- 1 For more on this, see Emmanuel Jacquart’s Théâtre de dérision, dating as early as 1974. For an upda (...)
- 2 J.L Styan’s ground-breaking 1968 work The Dark Comedy provided excellent arguments in defense of se (...)
- 3 One welcome exception to this being Nathalie Lempereur’s recent Arthur Adamov, Ici et Maintenant : (...)
- 4 A few notable exceptions exist, such as Stanley Cavell’s 1976 reading of Beckett’s Endgame in Cavel (...)
1This article proposes an analysis of how comedy upends language in several plays by two post-war European playwrights, Arthur Adamov and Samuel Beckett, both grouped under the moniker of the Theatre of the Absurd by Martin Esslin back in 1961. From the subjectivity and solitude of language to the power of language to terrorize and dehumanize, the post-war European theatre associated with the concept of the absurd is often interpreted as presenting language as an alienating force. In Michel Pruner’s description: “Sclerotic, disarticulated, unsuitable, language functions as the vehicle of all approximation and all contradiction. Instead of expressing, it betrays; instead of encouraging communication, it isolates individuals. It reveals the absurd” (Pruner 2005, 129). While heartily concurring with the recognition that language functions very differently from former dramatic models in these plays, this study operates from the perspective that the prolific conflict around how the term ‘absurd’ has been associated with the plays of Adamov and Beckett and several other post-war European playwrights is due primarily to a strong anti-comedy prejudice. In the absence of any consensus or clear understanding of how serious comedy could adequately account for the bleak landscapes of the plays or their lack of harmonious resolution, attempts were made to offer alternatives to the tragic genre that nonetheless preserved tragedy’s basic tenants. The wide-spread dissatisfaction with the notion of the absurd as an adequate substitute1 speaks to the persistent need to embrace a deeper and darker understanding of serious comedy as the ironically more appropriate genre for the post-war context.2 While attention to Adamov’s plays has waned over the past fifty years,3 studies of Beckett’s theater remain profuse yet firmly inscribed along the tragico-absurd continuum.4 By way of an alternative, this study offers a close examination of how comic mechanisms operate in plays by both Beckett and Adamov in order to open new interpretive possibilities concerning comedy’s relation to despair and meaninglessness.
- 5 Glasgow comments on “the proximity of the poetic and the comic Muses” in Madness, Masks, and Laught (...)
2As we all know, language lends itself to repetition. Not only language, for that matter, but concepts as well – everything we try to pin down and identify – exist by way of repetition. This reliance of language upon repetition, as R. D. Glasgow points out, leads to the multiplication of minimal patterns, “constituted by repetitions in its phonological properties, the finite number of sememes being ‘represented’ by an even smaller number of phonemes, or minimal phonetically distinctive articulations of sound” (Glasgow 1995, 74). When language draws attention to itself, it multiplies these repetitions into patterns, creating either a comic or a poetic effect.5 In not only comedy but also poetry, linguistic repetition is thus exaggerated in order to suggest that language masks a meaning that lies beyond the rational formula Identity = Repetition. And this masking, in addition to being eminently theatrical, also functions as a meaningful construction. As Nietzsche claimed, “Every philosophy also conceals a philosophy; every opinion is also a hideout, every word also a mask” (Nietzsche 1989, 289). The dual nature of semiotics can thus provide insight into the opposing yet closely intertwined genres of tragedy and comedy, between poetry and limericks. Remarking on the similarities between poetry and comic wordplay, Jean Emelina insists that their frontiers are dangerously close: “Nul ne peut dire à partir de quel moment on bascule du poétique dans le comique, de l’émotion au sentiment de parodie, et les risques de ‘dérapages’ sont toujours possibles [. . .] Du poète au clown, le pas, de façon préméditée ou involontaire, est vite franchi” (Emelina 1991, 121). Thus while the term of “the absurd,” about which much has been written, may ultimately prove limited in its application to these plays (and was rejected by the playwrights themselves), I would like to show how the its primary characteristics of inversion and reversal still proves useful in analyzing the operative force of these plays. As suggested above, the limitations can be understood as belonging to the attempts to propose a new form of the tragic rather than embrace an inversion and reversal of the genre itself.
- 6 And here “nonsense literature” inevitably comes to mind, in particular Lewis Carroll’s world as he (...)
- 7 In Theatre of Chaos, William Demastes claims it is no accident that the advent of surrealism coinci (...)
- 8 As Claude Mauriac has pointed out, language has a way of carrying the writer away with the logic of (...)
- 9 Jan Kott writes, “The Fool knows that the only true madness is to regard this world as rational [. (...)
3As far as language is concerned, the deeper meaning suggested by semantic subversion is completely unknowable and thus purely negative. As Miguel de Unamuno has noted, “All philosophy, then, is essentially philology. And philology, with its great and fruitful law of analogical formations, gives its head to chance, and to the irrational, to the absolutely incommensurable” (Unamuno 1972, 337). As soon as it is symbolized by language, being is plunged into the confusion between the real and the symbolic. In open recognition of this, comedy posits no hypothesis of a “real self” that could emerge independently of role playing; it merely reveals the emptiness of our constructions and reduces them to repetitive gibberish.6 The parallels between comedy and psychoanalysis are here apparent with post-structuralists such as Lacan claiming that “all language is a slip of the tongue, all communication is a skeptical joke, and every utterance is invaded and pervaded by the unconscious” (qtd in Glasgow 1995, 98). The comic by no means participates in the age-old attempt to distinguish the signifier from the signified, any more than it tries to distinguish appearance from the thing-in-itself. It does not wish to dissolve language into vacuous relativity or to assert absolute meaning. These attempts are by definition doomed since language is something borrowed in the first place, and our self-constructions merely adaptations of the categories, meanings, and names which we have adopted from outside sources.7 Comedy’s only ambition is to repeat the inadequacy of language to signify the unknowable. Since it often uses language to do this, the pun repeats itself.8 The philosophical language of the clown or fool sounds dangerously close to madness; his language is one of riddles, rhymes, and unsolved innuendoes.9
4Unmasking the nonsense of sense is thus often heralded as comedy’s singular contribution to literary articulations of human experience. According to scholars such as Alenka Zupančič, however, the nonsense component of language behaves more often than not as a midwife in the act of sense creation. To reduce comedy to the revelation, recognition and/or rejection of our missed attempts at communicating is to ignore the vibrant excesses of wit involved in puns, slips, and other forms of word play. Following the rhythms of repetition, parallel discourse, and the dissolution of intelligible language altogether, this study examines these scripts as plays on absence – palindrome cases of failures to communicate the futility of communication. While frequently referencing philosophical discourse, these dramatists openly resist allegiance to a discernible, rational system by constantly inverting the high and the low and reversing the situation between the characters. By positing words against meaning and surface against depth, these plays do nothing less than bring the dead to life, again.
5In Beckett’s theatre, for example, while bringing the content of the play as close as artistically possible to stark minimalism, he reveals comedy’s potential to take despair seriously and adapt to the situation while neither properly renouncing nor resisting the facts. By way of a mere pause, absence, or delay, Beckett’s theatre manages to dispel the force of tragic despair. This minute attention to rhythm and temporality crosses both form and content, reversing the hierarchies of substance. In Beckett’s dialogues for example, the emphasis is routinely displaced from what is being said or acted to what is not happening and not being said: VLADIMIR: “Say something!” ESTRAGON: “I’m trying.” [Long silence.] VLADIMIR: [In anguish.] “Say anything at all!” (Beckett 2006, 59). This vacuity of language is further reinforced by the deliberate distinction Vladimir makes between speaking and thinking. Whereas the value of language is typically gauged by the substance granted it by thought or meaning, Beckett’s characters adamantly invert this ranking. The capacity for thinking can be lost, as when Vladimir declares “We’re in no danger of ever thinking any more” (Beckett 2006, 59) and suggests that it was not necessarily useful in the first place:
VLADIMIR: Oh, it’s not the worst, I know.
ESTRAGON: What?
VLADIMIR: To have thought.
ESTRAGON: Obviously.
VLADIMIR: But we could have done without it. (Beckett 2006, 59-60)
6However, the imperative to speak remains:
ESTRAGON: That wasn’t such a bad little canter.
VLADIMIR: Yes, but now we’ll have to find something else. (Beckett 2006, 60)
7Moreover, the capacity for thinking is not only undesirable, but implicated as directly responsible for murderous acts:
VLADIMIR: What is terrible is to have thought.
ESTRAGON: But did that ever happen to us?
VLADIMIR: Where are all these corpses from?
ESTRAGON: These skeletons.
VLADIMIR: Tell me that.
ESTRAGON: True.
VLADIMIR: We must have thought a little. (Beckett 2006, 60)
8Beckett cannot overemphasize his point. Far from the call to create a coherent discourse or a theoretical examination, the only act left to be performed amid the ghosts of countless corpses is to find something to say while waiting. Much has been written about this imperative to speak which is more than implicit in Beckett’s works. Confronted by Niklaus Gessner as to the contradiction of using words if words cannot convey meaning, Beckett famously replied, “Que voulez-vous, Monsieur ? C’est les mots ; on n’a rien d’autre” (qtd in Esslin 2004, 85). Concerning Beckett’s use of words, Cavell asks:
Is there a contradiction between Beckett’s “obvious conviction” about words and his going on to use them? One could say: He doesn’t use them just any way; and even; He doesn’t use them at all (for example, to promise, to threaten, to pray, to apologize – the things words are used for) or sees how far he can go in not, in not saying more than the words. (Cavell 1976, 161)
- 10 For more on this concept, see Ricks 1995.
9Carefully distinguishing between words and thoughts, Beckett differentiates the act of speaking from the act of thinking, as Lucky’s nonsensical speech absurdly demonstrates. Repeatedly, Beckett’s characters comically differentiate between what it means to speak and what it means to think, consistently placing the emptiness of words in a hierarchy above the pretension of thinking, or what Beckett calls “a syntax of weakness.”10
10Beckett also wrote several plays in which he dispensed with words altogether. So, while as a novelist and playwright, Beckett is clearly a man of words, his use of language consistently strives to expose the deficiencies of words rather than to laud their meaningfulness. However, I would argue that many of his plays adopt a comic vision specifically because he does not posit language against some abstract notion of pure meaning, but exposes how, despite all the words that would annul meaning, it is precisely the impossible occurrence of life among the ashes that gives our existence its comic resilience.
11In Krapp’s Last Tape, for example, we are forewarned as to the slippery and comical nature of language by the metaphorical mime with the banana skin that opens the first scene. The reel of tape that Krapp mistakenly takes out of the drawer while searching for the banana will send him reeling in ways unmistakably comparable to the classic silent clown routine. The expectation of comic irony is immediately confirmed by the first ledger entries that indiscriminately mix the high and the low, from Krapp’s mother’s death to his improved bowel condition to a memorable equinox. This concurrence of the solemn grave with bodily waste with the celestial heavens culminates in a farewell to love, which presumably combines all three. We are soon led to understand that Krapp has a compulsion to eat bananas and suffers from chronic constipation, another hilarious juxtaposition that mirrors his consumption and indigestion of language, not least indicated in the phonetic resonance of his name. These unexpected combinations continue throughout the play in telegraphic form: “Last illness of father. Flagging pursuit of happiness. Unattainable laxation” (Beckett 2006, 218) combined with occurrences we have been warned not to expect, as when Krapp insists on his lack of any propensity to sing – “Shall I sing when I am her age, if I ever am? No. [Pause.] Did I sing as a boy? No. [Pause.] Did I ever sing? No” – only to burst into song shortly afterwards (Beckett 2006, 218). In counterpart to these unexpected occurrences, the words we are given to expect strangely fail to appear, leaving the spectator hanging after following the building of suspense. The recorded account repeatedly seems to arrive at its primary revelation, only to be suddenly switched off by Krapp, clearly determined to prevent the great insight from sounding forth:
The vision at last. This I fancy is what I have chiefly to record this evening, against the day when my work will be done and perhaps no place left in my memory, warm or cold, for the miracle that . . . [hesitates] . . . for the fire that set it alight. What I suddenly saw then was this, that the belief I had been going on all my life, namely – [KRAPP switches off impatiently, winds tape forward, switches on again] – great granite rocks the foam flying up in the light of the lighthouse and the wind-gauge spinning like a propeller, clear to me at last that the dark I have always struggled to keep under is in reality my most – [KRAPP curses, switches off, winds tape forward, switches on again] – unshatterable association until my dissolution of storm and night with the light of the understanding and the fire – [KRAPP curses louder, switches off, winds tape forward, switches on again] – my face in her breasts and my hand on her. (Beckett 2006, 220)
12Once again, Beckett is intentionally downplaying deep meaning or profound significance as the primary reason for using words. Krapp’s behaviour throughout the play repeatedly confirms the surface value of words: he stops the recording to decipher the definition of the word “viduity” with a fascination that all-too-obviously belies his lack of interest in the narration of his own mother’s death in which that word was being used. His childish glee in pronouncing the word “spool” also proves that meaning has been displaced by the sheer sound of words: “Box . . . three . . . spool . . . five [He raises his head and stares front. With relish.] Spool! [Pause.] Spooool! [Happy smile. Pause.]” (Beckett 2006, 216). In case any doubt remains as to the displacement of meaning, it is dispelled by Krapp’s annoyance when the recording sets up speech as providing a revelatory moment of insight. In the end, making a new recording on the occasion of his 69th birthday, Krapp notes his newfound delight at the pronunciation of the word “spool” as one of the year’s highlights, further emphasizing how meaning is now clearly located for him upon the surface: “Revelled in the word spool. [With relish.] Spooool! Happiest moment of the past half million” (Beckett 2006, 222). Another superficial layer of comic significance in this play is the near confusion of Krapp with the tape recorder which speaks in his stead, reciting his lines while serving as a surrogate memory. The Bergsonian encrusting of the mechanical upon the living is once again upended as Krapp returns to the recording, or spool, as literally to the last remnants of his life. In the same way, the recording hollows the words, reducing them to ribbon on a spool in the hands of a constipated speaker, compulsively consuming bananas, whose outer skin can cause one to come into close and unexpected contact with the floor.
13That Beckett’s dialogue adopts the comic form straight from a clown routine of rapid-fire tit-for-tat peppered with slapstick moments, double-entendres, and punchlines indicates that he is distancing himself as far as possible (in form as well as content) from attempts to analyse or to apply discursive reasoning to the incomprehensible. By focusing on the form of an idea rather than its content, Beckett suggests that our failure to provide answers may in fact be our greatest accomplishment. While other genres may also reject discursive reasoning and analytical methods in an appeal to emotion, only comedy turns the glove of rationality inside out, using its own weight against itself. Far beyond considerations of whether or not resolution can be located on the horizon, Beckett’s theatre questions the validity of our intellectual horizons, staging the experience of the impossible in the here and now.
14In the same way, several plays by Arthur Adamov suggest that if the complete loss of meaning in language can be achieved, it can lead to understanding, echoing Socrates’ claim that knowing begins with knowing that one knows nothing. In L’Invasion, for example, the inherent obscurity of meaning, the contradictory nature of relationships, and the use of words to say what one doesn’t mean – everything in the play is actually used to reveal, not the tragic impossibility of meaning, but rather its comical impossible possibility. Invaded by the obsession to decipher a mysterious manuscript left by the defunct Jean, Pierre – Jean’s best friend – and his wife Agnès – Jean’s sister – are united by Pierre’s fixation on finding the right words. Although the task turns out to be an impossible one, the hopeful search for meaning among the words gives life and shape to their love, while more desperate attempts to impose order and reason drive Pierre to silence and isolation, and the couple to physical and emotional estrangement. The irony threaded through the play does not present the failure of words to provide meaning, but the uncanny ability of words to stand on their own – that is, to be meaningful despite themselves. Likewise, Agnès contrasts her ability to recognize her brother in the pages with her ability to make sense of the writing: “Je me trompe bien parfois sur un mot. Mais je retrouve toujours Jean. (Pause.) Ce qui me fait le plus de peine, ce sont ces pages où le crayon s’écrase, où les lignes tombent. C’est dans ces pauvres pages que je le revois le mieux !” (Adamov 1953, 61). The comedy lies not in the separation of words from meaning, but in the fact that the words still function even if considerably detached from their original intelligibility. As Zupančič puts it, “what is comical is not simply how words can move a very long way from sense-reality, how they can be completely detached from it, but, rather, the fact that, even in this detachment, they still function pretty well, and produce material effects of truth. What is comical is not simply their disjunction but, rather, the ‘impossible’ points of their joint articulation” (Zupančič 2008, 83).
15In a not-so-subtle use of metaphor, the protagonists’ attempt to reconstitute Jean’s work signifies the search for meaning in general. Tradel chooses to fill in the gaps with his own words, while Pierre condemns such a method as unfaithful to the truth. In reference to Tradel, Pierre remarks, “Il se fait la tâche facile. Quand il n’arrive pas à lire un mot, il l’invente. Pourvu que le sens y soit à peu près, il est content. Je n’arriverai jamais à lui faire comprendre qu’on n’a pas le droit de faire ça” (Adamov 1953, 62). Tradel, however, defends his method, stating that Jean simply fails to understand that they will never make it if they do not decide to recreate the missing bits, the parts beyond their grasp: “Jean “ne veut pas comprendre qu’on ne s’en sortira jamais si on ne se décide pas à recréer ce qui manque, ce qui nous échappe” (Adamov 1953, 68). Again, we have two protagonists whose perspectives are pitted against each other and framed as mirror images. Jean’s relation to the words of the text is oppressive, characterized as an exercise in futility in which no progress is ever made and resulting in Jean’s untimely demise. In the case of Tradel, on the other hand, despair does not quite add up, and an uncalculated, additional element to the equation, in the form of his little son, leaves the final scene clutching a handful of text. Tradel conceives of understanding as a creative act of interpretation, by nature only available to those who know how to follow their “intuition” (Adamov 1953, 69).
16Significantly, the character of Tradel is depicted comically: he belongs to a lower, working-class strata of society than does Jean, repeatedly provokes La Mère and L’Amie to mocking laughter, and relays his own point of view in an inadvertently and thus unmistakably comic way. Speaking of “infallible intuition,” Tradel explains his position in a way that invites ridicule on the surface, yet is at the same time profoundly paradoxical: “Je suis guidé par une intuition infaillible . . . D’ailleurs, cette intuition, elle se vérifie pour chaque page, avec la plus grande logique . . . (Ouvrant le cahier.) Ici, par exemple, je lis : ‘apparent’ et à côté, sans rien, ‘illusoire’. Je suis sûr qu’entre les deux, il faut un ‘donc.’ Si Jean avait eu le temps de se relire, il n’aurait jamais laissé un tel trou . . .” (Adamov 1953, 69). By transforming the juxtaposition of the words “apparent” and “illusory” into a conjunction, Tradel creatively participates in an interpretation of sense as the ambiguous association of potential opposites. The choice of words is itself a clin d’oeil to the very irony of meaning: what appears obvious is the least likely to be true, implying, in turn, that genuine meaning has a way of showing up where we least expect it to be. The significance of these lines goes straight to the heart of the comic perspective as the reversibility of surface and depth – or, in Hegelian terms, as the place where the particular and the universal coincide.
- 11 “Il [Jean] les haïssait [ses papiers]. Ils lui rappelaient trop tout ce qu’il avait souffert” (Adam (...)
17As with L’Employé in La Parodie, Tradel feels a great sense of urgency and is in constant movement, pacing up and down the apartment. He projects himself into the future with ease and anticipates great things. The pages invading the stage are a sign of suffering. Jean, the deceased author, “hated” them because they reminded him of all he had suffered.11 Moreover, he hated writing as well, and found the very act of holding a pencil painful: “Il [Jean] avait horreur d’écrire . . . Il y a eu des moments, à la fin, où tenir un crayon devenait pour lui un vrai supplice” (Adamov 1953, 65). Yet Pierre draws a corollary between the act of suffering and the act of writing which implies a parallel link between suffering and the possibility of meaning: “Bien sûr, il parlait de détruire ses papiers, souvent même. Mais c’était aux moments terribles, quand tout lui apparaissait d’avance inutile. S’il n’avait pas connu ces moments-là, je me demande s’il aurait jamais écrit” (Adamov 1953, 65). The link between suffering and the text continues in the character of Pierre, whose obsession with the deciphering of the text’s meaning causes him pain. Tradel, in contrast, shrugs off this association by suggesting that it is only the form that matters: Jean asks Tradel to make out a particular word which has cost him “infinite grief.” Not insignificantly, the word in question wavers between “suppliant” or “suffering.” In response to Jean’s insistence on finding the right word, Tradel asks: “Mais qui le connaîtra ? Qui se soucie de le reconnaître ? Et puis, qui oserait nous chicaner sur des erreurs que personne ne peut prouver, et dont rien ne prouve qu’elles sont des erreurs. D’ailleurs, ce qui compte avant tout pour le lecteur, c’est la beauté de l’expression” (Adamov 1953, 78). Here, Tradel questions meaning on a higher level: that of Pierre’s quest to surpass the immediately present meaning provided by any number of words. Cut off from all practical application or practical association – Pierre does not want to be reminded of a former conversation between himself and Tradel concerning the passage in question, neither does he intend to publish it for other people to read – the meaning Pierre seeks remains wholly theoretical and thus elusive. Whereas, for Tradel, their relation to each other as interpreters, as well as the relation of future readers to the text, are part and parcel of the text’s possible meaning. Tradel’s ultimate frustration with Pierre is not about the right words, but about Pierre’s refusal to publish the text so that others can receive it. In the end, having chased away the help of both his friend and his wife, then having withdrawn from all contact with the world, Pierre’s purely theoretical relation to the text is unsustainable, and he loses everything. His determination to extract absolute meaning from the “exact” word ironically leaves him reeling in relativity: “Pourquoi dit-on: ‘il arrive ?’ Qui est ce ‘il’, que veut-il de moi ? Pourquoi dit-on ‘par’ terre, plutôt que ‘à’ ou ‘sur’ ? J’ai perdu trop de temps à réfléchir sur ces choses” (Adamov 1953, 86). Ironically, the supposed transcendence of meaning breaks down; the text is only as meaningful as the mere words that compose it.
18Appropriately, the word Pierre uses to describe his despair regarding the meaning he has been unable to draw from the text indicates the lack of form: “Tout ce que j’ai tiré de l’ombre, ordonné, retrouvé, reste désespérément sans relief. Plat. Savez-vous, au juste, ce que c’est qu’une chose plate? Aplatie? Rejetée soudain hors de l’espace?” (Adamov 1953, 86). Having comme full circle, Pierre concludes: “Ce qu’il me faut, ce n’est pas le sens des mots, c’est leur volume et leur corps mouvant. Je ne chercherai plus rien. J’attendrai dans le silence, immobile” (Adamov 1953, 86). Understanding, in the end, that what he needs are the words without their meaning, this upheaval proves too much for him, and he retreats into silence.
- 12 For more, see Cohn 1987, 105-106. For Adamov’s own account of Chekhov’s influence on his writing, s (...)
19At the end, as if to drive his point home, Adamov has Agnès use words without their meaning, yet which still, as words, somehow function. She comes home asking to borrow the typewriter, while what she is really asking is to renew her relationship with Pierre. Adamov thought he had invented a new technique of indirect speech before realizing that Anton Chekhov had anticipated him (in having characters talk past each other while using seemingly innocent words to mean something else entirely).12 The implication that words in themselves are enough to provide meaning places the emphasis once again on the shape or practical function of language rather than on its theoretical essence.
20While mocking the supposed significance of words, comedy nonetheless pays homage to the inexplicable force of storytelling, recognizing its power to bring the dead word to life. Moreover, comedy emphasizes the compulsion that drives its characters to speak – without any hope for meaning, but simply the need to speak, to hear and to be heard. In other words, comedy’s affinity to the concrete is precisely what allows it to ignore the limitations of the real. The same goes for meaning. Reveling in the surface form or mere shape of words paradoxically frees meaning from the logical confines of language. Like our attempts to apply rational principles to language, the sensory mechanisms that we usually rely upon to interpret the world at large more often than not betray us.
21In Embers (as elsewhere), Beckett brings these aspects together in challenging the positive assumptions typically ascribed to the senses, depicting sound and sight as afflictions to be overcome rather than as useful faculties. The main character, Henry, engages in incessant talking in order to drown out the sound of the sea/see. He explains, “Today it’s calm, but I often hear it above in the house and walking the roads and start talking, oh just loud enough to drown it, nobody notices” (Beckett 2006, 254). By way of classic comic doubling that exposes the opposite, sound is pitted against sound in order to cancel each other out and achieve a kind of makeshift silence. Yet, as fervently as Henry seems to pursue it, silence is consistently equated with death and drowning. All one needs to do to drown out the sound of the sea is to immerse oneself in it, slipping one’s head under the surface, where “all is as quiet as the grave.” This insight comes from Ada, Henry’s companion, who remarks on the exposure of depth via a proliferation of surface. She points out that the noise of the sea is merely superficial: “It’s only on the surface, you know. Underneath all is as quiet as the grave. Not a sound. All day, all night, not a sound” (Beckett 2006, 261). Henry’s father, who can no longer answer him, is presumed to have drowned and is described as a blind and foolish old man in the opening lines. Moreover, the sea’s doubling as a grave is the precise reason why Henry cannot move away: “HENRY: And I live on the brink of it! Why? Professional obligations? (Brief laugh.) Reasons of health? (Brief laugh.) Family ties? (Brief laugh) A woman? (Laugh in which ADA joins.) Some old grave I cannot tear myself away from? (Pause.)” (Beckett 2006, 258). The strange compulsion to speak is thus depicted as a desperate ploy to keep the silence of death at bay. Henry must “drown it out,” yet at the same time cannot tear himself away from it, a point Ada makes in asking, “And if you hate it why don’t you keep away from it? Why are you always coming down here?” (Beckett 2006: 260). Yet actual faculties of sight and hearing seem strangely beside the point, like his blind father who was last seen staring at the sea. And so keeping away from the sound would apparently be of no use, as when Henry went all the way to land-locked Switzerland to get away from the sea and didn’t stop hearing it the entire time.
- 13 This passage has strange reverse similarities with the biblical account of the post-crucifixion exc (...)
22While Henry purports to use his voice to escape sound, he also seems to rely upon the sound of his own voice in order to command his body. The play opens with his repeated directives: “On!” “Stop!” and “Down!” (Beckett 2006, 253). At various moments throughout the play, he cries “Hooves!” followed by the corresponding sound. His story-telling powers also make other sounds and voices audible that either do not belong to the place or to the time of the play’s action. We hear sounds of Henry and Ada’s first sexual encounter along with the enhanced raging of the sea on that day long ago, followed by the voices of their daughter, Addie, and her piano teacher along with the sounds of the piano lesson, presumably happening concurrently to the play’s dialogue but in another location. Amid the wildly fluctuating space and time, Henry admits to needing to imagine someone to hear him, a comical thing for a character from a radio play to say. He self-reflexively realizes that his very existence depends upon this tenuous relation to an imagined auditor: “Stories, stories, years and years of stories, till the need came on me, for someone, to be with me, anyone, a stranger, to talk to, imagine he hears me, years of that, and then, now, for someone who . . . knew me, in the old days, anyone, to be with me, imagine he hears me, what I am, now” (Beckett 2006: 255). Although Henry articulates this need for another to hear him, his talking does not work convincingly to draw him closer to other people but mostly serves to drive others away. He recalls walking with Addie and trying to get rid of her so that he could talk: “I use to walk with her in the fields, Jesus that was awful, she wouldn’t let go of my hand and I mad to talk. ‘Run along now, Addie, and look at the lambs’ [Imitating ADDIE’s voice.] ‘No papa.’ ‘Go on now, go on.’ [Plaintive.] ‘No papa.’ [Violent.] ‘Go on with you when you’re told to look at the lambs!’ [ADDIE’s loud wail. Pause.]” (Beckett 2006, 256).13 He even goes so far as to equate talking with his wife to hell: “Ada too, conversation with her, that was something, that’s what hell will be like, small chat to the babbling of Lethe about the good old days when we wished we were dead” (Beckett 2006, 256).
- 14 This is a running gag in Beckett’s works. See the above discussion of Krapp’s Last Tape, in which K (...)
- 15 “HENRY: Ah yes, the waste. [Pause.] Words. [Pause.]” (Beckett 2006, 264).
23Beckett also subtly transposes the logorrhoea with diarrhoea,14 and, as if such a transposition of the high and low orifices were not enough, has Henry sarcastically call it prayer at the same time. Complaining that Henry’s constant chattering is bad for Addie, Ada recalls her asking, “Mummy, why does Daddy keep on talking all the time? She heard you in the lavatory. I didn’t know what to answer.” And Henry replies, “I told you to tell her I was praying. [Pause.] Roaring prayers at God and his saints” (Beckett 2006, 260). The play is packed with religious imagery, from the three-in-one of God the Father (Dad, Ada, Addie) to Henry’s last lines, which compare his impending agenda to Easter weekend. The lines of distinction between living and dead, speech and silence, presence and absence are blurred by words, these words offered up as prayers in the same breath that compares them to waste water.15 Henry’s relation to words does indeed seem mystical rather than practical, with his attempts to engage in conversation with the absent taking precedence over his connections with the present. Given that it is a radio play, there is also an unspoken reference to the unseen listeners across other waves, breaking into other places and other times.
24Nevertheless, words, sounds, and stories are indeed what bring Henry into contact with others, and his impulse to speak conjures ghosts both present and absent. They are the punctuating marks that allow him both to situate himself in a moment and to transgress time, as his parallel obsession with the marking, stomping, and beating of time indicates. Henry is hungry for words from others as well and begs Ada to continue her story: “Keep on, keep on! [Imploringly.] Keep it going, Ada, every syllable is a second gained” (Beckett 2006, 262). Despite the repeated recognition that sounds are only the surface of life, masking the deadly depths of silence, such surface values are clearly compelling enough, not only to engage in conversation, but even to speak without ceasing, inventing stories and imagining listeners. They are the sounds of dying, the embers that remain, the shifting, sucking restlessness of the surface. Yet as much as we may be drawn to the depths, it is the surface that moves us along. Words are what traverse temporalities and spatialities; they are what mark the time, second by second, syllable by syllable.
25Storytelling functions similarly in Waiting for Godot, as when Vladimir asks Estragon about the two thieves:
VLADIMIR: Ah yes, the two thieves. Do you remember the story?
ESTRAGON: No.
VLADIMIR: Shall I tell it to you?
ESTRAGON: No.
VLADIMIR: It’ll pass the time. (Beckett 2006, 14)
26At the end of the telling of this particular story, Vladimir expresses his amazement at the power of storytelling, remarking that of the four Evangelists present at the scene, only one mentions the saving of the thief. While Vladimir suggests that failing to tell a story should in principle cast doubt upon the story’s veracity or at least carry as much weight as the telling of a story, this is clearly not the case, as “everybody” not only believes one account, but fails even to be aware of the omissions – “It’s the only version they know” (Beckett 2006, 15). Thus, stories not only pass the time, but they also mark it indelibly with specific versions and points of view, affecting entire belief systems. The superficial surface of words carries humanity along. Comedy exposes this by finding meaning’s best illustration in its opposite – the occurrence of omission and silence. It is precisely by focusing on the fault lines of speech, its absences and its failures, that the tenacity and force of language is best revealed. Whatever words fail to do, however superficial their significance, they matter, to an overwhelming extent.
27The ambiguity of words is omnipresent in the plays, but beside the point. For example, when Vladimir interrogates the boy about his provenance – to Estragon’s commentary, “That’s all a pack of lies” (Beckett 2006, 48) – he simultaneously dismisses the veracity of the boy’s affirmations while commanding him to speak:
VLADIMIR: You don’t know me?
BOY: No, sir.
VLADIMIR: It wasn’t you came yesterday?
BOY: No, sir.
VLADIMIR: This is your first time?
BOY: Yes, sir.
[Silence.]
VLADIMIR: Words, words. [Pause.] Speak. (Beckett 2006: 49)
- 16 Repetition is frequently used against itself in this play, as when Vladimir’s insistence belies his (...)
28The refrain “Words, words” both reduces the boy’s speech to empty sounds (as though accusing them of being merely “words, words”) while also prompting the boy to speak further. The double occurrence of the term itself emphasizes the dual nature of the term’s significance as both dismissive and insistent. Followed by the command “Speak,” the dubious nature of the words in no way prevents the need to speak them.16
29Moreover, the fact of speaking the words takes clear precedence over their supposed sincerity, as when Vladimir urges Estragon to declare himself happy regardless of his actual feelings:
VLADIMIR: You must be happy, too, deep down, if you only knew it.
ESTRAGON: Happy about what?
VLADIMIR: To be back with me again.
ESTRAGON: Would you say so?
VLADIMIR: Say you are, even if it’s not true.
ESTRAGON: What am I to say?
VLADIMIR: Say, I am happy.
ESTRAGON: I am happy.
VLADIMIR: So am I.
ESTRAGON: So am I.
VLADIMIR: We are happy.
ESTRAGON: We are happy. [Silence.] (Beckett 2006: 55-6)
30Ironically, the words themselves have value over and above the speaker’s supposed intent, as if the act of utterance in itself bestows the only signification words could ever be expected to have. Beckett thus recognizes what religious and political creeds have long demonstrated: the act of speech has a life of its own. Words are never limited to the intention or sincerity of the speaker. The pure mechanics of the dead letter incorrigibly spring to life from their own strength and on their own terms. Beckett’s plays do not stage the futility of language to any other purpose than to highlight this uncontainable persistence of words.
- 17 See Esslin 2004, 328, 360.
- 18 One cannot help but think of Harpo, the mute member of the Marx brothers, whose silence was coupled (...)
31Thus to say the least, language behaves strangely in this form of post-war European theatre. Following upon the heels of the romantics and the naturalists, who integrated language into the theatre to an almost overpowering extent, the quasi-elimination of language was all the more surprising, but language is not, and has never been, necessary to theatre. Thus the term “pure theatre” has been applied to the Theatre of the Absurd, referring to the physical gestures of a timeless ritual unadulterated by a literary medium.17 For plays which forgo plot and action, while attempting to portray the psychological experience of despair, anxiety, and disgrace, the use of language would indeed seem indispensable. Yet silence is no newcomer to the comic. Since antiquity, mimes, silent clowns, and non-verbal gags have served to provoke laughter.18 One could go as far as to say that language gets in the way of laughter. Far from distancing the spectator, the creative lack of language pulls her into the dreamlike or nightmarish feel of the play and, as with silent film comedy, “repeatedly demonstrates the deep poetic power of wordless and purposeless action” (Esslin 2004, 335).
- 19 “‘Delight in nonsense,’ says Freud in his study of the sources of the comic, ‘has its root in the f (...)
- 20 See also Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark.
32The language in these plays is often altered beyond recognition, as in the custom of nonsense literature. Again, there is an unmistakable element of playfulness, despite the apparent disappointment in the available form. To Sigmund Freud, nonsense equalled freedom, a breaking away from “the straitjacket of logic.”19 To oppose freedom and logic, imagination and reality, or saying and meaning, verges on the blasphemous. It threatens existence at its core by purporting that there is no core, no essence, no immortality. That this be done lightly, with a wink and a smile, without taking itself seriously, is simply outrageous. At the same time, this is the only way it could be done. As Esslin writes: “The literature of verbal nonsense expresses more than mere playfulness. In trying to burst the bounds of logic and language, it batters at the enclosing walls of the human condition itself. [. . .] Verbal nonsense is in the truest sense a metaphysical endeavor, a striving to enlarge and to transcend the limits of the material universe and its logic” (Esslin 2004, 341–2). Esslin points out that nonsense literature uses incongruity as its signature mark by repeatedly associating opposing impulses, such as poetry with cruelty, or tenderness with destructiveness (Esslin 2004, 343). Lewis Carroll’s nonsense writings, for example, portray the desire to achieve freedom by exposing the arbitrary use of meaning and by refusing to accept its determining, crushing force. The affinities between Carroll’s and Beckett’s unhinging of words from their substance could allow us to imagine Vladimir getting along perfectly well with Humpty Dumpty from Alice in Wonderland, particularly the scene wherein he claims to be able to freely choose the meanings of the words he uses. The problem with making up one’s own meaning, however, is that it inevitably leads to an encounter with the inexpressible.20 It is in this void, in the unchartered territory of the cessation of language and at the limits of being, that a unity without identity can be creatively imagined. For if nonsense literature operates a rupture that liberates the Identity = Repetition dynamic, allowing words to unmoor themselves from their definitions, the loss of meaning also ushers in the loss of separate and distinct identities, uniting meanings in a radically different structure of relations.
33What gives this approach to language its affinity to comedy is its deliberate staging of the impossible, evidenced via language by bringing the dead word to life, creating fabrications that reflect reality more accurately than the objective facts. For comedy does not deny the meaninglessness or surface absurdity of language but employs them against language to emphasize the extraordinary occurrences of meanings that cannot be explained. By overtly demonstrating the nonsense of language, comedy shows how meaning happens as an impossibility, properly speaking. Moreover, the ability of words to bring the dead to life is emphasized so strongly as to be reversed into an inability to remain silent. After suggesting that the best thing would be for Vladimir to kill him, Estragon finally acquiesces: “In the meantime let us try and converse calmly, since we are incapable of keeping silent” (Beckett 2006, 58). Although the conversation is between the two characters, the incapacity to keep silent extends to and situates the characters in a larger community, unambiguously confusing the spectators with the deceased. Intertwining references to “all the dead voices” whispering, rustling, and murmuring like leaves or ashes, Beckett suggests that the imperative to utter forth extends beyond the realm of possibility and even beyond the grave. Referring to the “billions of others” killed, Estragon muses:
VLADIMIR: What do they say?
ESTRAGON: They talk about their lives.
VLADIMIR: To have lived is not enough for them.
ESTRAGON: They have to talk about it.
VLADIMIR: To be dead is not enough for them.
ESTRAGON: It is not sufficient.
[Silence.] (Beckett 2006, 58)
34Words are thus the inexhaustible, comic counterpart to death and dying. They are what bring back to life, what cannot be silenced, what refuses to be buried. The approach taken by the dramatists considered here reflects a comic structure, not by infusing meaning or happiness or redemption there where they are not to be found, but precisely by failing in the attempt to deny that these impossibilities happen in an irrepressible way. Comedy’s double movement is an eminently indirect one; it operates not by affirming but by doggedly failing to deny convincingly. And so to Vladimir’s declaration “This is becoming really insignificant,” Estragon despondently replies, “Not enough” (Beckett 2006, 64).