Masarykova univerzita Filozofická fakulta

Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky

Magisterská diplomová práce

2010 Vital Voranau

Vita

l Vora

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010

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Vital Voranau

Drama of Repetition

Repetition as a Dramatic Tool in

Samuel Beckett’s Writing Master’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph.D.

2010

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,

using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Author‟s signature

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Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................... 1

INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 2

CHAPTER 1: THE THEATRE OF THE ABSURD .................................................. 4

CHAPTER 2: THE DRAMA OF SAMUEL BECKETT ......................................... 32

CHAPTER 3: REPETITION AS A DRAMATIC TOOL IN SAMUEL

BECKETT'S WRITING .............................................................................................. 48

CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 65

BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................... 67

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Nothing is absurd in a world

bereft of judgement.

Samuel Beckett

Introduction

The aim of this work is to show that linking Samuel Beckett‟s drama to the theatre of

the absurd, and interpreting his plays through the prism of this convention, runs counter

to attempts at unbiased reading of this author. The inescapable subjectivity derived of

reading Beckett, is exemplified through Martin Esslin‟s discussion of the theatre of the

absurd as compared with Samuel Beckett‟s own dramatic works, demonstrating

fundamental incongruities between the two. This will be followed by an analysis of

Beckett‟s use of repetition, his primary dramatic tool, as that which facilitates and

provides for those subjective interpretations beyond the theatre of the absurd. Source

materials dealt with are mainly Beckett‟s dramatic works, since that is where his use of

repetition reached nearest to perfection, while his prose, poetry and essays are taken

into consideration where they serve to farther illustrate his use of the stylistic device.

Chapter One characterizes the theatre of the absurd, its language, humour and

various formal aspects as organized and understood by Martin Esslin. Then, those

characterizations are traced in history through traditional drama, from Greek drama and

Medieval theatre, through Commedia dell‟arte and Shakespeare, by way of Camus and

Sarte, to Chaplin and Keaton. This is followed by a study of Beckett‟s writing in the

context of the theatre of the absurd and an analysis of four common elements: absurd,

tragicomedy, symbolism and avant-garde. On the whole, the survey of this chapter

explores Samuel Beckett‟s writing within the context of the theatre of the absurd,

showing both, how Beckett pertains to it, and in what ways he is detached. Ultimately,

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Chapter One concludes with a criticism against the attribution of Samuel Beckett to the

theatre of the absurd. In Chapter Two, by contrast to Chapter One, Beckett‟s drama is

presented out of the context of the theatre of the absurd. Here, priority is given to the

scope and specifics of traditional disciplines having common influence with Beckett‟s

works, e.g., philosophy, art, religion and certain aspects of drama, such as silence,

language, light etc. The final section, Chapter Three, focuses on repetition in Beckett‟s

writing. Discussion centres on repetition here for being the tool most specific to his

dramatic work. It has become conventional to divide Beckett‟s writing career into three

periods: early works, middle period and late works, and this is normally useful enough

a division for the sake of a general study of the whole of his oeuvre. For the study of his

drama, however, a tri-part division is more practical between his major works (Waiting

for Godot, Happy Days, Endgame), short pieces and plays for radio and television.

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The Theatre of the Absurd

The theatre of the absurd is a term which usually refers to a type of drama which

dominated West-European literature between the years 1940-1960 and is most often

associated with the names of famous writers, such as: Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco,

Jean Genet, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Edward Albee, Arthur Adamov, Fernando

Arrabal, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Witold Gombrowicz, Sławomir Mrożek, Vaclav Havel

and many other less famous playwrights. However, as any characterization of genre,

attempts to encompass its abstract relations and phenomena, this term has many

inconsistencies. Unlike other coinages used to describe different kinds of theatre in the

XX century such as: „prose drama”, „kitchen-sink drama”, „theatre of menace”, or

„theatre of cruelty”, which mainly refer to a few, or even singular, plays or playwrights,

of distinguished manner, in close time proximity, or being clearly associated with a

specific literary movement, „the theatre of the absurd” tends to entail too many

features, authors, and spans of time.

The term was first introduced by the dramatist, critic and scholar, Martin

Esslin, in his book titled Theatre of the Absurd, which, in the 1960‟s, became an

influential dramatic critique. In this book, the author sets out a re-framing in light of

misconceptions and confusions connected with the new type of theatre:

A public conditioned to an accepted convention tends to receive the

impact of artistic experience through a filter of critical standards, of

predetermined expectations and terms of reference, which is the natural

result of the schooling of its taste and faculty of perception. This

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framework of values, admirably efficient in itself, produces only

bewildering results when it is faced with a completely new and

revolutionary convention – a tug of war ensues between impressions

that have undoubtedly been received and critical preconceptions that

clearly exclude the possibility that any such impressions could have

been felt. Hence the storms of frustration and indignation always caused

by works in a new convention. (Esslin 28)

The purpose of his book as he puts is “to provide a framework of reference that will

show the works of the Theatre of the Absurd within their own convention” (Ibid.). To

give a framework of reference, Esslin first explains what the difference between

traditional theatre and the theatre of the absurd is:

If a good play must have a cleverly constructed story, these have no

story or plot to speak of; if a good play is judged by subtlety of

characterization and motivation, these are often without recognizable

characters and present the audience with almost mechanical puppets; if

a good play has to have a fully explained theme, which is neatly

exposed and finally solved, these often have neither a beginning nor an

end; if a good play is to hold the mirror up to nature and portray the

manners and mannerism of the age in finely observed sketches, these

seem often to be reflections of dreams and nightmares; if a good play

relies on witty repartee and pointed dialogue, these often consist of

incoherent babblings. (Esslin 21, 22)

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The difference between the traditionally well-made drama and the drama to which

Esslin refers, lies, as he argues, in the dissimilarity of their purposes. Traditional

criticism, Esslin says, cannot be applied to the evaluation of the dramas described by

him as the theatre of the absurd. Therefore, he provides a set of references, which

according to the author coincide in plays of the theatre of the absurd. These references

encompass a variety of features based on the quality of language, form and style. The

largest focus is on language:

The Theatre of the Absurd… tends toward a radical devaluation of

language, toward a poetry that is to emerge from the concrete and

objectified images of the stage itself. The element of language still plays

an important part in this conception, but what happens on the stage

transcends, and often contradicts, the words spoken by the characters.

(Esslin 26)

The role of language in this theatre, due to its incapability of illustrating reality, is

reduced to a minimum and devalued of its traditionally preconceived weight. “On the

stage, language can be put into a contrapuntal relationship with action, the facts behind

the language can be revealed. Hence the importance of mime, knockabout comedy and

silence...” (Esslin 85). Therefore, according to the author some functions of language

are transferred to other dramatic tools. Esslin cites Ionesco: “Just as words are

continued by gesture, action, mime, which at the moment when words become

inadequate, take their place, the material elements of the stage can in turn further

intensify these” (Ionesco, cited by Esslin 186).

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Humour is one of the tools, which compensates for the limited language of

the drama of the absurd. It serves both to release the tension of and to balance the

tragic part of such plays:

Humour makes us conscious, with a free lucidity, of the tragic or

desultory condition of man… It is not only the critical spirit itself…

but… humour is the only possibility we possess of detaching ourselves

– yet only after we have surmounted, assimilated, taken cognizance of it

– from out tragicomic human condition, the malaise of being. (Ionesco,

cited by Esslin 186)

In the theatre of the absurd humour is not applied for the sake of fun, as in traditional

theatre. Here it serves another purpose: “To become conscious of what is horrifying

and to laugh at it is to become master of that which is horrifying…” (Ionesco, cited by

Esslin 186). Laughter has a revealing and strengthening function against unbearable

misery and despair. It saves the character of the drama of the absurd from craziness and

self-annihilation.

Also connected with illogical communication and incomprehensible language

is the lack of linear plot. Again, this absence is compensated for with circularity of

actions and dialogues. “Many of the plays of the Theatre of the Absurd have a circular

structure, ending exactly as they began; others progress merely by a growing

intensification of the initial situation” (Esslin 405, 406). Since, the linear development

is absent; there is also no typical resolution, or culmination in a classical meaning of

these words.

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Still another feature is the absence of Aristotle‟s unities of place, time, and

action. The theatre of the absurd usually distorts all the dramatic rules described in

Poetics. Absurdist drama does not need to be attached to one realistic scene, often does

not need any stage props at all; the actions become distorted, and time changes its

primarily function.

While the play with a linear plot describes a development in time, in a

dramatic form that presents a concretized poetic image the play‟s

extension in time is purely incidental. Expressing an intuition in depth,

it should ideally be apprehended in a single moment, and only because it

is physically impossible to present so complex an image in an instant

does it have to be spread over a period of time. The formal structure of

such a play is, therefore, merely a device to express a complex total

image by unfolding it in a sequence of interacting elements. (Esslin 394)

Hence, as time depends on unreal images it becomes deformed and is often marked by

its absence. For the characters of this theatre, time is not to be counted or referred as to

some reality, but simply to pass or fill with irrelevant actions.

As the author admits his term does not refer to those contributing, in his view,

to the theatre of the absurd, but rather to a common basis for their works, which is

illustrative of “the preoccupations and anxieties, the emotions and thinking of many of

their contemporaries in the Western world” (Esslin 22). He also acknowledges that such

an illustration is always relative:

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It is an oversimplification to assume that any age presents a

homogenous pattern. Ours being, more than most others, and age of

transition, it displays a bewilderingly stratified picture… The Theatre of

the Absurd, however, can be seen as the reflection of what seems to be

the attitude most genuinely representative of our own time. (Esslin 22,

23)

Therefore, in his book, Esslin does not seem to aspire to giving an exclusive and

homogenous name to the group of writers, as if placing them in the same school or

convention. On the contrary, he is rather describing the receptions of such dramatic

pieces, which according to classical conventions, are deemed absurd in their nature.

Instead of saying what the aesthetics of the theatre of the absurd are, assuming that such

aesthetics exist at all, he is rather saying what they are not, in contrast to the aesthetics

of a “well-made drama” in the conventional meaning. Although, Esslin introduces a

series of characteristics which, in his opinion define the essence of the drama of the

absurd, they are always discussed in the terms of absence or contradiction to traditional

ones, rather, than possessing sustainable quality of their own.

Although the theatre of the absurd is often viewed as a purely avant-garde

creation, its elements can be found in the variety of theatrical traditions. Esslin

comments that the novelty of this theatre is rather in the audience‟s perception than in

the theatre itself:

If there is anything really new in it, it is the unusual way in which

various familiar attitudes of mind and literary idioms are interwoven.

Above all, it is the fact that for the first time this approach has met with

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a wide response from a broadly based public. This is characteristic not

so much of the Theatre of the Absurd as of its epoch. (Esslin 388)

According to Esslin the public plays an important role as far as writers‟ inspirations

and applications are concerned.

Absurdist elements are already to be found as early as in Greek drama.

Similarly to the theatre of the absurd, Greek drama is preoccupied with language:

“With respect to Greek tragedy, which, of course, comes to us only as a drama of

words” (Nietzsche 199). Another focus of absurdist drama is on laughter, which in

many senses echoes with a specific usage of laughter in Greek drama. As Erik Segal

puts it: “All Comedy aspires to laughter – although not all laughter is related to

Comedy” (Segal 23). This evokes the association of laughter as applied in the theatre

of the absurd in order to achieve a sort of “cathartic” effect. However, the most

astounding commonality between the two theatres is the domination of merging

quality:

The wearing of masks, symbolizing changes of personality, a practice of

multi-levelled cross-dressing, the presence of a chorus (giving out its

commentary, plus an argument in the form of parabasis (a

pronouncement of advice, often seemingly unrelated to the rest of the

play), a widespread tone of vulgarity (evident both in stage-props and

dialogue), and various metatheatrical devices were all prominent

features. The more unusual the combination of such elements contained

in a particular play or performance, the closer such a drama (the Greek

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drama, meaning „something done‟) might approximate to our modern

understanding of Theatre of the Absurd. (Cornwell 34)

Alike Greek drama the theatre of the absurd is a certain fusion of sometimes loose and

seemingly unrelated elements of performance.

Elements of the theatre of the absurd can be also traced to the medieval

theatre, in the form of allegorical farces, which “represents a world gone wrong; social

institutions and people in general are in the grip of vicious folly from which no one is

able to break free... often peopled with wise or benign fools, clowns, and acrobats,

whose function is to reveal, ridicule, and censure the folly around them” (Knight 80).

Such plays are closely intertwined with performances of travelling clowns, which

became extremely popular in The Middle Ages.

Commedia dell'arte was another source of inspiration for the writers of the

theatre of the absurd. “Commedia dell'arte has three main stock roles: servant, master

and innamorata” (Katritzky 104), which reminiscent of many stock characters in

Beckett, Pinter and Stoppard‟s plays. Similarly to the theatre of the absurd, in

commedia dell‟arte “the characters themselves are often referred to as "masks", which

according to John Rudlin, cannot be separated from the character. In other words the

characteristics of the character and the characteristics of the mask are the same” (34).

The characters of the theatre of the absurd also tend to exemplify a type of an

individual, rather than a singular individual, but at the same time cannot be separated

from its “mask”. Commedia dell‟arte made use of different types of humour, including

prepared jokes, physical gags, as well as improvised, practical jokes, which is still

another parallel to the theatre of the absurd.

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Absurdist elements also abound in Shakespeare‟s tragicomedies, in which

tragic elements are fused with comical ones in such a way, that they often bring about

an ambiguous effect. Shakespeare‟s devotion to meaningful names, when a name

serves as a label of a person‟s character, is also typical for the theatre of the absurd.

These plays brought about the low and mad characters typified of quaint humour,

ranging from bastards to fools, which later became illustrative of the drama of the

absurd. Tom Stoppard‟s reference to Shakespeare notes the absurdist potential of

Shakespearian characters as well. Plays by Shakespeare and other Jacobean

playwrights often, like plays of the absurd, are illogical and lack realism.

Major philosophical influences come from the writings of existentialists,

mostly of Camus and Sartre‟s interpretations. Camus makes an elaborate description of

the absurd in his work “The Myth of Sisyphus”.

Camus‟s starting point is a dichotomical all or nothing: life has meaning,

or to go on living is pointless. This formulation of the question grows

from existence, characterized by a deep sense of despair and an inability

to find purpose in life‟s everyday moments. (Sagi 48)

According to Camus the absurdity of life lies not only in the alienation caused by living

in a hostile and inhuman world, but also in language, which does not mean what it is

supposed to mean: “When things have a label, aren‟t they lost already?” (155). For

Camus there are two options in response to human anxiety cause by absurdity, either to

find the answer to existence or to commit a “philosophical suicide”. Sartre seems to go

even further in his pessimism: “For Sartre, absurdity is a state of affairs. Existence is

absurd because it lacks any inherent design, meaning, or end point. In Being and

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Nothingness and elsewhere, Sartre links the notion of absurdity to the notion of

contingency” (Conard 110). Sartre‟s solution is not in looking for a non-contingent

answer to our existence, but in realization of its contingency: “I do not have nor can I

have recourse to any value against the fact that it is I who sustain values in being... In

anguish I apprehend myself... as not being able to derive the meaning of the world

except as coming from myself” (Sartre 40). Whereas for Camus the absurd is

contextual and usually lies in the dichotomy between the inner and the outer worlds for

Sartre it is ubiquitous, thus including our innate selves. Although they have a different

perception of absurd, they agree upon the expository potential of absurdity. “Sartre and

Camus are alike in an important respect. Specifically, in their literary works, both

illustrate how susceptible individuals are to the menace of absurdity and how powerful

the revelation of absurdity can be” (Conard 111). In this respect, they also agree with

many authors associated with the theatre of the absurd.

Still more non-literary influences can be found in vaudeville comedy style,

particularly as it transitioned from stage into the silent film era by Charlie Chaplin and

Buster Keaton; frequently associated props, including the derby hat, walking stick, and

baggy trousers, are also very often encountered in theatre of the absurd. There is also a

noticeable relation between silent movies and the use of silence by many authors

writing absurdist plays. Samuel Beckett‟s desire to see Chaplin as an actor of Film is an

example of such relations. Another similarity, originating from Commedia dell‟arte,

and popularized by Chaplin and Keaton, is usually referred to as “slip stick” and

describes a type of comedy involving exaggerated physical violence and, often,

irrational acts.

Ever since the first edition of The Theatre of the Absurd with which Martin

Esslin coined the name, invoking the meaningless of life as thematically consistent with

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the plays of Beckett, Adamov, Genet and Ionesco, Beckett‟s name has been forever

linked. “Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost;

all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless” (Esslin 23). Absurdist theatre echoes

all other genres, literary techniques and philosophical schools, which stand in

opposition to realism. It explores Bertold Brecht‟s “alienation effect”, the aim being to

distance the audience from the reality of the stage, and to perform a study in the

philosophy of existentialism, the key concepts of which were “dread” and

“nothingness”. One of the most important features of this theatre was a denial of the

communicative function of language.

The Theatre of the Absurd constituted first and foremost an onslaught on

language, showing it as a very unreliable and insufficient tool of

communication. Absurd drama uses conventionalized speech, clichés,

slogans and technical jargon, which it distorts, parodies and breaks

down. By ridiculing conventionalized and stereotyped speech patterns,

the Theatre of the Absurd tries to make people aware of the possibility

of going beyond everyday speech conventions and communicating more

authentically. (Culík 2000: http://www.samuel-beckett.net)

Samuel Beckett uses this unconventional language thusly, in order to create the specific

atmosphere of his plays, which consist of numerous misunderstandings and endless

misinterpretations based on language defect structure. Camus concluded that: “…our

situation is absurd because our longing for clarity and certainty is met with, and forever

thwarted by, the irrationality of the universe into which we have been thrown; we can

neither rid ourselves of the desire for order nor overcome the irrationality that stands in

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the way of order” (Camus, cited by Brockett 1988: 226). Thereof Beckett not only

denies definiteness, but he also questions the reality of human life.

In Beckett‟s plays, the absurdity of life does not end with death. Death does

not reveal the rationality of people‟s lives or give any sort of solace, but rather makes

ridicule of any preconceptions of any function, such as in Christianity: “death, in

which… one will „come to oneself‟ and meaning will arise” (Butler 112). Beckett

agrees with Sartre on this issue:

Thus, for Sartre, death, far from being an end that gives a meaning to

life, is absurd. We are like the condemned man who is preparing to give

a meaning to his life, to „close the account‟ satisfactorily, by making „a

good showing on the scaffold‟ and who is then carried off by a „flu

epidemic‟. (Sartre, cited by Butler 112)

For Beckett, however, unlike for some existentialists, death, though meaningless, is not

a matter of dread, and it is not a final destination, by no means. Beckett‟s characters are

preoccupied with waiting for death, not by death itself, which serves completely

different aims:

Thus death becomes the main subject of the Trilogy, but not in any

ordinary sense. Not one of Beckett‟s people is afraid of death. Some

long for it (Hamm, for instance), but all, without exception, are

desperately puzzled about its meaning and its mechanism. (Coe 59)

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Death is neither the end to existence nor a transitory state. Beckett‟s usage of death is to

mark the absence of real life: “All [characters] think of life as an exile, a punishment

for some unknown crime, perhaps the crime of being born, as Estragon suggests – an

exile in time from the reality of themselves, which reality is, and must be, timeless”

(Coe 59). Hence, his characters think rather in terms of life, than in terms of death.

Estragon and Vladimir are able to commit neither a real nor a philosophical suicide, in

terms described by Camus. “Death is never that which gives life its meanings; it is, on

the contrary, that which on principle removes all meaning from life” (Heidegger, cited

by Butler 112). Here, Beckett is closer to Sartre who says: “Since the for-itself is the

being which always lays claim to an „after‟, there is no place for death in the being

which is for-itself” (Sartre, cited by Butler 112). Therefore, Beckett focuses on the

process of waiting, but not on the object of waiting: “…if Godot came there would not

be a joyous revelation of the meaning of the waiting (i.e. of suffering, life). On the

contrary, it would only confirm the absurdity of existence” (Butler 113). Beckett‟s

characters‟ hope is in what is ahead of them, not behind.

Another difference between Beckett‟s and the existentialists‟ attitudes toward

absurdity is brought about by Adorno:

Beckett‟s oeuvre has many things in common with Parisian

existentialism… But whereas in Sartre the form – that of the pièce à

these – is somewhat traditional, by no means daring, and aimed at effect,

the form overtakes what is expressed and changes it… For Beckett

absurdity is no longer an „existential situation‟ diluted to an idea and

then illustrated. (Adorno, cited by Lane 131)

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Hence, Beckett‟s preoccupation with form and themes, like absurdity, is somewhat

different from the existentialists approach and illustration.

While Sartre and Camus express the new content in the old convention,

the Theatre of the Absurd goes a step further in trying to achieve a unity

between its basic assumptions and the form in which these are

expressed. In some sense, the theatre of Sartre and Camus is less

adequate as an expression of the philosophy of Sartre and Camus – in

artistic, as distinct from philosophic, terms – than the Theatre of the

Absurd. (Esslin 24)

As such, the difference between the authors lies not only in their approach to reason

and absurdity, but is also evident in their forms of expression. “Beckett‟s „absurd‟

works deny „meaning‟ and protect themselves against interpretation, but provoke and

entice interpretation” (Buning and Engelberts 317). Potential literary expression is less

confined in its formal representation than philosophical works on the absurd.

Tragicomedy is another link between Samuel Beckett and the theatre of the

absurd. Tragicomedy is not only a compound word in lexical terms, but it also carries a

twofold semantic meaning. It is popularly understood as a combination of tragedy and

comedy. Sometimes, when the combination is not so obvious, balanced or visible, it can

be defined as neither a pure tragedy nor a classical comedy. Ristine explains this

mixture as follows:

What we consider as tragic and comical have a way of shading into one

another by imperceptible advances, until the juncture is lost; or what

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may appeal as tragic to one will be comic to another. Many a serious

event has its humorous side; that the pathetic is akin to the comical and

laughter neighbour to tears are truisms of long-standing acceptance;

while the comparison of life to a tragicomedy is almost as old as the

world itself. (Ristine ix)

In his terms, both tragic and comic have more than one effect or meaning. Neither

laughter, nor tears should be taken for granted, as they are people‟s reactions, which are

highly subjective and individual in every case. Although the heyday of tragicomedy is

considered to have been in XVII c., Beckett revived and substantially refreshed the

genre in the fifties of XX c. Whereas, classical tragicomedy moves towards catastrophe,

but results in a happy ending, brought by some fortunate events, Beckett‟s tragicomedy

has rather a reversed nature:

He would allow “the dark” into his work, the chaos, pain, and painful

comedy of existence as he experienced it, and thereby make a new kind

of art, one that depended not on Joycean richness and playfulness, but on

deliberate shrinkage of material and elimination of literary ornament, an

art that sought its apotheosis in failure… an art shot through in equal

measure with unassuageable anguish and bleak humour. (Banville 1996:

http://www.samuel-beckett.net/banville.html)

In contrast to classical tragicomedy, Beckett‟s plays depict comic events with a rather

tragic result or ending. Beckett makes the combination between funny and sad even

more intensive and the boundaries between the two yet more blurred. Since the

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publication of Waiting for Godot (A Tragicomedy in Two Acts) critics often cite Samuel

Becket as having provided its definitive, updated form.

In many works by Beckett, this blur between laughter and crying ascends

beyond its threshold, where it is virtually impossible to say which is which, and is best

described as crying with laughter.

The dislocations of language that follow are serious but, given the

playfulness of the Anglo-Irish tradition, hardly ever solemn. Humour

runs across almost every episode or scene in Beckett‟s novels and plays.

Even when „it is no laughing matter‟, a tragicomic language is created

that is constantly at play, as if acting out the mutilated Nell‟s response to

Nagg‟s laughter…: „Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you

that. But – ‟ (Kennedy 6)

The reason for which Beckett is popularly perceived as a gloomy and pessimistic writer

grows from the fact that his plays tend to overshadow his prose, in which he often

appears almost a comic writer.

There are books – Proust, More Pricks Than Kicks, and various

collections of poems – in which he is not clear whether he is a comic

writer or simply a bitter one, and his first comic book, Murphy, achieves

its daft freedom in a kind of air pocket, while simultaneously poems…

precipitate into three or four hundred words his mounting nausea with

the human state. (Kenner 35)

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This confusion lies in the nature of tragicomedy, as well as in the usage of various

comic tools, ranging from clowning, through slip stick, to farce.

Act Without Words I and II are perfect clowning: in the second, the two

clowns come out of their sacks, go through the day‟s work and back into

the sacks, in possibly ten minutes… Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting

for Godot seem to be outside any definition of clowning; perhaps we

should be content with calling them clownish actors, but they do an act

rather than play a part. In fact, Beckett has been careful to insert enough

farce to discourage pathos in spite of the pathetic elements in the text.

Thus the pulling off of a stubborn boot, the horse-play with Lucky, and

the kicks and howls and the tumbling of all the characters in a heap, and

the juggling interlude… involving two heads and three hats, are

carefully inserted with a dual purpose… (Mayoux 29)

As suggests Mayoux, all such applications have twofold purpose: reduction of

tragic pathos and elimination of unwanted realism: “Moreover, aesthetically

speaking, clownish clothes and clownish acting are part of the rejection of all

realism” (30). Moreover, Beckett does not avoid dirty humour. The examples of

this could be Hamm‟s “pee” without catheter, Lousse‟s eloquent parrot, and

Murphy‟s taste for Glimigrim, Gulliver‟s diuretic wine (Tindall 36). According to

Tindall another purpose of such combinations is the analgesic or aggravating

effect: “A guaranteed painkiller, humour makes horror bearable or, as Yeats has

it, transfigures dread. Yet humour also intensifies what it guarantees relief from”

(Tindall 32). In these terms, Beckett can be described not only as the successor of

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a great legacy of tragicomedy but also as a contributor to its development and a

precursor of a sort.

Still another feature that serves as a common platform for Beckett and

the theatre of the absurd is symbolism. This kind of symbolism says that truth

cannot be logically grounded, but should be sought with the help of intuition.

Different symbols can be indirect hints in the quest for the ultimate truth.

Symbolism in the theatre changed the view of many traditional aspects in this

genre.

The Symbolists believed that scenery should be confined to draperies or

undefined forms which evoke a sense of infinite space and time.

Historical detail was avoided because it tied plays to specific periods and

places rather than bringing out their timeless qualities. Décor was

reduced to elements giving a generalized impression appropriate to the

ideas and feelings of a play. Similarly, costumes were usually simple,

draped garments of no particular period o place; colours were dictated

by the play‟s mood. (Brockett 1969: 318)

That is why sceneries of Beckett‟s plays are usually either undefined or limited to some

symbolic elements, like a bare tree or trash scattered over the scene. Similarly,

language in the dialogues of his heroes is more metaphorical and vague than literary.

Maeterlinck referred to this in the following way:

Side by side with the necessary dialogue you will almost always find

another dialogue that seems superfluous; but examine it carefully, and it

22

will be borne home to you that this is the only one that the soul can

listen to profoundly, for here alone is the soul that is being addressed.

(Brockett 1969: 310)

Beckett‟s dramas abound in symbolic meanings and exploration of suggestiveness. All

the elements that appear in them are motivated by the writer‟s intentions. “No symbol

where none intended” (Alvarez 86). Beckett‟s works are so symbolic that sometimes it

makes all interpretations virtually impossible or erroneous.

This is why the many and elaborate interpretations that have been foisted

on Godot seem particularly superfluous. Pozzo and Lucky may be Body

and intellect, Master and Slave, Capitalist and Proletarian, Colonizer and

Colonized, Cain and Abel, Sadist and Masochist, even Joyce and

Beckett. But essentially and more simply, they embody one way of

getting through life with someone else, just as Vladimir and Estragon

more sympathetically embody another. (Alvarez 86)

Beckett‟s symbolism is particularly hard to discern, as it is multilayered and often

simultaneously expressed through many different media, such as language, gesture,

sound and visual signs. Therefore, Beckett‟s works give endless opportunities for

varied, sometimes contrastive, readings.

On the other hand, Beckett‟s attitude towards symbolism is not passive and

merely derivative, but also critical: “Symbolism was an art movement originally

designed to resist the discursive, the prosaic, to edge toward silence, but Beckett finds

that the symbolic method hinders the symbolists from attaining their goal…” (Albright

23

13). Long before Beckett wrote the majority of his pieces, he became not only

captivated by the potential of symbolism, but also quite cautious about its traps, which

is conspicuous in his essay on Proust. The symbol, he says, must be reduced to

“autosymbolism” (Beckett‟s own term). “A fiction purged of mimesis and symbol alike

would seem to deny itself every resource… Beckett‟s chief mode of self-entertainment

was to refine the procedures through which a text can reflect its lack of content, the

central absence” (Albright 13). Therefore, symbolism in Beckett‟s realization has a dual

function, in a traditional and figurative, self-deniable senses. Consequently, Beckett is

one of the most over-interpreted authors ever.

A final important correlation between Beckett and the theatre of the absurd

that is considered here is the avant-garde element. The nature of avant-garde art is to

criticize established canons and replacing them with new alternatives. Although the

term is applied to many different artistic acts and forms, it can be described as follows:

“Avant garde” has become a ubiquitous label, eclectically applied to any

type of art that is anti-traditional in form. At its simplest, the term is

sometimes taken to describe what is new at any given time: the leading

edge of artistic experiment, which is continually outdated by the next

step forward. (Innes 1993: 1)

Avant-garde usually bears on provocative message, which aims to evoke repugnancy,

bewilderment and anger. In these terms, Beckett‟s writing can be labelled as avant-

garde. Throughout his entire career, experimentation remained the most important

catalyst of his art. “In each play he has successively pushed out the limits of

abstraction… His work has continually extended the frontiers of modernism, to the

24

point that his later plays barely belong in the theatre at all” (Innes 1995: 428). Although

there are no stylistic features, which would describe an avant-garde drama, it does

manifest in the desire for transformation of every genre as well as in the revolt against

the status quo of mainstream culture. “The outlines of his concerns must have been

obvious… We need not expect any Victorian three-deckers, any engage

pamphleteering, any autobiography or any bourgeois melodramas from Paris this year;

yet the uncompromisingly experimental products of Beckett‟s “ontospeleology” have

become, with time, entirely unpredictable” (Pilling 184). Becket would not comply

with any, even his own conventions in his art.

However, as with absurd, tragicomedy and symbolism, Beckett‟s avant-garde

is not univocal either. First, although avant-garde is a pretty fuzzy notion, Beckett is

rather not a typical representative of avant-garde movement:

Part of Beckett‟s importance as a cultural figure is that he blurs ordinary

distinctions between mainstream and avant-garde. Because he was

embraced so readily as a classic he was able, in effect, to smuggle

certain progressive ideas across the border of mainstream culture, and

that achievement is, rightfully, his most celebrated: he has actually

changed many people‟s expectations about what can happen, what is

supposed to happen, when they enter a theatre. Not surprisingly, then,

many avant-gardists, true to the bohemian habit in mind that considers

any work compromised as soon as it attracts a wide audience, perceive

this achievement as already ancient history and assume that their own

work represents a radical departure from Beckett‟s. (Kalb 157, 158)

25

Second, in distinction from his balancing on the edge of avant-garde and non-

ideological innovativeness, intrinsic to many ambitious writers -

Perhaps the most significant assumption he does not share with the

avant-garde is that artistic goals must be pursued in a spirit of aggression

and panic, which is really part of Artaud‟s legacy: the conviction that the

world and the theatre have deteriorated to such a state that the only

appropriate response is to scream. Beckett‟ inner calm, his unceasing

effort to pare down, to weed out every inessential syllable, discarding all

technical “gimmicks,” stand diametrically opposed to the ethic of

eclecticism and entropy in what is sometimes called “pluralistic”

performance (Wilson, Squat Theater). The avant-garde had in fact

ceased to search for the icon, as does Beckett in his late works, since that

search represents a quest for unity, and unity is antithetical to the model

of a “radiating” action that explodes from a center. (Foreman, in Kalb

159)

With these arguments in mind, Beckett can be regarded as an avant-garde writer only to

some extent. A more precise statement would be to say that he was a consistent and

inherent practitioner of avant-garde art, but not its typical representative or artistic

ideologist.

Having seen how different elements of the theatre of the absurd are altered in

Beckett‟s realization it is necessary to look at how various critics perceived his

contribution to this theatre from the very introduction of the label. Dan Rebellato, for

instance, says that “In their early days, there was felt to be some overlap between the

26

work of Beckett and Ionesco and the movement inspired by Look Back in Anger”

(Rebellato 145). However, as the critic admits the authors associated with new drama

were too antagonistic in the terms of what is “fictional” and “real” in their writings:

“Vaughan Williams, in this sense, is „simple‟ by contrast with the „liturgical‟ Beckett,

the „discordant wilfulness‟ of Ionesco, and the „peremptory sourness‟ of Brecht”

(Osborne, cited by Rebellato 145). O‟Hara draws attention to discrepancy between

Beckett and other associated authors:

The universe of Samuel Beckett is certainly as complex as that of any

other living writer. Yet it is not a dream universe, like that of Jarry or

Ionesco. It is a metaphysical vision of ultimate „reality‟, constructed out

of innumerable threads of logic tightly interwoven, out of fragmented

arguments... (O‟Hara, cited by Butler 195, 196)

O‟Hara‟s point, that Beckett is much more preoccupied with “real” than “unreal”, is

confirmed by another critic Kenneth Allsop, who says that “[Beckett] is in his

technique an obsolete writer... ...his standpoint is a surprisingly orthodox one in the

environment of the fifties” (Allsop 37). Tindall, on the other hand, emphasized the fact

that any tendency to group writers into a movement is a relative endeavour, based on

people‟s preferences:

Occasional resemblances to Ionesco have led critics to place Beckett in

the school of the absurd. This is worth looking into; for if there is such a

school-indeed, if schools, such as those of the metaphysical or symbolist

poets are more than academic conveniences for ignoring peculiarity-

27

Beckett might belong to this school. The critical mind, amorous of

categories, wants to put him there. Amorous of individuality, Beckett

rejects membership: “I don‟t think I deserve a place in this school.”

(Tindall 12)

Richard Coe agrees with Tindall, saying that the term “despair”, which is closely

connected with another term, “absurd”, is a sweeping statement, when applied to

Beckett:

...but to class Beckett himself as the simple incarnation of “despair” is a

drastic over-simplification. To begin with, the concept of “despair”

implies the existence of a related concept “hope,” and “hope” implies a

certain predictable continuity in time-which continuity Beckett would

seriously question. “Despair,” with all its inherent moral overtones, is a

term which is wholly inadequate to describe Beckett‟s attitude towards

the human condition; nor is this condition, in the most current sense of

the definition, “absurd.” It is literally and logically impossible. (Coe 1)

According to both critics, Beckett was a follower of Euclidean reason, which stands in

opposition to absurd, the latter being dependent on the presence of a judging mind

(Tindall 13). In Coe‟s opinion, Beckett‟s method is rationalistic, before mystic:

This is one of the factors [validity as a method] which sets Beckett apart

from the writers of the Absurd. For “the Absurd” is a method which

proceeds, by means of the annihilation of rational concepts, to a point

28

where ultimate reality, irrational by definition, may be glimpsed through

the wreckage. But Beckett, by contrast, cherishes rationality above all

things, but drives it to the point at which – just as moving particles are

transformed as they approach the speed of light – reason itself is

transmuted into the still vaster reality of the irrational. (Coe 20)

The inconsistency of including Beckett into the theatre of the absurd reveals itself in the

abundance of various illusive terms referring to his writing: ...there was also a theatrical

movement [associated with Beckett] that went by various names, including a-theatre,

anti-theatre, theatre of the absurd, experimental theatre, method theatre or the theatre of

ridicule (Cronin 424). All of these names besides being self-inclusive are equally

misleading as the analyzed term. This is also visible in Anthony Cronin‟s account of

Beckett‟s attitude towards such clichès, and “the absurd” in private.

The passive characters of Godot, as well as the music-hall and circus

associations and the fact that there was no action in the ordinary sense of

dramatic action, gave plenty of excuse to critics to make Beckett part of

a movement. ...Beckett would assent to and even encourage the

association of his name with the nouvelle vague in the novel and would

become friendly with other members of the movement, the public

association with Ionesco, Adamov and „theatre of the absurd‟ would

always annoy him and he would discourage it in every way possible

short of public dissociation. (Cronin 424, 425)

29

Samuel Beckett‟s biographer, also attaches such categorization of Beckett to some facts

of his life; one being a conversation between Samuel Beckett, trying to find a reason for

an attack, and his assailant: “The reply, according to these later stories, was „I don‟t

know,‟ a rejoinder on which a great deal of criticism about the theatre of the absurd and

the meaninglessness of all action has been founded” (Cronin 290). Such, almost

anecdotal associations do not speak in favour of any labels of this sort. Not without

certain reason is the author‟s opinion on his belonging to the theatre of the absurd. It is

a rare case when an author, regardless of his unequivocal and persistent repudiations, is

enduringly attached to this label.

One can not define them [moral values]. To define them it would be

necessary to produce a judgement of value and that can not be done. It is

why I have never been in agreement with this notion of theatre of the

absurd, because there, that is a value judgement. One can not even speak

of the truth that is part of the distress. Paradoxically it is in form that the

artist can find a sort of solution. In giving form to the unformed. It is

only at this level that there could be a kind of underlying affirmation.

(Becket, cited by Cronin 512)

The reasons for Samuel Beckett‟s rejection of the concept might have varied from those

connected with his striving for ultimate originality as an author to ones of more vague

importance, like the danger of misinterpretation.

Every literary classification bears in itself the potential for constrained

interpretations of the classified authors or their works. The theatre of the absurd is no

exception. Before going into an analysis of the characteristics, which are beyond the

30

context of the theatre of the absurd, it is necessary to show in what ways the ascription

of Samuel Beckett to this theatre might lead to misinterpretations of his writing. Here

Beckett, again, was very cautious and taciturn. When an American director, Alan

Schneider, asked Beckett a questions about Godot‟s nature, the answer was: „If I knew I

would have said so in the play.‟ Beckett seemed perfectly willing to answer questions

specific meaning or reference but would not go into questions of larger or symbolic

meaning, preferring his work to speak for itself and letting the supposed „meanings fall

where they may‟ (Cronin 454). The wave of misinterpretations started with the reaction

to Waiting for Godot

...at once an elaborate nothing and a possible something, were various,

as a series of letters to the Times Literary Supplement in 1956 makes

clear. Each correspondent, trying to make sense of what he saw or read,

came up with his hypothesis. One thought the play deeply Christian.

Another found it an existential parable. Others found it a social and

economic allegory, a tract on spiritual awareness, something too deep

for words, and a hoax upon the highbrows. There was no better

agreement among professional critics. To each his guess, the less certain,

the more dogmatically propounded. (Tindall 6)

Supposedly, most of these misinterpretations could have given basis for a term like the

theatre of the absurd but, what is more likely, is that the term itself attended an

affirmative rooting of misinterpretations of all sorts. Such interpretations, within a

certain constraint, are usually prone to preconceived and erroneous statements. “The

new situation has brought with it the risk of over-interpretation: it is possible that in

31

Beckett criticism „more is less‟, while the inner law of Beckett‟s work is „less is more‟

(Kennedy 1). More examples of such misconceptions will be analyzed in further

chapters.

Considering Samuel Beckett‟s affiliation with the theatre of the absurd and its

outstanding elements aside from him, regarding both his inspiration and contribution to

it, it should be said, there is no indication of his being an exemplary agent of any of

these elements. On the contrary, in each of its instances, including absurd, tragicomedy,

symbolism and avant-garde he rather remained a sufficiently outstanding and peculiar

associate, but not greater than that. Furthermore, the author‟s own resentment of his

affiliation with the theatre of the absurd, was supported by many renowned critics.

Beckett‟s involvement should be farther perceived as that of a highly sovereign author,

whose attachment to any particular current, school or movement would be

counterproductive to his attributable originality. Besides his evident interests for

potential variations of a range of aspects and elements of existing modes of theatre,

Beckett‟s input is by and large corollary to his qualities of a stand-alone author.

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The critical mind, amorous of

categories, wants to put him

there. Amorous of individuality,

Beckett rejects membership…

Beckett wants to be alone.

William York Tindall

The drama of Samuel Beckett

The aim of this chapter is to consider Beckett‟s cultural asset through the prism of

certain semi-literary domains, such as philosophy, art, and religion, as well as through

some literary and dramatic aspects, like time, language, light etc. Each of these

concerns featured here go beyond the notion of the theatre of the absurd in order to

avoid, what is sometimes taken as a schematic reading or statement, inspired by the

dogmatic nature of categorization. That is why, for example, this chapter discusses only

those relations of Beckett to philosophy, which do not overlap with ones covered in the

context of the theatre of the absurd.

Beckett‟s relation to philosophy as to many other arts, is not categorically

expressed, neither by the author himself nor by the scholars studying his oeuvre. Their

positions, often radically, depart from those considering Beckett a philosophical

thinker, who expressed his ideas in literary genres, as they strongly deny any

philosophic influences and contributions. John Butler in his book Samuel Beckett and

the Meaning of Being says: “However close the parallels are we must remember that

Beckett has disclaimed any philosophical achievement” (Butler 4). Butler cites two of

Beckett‟s own statements regarding his attitude towards philosophy, one of them with

Tom Driver, an American theologian, and critic: „I am not a philosopher. One can only

speak of what is in front of him, and that is simply a mess.‟ (Beckett, cited by Bishop

33

and Federman 219). Another of his disclaimers of philosophical interest comes from an

interview in 1961, conducted by Gabriel d‟Aubarède, for the French journal Les

Nouvelles Littéraires,: “I never read philosophers... I never understand anything they

write... I wouldn‟t have had any reason to write my novels if I could have expressed

their subject in philosophic terms” (Beckett, cited by Bishop and Federman 240).

Cronin seems to confirm Beckett‟s words by saying: “In general too much has been

made of Beckett‟s interest in philosophy and too little of his impatience with it”

(Cronin 231). However, Cronin acknowledges: “Yet he did take some interest in the

pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, Zeno the Eleatic, Parmenides, Democritus of Abdera”

(Cronin 232). At the same time, Cronin undermines these interest and citations

claiming that Beckett was more interested in the shapeliness of ideas, rather than in

their philosophic inclinations. Mary O‟Hara, in a thesis from 1974, says something very

contradictive to Beckett and Cronin: “So close is Heidegger‟s thinking to Beckett‟s that

the latter‟s work could almost be seen as a literary exploration of Heideggerian

metaphysics” (O‟Hara, cited by Butler 4). Finally, Butler seems to express the most

negotiable position towards Beckett‟s affiliation with philosophy: “I do not see that

Beckett‟s dismissal of philosophy need deter us unless we think the Intentional Fallacy

unfallacious” (Butler 5). Still another point of view could be summarized by Michèle

Le Doeuff‟s words from The Philosophical Imaginary: “Imagery and knowledge form,

dialectically, a common system. Between these two terms there is a play of feedbacks.”

Literature and philosophy could be as inseparable from each other as the language they

use from the thoughts signified. That is why it is difficult not to perceive Beckett‟s

heritage in both literary as well as in philosophical terms.

Arthur Schopenhauer is considered to have influenced Samuel Beckett the most.

“Schopenhauer was an important discovery for him, perhaps indeed the most important

34

literary discovery of his life” (Cronin 120). Beckett admired his “intellectual

justification of unhappiness – the greatest that has ever been attempted” (Cronin 121).

This philosopher appealed to Beckett for many different reasons, but the strongest

influence or similarity, as Cronin claims, is to be observed in their attitude towards

suffering.

Suffering is for the German philosopher the principal fact of human

existence, and he attacks as absurd the idea which underlies almost all

metaphysical systems... Suffering, he says, is the positive thing, the

norm. Pleasure is the purgative: usually the mere abolition of a desire or

cessation of a pain. We are for the most part hardly aware of happiness

or satisfaction, but we are acutely aware of pain and deprivation,

dissatisfaction and desire, which are with us nearly all time. (Cronin

121)

Maybe that is why Beckett‟s characters are the most suffering creatures in the world,

though they are still able to take their fate in a Schopenhauerian way, as something

given to human existence. Many of Schopenhauer‟s ideas came to Beckett via another

associate Marcel Proust and revealed themselves in Beckett through one of his first

written works Proust: “Here the artist‟s role is considered in terms primarily derived

from Schopenhauer, with Proust‟s romanticism, relativism, and impressionism having

their roots in the doctrine of pessimism” (Ackerley and Gontarski 512). It is a general

agreement between scholars that Schopenhauer‟s philosophy was more attractive to

writers than professional philosophers, and that is in keeping with Beckett‟s being

influenced not only by his ideas but also by artistic expression of those ideas:

35

“Schopenhauer suggests that limited transcendence may be attained through aesthetic

contemplation. Some of SB‟s [Samuel Beckett‟s] dramatic moments are rooted in this

paradox, in his acceptance of the experience... but also his distrust of its value”

(Ackerley and Gontarski 512). Although Beckett equally acknowledged his interest in

Schopenhauer: “I always knew he was one of the ones that mattered most to me”

(Knowlson 248); “he [Beckett] was not reading philosophy and had no interest in

whether Schopenhauer was right or wrong as a metaphysician” (Cronin 121); still, there

is a clear, possibly coincidental, connection between Schopenhauer‟s doctrine of the

lack of ultimate purpose and most of Beckett‟s characters.

Another early discovery for Beckett was the Dutch philosopher Arnold

Geulincx and his maxim “Ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil velis1” echoing with Beckett‟s own

“Nothing to be done”.

Geulincx said that this injunction was the “highest principle of ethics

from which easily follows each and every obligation‟, for „if nothing

ought to be done in vain‟, one ought to accept both death and life, not

struggling against death when God called one away, nor against life

when it was given one. „And if nothing ought to be done in vain, one

ought to accept both death and life...‟ (Geulincx, cited by Cronin 239)

Beckett‟s man seems to follow this ethical obligation in a very exact way. Geulincx‟es

influence is also traceable in what is considered to be an improvement on Descartes,

regarding the split of a man into two separate parts: mind and body (Cronin 231). This

duality, in Beckett‟s works, is visible not only in the inner world of his characters, but

1 “Where you can do nothing, there wish nothing” as translated by Ronald Begley.

36

also manifested in their outer duality, represented by complementing, and often

seemingly inseparable pairs. Like with Schopenhauer, Geulincx‟es influence cannot be

claimed as unequivocally “apart from the maxim „Ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil velis‟, which

was deeply in tune with his own quietism and seems to have struck him with great

force, though it is difficult to register how much he was really influenced by Geulincx”

(Cronin 230). Nevertheless, Beckett read, enjoyed, and to certain extent shared

Geulincx‟es philosophy.

Beckett‟s later interests shift towards Heidegger, whose philosophy often very

closely intertwines with Beckett‟s middle and especially late oeuvre. One of these

interconnections is present in the being-there quality of Beckett‟s characters, described

by Heidegger in the concept of “Dasein”: “...Didi and Gogo in Godot are not going

anywhere and not doing anything they are just „there‟ with a vengeance” (Butler 10).

This is how in depriving them of noticeable motion and visible aspirations Beckett

brings them closer to the real existence symbolized by Heidegger‟s notions described in

German as “Selbstein” (being onself), “Das Man” (they) and “Existenz” (existence).

“Dasein”, being based on the given quality of facticity and limited possibilities of free

choice is well represented by the concern of Beckett‟s people with their past, as well as

by the physical limitation of their presence: “The factical situation is usually illustrated

by physical limitation – amputation, paralysis, blindness. On this level Beckett is a

pessimist if it is optimism to minimize facticity and maximise possibility in one‟s

account of man” (Butler 15). Doomed to disabilities of all kinds, together with mental

incapability and general impotence of their will, Beckett‟s characters have to

compensate their “Dasein” with verbal existence, which “takes the form of the story-

telling and fantasizing that makes up so much of the novels and a good part of the

plays” (Butler 15). This is the point where mockery of existence, symbolized by

37

pointless dialogues meets with another alternative - being silent. “The call does not

report events; it calls without uttering anything” (Heidegger, cited by Ronell 37) is

what can be described as the Heideggerian call of conscience so often symbolized

through meaningful silence in Beckett‟s writing. “It calls even, though it gives the

concernfully curious ear nothing to hear which might be passed along in further

retelling and talked about in public... The call discourses in the uncanny mode of

keeping silent” (Heidegger, cited by Ronell 37). Realizing this, Beckett arrived at what

became a widely quoted idea of his, an alternative to the “plane of the feasible”, which

comes from Three Dialogues of Samuel Beckett with Georges Duthuit: “...there is

nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no

power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express”

(Beckett, cited by Harrison, Wood 617). This, as Butler claims:

...is similar to Wittgenstein‟s point of view... speech, language, words

are the only way we have of capturing Being, they are certainly all that

an author or narrator has to use, and at the same time they are exactly

what separates us from Being – whence the simultaneous talking and

yearning after silence. (Butler 62)

The masterful combination of talk and silence will become a recurring motif regarding

not only the inner qualities of Beckett‟s writing, but also his attitude towards it. In

Beckett‟s case the obligation to express, or putting it more precisely, the obligation to

repeat to express, leads to the habitual quality of the lives created by him, probably best

illustrated by Act Without Words I and II. In these mimes the characters silently

undergo a series of routines, in one play induced by a mysterious whistle, in the other

38

by a goad coming from an unknown source. In both pieces, with every act and deed, the

characters seem to escape from routine, only to be thrown back into it at the end of

every endeavour. Here, the central focus is neither on utterance, nor on silence, but on

repetition, which will be discussed in detail in the last chapter.

There are additional parallels between Samuel Beckett and such thinkers as

René Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Gottfried Leibniz, and others; however, none of their

impacts should be overrated. William Tindall puts this concern in the following way:

The trouble with Beckett, for those intent on affinities or influences, is

that he seems to have read everything – all the novels, plays, and poems

– and that, whatever the echoes, his work is like nothing else. All

philosophy seems his province, from the pre-Socratic fragments to

Heidegger and Sartre; all psychology from William James to Freud and

the Gestalt. References to these, improving the pedantic air of novels

and plays, have led some to think Beckett more of a thinker than he is.

Whatever the air, he is first of all an artist... Not ideas but particulars are

his concern, not systems but arrangements... Concept and logic, says

Beckett, are helpless in a confusion that the artist must order without

them. (Tindall 4)

Yet, a mere shift of Beckett‟s oeuvre from the domain of philosophy into the domain of

art does not answer many a crucial questions about the nature of his art.

Beckett‟s art seems to be even more difficult to classify than his philosophical

views. “Beckett caught the fever of innovation from various avant-garde movements of

the interwar period – the expressionists, surrealists and dadaists – without becoming a

39

devotee of any one „ism‟” (Kennedy 21) observes Andrew Kennedy. Anthony Cronin

as well is prone to believe, that Beckett is more an artist than a philosopher, and says

that Beckett‟s answer to suffering “is: through art; but it is an art of a special kind, open

to, and reverent before, the operations of involuntary memory, those moments of

evocation of the past when the veil of habit is pierced... and almost unbearable nature of

reality is perceived” (Cronin 145). Butler, in his turn, notices that Beckett‟s art aspires

to the nature of existence or being as such: “The overall impression gained is that

Beckett is asking here for an art that will confront ultimate reality, and art that will

correspond not to the socialogical or „natural‟ structure of the world, but to its ultimate

structure, its ontology” (Butler 161). On the other hand, Beckett himself is very

conscious of art‟s inabilities and flaws: “The artist is driven – by the very fact of being

an artist – to realise, to create in art, that which is not, which cannot be, because, as

soon as it is realised in concrete terms (paint or words) it ceases to be itself.

Consequently, it must fail” (Beckett, cited by Coe 4). However, even assuming that

Beckett‟s writing is an essentially artistic prerogative, it is still quite impossible to stay

away from a nondescript quality and multi-referential nature of his writing.

Perhaps another difficulty, connected with literary and formal classifications

is the blur of the borders between literary genres in some pieces by Beckett. A good

example is Whoroscope, a poem, “which concerns a philosopher, is a dramatic

monologue in free verse, with footnotes more grotesquely pedantic than Eliot‟s”

(Tindall 4). Therefore, Whoroscope could be considered by critics as a free verse poem,

a monodrama, an informative article in prose on Descartes or a mixture of all of these.

As it had been said in Chapter One Beckett was equally avant-garde and to some

extent, also traditional. He was writing modernist literature in post-modernist times,

though some scholars disagree about these epochal classifications. Debuting with

40

literary criticism, Beckett continued as a poet and later a novelist, to end up as a

playwright. However, his last novel How It Is, was written after he had received

worldwide recognition for his best plays. His final work, a year before his death was a

poem again What Is the Word. Coe argues that “Whereas much of his prose is superb

poetry, most of his “poetry” is a second-rate verse” (Coe 14). Talking about his plays,

they underwent a continuous evolution. “And, paradoxically, the later plays tend to

become more theatrical, though less substantially „flesh and blood‟. The plays get

nearer to pure theatre, in the sense that they could not function in any other genre or

medium...” (Kennedy 23). Having in mind Beckett‟s passion for painting and music, it

can be said without exaggeration that he was more of a multiple-vector artist than just a

playwright.

Similar classificatory problems arouse concerning religious motifs in his

oeuvre. Here the opinions of scholars are more or less unified, but often differ with

audiences responses, especially from his first and early performances, which often

varied very radically, from those regarding Beckett as a deeply atheist writer to those

ascribing him multiple Christian symbols. However, having received a strictly

protestant upbringing from his mother, a well known as a devotee, and living among a

Catholic majority, first in Ireland, then in France, it would be hard to isolate himself

from Christian symbolism. Butler argues “Beckett is not devoid of an interest in

religion, but he is certainly not an orthodox Christian” (Butler 56). In Waiting for

Godot, Tindall notices a variety of theological analogies, suggesting, however, that do

not have to be religiously bound:

Lucky speaks of a “personal God... with a white beard.” The messenger

boy – and angels are messengers – thinks Mr. Godot has a white beard.

41

What is more, separating the sheep from goats, he punishes the

shepherd, capriciously. Cain, Abel, Adam, Christ, tree, prayer, and

repenting the original sin of “being born” thicken the holy atmosphere.

But these hints, proving nothing about Godot, may be there to reveal

Vladimir‟s state of mind, to tease the audience, or to indicate man‟s

hopeless hope. All we know for sure is that waiting for Godot is like

waiting for God, that Godot is a kind of nothing. (Tindall 9)

Cronin links these references to Beckett‟s biography: “Beckett‟s Christian upbringing

and his familiarity with the sacred texts of Judaism and Christianity is evident and is

used in all his work...” (Cronin 391, 392). Nevertheless, Christianity and Judaism are

not the only sources for Beckett‟s religious overtones and go much further beyond these

religions. “Something else that escaped everybody‟s notice until much later is the use

made of Manichaean ideas in the construction of the work [Krapp’s Last Tape]”

(Cronin 485). Cronin draws attention to Beckett‟s use of the three prohibitions of

Manichaeanism, one of the major Iranian Gnostic religions, which is preoccupied with

the symbolism of light and darkness: “...Krapp is in violation of the three seals or

prohibitions of Manichaeanism for the elect: the seal of the hands, forbidding

engagement in a profession, the seal of the breast against sexual desire, and the seal of

the mouth, which forbids the drinking of wine” (Cronin 485, 486). Mayoux seems to be

sceptical about any theological implications in Beckett‟s works, perceiving them more

like literary myths:

Much has been said of the theological implication of the play, which are

almost too obvious. Their purport is another matter. There is nothing

42

here except the author‟s images, cosa mentale. So we can only speak of

theological images, and pass on from one more „mythology‟. (Mayoux

31)

The presence of religious connotations is here undeniable, but it is also quite evident

that the connotations are reduced by Beckett to laic symbols, which do not have their

converting purpose. Beckett‟s religious quests go beyond the scope of traditional

beliefs and cults.

There are interesting implications on other realms which received a great deal

of attention from scholars and resulted in numerous publications: Beckett and politics,

Beckett and aesthetics, Beckett and music, Beckett and love, Beckett and myth, Beckett

and mathematics, Beckett and Joyce, and even Beckett versus Beckett, and many other

contextual studies. It is not the aim of this chapter to present the majority of the studied

frameworks of Beckett‟s oeuvre, but rather to show the omnitude of his works, and to

underline the variety of nearly endless connotations, references and links. As it has

been presented in brief on the basis of Beckett‟s treatment of philosophy, art and

religion, he is an author who expands any existing confines of perception and

experience. In order not to get lost in the studies of Beckett it seems to be necessary to

engage a close reading of his texts, with a focus on certain aspects and tools only.

Finally, before proceeding towards a discussion of the tool of repetition, it is necessary

to give some consideration of some aspects of his dramatic craft which override the

theater of the absurd, such time in opposition to timelessness, language in opposition to

silence, and light in opposition to darkness.

Beckett‟s use of time is probably the most mesmerizing application in his

writing of all. Referring to Beckett‟s lecturing experience Cronin says:

43

His [Beckett‟s] lectures contained a good deal of reference to the

philosopher Henri Bergson and his distinction between „spatial time‟,

which could be measure by clocks, and „duration‟ – time as it is really

experienced by human beings. Bergson‟s ideas had an immense

influence on all the French writers of the early twentieth century... They

seem to have remained with Beckett and it is impossible to see later

works like Happy Days, Play, and How It Is as being set not in any sort

of eternal after-life, as some critics have assumed, but simply as

reflecting Bergsonian ideas about time. In the Bergson/Beckett view, the

intensities of an experience transcended time. (Cronin 127)

Therefore, time for Beckett is unlikely not linear. Nor are his characters simply reduced

to the time experienced by them. Beckett often marks this duality by pointing at two

dimensions of time, inner and outer, marking them in different ways. In Waiting for

Godot real time is marked by the day and night cycle. Another dimension, the time of

nature, is marked by the cycle of a tree and its leaves. All of these are complicated by

the characters‟ vague perceptions of time: Estragon‟s reduction to short memory. This

is very reminiscent of Schopenhauer‟s doctrine of the eternity of the present: “As the

ideal limit which separates the past from the future the present is as unreal for the

senses as a point in mathematics. But if it is inaccessible to empirical consciousness it

can be seen as the superior reality for the metaphysician” (McQueeny, 133). Beckett‟s

characters seem to exist in such an eternity of the present, where their past and future

are often symbolized by their quasi progression in time. Another of Beckett‟s interests

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in time was a philosophical notion the heap of millet, studied by a Greek philosopher

Zeno.

Take any finite quantity of millet, and pour half of it into a heap. Then

take half of the remaining quantity, and add that to the heap. Then half

the remaining quantity again... and so on. In an infinite universe, the

heap could be completed; in a finite universe, never, for the nearer it gets

to the totality, the slower it increases. (Coe 89, 90)

The scenery of Happy Days, as notices Richard Coe, is the “heap of time” represented

by the heap of sand, which is covering Winnie with the progression of the real time of

the play. Although it accumulates with time, the end of the play will not mark the end

of Winnie and Willie‟s “happy suffering”. Pretty early in his writing career, Beckett

became fascinated by what Proust called “that double-headed monster of damnation

and salvation – Time” (Proust 17). The French author “invoked the aid of “involuntary

memory,” and, much later, of art. Both, he believed, had the power to enable the subject

to relive instantaneously in the present a total sequence of experience belonging to a

past Self, thus enabling the true and extra-temporal Self to escape...” (Coe 17). As Coe

remarks Beckett was not completely satisfied with such an escape. “The mortal

microcosm cannot forgive the relative immortality of the macrocosm” (Beckett, cited

by Coe 19). Beckett‟s answer to this problem lies in his accommodation of repetition as

a remedy against the oppression of time.

Language is another aspect that distinguishes Beckett from many other

writers, including those associated with theater of the absurd. Cronin writes in

Beckett‟s biography “he [Beckett] had, he said, a particular memory of being at the

45

dinner table in his mother‟s womb shortly before birth. There were guests present and

the conversation was, perhaps needless to say, of the utmost banality (Cronin 2). This

“banality” is what constitutes the body of his literary language. Words are here uttered

for the purpose of killing time, as well as to mark silence. Throughout his writing career

Beckett was striving between these two opposites: talk and silence:

He yearned for silence, the blank white page, the most perfect thing of

all... The principal failing of his earlier work, so knowing but also so

self-revealing in all the wrong ways, is the failure to achieve a form and

a tone of voice which would allow him to express his particular truths.

Perhaps this repeated failure made him feel more acutely than most the

torment of marred utterance, of false utterance, of would-be significant

utterance; and to feel also more intensely than others that the object of

true, achieved and necessary utterance is silence – in some sense or

other, a permission to be silent... (Cronin 376)

That is maybe why his late works seem to be progressing from utterance to silence.

However, with Beckett, silence can be more meaningful than talk, and the pauses

between utterances do not always go to represent dumbness. In an intrinsic manner to

himself, Beckett plays with reversions of these two. Whereas in early prose he speaks

to become silent: “The analysis of silence in the trilogy shows how the texts tend to

undermine any straightforward signification. There is no shared community of meaning

that Beckett‟s readers can take shelter in” (Loevlie 209); in plays he becomes more

silent in order to say more, and to achieve the so-called meaningful silence. The main

character of The Unnamable says: “All my life... there were three things, the inability to

46

speak, the inability to be silent, and solitude...” (Beckett, The Unnamable, 389). In the

constant fight between this binary opposition Beckett once again comes to repetition; if

it is not possible to keep silent, and there is no need to speak, one can repeat what has

been already said.

With regard to the opposition of light and darkness, and as it has been already

hinted earlier, by the mention of the allusion in Krapp’s Last Tape to Manichaeanism,

Beckett‟s drama, unlike any other, makes an extensive use of darkness and light. In

some plays the hints concerning the use of light during performances occupy the major

part of stage directions. What is more, some of his plays, like Breath or Catastrophe are

predominantly set in light for the achievement of a dramatic effect. Jean-Jacques

Mayoux suggests that light represents consciousness, so as, to represent outer world.

„Desert. Dazzling light‟: such are the first words of Act without Words I.

„Expanse of scorched grass... Blazing light‟ is the stage direction to

Happy Days. „Table and immediately adjacent area in strong white

light‟, that to Krapp’s Last Tape. „This mime should be played at back

of stage violently lit in its entire length‟, to Act without Words II, and it

is the obstinate light of consciousness that seems in Play to persist

compellingly after death. (Mayoux 8)

Nonetheless, light rarely, maybe with the exception of Happy Days and a few shorter

plays, dominates Beckett‟s scene. In most of the plays light is surrounded by darkness,

and as in Leibniz virtual, corresponds to the dark zone of the mind and the actual to the

light one: “Krapp and his tape recorder occupy a circle of bright light surrounded by

darkness... For Krapp light means identity and consciousness, but without darkness,

47

that he tries to keep under, light would lack all meaning” (Tindall 44). Therefore, as

Tindall suggests, for Beckett light and darkness never go in isolation; they never go to

represent black and white, they are usually supposed to complement each other,

forming grey colour. It corresponds well with Beckett‟s famous remarks to the actors

when directing his own plays: “Too much colour”, meaning the limitation of theatrical

“playfulness”. Beckett‟s light and darkness are in a constant move, as darkness changes

into light only to be substituted by it in the following round. This repetitive nature of

the usage of light in Beckett‟s plays is best illustrated in stage directions for Breath:

“MAXIMUM LIGHT No bright. If 0 = dark and 10 = bright, light should move from

about 3 to 6 and back” (Beckett, 371). This also serves to reveal the repetitive nature of

Beckett‟s drama and a use of balance in stage-craft which goes beyond a mere will to

provoke with absurd differences.

All binary oppositions, including time and void, speech and silence, darkness

and light, in Beckett‟s use, seem to be based on the mechanism of repetition. Beckett

rarely uses them in isolation and often only to mark the absence of the opposite. The

utmost of his dramatic effect is, though, achieved by the swinging of these oppositions

into constant rotation, which will be specifically analyzed in the following chapter.

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Estragon: I can't go on like this.

Vladimir: That's what you think.

Repetition as a dramatic tool in Samuel Beckett‟s

writing

The survey of different aspects of Beckett‟s drama to this point has lead to repetition as

the most relied upon dramatic tool and catalyst in the plays of Samuel Beckett. As

indicated in the analysis in the latter part of the previous chapter and what will be set

out and examined in this chapter, are specific examples of repetition in various

dramatic works by the author.

The preliminary, theoretical part of this chapter will be based on a book,

Samuel Beckett: Repetition, Theory, and Text, by Steven Connor, a professor of modern

literature and theory at Birkbeck in London. However, given that this book has been

devoted for the most part to repetition in Samuel Beckett‟s prose, it will be referenced

only for theoretical orientation, and treated rather as a springboard than as the proof for

the following considerations, in the context of Beckett‟s plays. The focus will be given

to repetition as a dramatic tool, and not to repetition as a concept in itself. For that

reason criticism of repetition in the theatre, such as that of Antonin Artaud in his essay

The Theatre of and its Double will be omitted.

Samuel Beckett: Repetition, Theory, and Text was first published in 1988 and

then republished in 2007. Thus far, it has probably been the only published study to

have argued that: “...Samuel Beckett, the writer who in this century has most single-

mindedly dedicated himself to the exploration of what is meant by such things as being,

49

identity and representation, should have at the centre of hs work so strong and

continuous a preoccupation with repetition” (Connor 1). In the first chapter of the book

“Difference and Repetition” the author claims “Beckett‟s world is one of linguistic

repetitions...” (Connor 2). Connor notices that at the beginning of Beckett‟s writing

career, his texts in prose were continually referring to, or repeating texts of other

authors, whereas with time it shifted to the reproduction of Beckett‟s own oeuvre. For

Beckett repetition was not only a literary tool but also the fundament of his art as such.

Therefore, while in texts it would manifest in the constant reappearance of the same,

though often obscured under different names, characters, reoccurring situations, motifs,

and symbols, beyond them repetition would emerge salient amongst his creative

principles. Beckett would constantly recreate his own work, first as a written text, later

in the form of a performance, often directed by himself, finally, as a film, as in case

with What Where. As a mature playwright he frequently came back to his first and

published only posthumously text Dream of Fair to Middling Women in order to

rework and make use of some, as he put it, of the craziest ideas. He would not be afraid

to give his works the same names, like with Cascando, which he mutated from a poem

into a play. Beckett‟s devotion to repetition did not influence only his art, but became a

leitmotif of his life: “To an extraordinary extent he was a creature of habit” (Cronin

504) says Beckett‟s biographer, who gives copious examples of writer‟s habitual

procedures, ranging from having a certain amounts of glasses of wines in a cafe to a

particular way of making appointments. This quality also reveals itself in Beckett‟s

self-translations from French to English, a fastidious duplication of sorts, which he

would rarely, with but a few exceptions, confide to others.

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Steven Connor gives an account of the ideas of other thinkers, concerning

repetition in philosophical context. According to him, Jacques Derrida sees the double

nature of repetition as follows:

Repetition is at one and the same time that which stabilizes and

guarantees the Platonic model of original and copy and that which

threaten to undermine it... Repetition is therefore subordinated to the

idea of the original, as something secondary and inessential. For this

reason, repetition is conventionally condemned in Western culture as

parasitic, threatening and negative. (Connor 3)

Moreover, this problem can be reversed to the other direction, in which a copy would

question and challenge its original. Derrida traces this dichotomy back to the opposition

between spoken and written texts. However, he says there is a certain difference

between mere copying and a repetition: “the same line is no longer exactly same, the

ring no longer has exactly the same centre, the origin has played” (Derrida 296). For

Derrida repetition is in the process of circularity, and not in a beginning or an end.

Another philosopher cited by Connor is Deleuze. Deleuze says he,

distinguishes two forms of repetition: „mechanical‟ or „naked‟ subservient to its original

and „clothed‟ or „disguised‟ repetition, which tries to bring some kind of modification.

Delueze claims, though, that repetition can never be the same: “In order to be

recognizable as such, a repetition must, in however small a degree, be different from its

original... Repetition is difference without force – or without force to guarantee identity

– and therefore a principle which can force identity apart” (Connor 7). Connor says that

for Deleuze and his associate, Foucault, “nomadic difference is seen as a liberation

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from the constricting untruth of difference and repetition in the service of the Same”

(Ibid.). Finally, Deleuze brings back his analysis to Nietzschean „eternal recurrence”, a

simulacrum of some sort “in which the very opposition between original and copy is

done away with” (Ibid.). In this sense, repetition becomes a powerful, liberating tool.

Repetition in eternal recurrence presents itself under all its aspects as the

essential power of difference; and the displacement and disguise of that

which repeats itself act only to reproduce the divergence and decentring

of the different, in a single movement which is the diaphora or transport.

Eternal recurrence affirms difference, affirms dissemblance and

disparity, chance, multiplicity and becoming. (Deleuze, cited by Connor

8)

This takes repetition a step further, to the point where it is perceived as a process, a

continuum which transfers the centre of gravity from an original and subsequent

reproductions. Such a change of the focus allows Ruby Cohn to see repetition as the

central point between a predecessor and a successor. “Repetition is above all

intensification and magnification of a centre, so that, in the end it is a metaphorical

device which collapses art and life into unity...” (Connor 12). In Connor‟s

understanding Cohn‟s point is closer to Deleuze‟s term, “clothed repetition”, the one

that is based upon symmetry. This as, Connor argues, allows perception of Beckett‟s

works a whole unity and guarantees the originality of every separate work.

The last consideration in the first chapter of Connor‟s book is that of Bruce

Kawin, who distinguishes “destructive repetition” of habit, from two forms of

“constructive repetition” in film and writing. The first concept as Connor reports is

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based on the principle of integral memory, and certain totality. The other one:

“considers the present to be the only apprehensible tense and „deals with each instant

and subject as a new thing, to such an extent that the sympathetic reader is aware less of

repetition than of continuity” (Kawin, cited by Connor 13). This, as Connor says seems

to correspond to Deleuze‟s distinction between habit and memory and reminds one of

Bergsonian durée, the merging of past and present. “Kawin praises Beckett‟s work as

exemplifying that intense being-in-the-present which can free us from dead repetitions

of habit” (Connor 13). All these are plausible arguments, but do not give enough

attention to the very alternations occurring from one repetition to another. Steven

Connor notices this and proposes:

...to move towards a consideration of the principle of repetition as it

operates upon Beckett‟s texts, as well as within them, in the work of

displacement involved in the production and reproduction of dramatic

text, and the displacements and reapproapriations effected by criticism

and commentary... At this point, repetition will emerge as something

more than a principle of inert, indifferent plurality, and become and

become visible as a principle of power, embodying authority,

subordination, conflict, and resistance. (Connor 14)

Such an argument, however, assumes that there is some form of tension in the process

of repetition as well as in the course of getting critical feedback. A potential

commentary could hence influence the repetition itself, which introduces still another

binary opposition of repetition within the work and out of it.

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Connor‟s considerations will therefore stay out of the focus of this argument,

as the latter is concerned with Beckett‟s art, through the prism of his drama works, and

in certain isolation from criticism. Another difference with Connor‟s attitude lies in his

statement:

But if repetition is by its nature dual, concerned with relationship rather

than essence, then to restrain analysis to the effects of repetition within

texts is to run the risk of reinstating the subordination of repetition to the

Same, creating of Beckett‟s oeuvre a closed system which both permits

and precludes the play of repetition. (Connor 13, 14)

The argument of this chapter implies something rather opposite; Beckett‟s repetition

never comes to “the Same”, as it may grow in a cumulative way, and therefore never

comes to the end. That is why, although Beckett‟s oeuvre is a completed and formally

closed set of works, it never stops to proceed from the inside, repeating itself, but in

such a way, that it is getting beyond the closed system of completed circles. New

critical books and an unrelenting interest in his works over time seem to support this

hypothesis.

Waiting for Godot, the second of Samuel Beckett‟s plays, and the first one

ever staged, was also the first to exploit the tool of repetition on such an ambitious

scale. Beckett introduces in it, that which reappears in most of his ensuing plays, and

what was coined in “Beckett country” as “SB‟s [Samuel Beckett‟s] psychological

landscape... replete with bicycles, dogs, dustbins, and destitutes in hats, greatcoats, and

ill-fitting boots” (Ackerley and Gontarski, 40). Waiting for Godot stage directions

concerning landscape are very minimalistic: “A country road. A tree. Evening.” (1).

54

Later, only a few additional props add to this wretched and humdrum view. Beckett‟s

attitude to scenery is best described by his own account of landscapes in Cézanne‟s

paintings: “Atomistic landscape with no velleities of vitalism, landscape with

personality á la rigueur” (Knowlson and Haynes 84, 85). In Endgame this scenery is

described as “Bare interior” (Waiting for Godot 92); in Happy Days – illustrated as

“Maximum of simplicity and symmetry”. Another recurrence in the major plays is

“Beckett man”:

Beckett man is a lone individual who regards other with fear, hatred,

impatience or contempt... He does not believe in the brotherhood of

man; and questions of equality are disposed of by the eager admission

that he is, in all respects, inferior. He lays no claim to any virtue that can

be named except to a rather dubious humility and a too eagerly embrace

resignation.... The Beckett man has usually no past except, since he has

been born, a mother or mother memory. He belongs to no recognizable

community. He has no employments or qualifications for employment .

Nor has he any sources of income except charitable ones. (Cronin 379,

380)

Vladimir and Estragon, the two main characters of Waiting for Godot, have their

counterparts in Hamm and Clov in Endgame, and Winnie and Willie in Happy Days.

Secondary characters from Endgame, Nagg and Nell, presage the appearance of a

married couple in Happy Days. Repetition is also revealed in the very titles of the plays.

Whereas “waiting” implies some iteration in time, “endgame” describes a situation in

the game of chess when the final result of a game, except for a draw, is hard to achieve

55

and usually takes a great deal of, and potentially, an amount infinite time, while Happy

Days is an ironic metaphor for the previous two – never-ending recurring in time. The

patterns of repetition are present also in the naming of the characters, usually, being

based, on mutual adjunctions: Didi and Gogo, as in French dis-dis for talk-talk and

English go-go. In Endgame, the character‟s names circle around the semantic

connection between a nail and a hammer (Humm): Nagg (German nagel - nail), Clov

(French clou - nail) and Nell (English nail). Winnie and Willie - are another pair of

rhyming and complementing pairs. The metaphorical significance of names in

Beckett‟s writing is one of the most regular patterns.

Concerning the non-formal patterns of repetition, all major plays open and

close in order to acquire circular structure. Waiting for Godot opens with Estragon‟s

words: [Giving up again.] Nothing to be done (Waiting for Godot 11), and ends with his

“Yes, let‟s go” [They do not move.]” (Waiting for Godot 88). Endgame starts with the

metaphor for the heap of millet: “Clov: Finished, it‟s finished, nearly finished, it must

be nearly finished. [Pause.] Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there

is a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap” (Endgame 93), and closes with the

Hamm‟s monologue, which ends with the words: “You... remain.” (Endgame 134).

Another heavenly day says Winnie at the beginning of Happy Days, and “Oh this is a

happy day, this will have been another happy day!...” (Endgame 168). In all three plays

opening and closing lines form bracket structures, which like in Endgame almost

literally suggest that these plays begin where they end. The readers and viewers are

informed at the very start that what they have in front of them are elements chosen,

maybe incidentally, of an endless series. In order to achieve that, Samuel Beckett uses

repetition not only within a single act, as in Endgame, usually by referring to a closed

circle pattern of a day or another period of time, but also shows repeating regularity

56

between two acts, which evokes an association with a mathematical equation that

progresses towards perpetuity. Therefore, Waiting for Godot and Happy Days, and to

some extent also Endgame, assume that there is some informal point of division into

two within the text of the play. What allows for repetition between the acts, and still

maintains some variations between them, is the motif of destroyed memory. The

characters of Beckett‟s plays have little or no memory of the past, which dooms them

and makes them happy at the same time. On one hand, they are condemned because

they are unconscious of the sameness of their existence, on the other hand, it allows

them to survive this dreadful monotony. That is why they always add some new, at

least in their own perceptions, quality to the following day. They entertain themselves

or kill their time using the same patterns, making use of the same games and rituals,

however, always filled with new rules and content. This quality guarantees the survival

not only of the characters but also of the viewers, and this makes Beckett‟s art

inimitable.

In terms of the technical aspects of repetition, they rarely alter from one major

play to another. In Waiting for Godot, Vladimir and Estragon often resort to dull

exchanges, in the form of dialogue, however devoid of its traditional function –

communication.

Estragon: What is it?

Vladimir: I don‟t know. A willow.

Estragon: Where are the leaves?

Vladimir: It must be dead.

Estragon: No more weeping.

Vladimir: Or perhaps it‟s not the season.

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Estragon: Looks to me like a bush.

Vladimir: A shrub

Estragon: A bush.

Vladimir: A -. What are you insinuating? That we‟ve come to the wrong place?

(Waiting for Godot 15, 16)

These pseudo dialogues, as a rule, lead to wrong or no conclusions, which in turn

initiate further senseless talk and further bewilderment. Very often they become music-

like, as with the case of seven times repeated “adieu”, by Estragon, Vladimir and

Pozzo, which rhymes with “thank you” and closes with, again, meaningless repetitions

of “yes, yes” and “no, no” phrases (Waiting for Godot 45, 46). Such song-like

fragments are often based, on the repetition of the same initial or end sounds, and

syllables:

Estragon: A relaxation.

Vladimir: A recreation.

Estragon: A relaxation. (Waiting for Godot 64)

The specificity of this type of repetition is that it is usually performed by pairs of

characters, as if a song or a poem, which is performed separately but in perfect unison.

Hamm: How are your eyes?

Clov: Bad.

Hamm: How are your legs?

Clov: Bad.

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Hamm: But you can move.

Clov: Yes. (Endgame 95)

In Happy Days, where Willie‟s partner does not take an active part in such exchanges

this function is condensed in Willie‟s monologues. Once again, it is repetition, which

allows for this: My arms. [Pause.] My breasts. [Pause.] What arms? [Pause.] What

breasts? [Pause.] Willie. [Pause.] What Willie? [Sudden vehement affirmation.] My

Willie! [Eyes right, calling.] Willie! [Pause. Louder.] Willie! (161). This not only

brings poetic features into Beckett‟s drama, but also attracts attention to the repetitious

nature of his characters. It is worth pointing out that such strains tend to sound like one

text, but performed by two, or more characters. This strengthens repetition. Still another

tool for stressing repetition is Beckett‟s use of different symbolic props, some of which

are movable, some of which remain still until the ending. The movable objects might be

contingently divided into different categories, such as: food (including painkillers),

pieces of clothes (especially hats and shoes), bags and boxes (often in the form of

dustbins) and weapons (which are often of no use, or out of reach). Certain of these

props might change from act to act, as in Waiting for Godot, where carrots and turnips

change into carrots and radish; or from play to play, like in Endgame, in which

vegetables are substituted by biscuits, given by Clov to Nagg and Nell. Such objects

might be exchanged between characters, as in Estragon and Vladimir‟s five-time

exchange of bowlers in act two of Waiting for Godot. Immovable objects, on the other

hand, in Beckett‟s plays often mark repetition but have a little bit different function.

Immobile props, like a tree in Waiting for Godot, windows in Endgame, a heap of sand

in Happy Days, being static in their nature, cannot move but still can and might

alternate. The tree grows a few leaves in act two, a heap of sand grows in size, windows

59

are repeatedly closed and opened by Clov. Functioning as points of reference, they

make semi-plots circulate around them. In this manner, Vladimir and Estragon want to

use the tree as the gallows, try in vain to hide behind it, attempt to imitate it in the

exercise of balance. Other powerful markers of repetition are connected with time.

These are the Moon and Pozzo‟s watch in Waiting for Godot, the Sun, which is visible

only to Clov in Endgame, or an alarm clock which wakes up Winnie and Willie in

Happy Days, stressing repetition by regular drawing attention to real time. Certain

types of repetition are based on listing: list of dances Lucky could have been once able

to perform, according to Pozzo, or the list of sports, from Lucky‟s monologue: “tennis

football running cycling swimming flying floating riding gliding conating camogie

skating tennis of all kinds dying flying sports of all sorts autumn summer winter tennis

of all kinds of hockey...” (Waiting for Godot 42). Again, such lists are organized upon

the principle of alliteration, rhymes, and rhythms.

Beckett‟s short pieces, including mimes, and experimental sketches are

sometimes very different in their qualities; however, some patterns of repetition are still

comparable in many of these plays. Most of these works were written in the third stage

of Beckett‟s writing career when his writing was becoming more and more minimalist.

“Beckett country” is pruned to a plain background with different variations of grey

colour. “Beckett man” changes from a lone individual (character) into an everyman

(player) devoid of individualism, whose face is either indistinguishable from other

faces in the play, half seen, or reduced to specific body parts, such as the mouth, in Not

I, or the hands in Nacht und Träume. In these types of plays, as in one of his titles, A

Piece of Monologue, dialogues morph into mechanical self-repeating pieces of

monologues. In the minimal surrounding of such plays, sparse props and brisk phrases

begin to take on a highly symbolic role. Even the smallest sighs, as in Rockaby or

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breathing in Breath might assume a central place in a play. Repetition thus becomes

even more pronounced. It can be marked by a whistle sound, as in Act Without Words I,

in order to signal different things to the main character, or by a goad, as in Act Without

Words II, which ruptures the sacks with people to emphasize their responses. Moreover,

if, in major plays repetition stresses monotony, in short pieces it rather breaks it, and

functions to establish changes. In Come and Go, the leaving and arriving of three

women sitting on a bench-like seat breaks the play into three facile parts, which repeat,

with slight, but very meaningful alterations. The fact, that the plays are short dramatizes

repetition and makes it easier to grasp. Some characters in short plays become aware of

repetition themselves: “Flo: I can feel the rings” (Come and Go 355); some stay

unconscious. One short play What Where is to a great extent based on repetition. At its

beginning, the voice of Bam, seemingly the main character and a director of the play,

speaking with a small megaphone, says:

We are the last five.

In the present as were we still.

It is spring.

Time passes.

First without words.

I switch on. (470)

“Players as alike as possible” (469), named Bem, Bim, and Bom reappear to be asked

questions and given orders by Bam:

Bam: Well?

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Bom: [Head bowed throughout.] Nothing.

Bam: He didn‟t say anything?

Bom: No.

Bam: You gave him the works?

Bom: Yes.

Bam: And he didn‟t say anything?

Bom: No.

Bam: He wept?

Bom: Yes.

Bam: Screamed?

Bom: Yes.

Bam: Begged for mercy?

Bom: Yes.

Bam: But didn‟t say anything?

Bom: No. (472)

As time passes through summer, autumn and winter, some new allegorical questions

arise, like “what” and “where”, however, none of them are ever answered. At the end

when all characters seem to be dead, Bam reappears, and his voice from a loudspeaker

says: “That is all. Make sense who may” (476). Without the instrument of repetition in

Beckett‟s works this sense would be very hard to grasp.

Beckett well understood the value of technology and its potential for

innovation in theatre. With that, sound, image and lighting effects afforded new

experimentation in the tool of repetition. Beckett‟s works for radio, like Rough for

Radio I, Rough for Radio II, Embers, Words and Music, Cascando, use various

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auditory techniques. In the radio plays, being limited to sound only, Beckett makes a

full use of pauses, silences and music. “Theatre practice can never by pause or silence

effect a total cessation of impulses: only radio can” (Zilliacus 159). Pauses and silence,

which had always been an important part of Beckett‟s plays, take a central part in radio

productions.

The tempo of Mr. Rooney‟s [All That Fall] stick and his feet establishes

itself; it is repeated in the same way as Mrs. Rooney‟s footsteps earlier

on, in the sequence of four phrases, then – in the same tempo and

without any glossing over it – a purely percussive and unrealistic pattern

replaces it. The sudden jump from real to symbolic, unmodified by any

attempt to make the transition palatable, is in itself dramatic, and

registers emotionally as a turning-point in the play. From this point on,

we use the symbolic footsteps as a purely musical device, and

sometimes simply for the sake of their own musical effect. (McWhinnie

cited by Zilliacus 71)

Beckett gives pauses and silences repetitive structure, serving to illustrate Martin

Esslin‟s comment: “sound effects can be used most tellingly in radio drama, but only if

they have been orchestrated into the total structural pattern, if they play the part of a

refrain, a recurring image...” (Esslin cited by Zilliacus 71). The same structural pattern

is used in Krapp’s Last Tape, which due to its extensive use of a tape recorder can be

included into the radio plays; tape allows Beckett to increase the effect of repetition.

Here, not only does Krapp‟s real voice keep repeating the same stories of his life, but

also his recorded voice from the past. As the play was written in the last stage of

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Beckett‟s life, some images and motifs now reappear from his earliest works. For

instance, the name Krapp comes from Beckett‟s first play, Eleutheria.

The highest mastery of repetition that Beckett achieves occurs in his film

productions: Film and Quad. In Film Beckett plays with Bishop Berkeley‟s „Esse est

percipi” (to be is to be perceived). The main character has a specific vision, E which is

his eye, represented by the camera‟s lens, and O = himself, who is being chased. The

utmost effect of repetition lies in changes of perspective, to visions represented of other

living creatures (cat, dog, parrot and a fish), non-living objects (window, glass, picture)

and finally himself – the protagonist. All of these visions are intertwined with each

other, making escape virtually impossible. Here, words are substituted by a vista, hence

all repetition in Film is optical as well. An even more allegorical and condensed

function of repetition occurs in Quad, “A piece for four players, light and percussion”

(451) in which “The players (1, 2, 3, 4) pace the given area, each following his

particular course” (451). In Quad Beckett‟s move towards abstractness reaches

perfection. The four players do not utter a word; pauses and silence balance sounds of

percussion and steady, synchronized walking tempos. Players do not move chaotically,

but according to a very specific series represented by numbers and geometric

coordinates. The tool of repetition in the play is based on mathematical combinations

and the doctrine of relativity. However, as with some kind of abstract painting, it is not

regularity, which matters, but a work of art composed of numbers, arrows, letters,

latitudes and traces. Players in Quad are moving from an outer square to an inner one.

Taking for granted that they came out of a bigger, invisible quadrate a viewer can feel

that such quadrates are infinite, although the number of movements within them, as in

life, are always mathematically restricted.

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The tool of repetition in each of the three kinds of Beckett‟s plays can be

summed up by directions from Words and Music “As before or only very slightly

varied” (294). As it has been shown, Beckett‟s repetition is never the same and has

specific patterns of development. Circularity revolves not only within single acts but

also from act one to act two, from one play to another, from one form to a different one.

These differing manifestations speak against the argument that Beckett‟s repetition

works in a closed system. The oeuvre works as closed system; however, it has a

perpetual motion quality, which allows it to go beyond itself.

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Conclusion

This thesis has been concerned to show Samuel Beckett‟s distinction from typically

associated writers, as revealed by the novel use of repetition in his plays. Chapter One

presented Martin Esslin‟s definition of the theatre of the absurd, emphasizing an

evolutionary manner in its development, rather than a revolutionary one. From that

point of departure, consideration moved to a comparison and contrast of Beckett‟s

oeuvre with the basic fundamentals of the theatre of the absurd, concluding Beckett‟s

difference from it. Chapter Two looked at Beckett‟s drama beyond the frames of the

theatre of the absurd, showing most aspects of his writing are held in repetition.

Finally, in Chapter Three, repetition is evinced in fact, as the very dominating tool of

Samuel Beckett‟s writing.

In exploring Beckett‟s writing, only a few aspects are shown to be fully

characteristic of the theatre of the absurd. Most other features, distinctly Beckett, go

beyond Martin Esslin‟s conception – a heuristic that pivoted on functions of the

theatre‟s prior development, and more concerned with responses to Beckett‟s works,

than with the works themselves. In contemporary criticism, viewing Beckett through

the prism of the theatre of the absurd, can lead to unnecessary over-interpretations or,

on the other hand, it might narrow the potential interpretations to the limits of its own

range. Inasmuch as Beckett‟s oeuvre forms a sort of unified whole, based on the tool of

repetition, then, this repetition starts to lose its meaning as soon as any fragment is

considered in the context of the theatre of the absurd, and other associated authors, as

their works do not resonate with Beckett in the way intended by the critics. The theatre

of the absurd necessarily drives any potential study of Beckett‟s works toward a

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comparison with other authors and works in frames typifying the theatre. Therefore, the

study of Beckett, if it is to be done justice, is in need of being taken a step further from

what has become a conventional perspective. The tool of repetition is proposed herein

as that potential step.

67

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