The Aesthetic Values of Silence in Two Plays by Harold Pinter

Niloufar Amiri

doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.7n.3p.111

Abstract

In our modern world where people suffer from self-alienation and are after the meaning of existence in their mechanical and flamboyant outside world, finding a discernible language is very important. Dejected minds of people are the products of the miserable modern societies which have changed them to the taciturn and uncommunicative creatures in search of meaning. The significance of language specifically poetic or living language is an undeniable fact in different eras. Therefore, it would be easier for the artists to communicate people by letting them get the maximum meaning with the least amount of words. This article shows the aesthetic values of silence in two Pinter plays, The Birthday Party and The Dumb Waiter . It uses Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s theory of “organic unity” to show that the simultaneous presence of language and silence in Pinter’s dramas keeps the whole work of art in balance, allowing opposite particles to reconcile. Keywords: poetic/living language, theory of organic unity, unseen and unheard aspects of language, metaphoric and ambiguous language, defamiliarization in language, modern musical language

Highlights

How do the aesthetic values of Harold Pinter (1930-2008), the modern playwright renowned for his “comedies of menace,” exemplify aesthetic theories put forward by English romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)?
First we must review some of the conspicuous positions of language in the romantic age and the importance of poetic language in both romanticism and symbolism, the latter as defined in programmatic essays by William Butler Yeats and Andrei Bely
Poetry is the verbal art capable of establishing such a relation. It has the greatest number of constituent parts that bring the highest degree of pleasure by engaging us with a work and enable us to delight in the “whole.” This is what he called “organic unity,” the absolute quality that every poem or work of art should possess

Summary

Introduction

How do the aesthetic values of Harold Pinter (1930-2008), the modern playwright renowned for his “comedies of menace,” exemplify aesthetic theories put forward by English romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)?. Language for Pinter, has the same importance that it does for Coleridge, but his techniques for conveying this meaning to his audiences are different For his plays, Pinter chooses comedic language, which uses pauses and silences to intensify the humor or deepen the horror of situations. Pinter chooses comedic language, which uses pauses and silences to intensify the humor or deepen the horror of situations These situations result from the afflictions of men and women in modern society. Literary language can be seen as self-focused, offering the reader a special mode of experience by drawing attention to its own formal features, such as linguistic signs, which are used in modern drama as a substitute for the rhetorical language of romantic drama. We will consider the writings and theories of romantic dramatists on dramatic language and compare the aesthetic values of modern drama to those of traditional drama, as concerns the existence or absence of language

Discussion

Conclusion