İNCE YA DA KESKİN SIZI?: PINTER'IN İNCE SIZI'SINDA FREUDYEN UNCANNY
Bir kâse reçelin eşlik ettiği mütevazı bir kahvaltı sahnesinin huzurlu atmosferindeki kır evinde geçen Pinter'ın İnce Sızı 1959 isimli oyunu, eksiksiz sükunet ve yalınlığın hüküm sürdüğü sıradan bir dünya sunuyormuş gibi görünür. Ancak, oyunun Sigmund Freud'un “The Uncanny” “Tekinsiz” makalesi ışığındaki analizi gösteriyor ki, Pinter sıradan bir dünya sunmaz ve karakterlerinin 'ince sızıları' gerisine tanımlanmaya ya da çözümlenmeye karşı şiddetle direnen 'keskin sızıları'nı saklayarak, şaşırtıcı bir karmaşıklığın, her an tehdit teşkil eden tehlikenin ve bastırılmış duyguların yer aldığı anlaşılması zor bir dünya sunar. Buna dayanarak, çalışma Pinter'ın tek perdelik oyunu İnce Sızı'yı Freud'un psikanalitik kavramı “the uncanny” “tekinsiz” kapsamında analiz etmektedir ve oyunun mütevazı kahvaltı sofrasındaki evli çiftiyle bu çiftin arka kapılarında sessizce dikilen kibritçi gibi bilindik karakterlerinin oyuna sıradanlık izlenimi vermelerine rağmen, sıradan görünümlü kelimelerinin yanıltıcı maskesiyle örttükleri şüpheli geçmişlerine dayanan bastırılmış niyetleri ve düşmanca düşünceleriyle birbirlerine karşı potansiyel olarak tehlikeli ve çatışmacı oldukları için, oyundaki görünen yüzeyin gerisinde uncanny hissiyatının yer aldığını göstermeyi amaçlamaktadır.
A SLIGHT OR A STINGING ACHE?: THE FREUDIAN UNCANNY IN HAROLD PINTER'S A SLIGHT ACHE
Set in a country house's relaxing atmosphere of a modest breakfast scene accompanied by a cup of marmalade, Pinter's A Slight Ache 1959 seems to present a world of utmost simplicity over where a sense of complete tranquility and utter nakedness rule. However, as claried by a reading of the play in the light of Sigmund Freud's “The Uncanny”, Pinter presents not a world of simplicity but a convoluted world of bewildering complexity, impending danger, and emotional repression, hiding beneath the 'slight ache' of its characters 'a stinging ache' that vigorously resists both denition and resolution. Based on this, the present study analyzes Pinter's one-act play A Slight Ache from the perspective of Freud's psychoanalytic concept of 'the uncanny' and aims to show that although the play gives the impression of reecting simplicity for its such known characters as a married couple set at a modest breakfast table or a matchseller silently standing on their back gate, it arouses uncanny feelings beneath the surface because its 'familiar' characters are uncovered to be potentially dangerous and battling towards each other with their repressed intentions and evil thoughts relating to their blurred pasts guised in an illusionary veil of ordinary-looking words.
___
- Adler, Thomas P. “Notes Towards the Archetypal Pinter Woman.” Theatre Journal
- Almansi, Guido and, Simon Henderson. Harold Pinter. London: Routledge
Publishing, 1983.
- Begley, Varun. Harold Pinter and the Twilight of Modernism. Canada: University of
Toronto Press, 2005.
- Bermel, Albert. “The Monarch as Beggar.” Contradictory Characters: An
Interpretation of the Modern Theater (p. 228-242). USA: Northwestern
University Press,1996.
- Burkman, Katherine H. “Conclusion.” The Dramatic World of Harold Pinter: Its Basis
in Ritual. Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1971.
- Chiasson, Basil. “(Re)Thinking Harold Pinter’s Comedy of Menace.” Harold Pinter’s
The Dumb Waiter. Ed. Mary F. Brewer. Amsterdam: Ropodi Press, 2009. 31-
54.
- Cohn, Ruby. “The World of Harold Pinter.” The Tulane Drama Review 6. 3. (1962):
55-68.
- Dawson, Lorne. “Otto and Freud on the Uncanny and beyond.” Journal of the
American Academy of Religion 57. 2 (1989): 283-311.
- Deason, Charlotte. C. Harold Pinter’s Use of the Five Senses in “The Caretaker” and
“A Slight Ache”. London: Arabella, ProQuest, 2008.
- Diamond, Elin. Pinter’s Comic Play. USA: Associated University Press, 1985.
- Dukore, Bernard. “The Theatre of Harold Pinter.” The Tulane Drama Review 6. 3.
(1962): 43-54.
- --- “What’s in a Name?: An Approach to ‘The Homecoming.’” Theatre Journal 33. 2.
(1981): 173-181.
- Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd. Edinburg: T.&A. Constable Ltd
Publishing, 1961.
- Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Eds. Julie Rivkin
and, Michael Ryan.USA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 418-430
- Gabbard, Lucina Paquet. The Dream Structure of Pinter’s Plays: A Psychoanalytic
Approach. USA: Associated University Press, 1976.
- Gale, Steven H. Butter’s Going Up: A Critical Analysis of Harold Pinter’s Work.
Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1977.
- --- Sharp Cut: Harold Pinter's Screenplays and the Artistic Process. Kentucky: The
University Press of Kentucky, 2003.
- Guido, Almansi. “Pinter’s Idiom of Lies.” The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, The
Homecoming. Ed. Michael Scott. Hong Kong: Macmillan, 1981. 71-76
- Homan, Sidney. Pinter’s Odd Man Out: Staging and Filming Old Times. USA:
Associated University Press, 1993.
- Misra, Chittaranjan. Harold Pinter: The Dramatist. New Delhi: Creative Publishers,
1992.
- Owens, Craig N. “Mirrored Stages: Monologues, Split Subjects, and the Truth of the
Absurd.” The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 43.1.
(2010): 57-67.
- Pinter, Harold. Harold Pinter: Plays 1. London: Faber and Faber Publishing, 1996.
- Prentice, Penelope. The Pinter Ethic: The Erotic Aesthetic. New York: Routledge
Publishing, 2000.
- Roof, Judith. “Takes a Licking and Keeps on Ticking: Paranoia and Misogyny in
Modern Drama.” Staging the Rage: The Web of Misogyny in Modern Drama.
- Eds. Katherine H. Burkman and, Judith Roof. USA: Associated University
Press, 1998. 38-53.
- Rosça, Alina-Elena. “Multi-levelled Representations of Power in Harold Pinter’s
Plays.” Petroleum - Gas University of Ploiesti Bulletin, Philology Series 61. 2.
(2009): 91-98.
- Sakellaridou, Elizabeth. Pinter’s Female Portraits: A Study of Female Characters in
the Plays of Harold Pinter. Hong Kong: Macmillan, 1988.
- Strunk, Volker. Harold Pinter: Towards a Poetics of His Plays. New York: Peter Lang
Publishing, 1989.