Samuel Beckett and The Absurd Existentialist/Absurdist Dramatist 1906-1989

Beckett’s use of the Absurd “Nothing is more real than nothing” Beckett says of his own writing, because to know nothing is nothing, not to want to know anything likewise, but to be beyond knowing anything is when peace enters into the soul of the incurious seeker. Enigmatic and pessimistic His plays exhibit a lack of plot and character, because character presumes that personality and individuality matter, and plot assumes that events in time have significance Rejects learning and sees language as part of the failure to know where and what we are. Language has failed us Beckett is an agnostic. “Even if God were to exist, he would make not difference; he would be as lonely and as enslaved, and as isolated as man is , in a cold, silent, indifferent universe.”

Waiting for Godot A play about a world without any divinity, a world in which man waits and hopes for something to give a meaning to his life, and relieve him of the absurdity of a death that will terminate all. But he waits in vain, and so our life is as meaningless as our deaths Paradox that an individual’s life is an eternity while it lasts, but it is less than an instant in regard to cosmic time. The ultimate goal in the case of WFG becomes anything that helps us bear our existence

Beckett on Art Beckett believes that “art has nothing to do with clarity, does not dabble in the clear, and does not make clear.” All a writer can do is to attempt to distill in words, however imperfect, an intuitive vision or experience (rather than a systematic set of beliefs) of the misery and desperation of life. Desire is the source of our misery; such happiness as is possible can only be obtained by the removal of all desire Beckett’s characters collapse under the burden of choice, responsibility, and anguish as they seek to answer the questions: What am I? What are time and space? What are mind and matter?

Beckett’s characters They drive reason to a point where reason itself becomes irrational, and generally very comical. “Do not come down the ladder, I have taken it away” They believe that even in a meaningless situation life must have meaning. Beckett’s plays present an inability in anyone to be nihilistic, not nihilism. Beckett has left us with a final bleak image of life in the universe; that of a woman giving birth astride a grave.

Samuel Beckett

Absurd Theatre Absurd Theatre presented life as meaningless and one that could simply end in casual slaughter (i.e. Hiroshima and Nagasaki) Reflected in society where The mechanical nature of peoples lives led them to question the purpose of their existence. Time was recognized as a destructive force One had a sense of being left in an alien world, a world from which logic and insight have been removed One sensed being isolated from other beings

Existentialism We are the sum of our acts. We make ourselves a particular kind of person by doing particular acts. Sartre said: “We are nothing and in action become conscious of that original nothingness.” In “The Myth of Sisyphus” by Camus, Sisyphus spent eternity rolling a ball up the hill, seeing it get bigger and then rolling down again. He realized this was absurd, but the knowledge that all of life’s tasks were equally as absurd, because they were all subject to Death, gave Sisyphus victory. He is happy because he escaped the dilemma of his existence.

Existentialism and Theatre of the Absurd If Existentialism was the philosophical model of a universe that has lost its meaning and purpose, then the Theatre of the Absurd was one way of facing up to that universe. If there is a sin of life, “it is not so much to despair of life, as to hope for another life and to lose sight of the implacable grandeur of this one.” -Camus

Absurdism Elizabethan Theatre explored the political and moral dilemmas of the Renaissance Naturalism gave expression to the ghosts which haunted the bourgeoisie of Capitalism Absurdism found the means of exposing the metaphysical doubts that tormented our existence. Doubts which first surprised us came to seem natural and inevitable.

Alienation

Alienation In the Post-Modern era of the 50’s and 60’s, the Theatre of the Absurd re-emerged, producing the effect of Alienation, revisiting the social theatre of Bertolt Brecht in the 30’s and 40’s. We may find it difficult to identify with the characters in Absurd Drama, but where Brecht hoped to “activate the audience’s critical, intellectual capacities, Absurd Drama spoke to a deeper level of the audiences’ awareness The staging was usually very funny and very terrifying, pushing the audience forward, then confusing them, then compelling a a personal assessment of their reactions by offering opposites that multiply in their minds.

Absurd Drama Challenges the audience to make sense of non-sense, to face the predicament of life consciously rather than feel it vaguely, and perceive with laughter, its fundamental absurdity. The absurd has as its underlying premise the irrationality of experience. We, in the West, hopelessly committed to making sense of the world can not accept “irrationality”… the world does make sense, “God does not play dice” – Einstein Joe Orton said: “You can’t be rational in an irrational world, it’s not rational.”

Absurd Theatre The experience of this world is never debated, it is simply presented, shown in action It presents humans “stripped of the accidental circumstances of social position or historical context” Satirizes a society that is petty and dishonest Substitutes an internal landscape for the outer world Lacks any clear division between fantasy and fact Has a healthy disrespect for the constraints of time, which can expand, contract or back fold on itself acc. To subjective requirements Constructs environment which can depict/project mental conditions in the form of visual metaphors

Absurd Theatre (continued) Employs a precise use of language, constructed by a writer as their only defense against the chaos of the experience of living Uses meta-theatricality: “all the world’s a stage” and life is a dream. The medium is totally aware of itself and involving the audience in a searching act of self-awareness Has a preference for tragicomedy rather than the classical genres of tragedy or comedy Uses silence as a metaphor … never before had moments of the fragmentary, the inarticulate, the incoherent and the non-verbal been so extensively employed Deliberately employs ambiguity as a device. What is reality? What is illusion… successfully destroying our confidence in familiar things and places

Absurd Theatre Explores antagonism and violence, particularly on the psychological plane. Tends towards a radical devaluation of language, towards a poetry of images. What happens on the stage often contradicted by the worlds spoken by the characters, for instance, the end of WFG

Sources “The Absurd and Beckett a brief encounter” www. Samuel-Beckett.net/AbsurdandBeck.htm