, abstract ideas, and nonlinear timelines, the readers will be able to suspect how things finally come to an end. This effort can be classified as a psychic automatism that encourages the readers to make use of their actual functioning of thought. Therefore, I would say that this book has a two-ways interaction with its readers—it does not only talk to them, but also invites them to think with it in order to solve the story. Only by thinking with the book, the readers will be able to grasp what the book is trying to say.

Description as Decoration in Lisa Robertson's Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office

In Lisa Robertson's Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture, I was fascinated by the idea that ‘description' functions as a decoration (in Introduction to the Weather, p.67). In this part, a ‘description' is considered as an important decorative work and an ornament that adorns mortality. Here the narrator relates ‘description' with decoration and act of filling spaces.

A description generally serves as an account of a person, a subject, or an event; and it being a decoration demands the ability to think with mindfulness. By decoration, it means that something is not described merely according to its formal characteristic or appearance, but there might be feelings added to it. On page 67 the narrator states, "Within that chiaroscuro, we need to gently augment the fraught happiness of our temporary commons by insisting on utopian delusions as a passage—like a wet pergola or a triumphal arch against blue". I come to understand that the narrator suggests that: when description acts as a decoration, it is filling in empty spaces that lay between an appearance of something with the intact it creates with us. As an example, on page 68, it is stated, "Recall the peculiar feeling of lassitude before a storm." In that statement, a feeling comes into a description that is to represent a storm. Here it is also suggested that description makes the thing it represents, and its decoration performs to what extent our interaction is with it. A description is "what makes 1 a.m, 4 a.m., 5:15 a.m." (p.68). It is what it is, with us involved in it. As part of the making of description, in the text it is also suggested that we are eventually creating something new by adding a generative commentary to the subject matter: "By ‘integrate' we mean: to arc into space without surface as if it were uninhabitable, flickering event.." (p.68).

When a description of something is being made, it starts from soft text, especially when feelings are added to it. A description that is decorated inside the mind exists. However, it might not be all written or physically appeared. It exists in the spaces between us and a person/subject/event. It stands between when no word is present, which is parallel with the definition of soft text that it "..occurs in the moments when no one is saying any words aloud, and yet you know the line is open" (Robertson p.2). The déco is a silent utterance in response to the subject that we encounter and try to describe.

The Power of Memory in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go

I stumbled upon a book-shelf in my friend’s apartment and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go instantly attracted my attention. I’d heard about Ishiguro but never really had the chance to read his book. ‘May I borrow this one?’ I asked my friend. ‘Sure thing!’ she said. And that was how I ended up with another book on a queue when I had not even finished the one I bought the week before. Three months later, after my hectic semester ended, I finally had the opportunity to finish it!

I loved this book, a lot. I must say that I have watched its movie version starring Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley—and I did not realised it only after I finished the first chapter. Then after realising, I was wondering if I would know how the story goes. Well, I did. However, despite of the fact that both the book and the movie have the same plot, the experience of reading it was totally amazing! I am obsessed with how Ishiguro delivers memory in such a detailed manner through texts. Taking place at Hailsham, a school in the countryside of England, Kathy H reminisces her past including her traumatic experiences which soon unfold a big secret about her and other students’ identity. I will not tell you how the story goes, because you should definitely read it yourself! But I can tell you one thing: you would feel like you’re inside Kathy H’s head throughout the book. Ishiguro places you in Kathy H’s position and makes you see things the way she sees it.

Through a recount narrative, Kathy H tells past events according to her point of view. This is what I mean by being inside her head. She tells stories independently and according to her own perspectives, which drive the readers to consider it as what really happens. There are no other options rather than to agree with the narration that she tells, even though generally speaking, memory is sometimes not to trust. It can be mixed with other events and personal desires as well.

In this book, Kathy H's memory is depicted as the truth. Her memory then posits subjectivity. This subjectivity is what creates a protagonist figure in Kathy H’s character. Ishiguro as the writer is on her side. Whatever Kathy H does in her past and present are mostly right, and whatever other characters do might be all wrong (Ruth B is pictured as a pain in the ass in this book! But is she really?) After all, Never Let Me Go is exciting to read. The power of memory through a recount narrative is detailed and the characters conveying this memory are vivid. I am thinking about buying this book, instead of borrowing, to add to my collections!