Masarykova univerzita Filozofická fakulta Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky Magisterská diplomová práce

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)
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 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-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 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)
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 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 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.

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 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 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: “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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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:
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 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 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 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, 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.