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Letteratura Inglese III
SAMUEL BECKETT (Dublin, 1906 - Paris, 1989)
- Born in Dublin in an Anglican family
- 1923-27 he studies Modern Literature at Trinity College
- 1928-30 teaches at École Normale Superieur in Paris. He meets Joyce and becomes his secretary
- 1929 he publishes his first work, a critical essay entitled “Dante…Bruno… Vico…Joyce” in which he defends Joyce from the charge of obscurity
- 1939 settles in France, although it is at war and takes part in the French Resistance WORKS The Joycean Phase (1930-44)
- More Pricks than Kicks (1934) → Short story collection
- Murphy (1938) → Novel
- late 1930s he starts writing poems in French → this leads to a new more simplified style → he wants to write about the basic needs of man and the use of French prevents him from being too artificial The Golden Phase (1945-61) - THEATRE OF THE ABSURD
- En Attendant Godot / Waiting for Godot (1948-49)
- Fin de Partie / Endgame (1955-57)
- Krapp’s Last Tape (1958)
- Happy Days (1961)
- Molloy (1951)
- Malone meurt / Malone Dies (1951)
- L’innomable / The Unnamable (1953) → Interior monologue, destruction of plot and character, destruction of time and space The Minimalist Phase (1960s-1989)
- Play (1962)
- Breath (1969) → lasts 35 seconds, it has no characters, themes of memory and aloneness
THE FORMATIVE CONTEXT:
Beckett grew up and lived in the Age of Catastrophe (1914-1950), what is believed to be the darkest and most brutalised century in recorded history. Samuel Beckett’s adolescence in Ireland coincided with the Anglo-Irish War and then the Irish Civil War, when in France he partook in the struggle against Nazi power in Paris. The aftershock these experiences left behind through the values, beliefs and attitudes of the societies in which he lived inevitably passed through and moulded his creative intelligence. The horrors of history helped shaping his pessimistic view of human condition. POETIC of SUBTRACTION → Impoverishment, lack of knowledge His way was subtracting rather than adding. The NON-PHILOSOPHY: Beckett was rejecting the Joycean principle the knowing more was a way of creatively understanding the world and controlling it. In future, his work would focus on poverty, exile, failure and loss.→ man as a ‘non-knower’ and a ‘non-can-er’ THE PESSIMISM
- ANTI-NATALISM: transmitting life means transmitting pain, “the original sin…having to be born”
- NATURE IS EVIL (or INDIFFERENT): Man’s condition has never been so monstrous THE MIND AND THE BODY Critics have traditionally considered Beckett as the point of arrival of the philosophical debate on the mind-body relationship. Cartesian Dualism: the mind is non-physical Monism: mind and body are inseparable In Beckett’s works the mind does not have complete dominion over the body, the world is within the mind but this is not omnipotent, it cannot govern the body as a god masters a machine. The body is and overwhelming presence, it suffers and add a burden to the pain of existence.
Martin Esslin → the theatre of absurd tend toward “a radical devaluation of language”, language never explains, it’s only functional: expresses an aspiration to do something, but it’s never realized. “what happens on the stage transcends, and often contradicts, the words spoken by the characters”. “[…] there are no easy solutions to the mysteries of existence, because ultimately man is alone in a meaningless world”. Pseudo-couples → they’re not real couples, there’s no real communication between the components of the couples, they’re kind of forced to be together. They’re kept together by the intentions of causing damage to one another, they use language to hurt or tease each-other. Their mutuality/togetherness is unavoidable and painful at the same time. But the members of the couples eventually find meaning in each-other, and they do not commit suicide. THE ABSURD, now
- 2011 M.Y. Bennet tried to reconsider the idea of absurd (“Reassessing the
Theatre of the Absurd”) “The Theatre of Absurd is not about absurdity, but about making life meaningful given our absurd situation. […] Because of the plays’ parabolic nature —metaphor, paradox and a move to disorder— the reader or audience member is forced to confront his or her worldview in order to create order out of the chaos presented in the plays.” E. Brater, “Rethinking Realism and a Few Other Isms” (1990) ↓ summed up the main features: pointless play, use of discontinuous dialogue, the set empty but filled with mysterious suggestion, the resolution that never comes, the effects of silence (and the tension that builds in a pause), extended monologue THE DRIVE TO SPEAK → Narro, ergo (non) sum
- THE RATIONAL LOGIC “Whereof one cannot speak, therefore one must be silent” L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-philosophicus (1921)
- THE ABSURDIST LOGIC completely adverse to logic philosophy Language is not a saving tool, it’s the only way we have to say we exist. “I am obliged to speak. I shall never be silent. Never.” -S. Beckett, The Unnamable
ENDGAME (1955-57)
Genre: TRAGICOMEDY Dramatic typology: one-act play, absurdist farce Poetics: late/neo/post-modernism Beckett, the last modernist or the first postmodernist writer CHARACTERS: 2 Pseudo-couples NELL → typical name for a horse & NAGG → word to describe a worn-out horse + verb to nag They both live in bins and have no legs. HAMM → amputated form of Hamlet + suggest the flesh of the pig & CLOV → clove, a spice used to cure ham Hamm is blind and stuck in his wheelchair and Clov is his servant and he struggles to walk. The physical disabilities and mutilations of the characters mean they cannot move freely, but the ‘something’ that is taking its course suggests they are also trapped in a deterministic or mechanical system. ANXIETY and ANGUISH acute anxiety attack ≠ despair (or hope) or struggle against death ↓ reaction to the danger of object loss, Hamm fears of losing Clov Freud: anxiety after all is only a perception of possibilities of anxiety SETTING Beckett’s notes a bunker/skull the windows resemble eye sockets there’s nothing but a wasteland outside
THE BEGINNING: “brief laugh” Clov: [fixed gaze, tonelessly] Finished, it’s finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished. [Pause.] Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there’s a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap. [Pause.] I can’t be punished any more. ↓ The pain is finished, but the play is just the beginning → paradox Theme of punishment: the original sin is having been born. Life is a punishment. “I can’t be punished anymore” = I don’t wanna live anymore Misery is boring to Hamm, he’s so used to pain that he doesn’t feel it anymore. Hamm (like Hamlet) has grand words for grand feelings. “Can there be misery loftier than mine?” Hamm: What time is it? → Timelessness Clov: The same as usual. Hamm: Have you not had enough? Clov: Yes! [Pause.] Of what? Hamm: Of this…this…thing. Clov: I always had. [Pause.] Not you? Hamm: [Gloomily.] Then there’s no reason for it to change. Clov: It may end. [Pause.] All life long the same questions, the same answers. ↓ The absurdity of life is unnamable OUTSIDE - ANTINATALISM : life and death are equally bad Hamm: Outside of here it’s death.[Pause.] Alright, be off. [Exit Clov. Pause.] We’re getting on. Nagg: Me pap! Hamm: Accursed progenitor! FARCE - NOSTALGIA Nagg: Kiss me. Nell: We can’t. Nagg: Try. [Their heads strain towards each other, fail to meet, fall apart again.] Nell: Why this farce, day after day? [Pause.] Nagg: I’ve lost me tooth. Nell: When?
Nagg: I had it yesterday. Nell: [Elegiac] Ah yesterday! LONELINESS and PAIN Clov complains about the excruciating pain in his legs. Hamm repeatedly demands his painkillers, until Clov tells him there’s no more: “You’ll never get any more painkillers.” and Hamm’s reaction is a scream of panic. Nagg and Nell, even though they have genuine affection for each other, are physically isolated in their trash bins. Nagg’s tale of the Tailor → God’s a blunderer This is an attempt to make Nell (and the audience) laugh, but his performance is so poor that one is forced to agree with Nell that “it’s not funny”. And his own laughter at the conclusion of the story is “a high forced laugh” which reinforces Nell’s definition, he’s not laughing at the ‘joke’ but at his own incompetence and, hence, his own unhappiness. CEREBRAL FARCE: emotions are impossible in the age of intellectualism Neither Modernists not Postmodernists are allowed to express naively their emotions. The former coldly distance themselves from emotions, the latter filter them through quotations and literary references. Hamm: A heart, a heart in my head. [Pause.] Nagg: [Soft.] Do you hear him? A heart in his head! [He chuckles cautiously.] Nell: One mustn’t laugh at those things, Nagg. Why must you always laugh at them? Nagg: Not so loud! Nell: [Without lowering her voice.] Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Nagg: Are you crying again? Nell: I was trying. Trying to feel something, trying to live.
- When Clov looks outside there’s nothing on the horizon, it’s grey It’s not night nor day → timelessness
The end is the same as the beginning: Clov has not left after all and Hamm is covered by the handkerchief. Nothing is changed. ↓ Cyclical, repetition, stasis
- ORDINARINESS OF EVENTS, SIMPLY A FAMILY Nagg and Nell’s memories of youth, when their tandem bicycle crashed and they lost their legs → their past and their pain has become their own entertainment now
- HIDDEN LITERALITY OF LANGUAGE “What in God’s name could there be on the horizon?” Beckett wants to “escape connotation, rhetoric, the non-cognitive, the irrationality and awkward memories of ordinary language, in favour of the directly verifiable, the isolated and perfected present” Clowns, not actors, not characters “To the extent the figures up there are not actin, but undergoing something which is taking its course, they are not characters. And we could also say: the words are not spoken by them, to one another; they are occurring to them. It is a play performed not by actors, but by sufferers. Clowns. Beckett had discovered how clowns would talk if they were given the power of speech, and if they couldn’t be slapped anymore (nobody has the strength), or trip (they can’t walk), or do prat-falls (they can’t sit). Their words take the falls for them, since they have to fall.” - Stanley Cavell
