Larenas 1

Language of a Broken Mind: Suicidal Poetic Techniques and Dramatic Dialogue in 4.48
Psychosis
Gabriel Nicolás Larenas Rosa1

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 and

it doesn’t allow anyone to go out until the curtains are opened. Curtains which might be as well

arm-flesh; the rope to the neck; breath to mouth.

Kane masters her dramaturgia by the use of poetic writing techniques. These are used to

construct 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 analyze3 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 own

dramatic structure so as to create a psychological dialogue through its poetic means. It will

consider, so as to read its psychological meanings, how the play refers to psychosis4 without

1
B.A on Literature and Aesthetics, from the Catholic University of Chile, and currently obtening a Master’sdegree in
Cultural 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 I’m revising this paper) It has been over a year since I worked with Sarah Kane’s play. This
would not be a complete text without me giving any signs of how much this text demanded from me, and how much
I mentally suffered, even in joy, doing this. I wrote this paper as my final seminar to obtain my B.A in English
Literature. I was 25 years old. I had previously suffered from depression myself; but at the time I had agreed
depression 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. Deathly
and unique. It did provoke me a breakdown, and that is something I would like people to pay attention on. Working
with these kind of literary subjects, if you truly love writing, affects your daily life, affects your sleeping, it gets into
every nerve. This is not a symptom that something is wrong. It is a good notice that you are becoming passionate
about your research object. Sadly, univesirties and institutions will not even care. Working with Kane and finishing
the 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
 Larenas 2

specifically articulating the pathology but played linguistically. It is done so as to create a

dialogue 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 not

classic poetry must suit perfectly the written text. A theater play is an organic unit. There is

something beyond its forms that makes them work or not (as if it were that simple). Dialogues are

essentials, 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 will

connect 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 unusual

forms that will not usually be expected in a dialogue. Added to the overly charged semiotics, the

reader 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 always

in interaction with a none-given receptor. She presents this distinction in contrast, as the play

opens. 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 so

supportive? (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
 Larenas 3

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 banqueting

hall near the ceiling of a mind whose floor shifts as ten

thousand cockroaches when a shaft of light enters as all

thoughts unite in an instant of accord body no longer

expellant as the cockroaches comprise a truth

which no one ever utters. (205)

This is an example of how Kane creates a change throughout a poetic dialogue. She installs the

imagery of the subject: the mind, a dark room, fragile floor, invaded with cockroaches; insects

that bring a message, a truth. These insects could represent in fact words; dark words which

invade the mind, words that are not pronounced and that are trapped in the body (the truth that is

never uttered) which is a reading of psychosis from Lacan point of view, thinking that for Lacan

symptoms are words that the body does not want to expel; words trapped in a body. This is what

the text wants to portray. If the poetic function is recognized as being predominant in a specific

text, the text can become more cryptic, enigmatic, allowing the reader of the play to manage a

wider range of interpretations of any read information.

If the reader is not able to be interactive with the voices (the non-titled characters) by

visually interpreting the fragments, the dialogue becomes automatically a monologue and it does

not 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 physically

responding to it, she repeats it twice in the same sentence. She places it next to a word that does

not 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.

 Larenas 4

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 (a

consolidated consciousness resides in a darkened banqueting hall). It does not use words such as

“like”; 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 thought

character speaking, the presence of these words signifies something different. 4.48 Psychosis is

a one-act play, though it is never explicit that Kane thought of acts when writing it. However, all

texts have a solid connection between one and another. Even if the tone changes, the language is

coherent with its dramatic flow. This is why the next lines can be analogous with the previous

text:

the broken hermaphrodite who trusted hermself alone finds the

room in reality teeming and begs never to wake

from the nightmare (205).

With this quote, Kane brings back the room so as to reuse a previously constructed image and

add more meanings to it. This is a strategy cleverly repeated throughout the whole play and it is

the reason why this play is so dense. It never suggests a conveyed meaning as a thread to be

followed, so each time repetition

The presence of the words “hermaphrodite” and “hermself” is the linguistic sex ambiguity of the

voice, in which characters can be both male and women separately but with the fact that they

once shared a mutual body. As there is no names in this play, there is no clear identity, which

makes the context much more richer, since it becomes intersexual. There is never clear evidence

about who is speaking. There are no implied genders. Presenting the figure of the intersexed is a

technique that allows readers from both sexes to apprehend the text at the same level. It is

difficult, because the intersexed is part of our invisibility. Kane dares the reader.
 Larenas 5

It 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 virtual

audience, 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 through

this 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. Stylan

explains in his book The Elements of Drama,

Poetry can make the drama uniquely precise not only for the

actor to work with, but also for the audience to react to. [. . .] It

will compel drama on the stage of such a kind that the image of it

in the audience’s mind will be something wider and yet finer[. . .]

The poetry is there to express and define patterns of thoughts and

feeling otherwise inexpressible and indefinable” (33)

In this sense, if the play portrays death and suicide as the main subjects, poetry is justified, since

there 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 such

in 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 poetry

and drama. As mentioned before, the intensity of the poetic forms presented in the play has led

many critics to argue that 4.48 Psychosis is not a play because it does not function dramatically. It

is 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
 Larenas 6

even be ironically theatrical, questioning who decides whether there is drama or not. Despite the

fierceness of poetry in Sarah Kane’s work, 4.48 Psychosis works as a play beyond all doubts.

When analyzing dialogue, the written dramatic text demands an intense work from the

reader, since it constantly appeals to all possible interpretations. In order to analyze, would have

to 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 more

channels of recognition besides interpretation, even though the live transmission is more

categorical. Messages, according to Pfister, are sensible to change by any small variation of both

internal and external communication.

The type of dialogue built by Sarah Kane suits the stage perfectly, as a play, not as an

open declamation. No matter how language is performed, the specific messages consider the

reaction 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 anatomy

finds its own ways to give the reader an opportunity to understand our proposed crossing. This is

why words are so important in the analysis. They build a safety net for the messages not to be

corrupted by any external interference.

Pfister claims in Theory and Analysis of Drama that “normally, the poetic function only

applies to the external communication system” (119) because in order to reach internal

communication 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 the

required astonishment. Kane writes in the beginning, “I had a night in which everything was

revealed to me. / How can I speak again?” (204), and then she repeats the bewilderment in the

middle of the play with “how can I return to form / now my formal thought has gone?” (213).
 Larenas 7

This is an evident, and clever, paradox about formalism and trying to compose structures without

feelings.

The voice is aware of the language used, its articulations and forms. The poetic function

connects both structure and meaning; verses, words and significations. The way she writes and

how she writes it. She assigns logic in the apprehension of the text/words. It places everyone in

the same position.

Nevertheless, that the play is written mostly in free verse as said before, is not the main

condition for the poetic function to get hold of this work. It is in fact, the dialogue that is

constructed by this predominant function. Since poetry needs a receiver that is able to both

decipher and interpret messages emotionally, in theater both the reader of the text and the

audience of the performance becomes automatically that receiver in a more active way than

someone who just witnesses a conversation. This, according to Ubersefeld, is one of the main

characteristics of the poetic function, its figure of speech, the one that “conditions theatrical

dialogue, [. . .] 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 formal

thought has gone?” (213), can also be applicable to how Kane feels about her own play and

Formalism. 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, and

translates them under structures that correspond strictly to poetry. Poetry is the main written form

that 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
 Larenas 8

not mean that all blank-versed poetry is suitable for the stage. It needs a thread, it needs a reason

to be, and that is the brilliance of this particular play; it accomplishes its goals completely. It

creates 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 any

kind of considerations, the pain of the writer to an audience that becomes more sensitive

throughout 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 as

the 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 a

consequence “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 is

constantly trying to explain what this time means, without mentioning it all the time. A signified

reality 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 by

the intuition of suicide and that changes its own artistic codes that are intervened by this lucid

depression. Intuition is mainly lead by words and facial expression. The chosen language triggers

a transit between life and death. The same happens, for example, in the last work of Sylvia Plath,

Ariel, found in Plath’s desk after she committed suicide. The most famous verses of this work are

closely related to her suicide; she writes in her poem “Lady Lazarus”: “Dying is an art / like

everything else / I do it exceptionally well” (43-45). For Plath and Kane, death had a very similar
 Larenas 9

signification and it is not surprising that both of them are famous for how they portrayed suicide

in literary works of art.

Al Alvarez, author of The Savage God, a Study of Suicide, was a close friend of Sylvia

Plath at the time of her death. The approach Alvarez has about death is daring, since there are not

many texts that speak about suicide with such theoretical, yet caring, closeness. He comprehends

“the 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. Kane

flaunts 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 necessary

to understand the codes of theatre and suicide. Language creates images which are strong enough

to 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 necessary

for them to build this place into their own familiar codes.

The most effective strategy is to constantly repeat words in different situations for the

reader to conceive diverse significations upon the same image/word. Because repetition will be

found in different times and places, these will become more obscure concepts. They cannot be

given, because a sudden mention of them will assume concepts of reality which the play avoids

and 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 within

their context: silence, consciousness, dark, mind, nightmare, sad, hopeless, bored, dissatisfied,
 Larenas 10

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 Kane’s cockroaches; the words that populate the play. Most of them are

repeated more than three times throughout the whole play. With this strategy, Kane leads the

reader to visually interpret death giving specific instructions of how the imagery must be

constructed. 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 abstract

nouns defining an abstract picture. In contrast, Kane presents in two full pages, nouns that are

corporeal with the situation, concrete identifiable nouns such as the ones given in the following

lines,

Symptoms: Not eating, not sleeping, not speaking, no sex

drive 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 inten

tion. Discontinued following hospitalization. (223)

These examples are given in the next following two pages of the play, with medications and

symptoms. The former, gives an exact anatomical reference to what is happening to the voice due
 Larenas 11

to a psychiatric condition. It makes the visual field more accurate by the presentation of concrete

nouns that the reader might be more familiar with.

Because of the need of visual suggestion for this play to achieve its goal, it can be

assured we are in presence of a dialogue and not a monologue; the voice its clearly speaking to an

other, 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 be

no dialogue between voice and reader. If this dialogue is not present, then the actions would be

declamatory 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 psychotic

tends to repeat acts and words constantly, producing a disorganization of the mind. Every time

something 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 with

the major repetitions of words, but with dialogues as well. As we have previously seen, the play

opens 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 so

supportive? (205)5

At the beginning it is not clear, but this dialogue is actually a repetition. It shows that every piece

of 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.
 Larenas 12

read it in the middle of page 236. It blurs the concept of time since the text does not specify what

action came first. This is where the text establishes the loss of contact with reality on its own. It is

not a character, nor a voice, the one that is producing this repetition. The text repeats itself for the

reader. 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 the

word 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. It

is implicitly repeated in the text, such as in this number of repetitions. It a religious icon present

as a negative bonding. The anger with God is violently present on the text. It can represent the

anger toward living against a will of an own: “fuck you God for making me love a person who

does not exist, FUCK YO FUCK YOU FUCK YOU” (215). In this sense, it is not a surprise that

there 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 as

“Serial 7”). Numbers are presented in the following display, page 208, which beyond all doubts

provokes an optic impact on the reader:

100 91

84 81
72
69 58
44 37
42 21 28
12
7
 Larenas 13

It is contrasted with how they are presented later on in the play, page 232:
100
93
86
79
72
65
58
51
44
37
30
23
16
9
2
The visual representation of numbers is perhaps the most characteristic visual presentation of the

play. It influences the reading. Because of the play’s poetic structure, verses, calligraphy and free

punctuation, Kane forces the reader to interpret by means of his/her own channels. Interpretations

in 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 receiving

other. The constant repetition of “death” is not the representation of a compulsive character; on

the contrary, is producing compulsion in the reader.

This is the reason why the importance of words, as fragments, cannot be conceived as part

of the portrayed mental disorder, but a strategy. “The strongest impressions are clearer

impressions”, states Alexander Gottlieb in Reflexiones Filosóficas, “hence more poetic than the

less clear ones. It is poetic, in a high degree, to excite the more vehement affections” (49). A
 Larenas 14

poetic structure in theater would work then only if it is able to rouse emotions violently. The

interpretation needs to be aggressive, not just a passive codification of what the words means to

whoever is speaking. Soon after the beginning, Kane will reveal this intention in the following

dialogue:

- Yes. It’s fear that keeps me away from the train tracks. I just hope to

God that death is the fucking end. I feel like I’m eighty years old. I’m

tired of life and my mind wants to die

- That’s a metaphor, not reality.

- It’s a simile.

- That’s not reality.

- It’s not a metaphor, it’s a simile, but even if it were, the defining

feature of a metaphor is that it’s real. (210)

By announcing the wish for mind-death as a simile6, what is truly meant is that wanting to

die can be comparable. It never says with what can be compared to, since “my mind wants to

die” is an outer embodiment, a despersonificación, not a simile. The previous “like” is

descriptive. 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 a

despersonification of her longing. It is an affirmation that supports the consciousness of the

speaker 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 they

can be recognized in language use. However, it is a far more intricate example. Structurally, it
6
This discussion I understood in time, telling my own therapist that every cliché spoken about madness is not a
metaphor, is in fact a similie. It is happening. It is not as if it were to happen. The discussion about metaphore and
similies is the drawing line between those who are truly suffering from depression and those we see it from the
outside or think they might be crazy or depressed.
 Larenas 15

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; they

can be set apart as individuals. No matter how many hyphens might be found in the text, the final

decision 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 the

stage.

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 the

complex linguistic elements into the play for them never to lose their functions given by the text

itself. In this sense, “Silence”, the second most repeated word in the whole play, is probably the

most complex translation from text to stage. Specially because it is given as a multifunctional

stage direction.

In Theater as Sign-System: A Semiotics of Text and Performance Aston and Savona claim

that the main body of the dramatic text and the text containing stage directions should be

distinguished from each other. For them, stage directions are pieces of highly relevant

information for the play itself, whether extra or intra-dialogic, and they must always be

considered and analyzed. In 4.48 Psychosis the stage directions are as important as the dramatic

text, because it part of it. They cannot be divided from the text. The only written stage directions

are 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 well

as in the psychological definition of voices. The play opens with “(A very long silence)”. In
 Larenas 16

brackets and curved, as stage directions are written. It illustrates a command given by its implied

form. 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, that

is, 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 uneasiness

with communication. Stage directions become a key to understanding the importance of the

interpretation of the reader. However, because of the ambiguity of the text, and that there is an

emphasis in only giving silence as a stage direction, that piece of writing can be also interpreted

not 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 the

form. Symbolically, it is the place in which the author takes a breath herself, in silence, and

allows the voice to rest as well, as if, because of the intensity of the words, that was the only

action 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 to

communicate” as well as helping to “create and intensify the dialogical contact between the

various figures” (113). In the following example it can be seen how the figure of silence

intervenes in communication:

- You are not eighty years old.

(Silence)

Are you?
 Larenas 17

(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 from

one 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, the

different types of silences can be considered as answers, that is to say, as part of the dialogue, a

silence that is not portrayed in speech. It can be seen also as a gap in which the other voice gives

room for another question to appear. It can be a refusal to the questions. It is never a closing

feature.

In the following example, silence will be a figure of speech that leads the voice to

continue the dialogue with the reader:

Do you think it’s possible for a person to be born in the

wrong body?

(Silence) (215)

(Silence) can be translated as a time for breathing while the voice is speaking to itself, as

well 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 as

Pfister would notice.

These forceful breaks in structure signify the emotional psychological breakdowns of the

writer. 4:48 am is the time Kane would wake up, everyday, due to paranoia. Even though nor the
 Larenas 18

reader nor the audience must be aware of this fact, it is a fundamental truth that configures

dialogue 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. It

situates them in an awkward, uncomfortable place which leads to the unraveling dialogues. Susan

Sontag, in her essay “The Aesthetics of Silence” expresses a notion of silence which is

fundamental to understand the opening of the play. She addresses the question of how literally

silence 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” [. . .]. Silence

also exists as a punishment, in the exemplary madness

of 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. The

frontiers of consciousness are taken, literally, to the boundaries of theater and what could be its

limitations; 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 (“a

long silence, a very long silence, silence”) has a deep communicative meaning. Because it is a

neutral zone, semantically uncharged, it leads the reader to what Ubersfeld would recognize as

“presupposing 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 the

constant repetition done in different units of meaning, every time silence appears in the play it

7
According to her, in her book El diálogo teatral, page 151, what is not said, “lo no dicho”, is part of the poetic form
of dialogue.
 Larenas 19

will join the previous sentences pronounced. The intuition in the other will be provoked by the

face 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 flow

of 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 given

information, 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 this

sense, the expectation, what it is not said, formulates a language of its own. In this place, where

hearable language is not present, words flow inside the reader’s mind, a constant questioning; the

complete 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 institutionalized

rules of the mind versus the true self, the main concern of the play; the reason of speech. In this

logic, silence approximates what Esslin in his essay "Language and Silence" would define as a

refusal to communicate. However, in this particular case, silence would be a simulation of that

refusal, as another strategy. The dialogue results to be a very intimate, still crudely rough, sharing

of 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. Because

of this psychological intensity, a psychoanalytical approach to the play would be easier, but

dangerous, since as Aston and Savona explain those types of analysis can make the text loose a

severe amount of edges. This is why we will consider a psychological approach only to add

meaningful 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 could

not agree more with “Teoría de la Expresión Poética” where Carlos Bousoño claims that “poetry
 Larenas 20

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.

Bousoño highlights the difficulty in comprehending the meaning of communication when it

comes to poetry, because of this crossing between communication and interpretation in a

subjective field. He claims that what the reader must always have in mind is that everything that

is being communicated is imaginary with codes that are real language, which determines

everything that has to be imagined. In this sense, the various messages that can be decoded are

completely valid. Bousoño affirms that poetry follows an “intuitive understanding, not a logic

one” (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 therapist

when 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 who

determines what is healthy, what is not, what is a metaphor, what is a simile. For art sake, it is

clinical censure.

One of the main pathological characteristics of psychosis is the loss of contact with reality

together with a derangement of personality. For many readers, the main voices as well as the

author might be driven by a psychotic state of mind, but it is not technically necessary as a

general 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 severe

depression, clever enough to have a theoretical approach to mental diseases.

 Larenas 21

There is a voice who feels inside a prison; the opinion of the doctor who is trying to make

an own version of her, trying to psychologically decode her. If Kane is trying to shape death as a

major desire; what she would be reflecting is the death of the judgemental voice that criticizes

her. 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 being

signified, the critic self-recognition assures her in a reflexive state of mind, not a psychotic one.

There is no Foreclusion8 in the dialogue, that is to say, there are no forgotten radical

rejections. 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 that

is trying to kill herself, then she is, because the reader is giving the voice a suicidal identity. The

voice 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 a

word is repeated it will mean something different. All this different significations are part of an

identity that is able to visually construct meanings. Psychosis justifies repetition as trying to

release 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, the

“signify” out of it, comes from all images attached to the word. In this sense, if it is suicide what

triggers the action, “to explain suicide” is absolutely not the main goal of the play.

8
This is a very specific Lacanian term, which is used when a child grows out of his/her connections between the real
and the imagery; specifically because of the ingrown relations with the father. For a post feminist reading of this
play, this foreclusion must be something to be developed together with the postulates of role and genders (for
example, thinking the doctor as the pressence of a father).
 Larenas 22

An important aspect that psychotics manifest through their language structure is the way

they deal with their loss of identity. This loss is one of the main issues of 4.48 Psychosis. In the

following lines, examples of alienation are presented

I will drown in Dysphoria9

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 the

self. “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 that

the speaker feels that she is not part of her own self as a unit, that there is always a division; an

earthly body and an atmospheric one. This representation is seen as Kate writes

Here am I

and there is my body

dancing on glass (230).

Identity is a delicate issue in 4.48 Psychosis. It arises in both text and performance. It is

addressed in dialogue itself. Lacan assures that the identity is not formed by how the “I”

conceives itself in language (I am), but how the other constructs the identity of the other “I”; that

is to say, how the other sees me is how I will see myself. This is called “Otherness”. In a lecture

given on October 2007, at the National Library of Chile, Stéphane Thibierge explained that for

Lacan the self is something we project to bare everything that for us belongs to the other. For this

reason, the speaker will tend to be narcissistic; the image the “I” has about itself is fed by the

other. 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.
 Larenas 23

The play soundly opens with the opinion of that other “But you have friends” (205); a

grammatical 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 the

other; most probably a doctor and/or a very judgmental voice. The constructed self, a self that is

always 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 which

articulate a conclusion of her state of mind before committing suicide. This is the one point in

which the notion of interpretative dialogue becomes more than essential.

The most unstructured voice might hallucinate the appearance of other characters (which

does not have to be two), or he/she can play them, assuming a disorder of personality or a

schizophrenia. Even though readers can freely assume these positions, because in their mind they

can 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 and

defining the dialogue that will be shared. This is also an instance in which readers, in their role as

virtual 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 a

depressive mind, how clear death appears to those who have been called “unstable”. She

questions identity by suggesting the reader how to build conclusions about sanity. Sarah Kane

uses 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 a

dramatic piece of work led, exclusively, by its poetry, its words.

 Larenas 24

Though poetry and theatre have come across together repeatedly in history; though many

forms of poetry can be vividly declaimed on a stage, Kane is clearly a playwright. She revels

against formal dramatic structure without ever stopping using it. The most clear example is how

she uses stage directions; impossible to follow without the other’s 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 precisely

how to work with language in order to affect dialogue effectively. For this reason, even though it

can be easily argue that 4.48 Psychosis is a poem because of the way it is written; it is, beyond all

doubts, a penetrating play which requires an extraordinary alertness from the reader. The play

will find no difficulty to achieve such. Language per se is privately rich, and it apprehends

attention with its high suicidal notes.

The title of the play hints to a known mental disorder called psychosis. However, there are

not 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 in

order 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 any

of the characters, nor the author, but the play itself.

Portraying a language of her own, choosing very carefully what words will conduce each

reading, Kane proves to be a gifted writer who suffered from an unspeakable pain. The text gives

hopes of light “I want to live” (237); however it was death who would win the battle. This fact

sometimes seems to outshine the work of art as such. As David Greig argues in the introduction
 Larenas 25

of Sarah Kane’s 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 personal

literary 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.

Works Cited

Kane, Sarah. 4.48 Psychosis. Complete Plays. London: Methuen Publishing, 2001.

Álvarez, A. The Savage God. London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1990.

Aston, Elaine & George Savona. Theater as a Sign System. New York: Routledge, 1991

Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb. Reflexiones filosóficas acerca de la poesía. Buenos

Aires: Aguilar, 1975.

Bousoño, Carlos. Teoría de la expresión poética. Madrid: Gredos, 1985.

Carlson, Marvin. A Performance : a critical introduction. New York: Routledge, 2004

Eliot, T. S., 1888-1965. On poetry and poets. London: Faber & Faber, 1957.

Naudón de la Sotta, Mario. Apreciación teatral. Santiago, Chile: Del Pacífico, 1956.

Pfeiffer, Johannes Sierich. La poesía: hacia la comprensión de lo poético. México:

Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1959.

Pfister, Manfred. The Theory and Analysis of Drama. New York: Cambridge University

Press, 1991.

Sontag, Susan. “The Aesthetics of Silence”. Styles of Radical Will. New York: Farrar,

Strauss and Giroux, 1969.

Styan, J.L. The Elements of Drama. Great Britain: Cambridge, 1960.

Ubersfeld, Anne. El Diálogo Teatral. Buenos Aires: Galerna, 2004.