ABSTRACT
In the radiophonic medium, the body is not defined by the visual body image, but is evoked through language, the voice, music and sound effects, and it therefore depends on the imagination of the listener to come into existence. Corporeal boundaries are dissolved in the radiophonic circuit where visually evoked bodies and scenes may instantly metamorphose and the focus shift from exterior to interior, public to intimate, imaginative vision to the visceral sound of cry or cough. Beckett's radio dramas take the exploration of specifically radiophonic bodies, constituted through the apparatus of the medium. Words and Music engages a history of aesthetic debate about the expressive modes and possibilities of language and music. Several critics have invoked Beckett's references to Schopenhauer's Romantic view of music as the 'highest' art in his monograph on Proust. Music does not imitate the phenomenal realm, but directly expresses the Will itself—'the inner content, the essence of the world'.
