Resumen de The Language of Traumatic Grief in Samuel Beckett´s A Piece of Monologue
A Piece of Monologue is analysed in this chapter in relation to the specific characteristics of the language of traumatic mourning. The ghost-like Speaker, who is on the edge of his life, is ‘hanging on words’ for his existence. The memories of lost loved ones are haunting his present. And though mourning is part and parcel of old age, the Speaker is either incapable or reluctant to remember the ones he lost. Nameless ghosts and the anguish of losses pervade the Speaker’s narration, his memory is a blur and his grief is mollifying. Petra G.H. Aarts and Wybrand op den Velde point out that ‘Mourning for losses, giving meaning to and accepting past and present experiences, and (re)creating self-coherence and self-continuity are chores within each process; ego integration is the completion of both.’ Both self-coherence and self-continuity are vital to the sense of integrity and the construction of identity through time and any form of loss produces a rupture in the individual’s psyche. Thus, manifold non-integrated losses time may result in traumatic grief and lead to the ‘pathology of self’ especially in old age, which is a period of inactivity and reflexions. Aarta and den Velde conclude that ‘The losses that accompany senescence have been noted to reactivate not-worked-through traumatic contents.’ The Speaker’s grief goes far beyond the mourning of his loved ones – he grieves over his shattered and lost self. ‘Birth was the death of him’, the first words in A Piece of Monologue reject any possibility of self-re/construction. The Speaker is on the fragile boundary between the two worlds: the world of the living and the world of the dead. Therefore, his speech acquires the poetic quality of a pendulum movement, which is analysed through the lens of the language of traumatic grief.
