当前位置: X-MOL 学术Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory › 论文详情
Our official English website, www.x-mol.net, welcomes your feedback! (Note: you will need to create a separate account there.)
Atmospheric Violence: Samuel Beckett’s Aesthetics of Respiration
Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory Pub Date : 2019-04-03 , DOI: 10.1080/10436928.2019.1598225
Yan Tang

Two examples index a century-long obsession with an uncanny aesthetics of respiration in modern and contemporary art. In Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s collection Contes cruels (1883), there is a satire called “L’Appareil pour l’analyze chimique de dernier soupir” (“The Apparatus for Chemical Analysis of the Last Breath”). The narrator of the satire promotes an apparatus that can alleviate the pain of bereavement. The apparatus first collects people’s “penultimate breaths during the sleep of life” and eventually compares the collected breaths to their last exhalations before death, “the first of the sleep of death” (160). This comparison prepares families for the loss of their beloved on a daily basis, “familiariz[ing] them artificially with the pangs of bereavement, when they will be merely familiar, reiterated, and insignificant” (160). A century later, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s art installation “Last Breath” (2012) incidentally actualized Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s imaginary apparatus: the installation stores a person’s breath in a brown paper bag whose inflation and deflation mimic human respiratory activities. Spectators can also hear the crushing sound of the paper bag synchronized with a faint sound of breath circulating in the tubes. The first version of the installation preserves the breath of Cuban singer Omara Portuondo as “a biometric portrait” and “a living memorial” (“Last Breath”). One question in the “Frequently Asked Questions” section reads: “is there a way to silence the piece?” (“Last Breath”). The aesthetics of respiration defamiliarizes the most banal and involuntary activity of breathing in everyday life, showing that under new forms of atmospheric violence the modern respiratory experience is no longer idyllic but often associated with feelings of contamination, suffocation, and technological mediation. As Peter Sloterdijk argues in Terror from the Air, the twentieth century witnessed a technological explication and acceleration of latent atmospheric violence targeted on “new surfaces of vulnerability” (28) – our living environment. In the realm of twentieth-century literature, we can find an explicit engagement with violent and difficult respiratory experiences in Wilfred Owen’s portrayal of gas attack in “Dulce et Decorum Est” (55–56), Wyndham Lewis’s curse at “the myriads of Prussian germs, gases, and

中文翻译:

大气暴力:塞缪尔·贝克特的呼吸美学

有两个例子表明,一个世纪以来,人们对现代和当代艺术中呼吸的奇特美学产生了痴迷。在Villiers de l'Isle-Adam的收藏Contes cruels(1883)中,有一幅讽刺作品被称为“ L'Appareil pour l'analyze chimique de dernier soupir”(“最后呼吸的化学分析仪器”)。讽刺小说的叙述者促进了一种可以减轻丧亲之痛的装置。该装置首先收集人们的“生命睡眠期间的倒数第二次呼吸”,并最终将收集的呼吸与其死亡前的最后呼气(“死亡睡眠中的第一次”)进行比较(160)。这种比较使家庭每天为失去自己所爱的人做好准备,“当他们只是熟识,重申和微不足道的时候,就通过丧亲之痛人为地使他们受苦”(160)。一个世纪后,拉斐尔·洛萨诺·海默(Rafael Lozano-Hemmer)的艺术装置“最后一口气”(Last Breath)(2012年)偶然地实现了维利耶·德·伊斯莱·亚当(Villiers de l'Isle-Adam)的假想装置:该装置将一个人的呼吸存储在一个棕色的纸袋中,该袋的通气和通气模仿人类的呼吸活动。观众还可以听到纸袋的压碎声与管道中微弱的呼吸声同步。该装置的第一个版本保留了古巴歌手Omara Portuondo的呼吸,作为“生物特征肖像”和“活着的纪念物”(“最后的呼吸”)。“常见问题”部分中的一个问题为:“有没有办法使作品静音?” (“最后一口气”)。呼吸美学消除了日常生活中最平淡和非自愿的呼吸活动,表明在新的大气暴力形式下,现代呼吸体验不再是田园风光,而是常常与污染,窒息和技术中介的感觉相关。正如彼得·斯洛特迪克(Peter Sloterdijk)在《空中恐怖》中所说的那样,二十世纪目睹了针对“脆弱性的新表面”(28)-我们的生存环境-的潜在的大气暴力的技术发展和加速。在20世纪文学领域中,我们可以发现威尔弗雷德·欧文(Wilfred Owen)在“ Dulce et Decorum Est”(55-56)中描写的瓦斯攻击刻画了暴力和艰难的呼吸经历,温德姆·刘易斯(Wyndham Lewis)的诅咒是“无数普鲁士人”。细菌,气体和 正如彼得·斯洛特迪克(Peter Sloterdijk)在《空中恐怖》中所说的那样,二十世纪目睹了针对“脆弱性的新表面”(28)-我们的生存环境-的潜在的大气暴力的技术发展和加速。在20世纪文学领域中,我们可以发现威尔弗雷德·欧文(Wilfred Owen)在“ Dulce et Decorum Est”(55-56)中描写的瓦斯攻击刻画了暴力和艰难的呼吸经历,温德姆·刘易斯(Wyndham Lewis)的诅咒是“无数普鲁士人”。细菌,气体和 正如彼得·斯洛特迪克(Peter Sloterdijk)在《空中恐怖》中所说的那样,二十世纪目睹了针对“新的脆弱性表面”(28)(我们的生活环境)的潜在的大气暴力的技术发展和加速。在20世纪文学领域中,我们可以发现威尔弗雷德·欧文(Wilfred Owen)在“ Dulce et Decorum Est”(55-56)中描写的瓦斯攻击刻画了暴力和艰难的呼吸经历,温德姆·刘易斯(Wyndham Lewis)的诅咒是“无数普鲁士人”。细菌,气体和
更新日期:2019-04-03
down
wechat
bug