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One Day, Samuel Beckett Edited by Burçin Erol Department of English Language and Literature Hacettepe University and The Embassy of Ireland Irish Writers Series : 3 © Hacettepe University, Department of English Language and Literature, 2014 Ankara, Turkey Printed by Bizim Büro Table of Contents Acknowledgements Foreword Preface 1. Man’s Post-tragic Position in Beckettian Drama............................1 Aysegül Yüksel , 2. “Nothing is More Real than Nothing”: A Reading of Beckett’s “Ping” as a Postmodern Text.................................................................11 Oya Batum Mentese , 3. Not I: An Existentialist Statement on the Human Condition.........23 A. Deniz Bozer 4. Beckett’s Molloy : Some Things Still “Affirmative”........................39 Aytül Özüm 5. The Influence of Music on Samuel Beckett’s Art..........................55 ˘ Neslihan Ekmekcioglu 6. Self-translated: Samuel Beckett..................................................71 ˘ Bozkurt Sinem Sancaktaroglu Note on Contributors......................................................................83 Acknowledgements I would like to thank all the colleagues and staff members in the Department of English Language and Literature who have helped in the process of putting together the articles in this volume which were formerly presented in the “One Day, Samuel Beckett Conference” organised at Hacettepe University. I owe special thanks to Assistant Professor Dr. Sinan Akıllı for his ever present support and for designing the cover of the present volume. I would like to express my gratitude to Barrie Maguire for allowing us to use his painting, the portrait of Samuel Beckett for the cover. Special thanks are due to the Irish Embassy and to Simon Williams the Associate Director of Trinity Foundation who have most kindly collaborated for the conference and made the keynote speaker Dr. Nicholas Johnson’s presence at the conference possible. Unfortunately due to copyright restrictions it was not possible to include Dr. Nicholas Johnson’s chapter, however I am grateful to him for his contribution to the volume in the form of a preface. Last but not least I would like to express my gratitude to Hacettepe University for the financial support of the project. iii Foreword This volume is comprised of the chapters focusing on different aspects and works of Samuel Beckett that arose out of the presentations of the “One Day, Samuel Beckett Conference” held at Hacettepe University in 2013 with the collaboration of the Embassy of Ireland and the Trinity Foundation. The aim of the volume is to bring together the work of the scholars in Turkey who specialise in and have publications on the specific writer to provide a compendium of research on one specific Irish writer. The third conference and the ensuing volume in the Irish Writers Series has been devoted to Samuel Beckett the second Nobel laureate of Ireland (1969). He is one of the most widely discussed and highly prised writers of the twentieth century. Although he is one of the key writers of the Theatre of the Absurd he is also a novelist, poet and director. Although he is acclaimed to be one of the last Modernists he is also considered to be one of the first postmodernists. He had a wide influence and his works have been translated over twenty languages. He came from a well to do middle class Protestant Irish family. All his education was in Ireland and during his childhood he took music lessons; his involvement with music continued all through out his life and the musical aspect of language became an important element in his works. He studied French, Italian and English at Trinity College, Dublin. After graduating from Trinity College he went to Paris where he met James Joyce which had a profound affect on him. He returned to Ireland and continued hi