Masarykova univerzita Filozofická fakulta Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky Magisterská diplomová práce

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, 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.

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 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 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.

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). 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 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 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.

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.

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 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 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?

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 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 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.

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.

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 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.

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