Language of a Broken Mind: Suicidal Poetic Techniques and Dramatic Dialogue in

4.48 Psychosis

LarenasLanguage of a Broken Mind: Suicidal Poetic Techniques and Dramatic Dialogue in
4.48 Psychosis
Gabriel Nicols Larenas Rosa
1
This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary--Sylvia Plath in The Moon and the Yew Tree
Psychosis 4.48
is a play of agony. A thread. The exhausting, ill-tempered world of suicide.
2
A play to think about killing yourself.
4.48 Psychosis
is a claustrophobic dark-room andit doesnt allow anyone to go out until the curtains are opened.
Curtains which might be as wellarm-flesh; the rope to the neck; breath to mouth.Kane masters her
dramaturgia
by the use of poetic writing techniques. These are used toconstruct a very specific type of dramatic
existentialist dialogue. Given that the critics argue that
4.48 Psychosis
is more of a poetic work than a theater play, the following paper will analyze
3
the juxtaposition of poetry and dramatic dialogue in this play, so as to understand it as a visual
play.Its studies why the purpose of this dramatic-poetic writing is to achieve a dense
psychological,suicidal, atmosphere. The main objective is to explore how
4.48 Psychosis
creates its owndramatic structure so as to create a psychological dialogue through its poetic means.
It willconsider, so as to read its psychological meanings, how the play refers to
psychosis
4

without
1
B.A on Literature and Aesthetics, from the Catholic University of Chile, and currently obtening a
Mastersdegree inCultural Studies and Gender at the Arcis University of Chile.
2
To think of suicide is exhausting. As a formal process, it has the weight of a final action be
remembered by.
3
(Note I wrte at the time Im revising this paper) It has been over a year since I worked with Sarah
Kanes play. Thiswould not be a complete text without me giving any signs of how much this text
demanded from me, and how muchI mentally suffered, even in joy, doing this. I wrote this paper as
my final seminar to obtain my B.A in EnglishLiterature. I was 25 years old. I had previously suffered
from depression myself; but at the time I had agreeddepression is immanent, some are more
articulated than others, and it is not a direct interference with the moments of happyness. I decided
to work with this play because of its seductive literary doom. Because it was explicit. Deathlyand
unique. It did provoke me a breakdown, and that is something I would like people to pay attention
on. Workingwith these kind of literary subjects, if you truly love writing, affects your daily life, affects
your sleeping, it gets intoevery nerve. This is not a symptom that something is wrong. It is a good
notice that you are becoming passionateabout your research object. Sadly, univesirties and
institutions will not even care. Working with Kane and finishingthe paper is surviving Kane. Surviving
on your own. Without the help of anybody.
4
Thinking basicly of psychosis as a psychiatric condition of those who loose contact with reality

Larenasspecifically articulating the pathology but played linguistically. It is done so as to create
adialogue that recreates, in the receiver, a mental state of mind.It is agreeable that not all poetry
openly declaimed has to be theatrical; as well as notclassic poetry must suit perfectly the written
text. A theater play is an organic unit. There issomething beyond its forms that makes them work or
not (as if it were that simple). Dialogues areessentials, since it is how the a play breathers out and
stops being a form. In this case, the path is poetic, and what is beyond the strategy is to reach into
the reader a psychological nerve that willconnect text and reader in the same theatrical room, the
same fear of suicide.
4.48 Psychosis
is mainly written in blank verses. The text is visually constructed in unusualforms that will not usually
be expected in a dialogue. Added to the overly charged semiotics, thereader is pushed into a strong,
written poetic presence that changes the habitual structure of dramatic dialogue. However, it does
not change its functions. Kane is not writing a collection of poems, she is writing a dramatic piece.
The voices undergo a poetic state of reasoning, but alwaysin interaction with a none-given receptor.
She presents this distinction in contrast, as the playopens. The very first lines indicate the clear
presence of dramatic dialogue,(
A very long silence.)-
But you have friends
.(a long silence)
You have a lot of friends.What do you offer your friends to make them sosupportive? (205)Though it
does not say
who
is addressing to
whom
(absence of the specific names of characters),the voices are clearly dialogical and not monological.
The dialogue is marked by a hyphen. A
voice is addressing another with two statements, a question, and to someone else, not to itself.This
is different from the type of dialogue that will follow,a consolidated consciousness resides in a
darkened banquetinghall near the ceiling of a mind whose floor shifts as tenthousand cockroaches
when a shaft of light enters as allthoughts unite in an instant of accord body no longer expellant as
the cockroaches comprise a truthwhich no one ever utters. (205)This is an example of how Kane
creates a change throughout a poetic dialogue. She installs theimagery of the subject: the mind, a
dark room, fragile floor, invaded with cockroaches; insectsthat bring a message, a truth. These
insects could represent in fact words; dark words whichinvade the mind, words that are not
pronounced and that are trapped in the body (the truth that isnever uttered) which is a reading of
psychosis from Lacan point of view, thinking that for Lacansymptoms are words that the body does
not want to expel; words trapped in a body. This is whatthe text wants to portray. If the poetic
function is recognized as being predominant in a specifictext, the text can become more cryptic,
enigmatic, allowing the reader of the play to manage awider range of interpretations of any read
information.If the reader is not able to be interactive with the voices (the non-titled characters)
byvisually interpreting the fragments, the dialogue becomes automatically a monologue and it
doesnot function. Therefore, Sarah Kane uses very particular words that cannot be easily
avoided.Knowing that the crawling cockroaches will call the attention of the reader by
physicallyresponding to it, she repeats it twice in the same sentence. She places it next to a word
that doesnot have a visual equivalent:
mind
, hence its visual interpretation must be done by the readers.By forcing them to execute this action,
she creates a dialogue
The extract also is an example of how Sara Kane makes references of Lacan, because of the constant
signification of reality through language. The given text is in present tense (aconsolidated
consciousness resides in a darkened banqueting hall). It does not use words such aslike; it is not a
poetic simile. For the voice, the message of this text is extracted from reality,the situation is
happening as it is being said in the text. But for the reader, as there is a thoughtcharacter speaking,
the presence of these words signifies something different.
4.48 Psychosis
isa one-act play, though it is never explicit that Kane thought of
acts
when writing it. However, alltexts have a solid connection between one and another. Even if the tone
changes, the language iscoherent with its dramatic flow. This is why the next lines can be analogous
with the previoustext:the broken hermaphrodite who trusted hermself alone finds theroom in reality
teeming and begs never to wakefrom the nightmare (205).With this quote, Kane brings back the
room so as to reuse a previously constructed image andadd more meanings to it. This is a strategy
cleverly repeated throughout the whole play and it isthe reason why this play is so dense. It never
suggests a conveyed meaning as a thread to befollowed, so each time repetitionThe presence of the
words hermaphrodite and hermself is the linguistic sex ambiguity of thevoice, in which
characters can be both male and women separately but with the fact that theyonce shared a mutual
body. As there is no names in this play, there is no clear identity, whichmakes the context much more
richer, since it becomes intersexual. There is never clear evidenceabout who is speaking. There are
no implied genders. Presenting the figure of the intersexed is atechnique that allows readers from
both sexes to apprehend the text at the same level. It isdifficult, because the intersexed is part of our
invisibility. Kane dares the reader

LarenasIt is a form of ambiguity which redirects the reader into wider possibilities of interpretation.
This emphasis is starting to reveal the need for the reader to be an active participant in the
development of the play, and not just a witness of it. The reader, or virtualaudience, will be needed
as the nucleus of the dramatic dialogue for this play to succeed.Ambiguity will also be needed a hand
for the visual constructions that must come alive throughthis dialogue between the declaiming
voices and the interpretative reader.It is important to know that the dialogues are built in dramatic
verse. As J. L. Stylanexplains in his book
The Elements of Drama
,Poetry can make the drama uniquely precise not only for theactor to work with, but also for the
audience to react to. [. . .] Itwill compel drama on the stage of such a kind that the image of itin the
audiences mind will be something wider and yet finer*. . .+The poetry is there to express and define
patterns of thoughts andfeeling otherwise inexpressible and indefinable (33)In this sense, if the play
portrays death and suicide as the main subjects, poetry is justified, sincethere is a mandatory need to
construct images, sometimes by repetitions that are inexpressible, but expressible only through
language. That is the pattern. Poetry will not be considered as suchin the thought of dialogue, but as
a monologue that has an interaction with an unknown receptor.
4.48 Psychosis
is integral, complex and organic for analyzing the crossing between poetryand drama. As mentioned
before, the intensity of the poetic forms presented in the play has ledmany critics to argue that
4.48 Psychosis
is not a play because it does not function dramatically. Itis claimed that the play is an extended poem
that can be declaimed in an open stage. Kane writes,just a word on a page and there is the drama
(213) in order to state that the written word can
even be ironically theatrical, questioning who decides whether there is drama or not. Despite
thefierceness of poetry in Sarah Kanes work,
4.48 Psychosis
works as a play beyond all doubts.When analyzing dialogue, the written dramatic text demands an
intense work from thereader, since it constantly appeals to all possible interpretations. In order to
analyze, would haveto
choose
from an original first reading and others led by theory. The performance itself,however, is more
deceitful in analysis because the given messages have to undergo morechannels of recognition
besides interpretation, even though the live transmission is morecategorical. Messages, according to
Pfister, are sensible to change by any small variation of bothinternal and external
communication.The type of dialogue built by Sarah Kane suits the stage perfectly, as a play, not as
anopen declamation. No matter how language is performed, the specific messages consider
thereaction of the reader. It chooses the exact words to provoke him/her even in writing. Though
4.48 Psychosis
is not a full-dressed hybrid, it comes very close to one. Its proposed anatomyfinds its own ways to
give the reader an opportunity to understand our proposed crossing. This iswhy words are so
important in the analysis. They build a safety net for the messages not to becorrupted by any
external interference.Pfister claims in
Theory and Analysis of Drama
that normally, the poetic function onlyapplies to the external communication system (119) because
in order to reach internalcommunication the voice would have to express their astonishment to his
unnatural manner of speaking. Sarah Kane is aware of this differentiation, because the voice
actually exclaims therequired astonishment. Kane writes in the beginning, I had a night in which
everything wasrevealed to me. / How can I speak again? (204), and then she repeats the
bewilderment in themiddle of the play with how can I return to form / now my formal thought has
gone? (213)
This is an evident, and clever, paradox about formalism and trying to compose structures
withoutfeelings.The voice is aware of the language used, its articulations and forms. The poetic
functionconnects both structure and meaning; verses, words and significations. The way she writes
andhow she writes it. She assigns logic in the apprehension of the text/words. It places everyone
inthe same position. Nevertheless, that the play is written mostly in free verse as said before, is not
the maincondition for the poetic function to get hold of this work. It is in fact, the dialogue that
isconstructed by this predominant function. Since poetry needs a receiver that is able to
bothdecipher and interpret messages emotionally, in theater both the reader of the text and
theaudience of the performance becomes automatically that receiver in a more active way
thansomeone who just witnesses a conversation. This, according to Ubersefeld, is one of the
maincharacteristics of the poetic function, its figure of speech, the one that conditions
theatricaldialogue, [. . .] because the audiences know that all pronounced words are addressed to
them(132).The quote that was previously mentioned, how can I return to form / now my
formalthought has gone? (213), can also be applicable to how Kane feels about her own play
andFormalism. Artistic formality would manifest in structures and its clefts. Her language, spirited
passion about death, breaks the common dialogical structure since it does not allow a transit from
passion to form. In order to accomplish coherence, she breaks the comfortable structures of theater,
habituated dialogue, recognizable characters, distinguishable stage directions, andtranslates them
under structures that correspond strictly to poetry. Poetry is the main written formthat supports the
so called
less formal
structures such as blank verse. Blank verse is adaptable for many situations, since it comes from an
unstructured creativity; it becomes stageable. This does
not mean that all blank-versed poetry is suitable for the stage. It needs a thread, it needs a reasonto
be, and that is the brilliance of this particular play; it accomplishes its goals completely. Itcreates its
own undefined, natural form.To rely on this function as principal and not secondary is defiant. In this
play, the style of the dialogue questions the repetitive form of dramatic dialogue, the observable
conversation.The actual reason for this construction is to speak, loudly, about pain. It transmits
without anykind of considerations, the pain of the writer to an audience that becomes more
sensitivethroughout the chosen words.The poetic dialogues in
4.48 Psychosis
are always attached to their own suggestions of reality, what is going to happen, as seen in the
previous example, or expressing feelings such asthe following: when he wakes he will envy my
sleepless night of thought and speech unslurred by medication (208). In this sentence a he that
had never been mentioned, appears. An out-of-context situation is present (someone that is waking
up) and the voice is waiting for aconsequence when he wakes. The sentence is the portrayal of
how the voice is signifying her insomniac uneasiness which the reader knows occurs every night at
4.48 am. The voice isconstantly trying to explain what this time means, without mentioning it all the
time. A signifiedreality is presented in a voice that is not aware about its distance with reality.Words
are chosen to articulate a pressured life that wants to get away. A work written bythe intuition of
suicide and that changes its own artistic codes that are intervened by this luciddepression. Intuition is
mainly lead by words and facial expression. The chosen language triggersa transit between life and
death. The same happens, for example, in the last work of Sylvia Plath,
Ariel
, found in Plaths desk after she committed suicide. The most famous verses of this work areclosely
related to her suicide; she writes in her poem Lady Lazarus:

Dying is an art / likeeverything else / I do it exceptionally well (43-45). For Plath and Kane, death
had a very similar
signification and it is not surprising that both of them are famous for how they portrayed suicidein
literary works of art.Al Alvarez, author of The Savage God, a Study of Suicide

,
was a close friend of SylviaPlath at the time of her death. The approach Alvarez has about death is
daring, since there are notmany texts that speak about suicide with such theoretical, yet caring,
closeness. He comprehendsthe power the act has exerted over the creative imagination (166)
which is compelling for this particular analysis. Both writers depicted death with a strange, yet
appealing, seduction. Kaneflaunts her own threat to an executing reader. They will love me for that
which destroys me(213) writes Kane, just as it happened with the work of Plath, who became a
fashionable icon of suicide. The visual field becomes sweetly mined, a perfect trap.Because of the
need to find words that exactly characterize a need for death and suicide,the dramatic language is
altered to meet everything that is needed to create the imagery necessaryto understand the codes of
theatre and suicide. Language creates images which are strong enoughto condition an action. If
readers are constructing a place they cannot recognize, the dialogue between the ones who are
inside this place and the outsiders will raise the suggestions necessaryfor them to build this place
into their own familiar codes.The most effective strategy is to constantly repeat words in different
situations for thereader to conceive diverse significations upon the same image/word. Because
repetition will befound in different times and places, these will become more obscure concepts. They
cannot begiven, because a sudden mention of them will assume concepts of reality which the play
avoidsand the repetition would not work. Thus, the semantic field is the key to unveil the place.The
play has an eye/ear-catching emphasis on certain words. The following words, for example, are
extracted from the text; words that repeat constantly or that are highlighted withintheir context:
silence, consciousness, dark, mind, nightmare, sad, hopeless, bored, dissatisfied,
9


Larenas
failure, guilty, punished, kill myself, cry, tears, loneliness, fear, disgust, death, alone,
depressed,mortality, suicide, unconsciousness, sleepless, pain, bitter, grief, expressionless,
dismay,humiliation, illness, panic, shame, anguish, grave, hurt, lies, falsehoods, betrayal, nothing,
anger, scare, unhappy, hell, destroy, sickness, nervous breakdown, repugnant, aching, tears,
lobotomy,brain, pathological grief, darkness, madness, insanity, pain.
These are Kanes cockroaches; the words that populate the play. Most of them arerepeated more
than three times throughout the whole play. With this strategy, Kane leads thereader to visually
interpret death giving specific instructions of
how
the imagery must beconstructed. The weight of these words deal with attitudes and mental states;
they speak of desperation as well a severe depression, as if the cockroaches could multiply due to the
lack of light that these words apprehend. However, none of them are concrete; most of them are
abstractnouns defining an abstract picture. In contrast, Kane presents in two full pages, nouns that
arecorporeal with the situation, concrete identifiable nouns such as the ones given in the
followinglines,Symptoms: Not eating, not sleeping, not speaking, no sexdrive in despair, wants to
die.Diagnosis: Pathological grief.Sertraline, 50 mg. Insomnia, worsened, severe anxiety,
anorexia(weight loss 17kgs), increase in suicidal thoughts, plans and intention. Discontinued
following hospitalization. (223)These examples are given in the next following two pages of the play,
with medications andsymptoms. The former, gives an exact anatomical reference to what is
happening to the voice due
to a psychiatric condition. It makes the visual field more accurate by the presentation of
concretenouns that the reader might be more familiar with.Because of the need of visual suggestion
for this play to achieve its goal, it can beassured we are in presence of a dialogue and not a
monologue; the voice its clearly speaking to another, giving information about its actual condition
that has led her to the staged moment.Without the repetition of words, there could be no
construction of imagery; hence there would beno dialogue between voice and reader. If this dialogue
is not present, then the actions would bedeclamatory and the play would become a poetry
collection.Repetition seems to be the main strategy for Sarah Kane to make the dialogue work. For
Lacan, repetition has a major significance in a psychosis. It is given as an impulse. The psychotictends
to repeat acts and words constantly, producing a disorganization of the mind. Every timesomething is
repeated, it signifies something different and it can lead to a different context.However, the root of
that repetition will remain the same. This is not only seen in the play withthe major repetitions of
words, but with dialogues as well. As we have previously seen, the playopens as follows,(
A very long silence.)-
But you have friends
.(a long silence)
You have a lot of friends.What do you offer your friends to make them sosupportive? (205)
5
At the beginning it is not clear, but this dialogue is actually a repetition. It shows that every pieceof
text can have a different signification. To read this dialogue in page 205 is different than to
5
Many of the lines quoted in the analysis are written as they appear in the text.
11


Larenasread it in the middle of page 236. It blurs the concept of time since the text does not specify
whataction came first. This is where the text establishes the loss of contact with reality on its own. It
isnot a character, nor a voice, the one that is producing this repetition. The text repeats itself for
thereader. The repetition of words is necessary to make this division. Death is repeated for the
reader to assemble images with respect to their own private visions of death. It is important that
theword
death
drives the dialogue between play and reader, because this is the instance where the play achieves its
desired communication; ridden interpretation.Death is present twenty-one times in the play, from
beginning to end, plus seven forms of dying and seven references to the act of killing. Number seven
is an important key in the play. Itis implicitly repeated in the text, such as in this number of
repetitions. It a religious icon presentas a negative bonding. The anger with God is violently present
on the text. It can represent theanger toward living against a will of an own: fuck you God for
making me love a person whodoes not exist, FUCK YO FUCK YOU FUCK YOU (215). In this sense, it is
not a surprise thatthere is an explicit bond between death, religion and a mental state (anger).
Number seven is also part of a mental treatment. It consists in making patients subtract from seven
to seven (known asSerial 7). Numbers are presented in the following display, page 208, which
beyond all doubts provokes an optic impact on the reader
The visual representation of numbers is perhaps the most characteristic visual presentation of the
play. It influences the reading. Because of the plays poetic structure, verses, calligraphy and free
punctuation, Kane forces the reader to interpret by means of his/her own channels. Interpretationsin
this play are not conveyed by the observation of different linguistic alternations; they are produced
by the sensual reactions of the readers when they find themselves as the receivingother. The
constant repetition of death is not the representation of a compulsive character; onthe contrary, is
producing compulsion in the reader.This is the reason why the importance of words, as fragments,
cannot be conceived as partof the portrayed mental disorder, but a strategy. The strongest
impressions are clearer impressions, states Alexander Gottlieb in
Reflexiones Filosficas
, hence more poetic than theless clear ones. It is poetic, in a high degree, to excite the more
vehement affections (49). A
poetic structure in theater would work then only if it is able to rouse emotions violently.
Theinterpretation needs to be aggressive, not just a passive codification of what the words means
towhoever is speaking. Soon after the beginning, Kane will reveal this intention in the
followingdialogue:-Yes. Its fear that keeps me away from the train tracks. I just hope toGod that
death is the fucking end. I feel like Im eighty years old. Imtired of life and my mind wants to die-
Thats a metaphor, not reality.-Its a simile.-Thats not reality.-Its not a metaphor, its a simile, but
even if it were, the definingfeature of a metaphor is that its real. (210)By announcing the wish for
mind-death as a simile
6
,what is truly meant is that wanting todie can be comparable. It never says with what can be
compared to, since my mind wants todie is an outer embodiment, a
despersonificacin
, not a simile. The previous like isdescriptive. The reader will tend to think of their own thoughts of
suicide, constructing a personal imagery towards death. This is the desired action. The negation of
the metaphor is adespersonification of her longing. It is an affirmation that supports the
consciousness of thespeaker towards reality.The former extract is rich for explaining the many
attitudes and approaches
4.48 Psychosis
has. On a flighty surface, it is taken as a literary discussion of similes and metaphors; how theycan be
recognized in language use. However, it is a far more intricate example. Structurally, it
denotes the use of voices as dialogical characters proposed by Sarah Kane. These are more
regular
type of dialogues marked by a hyphen. The tones of the voices are clearly different; theycan be set
apart as individuals. No matter how many hyphens might be found in the text, the finaldecision of
how many characters there are must be taken first by the reader and his/her virtual performance
while reading, and then by the director who wants to take
4.48 Psychosis
up to thestage.The play can never be converted in a mere representation of the dialogue between
director and text; it has to work all the stageable-linguistic proposals for the audience never to lose
their role as receivers. On the other hand, the director will need to know how to transcribe all
thecomplex linguistic elements into the play for them never to lose their functions given by the
textitself. In this sense, Silence, the second most repeated word in the whole play, is probably
themost complex translation from text to stage. Specially because it is given as a
multifunctionalstage direction.In Theater as Sign-System: A Semiotics of Text and Performance Aston
and Savona claimthat the main body of the dramatic text and the text containing stage directions
should bedistinguished from each other. For them, stage directions are pieces of highly
relevantinformation for the play itself, whether extra or intra-dialogic, and they must always
beconsidered and analyzed. In
4.48 Psychosis
the stage directions are as important as the dramatictext, because it part of it. They cannot be
divided from the text. The only written stage directionsare silences, so the reader might attribute
them to characters, space, acts, as well as part of the poetic writing; as if Kane would be using
brackets in the style of e.e. cummings.If considered only as stage directions, they would have an
internal effect on the text as wellas in the psychological definition of voices. The play opens with
(A very long silence).
In
brackets and curved, as stage directions are written. It illustrates a command given by its
impliedform. The requirement is not there to help to construct a mood, it settles it.
(Silence)
will be repeated several times from beginning to an end; 38 times to be exact. It becomes a
fragment. Even though this is the first form of repetition given in the text, it is never complete until
the very end where the last
(silence)
is followed by I was trying to explain (238)and when this fragment is replaced by (but Nothing)
(231), a Nothing that is capitalized, thatis, given the title of a place, a land of nothing. Why is it
silence the chosen opening medium?Answering to the psychiatric nature of the play, it denotes a
mental process as well as uneasinesswith communication. Stage directions become a key to
understanding the importance of theinterpretation of the reader. However, because of the ambiguity
of the text, and that there is anemphasis in only giving silence as a stage direction, that piece of
writing can be also interpretednot as a Stage Direction per se, but as part as well of the integral text
which has a meaning over the previous and following texts. It depends on how the reader wants to
take advantage of theform. Symbolically, it is the place in which the author takes a breath herself, in
silence, andallows the voice to rest as well, as if, because of the intensity of the words, that was the
onlyaction truly required.
(Silence)
can be considered within an unconventional
phatic function
as well. As Pfiester recognizes it, the Pathic Function refers to the psychological willingness of both
parties tocommunicate as well as helping to create and intensify the dialogical contact between
thevarious figures (113). In the following example it can be seen how the figure of silenceintervenes
in communication:- You are not eighty years old.
(Silence)
Are you?16

Larenas
(A Silence)
Are you
(A Silence)
Or are you?
(a long silence)
(212)As it was mentioned,
4.48 Psychosis
does not have structured characters. It can be fromone voice to several voices. When it was first
staged in the year 2000, three characters were presented. In Chile, the play was directed by Alfredo
Castro in 2004. Two characters were staged.It is always a personal decision that comes from the
reader. As there are no turns in dialogue, thedifferent types of silences can be considered as
answers, that is to say, as part of the dialogue, asilence that is not portrayed in speech. It can be seen
also as a gap in which the other voice givesroom for another question to appear. It can be a refusal to
the questions. It is never a closingfeature.In the following example, silence will be a figure of speech
that leads the voice tocontinue the dialogue with the reader:Do you think its possible for a person to
be born in thewrong body?
(Silence)
(215)
(Silence)
can be translated as a time for breathing while the voice is speaking to itself, aswell as a moment for
the reader, or virtual audience, to feel that they are being addressed personally. This will encourage
dialogue to develop, always in a psychologically manner asPfister would notice.These forceful breaks
in structure signify the emotional psychological breakdowns of thewriter. 4:48 am is the time Kane
would wake up, everyday, due to paranoia. Even though nor the
reader nor the audience must be aware of this fact, it is a fundamental truth that configuresdialogue
and its fragments, because from this repetitive silence, the flow of words emerge.Silence is not a
code that asks for a reply, but it does provoke a reaction in the other
.
Itsituates them in an awkward, uncomfortable place which leads to the unraveling dialogues.
SusanSontag, in her essay The Aesthetics of Silence expresses a notion of silence which
isfundamental to understand the opening of the play. She addresses the question of how
literallysilence figures in art. She answers,silence exists as a decision in the exemplary suicide of the
artist,who thereby testifies that he has gone too far *. . .+. Silencealso exists as a punishment, in the
exemplary madnessof artists who demonstrate that sanity itself may be the price of trespassing the
accepted frontiers of consciousness (9).Sontag seems to precisely delimit

the concept of silence used in
4.48 Psychosis
. Thefrontiers of consciousness are taken, literally, to the boundaries of theater and what could be
itslimitations; silence as a stage direction in the very opening. However, this first rupture of the
rule,that trespassing, a silence that is mandatory stageable with ambiguous determinations of time
(along silence, a very long silence, silence)
has a deep communicative meaning. Because it is aneutral zone, semantically uncharged, it leads the
reader to what Ubersfeld would recognize aspresupposing what is not said
7
because in silence there is a constant expectation for words,what is going to be said in order to break
the tension.The absence of pronunciation must be portrayed by the actors on stage. Because of
theconstant repetition done in different units of meaning, every time silence appears in the play it
7
According to her, in her book
El dilogo teatral
, page 151, what is not said, lo no dicho, is part of the poetic formof dialogue.
18


Larenaswill join the previous sentences pronounced. The intuition in the other will be provoked by
theface that joins the silence; a face that will rearrange the hearing words and that has the power
enough to modify the ones that will be said. Whether positive or negative, it will affect the flowof
dialogue. The proposed silence is never a place for resting. It is always tensional. As it produces
constant expectations, the psychological space is used, first as a time to gather the giveninformation,
and then to build, at the same time, more expectations about the development;expectations that
always tend to be more negative as the dark intensity of the play grows. In thissense, the
expectation, what it is not said, formulates a language of its own. In this place, wherehearable
language is not present, words flow inside the readers mind, a constant questioning; thecomplete
lack of silence.This is how the dialogue begins between the play and its readers. It follows a
psychological order, since it is psychology, the failure of it, the fight against the institutionalizedrules
of the mind versus the true self, the main concern of the play; the reason of speech. In thislogic,
silence approximates what Esslin in his essay "Language and Silence" would define as arefusal to
communicate. However, in this particular case, silence would be a simulation of thatrefusal, as
another strategy. The dialogue results to be a very intimate, still crudely rough, sharingof death
wishes, images, feelings, etc. It always attempts to defy the psychology of the reader, to prove how
long they can resist while being confronted with their own visions of death. Becauseof this
psychological intensity, a psychoanalytical approach to the play would be easier, butdangerous, since
as Aston and Savona explain those types of analysis can make the text loose asevere amount of
edges. This is why we will consider a psychological approach only to addmeaningful views to the rich
construction of language and communication in
4.48 Pyschosis.
Viewing the effects that this psychological comprehension has upon the text itself, I couldnot agree
more with Teora de la Expresin Potica where Carlos Bousoo claims that poetry
is the contemplation of a real state of mind. Poetry does not communicate what it is being felt, but
its contemplation (20). This statement reinforces the way in which the play was written.Bousoo
highlights the difficulty in comprehending the meaning of communication when itcomes to poetry,
because of this crossing between communication and interpretation in asubjective field. He claims
that what the reader must always have in mind is that everything thatis being communicated is
imaginary with codes that are real language, which determineseverything that has to be imagined. In
this sense, the various messages that can be decoded arecompletely valid. Bousoo affirms that
poetry follows an intuitive understanding, not a logicone (53).The dialogues marked by hyphens
are clearly about treatment; it is usually recognized as a patient and her therapist. To allow the other
to decide whether these dialogues follow a pathological disorder means that the author is forcing the
other to assume the role of a therapistwhen labelling the artistic drive. Dialogues are articulated
under a penetrating artistic insight.Whether sick or healthy, it should not infer any form of prejudice
towards the work itself. Kane presents in her work how difficult it is to write under the constant
pressure of an outsider whodetermines what is healthy, what is not, what is a metaphor, what is a
simile. For art sake, it isclinical censure.One of the main pathological characteristics of psychosis is
the loss of contact with realitytogether with a derangement of personality. For many readers, the
main voices as well as theauthor might be driven by a psychotic state of mind, but it is not technically
necessary as ageneral truth.
4.48 Psychosis
is not a delirium; a psychotic mind can never interpret a delirium.The voice that speaks of mental
states is clearly eloquent; hence the voice comes from a severedepression, clever enough to have a
theoretical approach to mental diseases.20

LarenasThere is a voice who feels inside a prison; the opinion of the doctor who is trying to makean
own version of her, trying to psychologically decode her. If Kane is trying to shape death as amajor
desire; what she would be reflecting is the death of the judgemental voice that criticizesher. The true
self emerges, for Lacan, in delirium. Kane seems to know precisely what her deliriums are. Even
though there are sentences in which the signifier differs from what is beingsignified, the critic self-
recognition assures her in a reflexive state of mind, not a psychotic one.There is no Foreclusion
8
in the dialogue, that is to say, there are no forgotten radicalrejections. The voice is able to articulate
everything that is happening under her own language;her views of reality. If the reader decides that
the voice is ill, that this is the voice of someone thatis trying to kill herself, then she is, because the
reader is giving the voice a suicidal identity. Thevoice is coherent with its depression, but in a degree
that gives her certain logic that keeps her mind lucid to declaim her inner truths.As we know, if the
signified is always changed, but it keeps the signifier, every time aword is repeated it will mean
something different. All this different significations are part of anidentity that is able to visually
construct meanings. Psychosis justifies repetition as trying torelease a specific trauma. Now, it is not
what is repeated but what is meant by it. As explained,if the author repeats death over and over,
it is not the actual concept of death what is trying to be portrayed, but something deeper. However,
the imagery constructed to reach the meaning, thesignify out of it, comes from all images attached
to the word. In this sense, if it is suicide whattriggers the action, to explain suicide is absolutely not
the main goal of the play.
An important aspect that psychotics manifest through their language structure is the waythey deal
with their loss of identity. This loss is one of the main issues of
4.48 Psychosis.
In thefollowing lines, examples of alienation are presentedI will drown in Dysphoria
9
In the cold black pond of my self The pit of my immaterial mind (223).Dysphoria is a bipolar disorder,
in which grief release a confrontation with another self within theself. We are anathema / The
pariahs of reason (228). Anathema is a gift made to the gods,lifted, separated from the earth. If they
are used as an adjective to describe the I, it implies thatthe speaker feels that she is not part of her
own self as a unit, that there is always a division; anearthly body and an atmospheric one. This
representation is seen as Kate writesHere am Iand there is my bodydancing on glass (230).Identity is
a delicate issue in
4.48 Psychosis
. It arises in both text and performance. It isaddressed in dialogue itself. Lacan assures that the
identity is not formed by how the Iconceives itself in language (I am), but how the other constructs
the identity of the other I
;
thatis to say, how the other sees me is how I will see myself. This is called Otherness. In a
lecturegiven on October 2007, at the National Library of Chile, Stphane Thibierge explained that for
Lacan the self is something we project to bare everything that for us belongs to the other. For
thisreason, the speaker will tend to be narcissistic; the image the I has about itself is fed by
theother. The I will tend to emphasize the need to hear itself repeated.
9
Having in mind that we are reading from Identity concepts; when evidently Disphorya is the climax of
the Gender Analysis of the play.
22


LarenasThe play soundly opens with the opinion of that other But you have friends (205);
agrammatical conjunction that immediately implies an explication or justification. As the reader will
probably interpret later on, the character that opens with this line represents the voice of theother;
most probably a doctor and/or a very judgmental voice. The constructed self, a self that isalways
feeling attacked, is the one that the outsider is trying to build by attaching every word to a
psychological reason to be. It can be understood that the voices are a written polyphony
whicharticulate a conclusion of her state of mind before committing suicide. This is the one point
inwhich the notion of interpretative dialogue becomes more than essential.The most unstructured
voice might hallucinate the appearance of other characters (whichdoes not have to be two), or
he/she can play them, assuming a disorder of personality or aschizophrenia. Even though readers can
freely assume these positions, because in their mind theycan have all possibilities, this will be a
difficult choice for the director, because she/he will take a personal interpretation of the dialogues
into a stage, conditioning the perception of the reader anddefining the dialogue that will be shared.
This is also an instance in which readers, in their role asvirtual directors, and the directors themselves
become doctors. This fact is violent, because the play would attack the reader from beginning to an
end.Personally, I believe that
4.48 Psychosis
is the most intense piece written by Kane. Its brilliance relies on how the play instates its own
dramatic structure by means of poetic dialogues.By writing in blank-verses, Kane fixes a form of
dialogue that portrays the inner functioning of adepressive mind, how clear death appears to those
who have been called unstable. Shequestions identity by suggesting the reader how to build
conclusions about sanity. Sarah Kaneuses violence to make her play work. She always thinks about
how readers will construct their own intuitions by their possibly reactions suggested by the words
she writes.
4.48 Pyschosis
is adramatic piece of work led, exclusively, by its poetry, its words.
Though poetry and theatre have come across together repeatedly in history; though manyforms of
poetry can be vividly declaimed on a stage, Kane is clearly a playwright. She revelsagainst formal
dramatic structure without ever stopping using it. The most clear example is howshe uses stage
directions; impossible to follow without the others interpretation. There is no clear presentation of
characters. If three, two are called - and the other one has no name, no title.Kane is smart enough
to cross-examine the characteristic of language and its functions.She knows exactly how to construct
a dialogue from her proposed forms. Kane knows preciselyhow to work with language in order to
affect dialogue effectively. For this reason, even though itcan be easily argue that
4.48 Psychosis
is a poem because of the way it is written; it is, beyond alldoubts, a penetrating play which requires
an extraordinary alertness from the reader. The playwill find no difficulty to achieve such. Language
per se
is privately rich, and it apprehendsattention with its high suicidal notes.The title of the play hints to a
known mental disorder called psychosis. However, there arenot any exact references about this state
of mind, since the voices, though highly metaphorical,are always coherent with their own truth. As
we have seen, the reference to psychosis is done inorder to execute an approach to the linguistic
work of Jacques Lacan, a French psychiatrist who paid particular attention to language in different
states of mind. The text follows the main two points that Lacan sees in a psychosis; a detachment
from reality and a problem of identity;identity that is looked for in
the other
not in the
self
. In this sense, the psychotic will not be anyof the characters, nor the author, but the play
itself.Portraying a language of her own, choosing very carefully what words will conduce
eachreading, Kane proves to be a gifted writer who suffered from an unspeakable pain. The text
giveshopes of light I want to live (237); however it was death who would win the battle. This
factsometimes seems to outshine the work of art as such. As David Greig argues in the
introduction24

Larenasof Sarah Kanes complete works, she must not be acknowledged for her will to suicide, but
because of her accurate literary talent. I hope the analysis provided sufficient clues for a
personalliterary approach to the play; clues, not forced interpretations, since they would not work
well for Sarah. The reading of this play must always be a personal experience.