The Waiting Game: The Human Condition of Being in Time in the

The Waiting Game: The Human Condition of Being in Time in the
Theatre of Samuel Beckett
Abstract
He who has been waiting long enough will wait forever. And there comes
the hour when nothing more can happen and nobody can come and all is
ended but the waiting that knows itself in vain.
- Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies.
On Sunday, 4 January 1953, at the théâtre de Babylone in Paris, a play was about to
change the entire conception of contemporary theatre. This play was none other than
Samuel Beckett’s En Attendant Godot, a play which will later be referred to as a “play
in which nothing happens twice”. At first, this total spectacle was to make us laugh,
however, with reflexion, we were to feel a peculiar malaise, that of the human
condition of being in time.
Heir of Alfred Jarry and the surrealists, and despite always denying being part
of the movement, Martin Esslin has placed Beckett’s theatrical style within the
Theatre of the Absurd, noting both the absurdity of the situations of Beckett’s
protagonists, representative of mankind and, often reduced to mere puppets
surrounded by a colourless and barren decor, as well as the destruction of language
seen in his works, where gestures and words appear derisory, expressing nothing more
than vocal rhythms with the only aim of preventing the silence. However, there is
something much more fundamental to be taken from Beckett’s works which is the
idea that his theatre explores the torture, for consciousness, of being in time; that his
characters are forced to inhabit de-narrativised time, their panic generated in large
part by the sense that there will not be an ending.
Beckett’s most discussed play, En Attendant Godot illustrates the problem of
having to wait endlessly for the end of existence to begin and, Fin de Partie presents
the problem of having to wait endlessly for the end of existence to end. It is the vision
of an irrational and unrationalisable process - sheer waiting without end or outcome,
pure decay without the possibility of death. These are the stories of vagabonds,
cripples and mimes who desperately plunge into this futile pattern: waiting. These are
the stories of humanity, man trapped in an hourglass, the endless quest for an ending;
dramatic illustrations of the plight of modern man, of his purgatorial state of being in
time, of his confusion and his anguish.
Looking at Beckett’s earlier prose works, his essay on Proust, the works and
discourse of his contemporaries, his critics and his admirers, those both before and
after his era, this dissertation analyses the human condition of being in time in
Beckett’s theatre, in his trilogy of “waiting plays”. It shows us that his works have
much more to say than that of a simple spectacle created uniquely to make us laugh,
for, given his Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969, “his writing, which – in new forms
for the novel and drama – in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation”.
1
The Waiting Game: The Human Condition of Being in Time in the
Theatre of Samuel Beckett
Rien n’est si insupportable à l’homme que d’être dans un plein repos, sans
passions, sans affaire, sans divertissement, sans application. Il sent alors
son néant, son abandon, son insuffisance, sa dépendance, son
impuissance, son vide. Incontinent il sortira du fond de son âme l’ennui, la
noirceur, la tristesse, le chagrin, le dépit, le désespoir.1
-
Blaise Pascal, Pensées et Opuscules.
Writing in the seventeenth century, Blaise Pascal confronted his readers with a
bothersome thought, an exploration of the torture, for consciousness, of being in time,
an idea which would go on to influence numerous philosophical and literary figures,
most notably Beckett, as Jean Anouilh noted when he likened the first production of
Beckett’s En Attendant Godot to “a music-hall sketch of Pascal’s Pensées performed
by the Fratelini clowns.” 2 However, for Pascal, the néant 3 of man is balanced by the
toute-puissance of God and, as Colin Duckworth notes, one side of the equation has
disappeared for Beckett, leaving only Nothing – and to quote Beckett’s favourite
saying from Democritus: “Nothing is more real than nothing.” As a writer, Beckett’s
task was then to render “by very different means the nothingness of man seen sub
specie æternitatis, in relation to infinity.” 4 In this essay, I will explore how Beckett
deals with this notion, while taking into account the contribution critics, academics
and literary figures have made in dealing with this human condition, being in time,
represented in the Theatre of Absurd.
The post-war period, having witnessed banality shot through with atrocity,
questioned the meaning of being.5 Antonin Artaud believed the theatre is the place to
remind us of the true meaning of life:
Nous ne sommes pas libres. Et le ciel peut encore tomber sur la tête. Et le
théâtre est fait pour nous apprendre d’abord cela.6
Beckett was to create the apogée of this notion; “the dividing line [between old and
new theatre] is 1955, Waiting for Godot is the play.” 7 Time had long been a recurring
subject for Beckett. In 1930, he won the Hours Press prize for his poem Whoroscope
which presented the philosopher Descartes meditating on time, hens’ eggs, and
evanescence. His penetrating interpretation of Proust’s work analyses “Time creative
Pascal, Blaise, ‘Pensées’ (n.131), Pensées et opuscules, ed. Léon Brunschving (Paris: Classiques
Hachette, 1959), p.388. See also p.72 where Pascal presents a majestic visionary expression of infinity,
cited in Beckett, Samuel, En Attendant Godot: Piece en Deux Actes, ed. Colin Duckworth (London:
Harrap, 1966), [hereinafter Duckworth], p. xlii.
2
Arts, 27 January 1953. Quoted by Kern, Edith, ‘Drama stripped for Inaction’, Yale French Studies,
no.14, p.41.
3
A term defined by Sartre, Jean-Paul, L’Être et le Néant: Essai d’Ontologie Phénoménologique (Paris:
Gallimard, 1943).
4
Duckworth, supra note 1, p. xliii.
5
See Frankl, Viktor, Man’s Search for Meaning, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959), and Metman, Eva,
‘Reflections on Samuel Beckett’s Plays’, Journal of Analytical Psychology, January 1960.
6
Artaud, Antonin, ‘En Finir Avec Les Chefs-d’œuvre’, Le Théatre et Son Double, (Paris : Gallimard,
1938), p.123.
7
Alec Clunes cited in Bradby, David, Beckett: Waiting for Godot, (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), p.76.
1
2
and destructive” and concludes that “habit and routine are the cancer of time”,8 which
was later seen in En Attendant Godot, “a play in which nothing happens twice”,9 with
Vladimir’s comment “l’habitude est une grande sourdine”.10 Mercier et Camier
presents an illuminating disquisition on the tyranny and meaninglessness of time. In
Beckett’s Trilogy, we see the seeds of the two plays written in French, the carrying
over of timelessness and absence of activity.11 His 1931 Le Kid mocks time with two
stage alarm clocks, and clocks are a “recurrent prop” in later plays – Pozzo’s
grandfather gave him a watch, and on losing it he confuses its “tic tac” with his
heartbeat, Clov and Hamm listen to an alarm-clock, B schedules activities by his
watch in Acte Sans Paroles II, Krapp has a silver watch, even the bells of Oh Les
Beaux Jours are linked with time, “the shadow protagonist of his plays”.12
Herbert Blau’s 1957 production of En Attendant Godot, a play which had
bewildered its audience in the Théâtre de Babylone,13 in San Quentin penitentiary
highlighted the human experience of waiting the play exposed, “the empty kind of
waiting where ‘nothing to think about’ is a permanent threat, and every happening
offers both a promise and a disillusioning repetition of the daily round”.14 From the
second the light shone on Wagner’s “limbo-like set,” the audience of prisoners were
enthralled in a situation analogous to their own.15 For them, Godot was “society”, “the
outside”.16
We’re still waiting for Godot, and shall continue to wait. When the
scenery gets too drab and the action too slow, we’ll call each other names
and swear to part forever – but then, there’s no place to go! 17
This sense of metaphysical anguish at the absurdity of the human condition is found
consistently in Beckett’s work, including Le Calmant where the hero says “tout est
dit, tout sera à recommencer,” and can be likened to Camus’s Le Mythe de Sisyphe
where the figure of Greek mythology, condemned to repeat the same meaningless task
of pushing a boulder up a mountain only to see it roll down again, is related to man’s
futile search for meaning, unity and clarity in the face of an unintelligible world
devoid of God, eternal truths and values.18
Beckett’s characters are in greater despair than Camus’s “l’homme absurde”
or révoltés. Physically and psychologically disproportionate, they are less
distinguishable as individuals, thus enhancing their ability to express the struggle of
our common human condition. Like Kafka’s Josef K. in Der Process and K. in Das
Schloss, they show an inability to cope with the exterior world, yet their only concrete
8
Beckett, Samuel, Proust, (London: Chatto and Windus, 1931).
Mercier, Vivian, The Irish Times, 18 February 1956, p. 6.
10
Beckett, Samuel, En Attendant Godot, (Paris: Gallimard, 1952), [hereinafter Godot], p. 119.
11
Friedman, Melvin J., ‘The Achievements of Samuel Beckett’, Books Abroad, Vol.33, No.3,
(Summer, 1959), p. 280.
12
Cohn, Ruby, Just Play: Beckett’s Theatre, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), [hereinafter
Cohn], p. 34.
13
Cronin, Anthony, ‘A Play in Which Nothing Happens, Twice’, The Irish Independent, Sunday
January 5 2003. See also Esslin, pp.11 and 19.
14
Kennedy, Andrew K., ‘Action and Theatricality in Waiting for Godot’, Waiting for Godot and
Endgame, ed. Steven Connor, (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), p.16.
15
San Quentin News, San Quentin, Calif., 28 November 1957.
16
Theatre Arts, New York, July 1958.
17
San Quentin News, 28 November 1957.
18
Camus, Albert, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, (Paris : Gallimard, 1942). See also Nietzsche, Friedrich, Thus
Spoke Zarathrustra, ed. Robert Pippin, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). The work
deals with ideas such as the "eternal recurrence of the same" and the parable on the "death of God”.
9
3
wrong is “d’être né”. In Fin de Partie, Hamm cannot walk and Clov cannot sit. In
Godot, Vladimir cannot laugh as it forces him to urinate and Estragon’s feet hurt. Oh
Les Beaux Jours sees Winnie trapped neck-high in a mound of sand. Pas Moi is just a
mouth. Tous Ceux Qui Tombent sees Maddy Roony plagued with “rheumatism and
childlessness”, estranged from those whom she passes. Beckett’s famous precision
even makes sure the actors are in pain, as we see in Comédie where the actors face the
physical pain of kneeling for more than 20 minutes and the torture of a strong light
flashing on and off; unable to show expression in the face or voice during the
performance, what is transferred to the audience is repressed feelings. The characters
appear to be close to death, yet we never see them die. “The dead go fast,” 19 but the
protagonists are living a “last million last moments”.20 Just like Pinter’s characters “at
the extreme edge of their living, where they are living pretty much alone”,21 where
they are back in their rooms, confronted with the basic problem of being. Beckett has
broken the classical rules of tragedy by showing his characters in a long battle without
a harmonic resolution, similar to Dante’s Purgatorio, the eternal unchanging
sameness. Like the narrator in Comment C’est who continues crawling through the
endless mire, even though he knows this to be useless, Beckett’s characters always
possess the hope to go on, to keep their “rendez-vous”, whatever their condition, and
it is this alone that distinguishes them as humans, making them both ridiculous and
beautiful at the same time. In Beckett’s own production of Godot, Vladimir fingers a
leaf at the start of Act II, a symbol of hope.22 “Il faut continuer, je ne peux pas
continuer, je vais continuer.” 23
For the tragicomedy En Attendant Godot, the title itself implies duration, but it
also indicates a reason for the wait, hinting something more than the play fulfils. The
stretching of time – not measurable by clock or calendar, unlike Beckett’s other plays
– is used to cast doubt on the arrival of Godot. The specifics of Godot, who is
nowhere and everywhere, are blurred by the vaguely designated time and place. The
audience face a country road and a tree, a vast landscape, “an expanse of space which
harmonises with a concomitant expanse of time.” 24 Vladimir states, “dans cette
immense confusion, une seule chose est claire : nous attendons que Godot vienne”.25
This contrasts with the “grisâtre” shelter in Fin de Partie, a “spatial metaphor for a
box in time”.26 The light never changes during the acts, wayfarers are minimal, and
pauses are numerous. Life’s pressures are low, concerning mainly Freud’s primitive
“bodily drives”. Time clichés such as “Et après?” and “soyez long, ce sera moins
long” sprinkle the dialogue, further adding to the feeling of lengthy waiting.
Ce qui est certain, c’est que le temps est long, dans ces conditions, et nous
pousse à le meubler d’agissements qui, comment dire, qui peuvent à
première vue paraître raisonnables, mais dont nous avons l’habitude.27
19
Beckett, Samuel, Endgame, (New York: Grove Press, 1958), p.66.
Cohn, supra note 12, p. 44.
21
Harold Pinter interview with Kenneth Tynan, cited in Esslin, Martin, Theatre of the Absurd,
(London: Methuen, 2001), p. 262.
22
Cohn, supra note 12, p. 38.
23
Beckett, Samuel, L’Innommable, (Paris : Les Éditions de Minuit, 1953), p.213.
24
Cohn, supra note 12, p. 36. This vastness is comparable to Camus’ Les Muets where he presents
“l’eau profonde et claire” , a symbol of the aimlessness and absurdity of daily life, whose vastness
makes men insignificant, but also offers a prospect of some fleeting happiness.
25
Godot, supra note 10, p.103.
26
Cohn, supra note 12, p. 42.
27
Godot, supra note 10, p. 104.
20
4
The pseudocouple, finite beings in an infinite universe, find themselves
trapped in circular time, “an endless continua”, “an unending present”, just like
Vladimir’s performance of the German drinking song Ein Hund kam in Die Kuche,28
his Do do do do and their disyllabic nicknames, Gogo and Didi, which is all the more
emphasised by the linear time, seen in the second act, of the tree which now “porte
quelques feuilles” and the degradation of Pozzo and Lucky, now “aveugle” and
“muet” respectively, both decrepit. Pozzo, previously concerned with the time on his
watch, now states: “Les aveugles n’ont pas la notion du temps. (Un temps.) Les
choses du temps, ils ne les voient pas non plus.” 29 The two couples represent
antithetical theories to infinity – wait or wander. Like Clov and Hamm in Fin de
Partie, Vladimir believes “Le temps s’est arrêté”.30
Only existing in the present moment, with the haziest past and haziest future
tied to Godot,31 “in a state of perpetual anxiety about what they are doing there,
whether they are in the right place, on the right day, and what may come of their long
wait”,32 the pseudocouple have now got to consider all aspects to pass the time, to
fight what Baudelaire would call “une oasis d’horreur dans un desert d’ennui.” 33
They need to keep talking to evade thoughts, “toutes les voix mortes”, which would
lead to them feeling the absurdity of their situation. Words give thoughts their
existence, and are therefore the only defence against le néant and le vide of silence
and timelessness, “perilous zones”.34 “Il faut dire des mots, tant qu’il y en a, il faut les
dire.” 35 The repetition “Ça passerait le temps” signifies the play’s theme. Civilisation,
in the form of hats and shoes, the props of the clown, helps pass time. More inventive
than Hamm and Clov, stories, the telling of dreams, questions about time and place,
thoughts, Lucky’s “danse du filet”, are all swift “divertissements”, “routines”, from
which the clochards 36 return to the slow continuum. “On trouve toujours quelque
chose, hein, Didi, pour nous donner l’impression d’exister ?” 37 Like Daniel Defoe’s
Robinson Crusoe had to draw a face on a rock, les clochards desperately need each
other to feel they exist. This can also be seen in Oh Les Beaux Jours, a monologue set
by the opening line “Encore une journée divine”,38 where Winnie occupies herself by
singing Die Lustige Witwe song and by observing the objects around her. Beckett
makes use of Brecht’s alienation theory here as the audience feel the eager wait for
Winnie to finish reading the writing on her toothbrush, however like Godot and Fin
de Partie what we wait for is never achieved. In fact, the play itself is a metaphor for
life; the actors are stuck on stage until they have finished what they have to say. The
idea of suicide, although posing no reasonableness, as in the “didascalique” Acte Sans
Paroles I where the mime is prevented from using man’s inventions to commit
suicide, is repeated in both acts like many other actions and gestures, adding to the
28
Calderwood, James L., Ways of Waiting in Waiting for Godot, Waiting for Godot and Endgame, ed.
by Steven Connor, (London: Macmillan Press, 1992), p. 31.
29
Godot, supra note 10, p. 113.
30
Ibid, p. 47.
31
Robbe-Grillet, Alain, ‘Samuel Beckett, or “Presence” in the Theatre’, Samuel Beckett: A Collection
of Critical Essays, (London: Prentice Hall, 1965), p. 112.
32
Bradby, David, Beckett: Waiting for Godot, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 24.
33
Baudelaire, Charles, ‘Le Voyage’, Les Fleurs du Mal, (1861), VII.
34
Duckworth, supra note 1, p. xxxiv.
35
Beckett, Samuel, L’Innommable, (Paris : Les Éditions de Minuit, 1953), p. 213.
36
Alvarez, A., Beckett, (London: Woburn Press, 1973), p. 84.
37
Godot, supra note 10, p. 90.
38
Beckett, Samuel, Oh les Beaux Jours, (Paris : Éd. De Minuit, 1963), p.12, [emphasis added].
5
sense of long duration. “Allons-nous-en” both begins and ends each act. In Fin de
Partie, Clov repeats “Fini” four times in the first sentence, and time repetitively enters
conversation.
Fini, c’est fini, ça va finir, ça va peut-être finir. (Un temps.) Les grains
s’ajoutent aux grains, un à un, et un jour, soudain, c’est un tas, un petit tas,
l’impossible tas.39
The time lapse between the two acts in Godot is undesignated and incalculable;
resulting in an indication of infinite repetition as les clochards remain unchanged.
Further stretching the “generic” time is Pozzo’s recital which prophesises
Vladimir and Estragon’s own experience of time, referring to l’heure entre chien et
loup – a deceptive “voile de douceur et calme” suddenly suffused by night. “C’est
comme ça que ça se passe sur ce putain de terre.” 40 If Dalí’s The Persistence of
Memory can be viewed as “an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time,
a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order”, 41
Lucky’s “operatic aria”,42 a mirror for the whole play, can be read as showing the
absurdity of man’s desperate attempts to put a logical shape on chaos, on the
incomprehensibility of the universe, by using a form of speech a priest would use to
deliver a sermon, a judge would use to give a judgment, a student would use to
present a paper, the rational discourse of phrases such as “étant donné… il apparait
que…succédanés bref je reprends en meme temps parallelement… je reprends”. Like
how Ionesco and Genet show the “grand vide” at the heart of the scaffolding of
civilisation, Lucky’s passage shows the meaningless of words, an invention of man,
for at the heart of it all is non-sense. Four times in the body of Lucky’s speech, we
hear “ça viendra” or, in the English version, “time will tell”, however that is what it
does not, and time passes without telling, “inachevé”.
Beckett makes use of Jarry’s idea of communicating dark, difficult, serious
subtexts through “l’humour noir”.43 Estragon’s trousers fall absently “around the
ankles” 44 which has been interpreted as “a postmodernist acknowledgement of a
world beyond repair”.45 In each of Beckett’s three “waiting plays”, a character waits
eagerly for an unimaginable end, whether the end is Godot, annihilation, or full burial,
the sense of anxiety and panic increasing as the plays goes on. Although, an end may
not be certain, 46 resulting in the characters hanging between despair - that we exist
only in time, that Godot will not come - and presumption - that there is some form of
transcendence and Godot will answer our questions - of his entire existence and
salvation: "Do not despair: one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume: one of the
thieves was damned." 47 “The key word in my plays is ‘perhaps’.” 48 And as Goethe
says in Faust, “Whoever aspires unweariedly is not beyond redemption.”
39
Beckett, Samuel, Fin de Partie, (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1957), p.16.
Godot, supra note 10, p. 49. Like Kafka’s Ein Landartz “Es ist wirklich so.”
41
Ades, Dawn, Dalí, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982).
42
Cohn, supra note 12, p. 40.
43
Jarry, Alfred, ‘Questions de Théâtre’, Textes autour d’Ubu Roi, (Paris, 1896), p. 345.
44
Letter from Beckett quoted in Bair, Deirdre, Samuel Beckett: A Biography, (London, 1980), p. 362.
45
Conor, Steven, Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot and Endgame, (London: MacMillan Press, 1992),
p.5.
46
Pofahl Smith, Stephani,, ‘Between Pozzo and Godot: Existence as a Dilemma’,, The French Review,,
Vol. XLVII,, No. 5, April, 1974.
47
Beckett quoted in O’Driscoll, Robert, Theatre and Nationalism in Twentieth Century Ireland,
(Dublin, 1979).
48
Beckett quoted in Reid, Alec, All I Can Manage, More Than I Could: An Approach To The Plays of
Samuel Beckett, (New York: Grove Press, 1969).
40
6
As human beings, creatures of habit, we spend our lives blathering about
nothing in particular in fear of a moment’s silence. We attend the theatre to be
entertained, to distract us from life. Yet, in Beckett’s plays the curtains are pulled, the
sheet is removed, the characters are thrown on stage, and we are confronted with real
life, with the torture of being in time. In the words of Vladimir, “Mais à cet endroit,
en ce moment, l’humanité c’est nous.” 49 “Godot is life – aimless, but always with an
element of hope”.50 Therefore, it is true to say “qui a assez attendu attendra toujours,
et passé un certain délai il ne peut plus rien arriver, ni venir personne, ni y avoir autre
chose que l’attente se sachant vaine.” 51
49
Godot, supra note 10, p.103.
Beckett quoted in Whitman, Alden, New York Times, 24 October 1969, p.32.
51
Beckett, Samuel, Malone meurt, (Paris : Éd. De Minuit, 1951).
50
7
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8
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9
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10