THE STAGED PAINTING OF SAMUEL BECKETT

Dario Del Degan

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Centre for Study of Drama University of Toronto

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1*1 Canada THE STAGED PAINTING OF SAMUEL BECKETT

Dario Del Degan

Doctor of Philosophy

Graduate Centre for Study of Drama

University of Toronto

2007

ABSTRACT

This thesis examines the influence of visual art on Samuel Beckett's stage plays. Recent scholarship on the topic confirms the importance of painting on his theatre. This study contributes to the field by examining the ways select paintings directly inspired Beckett's theatrical development. It draws on the history of painting and visual art theory, in combination with developments in theatre during his lifetime, to contextualize and illustrate the creation of his staged painting.

Chapter one establishes the origins of the topic and presents the result of Beckett's theatrical vision as a guiding image. It then positions this study within the critical discourse between the identification of the painterly influence on Beckett and its phenomenological result by developing and analyzing the visual factors that influenced his approach, conceptualization, realization, and reception of his plays. The remainder of the chapter discusses how the ineffable is confronted by transforming the word into visual language. Chapter two examines Beckett's artistic shift from writing prose, poetry, and criticism to his entrance on the stage. The differences between his first serious theatrical endeavour and his first produced play demonstrate that painting shaped his shift from narrative to portraiture. Chapter three analyzes the development of painterly techniques in his plays by his use of chiaroscuro on the stage. The incorporation of this technique results in a further reduction of movement and action, dialogue to monologue. Chapter four focuses on the transition from Beckett's middle to later plays, ii uncovering the fusion of them with elements of expressionism, montage, and the ubermarionette.

Chapter five determines Beckett's attention to the primacy of perception as the foremost receptive act in his last stage plays. By transferring the heightened visual concentration of a single image from painting onto the stage, he provides the spectator with an opportunity to see beyond what is objectively presented. The visual arts inspired Beckett to transform the theatre into an art gallery, and the dramatic enterprise into a staged painting.

in TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ii

List of Figures v

Chapter One: Towards a Literature of the Unword 1

Chapter Two: Drama in the Image 34

Chapter Three: Chiaroscuro on the Stage 112

Chapter Four: Images of the Void 162

Chapter Five: Beckett the Painter 219

Appendix 258

Notes 262

Works Cited 294

Figures 314

IV LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Antonello da Messina, Virgin of the Annunciation 314

Figure 2. Billie Whitelaw as May, Footfalls. Royal Court Theatre 314

Figure 3. Caspar David Friedrich, Two Men Contemplating the Moon 315

Figure 4. Sam Coppola and Joseph Ragno, Waiting for Godot. Theatre at St. Clements 315

Figure 5. Caspar David Friedrich, Evening on the Baltic Sea 316

Figure 6. Adam Elsheimer, Flight into Egypt... 316

Figure 7. Claes Berchem, Landscape with Crab Catchers by Moonlight 317

Figure 8. Adriaen Van Ostade, Landscape with an Old Oak 317

Figure 9. Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition: White on White 318

Figure 10. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Parable of the Blind. 318

Figure 11. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Parable of the Blind (detail) 319

Figure 12. Frank Wood as Lucky, Waiting For Godot 319

Figure 13. Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Land of Cockaigne 320

Figure 14. Waiting for Go dot, 2003. USC School of Theatre 320

Figure 15. Jean-Antoine Watteau. Embarkation for Cythera 321

Figure 16. Jean-Antoine Watteau. Italian Comedians 321

Figure 17. Jack B. Yeats, Two Travellers 322

Figure 18. Waiting for Godot. USC School of Theatre 322

Figure 19. Jack B. Yeats, The Top of the Tide 323

Figure 20. Jack B. Yeats, High Water - Spring Tide 323

Figure 21. Alberto Giacometti, Walking Man II 324

Figure 22. Georges Pierre, Alberto Giacometti with Samuel Beckett and Tree 325

Figure 23. Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of Jacob Trip 326

Figure 24. Michael Gambon as Hamm, Film Still: Beckett on Film, Endgame 326 v Figure 25. Rembrandt van Rijn, Old Man in an Armchair 327

Figure 26. Jan Vermeer, The Astronomer 328

Figure 27. Jan Vermeer, The Geographer 328

Figure 28. Rick Cluchey, Krapp's Last Tape. Loyola Marymount University Theatre 329

Figure 29. Rembrandt van Rijn, The Money Changer 330

Figure 30. John Hurt as Krapp, Krapp's Last Tape. Gate Theatre 330

Figure 31. Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, Film Still: Un chien andalou 331

Figure 32. Madeleine Renaud as Winnie, Happy Days. Theatre du Rond-Point 331

Figure 33. Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory 332

Figure 34. Rene Magritte, The Betrayal of Images 332

Figure 35. Emil Nolde, Christ Among the Children 333

Figure 36. Edvard Munch, The Scream 333

Figure 37. Sergei M. Eisenstein, Film Still: Battleship Potemkin 334

Figure 38. Sergei M. Eisenstein, Film Still: Battleship Potemkin 334

Figure 39. Sergei M. Eisenstein, Film Still: Battleship Potemkin 335

Figure 40. Sergei M. Eisenstein, Film Still: Battleship Potemkin 335

Figure 41. Emil Nolde, Prophet 336

Figure 42. Play. Maryland Stage Company 336

Figure 43. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Two Women in the Street 337

Figure 44. Come and Go. Gate Theatre 337

Figure 45. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Berlin Street Scene 338

Figure 46. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, The Decapitation of Saint John the Baptist... .339

Figure 47. Billie Whitelaw as Mouth, Film Still: Beckett on Film, Not I. 339

Figure 48. William Blake, Engraving from the Book of Job 340

Figure 49. Niall Buggy as Listener, Film Still: Beckett on Film, That Time 340 vi Figure 50. Oskar Kokoschka, Portrait of Professor Auguste Forel 341

Figure 51. James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1 342

Figure 52. Penelope Wilton as W, Flim Still: Beckett on Film, Rockaby 342

Figure 53. Vincent Van Gogh, La Bergeuse 343

Figure 54. Kay Gallie as W, Rockaby. Arches Theatre 343

Figure 55. Rembrandt van Rijn, Margaretha de Geer 344

Figure 56. Gerard Terborch, A Group of Monks 345

Figure 57. Jeremy Irons, Flim Still: Beckett on Film, Ohio Impromptu 345

Figure 58. Albrecht Diirer, Virgin in Prayer 346

Figure 59. John Gielgud as Protagonist, Flim Still: Beckett on Film, Catastrophe 346

vn CHAPTER ONE: TOWARDS A LITERATURE OF THE UNWORD

C: when you went in out of the rain always winter then always raining that time in the Portrait Gallery in off the street out of the cold and rain slipped in when no one was looking and through the rooms shivering and dripping till you found a seat marble slab and sat down to rest and dry off and on to hell out of there when was that - Samuel Beckett, That Time (CDW 388)

§1: Preamble

A new phase in the scholarship on the work of Samuel Beckett began in 1996 with James

Knowlson's discovery that the visual arts held a prominent position in the artist's aesthetic development. Before the publication of Knowlson's authorized biography Damned to Fame: The

Life of Samuel Beckett, researchers had little recourse but to approach Beckett's work from multiple academic disciplines, substantiated with only a few biographical comments, an enormous volume of disparate and, in some cases suspect, critical analyses, in conjunction with the occasional authorial comment that had found its way to print. Beckett himself encouraged divergent interpretations of his works by refusing to explain the "underlying meaning" or motivation for any of them, claiming that they must stand on their own. The range of responses to his work suggests that it broaches universal concerns, realized through experimentation with structure and genre. The volume of critical literature already generated on Beckett's work can take one on infinite journeys of new associations and relations without concrete resolutions. The issue is compounded by details indicating Beckett's meticulous compositional process as a writer striving for an economy of language, and by his insistence, as a stage director, on the retention of the image at all costs: he desired to create works featuring a precise visual focus. Beckett was an exacting artist who ensured by design the strict placement of each detail in all of his works for eliciting an intense response in the recipient.

A breakthrough in the understanding of Beckett's aesthetic approach arose with

Knowlson's deduction that the visual arts held a prime position in the artist's creative outlook.

1 The biographer's discovery and analysis of six notebooks/diaries that Beckett kept during a six- month art pilgrimage to Germany as a young man in 1936-37, together with insights provided by the artist himself during the composition of his journals, initiated a new discourse in Beckettian aesthetics; one that converges on visual art principles. The fascinating aspect regarding the influence of visual art on Beckett's work is that it introduced him to the potential of theatre as means for him to express ineffable ideas. A Beckett play in performance displaces the cause and effect structure of traditional drama with the concentration of the dramatic action into a precise stage picture. The present study examines the development of Beckett's exchange of ideas with the visual arts by tracing his motivation to write for the stage, and then analyzing the ways in which particular painterly references find their way in his theatre. As the entrance to the topic, this chapter begins with an introductory case study of one of Beckett's later plays, That Time, to present a portrait of how his later theatre materialized to frame the interart discussion.

§2: A Portrait of That Time

At the outset of That Time, Beckett elicits the experience of viewing a painting by introducing into the verbal text a memory fragment recalling a time when the protagonist,

Listener, sought relief from dreary weather by viewing portraits in an art gallery.1 Emanating from one of three recorded voices played back in performance, voice C's recollection of looking at pictures of people offers the auditor an indication that the piece presents Listener's portrait.

The figure on stage does not move nor speak, but listens to voices from three distinct periods of his life recounting past experiences, uncovering a lifetime of isolation, emptiness, and misery.

Aside from five brief interjections of facial expression—amounting to no more than the opening and closing of Listener's eyes when the order of the three voices shifts, and closing the piece with a smile, "toothless for prefer-ence"---the only visual focus for the entire play remains

Listener's face, "about 10 feet above stage level midstage off centre" (Beckett, CD W 388, 395). 3 The principal material in the eight-page script consists of a verbal text that segments Listener's past into three voices labeled A, B, and C which, combined, result in a twenty minute performance that recounts details spanning his childhood, adulthood, and old age, while his present face suspends in midair under a tightly focused spotlight.

The dramatic action of That Time presents Listener's portrait accompanied by an audio transmission of select recollections from his memory, conveying aspects of his personality to

"colour in" the essence of the figure. Subtending the entire enterprise is an implicit call to consider the piece as the act of examining a portrait, suggested by the explicit reference to the experience of viewing painting, "till you found a seat marble slab," in the Portrait Gallery, where

Listener as voice C, examined a painted effigy:

till you hoisted your head and there before your eyes when they opened a vast oil black with age and dirt someone famous in his time some famous man or woman or even child such as a young prince or princess some young prince or princess of the blood black with age behind the glass where gradually as you peer trying to make it out gradually of all things a face appeared had you swivel on the slab to see who it was there at your elbow (Beckett, CD W 389).

Essentially, the older, supposedly wiser Listener finds himself struggling to uncover in the brushstrokes the details of a historic portrait; an analogous situation confronts the audience of

That Time. Beckett's piece literally presents three variations of the same voice that emerge from the dark to express the interior consciousness of Listener, whose face is focused in light. By situating one memory in an art museum, Beckett intimates to the audience that the piece itself presents a portrait. From a purely textual perspective, the reference to the art gallery possesses no greater prominence in That Time than voice C's later mentioning of visits to other public, cultural spaces including the library and the post office. But in performance, hearing voice C recall his experience in the portrait gallery, in combination with a static, scenic design whereby set and character fuse as one, the audience confronts an experience similar to viewing a painting, insofar as the reception of the piece consists of piecing together memory fragments that describe 4 past occurrences of the featured image. Although That Time features brief instances of subtle physical movement, its function, as with voice, light, and all communicative vehicles for the piece, supports a dramatic structure that invests the action into the central image, generating an experiential quality akin to viewing a painting.

§3: The Visual Quality of Beckett's Theatre

When one attends a Beckett play, aptly describing the experience poses some difficulty, for no existing critical methodology adequately elucidates the artist's elusive use of the stage.2

After encountering one of his performances, one commonly forms the impression that his dramatic method strives to reduce action to near stasis. By tracing the evolution of his dramas, one notices an increasing use of minimalist and reductive methods resulting in plays that engage the imagination via strong stage images. Beckett challenges the story-telling feature common to conventional drama in lieu of depicting some aspect of the human condition by amplifying a visual image with theatrical means. While all playwrights have access to the various communicative devices of the theatre, of which the visual necessarily comprises a significant component, Beckett's stark, minimalist theatre features an intense concentration on presenting a precise visual image using the language of the stage to support its composition.

The concentrated imagistic quality of Beckett's plays arises, in part, from his conscious attention to the presentation of the immediate moment, the professed "here and now" of the theatrical instant. His plays situate their characters in barren, unchanging environments, in which they face details about present or past situations, while contending with their respective ontological conditions. Though Beckett's dramatic designs utilize the range of the communicative elements of the stage, these expressive means consistently confront a domineering stage image that changes little. The picture is ubiquitous on Beckett's stage, providing the audience with a constant reference while engaging with other expressive stimuli, 5 particularly the text. The spectator of a Beckett play must combine the sensations into a coherent whole that articulates the staged picture, in the same way that the viewer of a painting merges lines, colour, and light in the imagination to render a composite image.

Movement in a Beckett play, for instance, amounts to formalized kinetic patterns creating repetitive, non-naturalistic shapes. These tightly choreographed circular patterns evoke for the spectator the sensation of returning to the starting point, the visual centre, rather than conveying a sense of traversing great distances. The reduction of movement to precise, repetitive actions draws the spectator's attention away from the impetus to discover a rationale for the kinetic design, thereby emphasizing the visual importance of activity, while showing motion within stillness. For instance, the companion piece to That Time, Footfalls, features four scenes with a woman who paces the length of a lighted strip following a pattern of nine steps and a turn. The rhythmic musicality of the circular oblong pacing conjures the infinity symbol that, when amplified with the text, suggests the suffering experienced by May's mother has been transferred to May's own feet. The movement provides a visual image of circularity evoking the notion of inheriting afflictions from past generations. Movement becomes framed within the spatial geometry of the total performance image, which accentuates the unchanging landscape and engenders figures and objects with a sculptural quality. In fact, Beckett described his artistic approach as that of a sculptor by comparing his methodology to that of Benvenuto Cellini:

'"Cellini, ignorant la foule, sur le Pont des Soupirs, ciselait sur le pommeau d'une dague le combat des Titans [Unmindful of the crowd, on the Bridge of Sighs, Cellini was chiselling on the pommel of a dagger the combat of the Titans].' 'I often feel like Cellini, you know' [...] 'as I chisel away at my work'" (Knowlson, Images 14).

The verbal element of Beckett's plays similarly functions to reinforce the theatrical present (the stage image), by way of his orchestration of words and speech into sequences that produce an incantatory quality. Listening to recitations of Beckett's monotonous, monotone texts 6 situates the spectator in a mild state of trance, wherein any search for exposition returns one, again, to the stage image, in absence of any other element from which to extract meaning.

Though Beckett's verbal texts often recount fragments of their characters' past histories, these details are not reenacted on stage in "flashback" sequences; rather, memories are articulated with the visual image firmly positioned in the theatrical present, thereby generating a theatrical phenomenon wherein the spectator hears events of the past while viewing their results in the visual present. In Not I, Mouth faces a barrage of events from her past that verbally spew from her in the present moment. Similarly, both Krapp 's Last Tape and That Time feature old, male protagonists who reflect on memories from their youths while situated in the present. In fact,

Beckett for the most part opts for monologue over dialogue as the verbal component of his later plays, further suggesting that the language directly interacts with the visual, as opposed to enlarging the characters purely through exchanges of utterances.

Beckett's plays encourage concentration on the visual presentation by eliminating theatrical embellishment. When employed at all, non-verbal sound serves to create a specific effect to underscore a stage moment. Likewise, Beckett's use of light functions to delineate physical boundaries or illuminate aspects of the visual landscape; he tends to apply harsh contrasts of white light, producing the effect of either intense focus on an area, or of the creation of shadows that darken the representations within the visual field, thus framing illumination itself and relegating colour to a secondary role.3 The prime dramatic action in Play, for example, consists of a blinding white spotlight that prompts three figures confined in urns to retell their participation in a sordid love affair. No element appears in his plays solely for decorative or ornamental purposes; rather, all combine to emphasize a succinct stage picture.

Beckett further enhances the imagistic quality of his plays by depicting states of human existence that change little, if at all. In most cases, Beckett's characters end in similar or worse situations than the one in which they began. In Waiting for Godot, Vladimir and Estragon "do 7 not move" at the end of the play, though they say they will, in the same way that Clov in

Endgame professes to leave Hamm, though he remains on stage at the final curtain. Krapp 's Last

Tape ends with the protagonist staring motionless at the circular pattern created by the spinning

of the reel-to-reel tape, which serves as a visual motif that encapsulates the character's inability

move forward from the past. Winnie in Happy Days remains planted in her mound of earth,

while figures A and B of Act Without Words //repeat in exact form a set of "daily" rituals taking

them in and out of their sacks that seem to carry on ad infinitum. Beckett's plays depict states of being, staged in a theatrical present, through his reinforcement of their dramatic structures with a

constant, relatively unchanging scenic arrangement. Beckett's minimalist aesthetic, which he

employed in all of his artistic endeavours, lends itself to creating works of theatre which place

the recipient in the same contemplative state in the imagination that painting offers. In fact,

Henning Rischbieter's understanding of aesthetic reductionism comes close to defining Beckett's

entire dramatic oeuvre: "Reduction: the action - often after wearisome repetition of the same

thing - comes to a stop; the quiet of nothingness prevails. Active reflection, the restlessness of

the intellect transposed into action [...] may be toned down, for instance into forms of simple

ritual, which may pass over into a state of meditation. Nothing more happens, nothing" (7).

§4: The Existing Discourse

Beckett's connoisseurship of the visual arts is no secret. Numerous accounts from

anecdotes and biographical analyses to critical studies attest to his avid engagement with the

visual art. The present study focuses on his theatre as best exemplifying the ambit of Beckett's

"dialogue" with art, since his knowledge of painting outweighed his familiarity with the theatre

before his own foray into the field. The material substantiating Beckett's extensive knowledge of

painting as opposed to his limited background in theatre during his formative years identifies his 8 cultural upbringing, pilgrimages to art galleries, and enduring friendships with painters as primary sources.

Remarks surmising that Beckett's "visually" stimulating plays result from his use of

"visual language" have appeared in critical works ever since the artist achieved fame; however, the trajectory of these studies tends to concentrate on allusions to and comparisons between his work and particular paintings without delving into the specifics of how his deep knowledge of art led to the creation of his theatre where one experiences a staged painting. As one of the first texts to broach the art relationship, Lawrence Harvey's Samuel Beckett Poet and Critic (1970) suggests that Beckett's aesthetic development concentrated on the articulation of visual imagery.

This finding was the result of an in-depth analysis of both Beckett's early published and unpublished writings (creative and critical), in conjunction with conversations with Beckett.

Referring to Beckett's later prose and dramatic writing, Harvey remarks that through his densely poetic writing, narration and dialogue expand beyond storytelling and communication "to produce the distance of aesthetic contemplation through images that in the context become emblematic of man's condition and destiny" (x). But, as Harvey outlines in his preface, the scope of the work concentrates on literary tradition, geographical setting, and biography as factors illuminating Beckett's poetry.

Almost twenty years later, Gordon Armstrong published Samuel Beckett, W. B. Yeats, and Jack Yeats: Images and Words (1990). Considering the meagre material associating Beckett with the visual arts available during the preparation of his study, Armstrong's text stands as one of the first to compare Beckett's "visual writing" to the pictorial and poetic output of William B. and Jack B. Yeats. Though Armstrong clearly demarcates points of similarity and difference between the Yeats brothers, and while he also properly aligns Beckett's aesthetic closer to the one held by his personal friend Jack, the framework of the study slants toward expressing the 9 "Irish-ness" of Beckett's work in relation to the themes in both Yeatses' art, thereby limiting the remarks one could offer of Beckett's art in the visual paradigm.

Aside, then, from a limited number of articles that raise pertinent issues regarding

Beckett's affinity for art,4 it was not until the publication of Knowlson's authorized biography

Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (1996) that a thorough study of Beckett's relationship with art appeared. Having Beckett's full cooperation and participation in researching the study, Knowlson discovered six notebooks/diaries5 that the artist kept during a six month art pilgrimage to Germany between late 1936 and early 1937 that, among other things, list the titles of the hundreds of paintings he saw together with the artists' names.6 The examination of the notebooks led the biographer to determine that the writer's relationship with art illuminates his style, which he supports by providing numerous examples aligning Beckett's plays with paintings (see DamnedH).7 Yet, as a biography covering the whole of Beckett's life,

o

Knowlson's study could not extend the analysis of these discoveries.

Since the publication of Knowlson's biography, a collection of essays and one full-length study have appeared under the direction of Lois Oppenheim. The anthology, Samuel Beckett and the Arts: Music, Visual Arts, and Non-Print Media (1999), features particularized studies that seek to identify intersections in Beckett's work with other art forms; though, since it is an anthology, it never claims to offer any overall argument. Oppenheim's full-length work, The

Painted Word: Samuel Beckett's Dialogue with Art (2000), stands as one of the first critical studies of Beckett and the visual arts. The text thoroughly analyzes Beckett's art criticism, and strives to liberate Beckett's art from the "isms" of literary theory. She argues that the primacy of visual perception (the play between the visible and the invisible) maintains ontological status in

Beckett's art. Her philosophical approach delves into the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-

Ponty to link the great visual force of Beckett's art to the philosopher's deep appreciation of painting. Oppenheim's study finds congruencies regarding perspective and vision between 10 Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology and Beckett's art. She argues that Beckett maintained no

particular aesthetic, which is why she claims his work resists literary classification, especially

due to the modernist/postermodernist impasse. As the first major analysis of "Beckett's dialogue

with art," The Painted Word aptly identifies phenomenology as a discourse that helps articulate

Beckett's visual approach to artistic creation.

To extend the critical discourse, the present study also embraces phenomenology as a way to relate the manner in which Beckett shapes the medium of the theatre according to formal

considerations of visual art theory, and the effect that this process generates for the audience.

However, my approach is to study the intricate relationship between select paintings identified as

inspiring images for Beckett's plays. The study begins by examining Beckett's artistic reasons

for turning to theatre as a relief from his frustrations with prose writing. It then looks at the

origins of Beckett's early theatre and the introduction of painterly techniques to his plays. By tracing the evolution of Beckett's theatre, one notices the increasing incorporation of painterly

techniques, resulting in the formation of a staged painting.

To date, while there has been much discussion of Beckett and the visual arts, there remains no study that links his frustrations with the written word to his venture into the theatre as

an aspect of his fascination with visual communication. Even Knowlson's recent Images of

Beckett (2004), which presents new and illuminating associations between particular paintings

and specific Beckettian works, does not systematically explore the theoretical intersections

between the art forms. In part, the difficulty arises from the lack of an encapsulating interart poetics. However, by studying the pictorial sources that inspired the composition of aspects of

Beckett's plays, one finds not only a wealth of information that supports the argument for the

heightened phenomenology of perception on his stage, but also a number of details that explain

his compositional process. 11

§5: From Page to Stage

Considering that Beckett's public reputation rests on his status as a literary writer who experimented with a multiplicity of written forms (prose, plays, poetry, criticism, reviews, translations), one initially may find it peculiar to consider the dominance of the influence of the visual arts on his plays. Equally perplexing is how one may find the congruence between

Beckett's literary output and the abundant commentary by esteemed actors, directors, publishers, and critics who assert a symbiotic relationship between Beckett-as-writer and the visual arts. To do justice to Beckett's theatrical approach, one must recognize that as a writer he focused his artistic energy on exploring the boundaries of communication; he was interested in testing the formal limits of communicability. When he reached a point where the written word could no longer adequately express his desires, he turned to the theatre for relief, and found a mode of expression that helped liberate him from the constraints of language. For Beckett, expression through language posed a challenge due to the distancing factor caused by literature's irremediable reliance on words: "[i]f you really get down to the disaster, the slightest eloquence becomes unbearable," Beckett told Lawrence Harvey, "[wjhatever is said is so far from experience" (Harvey 249). In expressing his frustration with language, Beckett vents, in a 1937 letter to Axel Kaun, his desire to escape the linearity of language by eliminating it altogether: Is there something paralysingly holy in the vicious nature of the word that is not found in the elements of other arts? Is there any reason why that terrible materiality of the word surface should not be capable of being dissolved, like for example the sound surface, torn by enormous pauses, of Beethoven's seventh Symphony, so that through whole pages we can perceive nothing but a path of sounds suspended in giddy heights, linking unfathomable abysses of silence? [...] On the way to this literature of the unword, which is so desirable to me, some form of Nominalist irony might be a necessary stage. But it is not enough for the game to lose some of its sacred seriousness. It should stop {Disjecta 172-173).

The evocation of imagery in literature poses the challenge of interposing words between the artist's vision and the recipient's apprehension. Based on Beckett's skepticism toward language, 12 his stage work has been categorized a "theatre of images,"11 suggesting that he attunes the

mechanisms of theatrical expression to substantiate the visual dimension for each piece.

Beckett's dramatic aesthetic aims to create plays in a minimal style wherein all theatrical

elements combine to amplify a stage picture. That Beckett approached theatrical creation from a

distinctly visual perspective becomes increasingly evident when one examines the evolution of

his dramatic works for theatrical performance, precisely because of the presence of physical

reality on stage, which offers a tangible, visual template within which to enact his dramas. As

Stanton Garner (Jr.) observes: "To appreciate this directness [of contact between Beckett and the

visual arts], we look to the plays, for the theater's dual status as literary and visual medium

allows Beckett to counterpoint his exploration of language with a parallel study of vision, as it is

actualized within the theatrical mise-en-scene" ("Visual" 349). The plays exploit the material of theatre; yet, experiencing them in performance evokes the experience of viewing a painting. In part, the condition arises from his thematic concentration on depicting some aspect of the human

condition, revealed on stage through the detailing of a central, static image. Beckett manipulates

theatrical form to emphasize foremost the perceptual act embedded in each element of the production. The drive toward an "economy of language" that manifested itself in the evolution of

his prose works becomes further accentuated in the development of his increasingly stark and

minimal theatrical works. The imposition of silence to emphasize tableaux, the use of extreme

contrasts of light and colour, the demarcation of playing space with simplified settings, the

employment of simple and repetitive movement, and the creation of written texts that illustrate a

condition rather than narrate a story-these theatrical techniques result in performances featuring

a slow, static unveiling of a single, unified impression—an experience akin to receiving a

painting. 13 Performers working on Beckett's plays for performance repeatedly discuss their experiences with analogies to visual art. One finds a particularly graphic account in Billie

Whitelaw's memoirs of the playwright directing her in Footfalls:

For me, as for him, Footfalls was to be an entirely new creative experience. Sometimes I felt as if he were a sculptor and I a piece of clay. At other times I might be a piece of marble that he needed to chip away at. He would endlessly move my arms and my head in a certain way, to get closer to the precise image in his mind. I didn't object to him doing this. As this went on, hour after hour, I could feel the 'shape' taking on a life of its own. Sometimes I felt as if I were modelling for a painter, or working with a musician. The movements started to feel like dance. Beckett moved my fingers, perhaps no more than half an inch this way or that, then he would stand back. If it didn't feel quite right he would correct the pose. Strangely enough, this didn't restrict me at all. More and more I felt that my movements were being choreographed. At other times I felt I was being painted with light. Then it seemed as if Beckett had taken an eraser out of his pocket to brush away what he didn't want. Having done all this detailed direction of movement, he would sometimes rub it all out, so that what grinned through (as they say in the wallpaper trade) was something never strident but faint, i.e. something that was not quite there (144-145).

Whitelaw's description of Beckett's directorial approach as similar to that of a painter, sculptor, choreographer, and composer is poignant for two reasons. First, it points to Beckett's approach to the stage as a synthesis of aesthetic ideologies from a number of arts, suggesting that it experiments with form as a means to overcoming expressive limitations. In particular,

Whitelaw's partial association of Beckett's directorial style as analogous to one of a composer, points to the manner in which Beckett uses words as brushstrokes of sound that conjure mental images. Second, her correlation of Beckett's view of the actor as resembling those of a painter, sculptor, and choreographer, at once points to Beckett's emphasis on foregrounding the human figure and positioning the spectator in a heightened state of visual perception. One further notices the painterly influence on Footfalls from Knowlson's deduction that its central image derives from Antonello da Messina's painting Virgin of the Annunciation (see figs. 1, 2).

Looking at the figure of May clasping her shoulders in performance, one immediately observes a likeness in shape, posture, and hand position to the Virgin Mary in the painting. Together, 14 Whitelaw's and Knowlson's reflections suggest not only the direct influence of a particular painting on the play in terms of image, theme, and/or technique, but also that Beckett's approach to realizing his plays for performance relies on visual art principles in the articulation of the central image for each piece.

Another accomplished Beckett actor, Jack MacGowran, explicitly declared in an interview that the playwright aspired to become a painter: "He was professor of French at Trinity

College and with the birth of a real writer still lurking in him at this time, what he really wanted to be, I discovered, was a painter. But there you are - arts are married; if you don't do one, you'll do the other!" (McGrory 173). While MacGowran's anecdote correspondingly reveals Beckett's affinity for painting, it also provokes consideration of the interrelationship and differences between art forms.13 As a point of departure into the discourse, Beckett's view of "art as life" provides an ingress by revealing his association of art making with the creation of possible worlds, as his British publisher John Calder reveals: "Art for him is not a part of life, a human activity, a means of earning a living, of self-expression. It is the act of creation itself. The making of a world and the making of a painting differ only in scale" (83). On Calder's premise, one links theatre and painting based on a shared concern with the creation of imaginary worlds that only differ materially in scale and form.

As he matured as a writer, Beckett developed a mistrust of language that, in conjunction with his passion for painting, influenced his aesthetic sensibility to focus on the image when creating for the stage. It was during this period of Beckett's career that his attention seriously turned to the writing of theatre. Accordingly, tracing the origins of his dramatic aesthetic necessitates understanding Beckett's approach to literature and the frustrations he encountered with the written word. As an artist who adopted a minimalist approach to ensure the precise evocation of emotion in his expressions, Beckett eventually reached the limits of the communicability of the written word when grappling with the ineffable dimensions of existence, 15 those experiences that lie beyond speech. Even Beckett's literary influences, in spite of their

imaginative uses of language, eventually reached the limits of communicability of the written

word, which they overcame by mutating, manipulating significant form to generate sensations as

if transmitted from a different material source. On that basis, the remainder of the chapter

analyzes the technique of two writers, Dante Alighieri and James Joyce, both of whom Beckett held in high esteem, to isolate the issues Beckett confronted regarding the expressivity of the written word that directed him toward creating for the theatre.

§6: Dante, Joyce, and the Ineffable

When asked if he was an authority on the Italian author, Beckett humbly replied: "No,

I'm not an expert. To be an expert on Dante, you'd have to know all the Latin works, and I don't

know them all" (Knowlson, Images 40). Despite Beckett's modesty, and also considering the

amount and array of literature with which he was familiar, one nevertheless can see, unquestionably, that his appreciation for the work of Dante Alighieri reigns foremost as an

artistic influence, indicative by the fact that out of all his books from his vast library, his

annotated childhood copy of The Divine Comedy was one of the few that remained with him

during his final days.15 In a 1934 review of Giovanni Papini's Dante vivo for the literary

magazine The Bookman, Beckett praises the literary quality of the poet's work while criticizing

Papini for the "reduction of Dante to lovable proportions":

"The greatest wrong one can do to Dante ... is to classify his most important work as literature." As what then? As morale negotium, in whole and in part a moral act, demiurgic anagogics, supplement to the Bible, sequel to the Apocalypse, the work of a prophet partaking of John the Baptist and a haruspex a la Joachim de Flora ("Daniel without the lions, Tarchon without Tages"), announcing the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, that of the Father and the Son having broken down ("Papini" 14).16

Dante's advancement of a new writing style, il dolce stil nuovo, aiming for a purity of expression

inspired Beckett to consider the expressive boundaries of artistic form. Also, Dante's adoption of 16 visual art principles to invigorate his own writing suggests that his artistic concerns centred on

the experience of a work of art as opposed to fulfilling decorative functions, a notion central to

Beckett's theatrical approach.

Mary Bryden discloses the depth of Beckett's artistic debt to Dante after discovering and

analyzing an illustration from his "Whoroscope" notebook outlining the structural principles of

the poem: "Headed 'Purgatorial Distribution,' it sets out a hierarchical listing of the terraces of

Dante's trizoned Lower, Middle, and Upper Purgatory. The painstaking quality of the diagram is

exemplary of the thoroughness and commitment that Beckett devoted to his study of Dante's

masterpiece" ("Three Dantean" 29). Though familiar with all three books of The Divine Comedy,

Beckett's diagram concentrates on the "waiting-room" sensation generated in the zone of Ante-

Purgatory, where inhabitants are not subjected to routine, do not labour under discipline, have no

fixed abode, nor have little to do (Bryden 29)—similar conditions confronting most of Beckett's

characters. In Beckett's "verbally anorexic later theatre" (Haughton 156), Dante's influence

materializes in the mise-en-scene by way of structural analogy. The protagonists of the later plays resemble "shades" of people, condemned to inhabit an infernal or purgatorial afterlife,

recalling Dante's "damned": Krapp trapped between light and dark (Krapp 's Last Tape)}1

Winnie buried in the earth {Happy Days),x Nagg and Nell bottled in their dustbins {Endgame),

M, Wl, and W2 ensnared in urns {Play), Mouth stranded in the void {Not I),19 Listener

disembodied in mid-air {That Time), May caught in a loop {Footfalls). Inspired by Dante's

hollow depiction of life in hell, Beckett's characters find themselves abandoned in desolate

places with nothing but empty expressions and unfilled memories.

One finds further evidence of Beckett's keen interest in Dante's Purgatory with his

comments written on three undated postcards that accompanied the editions of The Divine

Comedy he donated to Reading University Library. One of cards outlines the chronological progression of the poem from Inferno to Paradise, while the other two focus on the first five 17 cantos of Purgatory. Looking at the emphasis Beckett placed on the texture of the language,

Bryden recognizes that he appreciated Dante's ability to bring language to life:

From Canto I, line 117, Beckett jots down the phrase "il tremolar della marina" (the rippling of the sea), and underlines it. This vision of the sea at dawn, glimpsed by the Pilgrim under a sky suffused with "the tender tint of orient sapphire" (line 13), constitutes one of those sensuous descriptions of the landscape that serve to distinguish the opening Purgatory experience from the preceding transit through the terrain of Inferno. Beckett also notes from line 22 the predominant movement pattern in Purgatory: "Io mi volsi a man destra" (Then to my right I turned), adding that, in Hell, the Pilgrim turns always to the left ("Three Dantean" 30).

Beckett identifies that Dante's "sensuous descriptions" convey an immediate sense of place without specifying the particulars of locale; in this case the writing transmits the sensation of

7fl being by the sea. With descriptions such as "trembling of the sea" and "sweet hue of oriental sapphire,"21 Dante's language emits opulent sensations that stimulate the reader's imagination by emphasizing the quality and description of the subject rather than advancing an idea. In justifying the language of the piece to Anne Atik (wife of painter Avigdor Arikha), Beckett cited from memory Giovanni Boccaccio's concept that the image of the peacock serves as the central 77 allegory for the expressive force of The Divine Comedy (Atik 79).

In Boccaccio's view, verse connects humans with the divine. He therefore considers

Dante's poetry an amalgamation of prophetic vision and craftsmanship in the choice of language and metaphors to reveal that vision. He claims the profundity of The Divine Comedy lies not in its theological background and use of allegory, but in his perception of the mysterious veil that envelops one's life, destiny, and the quest to understand life itself. Boccaccio explains that the image of the peacock describes four notable attributes of The Divine Comedy, which Beckett summarized to Atik as follows: I The peacock's hundred eyes, or feathers, or plumage = the hundred chants of The Divine Comedy: 3x33+1. The Prologue and. Inferno consist of 34 chants. Purgatorio of 3 3. Paradiso of 3 3. 18 II The peacock's harsh voice corresponds to Dante's voice chastising sinners.

III Contrasting with the beautiful plumage are the ugly feet, corresponding to the ugly Vulgate tongue Dante is using.

IV The peacock's incorruptible flesh corresponds to the sweet odour of incorruptible verity (Atik 79-80).

According to Boccaccio, The Divine Comedy's presentation of "the ineffable [emphasis added] glory of the blessed" in the nearly one hundred cantos (technically there are ninety-nine cantos) parallels the one hundred eyes that a peacock has on its feathers: "These cantos are so arranged to express the variety of details treated in them, just as the eyes of the peacock carefully distinguish between the colors and shapes of the various objects which surround it" (59).

Regarding the "harsh voice" of the peacock, Boccaccio claims that though Dante's expression displays "a sweetness in style," the overarching message signifies a scream against vice and sin

(60). The ugly feet of the peacock and its quiet manner of walking conform to the type of language in Dante's work. Boccaccio considers Dante's use of the vernacular in The Divine

Comedy as "ugly" but suitable for Dante's readers in comparison with the elegant and masterful literary style employed by other "serious" poets, which could only be understood by educated elite: "The silent pace of the peacock signifies the humbleness of the style" (59-60). Finally,

Boccaccio argues the whole of The Divine Comedy symbolically represents the flesh of the peacock because "whether you give a moral or theological meaning to any part of the book that you like most, its truth remains simple and immutable, and therefore not only cannot in any way be corrupted, but the more it is studied, the more the odor of its incorruptible sweetness appears to the readers" (58-59). Based on these qualities, Boccaccio considers Dante's poem an anagogical text, a classification usually reserved for sacred texts, suggesting that Dante represents for Boccaccio the primordial example of the poet theologian. Dante's ability to 19 transmit through language the sensation of the divine, to transcend the material, could only occur through a manipulation of significant form to overcome the expressive limitations of language.

Supporting Boccaccio's position, Beckett acknowledges Dante's linguistic innovations as an assemblage of the purest elements from each Italian dialect to "construct a synthetic language that would at least possess more than a circumscribed local interest" {Disjecta 30). Due to the linguistic indigence at the time, Dante borrowed locutions from many dialects to have his message understood. Dante popularized an innovative approach to writing that emerged in the late thirteenth-century, which he names "il dolce stil novo" or "sweet new style" in the 57* verse of Canto XXIV in Purgatory24 The expression appears in a dialogue where Dante distinguishes his love lyric from his precursors by claiming that his verses reflect a closer relationship between divine "inspiration" and "expression":

"F mi son un che, quando Amor mi spira, noto, e a quel modo ch'e' ditta dentro vo significando" "O frate, issa vegg' io," diss' elli, "il nodo che '1 Notaro e Guittone e me ritenne di qua dal dolce stil novo ch'i' odo

["I am one who, when Love inspires me, takes note, and goes setting it forth after the fashion which he dictates within me." "O brother," he said, "now I see the knot which kept the Notary, and Guittone, and me, short of the sweet new style that I hear] {Purg. 1 XXIV, 11. 52-57, 260-261)

Orbicciani Bonagiunta considers that the use of "mi" in the passage reveals Dante's self- awareness of advancing a new style of writing; it serves as "a modest disclaimer to speak for anyone but himself in formulating his credo" that strives for a vernacular poetry of increased emotional and psychological depth (Alighieri, Purg. 2 fn. 52-54, 569). Dante's connecting of divine "inspiration" to "love" affirms that he considers the purpose of writing as the transference of emotion to the reader, to make the words come alive and convey a sensation to the reader as opposed to relaying explicitly specific messages of content. This idea of artistic expression as aiming for an increased emotional investment between artist and audience prevailed as an 20 aesthetic attitude that pervaded all medieval art forms; for instance, sculptors such as Nicola and

Giovanni Pisano and painters such as Giotto and his followers reflect a similar shift in style and

sensibility through their own mediums (Fengler 127).25

Late in the medieval era, political changes in central-northern Italy caused the rise of powerful city-states with robust trade economies, resulting in the rise of new building campaigns

such as the Duomo of Siena and Santa Croce in Florence (Grillo 11). The new religious orders

generated an interest in narrative art to garner an empathetic rapport with believers. In fact, the

Franciscan order of the fourteenth-century urged people to image what life was actually like

when Christ was incarnate (carrying food, finding shelter) to emphasize the human aspects of his

life, inspiring the medieval naturalistic movement (Fengler 129).2 The Franciscans developed a

form of religious drama in which they sometimes "impersonated" the holy figure of whom they

were speaking, which incorporated visual aids to make religious concepts more real. Art inspired by Franciscanism shows protagonists increasingly lifelike in appearance and behaviour.

Empathetic arts favour mimetic details, to bring historical events and didactic themes into the

empirical world through the communality of human experience (Grillo 11).27 Since medieval

aesthetic principles aimed for spiritual significance in all artistic expressions, works of art, like

the scriptures, lent themselves to a fourfold interpretation—literal, topological, allegorical, and

analogical—all applicable to The Divine Comedy (Praz 64). Dante himself states in his famous

Epistle XIII to Cangrande that the purpose of The Divine Comedy is to give the masses an

opportunity to experience the divine. Considered more beautiful than the object itself, the

representation only had the function of attuning the soul to a supersensible harmony. Along with

this metaphysical standard, the idea that an art work expressed an artist's personality first

materialized with Dante and his contemporaries, as Mario Praz explains: "It only broke through

with Dante, Petrarch, and Villani in the bourgeois milieu of the culture that developed in the free 21 cities of Italy. Before this time only the manual skill of the artist was appreciated, not his creative power, which was credited to God" (64).

The emotional and psychological depth that Dante's poetry achieves using vernacular language not surprisingly coincides with the advent of realism and naturalism in Italian art at the end of the thirteenth-century. Inspired by sensual immediacy of painting, Dante imported principles of perspective, colour, line, and chiaroscuro from the genre as means of articulating each physical description in his writing so that it conveys both internal and external aspects of the character. Dante's heightening of the dramatic and graphic power of language allows the reader to perceive a multidimensional world infused with vitality. In Purgatory, for instance,

Sordello's speech features snippets of spatially or physically descriptive phrases that attaches a physical characteristic to each soul:

Colui che piu siede alto e fa sembianti d'aver negletto cio che far dovea, e che non move bocca a li altrui canti, Rodolfo imperador fu, che potea sanar le piaghe c'hanno Italia morta, si che tardi per altri si ricrea. L'altro che ne la vista lui conforta, resse la terra dove l'acqua nasce che Molta in Albia, e Albia in mar ne porta: Ottacchero ebbe nome, e ne le fasce fu meglio assai che Vincislao suo figlio barbuto, cui lussuria e ozio pasce. E quel nasetto che stretto a consiglio par con colui c'ha si benigno aspetto, mori fuggendo e disfiorando il giglio: guardate la come si batte il petto! L'altro vedete c'ha fatto a la guancia de la sua palma, sospirando, letto. Padre e suocero son del mal di Francia: sanno la vita sua viziata e lorda, e quindi viene il duol che si li lancia. Quel che par si membruto e che s'accorda, cantando, con colui dal maschio naso, d'ogne valor porto cinta la corda; e se re dopo lui fosse rimaso lo giovanetto che retro a lui siede, ben andava il valor di vaso in vaso, 22 che non si puote dir de l'altre rede;

[He who sits highest and has the look of having neglected what he ought to have done, and does not move his lips with the others' song, was Rudolf the Emperor, who might have healed the wounds that were the death of Italy, so that through another she is succored too late. The other, who appears to be comforting him, ruled the land where the waters spring that the Moldau carries to the Elbe, and the Elbe to the sea: his name was Ottokar, and in swaddling-bands he was better far than bearded Wenceslaus, his son, who is fed by lust and idleness. And he with the small nose, who seems close in counsel with him that has so kindly a mien, died in flight and disflowering the lily: look there how he beats his breast. See the other that, sighing, has made a bed for his cheek with the palm of his hand. They are the father and the father-in-law of the plague of France; they know his wicked and foul life, and hence comes the grief that pierces them so. He that seems stout of limb and who accords his singing with him of the virile nose was begirt with the cord of every worth; and if the youth who is sitting behind him had followed him as king, then indeed his worth had passed from vessel to vessel, which cannot be said of the other heirs;] (Alighieri, Purg. VII, 11. 91-115, 72-74).

According Christopher Kleinhenz, Dante's use of language generates visual scenes that one is meant to read as frescoes featuring figures in profile, since Dante's repeated use of the word

"nose"29 highlights one of the prominent and distinctive features of a figure's side view:

The Florentine poet relied to a large extent upon the artistic awareness of his audience to reconstruct and revivify the scene which he, as Pilgrim, witnessed during his journey through the tre regni, and the insistence on naso provides the clue for the proper reading and interpretation of the passage in the Purgatory. The co-existence of the real and ideal in this episode and in the figurative arts of the time serves to underline the common inspiration of these two art forms (Kleinhenz, "Nose" 375-77).

To qualify Dante's naturalistic language, one defines his vernacular as rooted in the physical object to provide the sensation as if the descriptions materialize out of nothing to produce an immaculate image of a physical landscape or the portrait of a person. As a testament to his aesthetic, in Canto X of Purgatory Dante describes three reliefs carved into the rocky face of the mountain, each depicting an example of humility intended to provide moral instruction to help expiate the sin of pride; reliefs so convincingly rendered that "nature herself would there be put to shame,"30 suggesting the use of increased naturalism to fulfill a traditional medieval didactic {Purg. X, 11. 29-33, 100). In fact, Dante explicitly refers to the sculptural reliefs as 23 "visiblie parlare" or visible speech (Purg. X, 1. 95, 104-105). God executed the reliefs as examples of humility for those who led an excessively proud life. From this detail, one may infer that Dante approves of an art rooted in sensual reality for moral instruction to those attached to material objects. In the way that vice had been indulged through the senses, so too must the senses be used to reinforce virtue. And, since the visual impact of the reliefs is so persuasively naturalistic that, Dante says, other senses, specifically hearing and smell, seem to be engaged as well (Fengler 129).

When considering Dante's poem as a whole, one recognizes his challenge of capturing in words the relationship between divine and earthly matters. Accordingly, Dante could not have been immune to the abundance of visual representations of religious themes that he lived amongst in the development of his poetic imagination. Kleinhenz argues that the mosaic in the cupola of the Florentine Bapistry (Coppo di Marcovaldo, 1250-75), or the relief panels such as those on the pulpits in the Pisan Baptistery (Nicola Pisano, 1265) and Duomo (Giovanni Pisano,

1301) must have been present in Dante's mind when creating The Divine Comedy ("Visual Arts"

20).31 Throughout the poem, Dante refers to artists and the artistic process, as well as specific and generic indications of works of art (Kleinhenz, "Tradition" 18). Familiar with visual representations of the "other world," Dante's explicitly proclaims that it is through the senses that forms the basis of knowledge:

Cosi parlar conviensi al vostro ingegno, pero che solo da sensato apprende cio che fa poscia d'intelletto degno. Per questo la Scrittura condescende a vostra facultate, e piedi e mano attribuisce a Dio e altro intende; e Santa Chiesa con aspetto umano Gabriel e Michel vi rappresenta, e l'altro che Tobia rifece sano. (Par. IV, 40-8)

[It is needful to speak thus to your faculty, since only through sense perception does it apprehend that which it afterwards makes fit for the intellect. For this 24 reason Scripture condescends to your capacity, and attributes both hands and feet to God, having other meaning; and Holy Church represents to you with human aspect Gabriel and Michael and the other who made Tobit whole again.] {Par. IV, 40-48, 38-39)

In this passage, Dante affirms that the senses precede the intellect, suggesting an attraction to the expressive immediacy of painting. For instance, Dante's final vision of Christ as surrounded by a fiery mass of bright light can be found in numerous paintings of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Pietro Cavallini's fresco of the Last Judgment in the church of St. Cecilia in

Trastevere shows Christ seated on a golden throne encrusted with gems, encircled by a glowing triple circle of gold, red, and gold, which appears in Dante's poem as "tre giri/di tre colori"

["three circles of three colours"] (Morgan 186). In the Scrovegni Chapel, Giotto depicts Christ seated within overlapping circles of indigo, white, and orange-red, which materializes in Dante's text as "e '1 terzo parea foco/che quinci e quindi igualmente si spiri" ["and the third seemed fire breathed forth equally from the one and the other"] (Morgan 186). In Dante's description, the outer circle of the mandorla becomes a river of fire that flows down to engulf the damned, the centre is filled with golden light ("luce etterna" 1. 124), and Christ is "painted" ("pinta de la nostra effige" 1. 131) (Morgan 186).

In some respects, visual representations of Paradise aid in the structuring of Dante's images, especially his outline of the "blessed" in heaven. For example, he describes the elect seated in rows as if in an amphitheatre divided into two semicircles; on one side sit those who believed in the Messiah to come, and facing them are seated those who believed in Christ once he had come:

E come quinci il glorioso scanno de la donna del cielo e li altri scanni di sotto lui cotanta cerna fanno, cosi di contra qual del gran Giovanni, che sempre santo '1 diserto e '1 martiro sofferse, e poi l'inferno da due anni; e sotto lui cosi cerner sortiro Francesco, Benedetto e Augustino 25 e altri fin qua giu di giro in giro.

[And as on this side the glorious seat of the Lady of Heaven, and the other seats below it, make so great a partition, thus, opposite, does the seat of the great John who, ever holy, endured the desert and martyrdom and then Hell for two years; and beneath him, Francis and Benedict and Augustine and others were allotted thus to divide, as far down as here, from circle to circle.] {Par. XXXII, 11. 28-36, 360-361)

Dante includes in his image figures from the Old Testament (Adam, Eve, Moses, Judith, Sarah,

Rachel), New Testament figures (Mary, John, Peter, Anne, John the Baptist), and recent saints

(Lucy, Benedict, Augustine) to suggest that they ascended through the celestial spheres and are now seated in each figure's appointed place. All previous visual representations of the Last

Judgment similarly depict the elect seated in one or more rows, especially in the ones produced during Dante's lifetime, which include figures from all periods in history (Morgan 188).32

Aside from borrowing images from the visual arts, Dante also incorporates aesthetic techniques from painting, especially to describe the "saved." Inspired by the shimmering, other­ worldly play of colours when light hits mosaics, which he encountered in abundance in the city of Ravenna where he completed Paradise, Dante's depiction of "heaven" as full of "dazzle" and

"wonderment" in The Divine Comedy indicates the ineffability of certain dimensions of existence.33 As a primary element in visual experience, light represents for Dante a common feature of both heaven and earth because of its brilliance and splendour, its power to radiate and diffuse itself, its effects on different surfaces, its expressive character, and its ability to suggest psychological and emotional responses (Gilson 1). Founded on theories of optics and light,

Dante invests his similes with visual potency and pictorial sensibility to serve as the dramatic force for his visual imagery. Throughout The Divine Comedy, and especially in Paradise, Dante illustrates his fascination for light with striking luminous effects, optical illusions, and meteorological phenomena (such as his technical similes based on the rainbow). The fascination for Dante is the way light changes from contact with objects of different shape, colour, and 26 density (Gilson 258-259). For instance, the first episode to involve the dazzling light of an angel

occurs at the end of the Purgatory: "Marte rosseggia/giu nel ponente sovra '1 suol marino"

["Mars glows ruddy through the thick vapours low in the west over the ocean floor"] (Purg. II,

14-15, 12-13) until "Poi, come piu e piu verso noi venne/l'uccel divino, puu chiaro appariva;/per che l'occhio da presso nol sostenne,/ma chinail giuso;" ["Then, as the divine bird came nearer and nearer to us, the brighter did he appear, so that close up my eyes could not endure him and I cast them down"] (Purg. II, 37-40, 14-15). The narrative follows the gradual perception of the angel's true form until Dante's eyes cannot withstand its light, forcing him to avert his gaze. His action creates an atmosphere of expectation and spiritual trepidation, illustrating his interest not only with the optical effects produced by distant objects as they approach the viewer, but also with the distortions caused by atmospheric changes.

As the corollary in the production of these shimmering effects, the images of light in the text introduce themes of sight and blindness. Dante gives attention to how the protagonist responds to differing colours, intensities, and kinds of light, especially in Paradise where ever- increasing intensities of light engulf the pilgrim (Gilson 79). But, it is in Purgatory where

Dante's reaction to intense light becomes a recurrent theme and pattern that dominates the rest of the poem. One can relate all the scenes of blinding dazzle in the final cantos to the gradual process of increasing the intensity of natural and supernatural light as Dante ascends. The principle that greater intensities of light promote increased visibility finds explicit mention in canto XV of Purgatory, where Dante learns that his eyes will soon find delight in luminosity rather than the discomfort he now experiences:

"Non ti maravigliar s'ancor t'abbaglia la famiglia del cielo," a me rispuose: "messo e che viene ad invitar ch'om saglia. Tosto sara ch'a veder queste cose non ti fia grave, ma fieti diletto quanto natura a sentir ti dispuose." 27 ["Do not marvel if the family of Heaven still dazzles you," he answered me; "this is a messenger that comes to invite to the ascent. Soon will it be that the seeing of these will not be hard for you, but as great a delight as nature has fitted you to feel."] {Purg XV, 11. 28-33, 156-157)

Dante's works have inspired and continue to inspire modern writers, leading Reed Way

Dasenbrock to proclaim that: "One of the ways we could describe an aspiration of virtually all the major modernist writers in English is that they were all trying to write the Commedia of the twentieth century ... there is a sense in which Yeats, Wyndham Lewis, Beckett, and Eliot, in addition to Pound and Joyce, were simply imitating the Italian, Dante Alighieri" (209). The innovations that earned Dante the reputation as "father" of the Italian language achieved a

semantic and lexical flexibility and range that were unthinkable before him. Recognizing similarities between Dante and Joyce in their linguistic experimentation, Beckett declared in

1986 that "Dante created a new language that was not used before. Dante was a Joycean writer"

(Rabinovitz, Innovation 107). In "Dante ... Bruno . Vico .. Joyce," Beckett rationalizes his juxtaposition of the great Florentine poet with his Irish acquaintance by claiming that "[i]t is reasonable to admit that an international phenomenon might be capable of speaking [Joyce's

English], just as in 1300 none but an inter-regional phenomenon could have spoken the language of the Divine Comedy" {Disjecta 31). In his essay, Beckett bases the "considerable circumstantial similarity" between Dante and Joyce on linguistic innovation, an assemblage of

"the purest elements from each dialect [to] construct a synthetic language" {Disjecta 30). The essay, writtenvfor a collection by several authors on Joyce's Work in Progress, the working title for Finnegans Wake, implies an act of devotion on the part of Joyce to Dante, especially

considering that Joyce himself solicited the study.

Joyce began reading Dante at school, never losing interest in the Italian poet. From

Dante, Joyce inscribed literary theories and techniques into his text, appropriating and transforming them for his own purposes. Joyce channels Dante's voice through his work by 28 acknowledging his source and offering an insight to one of the many poetic, structural, and

exegetical models for Finnegans Wake (Boldrini 2). Though Joyce recognized Dante's

importance as a linguistic innovator, he pointed to a "distortion" inherent in both Dante and his own treatment of language, and, implicitly, to the "metamorphosis" and "distortion" to which his

"model" must be subjected; Joyce was reported to have said: "May Father Dante forgive me but I started from this technique of deformation to achieve a harmony that defeats our intelligence, as music does" (trans, in Boldrini 3).3 The underlying association between Dante and Joyce in the development of Beckett's aesthetics rests on their manipulation of language to transcend form.

Like Dante, Joyce transforms language so that the syntax, texture, and tone of his writing may channel multiple energy sources to generate strong emotional responses in the reader by stimulating various imaginative processes at once. Beckett's recognition of Joyce's artistic mandate is manifested in his oft-quoted aphorism (equally applied to his own works): "Here form is content, content is form. You complain that this stuff is not written in English. It is not written at all. It is not to be read - or rather it is not only to be read. It is to be looked at and listened to. His writing is not about something; it is that something itself {Disjecta 27). In examining a passage of text, Beckett identifies how Joyce's language become the objects they describe:

When the sense is sleep, the words go to sleep. [...] When the sense is dancing, the words dance. Take the passage at the end of Shaun's pastoral: "To stirr up love's young fizz I tilt with this bridle's cup champagne, dimming douce from her peepair of hide-seeks tight squeezed on my snowybreasted and while my pearlies in their sparkling wisdom are nippling her bubblets I swear (and let you swear) by the bumper round of my porr old snaggletooth's solidbowel I ne'er will prove I'm untrue to (theare!) you liking so long as my hole looks. Down." The language is drunk. The very words are tilted and effervescent {Disjecta 27).

In Beckett's estimation, Joyce's work stimulates both visual and auditory senses, necessitating an awareness of spatial and temporal unities:

There is one point to make clear: the Beauty of Work in Progress is not presented in space alone, since its adequate apprehension depends as much on its visibility 29 as on its audibility. There is a temporal as well as a spatial unity to be apprehended. Substitute 'and' for 'or' in the quotation, and it becomes obvious why it is as inadequate to speak of 'reading' Work in Progress as it would be extravagant to speak of 'apprehending' the work of the late Mr Nat Gould (Disjecta 28).35

Beckett's analysis posits that writing itself should aim for the precision of expression generated by hieroglyphics, which features modes of expression and communicability from language, gesture, and painting. In Joyce's writing, the text appears as a jumble of words in reaction to the natural world that produced them. Joyce mixes metaphors, puns, and neologisms to dizzy the reader into making tangible sense from the experience. Beckett held the greatest admiration for

Joyce as an artist, and valued his friendship with him. Each had much in common with the other: a keen intellect; degrees in French and Italian; curiosity about the rhythms, subtleties, and shapes of words; a fascination with religion deeply undercut by skepticism; a love of music, Dante,

Synge, and the visual arts; respect for silence; a total commitment to writing, and even a shared appreciation of the art of Charlie Chaplin (Ackerley 286). Though one may find many similarities between the two writers, a fundamental difference in the extent to which art can be affective separates them. Joyce believed he could "do anything" with words, while Beckett grew more and more distrustful of the extent to which meaning could be generated from words, leading to his decision to write predominately in French (Ackerley 288). The language switch forced Beckett to avoid the use of insistent interconnectivity of metaphor and ubiquitous allusion that unconsciously surfaces when writing in one's mother tongue. Eventually, however, even a switch in language could not provide the degree of specificity required to express Beckett's vision, leading to his experimentation with the stage.

Beckett concludes "Dante ... Bruno . Vico .. Joyce" with a "last word about the

Purgatories," which discusses the differences and analogies between the function and structure of

Dante's Purgatory and the "purgatorial quality" of Work in Progress, and, by extension, his own aesthetic notions on form and structure. He distinguishes Dante's purgatory as conical, implying 30 culmination, from that of Joyce, which he considers spherical, excluding culmination. The

similarity between the two structures is the fact that they are both moving—they are in flux.

As a way of consolidating the aesthetic practices of Dante, Joyce, and Beckett, Phyllis

Carey's analysis of the concept of pieta in their works illustrates how these writers manifested

abstract concepts in languages shaped and manipulated to generate the immediacy of experience

generated by painting. As Pietas stands as the Latin root for both piety and pity, the Italian word pieta may refer to either pity or piety or, as in Dante, to both. One sees the link between the two

ways of defining pieta when manifested in the visual arts; pieta refers to a religious painting or

sculpture of the Virgin Mary holding and mourning the dead body of Jesus, while piety stands

for religious devotion and reverence to God. Regarding the appropriation of pieta in the work of

Dante, Joyce, and Beckett, one recognizes that it is this unity of the spiritual with physical

manifestation that exposes the unique aesthetic approaches of these writers, at the same time

revealing each of their individual metaphysical outlooks.36

Dante's all-pervasive metaphor for God arises from the clear light that extends from the

dazzling claritas of Paradise to the dark atmosphere established at the beginning of the Inferno,

cursed by God's absence. For Dante, pity does not fit into the hellish equation since humans bear

responsibility for their own destiny. In Dante's world, action and will become synthesized in

conceptions of the divine. In metaphorical terms, only by "looking into the light," the light

emanating from the omnipotent deity, can one receive God's pity; though the choice to "give into

the light" must independently be made by every individual. While Dante's pieta spiritually

synthesizes action and will with the divine, Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

aesthetically integrates body and spirit in the poetic word, as Carey explains:

Aesthetic apprehension for Stephen is a progression from simple perception to recognition to satisfaction, a process whereby the reality of experience is revealed aesthetically. [...] Stephen substitutes a psychological progression from simple perception to epiphany for an ontological unfolding of the thing in itself (105). 31 Through Stephen Dedalus, Joyce emphasizes the phases of apprehension that the artist re-creates

in the text. In appropriating Dante for his own aesthetic, the interest for Stephen lies in what

Marshall McLuhan calls "the profoundly analogical drama of existence as it is mirrored in the

cognitive powers in act." Carey elaborates on McLuhan's comment by relating artistic creation

to religious ceremony: "[T]he artist in transforming the objects of perception into an aesthetic

image performs an aesthetic rite that produces artistic life; in Stephen's words 'a priest of eternal

imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life'"

(106). Unlike Dante's piety, Stephen's pieta does not establish a union of individual will and the

divine, but a combination of human mind and emotion through an aesthetic image. As seen in

Dante, invocation of the pieta materializes in language through metaphors of blazing light; for

Joyce, the light converts human experience into artistic experience: "Stephen finds himself

'swooning into some new world ... a world, a glimmer, a flower? Glimmering and trembling,

trembling and unfolding, a breaking of light, an opening flower ... wave of light by wave of light,

flooding all the heavens with its soft flushes'" (Carey 108). In transforming objects of perception

into an aesthetic image, the artist (inspired by the light) performs an aesthetic ritual that produces

artistic life.

The pieta serves as a structural metaphor to manifest the spiritual in the physical; Dante used it to express religious beliefs, Joyce employed it to attain aesthetic transcendence, while

Beckett utilized it to communicate ineffable ideas, as Carey explains: "For Dante, the pieta lies

in translating the transcendent meaning of the divine mysteries into images; for Joyce the pieta

lies in transmuting daily experience into artistic words whose meanings stretch and reverberate

in ever-richer resonance; for Beckett the pieta lies in detranslating the illustionary words into

images and echoes of the underlying, inexpressible quandary of human existence" (115).

Beckett's invocation of the pieta in "Dante ... Bruno . Vico .. Joyce" underlines his emphasis on the expressive limitation of language. 32 Literature, signifying more than the retelling of plots, possesses the limitation of relying on language as its primary mode of communication. As a product of human invention, language approximates representation using phonetic sounds and syntactic structures to convey meaning.

But, as a form of representation, language alone cannot always completely convey the emotional tenor of a situation or the nucleus of the aesthetic emotion in a work of art, as recognized by

Dante, Joyce, and Beckett in the creation of their respective works. As Ludwig Wittgenstein expresses in his famous last sentence of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: "There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical"

(6.522). As Wittgenstein suggests, one identifies a close association between ineffability and mysticism; by definition, language attempts to describe dimensions of reality that are ineffable, which lie "outside" speech. "Obliged to express," writers concerned with the evocation of particularized emotion in the reader, such as Dante, Joyce, and Beckett, struggle against the limits of language by manipulating artistic form to convey their desired emotional sentiment- words alone are inadequate to give expression to experience. Human preoccupation with speech, and the self-referentiality of texts suggests the desire to create something out of nothing, to break the silence with sound. In doing so, writers such as Dante, Joyce, and Beckett recognize that despite the expressive drawbacks of language, some essence of emotion can be transmitted through a self-reflexive form of language that invokes aesthetic principles from other art forms, especially (though not exclusively) painting, because it possesses the ability to convey immediately its complete expressive form. From the outset of Paradise, Dante's pilgrim was "in the heaven that most receives of His light, and have seen things which whoso descends from up there has neither the knowledge or the power to relate, because, as it draws near to its desire, our intellect enters so deep that memory cannot go back upon the track" (Purg. 1,1. 4-9, 2-3). The pilgrim's experience of the ineffable displays nothing less than unmediated contact with God—a sense of verbal beatitude has been achieved. In Beckett's case, one can consider his novels the 33 "final" step in the development of self-conscious fiction, the limits of novel itself. The narrative structures initiated in Watt, and continued in Molloy and Malone Dies, reach their syntactic limits in The Unnamable, where Beckett strives to express pure consciousness through written form.

The reader cannot easily determine if the protagonist can express himself only in words, or whether he is only words, for one encounters him in a book comprised entirely of his monologue wherein he discredits any other process but his own speaking.

As a form of communication to describe details or convey empirical information, the written word provides an invaluable source of information that enables one to broaden one's thinking—to accept and process new ideas. In dealing with the ineffable, creative writers such as

Dante, Joyce, and Beckett experimented with the form of language to shape expressive structures in such a way as to create a stronger relationship between words and emotions. In doing so, these writers tapped into the central expressive force of the visual arts, which possesses the ability to generate a direct emotional transference to the viewer, who later may choose to deconstruct the piece syntactically if he or she has been inspired by the immediate apprehension of the piece.

Beckett gained from Dante and Joyce an insight into how one can shape words and syntax to generate deeper emotional transferences between writer and reader. Owing to the fact that many of their techniques were inspired from the visual arts, Beckett's aesthetic education features an inheritance on the importance of painting's ability to generate an immediate emotional reaction. 34 CHAPTER TWO: DRAMA IN THE IMAGE

There is a wonderful sentence in Augustine: "Do not despair; one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume; one of the thieves was damned." That sentence has a wonderful shape. It is the shape that matters. - Samuel Beckett (qtd. in Schneider, "Working" 3-20)

§1: Entrance on the Stage

Samuel Beckett aspired to become a literary writer, illustrated by the restriction of his early work to the genres of poetry, short stories, and select pieces of criticism. Having limited exposure to the theatre until his own foray into the field, Beckett never projected becoming a playwright until confronting expressive challenges with prose writing. Due to his limited knowledge of theatrical operations, when Beckett designed for the stage he drew inspiration from painting—an art form that enamoured him to the extent that he educated himself in art history

(Knowlson, Damned 71-71). With only a brief introduction to mainstream theatre as a child, and some exposure to Irish drama at the Abbey Theatre as a young adult, Beckett could not claim virtuosity in the pragmatics of stage creation before envisioning Eleutheria and Waiting for

Godot. Even though as a university student Beckett participated in a farcical adaptation of Pierre

Corneille's Le Cid, quirkily re-titled Le Kid, historical accounts indicate his contributions to the production amounted to little more than suggesting the title and a small on-stage role (that became a source of embarrassment for him).37 Beckett began his first theatrical venture in 1937 with the beginnings of a play entitled Human Wishes, detailing the relationship of Dr. Samuel

Johnson and Mrs. Thrale. Though he compiled three notebooks of biographical and historical research, he abandoned the project after struggling through only a few pages of dialogue.

Although little evidence exists to determine conclusively the reasons why Beckett stopped the work, because this was his first attempt at writing a play, perhaps he encountered difficulty communicating his voice through a traditional text-based, dialogue-driven form of theatre.

For ten years, Beckett steered clear of dramatic creation until 1947 when he began 35 Eleutheria. The play was published posthumously in 1995, and in hindsight, one can understand

why Beckett refused its publication after initial interest to produce it fell through. Though the

spirit of Eleutheria reflects Beckett's ideological drive, the play uncharacteristically features a

traditional three-act dramatic structure involving numerous characters, ensnared in different

fictive realities, coupled with complicated lighting effects, a detailed set, and elaborate props.

As Dougald McMillan and Martha Fehsenfeld demonstrate, each act of the play invokes

Shakespearean and Strindbergian theatrical traditions (see 32-36), which suggests that Beckett

emulated established theatrical styles because of his lack of experience with the expressive potential of the stage. Ruby Cohn also notices the use of drawing-room realism in Eleutheria by

likening it to Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House and Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard

("Beckett's Theatre" 4). As his first complete theatrical work, Eleutheria illustrates Beckett's

attempt to express his ideas according to traditional approaches to the stage—a style inadequate

for his focused exploration of a single, universal aspect of the human condition.

One recognizes the opposition between Beckett's theatrical vision and traditional

conceptions of staging in Eleutheria by his pitting of two theatrical models against each other

within the scope of a single play, one of oldest formulas for creating dramatic tension. In

Eleutheria, Beckett separates the action into "main" and "marginal":

This play, in the first two acts, calls for a staging juxtaposing two distinct locations and therefore two simultaneous actions, a main action and a marginal action, the latter silent apart from a few short sentences and, as regards non-verbal expression, reduced to the vague attitudes and movements of a single character. Strictly speaking, less an action than a site, often empty. The script concerns the main action exclusively. The marginal action is the actor's business, within the limits of the directions [...] {Eleutheria 2).

The "main" action parodies features of traditional plays; Beckett ridicules boulevard comedy and

melodrama by confining the characters in a bourgeois living room, and having them discuss the

life choices of the reclusive protagonist, Victor Krap.40 Through the "marginal" action, one

detects the genesis of what became "Beckettian" drama—a solitary man alone in bed in a bare 36 room in search of truth. The play self-referentially highlights its clash of form in Act III when

Beckett disrupts the unfolding of the plot with a scene that critiques the presentation. A character portraying an audience member, frustrated with the expressive form of the piece exclaims: "It's odd. No sooner among you on the boards, than I start losing my grip. (Pause) A[nd] by no means an inconsiderable one. (Pause) Everything is becoming hazy, vague, and I can no longer make heads or tails out of it. (Puts his hands before his eyes) I don't even know any more what I was saying" (Eleutheria 142). Following the audience member's exclamation, a character playing a script-prompter replies in anger that the reason for the play's failure is due to the cast not following the script: "The play's the thing! Enough already. (The prompter emerges from his box, climbs up on the stage, the script in hand) That's it! All over! You are not following the script. You make me sick. Goodnight. (Exit)" (Eleutheria 142). The Glazier then reacts to the tirade with an ironic call for the return of the script: "The script! The script! Leave the script with us! (Enter the script by air. It crashes to earth) We're really in for it now!" {Eleutheria 142).

From this metatheatrical exchange, Beckett spoofs the well-made play's dependence on the text as the centre of the theatrical presentation and his reliance on that formula.

The critical consensus maintains that while Beckett fuses two distinct theatrical approaches, Eleutheria fails to sustain dramatic interest, as Knowlson explains: "Even though the wish for some form of clarification, definition, even explanation of Victor's motives is mocked within the drama itself, it becomes, nonetheless, a very real factor in the failure of the play to hold dramatic interest. Since Victor is by choice a dead weight dramatically, much has to depend on the other characters, on the visual biplay, and on the quality of the writing" (Damned 330).

After Eleutheria, Beckett abandons traditional forms of staging in favour of shaping the theatrical sign system better to express his ideas, exemplified by his aphorism "form is content, content is form" (Disjecta 27). From Beckett's infamous, oft-quoted expression, one recognizes that he considers the vehicles of communication as intertwined with thematic expression, which, 37 in the theatre, signifies multiple forms of communication. Once he became aware of the various communicative outlets of the stage, he realized that the potential to represent the ineffable dimensions of existence could be enhanced by combining language with a visual image.

One finds a significant shift in theatrical approach between Eleutheria and Waiting for

Godot by the elimination of sub-plots, fancy settings, and impressive lighting effects in the latter for focus on articulating its central image. From Waiting for Godot onward, Beckett viewed the stage as a canvas for his portraits of humanity by applying the economy of language governing his prose work to the design and textual elements of his stage plays—a paring down of elements to focus on presenting a clear, concise picture. As emblematic of his theatrical outlook, he specified Caspar David Friedrich's painting Two Men Observing the Moon (1819) as a source of inspiration for the play (see figs. 3, 4).42 Upon encountering Freidrich's painting during his 1937 visit to Dresden, Beckett wrote in his German notebook to having a "pleasant predilection for 2 tiny languid men in his landscapes, as in the little moon landscape, that is the only kind of romantic still tolerable, the bemolise [in a minor key]" (Knowlson, Damned 236). That

Friedrich's painting inspired Beckett's play marks the beginning of the playwright's use of the stage as a vehicle to represent an aspect of the human condition by painting a mood or atmosphere rather than to unfurl the details of a story—in Waiting for Godot nothing happens twice. One recognizes the affinity between Beckett's play, featuring two men in the act of waiting, and Friedrich's painting, portraying two figures in the act of contemplation, as rooted in those ideals of German Romantic art that celebrate the solitary wanderer longing for primeval nature.

§2: First Theatre

Although Waiting for Godot has become an international success, canonized in theatre history as the quintessential play of the absurdist movement, Beckett frequently mentioned his 38 inexperience in writing for the stage at the time of composing the play. Existing scripts and annotated copies of early productions feature additions, cuts, and changes to parts of the play in an attempt to refine the piece. When Beckett directed the play himself at the Schiller-Theater in

Berlin in 1975, he wrote in his production notebook that his purpose was "Der Konfusion Gestalt geben" ("To give shape to the confusion") (Knowlson, introd. Godot xi). Describing the original published version as "messy" to Ruby Cohn {Just Play 258), Beckett used his directorial opportunity to theatrically improve the play by removing superfluous dialogue and stage business to maintain the spectator's focus on the stage picture. After discovering new insights into his plays by directing them, he became conscious that staging was an integral part of the creative process, writing to Alan Schneider in 1963: "I realize that no final script is possible till I have had work on rehearsals" (Harmon 144). Staging his own work provided Beckett with the opportunity to realize his vision and express his ideas through sound, image, and space. Though he despised the public and social dimensions of the theatre and the intense effort that directing required of him, he felt compelled to overcome all challenges for the sake of preserving his artistic vision. From photographs, reviews, and reports from his wife and friends on productions directed by others, Beckett realized that some interpretations of his work did not meet his expectations, provoking him into the world of directing. Though he never claimed his version as definitive, he became annoyed and irritated with directors taking flagrant liberties with his work.

While Beckett supervised and assisted a number of productions of Waiting for Godot ever since its premiere in 1952, he did not direct the piece himself until asked in 1974 by the

Schiller-Theater in Berlin. Having gained some directorial experience by the time he embarked on his German Warten auf Godot, Beckett continued his practice of carefully working out each detail of the play before working with the cast. True to form, he arrived at the first rehearsal with the text memorized and a production notebook filled with hundreds of revisions to the play. The notebook, which grew into a second volume once rehearsals began, summarizes Beckett's 39 visualization of every moment of the play. The revised text features a shorter and tighter play structure envisioned in theatrical terms. The revisions not only align details between the French and English versions of the text, but also uncover Beckett's attention to the structure of the piece to establish a precise image, as Cohn describes: "This is not only traditional blocking, but concern with each actor's moment-by-moment victory over stillness, with the total stage pattern, with the counterpoint of word and gesture, with visual echoes, symmetries, and oppositions"

(Just Play 258).

In his Schiller notebook, Beckett wrote "K. D. Friedrich" on a page facing his analysis of the moonlight scene, which he labeled a "tableau," where the action stops for a moment of contemplation (Godot 238-239). Beckett captures the emotional intensity or "minor key" of the painting and recreates it in his play, not by copying the exact postures of the image, but by transferring the aesthetic effect that the composition generates.44 To better accentuate the atmosphere of Friedrich's painting when he directed the piece, Beckett revised the opening scene of the play by replacing Vladimir's pronounced entrance onto the stage while Estragon struggles with his boot with having both characters together in a frozen tableau; Vladimir stands at the tree in half-shadow upstage right, while Estragon, head bowed, remains motionless on a stone. Also, the change in set from mound in the original text to stone in Beckett's production creates compositional overtones with the stone in Friedrich's painting that juts out toward the right of the canvas. Beckett's modifications introduce a balance between the characters to show them as inseparable, similar to Friedrich's composition (Knowlson, introd. Godot xiii).

Walter Asmus, who worked on the production, relates how Beckett described the relationship between Vladimir and Estragon: "[T]hey are connected, and at the same time there is always the tendency to go apart. He used this image of the rubber band: they pull together by means of a rubber band and tear apart again, and so on [...]" (Kalb 175). To heighten the elastic relationship between the two characters, Beckett directed the costume designer Matias to clothe 40 Vladimir in striped trousers that fit him and a black jacket too small for him, and Estragon in black trousers that fit him and a striped jacket too big for him (Asmus 21). In the second act, they

switch their articles of clothing to reverse the effect. Offering a visual image of the characters' relationships to their landscape, Beckett said: "Estragon is on the ground, he belongs to the stone.

Vladimir is light, he is oriented towards the sky. He belongs to the tree" (Asmus 21). By tracing the source of Beckett's characters, one finds similarity in the inseparableness of Vladimir and

Estragon to the camaraderie between Friedrich's pensive figures. Placed in the foreground with their backs to the viewer, Friedrich's pair embodies the Romantic sense of yearning. By placing the figures off centre to the left of the moon, Friedrich encourages the viewer to identify with their angle of vision and share their contemplative mood. According to contemporary sources, the two figures in the painting are Friedrich himself, leaning on the walking stick, and his student

August Heinrich (Rewald 30). Both wear altdeutsch attire, depicting their solidarity to the Old

German dress code adopted in 1815 by radical German students, to oppose the ultraconservative policies being enforced after the Napoleonic Wars. As with Vladimir and Estragon, Heinrich and

Friedrich represent two who become one in their moment of contemplation, pictorially suggested

in the painting by the placement of Heinrich's hand on Friedrich's shoulder.

Inasmuch as Waiting for Godot captures the visual impression of Friedrich's painting, the

asymmetrical composition of Two Men Observing the Moon suggests its own dramatic quality with symbol-laden elements that evoke theatrical props, such as the fir tree, dead oak, rock, and broken-off branch. The contemplative mood of the painting emanates from the figures standing

on the edge of a V-formation, beyond which an empty chasm appears to open. The counter-stress

lies in the proliferating, outstretched arms of the tree's torn-out roots; their bizarre shapes

suggest something uncanny and distant, evoking a contemplative atmosphere (Hofmann 149).

The manner of using compositional irregularities in the pictorial representation to bring the

viewer into the moment of contemplation also appears in the overall structure of Beckett's 41 directorial version of the play. He asymmetrically divides the action of Waiting for Godot into a number of sections in his Schiller notebook, six for Act I (labeled A1-A6) and five for Act II

(B1-B5), giving shape to the dramatic action as a pattern of repetition and decline (Godot 397).

The structure of both acts is nearly identical; each begins and ends with a tableau, suggesting that whatever activity takes place between moments of stillness, the characters always return to the act of waiting. Waiting for Godot depicts the act of waiting as the experience itself: Beckett describes it as "a play which strove at all cost to avoid definition"; and Alec Reid remarks that

"Waitingfor Godot is not about Godot or even about waiting. It is waiting and ignorance and impotence and boredom, all made visible and audible on the stage before us" (Manage 52). With

Waiting for Godot, Beckett discovered tangible characters, a defined space, and real objects through which he could communicate by showing in conjunction with speaking. The compositional asymmetry found in both the painting and the play suggests the world as devoid of symmetry. The figures in both the painting and play stare at an uneven landscape with the moon in the sky in a moment of internalized thought in the hope of finding order and balance in the world and some meaning to their existence.

§3: Romantic Thoughts

Friedrich emerged as a painter during the aesthetic transformation from Neoclassicist restraint to Romantic freedom. He belonged to the German Romantic artistic society that valued synaesthesia; a multi-faceted form of art where the expressivity of several communicative types blend with philosophy to create the ultimate aesthetic experience (Siegel 1). The philosophical principle of German Romantic art considers the natural world as indivisibly united with the artist's spiritual world. Through painting, Friedrich aimed to bring his inner vision in contact with external reality in a form of landscape art that reveals the divine, as expressed by his aphorism: "The artist should paint not only what he sees before him but also what he sees within 42 him. If however he sees nothing within him, then he should also omit to paint that which he sees before him" (Vaughan, Caspar 103). Friedrich believed that in an authentic work of art the artist projects what he or she inwardly sees on to what he or she outwardly sees. The artist's thoughts and feelings colour his or her perception of nature, and as he or she starts to paint, this perception becomes the subject matter for the piece. By admitting the viewer to the artist's point of view,

Friedrich's landscapes embody a form of pietism professing that the study of nature through devout contemplation and meditation uncovers the secrets of life.

The "minor key" of German Romanticism, and specifically of Friedrich's painting, reverberates in Waiting for Godot with Beckett's use of the theatre to generate a visual "tone" of humanity. Moving away from the self-referential criticism found in Eleutheria regarding its clash of dramatic forms, Beckett abandons dramatic narrative in Waiting for Godot.

Drawing on his inspirational source, Beckett discovered that the theatre provides a visual medium to facilitate exploring the ontological issue of existence lacking context. In a play where nothing happens twice, Beckett's dramatic structure follows a cyclical pattern rather than the traditional form of exposition, climax, and denouement. Michael Worton describes Beckett's anti-theatre as images of entropy, depicting the world and its people in a downward spiral.

Descending towards a final closure, which never arrives in a Beckettian universe, the characters find refuge in the repetition of purposeless words and actions to pass the time (Worton 69).

Beckett presents the world as lacking vitality, filled with meaningless movements, leaving the spectator to discover the secret of existence. For instance, in one passage where Beckett revised the dialogue to bring the English and French versions closer together, he chose the word plateau to connote the image of the confused human in a barren landscape: "No doubt we're on a plateau. Served up on a plateau" (Knowlson, introd. Godot xv). Knowlson explains that in

French, "plateau" suggests a flat stretch of land, a tray, and the stage itself, while in English, the word also means "platter," suggesting that Estragon and Vladimir are served up on a 43 plateau/platter/tray/stage ready to be eaten alive (introd. Godot xv). The image connotes the

impression of the singular human, lost in the vast landscape, confronting existence itself in the

face of an expansive universe. Following Beckett's thinking that form is content, content is form,

the overtones produced by words such as these in conjunction with a refined stage tableau,

contribute to a landscape composition juxtaposing the human within the universe.

German Romanticism, which professed no absolute values in art, emphasized the

elements of artistic language that define the emotional and objective content of a particular work.

To express in painting the interrelationship between the finite and infinite, the individual and the universal, Friedrich counterpoised the foreground with the background. In absence of a middle ground or clear transition, Friedrich's works create tension between polar opposites, providing a uniform degree of attention to all details. Combining the position of the represented landscape with the foreground supplies coherence in the painting between the individual and universal elements, thereby establishing a cohesive mood or atmosphere. Though Friedrich painted nature as it appeared, he interjected symbols that express his concept of the universe. His paintings resemble soliloquies divulging his innermost thoughts in a subtle manner; in several, such as

Two Men Observing the Moon, he places himself in the picture to draw the viewer into the scene to share his thoughts and experience his feelings (Siegel 15).

Richard Wollheim explains that an internal spectator provides the external viewer with distinctive access to the content of the picture. First, the external viewer looks at the picture and absorbs the overall impression. Then, adopting the internal spectator as the protagonist, the viewer takes in the character's perspective within the painting; he or she imagines from the inside what the internal spectator sees, thinks, and responds to in the pictorial presentation. By identifying with the internal spectator, the external viewer gains fresh access to the picture's content to supplement his or her own perception of the work (Wollheim 129). The internal

spectator gives the viewer access to direct insight of the painting's content at the same time the 44 external viewer objectively interprets the structure of the composition. The result produces an interaction with form and content that provides the viewer with an opportunity to feel in the imagination the situation the internal spectator experiences without having to undergo it. The technique resembles the theatrical condition wherein the spectator reacts to the characters' experiences without actually enduring them. In Waiting for Godot, together Vladimir and

Estragon represent everyman, embodying one's innate desire to finding meaning in existence. In broad terms, both Friedrich and Beckett aim in their art to create a cathartic experience for the recipient.

For Friedrich, landscape painting offered the only suitable medium to embody his imagery. In describing the "minor key" of Two Men Observing-the Moon, Sabine Rewald emphasizes how the natural setting of the painting captures the essence of contemplation:

Two men pause on their nocturnal walk through a late-autumnal forest to contemplate the sinking moon and Venus, or the evening star. The three-day-old sickle of the waxing moon bathes the landscape and sky in an all-pervasive, rust- brown haze. Moonlight grazes the rocky uphill path that is lined by an evergreen fir tree, an uprooted dead oak, a large rock, and a broken-off branch. If to modern eyes these purposely arranged elements evoke theatrical props, to the deeply religious Friedrich they were emblems of the divine (30).

It is possible the leafless oak tree symbolizes suffering and despair, while the moon could stand for renewal, representing Christ's promise to return and offer consolation for believers. After showing the painting to fellow artist Peter von Cornelius on April 20, 1820, Friedrich exclaimed

"[fjhey're engaging in demagogic activities," highlighting the politically emotive quality of the piece (Hofmann 88). Though lacking the religiously rooted redemptive message embedded in the painting, Waiting for Godot implies consideration of religious themes, notwithstanding

Beckett's comment that if Godot meant God he would have written so in the text. For instance,

Estragon identifies himself with Christ when responding to Vladimir's query "You can't go barefoot," with "Christ did." Vladimir questions: "You're not going to compare yourself to

Christ." To which Estragon responds: "All my life I've compared myself to him." Along with 45 this kind of scriptural allusion, the play features numerous symbols that connote religious significance, such as the tree as cross analogy. Knowlson notices a substantial amount of crucifixion imagery embedded in the play. Looking at Beckett's Schiller notebook, one finds a number of blocking sequences that feature cruciform patterns along the upstage horizontal line and down the vertical line of the raked stage. The fallen bodies of Pozzo and Lucky form another cross. Several tableaux of Pozzo and Lucky being supported recall numerous pictorial representations of Christ between two thieves (Knowlson, introd. Godot xxi), implying that the religious themes in Friedrich's painting made a lasting impression on Beckett. Waiting for Godot captures not only the pictorial serenity and image of Friedrich's landscape with its sparse set of a country road, tree, and stone, but also transmits the emotional context of the act of contemplation featured in the picture.

Beckett's modification of the opening from an action sequence to a tableau in his production of Waiting for Godot implies that the dramatic design of the play serves to depict the act of waiting. In his Schiller notebook, he divided the entire play into sixteen feasible

Wartestellen or "waiting points" out of 109 units of waiting outlined in his Preliminary notebook. Finalized to twelve distinct, strategically chosen "waiting points" in the final production, Beckett reveals that all the dramatic action in the play leads to moments of stillness

{Godot 418). These waiting points make the spectator feel the pressing reality of silence that, in

Beckett's words, is "pouring into this play like water into a sinking ship" (Knowlson,

"Intoduction" xiv). He called these "frozen waiting" tableaux the "visual structure" for the play

{Godot 91). His alteration of the opening scene from an action sequence into the first waiting point immediately immerses the spectator into an atmosphere of waiting, establishing the subject of the play. All that the characters say and do return the spectator to silence and stillness.

Apart from imagistic and structural parallels between Two Men Observing the Moon and

Waiting for Godot, the significant link between the two works is their use of artistic form to 46 transmit an internalized moment of cognitive thought to the recipient. To overcome the challenge

of representing the abstract quality of "thought" itself, both works rely on dramatic contexts to

convey the act of contemplation. The dramatic situation implicates the recipient into the realm of the mind by focusing on the conditions that create a moment of introspection. As described, the

elements in Friedrich's landscape suggest a theatrical setting—the realistic detail of the natural

setting animates the actions of the figures. Two men, journeying together at night, stop along the road and look at the moon. The drama provokes the imagination to consider what they look and why, bringing the viewer to a moment of introspection, in the same way that the dramatic action

of Beckett's play also leads the spectator to moments of stillness.

Looking at the list of Wartestellen in his notebook, one finds that Beckett selects four

moments in each act along with their respective opening and closing scenes as the tableaux for

the piece. These waiting points occur as action sequences come to termination points. A pattern

develops where an action sequence becomes exhausted, returning one to the waiting motif.

Though difficult for one to ascertain which waiting points materialized in his production, Beckett

indicated with checkmarks in his Schiller notebook four distinct waiting points, apart from the

opening and closing images, per act. 7 No matter which points appeared in the final version,

Beckett claimed "above all possible" {Godot 327) with respect to the entire list of sixteen, all of

them arriving at a transition point in the action. When the action requires further development or

a response to an unanswerable query, it stops. The Appendix (see page 258) expands on the

sixteen points Beckett identified in his Schiller notebook with a contextualization of where the

waiting points appear in the development of the action.

Beckett uses these waiting points to bring the spectator into the moment of waiting itself.

The dialogue of the play serves as a time-filler, since the characters search for words to fend off

the silence, and the verbal and visual routines become "pitiful tricks for holding the terrible

silence at bay" (Knowlson, introd. Godot xvii). Beckett constructs the poetic structure of the 47 verbal text on principles of echo, balance, and rhythm: "All the dead voices. / They make a noise like wings. / Like leaves. / Like sand. / Like leaves." {Silence) "They all speak together. / Each one to itself." {Silence.) "Rather they whisper. / They rustle. / They murmur. / They rustle."

(Knowlson, introd. Godot xviii). The words supply no answers, establishing the theme of uncertainty in the play. At the outset, Estragon cannot identify his nighttime assailants.

Regarding those who responsible for beating Estragon, Vladimir asks: "The same lot as usual?"

Estragon replies: "The same? I don't know" (Beckett, Godot 9). Beckett writes in his Schiller notebook that Estragon's response represents the "first hint at unidentifiable being," establishing the atmosphere of uncertainty, fear, and the absence of help for the play. Beckett's Schiller notebook also features three pages headed "Doubts confusions" outlining textual instances of uncertainties regarding both the natural world and human knowledge, illustrating the pervasiveness of philosophical skepticism in the play. Knowlson's linguistic analysis of the play determined that twenty-four per cent of the utterances take the form of questions, while only twelve per cent constitute replies; and of those responses that seem to be answers, most are not since they do not resolve the issues that provoked the questions (Knowlson, introd. Godot xx).

When rational thought can no longer supply satisfactory answers to life's big questions, all one can do is wait, until something or someone else comes along to pass the time. The uncertainty in the play remains unexplained, leaving only visual images depicting human existence as disoriented, lost, and bewildered. Beckett employs action to arrive at inaction, in the same way that Friedrich's painting freezes a moment of action, to generate the experience of an internal moment of contemplation.

Beckett's movement patterns for the play, marked with diagrams in his notebook, precisely map out the exact steps in each action sequence to convey the sense of returning or backtracking to one's starting point rather than advancing forward. The choreography complements the repetition of action and words, creating "a striking form of visual poetry" 48 (Knowlson, introd. Godot xiv). Beckett described the movements of the piece as "balletic," and the patterns drawn in his notebook indicate that he set the choreography to the "music" of the text (Knowlson, introd. Godot xi). The largest changes Beckett made when he directed the play were additions and revisions to the stage directions, illustrating his preoccupation with visual form of the piece. Mapping out the sequence in the first unit of action, Beckett writes in his

Schiller notebook "establish at outset 2 caged dynamics, E sluggish, V restless. + perpetual separation and reunion of V/E" {Godot 187). In developing the indissoluble, elastic relationship between Vladimir and Estragon, Beckett assigns specific movement patterns for each character to create a visual impression. Recalling Asmus' remembrance of Beckett describing Vladimir and Estragon's relationship as full of tension similar to that of a rubber band, the two figures always gravitate toward each other no matter how far external forces may pull them apart: "The principle is," Beckett says, "they have to come together step by step" (Asmus, "Beckett" 23).

Vladimir restively advances toward Estragon, who either remains fixed to his stone or lethargically moves as little as possible.

In his Schiller notebook, Beckett classifies some of these movements as an "approach by stages," where one character advances toward the other in a series of stop and start steps. The movement pattern provides a visual parallel to the question and answer pattern of the verbal text.

Vladimir and Estragon come together when in need, though all movement becomes futile since they remain fixed at their waiting point for their appointment with Godot. The stylized movement patterns depict the tension that unites Vladimir and Estragon as opposed to conveying the sense of their traversing new ground (physical or mental). Beckett writes in his Preliminary notebook that the "general effect of moves especially V's though apparently motivated that of those in a cage," and considers having "faint shadow of bars on stage floor" to illustrate the image of the incarceration of self (Knowlson, introd. Godot xxii). Lucky's dance encapsulates the caged feeling felt by the characters in its depiction of the human as a prisoner in life. To 49 achieve this feeling of entrapment, Beckett employs a series of arcs and curves in the movements

"to connect the cardinal points of tree and stone and define the boundaries of a closed universe"

(McMillan 103). The turns that comprise the circular approaches to the movement serve as

"subliminal stage imagery," which Beckett explained to Michael Haerdter when directing

Endspiel as "a coordinated set of arcs and chords forming halves of a divided circle [to] suggest an existence which is endlessly repetitious. It also suggests the duality in contrasting, complementary but unintegrated parts of a greater whole" (McMillan 99).

§4: Light and Colour

One can trace the artistic lineage of capturing and presenting the mood of a scene to the

Dutch Baroque masters and especially the German Renaissance painter Adam Elsheimer (1578-

1610), considered one of the largest foreign influences on the movement. In particular, Friedrich and Beckett both appreciated Elsheimer's depiction of mood through light. Beckett studied R. H.

Wilenski's An Introduction to Dutch Art and wrote thirty-five pages of notes on the material, especially the section on Elsheimer's use of spotlight (Knowlson, Images 79). Dutch landscape prefigures the attention to mood and lighting developed by Friedrich and other Romantic artists.

For instance, the flickering firelight on the shore depicted in Friedrich's Evening on the Baltic

Sea (1831) draws striking comparisons to Elsheimer's night scene in his Flight into Egypt (1609)

(see figs. 5, 6). In both paintings, the sparkling firelight draws attention to an area of concentrated action in an otherwise dark, atmospheric landscape.

Though night scenes and candlelight effects already appeared in earlier forms of Italian art, Elsheimer's painting takes the viewer from undefined light on one side of the picture into undefined darkness on the other. Elsheimer innovatively generates an emotional reaction by having the viewer move from darkness into infinite light and from defined light into darkness and mystery. The transcendent realism that emerges from his evocation of light and darkness in 50 Flight into Egypt shows the Holy Family leaving the warmth and comfort of home for a perilous night journey into undefined space beneath a starry sky. Three light sources illuminate the scene: the moon and its reflection in the water, the pinewood-torch, and the sparkling fire. These light sources accent three distinct areas of the composition: the background, the central figures, and the left-hand side. The inclusion of the Milky Way and other constellations in the sky depict the vastness of the universe, suggesting the unity between humans and nature. Elsheimer's interpretation contrasts the fugitive Holy Family and the vast nature into which they have strayed, with the stars above and the promise of human contact with the group of shepherds, whom they are to encounter. The only contrast of colour, against the dark green of the trees and the subdued blue of the sky, is the red and dull yellow of Joseph's cloak. The light from the torch, fire, and moon fills the almost monochrome painting with a mysterious atmosphere.

Dutch painters of the seventeenth-century considered the natural landscape as one part of an unperceivable whole. While landscape as an art form existed before the seventeenth-century, no painting featured the detail of reality seen in the Dutch masterpieces of this period. The Dutch painter grasped everyday life as the subject and captured what the eye could see. The scenery that comprises much Dutch landscape includes: the sea, grassy land interwoven with small canals, rivers, meadows, towns, and the constantly changing clouds of the sky. Painters sought to express national pride through their works by offering realistic details of the beauty they experienced, influencing the Romantic painters. For instance, one notices the use of Claes

Berchem's (1620-1683) construction techniques in Friedrich's art, especially the way the figures move into the landscape with their backs to the spectator. One additionally finds a similarity between Berchem's Landscape with Crab Catchers by Moonlight (1655) (see fig. 7) and

Friedrich's Two Men Observing the Moon by their depiction of figures in action, so engrossed with scenery that they disregard the viewer. Moreover, one also notices that Berchem's painting features a sparking fire as a light source in an otherwise twilight piece akin to Friedrich's 51 Evening on the Baltic Sea. Further, Adriaen van Ostade's Landscape with Old Oak (1640) (see fig. 8) featuring an old tree ravaged by weather, with an atmospheric sky also serves as a visual source of Friedrich's moonlight series. The achievements of the Dutch painters include the gamut of light effects used to portray dusk, twilight and moonlight, which left a distinct impression on Friedrich.

One can trace Friedrich's technique to the panoramic landscape of the seventeenth- century Dutch painters: the oblong format of the composition, the high viewpoint and low horizon that is often left unbroken or without superimposition, the extended view over land and water, the elimination of flanking features or wings (to control the gaze), the degree of attention to all details, and the absence of a clear transition between the background and foreground (see

Wollheim 133).

Friedrich's art develops the attention to detail found in Dutch landscape. The theme of the solitary wanderer, longing for primeval nature, prominently figures in Friedrich's work.

Allegory and symbolism permeate his paintings; devices such as massive rock formations, the cross, birds, defoliated trees, new roots and buds, reappear as regular motifs. These devices contribute to generating the emotional and contemplative atmosphere in his paintings. In particular, Two Men Observing the Moon anticipates the later development of fairytale illustration. The image of the dusky, green primeval forest originates from Swedish-Germanic folk tales that describe deep ravines and jagged bare branches forming a gateway to a mysterious world inhabited by strange beings who only appear at night (Siegel 101). The ominous shape of the oak tree seems to spring forward by some mysterious force, which appears simultaneously to push upward the large rock formation. The darkness of the painting emanates from the rock formations that appear like gravestones, the remains of the dead trees, and the gnarled roots and limbs of the trees. The elements appear as sinister figures, creeping in on the two figures in their moment of contemplation, animating the scene. The painting avoids clear outlines or well- 52 defined forms giving the painting a sense of immediacy; the brushwork is loose and swift, the colours are hard, cold, and unreal.

In addition to the dramatic quality of Friedrich's painting, the use of colour and light contribute to the atmosphere of the landscape. The blue-green shade of the two figures' apparel marks the only other colour in the near-monochrome haze of rust and brown in the painting.

Friedrich does not subordinate colour to line; in Two Men Observing the Moon the colour patch serves as the dominant tonality of the colour range, which becomes reduced to a monochrome.

For Friedrich, who liked the monochromatic quality of sepia, colour served the symbolic purpose of highlighting emblematic objects. The monochromatic shade of the painting expresses volume with different gradients of grey. Painter Odilon Redon (1840-1916), who started out producing black and white lithographs and charcoal drawings before becoming a colourist in the 1890s, describes the objective quality generated by monochrome: "One must respect black. Nothing prostitutes it. It does not please the eye or awaken another sense. It is the agent of the mind even more than the beautiful color of the palette or prism" (qtd. in Arnheim, Art 330). Redon's description suggests that monochrome deemphasizes emotion to focus the mind on the structural composition. Although monochrome painting did not develop into a movement until Kazimir

Malevich's (1878-1935) White Square on a White Field appeared in 1918, it has been always been a consideration for painters when finalizing a colour scheme for any particular work (see fig. 9). The use of monochrome can serve two paradoxically different functions on a canvas. The monochromatic quality of Friedrich's Two Men Observing the Moon depicts multidimensional, infinite space. The figures in the painting invite the viewer into their moment of contemplation, which gives the composition an illusionistic quality that generates the sense of evolution or development. The figures stop within a monochrome landscape, embrace the universe, and admit the viewer into a transcendental realm where he or she can think about existence to improve his or her life. Friedrich's use of monochrome emphasizes a concentration on form, generating a 53 meditation on the essence of art to express pure feeling.

The second function of monochrome, which Beckett employs in Waiting for Godot, dismantles typical assumptions of paintings. One can read a monochromatic painting as a flat surface (as a material entity or "painting as object") with no colour that represents nothing but itself, ending all pretenses to illusionism in painting. Beckett restricts colour in Waiting for

Godot to a series of modulated grey, browns, and blacks. The theme of uncertainty dominates the play, suggesting nothing beyond the representation itself. Beckett's play depicts the entrapment of life itself, as echoed in his words: "I think anyone nowadays who pays the slightest attention to his own experience finds it the experience of a non-knower, a non-can-er" (qtd. in Knowlson, introd. Godot xix). Knowlson shows how Vladimir and Estragon, whom he describes as "failed rationalists," both represent non-knowers and non-can-ers: they try to hang themselves but cannot, they try to leave the spot but cannot, they do not move though they say they will, they search for answers to life's big questions but cannot find any (see Knowlson, introd. Godot xix).

Even cries for help in the play go unanswered; Beckett records in his Schiller notebook twenty- one calls for "help" of which the characters ignore fourteen of them, answer four of them, make an attempt to give help for one of them, answered one of the them "on condition," and one of them is "not known" (Godot 355). In Beckett's vision, one cannot believe in human sympathy and compassion. Nothing can be taken for granted in the play except the play itself.

Light also contributes to the establishment of atmosphere. Gradients of brightness,

especially for landscape painting, create depth in a pictorial representation. For the Romantics,

the use of light played a pivotal role in establishing the emotional context of a piece. The

function of light gained prominence in the nineteenth-century with the innovative stage and

lighting practices of the painter Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg (1740-1812). His innovative

staging systems that transformed the stage from an architectural to a pictorial aesthetic, gained him an international reputation as a designer who set a new standard for theatrical illusion. 54 Rather than relying on a stationary, static backdrop, he extended the use of movable painted flats

and drop scenes. He built a moving panorama using three-dimensional sets, lighting, and sound effects called an Eidophusikon in 1781 to represent shipwrecks and natural wonders such as thunder and lightning. The predominant aesthetic of the period promoted the use of special effects to create the illusion of natural phenomena. As we have seen, the landscape of Friedrich's painting exudes a theatrical quality based on the painter's emotional response to observing a natural setting. The illusion presented by the painter represents a subjective response to the image. In this way, the frame around a landscape painting and the frame of the proscenium arch in the theatre both engage the recipient to participate in the illusion. In fact, it was common practice for Romantic painters to gain inspiration from dramatic situations.

In Two Men Observing the Moon, the moon serves as the dominant light source for the landscape. Friedrich presents the moon as accurately observed, as Rewald explains. The faintly illuminated orb that completes the brighter crescent represents the reflection of light from the sunlit half of the earth onto the dark side of the moon, known as "earthshine" (Rewald 14). In the painting, the earthshine gives the moon a ghastly yellowish rim that contributes to the dark and mysterious atmosphere of the piece. The position of the planet Venus to the right of the moon in the painting rarely occurs as a natural phenomenon. Rewald claims that Friedrich seldom painted a starkly full moon; usually, it is partly covered with clouds. Though the light of the moon serves as the central illuminating source of the painting, Friedrich mutes its effect with clouds suggesting that there is no source of clear illumination to be found. As it is the subject of the piece, however, Friedrich draws the eye towards the moon through certain devices: the jagged limbs of the oak frame it, the triangular cape of the "Friedrich" figure on the right points to it, as does one of the bottom branches of the tree. The overall effect of the colour and lighting distort the natural phenomena producing an uncanny portrait of the mysterious German Romantic forest. 55 Akin to the Friedrich's painting, Beckett's play also uses the moon as the central illuminating device. In his Schiller notebook, he outlines three gradients of light: half evening light, full evening light, and moonlight (Beckett, Godot 391). For the most part, a hazy, grey dusk-like atmosphere permeates the lighting design for the piece, supporting the theme of uncertainty that governs its theme. By having the gradients of light in the play fade from dusk to full night, Beckett illustrates that illumination will not be found. Godot will not arrive. The cycle will repeat again the next day. The mysterious shadows cast by the moon symbolize the mystery of life that the characters confront. Waiting for Godot dispels the notion of that we live in a sensible world. With the collapse of the moral universe, Beckett, in the spirit of the symbolists, turned drama inward to explore the unconscious life. He uses the stage to present the psychic state of the poet aiming to evoke a corresponding state in the mind of the spectator.

§5: A "Lucky " Image

Inasmuch as Beckett revealed Friedrich's Two Men Observing the Moon as the pictorial and inspirational source for Waiting for Godot, Knowlson uncovered other pictures that prominently figure in the play. Specifically, he identifies two from Pieter Brueghel the Elder

(1525-1569). The first image originates from The Parable of the Blind (1568), which Beckett recreates in the second act of Waiting for Godot with Pozzo, now blind, following Lucky, harnessed on a shorter noose (see figs. 10-12). In particular, the third figure from the left of the painting resembles Lucky with his white hair and pained facial expression. Though Beckett modifies the image from the painting by only featuring two figures instead of the six, and by having Lucky retain his eyesight, the composition style and themes of the image parallel

Brueghel's piece.

Painted in tempera on linen, Brueghel's The Parable of the Blind emphasizes the line of the composition to downplay attention to his compositional technique to concentrate the viewer's 56 focus on his depiction of a modest view of life based on the biblical story in Matthew 15:14:

"And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch" (Gibson 189). Similar to Friedrich,

Brueghel uses a dramatic context to represent a state of mind, enhanced by his choice of the distemper technique, which accentuates the major shapes in the composition. In fact, one can consider the distemper technique as a dramatic painting process since it involves a careful heating of the medium and speedy application of the paint, yielding a matte, crusted, fresco-like surface, or when thinly applied, as in The Parable of the Blind, a surface that appears open and quickly brushed. In Brueghel's painting, the dramatic composition process supports its dramatic visual context; a procession of six sightless men, joined by the sticks they hold between them, shuffle across an open field. The first two stumble into a ditch, and the sloping diagonals formed from the angle of the figures' heads at the edge of the ditch suggest a similar fate awaits the others. The steeply pitched roofs in the left background also contribute to the falling image; toward the right, the men's sticks offer the only form of support. Only the trees and church spire in the background supply any element of stability in the composition.

The dramatic energy in The Parable of the Blind arises from Brueghel's transformation of a story into a visual image, considered a respectable practice at that time, provoking yet again consideration of the longstanding relationship between the "sister arts." Even before Hieronymus

Bosch's (1450-1516) interpretations of Biblical stories, artists illustrated proverbs in the margins of manuscripts and carved them on choir stalls. In the sixteenth-century, the images appear in

German and Netherlandish woodcuts, sometimes accompanied by long didactic poems.

Ostensibly, the parable as a literary form illustrates a moral theme or religious lesson by telling a story. Designed to provoke thought on the abstract concept of ethics, parables describe situations and contexts involving human decision-making, thereby highlighting the thinking process.

Similar to Friedrich, Brueghel confronted the challenge of depicting an abstract aspect of cognition in visual terms. Again, Brueghel's solution involved presenting the image as an action 57 scene depicting the essence of the story. Brueghel chose to focus on the central theme of the parable rather than depicting character. The Parable of the Blind does not aim to arouse the viewer's sympathy for the figures' impairment. Christ told the parable to describe the spiritual blindness of the Pharisees, which Brueghel expands to symbolize the spiritual blindness of all humans. The universal quality suggested by the depiction arises from the generic natural setting of the picture, displaying common elements such as meadows, a pond, and a farmhouse in preference to the exotic scenery of a identifiable locale, which would confine the image to a specific context and limit the universal applicability of its themes. The painting displays such abundance of dramatic energy in its a unity of form, content, and expression in its depiction of action that Philippe and Francois Robert-Jones consider it as prefiguring the capture of movement on camera (35).

The action in The Parable of the Blind literally depicts the message of the parable by showing the blind leading the blind into a ditch. Though Brueghel usually chose not to depict his subjects' faces by obscuring them with hats, baskets of fruit, or even basket-like headgear (such as in his drawing of the Beekeepers), in The Parable of the Blind he supplies such realistic attention to the physical details of the faces that one identifies leucoma, cataracts, and atrophy of the eyeball in his representation of the figures' infirmities. Ironically, Brueghel provides the viewer with specific visual details of figures incapable of experiencing the same privilege. By basing the image of the blind leading the blind on a religious parable, Brueghel provokes the viewer to consider the correlation between physical and spiritual blindness. By attiring the figures in sombre colours such as grey, and subdued shades of green, blue, and purple, Brueghel encourages the viewer to consider the internalized condition of these figures by deemphasizing their external appearance. These darker hues produce a monochromatic quality, drawing attention to the shape of the composition rather than its details. In The Parable of the Blind, the shape of the composition offers the redemptive message that one must wisely choose one's 58 spiritual guide or one may likely end up in a ditch of despair.

Inspired by the energy of Breughel's composition, Beckett captures the emotional and aesthetic quality of The Parable of the Blind through Lucky's character. Regarding Lucky's monologue, Beckett remarked in rehearsal that "[i]t is all about stones, about the world of stones" (qtd. in Asmus, "Beckett" 22), which for Knowlson means that Lucky's character aligns with Vladimir and Estragon in representing a cosmological set of contrasts: earth/sky, mineral/vegetable, material/immaterial, horizontal/vertical, aspiration up/impulse down

(Knowlson, introd. Godot xiv). As one half of a duo representing human existence, Lucky portrays the plight of the downtrodden, serving as the oppressed slave of the bourgeois landowner Pozzo. Grounded to the earth like a stone, Lucky embodies the hardship of earthly existence in the same way that Brueghel's blind figures succumb to the perils of the natural environment. Lucky, too, tumbles into a ditch of despair by blindly following his master's orders. Like Vladimir and Estragon, Lucky represents everyman when reciting his "think" monologue, which confronts the question of existence. In his Schiller notebook, Beckett delineates "Indifferent heaven," "Dwindling man," and "Earth abode of stones" as the themes of the monologue, indicating that Lucky's address assumes a universal quality in its depiction of existence. In the way that Brueghel's painting visually portrays spiritual blindness by depicting the blind man falling into a ditch, Lucky's speech enacts a moment of thought that, in conjunction with the reactions of the other characters during its recitation, describes the fall of humankind. In their universal approach to the larger questions of the meaning of life, both works examine the dynamism between earthly existence and the expansive potentiality of the universe.

The first part of Lucky's speech describes a world devoid of any God having the ability to understand the plight of human existence, suggesting that no deity exists to help humankind.

Having no knowledge of the purpose of existence and no reason to believe in a caring God,

Beckett implies that all one can do in life is "go on." Interestingly, though conventional 59 interpretations of The Parable of the Blind focus on the theme of spiritual blindness, one may consider that Brueghel's deliberate exclusion of the cross at the top of the church spire undermines the idea of maintaining blind faith in a deity. True, around the neck of the second last figure one notices a beaded rosary and crucifix. A rosary hangs loose from the third character's waist. Also, one may consider the rim of the cap on the second person as a type of aureole. These objects represent unmistakable signs of their common faith in God. However, though the figures avow their intimate connection to the cross, its absence from the top of the church implies the possibility that God, too, is absent in their lives. The second piece of Lucky's

"think" denounces human institutions that purport to advance knowledge. Using scatological onomatopoeia devices, Beckett suggests the "acacacacademy" is full of shit, as is

"anthropopopometry" or the study of body measurements, which has aural overtones with the word "anthropology," connoting that studying human culture is, in more respectable terms, a waste of time. The imagery generated by Lucky's words gains prominence by his citation of the fictional authorities "Fartov" and "Belcher" to support his claim. The final segment of the monologue reports that the natural environment faces some great catastrophe that will threaten all life forms.

In his Schiller notebook, Beckett divides the three themes of Lucky's monologue into five blocking units to map the other characters' reactions to specific phrases in the speech, which he labels "Main shocks."50'51 The first occurs at the outset of the monologue where Lucky discusses the existence of God. Beckett writes in his Schiller notebook that Pozzo "less to [Lucky's] performance than to [Vladimir and Estragon's] reactions" while they focus, at this point, on what

Lucky says {Godot 291). In the second section critiquing education and its institutions, Pozzo increasingly becomes unhappy while Vladimir and Estragon grow restive. In the third section

Vladimir and Estragon take some interest in Lucky's comments on sports, but begin audible protestations when Lucky mentions "Hockey on land," triggering Pozzo to place his fingers in 60 his ears as he bows over. The fourth and fifth sections feature sequences where Vladimir and

Estragon separately exit the stage in torment to escape the verbal assault, only to return to find that the outpour intensifies. As the monologue approaches its peak, Estragon attempts to drown

Lucky's delivery with whistles and boos while Vladimir and Pozzo determine to put a stop to

Lucky's "think" by physically removing his hat. Beckett instructs that the "tirade" be delivered as a crescendo, increasing in volume and speed until climaxing in a barrage of frantic vociferations. The finale of the speech cumulates in a moment of chaos; the other characters exhaust their tolerance for Lucky's verbal assault. The rising crescendo of Lucky's speech toward a climactic moment parallels Brueghel's depiction of falling men in motion.

In The Parable of the Blind, Brueghel destabilizes the four upright figures from the left of the canvas by showing the first two in the procession as already fallen. United in blindness, the others cannot see what transpired to the first two, destining them to the same fate. In Waiting for

Godot, Pozzo orders Lucky to think, instigating a cascade of words that spew from Lucky's mouth. Once activated, Lucky ceaselessly continues, building a momentum of words and sounds reaching such intolerable levels of volume and speed that the others must forcibly silence him. In both the painting and the play, the artists present the apex of their action sequences, bringing the recipient to the border between the representation itself and its meaning. In the painting, the depiction of the blind men in the act of walking and tumbling into a ditch shows the energy of

"falling" itself, conjuring spiritual connotations considering the source of the image. The haunting figures of Brueghel's blind men reveal their incapacity to cope with their illusory lives.

They engage in a role and their responsibility consists in playing it. The ethereal uniformity of the falling figures, the unnatural stillness of the unresponsive river that should display ripples since the leader has already fallen into the ditch, and the physical blindness that burdens the men, all serve as reminders of the ongoing performance in Brueghel's drama—one cannot escape the drama of life. In Beckett's play, the depiction of Lucky in the act of thinking and reciting shows 61 the energy of "emotional release," provoking ontological considerations considering the themes of the passage. In both art works, the depiction of action in motion serves to open a gateway to a consideration of an abstract quality of human existence.

Though Lucky's monologue relies on words, the theatrical impact of the recitation de- emphasizes textual coherence since its delivery escalates into a thunderous and hysterical outcry.

The words pour out of his mouth in a steady stream; syntax written without punctuation or a compositional format, recalling Beckett's words cited in the epigraph to this chapter: "There is a wonderful sentence in Augustine: 'Do not despair; one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume; one of the thieves was damned.' That sentence has a wonderful shape. It is the shape that matters" (Schneider, "Working" 3-20). Lucky's words swell into a crescendo, emphasizing shape and tonality rather than syntactical meaning, leaving the impression that an assault with words has just occurred. Beckett succeeds in generating a pictorial quality from the delivery of the monologue by dividing it into an asymmetrical pattern with the actions of the other characters. In his Schiller notebook, Beckett tabulates the number of words the main figures speak between their exits and re-entrances of Vladimir and Estragon: Estragon off 100 on 18 off

40, Vladimir off 100 on 16 off 30 (Godot 133, 294). As I pointed out earlier when looking at the structure of Friedrich's painting and Beckett's division of the global action sequences for the play, the use of asymmetry encourages the recipient to look beyond the immediate and determine the source of the irregularity. Through Beckett's asymmetrical structuring of Vladimir and

Estragon's exit and entrance patterns by the number of words in Lucky's speech, the spectator subconsciously notices the uneven pattern, prompting him or her more closely to investigate the depiction to satisfy this curiosity. Beckett's use of movement highlights how the body manifests unconscious thought in its creation of a composite image of the unconscious world. By looking deeper into the representation, one begins to notice the universal dynamism under lying.the depicted action. The delivery of Lucky's speech gives the words a pictorial shape in the way they 62 affect the other characters: Vladimir and Estragon leave and return a number of times and Pozzo physically recoils to protect himself. As Lucky reaches the climax of his monologue, the other characters writhe in pain from the intensity of the delivery until Vladimir breaks the momentum by removing Lucky's "thinking hat."52 The image presented by Lucky's recitation amounts to a verbal assault, where words become weapons that physically torture the other characters. Each word and movement illustrates both the psychological and philosophical reality of waiting.

§6: An Image of Fallen Man

The second of Brueghel's paintings that figures into Waiting for Godot is The Land of

Cockaigne (1567), which Beckett saw in Munich's Alte Pinakotek in 1937 (see figs. 13, 14)

(Knowlson, Images 74). The image appears in Act II when the characters end up on the ground facing the sky (Knowlson, Images 13-14; Beckett, Godot 75). As with The Parable of the Blind,

Brueghel illustrated The Land of Cockaigne from a story, in this case an old folk tale expressing a dream of effortless plenty. A Dutch poem of 1546 describes Cockaigne as a land with an abundance of food and drink: pigs and geese run about already roasted and ready to eat, pancakes and tarts grow on rooftops, and fences consist of fat sausages (Roberts-Jones 238). To reach this glutton's paradise where one may access all gustatory delights without cost or effort, the explorer must eat his or her way through three miles of buckwheat porridge, which Brueghel depicts in the right corner of his painting. The dynamism of the composition originates from the upper right quadrant of the picture, showing the pig in motion with a knife in its back. Slightly offset from the left-right diagonal, the pig, reinforced by the movement of the bent tree in the background and the cake-bearing cactus, produces an impression of pivoting. Brueghel repeats this curve in the shape created by the cleric's coat, the peasant's back, and the soldier's body. His use of arcs and curves supports the impression that the depicted action is also circular. The 63 figures pivot around the tree like the spokes of a wheel, as if some apparatus makes them revolve, conveying the idea that being lazy and idle will prevent one from advancing forward.

In its warning against gluttony, The Land of Cockaigne explores the ontology of humankind's materialism. Brueghel plays with the image of the civilized human by placing the figures on their backs rather than erect and upright like a fully evolved being. In the land of

Cockaigne where all of one's needs are taken care of, the lethargic human regresses to a primitive state. Interestingly, while traditional pictorial versions of Cockaigne represent it as crowded and busy, Brueghel reduces the iconographic signifiers of excess. The clearing of the narrative and pictorial fields creates a meditative space where the viewer can contemplate alternative possibilities to the mainstream accounts of this so-called paradise. By reducing the density of detail in the representation, Brueghel gives the viewer the opportunity to consider objectively the message embedded in the image rather than having him or her become caught up in the detail and momentum of a busy scene. Brueghel's strategy suggests that he wanted a pronounced element of space in his depiction to avoid misinterpretations of the painting as implying the normality of the depicted context.

Along with its moral theme, Breughel's The Land of Cockaigne also displays humanity as degenerated to a level lower than that of animals. One can interpret the egg at the centre foreground of the painting as representing the beginning of the life cycle, especially since it sprouts two legs giving it the freedom to walk. That the egg is empty, however, extends the meaning of the image by suggesting that it represents beginning of a spiritually empty life. The soldier, the scholar, and the peasant represent the low point of the hierarchy of life forms. With their stuffed bellies, they can no longer stand on their own accord, suggesting that a life of gluttony is a wasted one as it causes one to regress into apathy, illustrated by the abandonment of their professional instruments: the lance, the book, and the flail. 64 One sees echoes of Brueghel's image of "fallen man" from The Land of Cockaigne in the second act of Waiting for Godot, during the scene when Pozzo and Lucky return to Vladimir and

Estragon's waiting spot. Pozzo and Lucky appear as before, except this time landowner is blind and thus requires a shorter rope to follow more easily his slave. At the sight of Vladimir and

Estragon, Lucky stops short, causing Pozzo to bump into him. The ensuing domino-like falling effect echoes the dramatic action in The Parable of the Blind. With Pozzo and Lucky lying on the ground perpendicular across one another, constructing a cruciform image, Vladimir and

Estragon begin analyzing the scene. They first discuss whether the visitors mark the arrival of

Godot himself. After Vladimir clarifies to Estragon the characters' identities as Pozzo and

Lucky, the two tramps approach the fallen owner and his slave to investigate the possibility of striking a deal with Pozzo in return for their help. Eventually, after some comic stage business,

Vladimir attempts to help Pozzo up onto his feet, only to fall backward himself and join the others. Following a bit more banter, Estragon tries to assist Vladimir but ends up falling over like the rest, similar to the depiction of "fallen man" in The Land of Cockaigne.

With all four characters on the ground, Vladimir says, "We are men," responding to

Pozzo's question, "Who are you?" In a single tableau, supported by these words, Beckett captures a snapshot of humankind as fallen to the ground and crying for help. The circular shape of the image supports the theme of waiting that dominates the play by implying that circular action essentially becomes inaction, since the curves in the shape returns one to the starting point. The choreography for the play forms semi-circles, arcs, chords, and triangles.

Additionally, Knowlson finds that Beckett's production notebooks reveal a movement design that elicits the sensation of entrapment. In his Preliminary notebook, Beckett writes that the

"general effect of moves especially V's [Vladimir's] though apparently motivated that of those in a cage," and considered displaying "faint shadow of bars on stage floor," but decided against this level of realism (Knowlson, introd. Godot xxii). The characters find themselves trapped in 65 their space by their obligation to wait for Godot. Beckett outlines in his Schiller notebook

movement patterns under the heading "Inspection Place." Moving around the stage in a

clockwise direction, Vladimir and Estragon survey their surroundings on four occasions. The

movement patterns form enclosed shapes except for the last one, labeled by Beckett as "not

properly inspection" because it does not fully encircle all inspection points: the stone, the

offstage right area, the offstage left area, and the auditorium. Knowlson and McMillan interpret

this last diagram as suggesting that "Vladimir's expectations of finding anything new have faded

and apathy has set in" (Beckett, Godot 418). As in The Land of Cockaigne, the feeling of stasis

generated by the circular imagery provokes the spectator to look beyond the external to

determine its internal meaning. That Beckett desires to generate thought on the meaning of

existence itself is evident when Vladimir and Estragon finally raise Pozzo from the ground. With

Pozzo's arms around the necks of Vladimir and Estragon for support, Beckett creates another

cruciform image, potent with existential meaning. Again, his inspiration for the image stems

from his love of painting, which include hundreds of interpretations of Christ's crucifixion.

Knowlson finds that the image of the trio evokes Giovanni Bellini or Giulio Procaccini's The

Dead Christ with Angels, or even The Dead Christ by the "Prodigal Son," which Beckett

experienced on numerous occasions in the National Gallery of London {Damned 539). However,

as Knowlson relates, these specific visual echoes likely were not conscious since Beckett

absorbed the iconography into the creative palette of his imagination {Damned 539).

One final association between Brueghel and Beckett worthy of mentioning here is their use of tragicomedy to express their themes. Brueghel believed that laughter was healthier than

weeping, evidenced by the humour in his panoramic depictions of human folly. Similarly,

Beckett depicted a comedic world of lowlife tramps in which there is nothing to do but engage in

time-filling activities. To animate their depictions of "common man," both Brueghel and Beckett

drew on their predilection for low comedy (vaudeville in Beckett's case), using humour to 66 distance the recipient from the emotional context of the representation, generating a quality

similar in concept to Bertolt Brecht's alienation effect. To engender their works with a social purpose, both artists mock the serious and make it funny, thereby relying on the paradoxes and

absurdities of human existence. In Brecht's view, a work of art serves a social purpose when it becomes a social gest: "[T]he social gest is the gest relevant to society, the gest that allows conclusions to be drawn about the social circumstances" (104-105). The tragicomic form

employed by both Brueghel and Beckett achieves a social gest in its presentation of contradictions. One cannot laugh at the humour in the works without examining the tragic implications of the characters' folly and ignorance. When the recipient laughs at the satire, he or she tries to understand the reasons behind the response, and with that recognition, he or she hopefully can avoid experiencing the same situation. To achieve this critical outlook, the works rely on the contradictions produced by dramatic tension. Brecht himself recognized that

Brueghel "deals in contradictions" by not allowing "the catastrophe to alter the idyll": "Even though Brueghel manages to balance his contrasts he never merges them into one another, nor does he practise the separation of comic and tragic; his tragedy contains a comic element and his comedy a tragic one" (157). As a form, the tragicomedy is conceptual in that it posits the human against some unknowable condition of existence, resulting in humourous but tragic implications.

That is why in a letter to Roger Blin, who directed the world premiere of Waiting for Godot in

1953, Beckett insisted that Estragon's trousers drop to his ankles at the end of the play:

One thing troubles me, the pants of Estragon. I naturally asked Suzanne [Deschevaux-Dumesnil] if they fell well, and she told me that he keeps them half on. He mustn't. He absolutely mustn't. It doesn't suit the circumstances. He really doesn't have the mind for that then. He doesn't even realize they're fallen. As for the laughter, which could greet their complete fall, there is nothing to object to in the great gift of this touching final tableau; it would be of the same order as the preceding scenes. The spirit of the play, to the extent to which it has one, is that nothing is more grotesque than the tragic. One must express it to the end, and especially at the end. I have a lot of other reasons why this action should not be tempered with but I will spare you them. Just be good to reestablish it as it is in the text and as we always foresaw it during rehearsals. And that the pants fall 67 completely around the ankles. That might seem stupid to you but for me it's . capital (Bair 428-429).

Beckett's missive illustrates how tragicomedy involves a intricate blend of comedy and tragedy that touches upon the infinite complexity of the world at large.

§7: The Irish Landscape. The French Air

At the same time as Beckett acquired in-depth knowledge of classical works by the Old

Masters, he also maintained a number of friendships with contemporary painters of his lifetime.

In particular, Beckett's relationship with painter, playwright, and novelist Jack B. Yeats (1871-

1957), brother of the poet and dramatist William Butler Yeats, provided him not only with the opportunity to exchange current ideas on art, but also with an inspirational source from which to draw aesthetic principles and images. Looking at the work of the two artists, one notices a similar aesthetic approach emphasizing the space between the recipient and the image, contrasting conventional approaches to art that strive to develop and resolve a clear premise.

Both engaged in and appreciated several art forms, and they utilized comparable themes as well as settings in their works. Their mutual friend Thomas MacGreevy, who wrote one of the first studies on the art of Jack Yeats, introduced the aspiring writer to the experienced painter late in

1930.53 At their first meeting, Beckett instantly became enraptured with Yeats's paintings, and purchased several of them during the course of their friendship. Beckett so admired Yeats's work that of the few possessions he managed to take with him into hiding when escaping the

Gestapo during World War II, the picture Morning in Sligo (1898) was one of them.

In a review of MacGreevy's monograph, JackB. Yeats: An Appreciation and an

Interpretation, published in 1934,55 Beckett describes the challenge of categorizing Yeats's art:

"It is difficult to formulate what one likes in Mr Yeats's paintings, or indeed what it is one likes in anything, but it is a labour, not easily lost, and a relationship once started not likely to fail, 68 between such a knower and such an unknown" (McHugh 72). Farther into the review, Beckett associates Yeats with well-recognized painters to establish his friend's prominence in the art world:

He is with the great of our time, Kandinsky and Klee, Ballmer and Bram van Velde, Rouault and Braque, because he brings light, as only the great dare to bring light, to the issueless predicament of existence, reduces the dark where there might have been, mathematically at least, a door. The being in the street, when it happens in the room, the being in the room when it happens in the street, the turning to gaze from land to sea, from sea to land, the backs to one another and the eyes abandoning, the man alone trudging in sand, the man alone thinking (thinking!) in his box - these are characteristic notations having reference, I imagine, to processes less simple, and less delicious, than those to which the plastic vis is commonly reduced, and to a world where Tir-na-nOgue makes no more sense than Bachelor's Walk, nor Helen than the apple-woman, nor asses than men, nor Abel's blood than Useful's, nor morning than night, nor the inward than the outward stretch (McHugh 73-74).

Beckett extols the virtue of Yeats's use of literal and symbolic light to depict the indefiniteness of any so-called definitive interpretation of life. In Beckett's view, Yeats's paintings succeed in creating an indeterminate impression that the viewer completes in the imagination. They present a view of the human condition that Beckett likens to the expressions of Jean-Antoine Watteau

(1684-1721), writing to MacGreevy that Yeats "grows Watteauer and Watteauer." Initially,

Beckett's comparison surprised MacGreevy, who could not immediately see the relationship between Watteau's style, "all linear draughtsmanship of the most exquisitely penciled quality," and Yeats's figures, the product of "swift and summary, though extraordinarily telling, brushwork" (MacGreevy 14-15). Eventually, MacGreevy realized that the similarity Beckett detected between Watteau and Yeats was not their painterly techniques, but their approach to the human condition. Watteau's aristocratic figures differ from Yeats's peasants only in external elements such as time and place.

Among Watteau's favourite genres were fashionable outdoor gatherings that he termed fetes galantes or "scenes of gallantry," in which elegant court ladies and gentlemen pass their time in pleasant idleness while situated a picturesque natural setting, as emblematized in 69 Embarkation for Cythera (1717) (see fig. 15). Though Watteau coined the term to categorize his paintings for his election to the Academy, James Elkins contends that the fete galante implies the absence, avoidance, or imprecise definition of a genre (161). Describing "the Debarquement" in a letter to MacGreevy as a "part-anthropomorphised" landscape, Beckett identifies in Watteau the shift in eighteenth-century painting where artists concentrated on generating atmosphere in their pastorals rather than offering a realistic portrayal of a natural setting (Ackerley 637).56

Though he appreciated them for what they represented in their time, Beckett considered the anthropomorphic compositions of the past irrelevant to the modern person who had become separate from the landscape, ending up in "no-man's land." Writing to MacGreevy, Beckett praised Watteau's paintings for their "inorganism," which he also found in Yeats's work:

What I feel he [Yeats] gets so well, dispassionately, not tragically like Watteau, is the heterogeneity of nature and the human denizens, the unalterable alienness of the 2 phenomena, the 2 solitudes, or the solitude and the loneliness, the loneliness in solitude, the impassable immensity between the solitude that cannot quicken to loneliness and the loneliness that cannot lapse into solitude (Knowlson, Damned 247-248).

The aesthetic connection Beckett formulates between Watteau and Yeats, which can be applied to his own work, was their deliberate choice to infuse ambiguity in their images to open them to multiple interpretations, thereby resisting classification. The dramatic action in Watteau's

Embarkation for Cythera defies interpretation, since the figures seem to engage in activities that challenge any explanation as to whether they are leaving, arriving, or departing. Identifying the interpretative latitude generated by the painting, recent scholars have advanced the notion that the figures are both coming and going, thereby abstracting "place" as an allegory of site itself

(see Elkins 161).

The same technique arises in Yeats's Two Travellers (1942), featuring two men in the midst of a dynamic discussion against a dark, ultramarine sky (see fig. 17). The characters find themselves trapped between arriving and leaving, questioning whether to advance or retreat, 70 considering whether to conquer the elements or admit defeat. The entire subject matter of the picture converges on the nature of the encounter, which presents the indeterminate relationship between the figures and the landscape.58 In Yeats's paintings of the 1940s and 1950s, the thick, unstructured patches of colour on the figures could become part of the landscape and vice versa.

One may see these paintings as conveying the absorption of figure into the land. Such a reading promotes the view of the figure as inextricably joined to nature to the extent that one loses individual identity. The vague and sketchy realization of land and figure highlights the difficulty

of defining place and character. Yeats sketches his fluid characters in a seemingly perfunctory

style, presenting them as little more than images, solely identified by select details of dress and demeanour. After an interview with Yeats, Sir John Rothenstein commented that: "The more broadly handled the later pictures, the more insistent he was that their subject should be clearly

comprehended, and none of the accessory details, at first difficult to distinguish in a maelstrom

of brushstrokes should be missed" (qtd. in Pyle 159). In these landscapes, one finds little reference to either cultivation or residence. Created with kaleidoscopic colours applied with impasto that infuses the works with a sense of spontaneity, vigour, and artifice, Yeats's later paintings appear unformed and unfinished, denying the viewer any assurance of narrative or

thematic closure.

Following Watteau and Yeats's aesthetic outlook that strives to imbue art with ambiguity,

Beckett's Waiting for Godot dramatises the act of waiting as an illustration of the unknowingness

of existence. Beckett's characters respond to their situation with gestures and dialogue that

generate an atmosphere of suggestion rather than prescribe any complete meaning that easily can be articulated in discursive terms. A fine illustration from the play that Lawrence Graver highlights occurs when Vladimir tells Estragon that they were to meet Godot near the tree, and

Estragon queries what species of tree it is (see fig. 18): 71 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 more like a bush.

VLADIMIR: A shrub.

ESTRAGON: A bush. [{Turns face to face with VLADIMIR.)]59

VLADIMIR: A -. What are you insinuating? That we've come to the wrong place? (Beckett, Godot 13).

As Graver discerns, Vladimir's first line in the passage demonstrates Beckett's technique of simultaneously asserting and withdrawing meaning (35). In a literal sense, Waiting for Godot questions all forms of knowledge, including its place of action. Inquiring as to whether or not they are in the correct place, Vladimir and Estragon reveal the inconclusiveness of their activity:

ESTRAGON: And if he doesn't come?

VLADIMIR: We'll come back tomorrow.

ESTRAGON: And then the day after tomorrow.

VLADIMIR: Possibly.

ESTRAGON: And so on.

VLADIMIR: The point is -

ESTRAGON: Until he comes.

VLADIMIR: You're merciless.

ESTRAGON: We came here yesterday.

VLADIMIR: Ah no, there you're mistaken.

ESTRAGON: What did we do yesterday? 72 VLADIMIR: What did we do yesterday?

ESTRAGON: Yes.

VLADIMIR: Why ... (Angrily) Nothing is certain when you're about (Beckett, Godot 13-14).

Beckett explicitly heightens the ambiguity surrounding time and place throughout the play by introducing it into the dialogue. Possessing no history, Beckett's characters become universal or archetypal—they simply exist in the moment on the stage. As we have seen, Beckett supplies an

interrogative mood for the play by having "doubts/confusions" comprise nearly one quarter of the dialogue, half of which remain unanswered, and among these are questions of seemingly

great significance that address the issues of identity ("So there you are again." "Am I?"), birth, death, and the existence of God. Beckett undermines any definitive answer that the spectator may provide with statements followed by counterstatements ("Don't touch me. Stay with me."), and

assertions after denials ("I don't know. A willow."). In his article "Recent Irish Poetry" (1934),

Beckett reveals his aesthetic purview by distinguishing "antiquarian" Irish poets from modern ones, whose works address the limitations of perception—a quality he admired in exceptional works of art:

The artist who is aware of [the rupture of the lines of communication] may state the space that intervenes between him and the world of objects; he may state it as a no-man's land, Hellespont or vacuum, according as he happens to be feeling resentful, nostalgic or merely depressed. A picture by Mr Jack Yeats, Mr Eliot's 'Waste Land', are notable statements of this kind. [...] Those who are not aware of the rupture or in whom the velleity of becoming so was suppressed as a nuisance at its inception [...] are the antiquarians, delivering with the altitudinous complacency of the Victorian Gael the Ossianic goods (Disjecta 70).

Beckett objects to outdated notions of art that promote certified themes rather than explore the metaphysical uncertainty of human existence. Praising contemporary poets such as Denis Devlin

and Brian Coffey for writing poems that do not evade the "bankrupt relationship" between

subject and object, Beckett intimates his esteem for art that allows the indeterminate to consume 73 its representation as a more accurate reflection of existence itself, which he finds in the artistic lineage of Watteau and Yeats (among others).

In terms of figuration, Watteau, similar to Yeats, also enjoyed painting clowns, harlequins, and other figures from the commedia dell'arte, such as in The Italian Comedians

(1720) (see fig. 16). Though one notices a vast difference of painterly style in the works by the two artists, Watteau's figures represent their "essential selves" in the same way that Yeats explores the pleasure of the common person at the circus or music hall with faces showing restraint, thoughtfulness, and inner discipline.60 In Beckett's view, both Yeats and Watteau maintain integrity of vision in their depictions of the existential essence of their figures. The silk garments in Watteau translate into rough garb in Yeats. The artificial gestures of the garden party parallel the exaggerated gestures of travelers on a deserted plain. Though one visually notices more pictorial refinement in Watteau's depictions than those of Yeats, their treatments of transience and mortality are the same. Death serves as the condition for human consciousness, and though one could characterize Watteau's vision as melancholically ironic and Yeats's as heroic, both examine consciousness in search of liberation and freedom. Once again, to portray visually their visions of the abstractness of human thought, both artists situate their figures in a dramatic context that enacts a gesture leading the viewer to their internal perceptions.

The climate at the time Yeats entered the art world had been affected by the transition from Romanticism to Impressionism. With the emergence of Impressionism by painters such as

Edouard Manet (1832-1883), artists began concealing the detailed narrative of Romantic compositions by paying more attention to technique and the formal elements of painting itself than to narrating a scenario. Objects became transfigured in landscapes and people transformed

into affective objects. Painters aimed toward generating a quality of suggestion in their

depictions, enticing and empowering viewers to complete references. At the point when the

Expressionists and Surrealists dominated the scene, which coincided with the height of Yeats's 74 most original period, art became recognized as the means to expression, relegating narrative to the subtext. Although Yeats's work parallel these artistic developments, and while one can find aesthetic echoes and overtones between his work and the output of his contemporaries, he never participated in any formal art movement, deciding to work in isolation according to intuition.

Yeats's paintings portray the "traveller" figure—tinkers, tramps, entertainers, and guerilla fighters, common features of Irish society—as a metaphor for the dispossessed.61'62 He focuses on transients because of their determination to survive in spite of their displacement from society, reflecting Ireland's fractured national identity. Drawing on adventures stories that he enjoyed as a youngster, Yeats created theatrical images using the devices of the proscenium stage to establish the setting for his paintings, which Brian O'Doherty characterizes as "the picture space as a theatre of illusions" (McHugh 88). Yeats's vagabonds challenge the notion of class structure because they possess an integrity and passion for life that, in O'Doherty's view, reminds one of life in prewar Ireland and the innate beauty of human innocence: "The patriot on the run is a romantic figure like those other outsiders approved in the romantic canon - the madman, the criminal, the clown and acrobat... all paradigms for a soul the bourgeoisie felt they had lost"

(McHugh 81). Yeats painted the "traveller" to illustrate that beneath scruffy exteriors lies a refinement equal to the elegant attire adorned by the elite, suggesting that true beauty lies underneath external appearance and social status.63

According to Declan Kiberd, Beckett's characters parallel Yeats's dispossessed figures in finding themselves trapped by an ambiguous situation in which one finds difficulty establishing a distinct identity: "Beckett's essential character, the Tramp, was a representative of the now rather rootless Anglo-Irish middle-class, neither English nor Irish, but [...] wandering in a no-man's land between two cultures" (273). In Beckett's view, Yeats's portrayal of human alienation, isolation, and solitude depict a world where people are not only separated from nature, but also from each other. Describing the effect of Yeats's figuration in The Storm (1936), Beckett wrote 75 to MacGreevy in 1937 that the atmosphere of the painting suspends its dramatic context to focus

the viewer's attention on an internalized moment of its figures:

I find something terrifying for example in the way Yeats puts down a man's head and a woman's head side by side, or face to face, the awful acceptance of 2 entities that will never mingle. And do you remember the picture of a man sitting under a fuschia [sic] hedge, reading, with his back turned to the sea and the thunder clouds? One does not realize how still his pictures are till one looks at others, almost petrified, a sudden suspension of the performance, of the convention of sympathy and empathy, meeting and parting, joy and sorrow (Knowlson, Images 86).

Beckett sees the painting as visually capturing in mid-swing a moment from the figures'

experiences of a range of emotional vacillations, which materializes as a figurative technique in

his own characterizations.

Marilyn Rose identifies the characters in The Top of the Tide (1947) (see fig. 19), Men of

the Plain (1947), or Two Travellers (1942) as specific examples of Yeats figures that resemble

Beckett's Vladimir and Estragon. In her study, Rose juxtaposes The Top of the Tide with Waiting for Godot, illustrating the similarity in characterization between the two artists (see 45-46).

Featuring a typical, overcast Irish sky on a bare, slightly tinged canvas, The Top of the Tide

depicts a shoreline that could represent any number from Sligo, but the breakthroughs of bare

canvas supply the painting with an etherealized and universalized quality. One experiences the

intricate relationship between the strand, promontories, and threatening sky that differ from each

other only in hue. The dramatic action of the piece features two isolated men out for a walk,

standing nearly halfway between each other and the sides of the painting. The figure nearer to

the foreground stares outward from the side of his eye, visible beneath his cap, while the further

figure stands in profile, and looks off to left side of the canvas. Though Yeats does not indicate

whether the men journeyed together or randomly came across each other, in the representation

they seemingly have nothing to discuss with each other. Yeats heightens the ambiguity of the

scene by distorting the divisions between land, water, and sky, affecting the essences of the 76 characters, as illustrated by the blurring of their facial features. Conjoined as one in the pictorial representation, the only quality that separates the figures from their landscape is a deeper degree of opaqueness.

In the manner in which Yeats's "travellers" become archetypes of the human condition,

Beckett's "tramps" also represent everyman in their attempt to cope with the transitory position of waiting. As has been explored by many scholars, the personas in Waiting for Godot depict various nationalities, suggesting that they stand for all of humankind. By name, Vladimir is

Russian, Estragon French, Pozzo Italian, and Lucky English. Vladimir, meaning "ruler of the world," characterizes the intellectual who seeks to acquire more knowledge. Estragon, which stands for "herb, tarragon," is earthbound and allows uncertainty remain mysterious. Pozzo, denoting "well" or "hole," portrays the landowner and exploiter, and his name possesses an aural resonance with the Italian word "pazzo" meaning crazy. And Lucky ironically symbolizes the slave or exploited, who certainly does not undergo a lucky experience in Beckett's play. The tramps also call themselves by the nicknames Didi, implying tale teller or talker based on the

French word "dire," and Gogo, from the English "to go," with the additional connotation of the

French colloquial term "gogo" signifying naive person. The names of the characters together with numerous performance motifs imported from vaudeville such as the changing of the hats in

Act II, transform them into typified figures analogous to the stock characters of the commedia dell'arte. With his image of two lonely men striving for companionship on a deserted road,

Beckett, like Yeats, captures the essence of the confused, wandering Irish tramp searching for the meaning of existence.

The poetic dialogue of Beckett's play, with its distinct pauses and silences, and its

"balletic" movements, consisting of circular arcs and geometric patterns covering the entire perimeter of the stage, emphasize artistic process over permanence. Lois Gordon offers an interesting comparison with the experiences of Beckett's characters and Paul Cezanne's 77 numerous still life compositions of apples (see Reading 129). Beckett appreciated Cezanne's paintings for breaking the tradition of the anthropomorphic landscapes of the past by initiating a

new, more open-minded artistic mindset, providing additional aesthetic avenues for artists such

as Yeats to explore. For example, Lois Gordon describes Cezanne's apples as capturing the process of decay, requiring the viewer to interact with the asymmetrical and shaded ovals that

alter and age the image during the moment of perception. With the same intent of capturing a moment of a process in motion, Beckett's characters enact their rising helplessness in securing their direction in life while in the act of waiting for someone whom they are not sure will arrive.

The rhythms of the verbal and visual patterns in the play resolve nothing and illustrate the

absence of meaning in life. In Beckett's world, any form of understanding remains transitory, thereby emphasizing process as an end in itself, exemplified by the play's poignant verbal/visual motif'"Let's go.' {They do not move)'"

Yeats encodes his "travellers" by depicting travelling as a gestural act. His world focuses

on the relationship between humans and nature to the extent that he makes human objects

organisms of nature (similar to Vladimir's relationship with the tree and Estragon's attachment to the stone). His landscapes feature growing elements, developing objects, and life-sustaining

essentials. Even when painting interior scenes, Yeats brings the outside natural world of growth to the inside with sunlit floral hues and windows that expose the environment (Rose 18). As

Yeats matured as an artist, he increasingly obscured the distinction between the human and non- human; in his vision, people differ from their surroundings only by having a face with an

expression. To emphasize this ambiguity between existence and non-existence, Yeats merges the

appearance of his characters into the texture of the landscape, rendering it difficult to discern persona from place. The violent application of paint on his later canvases makes formulating a

definition for them difficult since the technique does not yield a precise depiction of distinct

shape in clear space, obliging the viewer to undertake an active engagement with his pieces to 78 uncover their meaning. Inasmuch as Yeats's characters gesture, so too does the paint that composes them. For example, Rose recognizes that in Death for Only One (1937), Yeats manipulates the distinction between the living and the dead. Though the living figure stands, the dead one dominates the centre foreground of the canvas, and Yeats gives the same colour and posture to both figures, suggesting that the human, the "knowing" subject, has lost dominance over nature, the "known" object (Rose 19). Yeats bestows sentient qualities to the items that comprise his landscapes (such as horses, horizons, clouds, and trees), while he concurrently reifies human figures, promoting the idea of equality between humans and nature (Rose 19).64

Noting that Yeats was born at the onset of modern painting, Rose uncovers three distinct phases in the development of Yeats's painterly style. In his first phase (1888-1919), Yeats primarily used India ink and watercolour washes in a vigorous linear manner. Though Rose finds these watercolour scenes conventional in terms of both their composition technique and their naturalistic subject matter, especially since Yeats establishes the forms in pencil before washing in the pastel tones, she identifies that his use of colour to carry the line prefigures his final style in oils (10). When Yeats first transferred to oils, he maintained the emphatic line of an India ink drawing and applied paint in a matte finish, achieving an effect comparable to tempera or opaque watercolour (Rose 10). At this early stage in his artistic career, Yeats painted concrete images for lack of an original style. His second phase (1919-1927), found Yeats experimenting with the resources of pigment, testing different degrees of opacity and cover overlay. It was not until the end of this period when he eliminated matte finishes and precise lined-in forms; leading Rose to determine that he was still sketching in pencil before applying paint (10). By 1929, however,

Yeats abandoned the politically and socially realistic images that comprised his early style to focus on generating atmosphere in his paintings.

In his mature phase (1927-1955), Yeats became a colourist, allowing paint to carry the line and reveal its full capacity for luminosity. Though his later style borrows techniques from 79 concurrent art movements, such as the manipulation of light from Impressionism to show an object appearing before the viewer's imagination prior to any associative relation with an actual object, and the emotive use of colour and blurred line of Expressionism, Yeats steadfastly retained his idiosyncratic aesthetic. His paintings require the viewer's vision to adapt to his vision, rather than allowing an alteration of the viewer's position to bring his subjects into focus as found in Impressionist paintings. In his later work, Yeats immerses the human subject in translucent paint, rendering it difficult to perceive. For instance, in The Tinker's Child (1926), the viewer must adjust his or her sight to find the little girl in the painting because she appears as an almost transparent overlay on black. Also, while Yeats portrays metaphorical subjects in an analogous manner to the Expressionists, implied by the literary titles of his works that insinuate but do not explain the meaning of his paintings, 5 he diminishes the social or psychological motives that make the subject matter identifiable in spite of the distorted line and daring colour.

Yeats's figures belong to dramatic narratives depicting journeys, which permeate the atmosphere of the compositions with a sense of re-enactment and continuity that distances the viewer from the depicted scene.

As his work evolved, Yeats embraced an emotional use of paint, applying it directly on the canvas with his hands or a palette knife, pushing the limits of its definition, making it an end in itself. One also notices in Yeats's later work a change in figuration from countrymen in moments of relaxation to characters that enter a world of subjectivity, where the spectator shares the loneliness of the individual soul, and the sense of tragedy emanating from the ominous feeling of nostalgia invested into his mature images. As Lois Gordon rightly notices, however,

Yeats's combination of bold colours and dissolution of strict line and form does not mean that his images totally became abstract. For example, in High Water - Spring Tide (1939), Lois

Gordon distinctly sees the everyday human activities of figures introspectively ambling alone along a promenade, but their expressions of revelry, boredom, hope, and despair lead the viewer 80 into their inner psyches (see fig. 20) (see World 88). In Lois Gordon's estimation, Yeats's later representations retain the ephemeral quality of human existence featured in his early work, but remove any signs identifying a specific environment to eliminate external influences from their explorations and universalize the experience.

In A Silence (1944), Yeats employs a thick colour scheme of yellow, black, and white to illustrate a group of self-absorbed, contemplative figures sitting in a room, showing no signs of interaction. Yeats paints his self-portrait for the central, elderly figure, while the young woman in the foreground represents his wife, who was long dead at the time of the composition. Though the painting presents a typical domestic setting, in it Yeats unites the living and the dead, representing a deeply personal and poetic reflection of his ongoing dialogue with his wife's memory. Ultimately, Yeats's interaction with image and painterly texture, or form and content, became indissoluble. He combined the memory of concrete experience with the dream state to express aspects of human cognition. Through his later work, Yeats strove to illustrate the ephemeral zone between fact and possibility, experience and illusion, to generate an encounter for the viewer that seems as though the painting was the product of both conscious and unconscious thought. Yeats passes the inspirational moment of the harmony between subject and object from the artist to the viewer, transforming the viewer into subject, and the painting into object. By moving inward into the soul of his figures, Yeats removes external barriers to create images without a specific background or definite reference that presents "the human condition in its most authentic state, the self within the self (L. Gordon, Reading 33). Rather than confront external issues, such as an indifferent nature or supernatural forces as found in Yeats's early naturalistic work, the dramatic tension in his later paintings arises from the inner state of the self, where individuals face an unknowable reality.

As a mature artist, Yeats came to accept the uncertainty of meaning and recognized that at best his paintings depicted the "process" or "stages of an image" (Armstrong 165). Hilary 81 Pyle compares Yeats's later visual expression of human tragedy to the sounds and rhythms of

language, "of the half-said, even of the quarter-said statement" (136), which Lois Gordon

associates with Beckett's view of life that the "sin of birth" leads one to "impotence" and

"ignorance," placing the human at the precipice between knowledge and powerlessness {Reading

34). In Beckett's view, Yeats exhumes the "perilous zones of being" to evoke ineffable

dimensions of existence: "What is incomparable [...] is [Yeats's] sending us back to the darkest

part of the spirit that created it and upon permitting illuminations only through the darkness"

(McHugh 75). Stylistically, Yeats accomplished his aesthetic objective by juxtaposing figure

with environment. Aside from a number of watercolour landscapes that Yeats painted between

the time of his marriage in 1894 and his return to Ireland in 1910, he seldom created a

composition devoid of a human presence, implying that the human being is an integral part of

nature. As Yeats's style developed, however, the landscapes expanded while the human figures

diminished, which, in addition to his impasto technique of pigment application, indicate his

growing view of nature as overwhelming and human life as transitory.

Beckett correspondingly examines the dynamism between humans and nature in Waiting for Godot by focusing on suffering during moments of solitude. Knowlson notices, for instance,

that when Estragon sleeps, Vladimir feels loneliness and when Vladimir sings, Estragon becomes

despondent, implying the disconnectedness of humans from a world where the landscape offers a

distraction but no consolation from ennui (Images 86). Beckett explicitly expresses his vision of

the disenfranchisement of the human from the natural landscape when Vladimir asks Estragon if

he recognizes where they are at the outset of Act II:

ESTRAGON: (Suddenly furious) Recognize! ({Looks about in a circle, gesturing with both hands.}) What is there to recognize? All my lousy life I've crawled about in the mud! And you talk to me about scenery! Look at this muckheap! I've never stirred from it!

VLADIMIR: Calm yourself, calm yourself. 82 ESTRAGON: You and your landscapes! [(Points to the ground with both hands.)} Tell me about the worms! (Beckett, Godot 54-55).

For the Schiller production, Beckett modified Estragon's movement from "Looking wildly about him" to "Looks about in a circle" for his line "Look at this muckheap," which seems to generate a more vivid image of the characters' disconnectedness from their environment since the circular pattern suggests stasis rather than progression. If Estragon wildly looks around, one could interpret the action as a frantic search for consolation from the landscape itself rather than the more distinct image of not finding comfort in the surroundings, as expressed in both the content and delivery of the corresponding lines. One can make the same inference with Beckett's addition of the stage direction, "Points to the ground with both hands" for Estragon's line "You and your landscapes," which supplies a strong visual image to correspond with the sense of frustration invested into the text, suggesting his detachment from the environment.

Describing Yeats's use of background that one could apply almost verbatim to Beckett's depiction of environment, MacGreevy shows how the painter abstracts the Irish landscape to offer a universalized juxtaposition of human with environment:

The foreground might be a field, a stretch of bogland or seashore, a village street or even a city street, but in Ireland the city street often provides glimpses of the mountains and it was against that mountain background, so suggestive of unchanging, extra-human, transcendent things, and, by implication, of the precariousness of all human achievement, that he painted the people of Ireland, men, women and children, at work and play, farmers, labourers, car-drivers, jockeys, ballad-singers, tramps, women, old and young, barefooted boys in rakish-looking caps - 'men with the eyes of people do be looking at the sea,' as I once heard it expressed, girls with the eyes of those who belong to people do be looking at the sea (22-23).

Founded on real Irish experiences, the artistic landscapes of both artists' work extrapolate the simple beauty of the mysticism of existence in expressions of apocalyptic vividness that explore the tenuous relationship between human and land. Articulating Yeats's exploration of human ontology in painting, MacGreevy describes how the combination of human form with Ireland's 83 bucolic magnificence transforms "one's perception into something very like prayer" (24), which

Yeats explains arises from an awareness of the mystic suggestiveness of pastoral beauty:

These blues and purples and pale greens - what crowd ever seemed clad in such twilight colours? And yet we accept it as natural, for this opalescence is always in the mist-laden air of the West; it enters into the soul to-day as it did into the soul of the ancient Gael, who called it Ildathach - the many-coloured land; it becomes part of the atmosphere of the mind ... (Pyle 165).

These aesthetic sentiments expressed by MacGreevy and Yeats, which Beckett would likely endorse, define great art as inspiring creative thought in the recipient, generating an experience akin to prayer by affirming the beauty of existence. In fact, Beckett explicitly begins

"Humanistic Quietism" (1934), a review of MacGreevy's Poems, by declaring: "All poetry, as discriminated from the various paradigms of prosody, is prayer" {Disjecta 68). In Beckett's view, the creative impetus for artists should be localized to producing realizable forms of expression that deny the self in the process to arrive at the space between creator and creation.

Yeats's landscapes promote consideration of the space between artist and art object by virtue of their genre, which encourages the viewer to read these compositions from a detached perspective, displaying the environment as independent from the action. Jonathan Smith explains that landscapes depict situations of "personal inconsequence" by situating the viewer in a position of distance and detachment (78-79). As a spectacle that transforms viewer into

spectator, the landscape stands as a comprehensive presence that offers a sense of completion, stability, and permanence. It suspends one's awareness of temporality by immersing the viewer in determining the meaning of the immediate depiction, which omits any reference to past or future events. The landscape decontextualizes both its subject and its objects by presenting the illusion that it exists outside of its context of consequential actions due to its displacement from both the agency and the scene of its creation, thereby eluding any sense of intentionality and

assuming the purity of nature (see Smith 79-81). One may consider viewing of this type as resembling the act of retrospection or invocation of memory, where no consequences ensue from 84 the moment of pure reflection. Constructing a landscape as pure scenery provokes the viewer into a moment of contemplation by admitting him or her to the artist's point of view. Yeats accomplishes this effect by positioning some of his figures with their backs to the viewer in the same way as Caspar David Friedrich. In Yeats's A Place of Islands (1946), for example, the traveler stands on a foreground stone in front of the viewer's vantage point. The painting disassociates the viewer from both scene and figure by providing a privileged sight of the landscape and its idealized perspective.

As a way of verbalizing his aesthetic ideals, (Jack) Yeats wrote a playlet in one act entitled The Green Wave (1943), featuring a conversation about art. In it, one elderly man shows a second elderly man a painting:

Second Elderly: What is it?

First Elderly: It is a wave.

Second Elderly: I know that, but what sort of wave?

First Elderly: A green wave - well - a rather green wave.

Second Elderly: What does it mean?

First Elderly: I think it means just to be a wave.

Second Elderly: I like things to mean something, and I like to know what they mean, and I like to know at once. After all, time is important, the most important thing we know of, and why waste it in trying to find out what something means, when if it states its meaning clearly itself we would know at once (Yeats 10).

As the drama progresses, the second elderly man admits his inability to define himself; rather, he says he responds to the variable moods of the sea. He denounces any suggestion to create art himself and insinuates that those who do are unable to cope with life: "They haven't got any confidence in themselves and that's what makes them paint pictures and try to make works of

Art just to look at [...]" (Yeats 12). The second elderly man then looks out the window at a

Dublin scene and describes the surface impression of the image instead of intellectualizing it: "I 85 see men as flies walking, and horses drawing carts and old-fashioned side-cars, jaunting cars! I don't believe I ever saw a jaunting car from as high up as this - do look how extraordinary the jarvey looks with his whip held out horizontal as if he were fishing, and the horse looks very odd and long shaped, and the passenger looks very funny, most undignified and sprawled" (Yeats

13). In this passage, Yeats promotes the idea that art must mean something to the recipient.

Asserting that the wave exists "just to be," the first elderly man's response reveals Yeats's view in support of the private or subjectivist response to art:

First Elderly: If that wave could speak it might say, "I'm an Irish wave and the Irish are generally supposed to answer questions by asking questions," and the wave might ask you what was the meaning of yourself!

Second Elderly: Agreed! Agreed! the wave could do that. If the wave could speak, but I wouldn't tell him - not that.

First Elderly: You're quite right you keep it to yourself (Yeats 11).

The conversation piece examines the spiritual and material values of art, which for Yeats seems to be resolved in one's idiosyncratic response to a work. In Yeats's estimation, an artist can only consider a painting complete if it garners varied interpretations from those who experience it. In fact, Pyle describes how Yeats would encourage his viewers to formulate their own interpretations of his work: "He would talk about his paintings, providing a story as a background, with the greatest facility, and charming anecdotes which shed light but to which he himself attached little importance, generally turning to his listener when he had finished and saying, 'Now you tell me what the picture is about'" (133). As a trademark of his aesthetic viewpoint, Yeats wore a rose in his buttonhole, as a symbol that the viewer's interpretation was only one of many, while the true meaning of the work remains the artist's privilege.67 Yeats, like

Beckett after him, refused to show or discuss his works in progress, only revealing them in their final form at exhibitions. 86 In a similar fashion, Beckett expressed his own aesthetic perspectives in a short dialogue between himself and Georges Duthuit regarding art and criticism entitled Three Dialogues with

Georges Duthuit (1949). In the first conversation piece, Beckett scoffs at the painter Pierre Tal

Coat (1905-1985) for rehashing variations of the relationship between perceiving artist and perceived object, prompting Beckett to declare his oft-cited aphorism that one can find nothing new in art: "The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express" {Disjecta 139). In the second discussion, Beckett and Duthuit converse about Andre Masson (1896-1987) and his recognition of and difficulty overcoming the crisis regarding the subject-object relationship. Though Duthuit appreciates Masson's attempts to prevail over the dilemma, even if he cannot paint the void, Beckett does not, prompting him to

"exit weeping." By the third dialogue, Beckett appeals to Duthuit to consider the "inexpressive art" of Bram van Velde (1895-1981), which eliminates "occasion in every shape and form, ideal as well as material" {Disjecta 143). The argument culminates in Beckett's admission that "to be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail, that failure is his world and shrink from it desertion, art and craft, good housekeeping, living" {Disjecta 145). Beckett's aesthetic perspective denounces the false conception of the idea that artists acquire a sense of total completion and absolute fulfillment from the creative act. The "great" artist's "obligation" rests on confronting expressive possibilities, which Beckett sees in the work of van Velde, serving as the primordial example of the new artistic order. The obligation to express prevails, yet artists can only produce works denuded of content, such as one finds in Beckett's later theatre, described as "enigmatically thin" by Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit because it strives "to erase the little it seems unable to prevent itself from giving" (28, 78).

Regarding the artist's obligation to express, Yeats explains that the painter merely visually represents an honest impression of life itself. Insisting that the artist does not possess 87 any special gift, Yeats claims that "[a] painter's life is so much like the life of anyone who is occupied, ever so little, in using hand, eye, and brain at the same moment, or anyway in a chain together" for the purpose of examining the mysteries of life that are embedded in nature: "The artist must always be looking at nature. If he does not, his Art begins to plant a hedge around him" (qtd. in Rose 19). Seized by the emotional intensity of the moment, an artist directly creates from nature and not reproductions of it. In Yeats's estimation, the artist must possess a liberated vision in order to free the viewer:

If the feelings of the artist were free and noble, then our feelings will be free and noble. The true artist has painted the picture because he wishes to hold again for his own pleasure - and for always - a moment, and because he is impelled - perhaps unconsciously, but nevertheless impelled - by his human affection to pass on the moment to his fellows, and to those who come after him (qtd. in Rose 20).

Herein lies the aesthetic bridge uniting Yeats and Beckett as aesthetic associates: the purpose of artistic creation is to admit the recipient into the context experienced by the artist. Nature becomes the object of the artist's vision, and the artist, in turn, displays his or her concept of the relations between subject and object both within the art work, and between the artist as subject, the recipient, the material, and the painting itself as the viewed object. The artist passes on a moment of experience to the recipient, who then becomes the subject, and the artwork as a whole embodies the object, to present the recipient with the artist's experience of the harmony between subject and object. As found in the viewer's reception of Yeats's paintings, Beckett's theatre requires the spectator to recreate in his or her imagination both the subject matter that he selects from memory and the immediacy of its enactment.

§8: The Tree of Life

Another significant and lasting friendship that Beckett had already forged by 1939 was with the renowned sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966). Each found 88 companionship in the other, enjoying late nights drinking together in cafes after long evenings of independent creative work. As artists, they shared the ideal of capturing the essence of humanity and representing the void. Both encountered frustrations with artistic form; Beckett realized that words could not adequately convey his ideas and emotions while Giacometti discovered that neither paint, clay, nor bronze could embody his experience of vision. In their work, both concentrated on the expressive potentialities of artistic form, thereby diminishing artistic avenues for works of pure self-expression. Their compositions pursued the futility of expression to examine the process of perception in relation to the art object.

The two artists collaborated in 1961 when Beckett invited Giacometti to design the set for

Jean-Louis Barrault's revival of Roger Blin's original version of Waiting for Godot (first staged in 1953), which took place in May at the Theatre de l'Odeon in Paris. After much uncertainty regarding the look of the set, Giacometti eventually created a shapely plaster tree that reportedly displeased them both (see fig. 22). According to Giacometti, they spent an entire evening modifying the set piece: "[W]e tried to make that plaster tree larger or smaller, its branches more slender. It never seemed right, and each of us said to the other: maybe" (Lord 429). In Beckett's account, they stood for hours on either side of the tree trying to determine the best way to affix the leaves onto the branches for the second act of the play, which in the end satisfied the playwright insofar as the design approximated his artistic vision: "Giacometti did a fine tree for

Godot. But at the Generate [he] left at the interval because he couldn't bear it any longer! His tree, he said, perhaps he meant something else" (Knowlson, Damnedlll, fn. 51). In Lord's estimation, the hesitant "maybe" or "perhaps" Beckett and Giacometti expressed regarding the tree likely stems from the fact that it was a human, contrived, "artistic" interpretation of a natural object, and so it fails as an object of representation (429). On closing night, the tree "disappeared as soon as the play ended," Beckett recalls, "and I have never been able to find out what 89 happened to it" (Cremin 88). Both believed that reality could not be represented in art and shared the constant feeling of artistic failure coupled with the impetus to continue creating.

The slender design of Giacometti's tree prefigures the sculptural form of his later filiform figures, which some scholars associate with "trees or figures of worship from Antiquity" (Hohl

47). Historically, designers have varied the shape of and number of branches and leaves for the tree since Beckett himself modified the image for several productions. Beckett finalized the number of branches and leaves after his 1975 German production, featuring a tree designed by

Mathias with three branches and three leaves, by writing the following post-production note in his Schiller notebook: "Was not right (3 branches) / Two branches only & two leaves / 3rd couple" (Beckett, Godot 395). The original text calls for "four or five leaves'" to be added to the tree for the top of Act II, while the revised text complied from Beckett's various directorial notes stipulates "three leaves," which Knowlson interprets as an implicit echo of the play's theme of

Christ and the two thieves (see Godot 145, n. 1575). In Knowlson's estimation, Beckett's afterthought of calling for only two branches and two leaves to create a third couple likely never materialized because it would too closely resemble an actual cross, contributing an additional layer of highly explicit religious meaning to the play (Beckett, Godot 88). Nonetheless, some scholars consider the tree as a sign of hope and inspiration analogous to the one in Dante's

Purgatory that "renewed itself, which before had its boughs so naked" (Beckett, Godot 146, n.

1575). According to Beckett, the tree exists "[n]ot to show hope or inspiration, but to record the passage of time" (Bair 383). The response that Beckett seems to desire from the image is a more ambiguous suggestion of the tree as cross analogy, generated by brief movement or speech patterns that evoke but do not confirm religious considerations and associations. For instance, when Beckett has Vladimir "do the tree for balance" in Act II, referring to the yoga posture in which one stands on one leg with arms in the air with palms placed together above one's head, his arms unavoidably must extend outward, momentarily constructing a cruciform image. 90 Beckett creates further confusion regarding the status of the tree by having Estragon doubt while

Vladimir affirms its significance, evidenced in his Schiller notebook under the heading "V/E and

Tree," which itemizes the textual passages that contribute to producing an atmosphere of ambiguity in the play {Godot 319, 417). The only guarantee of certainty in Waiting for Godot is uncertainty itself.

In Waiting for Godot, the tree visually symbolizes a number of composite ideas including: the arrival of spring, which occurs overnight in the play, promoting the idea of renewal and growth in relation to the cycle of life; and death, since Vladimir and Estragon consider hanging themselves from it, stimulating associations with Christ's crucifixion on the

"tree" (which other parts of the text mention). Inherently, as Katharine Worth points out,

Beckett's dramaturgy leaves multiple interpretative possibilities open, including the prospect that all speculation comprises part of a grand illusion (see Waiting 14), as self-referentially illustrated when Vladimir attempts to find refuge behind the tree from Pozzo and Lucky and exclaims:

"Decidedly this tree will not have been of the slightest use to us" (Beckett, Godot 67). In the

Schiller production, Beckett revised the stage direction from Estragon "crouching" to "standing" behind the tree, endeavouring to hide by appearing as thin as possible. As Knowlson notes, since

Estragon plays the "short, dumpy one of the pair," the effect of Beckett's modification heightens the comic potential of the scene by its presentation of visual contrasts (Beckett, Godot 159).

The comic image of Estragon attempting to appear as thin as possible behind the tree generates visual associations with Giacometti's emblematic, exaggerated impressions of the human form as tall and thin. Examining the development and approach of Giacometti's aesthetics reveals an artistic methodology and approach to the creative process that parallel a number of the aesthetic principles adopted by some of the other painters already examined. Born at the outset of the twentieth-century, Giacometti matured during a time when the art world began to "branch out" in different directions. One stream went from Post-Impressionism, to 91 Fauvism/Expressionism, then Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism. A second stream moved from

Abstraction to Constructivism. A third stream developed from "new" classicism, to objective

Realism, which became Magic Realism, and eventually state-sponsored Realism. And, a fourth stream of aesthetic development grew out of non-formal art into Abstract Expressionism, then to tachisme, which became conceptual art (see Hohl 45). While Giacometti was aware of these multiple art movements, participating in some of them during his early years as an artist, after

1935 he opposed, like Yeats, creating art according to the dictates of genre or prescribed aesthetic manifestos designed by committees. As Reinhold Hohl outlines, one can catalogue the evolution of Giacometti's art into three distinct phases. From 1935 to 1945, Giacometti concentrated on researching and establishing a phenomenological basis for representational art.

Between 1946 and 1956, he engaged in exploring his own perceptions of existence. And from

1957 to 1965, Giacometti focused on painting and modeling the human form (see Hohl 45-46).

Until 1925, Giacometti worked in a derivative Post-Impressionist manner that led him to explore figure composition based on "post-Cubist" stereology and "Primitivism" from 1926 to

1930. With his three-dimensional creations from 1930 to 1934 that gave sculptural form to the irrational, provocative, and mystifying ideas of Surrealism, Giacometti revolutionized modern sculpture by making the viewer's position an integral part of the free-standing portrait heads, which he only wanted seen from a three-quarter view. Though relatively easily realizable on a two-dimensional surface, Giacometti's aspiration to model a head standing free in space that could be seen from all sides, but only shows one of them, presented him with a distinct challenge that materialized in a sequence of sculptures including: Portrait Head of Joseph Muller 7(1925),

Portrait Head of Joseph Muller II (1927), Portrait of the Artist's Mother (1927), and Gazing

Head (1927-1929). In these works, Giacometti seizes the ephemeral and elevates one's individual response into something of universal significance. With Gazing Head, for instance,

Giacometti created an elusive non-corporeal sculpture of the flattened face of the head of his 92 father and the foreshortened head of his mother, resulting in a series of flat figures with chiseled facial features. For these works, Giacometti created from memory, foregoing particular details in lieu of reducing the subject to the core of its being, illustrated by the horizontals and verticals that to him seemed to define the body. What remains in these works is the overall form emphasizing the tension of the outline, as exemplified in the line of the neck and the two large indentations from Portrait of the Artist's Mother. The craters eliminate any sense of rigidity in the sculpture, bestowing it with a flexible, fluid like atmosphere that envelops the viewer with a sense of freedom in interpretation during the moment of perception.

Based on these innovations in artistic form and aesthetic approach, Hohl considers

Giacometti's Surrealist sculptures as models for stage sets of "suprapersonal psychodramas," wherein the artist frames subjects in boxes and cages that dramatise sculptural space, or positions them on game-boards and table-top pedestals or without bases altogether to integrate their

"presence" amongst daily objects (46-47). For example, Matti Megged notices that for The Cage

(1931), Giacometti created a box to be used as a platform for setting a number of visual models, heightening the drama between the objects and the confined space (see 401-402). As a Surrealist,

Giacometti strove to create works of art representing the "totality of life" as an independent and self-sufficient existence that in no way attempts to portray the "objective" world. Megged also considers Giacometti's sculpture No More Play (1932) as anticipating a stage set. Featuring one figure with raised hands in a submissive posture on one side, and an immobile figure on the other, along with circular depressions forming craters and dug graves with open caskets in the middle, Giacometti situates his figures in a defined environment analogous to the stage set in theatre, which highlights the relationship between the characters and their landscape. In fact,

Megged suggests that based on the sculpture's title and visual arrangement, Giacometti may be promoting the idea that there exists "no more play" except for death (402), echoing the themes of 93 many of Beckett's "anti-plays" including Endgame, which announces at its outset: "Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished" {CD W 93).

Though Giacometti accomplished significant strides in his stylisitic development as a

Surrealist, he found no resolution to the artistic dilemma of creating an independent work of art based on principles of perception that also retain the concrete presence of objective forms.

Consequently, in 1935 he withdrew from the Surrealists for a ten-year period of solitude before returning to the art world as an independent artist with a series of revolutionary innovations.

The motivation for his sabbatical from the formal world of art stemmed from his desire to create

"compositions with figures" based on life studies that would capture the interest of the common

7ft person and confront the viewer with a direct visual expression of reality as it appeared.

Giacometti's main concern during this period focused on representing a person or object in a spatial context using the traditional means of perspective, as seen in his portrait The Artist's

Mother (1937) and two still life compositions (of the same title and year) Apple on a Sideboard

(1937), which Hohl associates in terms of aesthetic approach with Cezanne's apples. Hohl explains that while Giacometti's depiction of the apple differs from Cezanne's in that it "does not consist of volume constructed out of flat, coloured shapes, and is not an object resplendent with the most intense presence," he finds a similarity in their treatment of the object in space

(48). Giacometti created a framework of energetic lines and contrasts of light and dark based on his own interpretation of Cezanne's technique. In these works, Giacometti establishes the foundation for an internal frame to make visible the action of the composition, accomplished by a sustained but rapid application of paint, which in turn infuses the painting with a sense of dramatic energy. As seen with Cezanne, and now with Giacometti, both artists attempt to capture visually the dramatic essence of the existence of the apple by focusing on the ambiguity of the form that separates volume and space; Cezanne examined its existence as decay while 94 Giacometti explored, in Hohl's words, "the existential residue of an apple, exposed on every side to the surrounding space" (48).

Giacometti ultimately rejected Surrealist aesthetics for its fixation on juxtaposing surrealistic symbols over focusing on the living subject, which in his estimation offers an insight into the "totality of life." In his search to capture visually the largeness and depth of existence,

Giacometti explains that his initial exploratory efforts under this mindset resulted in his figures shrinking in size to the extent that his entire collection of work produced between 1942 and 1945 could be, and was, housed in six matchboxes:

Yet, when I wanted to create from memory what I'd seen, the sculpted figures became, to my dismay, smaller and smaller; a likeness was there only when they were very small, but all the same their size infuriated me and I tirelessly started over and over again, only to end up, several months later, at the same place. I found a large figure untruthful even though I found a small one intolerable; apart from that, they often became so small that they crumbled to dust at a single touch of my knife (qtd. in Honisch 65).

These experiments prefigure Giacometti's late work in their search for a form that conveys his experience of seeing. Giacometti was the first to introduce the notion of relating sculpture to reality not on the basis of what we know regarding an object, but how it appears to us.71 In realizing his vision, Giacometti concentrated on distance and the sense of totality in the sculpture rather than traditional concepts of the object that consider it in terms of mass and proportion. To endow sculpture with a sense equivalent to experiencing reality required Giacometti to transfer the phenomenon in painting where painters reduce the scale of their figures in accordance with the laws of space to avoid losing any significance of the total pictorial representation. By modeling volume using painterly techniques, Giacometti freed sculpture from both the background and from the sense of immediacy it generates in terms of its proximity to the viewer.

Distance becomes the precondition for experiencing reality based on the principle that an object seen from extreme close up or distance dissolves into an arbitrary appearance. For Giacometti, to create an authentic work of how an object appears to the eye, the more the object was surrounded 95 by space, the smaller it had to be. Giacometti's aesthetic objective did not seek to create exact reproductions of reality, but equivalents of it, garnering a pictorial quality out of sculptural form, as he describes: "I make a sculpture I'm unable to walk around the model. ... Even the sculpture

I'm working on becomes almost as illusory as painting on a canvas" (qtd. in Honisch 68).

Giacometti's comments do not mean that he considered his sculptures as "living" pictures; rather, they suggest that one must pictorially experience them as one would a painting, though without the benefit of an exact viewpoint in a particular setting.

Giacometti resolved his artistic quandary by focusing on the image of the human head because it visually suggests the imaginary world created from the artist's vision. Remarking on the expressiveness of the head, Giacometti said: "The rest of the body is limited to functioning as antennae that make people's life possible - the life that is housed in the skull" (qtd. in F.

Robinson 332). In separate articles, both Megged and Fred Robinson illustrate that Beckett shared Giacometti's focus on the human head, citing examples from his prose work such as

Murphy, The Unnameable, and Texts for Nothing that create the separation of mind and body, and his plays such as Endgame, Happy Days, and Play that feature characters buried to either their waist or neck. The motivation that led Giacometti and Beckett to focus on the human head derives from their search to express metaphorically the distance of the soul from the external world. Giacometti pursued his aesthetic vision by creating figures that virtually appear as two- dimensional by stripping them of particulars illuminating their individual identities. Yet, at the same time, Giacometti provided his figures with gestures and traits that turn them into a metaphor rather than mirror of reality.

In 1946, Giacometti's sculptures became tall and thin, supported by unusual platforms such as chariots and wheels that emphasize the verticality of the composition, giving them the appearance of being two-dimensional. Additionally, he portrays his filiform figures in the act of walking, thereby dramaticizing gesture in a visual form as the ingress to their existential 96 conditions. In Walking Man 7/(1960) for instance, F. Robinson describes Giacometti's male figure as strong, firm, and purposeful in spite of his elongated thinness due to the hardness of the bronze, the straightness of the legs and torso, and the sense of determination emanating from his stride (see fig. 21) (333). Further, Giacometti portrayed some of his filiform figures standing straight and still, with their arms hanging downward by their sides. As Hohl illuminates,

Giacometti did not display any of his standing figures in contrapposto in order to achieve the hieratic effect of transforming them into hieroglyphics (see 49). Though critics tend to interpret these works as existentialist commentaries on the human condition, Giacometti's aim was more closely tied to his aesthetic outlook. The space around the figures, in conjunction with their elongated form, establishes distance, generating an appearance of the subject as if seen across a room.

Although Giacometti's later sculptures do not prescribe a particular viewing methodology, they do encourage the viewer to position him or herself in front of them so that they can be read as a pictorial presentation and not simply a material surface. Giacometti's sculptures are like paintings because they place the viewer's angle of perception in line with the central axis of the depiction, which he generates by bestowing them with a hierarchical quality that privileges the viewer's perspective. The iconographic quality of his sculptures offers them rich psychological implications by embodying multiple dualities of subject and style: abstract/figurative, male/female, active/passive, mobile/immobile, volume/void, impressionism/expressionism (see V. Fletcher 19). These dualities infuse the works with paradoxes that provide an underlying tension, endowing them with a dramatic quality.

Giacometti's aesthetic outlook focused on transforming the object into a subject and admitting the viewer to his point of view by representing the distance between viewer and the viewed. The result of Giacometti's modus operandi is the infusion of ambiguity into his works, thereby implicating the viewer into experiencing for him or herself the artist's vision, which Jean-Paul 97 Sartre characterized as a "game of appearance and disappearance" in an essay on the artist:

"These extraordinary figures are so perfectly immaterial that they become transparent, so totally, so fully real that they assert themselves like a physical blow and cannot be forgotten. Are they appearing or disappearing forms? Both" ("Paintings" 106).

To achieve his goal of presenting an internalized moment on the stage, Beckett drew his inspiration from paintings that present a moment of contemplation. The communal artistic aim is to use action to bring the recipient to a moment of stillness and silence, allowing symbolic elements to cast their effect. The drama in the image exposes the internal perceptions experienced by the characters in the depiction—the recipient sees what the figures see. While

Waiting for Godot does not feature a compelling plotline or elaborate action sequences filled with special effects, the dramatic action presents a poignant picture of human existence where all is meaningless. Beckett presents a denuded portrait of humanity, exposing the essence of existence, for the spectator to study and contemplate while pondering what to do while waiting.

Beckett does not offer an answer. He does not describe the condition. He recreates it on the stage drawing on the expressive power of pictorial representation. As Beckett's first successful, original play that draws on his influence of painting, Waiting for Godot represents the beginnings of the development of his unique theatrical style. Beckett harnessed the visual component of the stage to capture the communicative potential of painting. However, as evidenced by the numerous corrections he made to the text before directing it himself, Waiting for Godot was the first in the development of a theatrical style searching for the drama in the image. As Beckett continues to write for the theatre, the less he permits his characters to move in an attempt to subvert dramatic action to stasis. 98 §9: Beginning with Endgame

While Waiting for Godot marks Beckett's formal introduction to the world of theatre, he did not immediately realize the extent to which the stage could offer him repose from the expressive limitations of language, having not yet seen the piece on the stage. Since Beckett started Waiting for Godot as a relaxation exercise midway through the writing of his dense trilogy of novels, Malloy, Malone meurt, and L 'Innommable, one initially could consider the project as a mild distraction from his more intense focus, especially considering that he wrote it in the relatively short time of four months with few corrections or changes to the original text.

With no one showing immediate interest in producing the play, Beckett carried on with his prose writing. He completed the trilogy in January 1950, filling out the rest of the year with translations for Transition and a few aborted dramatic fragments. In 1951, Beckett started a collection of thirteen prose works entitled Textes pour rien {Texts for Nothing). Evident in the prose works from the trilogy onward is Beckett's frustration with language since he synthesizes fiction, prose poetry, and dramatic monologue, creating strange and ambiguous texts that converge on the theme of nothingness. Brian Fitch notices 658 repetitions of the word rien in the trilogy, 342 in L 'Innommable alone (179), and Ruby Cohn says of Textes that they "[...] cast doubt on the usual parameters of human definition - especially time, place, and memory [...]"

{Canon 195). After completing Textes pour rien, Beckett set out to draft a second, longer set of

Textes, which he abandoned after nearly a year's work. In January 1953, Waiting for Godot premiered at the Theatre de Babylone in Paris, leaving Beckett with the creative impasse of continuing to work with the deficiencies of language, or turning to the ephemeral world of theatre, which requires entrusting others to realize the work without adding their own theatricality to the text, particularly in Beckett's case. The famous Estragon "trouser" incident in the first production of Waiting for Godot quickly attuned Beckett to ways in which a creative team can alter a play when realizing it for production. Spending most of the year working on 99 corrections to his publications of L 'Innommable and Watt and a translation of Waiting for Godot into English, Beckett failed to write anything new until 1954, when he produced the "prose poem of criticism" Hommage a Jack B. Yeats (Homage to Jack B. Yeats) and the unfinished Mime du reveur A (Mime of Dreamer A) (Cohn, Canon 210). As 1955 approached, Beckett wrote his first

English prose work since Watt entitled From an Abandoned Work, in which Beckett leaves it ambiguous as to whether the story is spoken or written , and the mime Acte sans paroles I (Act

Without Words I), which visually explores the Tantalus myth of being born in an environment that one cannot escape and being offered sustenance which is forever unattainable (Cohn, Canon

214, 218).73 Along with these works, Beckett also managed to pen several "shards" of dialogue that some scholars consider part of the many fragmented pieces of writing that finally materialized as Fin departie (Endgame) in 1956.

As evidenced by this uneven creative pattern, Beckett reached a standoff regarding which direction to take his future work. As Worton explains, in the twenty years between the 1930s and the 1950s, Beckett's aesthetics changed: "[...] although he continued to juxtapose an acute sense of bleakness and nothingness with a desire for 'control', he discovered the medium of play- writing afforded him greater freedom to make silence communicate" (75). In the prose works

Beckett completed during the 1950s, he abandons rhetoric and grammar in search for an expression that directly communicates with the recipient's soul. Discussing Maurice Blanchot's idea that "Every philosophy of non-meaning rests on a contradiction as soon as it expresses itself with Patrick Bowles over several conversations in 1955, the two writers concluded that one should assume a pragmatic approach to language, which entails recognizing its ability to be affective by generating sound vibrations as opposed to expressing any symbolic meaning, as

Bowles explains:

The "spiritual dilemma", in his [Beckett's] own words, seems essentially simple. This writing is the only way of living for those who understand it. What writing? The writing that becomes a part of living. That point at which words break down 100 because, in life, there are wordless situations, that words shatter, or where "words fail you", then, once you admit and understand how it is possible for words to fail you, then you must admit that words are not omnipresent, that there are times when they can be employed with success, and times when their very employment is inappropriate, out of the question; if you like, a "contradiction". But not a contradiction in logic: merely a contradiction of the situation. And therefore here the word contradiction not only means contradiction, but denial, disavowal. I [Bowles] said there are times when speech is not significant in the sense that the words mean something, merely significant as any other human noise or act is significant. Then words then become not symbolic. They are themselves an act, a part of life, as the breaking of a bough from a tree is an act. Beckett agreed. Speech must always be contrasted with silence. It must always be thought of in relation to silence. [...] Our language, the language of life, on the other hand, very often has as its only function the particular and sometimes very subtle relation it bears to silence (Knowlson, Remembering 114-115).

In Bowles and Beckett's view, language cannot be relied on for direct communication of the inner recesses of an individual's soul, yet it remains humankind's foremost means of communication. But in theatre, Beckett discovered that he could control the rhythm and pace of the text with long periods of silence, providing the spectator with an opportunity to consider not only one's dependence on language, but also the consequences of such dependence by the codifications it imposes.

Beckett's recognition of the theatre's communicative potential materializes in Endgame with his refinement of the dramatic context to a single scene. By examining the fundamental changes in dramatic outlook between Waiting for Godot and Endgame, one notices Beckett's increasing attention to reducing the theatrical experience to the apprehension of an image. With its endless road and change of season (that happens overnight), Waiting for Godot conveys the sensation of limitless expanse with a visual landscape that indefinitely extends, whereas the sparse and decrepit living (and dying) room of Endgame features a tighter visual focus that suggests a confined space. Michael Worton also notices the dramatic situation of Waiting for

Godot develops dramatic tension on the promise of "an arrival that never occurs," tantalizing the audience with the possibility that a change in scene may be impending, while Endgame builds on "a departure that never occurs," thereby nullifying any chance of something new entering the scene (73). Beckett himself regarded Endgame as an extension of Waiting for Godot when he said: "You must realise that Hamm and Clov are Didi and Gogo at a later day, at the end of their lives [...]" (Bair 495). These examples demonstrating Beckett's paring down of the dramatic setting between Waiting for Godot and Endgame mark the onset of his journey toward refining the theatrical experience to the apprehension of a single, fragmented, minimal, and abstract image. As Beckett began working on Endgame, one notices that he first considers the possibility of expanding what he started with in Waiting for Godot, until he eventually decides to pursue the opposite direction by reducing theatricality from his theatre. Near the beginning of the Endgame composition process, Beckett wrote Alan Schneider in January 1956 that he was working on "the first act (of two)" of "an even worse affair" than Waiting for Godot, which by April turned into a

"three-legged giraffe" that left him "in doubt whether to take a leg off or add one on" (Harmon 9,

10). In its final form as a text, Beckett eventually truncated Endgame to a single act, a form he retained for his remaining plays with the exception of Happy Days. By localizing the play to one act, Beckett reinforces the play's characterization of the endless movements around the board in a bad chess match, as he explains:

Hamm is a king in this chess game lost from the start. From the start he knows he is making loud senseless moves. That he will make no progress at all with the gaff. Now at the last he makes a few senseless moves as only a bad player would. A good one would have given up long ago. He is only trying to delay the inevitable end. Each of his gestures is one of the last useless moves which put off the end. He is a bad player (qtd. in Cohn, Back 152).74

The circular, repetitive movements on the implied chessboard that lead nowhere convey the idea that no central reality can exist. Since a chessboard is bereft of a middle square, any conceptualization of the centre only points to the void or nothingness.

Beckett's concern with the visual focus of Endgame materializes from the play's outset.

After a "brief tableau," presenting the spectator with a frozen image, the first actions of the piece, featuring Clov going to each of the two small windows, located "left and right back" drawing the curtains, looking outside, closing the curtains, and laughing, also advances the play's focus on the act of perception (Beckett, Endgame 3).75'76 Clov requires a stool or short ladder to access the windows, which by their height and position suggests the image of a skull, further implying that the perspective the audience sees is one from the interior consciousness of a mind, since the skull serves as the locus of the brain.7 Performed in silence apart from the two laughs and the sound of the stiff staggering walk, these opening movements heighten the act of perception that the play generates by drawing the audience's interest towards that which remains unseen. Immediately after Clov "opens the curtains" to initiate the play, he goes over to the ashbins containing Nagg and Nell, removes the sheet covering them, looks inside one of them, and laughs, which he repeats, apart from the laugh, with a similar presentation of Hamm sitting in his armchair with castors (Endgame 3). Combined, these opening images and actions highlight the act of perception by suggesting the unveiling of theatre props before a show or sculptures at an art opening, drawing the recipient's attention to that which is visually concealed.

Beckett's attention to the act of perception in Endgame derives from the influence of several images from both real life and painting. Beatrice Lady Glenavy wrote in her memoirs that the image of Hamm in his wheelchair comes from Beckett's interactions with his Aunt

Cissie Sinclair after she became crippled with arthritis, which consisted of wheeling her around and straightening up her posture (Rnowlson, Images 52). Knowlson also considers Beckett's experience of seeing his brother dying, during which time seemed to slow as the family awaited

Frank's death, as another biographical source that may have influenced Beckett's use of slow, methodical forms of choreography in his productions of Endgame (Images 53). However, in the biographer's estimation, though these real life experiences may have contributed to Beckett's creative outlook, they do not constitute the prime inspirational force for his work: Real life situations, however, too often provide inadequate and unconvincing explanations of the sources of Beckett's stage images. Their origins are usually more mysterious and certainly more complex. For evidence has emerged recently that suggests it was his artistic experiences that provided him with a rich, primary vein of inspiration to be tapped, for he had a remarkable ability to draw on his knowledge of one artistic medium and see its possibilities for transformation and use in another {Images 53).

Consequently, Knowlson considers that the positions of Beckett's characters in Endgame more likely derive from seventeenth-century Dutch portraits where figures "sit motionless or freeze movements into immobility, moving toward yet resisting stasis" {Images 68). In particular,

Knowlson considers Rembrandt van Rijn's authenticated Portrait of Jacob Trip (1661) or the attributed Old Man in an Armchair (1652), both of which Beckett would have seen at the

National Gallery in London, as sources of a "pre-modernist" Hamm for Beckett's Endgame (see figs. 23-25) {Images 68).

Though one immediately sees visual parallels with the image of Hamm in Endgame and both the Portrait of Jacob Trip and Old Man in an Armchair, the play as a whole shows more of

Beckett shaping the theatrical medium with techniques from painting rather than transposing a representation from one medium to another. Also, while Beckett's in-depth knowledge of seventeenth-century Dutch art remains undisputed78, the play still materializes at an early stage in his theatrical development when he just begins to uncover various means to challenge traditional theatrical conventions in favour of generating an all-encompassing stage image. As

Beckett's plays develop from Endgame onward, he increasingly diminishes dramatic interaction for monologue as a way of exploring deeper the limits of human consciousness. Though the full implications of Beckett's familiarity with seventeenth-century Dutch Art will be analyzed in the following chapter by focusing on his next play Krapp 's Last Tape in which Beckett's stage image more closely resembles a painted portrait, a brief discussion of the specific paintings that

Knowlson attributes as inspirational sources for the image of Hamm in Endgame shows precisely how Beckett's approach to the theatre developed from Waiting for Godot. Waiting for Godot 104 marks the starting point of Beckett's theatrical development during which he comes to understand the potential for theatre to communicate visually by localizing the drama in the image. Endgame represents the evolution of his process of reducing and subverting traditional theatrical conventions by segmenting the various elements that make up the play into their constituent elements.

Beckett quickly learned how to achieve what he wanted with his theatre, which was to eliminate any possibility for a creative team not to realize his vision by adding elements of overt theatricality to his plays. Jean Martin, who played in both French premieres of Waiting for Godot and Endgame, explains that after Beckett experienced the production process in Blin's realization of Waiting for Godot, during which he remained silent for the most part, he became more confident interjecting when he felt that the creative team was imposing its own vision on his work: "Sam had become much more confident as far as directing was concerned after Godot and he let things pass on that production that he wouldn't let through on Fin departie, things that were not really the way he saw them. So there were, not exactly difficulties, but certain tensions with Sam [...]" (Knowlson, Remembering 119). In fact, Beckett's refinement of the theatrical performance to the apprehension of an image likely, in part, stems from his desire to restrict performers' chances of injecting their own theatricality into his plays by increasingly restricting his characters' range of action. In the case of Endgame, that Knowlson identifies seventeenth- century Dutch portraiture as a visual influence on the play shows Beckett refining his stage vision from the grander, external landscapes toward the smaller, inner consciousness of the human mind.

In the absence of monarchies or patrons of the arts to support their endeavours, seventeenth-century Dutch painters relied on portraiture to earn a living; in Rembrandt's case, nearly one third of all of his works are portraits (Coppleston 14). One of Rembrandt's unique qualities as a portrait artist was his ability to capture the souls of his figures, emphasizing their 105 immortal humanity, which he accomplished by not aggrandizing their dignity or self-esteem. To avoid flattering his subjects, Rembrandt begins with a direct, informal notation of the sitter and then pushes the portrait in formal and sculptural directions (Coppleston 14). Painted during

Rembrandt's mature phase as an artist, The Portrait of Jacob Trip, like most of his portraits, assumes a quality of tranquility and magnificence without resorting to refined techniques meant to enhance the subject with heightened realism. In the Portrait of Jacob Trip, Rembrandt employs bold brushwork and thick impasto to create a portrait of a wrinkled old man with saggy eyes in an atmosphere of brown fog; the figure looks as if the weight of the world rests on his shoulders. Yet, the portrait possesses a soulful, substantial quality that injects a sense of spirituality into the subject. As a person, Jacob Trip was an entrepreneur who made his fortune from mining, manufacturing iron, and trading arms, but in Rembrandt's portrait, he appears to have patriarchal dignity, appearing similar to representations of the aged Moses, apart from his leaning on a cane instead of a staff. One finds these qualities of heightened honesty in Beckett's character Hamm, who also appears as a seated archetypal figure of royalty, and plays the part of king in the chess match that is Endgame. What makes these characterizations by Rembrandt and

Beckett interesting is that they infuse a sense of humanity in figures that stereotypically have reputations as cold and unfeeling individuals. Rembrandt gives the viewer a sense of the introspective and spiritual side of the arms dealer, while Beckett provides the spectator with some insight into Hamm's humanity by showing the dependence of this pseudo-monarch of a barren room on those he mocks. As Worton explains, if Hamm is king of the chess match, then

Clov represents not only the pawn in his role as servant, but also as the opposing king, an equal strength figure, due to Hamm's dependence on him: "although the master has social superiority, the servant is actually more powerful, since he is more necessary to the master than vice versa"

(71). The similarity between Rembrandt's portrait and Beckett's play is their approach to portraiture. As a basic principle, portraiture serves to record visually the personality, character,

status, era and location of lifetime, and the figure's environment. The objective of the portrait artist, regardless of genre, is to convey the essence and personality of the character. What allows portraits to generate this effect is the fact that they freeze the figure in a moment of time, allowing the viewer to absorb and contemplate the representation, which provides an opportunity to feel the emotional resonance of the work; consider Quintilian's description of painting as "a voiceless production that always keeps the same form, [which] penetrates into our innermost feelings with such force that it seems at times to surpass the power of words" (XI.3.67). In

Rembrandt's case, his objective with painted portraits is to capture some essence by sculpting the figure with thick brush strokes, giving depth to the image, thereby encouraging the viewer to absorb the silence, look at the portrait, and see into the soul of a figure frozen in a moment of time. In Beckett's case, his dramatic objective is to freeze stage action into distinct moments, paring the temporal dimension of theatre down to a series of images that the spectator sees and contemplates in silence. The image of Clov's entrance with the alarm clock in Endgame suggests that fixed time does not exist, that it is indefinite, rendering it possible that the conclusion of this chess match may be perpetually delayed. In the revised text of the play, Clov "puts the clock first on NAGG 's bin, then after thought on NELL's," implying that time is dead, because he moves the clock from Nagg to Nell's bin knowing the latter would no longer be popping up (Beckett,

Endgame 37). While one sees obvious visual parallels between Beckett's play and Rembrandt's portraits, one must recall that at this early stage in the playwright's development, he was still in the throes of uncovering the expressive potentialities of the medium. For the most part, Beckett likely became inspired with Rembrandt's ability to capture a "snapshot" of the essence of his portrait subjects with a single image. Beckett's fascination with portraiture will continue to 107 influence his next set of plays, in which he nullifies any possibility for engaging dramatic

dialogue by completely focusing on the presentation of a portrait.

As scholars have determined, it was not until Beckett experienced the production process

and began directing his own works that he realized that as a director he retained more

opportunities to rework aspects of his play, especially once he became aware of the actors and material resources of the particular theatre he was working in, which often meant reductions of the text to further augment the visual image. Though researchers identify a production

(unaccredited) of Va et Vient {Come and Go) at the Odeon Theatre and a Stuttgart television production of He, Joe {Eh Joe), both in 1966, as Beckett's directorial debuts, his acceptance of

an invitation to direct Endgame for the Schiller-Theatre in 1967 not only marks the first public

acknowledgment as a stage director for one of his own works, but also, more important, the first production for which he carefully prepared a production notebook (Gontarski, introd. Endgame xv). When Beckett came to direct Endgame, once referring to the play as "the one I dislike the

least," he reduced the text to enhance the visual presentation, condensing dramatic action to a number of "frozen postures," which he achieved by segmenting the text into a series of tableaux

for sixteen distinct sections (Knowlson, Images 126).79 This change suggests Beckett's preoccupation with subverting the idea of dramatic continuance in favour of presenting distinct

images.

Although Beckett already shortened his text before embarking on rehearsals, he pronounced to the production team at the outset that their common objective must be to further

simplify the piece: "We have to retrench everything even further, it's got to become simple, just

a few small precise motions," to create "progressively simplified situations and person, toujours plus simple" (qtd. in Gontarski, introd. Endgame xvi). Nearly twelve years later, when Beckett

directed the play at Riverside Studios working from what he learned during the Schiller

production, he still sought avenues for further reduction, declaring to the cast: "There's too much 108 text" (qtd. in Gontarski, introd. Endgame xvi). One can see from Beckett's changes in the original text, his changing attitude toward the theatre, one of the foremost being his elimination of any direct references to the audience, making the work "more insular, more hermetic," as

Gontarski says (introd. Endgame xviii). Beckett's directorial decision to not break the fourth wall indicates his reluctance to heighten theatrical setting of the play in favour of retaining a precise stage image that the viewer contemplates like a picture; rather than addressing the outer action,

Beckett encourages the spectator to look inward, even beyond what is immediately visible.

Regarding what remains of the truncated text itself, one finds no conversational dialogue, only aggressive speech acts such as: making statements, asking interrogating questions, giving orders, insulting others, and uttering exclamations, leading Dina Sherzer to conclude that the language in the play does not narrate a story or plot, but rather serves to punctuate and organize the characters' lives (293). Beckett himself said of the text that its tone and delivery are equal to its content: "There must be maximum aggression [...] from the first exchange of words onward," he said, "Their war is the nucleus of the play" (Knowlson, Images 108). In Sherzer's view, the short verbal exchanges that comprise the play are of an ordinary nature to highlight the banality of everyday interactions (293), epitomized by Clov's remark: "All life long the same answers, the same questions" (Beckett, Endgame 5). The "verbal chess match" that comprises the text of the play subverts traditional theatrical dialogue by juxtaposing words and silence, offering the spectator the opportunity to contemplate the spaces between tableaux and render a personal interpretation of the play's meaning. In Sherzer's view, Beckett's use of pronounced pauses enables him to illustrate the deficiencies of language by showing its inadequacy to express, such as when the characters fail to find the appropriate words to respond to a query, and its ability to subdue others, as seen when one character silences another with the force of their speech act, or by a character's act of self-censorship to avoid violating a social taboo (293). 109 In conjunction with balancing words and silence, Beckett also initiated what was to become another standard theatrical trait of his, which was to separate text from movement.

During rehearsals for his Schiller production of Endgame, Beckett advised his actors to: "Never let your changes of position and voice come together": "First comes (a) the altered bodily stance; after it, following a slight pause, comes (b) the corresponding utterance" (Knowlson, Images

115). In Knowlson's estimation, Beckett's separation of words and movement produces a "series of still pictures or photographs more than continuous action or movement," depicting the world in terms of uncomfortable opposites {Images 115). To realize his vision, Beckett insisted on explicit and precise choreography for his Schiller production of Endgame. For example, Beckett meticulously calculated a consistent number and pattern of rhythmically timed footsteps for

Clov's journeys to and from the kitchen: "It's almost like a dance," he says, "equal number of steps, rhythm kept equal" (Knowlson, Images 133).80 For Hamm's choreography, Beckett designed a similar repeating action consisting of the impossible task of positioning himself in the centre of the chessboard:

HAMM: I feel a little too far to the left. (Clov {thumps} chair <>.) Now I feel a little too far to the right. {Clov {thumps} chair <>.) I feel a little too far forward. {Clov {thumps} chair <>.) Now I feel a little too far back. {Clov {thumps} chair <>.) {Endgame 16)

Beckett's approach to movement, as with text, is to regard it as a facilitator for enhancing the visual image. These repetitive, precisely paced movements give the impression of outlining an image rather than depicting the naturalistic, haphazard movements of daily living by tracing a pattern that the audience eventually visualizes. In fact, this technique becomes a dominant feature of Beckett's later play Footfalls. 110 Perhaps the reason Beckett considered Endgame to be the play he "disliked the least" is the fact that it represents the beginnings of his understanding of different ways the theatre can communicate. With Endgame, one sees the beginnings of such trends as the localizing of the dramatic situation to one Act, the separating of movement from spoken words, the restricting of characters' movements, and the subverting of naturalistic dialogue. At the time Beckett seriously turned to writing and directing for the stage, he found himself in between the extremes of the psychological realism of Chekhov, Ibsen, Strindberg, and the pure theatricality of Artaud, both of which he rejected (Worton 68). Rather than prescribe to any one theory, Beckett focused his concentration on the expressivity of artistic material, as revealed in Hamm's story:

HAMM: I once knew a madman who thought the end of the world had come. He was a painter - and engraver. I had a great fondness for him. I used to go and see him, in the asylum. I'd take him by the hand and drag him to the window. Look! There! All that rising corn! And there! Look! The sails of the herring fleet! All that loveliness! {Pause.) He'd snatch away his hand and go back into his corner. Appalled. All he had seen was ashes. {Pause.) He alone had been spared. {Pause?} Forgotten. {Pause.) It appears the case is ... was not so ... so unusual. {Endgame 24)

Hamm's story references the poet/engraver William Blake (1757-1827), whom Beckett respected as an original thinker who challenged the orthodoxies of his time (Ackerley 62). Though Blake received praise for both his poetry and his visual art, he regarded both disciplines inseparable from one another, united towards the same spiritual endeavour. In his long narrative Milton,

Blake raises the point when he writes "The Imagination is not a State : it is the human existence itself," suggesting that the imagination is the primary source for pleasure and satisfaction (32).

The imagination, which is at odds with the logical mind, requires freedom to stimulate an individual with the essence of life. In this way, the primary objective of art should be to fuel the soul, an attitude Beckett shares. As Worton reminds us, Beckett the playwright found himself in the middle of disparate theatrical traditions; on the one hand Beckett began writing in French to avoid the lure of lyricism as he worked with and against the Anglo-Irish tradition of ironic and Ill comic realism (Synge, Wilde, Shaw, Behan), while on the other hand, his education familiarized him with theories of French symbolist theatre, which not only intrigued him, but also partly influenced his work (69). But Beckett did not fully embrace any of these theories. Following

Blake's lead, Beckett uses the material available to him to create his own unique form of art. As we have seen with the development of the script for Endgame as well as Beckett's modifications to the play once he had an opportunity to direct it, his dramatic objective moves toward refining dramatic action down to an image. Beginning with Endgame, as Beckett incorporates more elements from painting in his plays, his dramatic focus increasingly narrows, further evident in his next stage play, Krapp 's Last Tape, wherein he strives to establish a form of presentation that one could loosely describe as dramatic portraiture. 112 CHAPTER THREE: CHIAROSCURO ON THE STAGE

"What visions in the dark of light!"

- Samuel Beckett (Company 59)

§1: Illuminating Light

The plays that mark the "middle-period" of Samuel Beckett's theatrical evolution display an increased attention to exploring and experimenting with light and dark as a means toward painting the inner thoughts and feelings of his characters. In particular, Krapp's Last Tape (1958) and Happy Days (1961) feature lighting instructions that create stark visual contrasts similar to the use of chiaroscuro in painting. In Krapp 's Last Tape, the chiaroscuro contrast of light and dark is obvious on the stage with its spotlight over the table surrounded by darkness. Although in

Happy Days the stage is lit in "Blazing light" (CDW 138) throughout, the contrast of light and dark imagery figures strongly in the action and the language of the play. Beckett explores the physical and emotional afflictions of his characters using stage lighting to add depth to a presentation of tableaux with little stage movement in between. While painters tend to employ chiaroscuro to give the illusion of depth on a two-dimensional surface, imparting a dramatic quality on their paintings, Beckett adapts the technique to frame theatrical space, creating static visuals. In Krapp's Last Tape and Happy Days, Beckett employs chiaroscuro on the stage to investigate different perceptions of the mind/body relationship, augmented with texts of light and dark imagery. His combined literal and metaphorical use of light and dark support the themes of these plays, which explore the internal dilemmas of their characters. These techniques help illustrate an investigation of existence by illuminating different parts of the individual so that the spectator may have the opportunity to contemplate separately different aspects of the mind and body, revealing Beckett's perspective on the characters.

The impetus to write Krapp's Last Tape originates from Beckett's request to accompany the Royal Court production of Endgame in 1958 with "something else from my own muckheap 113 more acceptable than the mime [Act Without Words 7]" (Knowlson, Damned 398). Inspired by

Patrick Magee's cracked Irish voice after hearing him read his prose works Molloy and From an

Abandoned Work for a BBC 3 recording in December 1957, Beckett set out on February 20,

1958 specifically to write a play for the actor. By March 15, less than a month later, the initial

"Magee Monologue" developed into Krapp 's Last Tape and Beckett began circulating initial typescripts. One month later, he announced that the play was scheduled for production at the

Royal Court Theatre, London, with Magee playing the role. In the relatively short time of a little more than three weeks, Krapp's Last Tape underwent seven developmental stages comprising four typescripts and three holographs. What initially began as a project designed to foreground the unique resonance of Magee's voice eventually matured into a play presenting a montage of three distinct perspectives on the same character at different ages in his life, communicated via symbolic representations of light and dark.81

Beckett originally began Happy Days as a monologue named "Female Solo," which later expanded into a two-character play when he added a male complement principally to serve as a sounding board for the protagonist. Similar to Krapp's Last Tape, the dramatic action in Happy

Days builds on a series of contrasts that illuminate fundamental characteristics of human ontology. During the first five of the nine versions that the play underwent until it achieved its final form as a text, Beckett struggled with securing a satisfactory stage image, resulting in a marginal note to himself in the fifth manuscript version stating his desire to "Vaguen" the details of the stage picture by making them more abstract. While seemingly an insignificant self- reminder written in the middle of the creative process, Beckett's note appears at a pivotal point in his development as a playwright when he begins to expand and refine his painterly approach to the theatre by reducing the overall amount of stage movement and by separating spoken passages from movement sequences in his plays. By desiring to make vague his initial, detailed description of the stage environment for Happy Days, Beckett intimates that his theatrical 114 outlook aims to produce an abstract visual impression. He generates this sensation by first

removing all extraneous, external elements, and then highlighting the persona he is studying

using extreme light. While Krapp 's Last Tape and Happy Days feature select movement

sequences, they anticipate the dramatic tableaux of his later plays with their pronounced

moments of stillness arising from Beckett's conscious separation of speech and action—from

Krapp's Last Tape onward, all remains still on the stage if and when recitations take place. As

Pierre Chabert explains based on his experience performing Krapp under Beckett's direction in

Paris, the separation of movement and text highlights and further engages the visual sense as a

mediator between the two extremes: "The basic problem of both production and acting lies in the

listening [...] How can a play which is based on the act of listening be made to work in the

theatre? How can the act of listening be dramatized? Listening is here communicated by the

look. It is literally the eye which is listening" (Brater, Essential 92). Along these lines, Enoch

Brater describes how Beckett uses the visual field to connect the text with the action in a unified

image: "The dynamics is both simple and pointed: we watch Krapp, and we listen with him. The

image we see onstage, however, makes an explicit comment on everything that is heard as well

as on everything that no longer needs to be said. On this platform every 'retrospect' is literally

seen in the bitter perspective framed by this mediating tableau" (Essential 92).

Beckett's theatre presents a series of tableaux that situate human beings in inexplicably

adverse contexts to investigate the effect of particular constraints on the human condition. His

plays act as portraits illustrating the influence of the external world on the personality of an

individual. His characters vacillate between the temptation to escape life by descending into the

void, and evading such an outcome by grasping to some hopeful promise that something or

someone will help them through their difficult predicaments. In Krapp's Last Tape and Happy

Days, Beckett reveals aspects of the human condition by stripping away layers of external reality

to uncover the inner thoughts and insights of his characters. Krapp's Last Tape portrays the 115 tragedy of an old man trying to relive past memories. The spectator learns how Krapp's egoism leads him to a life of misery, and sees how it reduces him to replaying old, tape-recorded monologues of his recounting past experiences describing personal failures. Although the play features moments of satire and humour, one overwhelmingly feels Krapp's pathetic condition because of his fixation on looking back at a life he avoided rather than lived. 4 Likewise, Happy

Days investigates the internal reflections of its main character Winnie, who also endures a life of hardship in which she increasingly finds her physical mobility limited, causing her to resist the lure of subjugating herself to a routine of habit and avoidance. In spite of her adverse physical condition and naive attitude toward the reality of her situation, the spectator feels Winnie's determined optimism to "look on the bright side of life." Winnie, to the best of her mental capacity, assumes her hardships, deals with them, and tries to transcend her situation while

Krapp wallows in his. By comparing Krapp 's Last Tape to Happy Days on the basis of their character depictions, one finds that Beckett presents multiple and extreme perspectives on the existential condition of humankind.

The opening images of Krapp's Last Tape and Happy Days immediately establish that

Beckett constructed these plays on extreme uses of light and dark to examine contrasting perspectives of the human condition. In Beckett's directorial notebook fox Das letzte Band

{Krapp's Last Tape), prepared for a production he directed at the Schiller-Theater Werkstatt in

Berlin that opened on October 5, 1969, Krapp appears as "a wearish old man" in "rusty black trousers," a "rusty black sleeveless waistcoat," combined with a "grimy white shirt open at neck, no collar'''' and a "surprising pair of dirty white boots" to match his "white face" (3). From the first moment Krapp arrives on stage, the spectator sees the black and white contrasts in his appearance, suggesting that he is a torn individual, split between several contradictions. Krapp's appearance, in conjunction with his "wearish" disposition, provokes consideration of the circumstances that led him to his miserable state of affairs. As the strong white light slowly fades 116 up at the outset of the play, the spectator encounters Krapp at age sixty-nine sitting motionless at his table, facing front. After an elongated moment of stillness and silence, Krapp shudders, serving as the first piece of action the spectator sees. This initial instance of Krapp

"shuddering" marks the first of several in the play meant to elicit the chill of winter, signaling the season of Krapp's birth (Beckett, Krapp 15). Further, Beckett divulges in a note to Knowlson that the shudder serves as a gesture of self-containment representing "more inner than outer chill" {Krapp 15). In both cases, one may interpret Krapp's trembling as his reaction to being

"thrown" into a situation he does not desire.

Similarly, the spectator first comes upon fifty-year old Winnie asleep, buried up to her waist in a mound of earth. The sky is painfully bright, and the landscape scorched. Her first action of raising her head to gaze frontward takes place after she startlingly is awoken by the loud, annoying ring of an alarm clock. Winnie immediately switches from a condition of extreme darkness to one of ultimate brightness, being forced into consciousness from a state of unconsciousness, suggesting that some external force beyond her control "flings" her into a hostile situation.

These opening images elicit consideration of Martin Heidegger's metaphor of birth as an act of being "thrown" or "flung" into a world of constraints that are beyond one's control (174); a theme Beckett explored in his 1956 mime Act Without Words I. Although Beckett cautioned against interpreting his plays from a purely philosophical perspective, he did reveal in an interview with Tom Driver in 1961, shortly after composing Krapp's Last Tape and Happy Days, that he artistically confronts the same issues of existence that some of the leading theorists faced at the time: "One cannot speak anymore of being, one must speak only of the mess. When

Heidegger and Sartre speak of a contrast between being and existence, they may be right, I don't know, but their language is too philosophical for me. I am not a philosopher. One can only speak of what is in front of him, and that now is simply the mess" (23). Notwithstanding Beckett's 117 staunch determination to separate his work from philosophical postulations, many scholars recognize that his art inspires considerations of select philosophical ideas, especially ontology. In the case of Krapp 's Last Tape and Happy Days, one may consider Heidegger's image of involuntarily being "thrown" into existence as an appropriate image for these plays because, as

G. C. Bernard says, it manifests "Beckett's favourite view of birth as being a forcible ejection of the child who wishes to remain in the womb" (109). Beckett "flings" Krapp and Winnie into difficult circumstances to illustrate that one's facticity is the only condition in life that one cannot change. Faced with their respective personal challenges, Krapp and Winnie grapple with the choice of either transcending or succumbing to their situations, wavering between the modes of being of the Being-for-itself and Being-in-itself, as Jean-Paul Sartre would say.

With each play, Beckett challenges the spectator to renounce traditional conventions of what constitutes the theatrical experience. Krapp's Last Tape and Happy Days feature no increase in dramatic situation, no character conflict, no rising action, and no denouement- qualities one usually expects to find in a theatrical performance. The primary action in these pieces consists of everyday, routine activities (such as eating and grooming). Krapp shuffles in and out of the zone of light over his table until finally he remains fixed in his seat, embracing his tape-recorder, as he listens again to his thirty-year-old recording describing a "farewell to love."

Winnie remains planted in the earth, with light blazing down on her, and as the light intensifies as the day progresses, her ramblings change from external facets of existence to her internal feelings and emotions. In struggling with artistically rendering the ineffable dimensions of existence, Beckett discovers that light assists in creating symbols that help engender images that have a strong emotional impact.

Beckett's art explores human existence. Whether expressed in prose, poetry, drama, or film, his ideas centre on the search for ontological meaning in that they focus on the depths of human emotion. Beckett manipulates artistic form to illustrate the chasm between one's 118 innermost feelings and the inability of art accurately to express them. The corollary of artistically focusing on the large questions of existence is that teleological issues tend to broach theological and cosmological ideas, which have a propensity to present dichotomous ideological positions that are often artistically rendered through light and dark imagery. When artistically exploring aspects of human ontology, one of the primary modes of expression involves employing light and dark symbols since these elements comprise the basic construction of the universe, which consists of dark matter existing amongst light sources. From our earliest anthropological studies, one finds that most civilizations venerate light as divine based on observations of the sun, moon, stars, fires, rainbows, and auroras.88 Since the nature and defining characteristics of any culture arises from its interpretation of light and dark sources, any exploration of human ontology gains depth when considering cultural formulations of light and dark symbols. Aware of the venerable understanding that light and dark symbolism signify polar attitudes on ontological issues that vary between cultures, Beckett's art embraces the challenge of reformulating these longstanding interpretations by presenting new insights and perspectives on traditional symbolic constructions.

As James Knowlson explains, symbolism prominently figures in all facets of the artist's work:

Light and darkness, which means, in terms of dominant colours, white and black with an intermediate grey, together with images of vision or blindness - even if only those of a temporary closing of the eyes, curtains or blinds - are all obsessive features which have an important structural, as well as thematic roles to play in the fiction, the plays, even in certain of the poems of Samuel Beckett {Light 12).

Beckett's use of symbolism attempts to break apart conventional understandings of the meanings of light and dark, marking his alliance with certain writers associated with the symbolist tradition who sought to find an artistic form that admits doubt and embraces ambiguity as the object of representation.

Confronting similar aesthetic challenges as the symbolists, Beckett divulged to Driver that his artistic concern concentrates on reconciling the contraries of form and chaos: 119 What I am saying does not mean that there will henceforth be no form in art. It only means that there will be a new form, and that this form will be of such a type that it admits the chaos and does not try to say that the chaos is really something else. The form and the chaos remain separate. The latter is not reduced to the former. That is why the form itself becomes a preoccupation, because it exists as a problem separate from the material it accommodates. To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now (23).

Though Beckett's comment indicates a preoccupation with separating form from content, his

most fundamental and consistently stated axiom has been the union of the two (Gontarski,

"Beckett's Art" 19). His early work assaults inherited literary forms by developing patterns,

shapes, rhythms, and cadences that "accommodate" the mess in his search for a resolution of the

form/content dichotomy. Primarily, Beckett's aesthetic approach strives to subvert audience

expectation, to demolish the mimetic notion of art, to reposition his art increasingly to higher

levels of abstraction, and to shape harmoniously his fragments by juxtaposing ambiguities

(Gontarski, "Beckett's Art" 19).90 In Krapp 's Last Tape, Beckett fuses form with content by

externalizing Krapp's overriding memory on a tape recording to serve as the recurring action for

the play (Pountney 57).

To achieve his dramatic objectives, Beckett employs light and dark motifs as a means of

visually and psychologically sculpting the profiles of his characters to illustrate contrasting

perspectives on human ontology. The interplay between light and dark supply the spectator with

an inner connection to the emotional state of characters situated in adverse conditions. In

Krapp's Last Tape, the emotionally constrained Krapp recalls a time when he gave his black ball

to a white a dog after hearing of his mother's death, marking the only selfless act attributed to

him in the play. Beckett juxtaposes the dark and light, leaving the spectator with little more to

contemplate than the experience of crawling inside Krapp's head. Similarly, in Happy Days,

Winnie's black props, such as her bag and gun, stand out as a visual contrast to the intense,

desert-like environment that traps her, eliminating her mobility. The extreme visual contrasts

lead the spectator beyond the black bag and its items into Winnie's darkest thoughts and feelings, evidenced by the more melancholy and dream-like atmosphere that Beckett creates for the second act of the play. By using extreme contrasts of light and dark to demarcate his investigation of the extent of human freedom, Beckett undermines preconceived notions regarding symbolic applications of light and dark imagery. The traditional function of contrasting imagery, Rudolph Arnheim explains, serves as "the primitive but always effective symbolism of Light versus Darkness, white purity versus black evil, the opposition between gloom and radiance" {Film 66-67). Analyzing Krapp 's Last Tape and Happy Days together, one recognizes that Beckett defies traditional applications of contrasting imagery by illustrating how neither extreme light nor extreme dark can provide any comfort or solace to the individual; rather, these plays suggest that one must strive to establish a balance between polarities—"to find a form that accommodates the mess."

As pervasive elements of our visual experience, shades of light and dark affect the way human beings interpret their reflections of the world. Painters inspired to create an identifiable representation of nature illuminate their objects with light in the same way that it affects objects in reality. However, as modern psychology shows, cultural traditions and inherited images condition one's experience of the world and perceptions of nature (Barasch x). Subsequently, the role of interpretation becomes pivotal in representational works because they translate what one perceives in the external world into art (Barasch x). As explained by Moshe Barasch, painters struggle more with determining the exact brightness of a shade, the saturation of a hue, or the expressive quality of colour than, for example, the size of some physical characteristic (x); an artistic outlook congruent with Beckett's meticulous attention to the subtleties of theatrical expression in creating a precise visual image. Aspects of light and dark provide opportunities for reshaping what one perceives in different cultural and artistic contexts, suggesting that experiences of light may be universal, but interpretations of those encounters remain ambiguous

(Barasch x). Harnessing this ambiguity, artists use different proportions of light to create bright 121 and dark areas that contribute to establishing the mood or expression of a piece. Light in painting is a sensation produced by material pigments, aesthetic effects, and emotional moods (Barasch xi). In Krapp 's Last Tape and Happy Days, the actors serve as Beckett's "material pigments," which he casts with sharp contrasts of light to establish introspective moods that opens a portal to the emotional state of his characters.

Light illuminates objects to make them visible for representation. Combined with shadow, light produces a convincing illusion of relief that gives a sense of corporeality to an object. From its functional purpose of revealing the form and structure of objects, one can consider extreme applications of light such as dazzling brightness or mystical dimness that obscure the shape of figures as contributing to imbuing specific meanings to paintings (Barasch xiii). Beckett utilizes this painterly technique to present shades of Krapp and Winnie's existences by subjugating the characters to extreme treatments of light to explore their psyches. For artists not concerned with making the external world visible, light can also produce atmospheric effects that function as an artistic value in itself by creating emotional overtones. In the case of Krapp's

Last Tape and Happy Days, Beckett uses light as both a means to illuminate his characters and to imbue a particular atmosphere in the plays to subvert established associations of light and dark with positive and negative values. By utilizing the ambiguity that light can cast on an object,

Beckett encourages the spectator to avoid making preconceived judgments on his characters by focusing attention on the emotional tenor generated by his application of light in the unveiling of his character portraits.

The evolution toward Beckett's use light to explore the connection between the mind and the body originates in seventeenth-century philosophy and art, which is filled with optical metaphors that express the nature of the relation between interiority and exteriority, self and world. Although Beckett was versed in the seminal philosophical and aesthetic works from the period, of greater importance here was the fact that he became knowledgeable about seventeenth- century Dutch painting after he began frequenting the National Gallery of Ireland as an undergraduate, and after reading R. H. Wilenski's An Introduction to Dutch Art in 1932

(Knowlson, Images 59, 78-79).9! The dualism of light and dark in the seventeenth-century arose when rationalism began overtaking Christianity due to the introduction of technologies of vision, influencing the metaphysics of the time (Bird 118). The outlook changed from a mysticism of light as deliverance from its struggle over darkness to one based on critical reason (Bird 118).

In painting, this shift in perspective raised the issue of whether the external world acting upon the body forms images, or whether they are the product of the mind, which forms impressions independently of the body. Since their introduction in the seventeenth-century, these issues of interiority/exteriority regarding the mind/body relationship have remained pertinent areas of study up to the present day, and certainly served as preoccupations for Beckett since they materialize throughout his artistic oeuvre. Krapp 's Last Tape presents three different temporal shades of one person, and Happy Days literally severs the head from the body. Familiar with and inspired by some of the greatest Dutch masters of the seventeenth-century who were sensitive to the effects of light on establishing the tone of a painting (particularly Rembrandt van Rijn and

Jan Vermeer), Beckett became fascinated with exploring light on the stage to reformulate considerations of the boundaries between mind/body, spirit/flesh, and sense/sensibility.

The use of light in seventeenth-century Dutch art inspired Beckett's application of stage light in the formation of his character portraits. In particular, Knowlson identifies two of

Vermeer's paintings, The Astronomer and The Geographer (sister works of 1668), along with

Rembrandt's The Money Changer (1627) as visual influences for Krapp's Last Tape (see figs.

26-30). While Beckett did not set out to amalgamate and transform these paintings into a play, his approach to composing his stage image reveals his preference for using stage lighting to generate similar visual effects as found in his inspirational sources. Though, a surface comparison of Rembrandt's painting and the two Vermeers to Beckett's play reveals a similar visual scene of a man, alone in his study, focused on his work. The Dutch masters were preoccupied with accurately representing the real, "rugged people" that they encountered during their daily interactions, which gave their paintings the quality of capturing the effects of nature

(Carroll 3). And while the downtrodden old Krapp may be more disheveled than his seventeenth- century painterly counterparts, he certainly resembles present day individuals who live a similar lifestyle and suffer comparable emotional and physical afflictions. Like the Dutch masters,

Beckett uses light and dark in Krapp's Last Tape as a means toward capturing the "real" and

"true" essence of life. Beckett presents the image of a single male figure, framed by light, in the act of thought itself to depict an inner stillness, an arrested moment, resembling the qualities of seventeenth-century Dutch art.

When Beckett came to write Happy Days, approximately three years after Krapp's Last

Tape, his application of stage light intensifies with stronger saturations, creating larger shadows, rendering a more abstract visual impression. The quasi-realism of the image of an old introvert living alone becomes displaced with an uncanny portrait of a woman stuck in the earth. Light becomes an instrument for Beckett physically to torture his character and bore into her psyche, transcending daily reality into the imagination and the unconscious. Beckett uses light to expose the psychological truth of Winnie by stripping her ordinary objects of their usual significance, creating a captivating image that evokes empathy from the spectator as the audience sees beyond the immediate and into her soul. Beckett's play with light and shadow to create a mysterious environment out of common images leads Knowlson to speculate that the final scene of Luis

Bunuel and Salvador Dali's surrealist black and white film Un chien andalou (1929), featuring two women buried to their waist in sand, inspired the central image for Happy Days (see figs. 31,

32) {Images 92).93 124 §2: Portraits of Old Men

In the evolution of Beckett's theatrical aesthetic, Krapp 's Last Tape marks the point when he begins to synthesize the various expressive outlets of theatre toward staging a character portrait. Beckett minimizes the exploration of landscape seen in earlier plays such as Waiting for

Godot and Endgame by localizing Krapp in Krapp's Last Tape to a central focal point, his table, which he frames with a beam of light projecting from an overhead lamp. The effect, as Sidney

Homan describes it, is that the light illuminates only the desk, representing a microcosmic stage that parodies the legitimate stage in its smallness (96),94 narrowing the spectator's field of vision to a perspective approximating the one that a person might have when viewing a painting. The miniaturization of the stage landscape redirects Beckett's attention to Krapp's positions, postures, and gestures, implicitly evoking the intense moments of concentration seen in the figures of Rembrandt's The Money Changer and Vermeer's The Astronomer and The

Geographer. These three Dutch paintings and Beckett's play employ chiaroscuro to sculpt an image of a solitary man, deeply focused on a task at his desk. The parallels are prominent to the extent that Knowlson's description of the miser hording his gold in Rembrandt's painting could pass for one of Krapp storing up his accounts in Beckett's play: "In this picture, the 'rich man' sits in a pool of light cast by a candle held in his left hand, holding up a gold coin in his right hand. He is surrounded by his account books bound in vellum, heaps of bills, promissory notes and a huge money-bag, all piled up on the table around him" {Images 68). In all four works, the characters' concentration on their tasks, accentuated by sharp contrasts of light to spotlight the figures, elicits a sense of inner stillness.

The idea of admitting the recipient to an intimate scene in these works by Rembrandt,

Vermeer, and Beckett originates in seventeenth-century Dutch aesthetics, which embraced the desire for self-expression, leading to innovations in artistic form. Having attained their independence in 1648 after the eighty-year war of succession from the Spanish king, the Netherlands became one of the most proud and progressive nations in Europe (Carroll 13). With no monarchies or patrons of the arts, and with Protestant churches having no need for altarpieces,

Dutch artists painted for private citizens small pieces designed for the home, requiring them to approach their art with a new outlook (Carroll 14). Even though seventeenth-century Dutch painters acquired knowledge of past traditions through study, travel, and exposure to growing numbers of reproductions, their social and political structures considerably varied from these societies, resulting in a unique and idiosyncratic approach to the art form.96 Moving away from the Renaissance preoccupation with accurately capturing nature, the Dutch emphasized the

"personal element" in their works, focusing more on their subjects than on the formal considerations of design. The most distinguishing characteristic of Dutch art is its study of the natural world and its concern with the infinite qualities of light. Along with this characteristic, another notable aspect of Dutch art is the domestic scene in an interior setting. Together, these attributes indicate an aesthetic attitude focused on the emotional depths of their subjects, using light and dark as a means to add the layers. The Dutch outlook moves away from accurate representations of external reality to portrayals of internal emotions using gradations of light to cast shades on subjects, leading the viewer into their consciousnesses. The Dutch perspective of capturing the interior essence of a scene in art materializes in Krapp 's Last Tape in its portrayal of the inner feelings of man rapt by his past.

Krapp forsakes present and future possibilities by remaining fixated on previous times.

He believes he finds solace in the dark, a place where he can retreat from the world and avoid the anguish of life. Yet Krapp's comfort zone ultimately becomes a form of self-imprisonment because he cannot avoid the light, as Amiel Schotz discovered when preparing to perform the role: "It is in the dark that his physical, sensual and emotional side is set free. In the dark he eats bananas, drinks his whisky, lies propped up on the pillows and lets his mind wander, peoples the dark with memories: this he calls to 'be again'. What irony that in the light he should constantly 126 grapple with his memories, give them artistic form and meaning, only to fail" (47-48). In a letter to Alan Schneider offering insights on directing Krapp 's Last Tape, Beckett explains that the contrasts of light and dark show that neither provides security:

Black and white (both dirty), the whole piece being built up in one sense on this simple antithesis of which you will find echoes throughout the text (black ball, white nurse, black pram, Bianca, Kedar - anagram of "dark" - Street, black storm, light of understanding, etc.) Black dictionary if you can and ledger. Similarly black and white set. Table should be small (plain kitchen table) cluttered up with tapes and boxes until he sweeps them to the ground (maximum of violence). In the light everything as visible as possible, hence unnatural opening of drawers towards audience, i.e. when he extracts spool from left drawer he holds it up so that it can be seen before he puts it back, similarly with bananas as soon as taken from drawer, similarly with envelope and keys and whenever else possible, almost (only almost!) like a conjurer exhibiting his innocent material (Harmon 60).

For Beckett, light illuminates everything and exposes all, including imperfections and weaknesses. When light literally and metaphorically saturates a scene, it can produce an unclear or blurred view. Instead of promoting traditional associations of light exclusively with positive values, Beckett shows how light can distort objects, suggesting that it does not always accurately illuminate a situation. Beckett's appreciation for the ability of light to illuminate beyond the material stems, as Knowlson discloses, from his respect for Rembrandt, "with whom he developed a highly ambiguous relationship, lost at times in admiration for [his] uncompromising artistry, yet turning away from his darkness and gloom" (Images 59).97 Remarking on

Rembrandt's The Money Changer in his notebook after seeing it at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Friedrich

Museum in Berlin in 1937, Beckett wrote that it was "apparently influenced by Honthorst. One aspect of Rembrandt is nothing but a development of Honthorst" (Ackerley 481). Gerrit van

Honthorst, famous for his nocturnal depictions using artificial light, was a leading member of the

Italian Utrecht school, and one of the first, after Peter Paul Rubens" and Adam Elsheimer,100 to combine Caravaggism and candlelight (Slatkes 36). Having read Wilenski, Beckett familiarized himself with the tradition of "spotlight painting" and the technique of creating "twilight effects" 127 when casting light and its influence on Dutch art. According to Ackerley and Gontarski, this reading contributed to Beckett's "art of disintegration" by informing him of the history behind

Rembrandt's "affection for aged idiosyncracies" (481).

The move away from Renaissance ideals of art originated in the Netherlands with

Rembrandt, who developed a personal style that emphasized the character of the sitter rather than superficial, ornamental forms of beauty. To learn how to reveal subtle values in the faces of his subjects, Rembrandt closely looked at people (especially the elderly), noticing their features and lines, studying the way light reflects off their faces (Carroll 17). His portraits present a dramatic unveiling of light from the darkness, creating dark beauty out of the shadows behind it, casting a warm glow on the canvas (Carroll 17). What set Rembrandt apart from the Italian tradition was his use of chiaroscuro to convey an intensely fantastic and mysterious mood as opposed to rendering a naturalistic portrayal, as illustrated by Tancred Borenius' analysis of The Money

Changer. "The scene is lit by candle, held by the old man, the flame being hidden by his hand - it is indeed a frequent device of Rembrandt to make the light emanate from the centre of the composition, the actual source being concealed; whereas Caravaggio uses strong light coming from above" (17). As Arnheim explains, the hiding of the candle eliminates the passive aspect of the event, making the illuminated object the primary source, allowing the light to radiate off the figures without violating the requirements for realistic painting while still engendering the work with a "glowing luminosity" {Art 325).101 The result of Rembrandt's lighting techniques reveals his interest in the dramatization of form by making highlights and shadows interact with each other, catching the eye in a recession leading to an obtrusion of shape, permeating the painting with a sense of life, movement, and strong emotional resonances (Burroughs 4). Rembrandt applies chiaroscuro in gradations, generating relations of massed light and shade with poise and balance, making it difficult to demarcate specifically the boundaries between light and shadow, 128 mirroring the thematic structure of Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, which shows Krapp attempting to resolve his internal conflict between intellect and emotion by moving in and out of the dark.

Based on Beckett's continual sharpening of the light and dark imagery in each of the drafts that resulted in Krapp's Last Tape, one notices his meticulous attention to using contrasts of brightness to portray the dual sides of Krapp's nature.102 In his directorial notebook for Das letzte Band {Krapp's Last Tape), Beckett outlines a series of "dark emblems" in the play that he counterbalances with corresponding "light emblems" (Knowlson, Samuel 24). Beckett expresses in his notebook that these contrasts reveal Krapp's enduring effort to merge spirit with flesh; the dark elements evoke a world of sense and death in contrast to the light elements, which induce an awareness of spirit and life:

Note that Krapp decrees physical (ethical) incompatibility of light (spiritual) and dark (sensual) only when he intuits possibility of their reconciliation intellectually as rational-irrational. He turns from fact of anti-mind alien to mind to thought of anti-mind constituent of mind. He is thus ethically correct (signaculum sinus) through intellectual transgression, the duty of reason being not to join but to separate (deliverance of imprisoned light). For this sin he is punished as shown by the aeons {Krapp 141).

Analyzing Beckett's notebook, Knowlson uncovers the following examples from the play where the playwright/director illustrates Krapp's attempt at reconciliations between the dark and light, revealing his inability to separate them (see Knowlson, Samuel 24-27). Though Krapp generously gives the black ball to the white dog, this action marks the only selfless act attributed to him during course of the play. Of his "on and off relationship with Bianca, which means white in Italian, all Krapp discloses is that she lived on a street named Kedar, which evokes a sense of darkness since the word not only means black in ancient Hebrew but also is an anagram of "dark." Curious as to the meaning of the word "viduity" after hearing it while listening to one of his earlier recordings, Krapp looks it up in the dictionary only to uncover somber definitions concerning mortality and existence: "state - or condition - of being - or remaining - a widow - or widower." Under the same entry, he finds that "viduity" also refers to the "black plumage of male." Beckett juxtaposes his description of the "dark" young beauty, "all white and starch," with the perambulator that she pushes by the weir, "big black hooded," an object described by

Krapp as a "most funeral thing" for something designed to carry a baby. Krapp also compares

the eyes of the "dark beauty" to chrysolite, a gemstone that shimmers when illuminated.

Additionally, Knowlson notices that Beckett's choice of chrysolite references William

Shakespeare's Othello, Act V, scene ii, lines 151-153—"If heaven would make me such another world / Of one entire and perfect chrysolite / I'd not have sold her for it"—a passage that thematically promotes the notion of the eyes as windows to the soul. In fact, Krapp obsesses

about the eyes of all the women he desired: Bianca, the girl in the park, and the girl in the punt.

To inform him that his mother has died, Krapp receives the signal of the window blind going down, an image that literally and metaphorically coveys the idea of shutting out the light. At the beginning of recording his "last" tape, Krapp mentions letting go of his attempt to reconcile the contrasts: "Everything there, everything on this old muckball, all the light and dark and famine

and feasting of... {hesitates) ... the ages! {In a shout) Yes! {Pause) Let that go!" (Beckett, Krapp

9). The line "all the light and dark" derives from Lord Bryon's poem "She Walks in Beauty" in

The Hebrew Melodies (1815) 103, which describes the splendor of the poet's cousin Lady Anne

Wilmot Horton by bringing together opposing qualities of light and dark (a motif at play throughout the verses).

Amongst these juxtapositions, Beckett illustrates the need and desire to reconcile contrasts by finding a balance and a separation between them, as he expressed in his directorial notebook commenting on Krapp's "selfless" act: "Note that if the giving of the black ball to white dog represents the sacrifice of sense to spirit the form of here too is that of a mingling"

{Krapp 141). Beckett establishes this idea of balance and separation by creating zones of light and darkness on the stage. In his directorial notebook, Beckett describes the light source over

Krapp's desk as a "hanging lamp, white shade, quite low" {Krapp 193). Remarking on the lamp, 130 the thirty-nine year old Krapp says: "The new light above my table is a great improvement. With all this darkness around me I feel less alone. {Pause.) In a way. {Pause.) I love to get up and move about in it, then back here to ... {hesitates) ... me. {Pause.) Krapp" {Krapp 5). Krapp's movements in and out of the light and dark provide him with a sense of well being because he believes that he can maintain the balance of participating in both while keeping them separate

(Knowlson, Samuel 25). In fact, Knowlson suggests that when Beckett came to direct the play himself he modified some of the stage business concerning the second banana, from having

Krapp push the peel into the pit to simply having him drop it to the ground, in order not to break the strict zones of light and dark that comprise the stage space: "In a balanced production, therefore, neither the comic nor the pathetic aspects of Krapp's appearance and predicament should be lost" (introd. Krapp xv).

The meticulous attention Beckett employs in juxtaposing light and dark sources to explore the duality of human nature finds its antecedents in the Dutch paintings that serve as the visual sources for Krapp's Last Tape. Rembrandt's The Money Changer displays extraordinary quality in the construction, execution, and colour combinations that paints a dramatic scene of a contemplative figure. The moneychanger is at his desk, examining a coin in his right hand. The only light source for the painting is its reflection off his face and glasses from a candle in its holder, held in his right hand. The moneychanger's right hand conceals the flame from the viewer, focusing his or her attention on the subject of the reflection rather than the source of the light. The shadows created by the candle lighting encourage the viewer to enter further into the scene. Since Rembrandt loosely based the painting on The Parable of the Rich Man, St. Luke's gospel text of a rich man hoarding his gold until held accountable by God, one cannot but consider the moral issues that it raises.104 Glasses symbolize the inability see clearly, suggesting that the moneychanger may be blind to the implications of his actions. He sits in stillness, engulfed with ledgers documenting his financial exploits, while examining his fortunes. Though 131 the figure's contemplative gaze produces a sense of calm in the portrait, Rembrandt shows that selfishness and self-satisfaction are two sides of the same coin that can lead one to a life of isolation and emptiness of human contact. Though adorned in finery, the figure sits alone in the dark with nobody to comfort him except his money. The tender manner in which the moneychanger holds the coin between his index finger and thumb resembles the way Krapp physically bonds with the tape-recorder;105 both figures immerse themselves in their own pursuits to the extent that it becomes physically manifested in their deportment and their handling of material objects. The moral issues in these works emerge from the darkness that surrounds the figures, which suggests their dissatisfaction with solely possessing material objects or wealth. In Knowlson's view, the themes of St. Luke's narrative that Rembrandt interpreted for

The Money Changer manifest in Beckett's play106 since the primary action features Krapp reflecting on his past while awaiting death, "discovering that what had once seemed most important to him now appears worthless and that what he had once rejected outright now seems important" (Images 69).107

Vermeer's The Geographer and The Astronomer similarly feature a solitary man in his study as their central images. Each figure is engrossed in scientific investigation; one studies the terrestrial realm, while the other probes the celestial. In The Geographer, Vermeer paints the portrait of a young scientist involved in cartographic work. Leaning over a translucent chart on his desk (like Krapp above his microphone), supporting himself with a book under his left hand while holding a pair of open and poised dividers in his right, the geographer pauses to gaze out the window. In contrast to the weight of the body, accentuated by the sharp slant of the robe, the light streaming in from the outside illuminates the geographer's face, revealing a rapt expression.

Vermeer seems to suggest that that larger world has captured the geographer's attention, indicated by the variety of cartographic material in the room, including a framed sea chart of

Europe. In the counterpart The Astronomer, Vermeer again paints the portrait of a man, this time 132 seated at his table, focusing on a colourful celestial globe, which Knowlson considers as almost a view of Krapp from the theatre wings—hands outstretched toward the globe like Krapp's to his recorder {Images 68). Light streams in from the window, illuminating the sphere and the focus of the astronomer's attention. Vermeer details the room with technical charts and books, one of which the astronomer consults. In both paintings, Vermeer's use of light provides contradictory emotional overtones, rendering it difficult to ascribe any one encompassing interpretation to the work, as Jon Bird explains:

In [The Geographer] and its thematic 'twin', The Astronomer, [...] Vermeer seems to depict 'thought itself: an inner stillness that precedes action, a clearing of the mind (interiority) for illumination, an arrested moment, emphasized in the hand holding the dividers hovering above the map - the body: presence, awaits experience: absence. The gaze is passive, the eyes unfocused, light falls strongest on the brow suggesting an irradiating intellect, but darkness envelops the figure and the shadow created on the wall by the globe situated on top of the wardrobe, creates a ghostly mimicking of the geographer. This light, Vermeer's light, is full of contradiction. Edges are softened, boundaries blurred, the figure exists in the space between the visible and invisible, a threatened erasure that inscribes absence into the very process of figuration (119).

Vermeer casts light directly on the scientists' resources and instruments, which serve as visual analogues of the material world, as a way of invoking consideration of our sources of knowledge. Vermeer distorts the objects in the background and saturates those in the foreground to the point where they become unreadable due to the dazzling whiteness, leading Bird to suggest that the images are consumed by light, undermining its function as the demonstration of knowledge for the knowledge of representation (120). The dark shape created by the rich, heavy floral table coverings in both paintings separates the viewer from the scene serving, as Bird says,

"as an allegory of the act of painting as an unveiling, an act of disclosure, and a mediation upon the relation between seeing and knowing" (120). These textures, which Vermeer creates with light, characterize The Geographer and The Astronomer as allegories of the application of human thought to global and universal issues. 133 Using light and dark to explore the ambiguity of contradiction in their paintings, Dutch artists sought to bring depth and humanity to their creations, a quality prominent in Krapp 's Last

Tape. In the paintings by Rembrandt and Vermeer and Beckett's play, the artists bring vitality to their portraits using to light to create a dramatic concentration of focus on their figures, suspended in a moment of inner stillness. These artists reflect light off the faces of their figures, illuminating their heads, drawing the recipient into their inner consciousness. Without the use of chiaroscuro and the atmospheric quality it creates, these works would lose their intensity by flattening the sculptural quality of their forms, eliminating the excitement of the moment, and the depth of the characters. The relationship between these works' themes and their use of chiaroscuro raise the ambiguity of the meaning behind the symbols in these portraits since the interplay of light and dark calls into question traditional associations. Beckett explores the dichotomies of light and dark in Krapp's Last Tape only to resolve that, as with form and content, the ultimate goal is to try an achieve a union of the two.

§3: Manichaean Dualism

Inspired, in part, to investigate the interstice between light and dark, Beckett realized when he came to direct Krapp's Last Tape that the numerous light and dark references in the play invoke consideration of Manichaean thought. In his directorial notebook for Daz letzte

Band, Beckett listed the light and dark references in the play under a section entitled "MANI," referencing the name and founder of the Manichaean religion. Initiated by the Persian in the third-century AD, Manichaean thought professes a dualism of light and dark based on the belief that there exist two Principles: one Good, which resides in the realm of light, and the other Bad, which inhabits the domain of darkness.108 As a form of dualistic Gnosticism, Manichaeanism claims that the foundation of the universe originates from the opposition of good and evil, both relatively equal in power, and that spirit and matter control the cosmos, which includes 134 humankind. Good and evil are separate and opposed principles that individually existed before the creation of the world, but became co-mingled in the making of the planet because darkness invaded light. Salvation for the individual lies in the release of goodness and a return to the original state of separation.

Of the voluminous amount and sheer complexity of Mani's ideas, Knowlson helps by summarizing the three key tenets of the philosophy that are pertinent to understanding Beckett's juxtaposition of light and dark emblems:

First, in the beginning, called the initium, Light and Darkness were totally separated into two kingdoms until, following a cosmogonic movement, the two substances were mingled in the present time, called the medium, when darkness invaded the realm of light; only in future time, the finis, will the original duality and separation of the two substances that existed in the beginning be restored through the efforts of the ambassadors of Light - Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus Christ and Mani. Secondly, in present time, it is the duty of man to seek to separate the enslaved light from the darkness in his life, since man's soul has fallen into the evil world of matter and can be saved only by means of the spirit or intelligence (nous). Thirdly, in order to achieve this separation, the true follower of Mani will lead the life of the ascetic - not fornicating or procreating, possessing nothing, eating no meat and drinking no wine (introd. Krapp xxi).

Although Knowlson cautions to treat Beckett's Mani reference with "circumspection" because it materialized in the author's directorial notebook eleven years after the composition of Krapp's

Last Tape along with the playwright's dismissal of the note as "Wild stuff," the play does subvert traditional dualistic forms of thought, such as Manichaeanism, by challenging traditional symbolic associations. These factors, in combination with Beckett's knowledge of how seventeenth-century Dutch art also opposed traditional symbolism, raise consideration of the role of Manichaeanism in the development of Beckett's aesthetic attitude. While Knowlson rightly advises the critic against over-analyzing the Mani reference, one cannot discount the influence of tradition and experience on Beckett's works. Although Beckett admitted that he only came across the relation between Manichaeanism and his own light and dark emblems in Krapp's Last

Tape when he physically came to concretize them in the theatre, the philosophy has a pervasive 135 influence on all works of art including those of Beckett in that its central idea of associating light and dark based on precepts of "good" and "bad" serves as one of the fundamental starting points when interpreting symbols.

Whether or not Beckett immediately recognized the Manichaean elements during the original composition of the text, Dougald McMillan and Martha Fehsenfeld uncover in the manuscript development of Krapp 's Last Tape numerous examples of its influence from the first draft—the set, lighting, the exploration of spirit and flesh, references to both the mingling and separating of light and dark, symbolic props such as the black ball, and the deep resonances of

Manichaean elements of light presented in pivotal moments such as the "memorable equinox" and the "boat scene" (see 242-254). Yet McMillan and Fehsenfeld's study, and an article by Sue

Wilson, both independently argue that Krapp's Last Tape actually critiques Manichaeanism by promoting a mingling of light and dark as opposed to the philosophy's demand for its separation.109 The metaphysical roots of Manichaean thought are opposed to the empirical tradition, rendering esoteric and spiritual truths available only through intellectual reasoning

(Wilson 133). Beckett's staging of Krapp's Last Jape upsets the intellectual oppositions of

Manichaean thought in its mingling of opposing elements, degrading spiritual objects to their material incarnations. The play does not offer a resolution to this dualism of the human condition; rather, it illustrates its lack of metaphysical fulfillment, expressed by the fact that

Krapp obsesses about empty dreams (see Krapp nb. 241).

Inasmuch as Manichaean thought underscores the themes of Krapp's Last Tape,

Beckett's dramatic aim is neither to posit nor rebuke outright any manifesto; rather, he focuses, in this case, on painting the portrait of a solitary man, as Martin Held explained in an interview after playing Krapp under Beckett's direction at the Schiller Theatre: 136 RonaldHayman [...] is the public supposed to think that [Krapp] is sort of Everyman?

Martin Held Oh no, no. Beckett once said something very beautiful about this. He said that Krapp is not a way of looking at the world (keine Weltanschauuug), and that in fact answers everything. No, this is just Krapp, not a world-view (qtd. in Knowlson, Samuel 69-70).

Described by Linda Ben-Zvi as "transitional play" from the stage action in Waiting for Godot and Endgame to the stasis of Happy Days and Play (155), Krapp's Last Tape stands as one of

Beckett's most mimetic stage plays. Krapp does not represent any symbolic figure; rather, he appears as someone recognizable. Moving away from the vast terrain of Waiting for Godot and the dream state environment of Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape presents the portrait of man's life on stage. Substantially transformed from the original published version of the play to reduce overt expressions of theatricality, the directorial version Krapp's Last Tape eliminates most of the opening clowning business and all elements enhanced for spectacle, such as having Krapp throw the banana peel behind him instead of breaking the fourth wall by flinging it into the pit, to refine the stage image by eliminating all illusions, carrying the spectator further into Kxapp's private world. The modifications Beckett made to Krapp's Last Tape over the eleven years that lapsed between the time of its composition and his opportunity to direct it, transform Krapp into a complete ontological being who, having been librated from his clownish facade, can simply now be himself, which he relishes when commenting on the light above his desk: "I love to get up and move about in it, then back here to ... {hesitates) ... me. (Pause.) Krapp" (Krapp 5). With these changes, Beckett presents a portrait of the private Krapp that the spectator can observe like a voyeur, illustrating his dramatic objective as focused on the generation of a stage image as opposed to accentuating the unique features of theatrical expression.

Since Beckett shifts his dramatic focus in Krapp's Last Tape from the larger metaphysical themes in the landscapes of Waiting for Godot and Endgame to the smaller, interior psychology of an individual, one begins to notice the refinement of his stage toward dramatic 137 portraiture. Complementing the light and dark dichotomy of Manichaean dualism with distinct points of "listening" and "non-listening,"110 Beckett suggests that the active part of the play involves listening, relegating movement to a subordinate role. While Beckett mingles the light and dark, disrupting Manichaean orders for its separation, he demands a strict division between the "listening" and "non-listening" moments by having Krapp pause for a moment of stillness before each act of listening: "Principle: always resumes listening position before switching on recorder" (Krapp 32-33).nl Also, Krapp's Last Tape, along with Act Without Words I (written in

1956, two years before Krapp) are the first of Beckett's stage plays to feature a solitary character, suggesting his focus on painting individual experiences. On his own, the "non- listening Krapp" amounts to little more than a bumbling alcoholic attached to his failures. But the "listening" Krapp admits the spectator into the deep recesses of the character's mind, creating a new level of representation emphasizing the visual over the linguistic.

Krapp exists in a paradoxical state: is he "being" or "remaining?" Beckett poses the question in the definition of viduity: "State or condition - of being - or remaining - a widow - or widower (Looks up. Puzzled.) Being - or remaining?" (Krapp 6). The portrait Beckett paints is one of the "remains" of Krapp's former self. Though he develops a system of recording audiotapes to retain the vibrancy of his interpretation of experiences, Krapp-69 recalls this past as his present self, a different person than the one recounting the details. Out of the fragmentary memories that Krapp spews upon the stage from his violent fast-forwarding through sections of the tape complemented with cursing, one imagines that he led an empty life of avoidance and that what he has lost is irreplaceable.112

Regarding the portrait Beckett paints of Krapp, one realizes the pain one can endure having never been emotionally or intimately close with anyone. Though Krapp achieves his objective of moving in and out of the darkness, he fails to shed light on understanding himself, as illustrated through the descriptions of his failed relationships with women. Each liaison ends with an image of privation, whether an internal loss of an emotional bond such as spirit or

security,113 or an external event of physical departure.114 In his accounts of his past relationships,

Krapp accentuates any insignificant detail that places him as the figure of attention, suggesting

an ego out of balance. These recurring patterns show Krapp's inability selflessly to love another,

evidenced by the fact that he never attempts to reconnect with anyone he has lost, indicating his

entrapment to a repeating cycle of failure, illustrated via the recurring visual motif of the

spinning spool on the reel-to-reel tape recorder.

In the spirit of seventeenth-century Dutch art, Krapp's Last Tape uses techniques

involving light and dark to investigate the emotional reaction of individual occurrences. ' The

Dutch masters contributed to the development of art by emphasizing the mood of a particular work, encouraging the viewer to transcend beyond the realistic depiction to experience the underlying emotions of the piece. They painted recognizable figures to show the results of

individual choice of the subjects depicted. Rembrandt's The Money Changer takes the viewer deep into the morality of his trade. Vermeer's The Geographer and The Astronomer both provoke consideration of examining the natural world and universe as a way, perhaps, of

achieving a greater understanding of individual existence. In the same tradition, Beckett's

Krapp's Last Tape shows the results of individual choice, promoting the theme of self-reflection.

Throughout the play, Krapp replays three times the recorded memory fragment of his encounter with the girl in the punt. The scene marks a turning point in Krapp's life when he attempted to

love another. This particular episode is one of the only that describes a complete encounter with

a woman who Krapp cares for as opposed to his typical, biased, objectified recollections of brief

run-ins with other females. Krapp reveals his potential for compassion during this episode: "I

noticed a scratch on her thigh and asked her how she came by it. Picking gooseberries, she said"

{Krapp 8). The girl's response marks the only "non-Krapp" speech in the play. The fact that

Krapp asks the question suggests, at least, that he possesses some concern for her well-being, a 139 quality not evident in the other relationships he describes. And although Krapp aggressively demands her compliance for lovemaking with his plea "Let me in," he does beautifully describe the experience as a moment of unity: "under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to side" {Krapp 8). The passage shows Krapp deciding to end the relationship with the girl for fear that she would distract him from completing his "opus magnum" (Mercier 200).

At the time when Krapp records his last tape, the spectator realizes that the "opus magnum" has been downgraded to the status of "homework." All his intellectual striving has come, pathetically, to fruition in only "Seventeen copies sold, of which eleven at trade price to free circulating libraries beyond the seas" {Krapp 9). The price he has paid for his efforts is the repression of potential emotional fulfillment and nourishment. "Getting known," he adds grimly.

His tragedy, which he cannot overcome, is that he has never closely known another nor let another know him.

The portrait Beckett paints of Krapp is a highly introspective one that promotes self- reflection, an attitude congruent with seventeenth-century Dutch art. Krapp wallows in his misery and happily decides to await death. He finds himself in a cyclical pattern of behaviour that upsets him, yet he does nothing to change his ways. Krapp is stuck in time, frozen at a moment when he made a grievous personal error. He copes by repeatedly replaying the episode in the hope of finding some justification for his loss. But, as Jon Erickson says, while the unexamined life may not be worth living, Krapp's over-examined life takes the place of living, negating its worth in the long run (183). Though infused with moral issues, Krapp's Last Tape is not a morality play. It stands at the beginning of Beckett's intense dramatic focus on painting the portrait of the inner feelings of an individual, as found in the visual sources that inspire the play.

Moving away from the larger metaphysical explorations of his earlier plays, Krapp's Last Tape is the one play where Beckett creates as complete a self-contained character as one will ever see on his stage. From this point onward, Beckett builds on his inspiration to create stage portraits by physically immobilizing his characters and refining the dramatic action to an even more precisely focused image.

§4: Perceiving Bodies

In the development of Beckett's theatre, from Happy Days on Beckett's plays become more static, concentrated, and spectral, bordering on the fringes of materiality (Knowlson,

Images 47). While movement still figures in Happy Days, Beckett drastically minimizes it

(especially in comparison with Krapp 's Last Tape), granting the spectator the opportunity to experience the piece in a manner more strikingly reminiscent of the focus generated when viewing a painting. The subtle lighting Beckett uses in Krapp's Last Tape to reveal shades of the character becomes intensified in Happy Days to present starker contrasts. The result of Beckett's escalation of intensity in contrast in Happy Days is that the light no longer provides a realistic portrayal of character as in Krapp's Last Tape; it now serves as an instrument for Beckett to penetrate into the psyche of his character, presenting extreme situations of the human condition for the audience to examine. Though language continues to play an important role in Happy

Days, Beckett uses it to stress the visual image by using words that conjure images, especially those that invoke the audience's role as onlookers (using verbs such as: look, see, watch, peer, gaze, etc.).116 With these developments in Beckett's dramaturgy, his later plays begin to actualize

Adolphe Appia's concept of using the actor's body as an element of the formalized mise-en-

scene; in particular, translating the "naturalistic" body, with its individuality and physiology, into a "spiritualized" one that subsumes the body's recalcitrant physicality (Garner, Bodied 56-57).

Moving away from the mimetic elements that contribute to a whole personality found in

Beckett's early plays up to Krapp's Last Tape, Happy Days features sharp light which deforms the human body, connecting Beckett with Appia and also Edward Gordon Craig in using light as

an "active, even aggressive determinant of the theatrical image" (Garner, Bodied 65). In Happy 141 Days, the light blazes from above, penetrating into the character's innermost recesses of her mind, permitting the spectator to see into her psychology and psychoses.

In Happy Days, Winnie struggles with the need to be perceived and the agony of being perceived. Focusing the play on the act of perception, Beckett infuses it with copious moments of self-referentiality that mirror the external view of the audience, turning the spectator's gaze inward while implicating him or her into participating in the creation of the stage portrait.

Beckett situates Winnie, a fragmented body, in the middle of a huge expanse, focusing the audience's gaze on a small segment of the stage. The extreme brightness of stage light sharply demarcates the boundary between the performance space and auditorium, forcing the spectator either to focus on Winnie or peer away from the scene by looking into the dark of the theatre auditorium. Winnie, too, cannot escape the audience's gaze, due to her being stuck facing forward. Though she tries to close her eyes and "ignore the bell" {CDW 162), the piercing sound forbids any repose, obliging her to face her perceivers. The text verbally echoes this reciprocal exchange of gaze when Winnie remarks: "Eyes on my eyes" {CDW 160). Winnie's awareness of an external perceiver causes her discomfort: "Strange feeling that someone is looking at me. I am clear, then dim, then gone, then dim again, the clear again, and so on, back and forth, in and out of someone's eye" {CDW 155). Beckett's use of self-referential words that describe the act of perception in the play diminishes the status of the individual character and marginalizes the actor, which produces the effect of tightening dramatic focus by considering character as nothing more than material pigment (see Beresford-Plummer 76-77). Using language that reflects the spectator's gaze upon the immobilized and fragmented body, Beckett intensifies his or her awareness of Winnie's dependence on the perceiving eye, and magnifies the vulnerability that arises from the inability to control one's perception of the performance. The results of these emphases show that Beckett composed Happy Days on a series of contradictions and contrasts in search of form that accommodates the chaos. 142 Winnie attempts to maintain an optimistic mental attitude in spite of finding herself in the dire predicament of slowly being buried alive; she engages her mind as a means of diverting attention away from her immediate situation, which increasingly worsens. Facing extreme physical hardship, symbolized by the blazing light of the sun, Winnie praises being alive to embrace the day with "Another heavenly day" (CDW 138). Explaining to Alan Schneider that

Winnie's attitude toward the "holy light" sequence should convey her dependence on the brightness, Beckett remarked: "If she were blind there would be no more light, hellish or holy, no more objects ('What wd. I do without them?'). She comes therefore to these lines from the last lines of p. 2. Light holy & to be missed in so far as a condition of seeing (which helps her through the day), hellish and not to be missed because emanation of the 'hellish sun' which is burning her. 'Bob up out of dark' - dark of sleep shattered by bell" (Harmon 102). Though

Winnie possesses an aerial personality, as Beckett revealed to Eva-Katarina Schultz when he said

"Winnie has something bird-like about her, something that belongs to the air," on another occasion he described her as "a bird with oil on its feathers," adding to his initial depiction that something dark and heavy weighs down this light-spirited being (Knowlson, Images 104). When

Beckett came to direct Billie Whitelaw in the role, he portrayed Winnie as suffering from some affliction resembling Attention Deficit Disorder by describing her as "a mess. An organized mess

... One of the clues of the play is interruption. Something begins, something else begins. She begins but she doesn't carry through with it. She's constantly being interrupted or interrupting herself. She's an interrupted being. She's a bit mad. Manic is not wrong, but too big ... A child- woman with a short span of concentration - sure one minute, unsure the next" (Knowlson, introd.

Happy 16). This "interrupted being" finds herself in a situation where neither the light nor the dark offers any reprise to her situation, forcing her to look inward and examine herself.

As with Krapp 's Last Tape, Beckett constructed Happy Days on a series of contrasts to illuminate the problem of mingling sense with spirit. In fact, scholars consider Billie Whitelaw's highly sexual rendition of Winnie's memories, elicited under Beckett's direction for a production of the play at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1979, as aptly illustrating the play's examination of the dichotomy between flesh and intellect (Knowlson, introd. Happy 16).

Analyzing Beckett's directorial notebook for the production, Knowlson finds the following four themes as demonstrative of the play's exploration of the contrast between sense and spirit

(introd. Happy 16). Beckett couples Winnie's "look on the bright side" philosophy with her repeated phrases of reassurance, "great mercies," "That's what I find so wonderful," which contradict the harsh realities of her horrible dilemma. Though Winnie aspires to escape her situation by "simply floating] up into the blue ... like gossamer," she finds herself in the downward spiral of sinking lower into the earth. In comparison to her counterpart Willie, who represents the flesh of human existence, Winnie is a "weightless being" whose natural element is the air, as Beckett says. Finally, while Winnie can still access the diversions in her handbag in the first act, by the second act her deprivation worsens marked by the depletion of her resources and her inability to reach them, rendering her awareness of the physical discomfort she feels more explicit and pronounced.

These contrasts materialize in any faithful production of Happy Days in a number of ways. One notices that the light cheerfulness of Winnie's narrative voice increasingly becomes pierced with dark, eerie tones as the play progresses. Beckett charges select passages with positive and negative oppositions, which he outlines in his notebook under the heading "+ -" to distinguish the optimistic tones in the first act from the pessimistic ones in the second (Beckett,

Happy 43).n8 Observing Beckett directing Billie Whitelaw in the role, Martha Fehsenfeld noticed how the playwright/director choreographed Winnie's movements to echo the images of expansion and contraction in the text; for instance, Beckett gradually had Winnie halt as she went to pray, signifying the end of her ability to dip into her bag, suggesting that Winnie confronts the fear of having nothing more to say or do (Knowlson, introd. Happy 17). Beckett 144 builds the play on a series of key contrasts that include lightness/heaviness, optimism/sorrow, and expansion/contraction, juxtaposing Winnie's upward aspiration with her downward movement (Knowlson, Images 141).

Beckett also utilizes props to illustrate the difficulty of satisfactorily reconciling contrasts, which his notebook explicitly reveals. For instance, he requires that Winnie's bag be black to ensure a "black presence in general bleachedness" (Happy 119). He describes the soft case that houses Winnie's glasses, an object meant to improve sight, as a "black open sheath for easy out/in" (Happy 119). He specifies that the colour of Winnie's dress, hat, music box, and gun be black (Happy 119). For Willie's props, Beckett calls for besmirched white objects; the handkerchief should be "dirty white," to match the postcard that has a "dirty white back finger- stained," which mirrors the dirty black ink on the newspaper (Happy 121). Describing the function of the props for Happy Days in his directorial notebook, Beckett explains that they illustrate the deteriorative effect caused by dependence on material objects: "Gen. [General] principle: hypertrophy [erasure] secondary, atrophy primary" (Happy 119). In context of the play, Beckett's note seems to indicate that Winnie's attachment to the objects in her bag contributes to her downfall as a free being. In fact, during rehearsals for the Schiller production of Happy Days in 1971, Beckett requested that the props be exaggerated to produce a

"verfremdet" (alienated) effect, suggesting that they serve as a "gestus of showing."

Along with his use of props, Beckett utilizes the entire visual field of the stage space to investigate the dichotomy of contrasts, la Happy Days, Beckett overlays multiple levels of space in the same way that he superimposes several layers of time in Krapp 's Last Tape to explore different levels of reality. During the composition of the initial text fox Happy Days, Beckett strove to increase the hostile conditions of the environment by changing descriptions of the set from "grassy expanse rising gently" to "expanse of scorched grass rising center," and by modifying the lighting instructions from "strong sunlight" to "blazing light" (Ackerley 244). 145 Other key revisions to the spatial dimensions of the stage derive from Beckett's directorial vision. He altered the set by changing the placement of the mound from a symmetrical to an

asymmetrical position, which allowed for the creation of additional spatial levels.120 Jocelyn

Herbert, the set designer for Beckett's production, fashioned an elaborate, solid, tiered wooden

structure, covered with painted canvas, hessian, shredded string, and sisal to create the illusion of

a scorched desert (Beckett, Happy 21). The back of the stage featured a curved cyclorama on which Herbert painted hills in the horizon under a dominant, orange-coloured sky, which Beckett augmented with lighting effects that made it appear as though the orange became darker as the sun rose in the distance and paler when it sank to meet the earth (Beckett, Happy 21). Within this desert-like landscape, the spectator sees that Willie lives in an underground hole while Winnie finds herself stuck to her waist in a mound of earth, creating two spatial levels to facilitate the play's exploration of contrasts. One can compare the cavernous hovel Willie dwells in to the dark zones in which Krapp attempts to find solace. Likewise, one notices a similarity between

Winnie's exposure to the harsh light and Krapp's painful zones of "enlightenment."121 A gam, these images show that neither extreme light nor extreme dark can protect or comfort people.

By exposing the inherent contradictions and ambiguities presented by traditional

symbolic associations of light and dark, Beckett reformulates the issue by turning inward and delving into the "discovery of self." In Happy Days, Beckett supplies Winnie with a mirror as means to look into her own soul and determine the reality of existence. In Beckett's directorial notebook for his Royal Court production, he specified that both the mirror and magnifying glass

should feature a "long silver handle" with a "small round glass" (119). These items, along with

all of Winnie's possessions, serve as her distractions, as she readily admits:

There is of course the bag. [Looking at bag.} The bag. [Back front.] Could I enumerate its contents? [Pause.] No. [Pause.] Could I, if some kind person were to come along and ask, What all have you got in that big black bag, Winnie? give an exhaustive answer? [Pause.] No. [Pause.] The depths in particular, who knows what treasures. [Pause.] What comforts. [Turns to look at bag.] Yes, there is the bag. [Backfront.] But something tells me, Do not overdo the bag, Winnie, make use of it of course, let it help you ... along, when stuck, by all means, but cast your mind forward, something tells me, cast your mind forward, Winnie, to the time when words must fail - [she closes eyes, pause, opens eyes] - and do not overdo the bag. [Pause. She turns to look at bag.] Perhaps just one quick dip (CDW 151).

Winnie's "dip" into the bag at this juncture produces Brownie the revolver, immediately reminding the audience that these props assist the protagonist in her struggle between self- awareness and self-delusion. The mirror serves as an emblem of Winnie's journey because, as the painters, architects, and engineers of the Renaissance discovered, it offers a sharp impression of nature by its combination of light and reflection. When he came to direct the play, Beckett considered in his notebook having Winnie "sigh" upon her first look into the glass in anticipation of her later line "a sigh into my looking-glass" (CDW 145). Even though Beckett's note never materialized in the final production—perhaps because it would be too explicit an echo of the textual line—his consideration of adding a sigh when Winnie looks at her face in the mirror suggests that the character feels astonishment at getting old. The mirror causes Winnie to examine critically her predicament. Though she attempts to lose herself in her material possessions as a way to avoid contemplating her situation, eventually she is forced to abandon the superficialities attached to her bag and its contents. As she increasingly finds her physical movements restricted, she gradually allows her mind to roam more freely, resembling Albert

Camus' existential archetype Sisyphus, who remains free through his consciousness in spite of being condemned to an eternity of repeating the monotonous physical task of rolling a stone up a hill. 22 Winnie's gradual rejection of her bag implies that she begins to understand the power of her mind to affect her perceptions of reality.

The question remains regarding the degree of consciousness Winnie exhibits concerning her situation. During select moments she seems unaware of her circumstances when she makes comments such as "no better, no worse [...] no change" (CDW 139); but at other times she reveals her consciousness of being stuck in a mound with remarks like "[t]he earth is very tight today" (CDW 149) and "should one day the earth cover my breasts, then I shall never have seen my breasts, no one ever seen my breasts" (CDW 154). Also, she increasingly seems to become aware of the threat of being alone, especially in Act II when Willie no longer responds to her.

Winnie requires knowing that "[s]omeone is looking at [her] still" (CDW 160), and that Willie, in theory, "can still hear [her]" (CDW 148). Without an audience, Winnie believes that she cannot go on: "I say I used to think that I would learn to talk alone. [Pause.] By that I mean to myself, the wilderness. [Smile.] But no. [Smile broader.] No no. [Smile off.]" (CDW 160).

Winnie attempts to maintain authority over the image that both the audience and her internal eye sees in Act I by using the mirror to help keep her "well-preserved" (CDW 138).

Winnie "inspects" (CDW 139) parts of her face such as her teeth, gums, and lips using her mirror; yet, the object is imperfect since it cannot capture and reflect her entire face. Her gaze is restricted to fragments as is the audience's toward her, indicating that she cannot control the image the audience sees in spite of her efforts. Beckett aptly illustrates this inadequacy with the mirror because it never provides a flawless reflection since by design it can only produce a distorted and inverted version of the original image. In Act II, Winnie continues to try and physically perceive herself in the face of being buried to her neck in the mound:

The face. [Pause.] The nose. [She squints down.] I can see it... [squinting down] ... the tip ... the nostrils ... breath of life ... that curve you so admired ... [pouts] ... a hint of lip ... [pouts again] ... if I pout them out... [sticks out tongue] ... the tongue of course ... you so admired ... if I stick it out... [sticks it out again] ... the tip ... [eyes up] ... suspicion of brow ... eyebrow ... imagination possibly ... [eyes left] ... cheek ... no ... [eyes right] ... no ... [distends cheeks] ... even if I puff them out... [eyes left, distends cheeks again] ... no ... no damask. [Eyes front.] That is all (C£W 161-162).

Though Winnie tries to gain control over the audience's gaze to assure her own existence, she increasingly becomes unable to do so, making the audience aware of its own visual limitations due to the fragmentation of gaze. In Act II, Winnie continues to try and gain control over both her own gaze and that of the audience through the act of story-telling when she recalls her memory of a childhood incident which seems possibly that of sexual initiation. She distances herself from the incident by refusing to use the first person in her recount to fictionalize the story. Her tactic suggests that she attempts to create a "screen memory" to replace the actual one.123 By describing the occurrence using the metaphor of a mouse running up Milly's thigh, Winnie hopes to place screen between her and the incident to avoid reliving the experience. By fictionalizing the event as a harmless but strange occurrence, Winnie shows that the source of her suffering is not the result of losing her innocence but because "it is out of control" (Bryden, Women 98). Nonetheless, Winnie's attempt at gaining control through her story-telling becomes interrupted with distractions, such as the involuntary memory of Shower/Cooker and her occasional awareness that the earth continues to swallow her body, suggesting again that she has neither control over the physical

"eye" nor the personal "I." Support for this reading arises from the prominence of the spectacles and the magnifying glass in the play, which symbolically suggest both the importance of sight and Winnie's inability to see clearly. Even the combination of simultaneously using both the spectacles and the magnifying glass to read the label on the handle of her toothbrush still causes

Winnie considerable difficulty in distinguishing the words. Her difficulty is comic and ironic, since optical instruments correct vision by distorting objects. Further, from the audience's perspective, Winnie's optical devices frame and enlarge her eyes, metaphorically reversing the roles of the spectator and the performer by enhancing the vision of the former while distorting the vision of the latter.

Beckett adds yet further layers of perception in Happy Days via the relationship between

Winnie and Willie. On one level, Winnie at times serves as the spectator's imagination by describing to the audience actions of Willie from behind the mound that it cannot see, such as his entrances and exits from his hole, his application of vaseline to his privates, and his looking at the postcard. On another level, one can consider Willie as doubling for the spectator as "literally a captive" audience to Winnie (Homan 91). In Act I, Willie barely responds to Winnie on six occasions, and in Act II not at all until the end, leading Winnie to conclude that all she has left are her personal items and her words. Winnie wonders that when words fail her, when she no longer has an audience, will someone condemn her to a life in which all she can do is gaze around her "with compressed lips" (CDW 162)?

Moreover, Willie also represents the spectator who, like Shower/Cooker, gains pleasure from "genuine pure filth" (CDW 144). Beckett implies that the audience's gaze is coarse and demeaning when he wrote to Alan Schneider, who was directing the world premiere of Happy

Days that:

Shower & looker are derived from German "schauen" & "kuchen" (to look). They represent the onlooker (audience) wanting to know the meaning of things. That's why (p. 17) she stops filing, raises head & lets 'em have it ("And you, she says ...") (Harmon 95).

In narrating her story, Winnie uses three different voices to depict the people and events, describing an incident of sexual harassment:

Standing there gaping at me. [Pause.'] Can't have been a bad bosom, he says, in its day. {Pause.} Seen worse shoulders, he says, in my time. [Pause.] Does she feel her legs? he says. [Pause.] Is there any life in her legs? he says. [Pause.] Has she anything on underneath? he says. [Pause.] Ask her, he says, I'm shy. [Pause.] Ask her what? she says. [Pause.] Is there any life in her legs. [Pause.] Has she anything on underneath (CDW 165).

Winnie's narrative describes Shower/Cooker's gaze as charged with sexual desire that objectifies her. The dialogue she reconstructs in her narrative vocalizes many of the questions that looking at her image evokes, implicating the spectator as perpetrator of the objectifying gaze in spite of his or her intent. The result elicits a sense of unease in the audience for the parallel made between its gaze and the one of Shower/Cooker.124

Herein lies the crux of Winnie's situation. Though she needs to be perceived to affirm her existence, she does not wish that it be one of objectification—all she wants is to be loved. Yet, 150 Beckett prompts the audience into objectifying her by describing the character in the stage directions as "plump, arms and shoulders bare, low bodice, big bosom" {CDW 138). In a letter to

Schneider regarding his actress for Winnie, Beckett wrote that someone physically attractive would be ideal: "Hope your girl has desirable fleshiness. Audience throughout Act II should miss this gleaming opulent flesh - gone" (Harmon 94). Beckett's emphasis on the "fleshiness" of the performer highlights the play's exploration of both the absence of the body and the audience's role as perceivers. With Winnie, Beckett challenges the traditional, objectified perceptions of the typical, middle-class housewife (that were prominent in 1961) by implicating the spectator's as perpetrators of this gaze. Through her narration describing being perceived, Winnie transforms the spectator into the perceiver, creating a doubling of vision making her both the object and perpetrator of the gaze. This interplay of perceptions forces Winnie to become self-reflective, which hopefully inspires the spectator to follow suit. When Winnie begins her narration, the spectator realizes that their eyes and the eyes of the objectifying gaper are one and the same, rendering the dramatic action in Happy Days as focused on the act of perception.

§5: Happy Surrealist Days

As Beckett's theatrical vision evolves, one notices that along with refining the visual focus of his plays to a precise image via the reduction of the stage environment from landscapes to interior scenes, he also diminishes the mimetic elements in his dramas by incorporating contemporary aesthetic ideologies divergent from realism. As Beckett's characters increasingly lose their mobility, the spectator travels further into their unconscious states. This shift in characterization materializes clearly between Krapp 's Last Tape and Happy Days. While

Krapp 's Last Tape paints the portrait of someone reasonably recognizable, inspired by seventeenth-century Dutch painting, Happy Days presents an uncanny picture of somebody in a bizarre situation, which Knowlson attributes to the influence of surrealism. Beckett encourages 151 the spectator to avoid interpreting the meaning of the words and actions by experiencing the presentation itself as the primary event; an attitude he expressed in his 1945-46 article "La

Peinture des van Veldes, ou le monde et le pantalon": "[E]ach time that one wishes to make words do a true work of transference, each time one wishes to make them express something other than words, they align themselves in such a way as to cancel each other out" (trans.

Hayman 12). As Beckett's theatrical vision becomes more refined, he increasingly defamiliarizes the theatrical space replacing the spectator's impulse to search for some unintended meaning behind the words and actions by focusing his or her attention on experiencing the presentation itself.

In Happy Days, Beckett combines a traditional domestic scene with horrific circumstances; a technique common to the surrealist artist Salvador Dali, who would start a work of art with an absurd situation and then establish a chain of associations by combining images with realism (Haftmann 273), such as his placement of watches melting within a relatively realistic landscape in his infamous painting The Persistence of Memory (1931) (see fig. 33).125

On one level, Winnie resembles a common middle-class housewife who enthusiastically dotes away at her errands, an image Beckett enhances by having Willie prattle off of "titbits" from

Reynolds News from behind the mound. On another level, that Winnie finds herself progressively more implanted in the earth defamiliarizes the material setting, reflecting the audience's own embedded status as perceivers of the scene, which is one of the central objectives of surrealism in art. For many surrealists, the purpose of transcending daily reality for one incorporating the imaginative and the unconscious is that it serves as the catalyst to invoke personal, cultural, and political change by liberating people from false rationality, and restrictive customs and institutions. As an artistic movement, surrealism sought to reveal psychological truth by removing the normal significance of ordinary objects to create mesmerizing images unlike those generated by any traditional formal organization. The movement produced art that combined the 152 depictive, the abstract, and the psychological to reflect the alienation felt by the modern

individual. The intent of surrealism is to provoke the recipient to explore more deeply his or her

psyche, which is precisely the aesthetic that Beckett brings into play in Happy Days by juxtaposing a familiar scene with an extraordinary situation.

In his "First Manifesto of Surrealism (1924)," movement leader Andre Breton explained

that the surrealists aimed to eradicate disturbances between the conscious and unconscious mind

to reach an adjusted psychic state in which "life and death, the real and the imagined, past and

future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be perceived as

contradictions" (124). After attaining this altered state, the change in orientation causes the recipient to depose accepted relationships between individuals and the material world (Zinder

38). As David Zinder explains, the process provides direct access to the limitless peculiar realm

of the subconscious, providing the recipient with an opportunity to uncover the mystical

connection between interior subjective reality and exterior objective reality (38). The objective

of the surrealist artist is not shape raw material into meaningful form, but to charge raw material with the ability to communicate directly to the recipient via its own form, bypassing the artist

altogether (Zinder 38). The result produces a series of successive, but not necessarily connected

images that connects the recipient's subconscious to the work, admitting him or her to the inner

landscape of the mind (Zinder 39).

To reach these surrealist ideals, the artist must attempt to quash conscious aesthetic

thought and all forms of self-censorship to create art objects directly from the imagination. One

of the primary means for the surrealists to achieve this direct connection between the imagination

and the art object is to employ automatism, a technique involving spontaneous writing or

drawing that prevents conscious thought from contaminating the art work by imposing meaning.

The result infuses the art object with the sensation that it came into existence independent of any

artist's intention, as if the art object appeared from nowhere. While Beckett's extensive and 153 meticulous writing and revision processes certainly disqualify his works as the product of spontaneous writing, one finds that the playwright does consider and appreciate the effect the technique can produce. For instance, the appearance that literary quotations surface unsolicited into Winnie's mind in Happy Days implies that they are randomly generated. Beckett also shared with the surrealists the idea that the artist merely exposes a work of art that already exists, expressing the idea as early as 1931 in Proust when he writes that the work of art is "neither created nor chosen, but discovered, uncovered, excavated, pre-existing within the artist, a law of nature" (84). When visualizing Happy Days thirty years later responding to Alan Schneider's questions regarding directorial approaches to the play, Beckett replied with an answer revealing his surrealist tendencies by requesting that the performance achieve a kitschy, slapstick quality:

"What should characterise the whole scene, sky and earth, is a pathetic unsuccessful realism, the kind of tawdriness you get in 3r rate musical or pantomime, that quality of pompier, laughably earnest bad imitation" (Harmon 94).126 Winnie's entire situation in which she reacts to the harsh physical environment determined to devour her coupled with her contrasting expressions blessing the day is, as Katharine Worth says, "absurdly incongruous" (49).127 The text highlights this disparity with Winnie's difficulty in selecting appropriate verb tenses during the scene in which she reacts to the revolver popping out of her bag: "I suppose this - might seem strange - this - what shall I say - this what I have said - yes - [she takes up revolver] - strange - [she turns to put revolver in bag] - were it not - [about to put revolver in bag she arrests gesture and turns back front] - were it not - [she lays down revolver to her right, stops tidying, head up] - that all seems strange. [Pause.] And more and more strange" (CDW 158). As Worth notices, Winnie's fourfold repetition of the word "strange" illustrates that though she finds herself in a state of stasis, her environment continually changes by becoming "more and more strange" (46).

To visually establish this "strange" atmosphere in Happy Days, Beckett contrasts the bright light of the stage with dark features on the characters. Knowlson reports that in Beckett's 154 production of the play, "[t]he lights moved from narrow spots on Winnie in her mound through medium to full and these lights were graded according to movement outwards from white to yellow to pale amber to dark amber" {Happy 22). Beckett distinguishes these brighter tones that consume the stage environment with small, dark features on the characters themselves. Under

Beckett's direction of the play, Winnie's make-up in Act I should be "garish," featuring a dark beauty-spot or mole on her right cheek {Happy 22). In Act II the difference becomes more pronounced by removing Winnie's lipstick and replacing it with "a lot of black pencil under the eyes" to shade her a "deathly pale" grey {Happy 22). Willie similarly maintains an "aged" look throughout the play with his bald skull and large white moustache. In addition to his black and white objects, Willie appears in the final scene of the play dressed in a tuxedo, leaving the audience with the ambiguity of whether his suit represents mourning or wedding attire. In fact,

Beckett reduced the choreography outlined in the original text for Willie's final movements at the end of the play to subvert the sensation of a continually developing scene with a series of distinct and contradictory tableaux. Instead of Willie coming from "around corner of mound" as written in the original text, Beckett's production had him "staring front, absolutely still," engaging the audience with a straight-on portrait {Happy 39). Originally, Beckett envisioned

Willie performing a number of grooming actions before reaching Winnie; however, in his performance, he simplified these events to merely the smoothing of the moustache, which successfully reduces the stage activity to a single action that still conveys the complete idea.

During his slow and cumbersome trek up Winnie's mound, Beckett had Willie halt for a rest in profile, head bowed downward, creating another frozen tableau. Finally, the sequence ends with

Willie "reaching up towards" Winnie, with "fingers in crevice to prevent slither back" {Happy

39), framing the final moment with an ambiguous image of Winnie, Willie, and all their black and white paradoxes; echoed in the text with Willie's barely audible utterance "Win" {CDW

167), suggesting either a call of compassion or a cry of victory. 155 As evident in the above example, Beckett uses the text as a medium to layer additional

"colour tones" to the play. In Beckett's Royal Court notebook, he created a section entitled

"Winnie's voices" ascribing particular tones to select passages {Happy 31).128 Beckett stresses the tone of the recitations over the content of the words themselves, generating a similar effect to the use of light and dark in painting. Beckett distinguishes select phrases in his notebook with

"+" and "-" symbols, such as Winnie's first words of the play "Another (-) heavenly day (+)"

{Happy 37), requiring vocal changes in tone to create different shades, thereby varying the emotional tenor of the passage. By using inflections to generate various sound vibrations,

Beckett approaches language as a means to tap into the emotional sensations that it causes, producing the same effect that light, shade, and colour have in painting. In fact, Happy Days is one of the few Beckett plays that allows for some variation of vocal tone. As his dramas continue to evolve, Beckett opts for monotone over melody to further reduce language to its constituent element of rhythm.129

The aesthetic underlying Beckett's use of words to generate colour sensations approaches Wassily Kandinsky's synaestheasic concept that colour can be heard as well as seen.

Though part of the artistic generation preceding surrealism, many scholars consider Kandinsky's abstract expressionism served as a foundation for the surrealist ideology that art objects should be generated directly from the imagination.1 ° In his On the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky argues that artists can apply colour in a painting as an autonomous and separate element apart from a visual description of an object or form.131 While Beckett admired the Russian painter and art theoretician, considering him in his review "MacGreevy on Yeats" as one of the "great of our time," along with Paul Klee, Bram van Velde, Georges Rouault, Georges Braque, Jack Yeats, and Karl Ballmer {Disjecta 97), he did differentiate his outlook from Kandinsky's on the issue of formalism, as he expressed in an interview with John Gruen: "I think perhaps I have freed myself from certain formal concepts. Perhaps like the composer Schoenberg or the painter Kandinsky, I 156 have turned toward an abstract language. Unlike them, however, I have tried not to concretize the abstraction - not give it yet another formal context" (210).I32 However, Kandinsky's support for the notion that artists can stimulate various sense faculties as well as the intellect through one medium inspired Beckett's consideration of artistic form as pliable, evidenced in his explicit reference to synaesthesia in his 1959 radio play Embers: "Listen to the light [...]" (CDW253).

Beckett used language in the theatre in the same way that Kandinsky employed colour in a painting, which was to facilitate the creation of a subjective experience wherein the expressive elements of the piece independently interact with the recipient's sensibilities, highlighting the relationship between the human form and the phenomenal-corporeal awareness of the human mind. The underlying theory supporting Kandinsky's aesthetics is that in experiencing a work of art, the recipient first encounters the physical effect of the expressive elements in the art engaging with the senses, which then produces an inner resonance in his or her soul. This inner resonance serves as the principle of art because it connects the human soul with the artistic form.

Each artistic form possesses inner content that affects the attentive recipient. Though the artist exposes a work of art to the world, the work itself maintains an autonomous existence as an independent subject as it stimulates the recipient's soul. Beckett's emphasis in his Royal Court production of Happy Days on ensuring that Winnie produce other voices marks his alliance with

Kandinsky in that he places more emphasis on the tone and colour generated by the words themselves as opposed to their explicit meaning. Since tone is taken as synonymous with colour for many applications including painting, Beckett uses the tones produced by language in Happy

Days to create shades of colour on the stage designed to reverberate in members of the audience with high and low keys that correspond with light and dark values as opposed to engaging their intellects with rational thought, thereby reducing the text to "shades" of a dialogue.

The juxtaposition of Winnie and Willie as opposites, with light and dark contrasts, shares select surrealist elements with the film Un chien andalou, which Knowlson cites as a likely 157 visual source for Happy Days. The final scene of the film features the image of a woman and

man buried up to their waists in sand that strikingly resembles Beckett's couple; especially

considering that the female protagonist in the film looks upward while the male gazes

downward, defusing any possibility for a happy ending, which echoes Winnie's upward

1 ^^

aspirations over Willie's downward outlook. These juxtapositions of contrasts produce

ambiguity, thereby neutralizing the scene of any preconceived notions. For instance, Ruby Cohn

notices that Beckett describes Winnie and Willie as a pair of opposites (female/male, refined/coarse, loquacious/taciturn) like a bird and a turtle (Canon 265). Beckett peppers

Winnie's "birdlike" dialogue with abundant amount of the adverb "up"—"bobs up," "bubbles up," "drift up," "floats up," "putting up," "holding up," "stuck up," "well up," "bring up," "ran up," and "sucked up" (Cohn, Canon 265). Willie turtle-like demeanour arises from his frequent

excursions in and out of his hole to accommodate Winnie—returning her parasol, lending her his pornographic cards, answering her grammatical inquiries, and responding to several of her

questions (at least in Act I) (Cohn, Canon 265). Un chien andalou also examines the dichotomy

in male/female relationships by presenting a tale of frustrated male desire in which a determined

"hero" attempts to seduce a reluctant "heroine," ending in the couple's unexpected burial in an unfamiliar landscape (Drummond xvii-xviii). As artists of the avant-garde, 34 Beckett shares with

Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali the aesthetic desire to transform collective understanding into

individualized awareness, thereby shifting art away from traditions and systems toward the

experience of the event itself by liberating it from pre-conceptual attitudes. In fact, Beckett

explicitly stated to George Reavy in a letter (22 September 1961) that one should avoid critically

examining the depth of Happy Days: "I'm afraid for me it is no more than another dramatic

object. I am aware of the hidden impetuses that are behind its making but their elucidation would prevent the making" (Ackerley 244). Again, Beckett's comment suggests an artistic outlook that reflects Dali's desire to materialize in the objective world the inner emotional sensibilities of the 158 dreamer inside each of us; to render human irrationality, which the surrealists considered more

important than rational thought, in concrete form (Zinder 43).

Un chien andalou artistically explores the blurring and destruction of human form.

Beginning with the slicing of the woman's eye that then remains intact (forcing her to see with

different eyes), following with a series of scenes featuring multiple juxtapositions and

contradictions of logic, and ending with the unexpected burial of the protagonists to their waists

in sand, Un chien andalou distorts traditional distinctions between interior and exterior space by

emphasizing the visionary power of eyesight and showing the necessity of eradicating the

conventional gaze with which one looks at cinema (Drummond xviii-xxi). The film employs

dream logic, described in terms of Freudian free association, to shock the viewer into an

emotional state. While specifically not the product of surrealistic techniques, Beckett's Happy

Days reveals the playwright's debt to surrealism for its similar focus on individual perception.

Winnie desires to shut out external judgment by using memories, quotations, anecdotes, and

activities to control the audience's gaze over her, yet her attempt to gain this authority fails since

unwanted memories often consume her. Aware of Winnie's struggle, the audience experiences

its role as perceivers by recognizing and sympathizing with the character, only to realize that its

objectifying gaze causes Winnie's torment. Possessing this awareness, the spectators become

victims of their own perceptions as they become implicated into performing the act of the

objectifying gaze.

Although Beckett signed a quasi-surrealist manifesto entitled "Poetry is Vertical" in 1932

as well as supplied Andre Breton and Paul Eluard with translations for a special surrealist issue

of This Quarter (5.1) also in 1932, he cannot be considered a surrealist writer, not only due to his

meticulous artistry when writing or directing, discarding any form of automatism, but also

because, like Salvador Dali, he could not support the surrealist endorsement of communism

(Ackerley 548-49). Also, as Ackerley and Gontarski point out, Beckett was aware of the wide 159 discrepancy between the surrealist rejection of formal constraints, and James Joyce's contrary position that he can justify every syllable in his works (549). For Beckett, the artistic quest remained finding a balance between the two, discovering a form that accommodates the chaos.

From the outset of his creative work, Beckett displays his aversion toward traditional formal literary constraints; yet, he remains steadfast in his search for form, explaining to Lawrence

Harvey that: "Being has a form. Someone will find it someday. Perhaps I won't but someone will. It is a form that has been abandoned, left behind, a proxy in its place" (249). While the influence of surrealism is pervasive in Beckett's works, he never wholly embraced any organized aesthetic or ideology in his search for form. What Beckett gained from surrealism was the idea of relinquishing traditional structures and logic for art in lieu of shaping material to elicit an internal reaction in the recipient. In Happy Days, Beckett uses the surrealist technique of juxtaposing contradictory images to further deconstruct the traditional perception of theatre as a medium for the sequential reenactment of a story, complete with embedded moral, to one where the act of perception dominates the reception of the performance.

§6: Growing Pains

Beckett's "middle plays" reveal the playwright's continual reduction of the theatrical enterprise to a single image. Progressing from his initial exploration of the human within the landscape in earlier plays such as Waiting for Godot and Endgame, Beckett's theatre increasingly moves inward into the inner landscape of the mind. Inspired by his love for painting, Beckett begins to eliminate conventional forms of theatrical dialogue in his middle plays in order to refine the stage portraits to single sets of consciousnesses. Krapp 's Last Tape begins the process by its elimination of mimetic elements (especially as Beckett gained insights from directing the play) inspired by the subtle play of light and dark in seventeenth-century Dutch portraits. With

Happy Days, Beckett extends further his desire to defamiliarize the stage environment by 160 incorporating surrealist elements to turn spectator's gaze inward. In the maturation of Beckett's plays, one notices the deliberate elimination of traditional, realistic forms of representation for more abstract depictions to engage the spectator viscerally with the presentation. By imbuing his plays with layers of ambiguity and contradictory logic, the spectator can only project his or her reaction to the experience; epitomizing the aesthetic goal of Rene Magritte's quintessential surrealist painting The Betrayal of Images (1928-1929), which asserts that an image of a pipe is not a pipe but rather Magritte's interpretation of one, promoting a subjectivist response to art (see fig- 34).

Beckett's concentration on visualizing the inner landscape of the mind in the theatre achieves what Les Essif calls "metadramatic subjectivity, a subjectivity created out of spatial construction and spatial consciousness: a visual image of the depth and intensity of the individual consciousness, an image accompanied by a verbal text that cues the spectator to the visual construction provided by the stage directions" (7). Beckett's dramatic objective strives to localize the theatrical experience to the sensations produced by the performance, thereby emphasizing one's phenomenological response to the piece. As Essif explains, the combination of a phenomenological analysis on top of a semiotic reading in the theatre produces "an active spectator who corporealizes the text, realizing that the image is a real body with its own subjective existence and that even the words and ideas have the potential to stem from (and to point toward) the extralinguistic body-mind, from the extra-conceptual, non-propositional dimension of mind" (11). Beckett's use of chiaroscuro helps create an active spectator by using shades to add layers of subtlety and ambiguity to his portraits to draw one into the depiction via one's personal associations to what is seen. In the darkness, one only has one's own thoughts and identifications. Having developed balanced portraitures that diminish external landscapes as a way of delving into the interior, Beckett's middle plays concentrate on painting aspects of the 161 psyche. From this stage onward, Beckett's visual obsession with the stage reaches its climax in his later plays by further reducing the visual portrait to partial aspects of the stage character. 162 CHAPTER FOUR: IMAGES OF THE VOID

"I only wish they would stop making me say more than I want to say."

- Samuel Beckett (Knowlson, Remembering 302)

§1: De-theatricalizing Theatre

With each new play that Samuel Beckett wrote, he increasingly refined his stage images by abandoning excessive stage scenery and minimizing choreography to a few simple, precise, repetitive movements. As his plays evolve, his theatrical purpose strays further from the heightened theatricality of conventional drama for one that presents an immediate, visceral painting before the spectator's eyes.135 By the time Beckett composes Play in 1963, his plays have transformed into performance pieces where voices appear to emerge from the dark to enhance a static image of a fragmented human figure. Considering the materials of the theatre his paint and the stage his canvas, Beckett also avoided using language to express meaning in his later plays, focusing instead on harnessing its sonic capabilities to support the visual image.

Evidenced by his exacting stage directions ensuring accurate reproductions of the stage image,

Beckett's painterly approach to the theatre demands a "new kind of critical vocabulary," as

Enoch Brater says, one that can articulate each of the brushstrokes that comprise his powerful stage images (Beyond 3). At present, the best description one can offer of Beckett's later plays is that they present monotone monologues on a static stage, framed around nothing more than stillness and silence.

Tracing the visual art influence over Beckett's theatrical evolution, Knowlson notices that his use of fragmentation and distortion to present themes of alienation and isolation in his later plays finds their origins in his knowledge of expressionism, in addition to his interest in film.

Coincidentally, at the beginning of the twentieth-century, expressionism rose as an artistic movement at the same time film was developing from solely a documentary device into a full art form.136 The connection between these artistic developments and Beckett's theatre is that they all 163 shared a rejection of mimesis as the fundamental goal of an artwork. While Beckett continued to draw inspiration from the Old Masters in his later plays, he transformed and modernized these images using techniques of distortion, fragmentation, isolation, and alienation inspired from expressionism and film (montage) theory to show the human condition alienated from the self, other, and world, eliminating any notion of redemption for a life of suffering (Knowlson, Images

87, 187).137 When discussing a painting, he emphasized specific details such as the composition of a hand or foot, the use of colour, the state of preservation of a canvas, or the quality of restoration on a work (Knowlson, Images 58). Beckett's dramatic aim, as Knowlson says, was to achieve "visual abstinence" in the theatre, which he accomplished using only a single or double static, concentrated, and spectral image, illuminated in the dark to expose the empty vastness of the void {Images 44). With these later plays that seem to cling to the periphery of materiality,

Beckett challenges the spectator to respond individually to a staged encounter where all communicative vehicles coalesce in the visual image. Since Beckett obsessed about maintaining a strict "economy" of expression in all his creative work as means of achieving "maximum grace" in his representations, his later plays stand as theatrical realizations of the possibility of finding beauty and inspiring the imagination from a single, concentrated focus, which explores the interior consciousness of the mind rather than from elaborate spectacles designed to dazzle the senses {Images 101).

As Beckett acquired more knowledge of the practical aspects for staging a play, he increasingly abandoned traditional theatrical conventions by abolishing plot and character, and limiting the stage to a concentrated visual focus of peculiar images composed out of fragmented body parts. As Gontarski describes them, the images of Beckett's later plays increasingly become more dehumanized, reified, and metonymic, striving for transparency over solidity as a way of undoing themselves (introd. Shorter xix). Beckett's strict attention to the visual expression in his plays anticipates the post-modern "theatre of images," in that the image 164 becomes the expression and notion of the play as opposed to the text or action (Pavis, Dictionary

179).139 The term "theatre of images" perhaps should be modified in Beckett's case to "theatre of

the image" for his late plays since he uses the communicative materials of the stage to generate a

single "mise-en-image" of a mental landscape or picture (Pavis, Dictionary 179-180). That

Beckett's later plays materialize into a "theatre of the image" again raises the issue of his lifelong

struggle with language. Paradoxically torn between a compulsion to write along with his

longstanding mistrust of the communicability of words, Beckett resolved by the time of his later plays to utilize language solely as a means to sensitize the recipient to the immediate, exposing

only that which can be seen. While the strong visual dimension of the theatre provided Beckett

some creative repose to explore the ineffable dimensions of existence through images, the genre's entrenched history as a medium for storytelling made his "theatre of the image," stripped

of theatricality, seem strikingly new and bizarre at the time of its introduction, demanding a new lexicon for its understanding.

When Beckett composed his stage portraits of Krapp and Winnie, he discovered how painterly techniques could engender strong, static stage images that allow the spectator to

contemplate the visual image of a human figure, or part of a human figure, which eventually

leads him or her into considerations of the interior consciousness of the representation. Using

chiaroscuro on the stage as a painter would with a canvas, Beckett realized that various

gradations of light could produce ambiguities that stimulate the recipient into contemplating the dialectic between the verbal language of the play and its visual language. However, while

Krapp's Last Tape and Happy Days incorporate techniques that provide the spectator with

insights into the characters' interior consciousnesses, such as replacing dialogue with monologues of the mind and using language as a sonic device, Beckett's middle plays still retain

aspects of traditional storytelling, which he renounces altogether in his later plays. 165 Beckett's increasing minimalism in his stage plays relies on his continual borrowing of techniques and approaches from the visual arts and film as a way of neutralizing the symbolic effect of language. Even thought Beckett displays his sensitivity and concern for the rhythms and cadences of language from his earliest writings, the early to middle plays possess multiple levels of literary referentiality, which he excises from the later plays.140 Beckett's change in outlook regarding dramatic language occurred after writing Happy Days when he composed the majority of his plays for radio, which challenged him to explore the possibilities of language for a medium totally reliant on sound as its sole means of communication.141 Writing for radio constrained Beckett to a strict economy of highly descriptive language, which he transferred to his later stage plays as a means of eliciting an emotional rather than intellectual response to the image.

Beckett's work for radio, beginning in 1956, facilitated his development of language in the theatre by providing him the opportunity to experiment with sound.142 As a genre, radio demands an economy of language and action; with few words, all must be implied to provide the listener with an opportunity to imagine an image, or a sequence of ideas or emotions, challenging the playwright to stretch the dramatic potential of language to compensate for the medium's lack of visual dimension.143 In absence of an image on the radio, Beckett learned how to create characters and settings using only voices, sounds, and music. For instance, during the production of his first radio play All That Fall in 1957, Beckett initially considered using canned "realistic" recordings of animal sounds but eventually was convinced by the more experienced producer

Donald McWhinnie to employ stylized sounds made by live actors so that the rhythms and cadences could be more easily controlled and shaped.144 Hence, Beckett's radio characters avoid sophisticated allusions to meaning, describing only what they see rather than opining about the situation they think should be in place. Beckett organizes language in his radio plays according to strict musical rhythms, cadences, and vibrations by controlling the tempo, rhythm, pitch, and 166 timbre of every sound, which he counters with pronounced pauses and silences to grant the listener an opportunity to visualize the scenario and identify patterns of the mind that he or she translates into meaning. Since radio easily blurs the distinction between internal and external reality, Beckett discovered through his experiments with sound how to place, as Everett Frost says, "the perceiver in the act of perceiving the world, and its being is the language he or she struggles in" (320).

Aside from his first works for radio, All That Fall and Embers, composed in 1956 and

1959 respectively, Beckett wrote the majority of his radio plays in 1961, including Rough for

Radio I and //, Words and Music, and Cascando, in between the stage plays Happy Days and

Play} Since the growth of radio coincided with Beckett's development as playwright, a mutual exchange took place where the genre was defining its own dramatic potential at the same time as

Beckett was exploring the communicative potentialities of his theatre. Beckett's work in radio, where he learned how to transmit acoustically a sensation or vibration of an interior consciousness, effected his return to the stage by providing him with a new approaches to language that support his stage images, which by the later plays become psychic vistas or

"inscapes" of the inner workings of the mind rather than expansive scenic panoramas (States,

"Playing" 456). As an aesthetic aim in all his creative work, Beckett presents some aspect of human consciousness, often expressed in the form of recollecting the past as an estranged third person, which he conveys in his later plays through succinct and dominant images that bombard the spectator with striking spectacles that stimulate self-reflective awareness.147 Beckett's use of the communicative vehicles of the stage reveals an aesthetic outlook seeking to transcend conventional forms of thinking about and experiencing art. Beckett's later plays combine "a theatre of concrete visual images with a theatre of poetic images," as Gontarski says, becoming more "formalist and patterned as [they] became more visual" by reducing activity to stasis, and by favouring lyric expression over the dramatic (introd. Shorter xv-xvi). 167 §2: Expressions of Expressionism

Beckett's concentrated experiences with modern expressionist art came about during his visits to the Sinclairs in Kassel, Germany in the late 1920s, he having had only a brief exposure to select paintings that appeared in the smaller, more progressive art galleries in Paris. His uncle,

William "Boss" Sinclair, was a part-time art dealer whose associates were painters, art collectors, and art experts (Knowlson, Images 59). From these visits, Beckett could still remember at the end of his life seeing in his uncle's collection Lyonel Feininger's painting The Bathers, Umberto

Boccioni's The Laugh, Heinrich Campendonk's The Lonely One, and Ewald Diilberg'sLas^

Supper (which receives explicit mention in his first novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women)

(Knowlson, Images 59). Also, Beckett's art pilgrimage through the major cities of Germany in

1936-1937 gave him the opportunity to experience many modern expressionist works of art that at the time were being rapidly labeled "decadent" by the Nazi government for their eventual banishment from public viewing (see Knowlson, Damned oh. 10).I48'149 In Dresden, he saw the collection of Willi Grohmann, former director of the Zwinger gallery (dismissed from his post due to his being Jewish)150, featuring paintings by Klee, Kandinsky, Picasso, Miro, and

Schlemmer (Knowlson, Damned 233). At the Hamburg Kunsthalle, Beckett saw the modern

German works of Heckel, Kirchner, Schmidt-Rottluff, Modersohn-Becker, andNolde.

Commenting on Nolde's Christ and the Children (1910) in his notebook, Beckett emphasizes the painting's ability to mesmerize him by the way it seems to expand time; the image captures his attention and replays itself in his imagination, providing a sense of "play" with the stationary object (see fig. 35):

Nolde's Christus und die Kinder, clot of yellow infants, long green back of Christ (David?) leading to black and beards of Apostles. Lovely eyes of child held in His arms. Feel at once on terms with the picture, and that I want to spend a long time before it, and play it over and over again like the record of a quartet (Knowlson, Damned 220). Beckett also met a number of contemporary painters in Hamburg, including Karl Kluth and

Eduard Bargheer, of whose work he considered competent yet lacking emotional intensity.

Instead, he preferred "the stillness of the unsaid" expressing the "metaphysical concrete" in the paintings of Willem Grimm and Karl Ballmer {Damned 224).151 Additionally, Beckett became acquainted with a private collector in Hamburg named Frau Fera, who introduced him to many notable artists and academics, including the distinguished critic, gallery director, and collector

Max Sauerlandt, who showed Beckett his collection of paintings and watercolours by Schmidt-

Rottluff, Kirchner, Nolde, and Ballmer. In Halle, he saw a number of modern paintings still on display at the Moritzburg gallery before Nazi removal, and in Erfurt he viewed pictures by

Kirchner, Kandinsky, Feininger, Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff, Nolde, and Dix that pleased him.152

Many of these artists belonged to one of two artist groups, Die Briicke and Der Blaue Reiter, which were fundamental to the rise of expressionism in Germany.153 What Beckett adopted from these artists was their focus on expressive, frozen gestures, often concentrating only on a part of the body, which materialized in his later plays in the form of motionless gestures combined with slow, precise, repetitive movements (if used at all).154

The rise of expressionism contributed to shifting the entire artistic outlook of the twentieth-century from realism and naturalism (with their commitment to surface reality and exploration of social concerns), and symbolism (with its devotion to beauty and projection of ethereal heavens) to one of subjectivism (see Carlson 346). Favouring abstraction, distortion, and lyric excess over mimesis and formal beauty, the expressionists aimed to arouse the recipient's emotions by communicating their emotional state in a work of art. While specifically not labeled

"expressionism" at the movement's outset, the term accurately distinguishes its emphasis on the artist's emotive response to that which is seen, from the previous movement impressionism, which sought to depict pure visual impressions of external stimuli.155 Expressionist artists intended to reveal things below surface reality by relating the visible and tangible to the spiritual 169 and intangible, and by focusing on the worlds of the imagination, dream, and spirit. Reacting against the materialistic outlook of the preceding generation, the expressionists shifted their focus away from duplicating one's surroundings to the search for their own selves. Painters criticized the symbolist loyalty to form and content for obscuring purely pictorial values with mysterious uses of colour. They also deplored the lack of structure, permanence, and autonomy in naturalist and impressionist paining, which they countered with works of pure pictorial and poetic inspiration. Considered a form of "new humanism" which sought to convey one's spiritual life, expressionist artists employed techniques of distortion, exaggeration, and primitivism via the dynamic application of formal elements as a way of eliminating notions of external reality to reveal the inner workings of the mind.

Expressionist painters defined the picture as a "spiritual place" of illusionist effects that transmute and subordinate natural forms to the spiritual order of the picture (see Haftmann TO­

TS). By means of pure and plain colours to achieve "maximum expression," the expressionists express rather than duplicate the effects of light. Relegating perspective and depth to the surface, the main elements of the expressionist picture are the surface itself, outline, and pure colour (also used to express chiaroscuro and relief) to abandon illusionism. The predominant aesthetic idea of

"colour harmony" gave rise to the dialectical interplay that replaces illusionist space for one constructed by colour to achieve an active harmony that deforms the object. The expression results from the colour arrangements that the viewer perceives as a harmonious whole before becoming aware of the motif, making the abstract elements that constitute the coloured surface the primary means of expression. In a similar way, Beckett's late plays present a single image that becomes clarified as the language of the play helps establish the emotional resonance for the piece by offering sound and silence patterns endowed with emotive sensations; consider, for instance, the verbal outpour of pain from the suspended Mouth in Not I, or the tortured fragments 170 of a sordid love triangle story that the urn-confined characters of Play must repeat at the whim of the interrogating light.

For the expressionists, as Edith Hoffmann says, the primary artistic objective was to translate into art one's emotions from experience by recreating objects as the artist felt them (see

6-8). Since the artist's imagination served greater importance than the subject itself, the expressionists initiated a new form of highly subjective art that granted creators nearly limitless creative freedom. Expressionist painters abandoned rules designed to generate realism in a work, allowing for the distortion of the proportions of figures and objects, as well as for the recombination of fragmented details (paralleling the concept of montage in film). Certainly,

Beckett's planting of figures in urns, suspending a mouth eight feet or a face ten feet off the ground, and choreographing of elliptical foot patterns in his later plays owes some debt to the radical distortions of figure introduced by the expressionists. Using techniques of distortion and fragmentation, the expressionists aimed to show that internal truth was more valuable than visual harmony by replacing beauty with intensity and by incorporating grotesque and repulsive elements to induce shock. Liberated from the demand to reproduce the impressions in nature received by the eye, artists could now employ colour as a dynamic and powerful source that can independently generate an arresting visual experience. While one can trace the origins of symbolic associations of colour to romanticism (especially in Goethe's writings), the expressionists were equally influenced by the rise of psychology (particularly Freud and Jung's ideas regarding the "inner eye") to reproduce the deep recesses of the mind, evidenced by the considerable number of self-portraits produced during the period.15 The expressionists viewed themselves lone warriors confronting life's challenges, and so depicted their cynical encounters as the source of their expressions. Even when painting portraits of others, they included features that revealed the figure's character, occupation, or attitude to life, which were often portrayed with a pessimistic tone. Owing to this new attitude moving away from realism, the titles of 171 expressionist paintings were reduced to general descriptive words, such as "exiles" or "friends," as opposed to highly specific ones describing identifiable details, for example "a studio in the

Batignolles District" (see Hoffmann 6-8). Similarly, the titles of Beckett's later plays, such as

Play, Not I, Footfalls, That Time, Come and Go, Breath, become more generalized owing to the influence of expressionism on his "growing distrust of rational attempts to impose order upon the straws and particulars of existence" (Ackerley 27).

In the absence of any formal organization of the movement, the expressionists banded together due to their mutual desire to challenge convention, resulting in a split in the academic and artistic communities between progressives, who embraced these new explorations of inner reality, and conservatives, who desired to maintain the status quo by denouncing these works as art. The antecedent ideas that fueled the expressionist exploration of inner life originate in

Friedrich Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, where he articulates his interpretation of the ancient dualism between the Apollonian world of mind, order, regularity, and elegance, representing the rationally conceived ideal, and the Dionysian world of intoxication, portraying the artist's subconscious as the source of artistic inspiration. Following Nietzsche, the expressionists glorified the individual, and idealized the creative personality through bold colours and distorted forms that appear improvised, emphasizing the Dionysian elements in their art. At this point, an important distinction between Beckett and the expressionists needs addressing. While the expressionists embraced the Dionysian element of intoxicated expression, providing their work with a highly improvised quality, Beckett pursued the Apollonian qualities of order and regularity, generating an elegant and highly polished quality to his work. In fact, Beckett makes a slight reference to Nietzsche in his first novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women when he describes the "Apollo" feature of Belacqua's mind.157 Differences aside, one finds that the overriding link between Beckett, Nietzsche, and the expressionists was their mutual quest for meaning in a world they considered to be lacking any God or notions of redemption. Possessing 172 the foresight to predict the eventual destruction of human values, the expressionists assumed a harsh and pessimistic view of society in their art, which reverberated with Beckett. Having lived through both World Wars, Beckett directly experienced the annihilation of all human certainties that, for him, created a senseless world disconnected from human life, joining him in spirit with the expressionists and Nietzsche in the credo that "god is dead."158

Although discussions regarding expressionism as a movement tend to emphasize painters as the first to embrace their new aesthetic, their associations with other artists allowed the core ideas of the movement to spread to other artistic fields. As Hoffman reports, many painters were friends with writers, leading to an exchange of artistic ideas. For instance, the expressionists impressed Dostoevsky; and August Strindberg (writer, playwright, and painter) was not only a friend of Edvard Munch, but he also inspired Oscar Kokoschka to explore the relationship between men and women (Hoffmann 9). Moreover, many of the expressionists considered their paintings "literary" in their ability to communicate without the written word. Working towards the liberation of art from formal principles, expressionist artists maintained close associations with one another. In the theatre, Strindberg, along with Frank Wedekind and Carl Sternheim, helped introduce expressionism to the stage, forever changing the genre (Carlson 346).

August Strindberg, who began his literary career as a naturalist, decided by 1902 to abandon realism for symbolism and later expressionism as a means of representing the unconscious. In the preface to A Dream Play, Strindberg explicitly states that his play strives "to reproduce the disconnected by apparently logical form of a dream":

Anything can happen; everything is possible and probable. Time and space do not exist; on a slight groundwork of reality, imagination spins and weaves new patterns made up of memories, experiences, unfettered fancies, absurdities and improvisations. The characters are split, double, and multiply; they evaporate, crystallise, scatter and converge. But a single consciousness holds sway over them all - that of the dreamer (193). 173 Strindberg designed ,4 Dream Play according to the associative links of dreams, deserting all cause and effect patterns of the well-made play. Staging dreams appealed to Strindberg because it allowed him to show how realistic concerns often do not have a definitive explanation or cause and are subject to randomness. Considering that Beckett knew Strindberg's plays well, it comes as no surprise that one finds dramatic parallels between their work; perhaps most strikingly is their similar motif of waiting for someone to arrive or something to happen in the hope of changing events (Knowlson, Damned 343). In fact, Beckett expressed to Knowlson that "all theatre is waiting," outlining a dramatic aesthetic based on the tension between boredom and its avoidance as the central motivation of the dramatic situation (Damned 343).

One can characterize the early stages of expressionist drama as a dramatization of the subconscious, presenting the mise-en-scene as a scripted dream by eliminating character motivation and rational plot development. This transition from representations of explicit to implicit memory generates the distinction between signs or metaphors and symbols. Beckett employs symbols as ingresses for the performers and spectators to enter into the multi-layered and highly charged environment of interior dramatic space. Since the visual component of

Beckett's stage depends on subjective interpretation, it demands of the spectator to abandon all expectations of traditional theatrical conventions in exchange for an excursion between reality and the consciousness via a dominating stage image.

Expressionist plays usually stage the spiritual awakening and suffering of their protagonists using the least amount of descriptive and narrative elements as possible. As J. L.

Styan outlines, there are at least six distinct features associated with the expressionist play, all of which are applicable to Beckett's later dramas (see 4-5). First, the atmosphere tends to be filled with dreamlike and nightmarish moods created by shadowy, unrealistic lighting, producing visual distortions. Also contributing to the creation of atmosphere is the use of carefully placed pauses and silence in contrast to speech which, when sustained for an unusual length of time, allow the spectator to consider the inner motivation that releases the words. Second, the set designs typically employ stark images with unusual shapes and sensational colours based on the theme of the play as opposed to exact reproductions of naturalistic details. Third, the plots and structures usually are disjointed, segmented into independent episodes, incidents, and tableaux that replace the rising conflict of the well-made play. Fourth, the characters possess no individuality; they are identified with generic names such as "Man," "Father," "Workman," or

"Engineer." Characters represent social groups as opposed to particular individuals, often portraying grotesque and unreal figures. Fifth, the dialogue replaces conversation with poetic, febrile, rhapsodic expressions in the form of long lyrical monologues and staccato utterances of one or two words, which directly aim at evoking sympathy in the spectator. Sixth, the acting style abandons realism for overacting; employing pronounced mechanized movements similar to those of a marionette, adding a sense of the carnivalesque to the presented image. Combined, these characteristics produce a self-conscious theatre that distances and elevates the spectator into a unique position of authority (Styan 193). Sharing the perception of the world as corrupt with materialism, expressionist dramatists focused their plays on spiritual themes in the hope of regenerating our morally bankrupt humanity with representations that probe deeper issues beyond materiality by exploring the spiritual via the subconscious. Accordingly, expressionist dramas, like those of Beckett, use language to verbalize emotions rather than dramatise conflicts, so that while characters may appear to be speaking to each other, no actual communication takes place between the characters.

Beckett's relationship with the expressionists was not entirely monogamous; he borrowed at will to suit his needs, resulting in some fundamental differences (see Knowlson, Images 89).

For one, as mentioned, expressionist dramas employ spectacular effects as their means to explore the unconscious, while Beckett utilizes minimalist staging techniques to arrive at the subconscious through a concentrated look at a static stage image. Additionally, Beckett did not 175 share the movement's initial idealism and propensity toward grandiloquence. In particular, while

Beckett admired Edvard Munch's work, leading many to see a striking resemblance between the

painter's The Scream (1883) and the playwright's Not I, he felt that Munch's work displays an

"overstatement" and "sentimentality" that conflicted with his appreciation for minimalism (see

fig. 36) (Knowlson, Images 89).' However, he did maintain a modern perspective on

contemporary human issues, sharing with the expressionists their earnestness and motivation to

investigate the tragic dimensions of suffering. Inasmuch as Beckett limits excess in his

representations, he infuses a type of grotesque horror into his works that thematically aligns him with many of the expressionists, leading to similar representational features including: the

isolation of whole figures or parts of figures; the alienation of one human from another; the

fragmentation of the human body, separating the head from the rest of the body; the inclusion of

sculptural, spectral qualities; and the depiction of seated or slow moving figures (see Knowlson,

Images 91).

§3: The Ubermarionette

Owing to their similar worldviews, Beckett and the expressionists produced pessimistic works of art by emphasizing features on their figures that expose their inner truths and attitudes.

They aimed to portray the human condition in all its extreme states, from the wild passions of

love to the dark agony of sorrow, with the purpose of stripping individuality from their

characters so that only their emotions become the focus, transforming them into a "type" for universal access. While the notion of "type" has been a conceptual part of theatre in its relation

to character since its inception, it was not until Heinrich von Kleist's essay Uber das

Marionettentheater of 1810 that serious attention was given to the idea replacing the live actor with a marionette due to its ability to reproduce exactly the same movements with perfect grace

and harmony. Familiar with the essay, Beckett referenced it when developing Eva-Katharina 176 Schultz's gestures for the role of Winnie for his 1971 production of Happy Days, and he referred the actor Ronald Pickup to aspects of it discussing "the advent of self-consciousness and the loss of harmony in man and [...] the value of economy and grace of movement" during rehearsals for

Ghost Trio in 1976 (Knowlson, Frescoes 277).' ° According to Kleist, an actor's prime motivation should be to attain the economy of movement, symmetry, harmony, and grace of a mechanical marionette. Free from the pretensions aroused by self-awareness, the marionette moves with a sense of grace that remains unattainable to egotistic humans. His reasoning is that a properly balanced person will move in perfect balance, with such flow and elegance as to appear weightless, since the soul will be aligned with the body's centre of gravity; but the human capacity to reason and reflect interferes with one's flow of emotions, resulting in one's falling out of harmony with nature. Striving to achieve a similar level of "maximum grace" in his late plays, Beckett designed precise, repetitive movement patterns akin to those of a marionette to show the character has attained a state of spiritual and physical grace.1 u

In his study of modern applications of the marionette in the theatre, Les Essif notices a fundamental shift in practice from art as reality to reality as artificial; rather than reality, the imagination becomes the subject with the intention of foregrounding and challenging conventions of reality (183-184). Following the ideas of Maurice Maeterlinck and Edward

Gordon Craig that a human presence on stage (especially in realistic dramas) impedes recognition of the artifice and artificiality of the theatre, Essif argues that in the modern period,

"the prominence of artistic image and the concomitant skewing of the life of/in the body have transformed the phenomenology of the dramatic character and its double, the marionette" (184).

The "hypersubjective" marionettes of the modern theatre appear denaturalized, de-socialized, and dehumanized, displaying three characteristic qualities: relative immobility, a central and highlighted presence on stage, and a focus on the head as a metaphorical empty space (Essif

184). As Essif says, "[t]he marionette is not simply an object and it is certainly not human; but, 177 as an inanimate icon of life, it can function as a dramatic character, though a less-than-human one," which serves as the ideal representation for Maeterlinck and Craig, following their belief that the human psyche distorts the formal beauty of the aesthetic image (186-187). As opposed to incarnating the character, the marionette disincarnates, iconizes, plasticizes, and denaturalizes it, transforming the puppet into a paradoxical signifier of the human (Essif 187-188). Coinciding with the reduction of the stage in the twentieth-century into a bare, "'organless' envelope of space, without the 'flesh' of setting," in Essif s words (189), the marionette serves to transform the mind into the body, as Pedro Kadivar explains: "The immobile body is not inanimate, it receives its movement from the inside ... Immobility summons up emptiness. To sustain immobility is to refuse any voluntary manifestation of life ... It is to accept the void and to heed the barely audible yet powerful murmur of life" (qtd. in Essif 192). While Beckett specifically did not employ actual marionettes in his theatre, he desired that his actors strive to attain the same level of immobility in their characterizations to maintain the visual shape of his later plays by requiring them to repeat exactly specific mechanical movements. Beckett enhances the marionette-like quality of his characters by interjecting elements of mime into his plays, owing to his appreciation of the slapstick performances by silent film actors such as Keaton, Chaplin,

Laurel and Hardy, and the Marx brothers, as well as his reading of V. I. Pudovkin and Rudolph

Arnheim's theories on film editing (Knowlson, Images 122).163 Combining the conceptual of ideas of Kleist's ubermarionette with mime, Beckett creates a form of theatre tightly focused on select gestures or movements that strives to merge the concrete with the ambiguous.

§4: Montage and Film

As all of his biographers have noticed, in addition to his love of painting, Beckett held a longstanding interest in cinema and film theory that not only inspired him to write several television plays as well as one film, but also influenced his visual approach to theatre. One can 178 compare Beckett's use of gesture and movement to a narrow concentration on a concrete image of isolated or fragmented body parts to the function of close-up in film. For instance, Rnowlson cites a passage from Arnheim describing the effect of filming a still photograph that aptly describes the suspension of movement in Beckett's late theatre:

[A] still photograph inserted in the middle of a moving frame gives a very curious sensation; chiefly because the speed with which time is passing in the moving shots is carried over to the still picture, whose effect therefore is similar to that produced by holding one expression for an uncomfortably long time. And just as the time is carried over, so the rigidity is, as it were felt as movement, that is suspension of movement {Film 110).

Along with Arnheim and Pudovkin, Beckett also familiarized himself with the theories and practice of Sergei Eisenstein, whom he once contacted for a possible apprenticeship in pursuit of his interest in film. Also, as Mariko Tanaka points out, Eisenstein wrote an article entitled

"Cinematographic Principles and Japanese Culture," which Beckett likely read, since it appeared in the same issue of transition (1930) in which he contributed "For Future Reference" (324).

Further, J. M. B. Antoine-Dunne discovers a letter from Beckett to Mary Manning Howe in 1937 that discusses the aesthetic issue of representing interior and exterior reality without destroying form by comparing Eisenstein's capacity to evoke emotion through the interplay of light and dark and plastic shapes or masses in The Battleship Potemkin (1925) with his own artistic

"failures" (316). What fascinated Beckett from these theories was how to transmit the mind via the visual in search of the "wholeness-in-fragmentariness," as Jonathan Kalb describes (116).

Soviet montage theory, developed in the early 1920s, emphasizes the editing process as the framework of film that could be utilized to create metaphors and analogies by juxtaposing images. As Antoinne-Dunne explains, Eisenstein's concept of montage rises from his recognition of the tendency of the human mind to leap to conclusions when presented with sensory stimuli.

The purpose of montage is to stimulate this mental process, which Eisenstein associates with the process of reassembling memory fragments in the mind (closely paralleling Louis Marin's 179 explanation of the reading process in painting, which will be introduced in the upcoming discussion on Play). Eisenstein believed that through editing, a director could create film metaphors that stimulate the emotions of the audience by linking different shots. In editing a film, the director creatively and formatively segments time from objects that become recombined according to his or her conceptual or poetic imagination. For Eisenstein, montage simulates the mental process of the human propensity to jump to conclusions by relating the editing to the process of reassembling memory fragments in the mind. Since each shot in a film corresponds to a concept or feeling, it presents a single idea, while the next one in the sequence presents a second idea, which could be designed to create a conflict, collision, or synthesis with the first.

For example, in the famous Odessa steps sequence in the film The Battleship Potemkin,

Eisenstein rapidly juxtaposes shots of Cossack soldiers marching in a machine-like manner down a flight of steps shooting at a crowd of fleeing bystanders (see figs. 37, 38), with others of a baby carriage dangerously hurling out of control down the same steps alongside the running crowd

(see fig. 39). Although the scene is fictional, Eisenstein arranges these images in a montage sequence to criticize the Czar and the Imperialist Regime. In particular, the closing shot of the scene presents a close-up of a woman's face, on which hang broken eyeglasses, as blood runs down the side of her head, eliciting a feeling of horror at how the military could act so heinously toward civilians (see fig. 40).

Essentially, montage represents an imperceptible mosaic of single frames that demands of the viewer to observe the discrepancy between the shots because each frame represents a single

slice of reality that must be understood as representing an integrated whole. Resulting from this

collusion of ideas is a synthesis that generates a new idea based on the combination of the previous shots rather than a presentation of a series of ideas. As a tool, montage assists in giving

increased emphasis to the represented events by eliminating or emphasizing anything in the

space-time continuum of the film; but there exists the risk that the whole may fall to pieces if the 180 viewer cannot comprehend the director's design. However, when successfully employed, montage can be used to change events and create new realities by having people suddenly appear and disappear and by creating a sensation of accelerated motion. Arnheim uses these features to defend cinema's status as an artistic medium. In Film as Art, he explains that as a documentary device, film cannot accurately capture reality due to its lack of depth perception, the distortions caused by lighting, and interruptions in time and place from editing. Rather, through the artistic juxtaposition of shots, film serves as an ideal form of art that connects subjective and objective reality, especially in its early days when its lack of sound and colour heightened the medium's capacity to generate a dreamlike experience.

In addition to new realities resulting from the collusion of different shots in film montage, the use of a close-up shot also helps produce new representational levels by stimulating the viewer's imagination. Often used to interrupt distance shots by revealing details such as a character's emotions or some intricate activity, close-ups empower the director to split scenes and have parts represents wholes, or to create suspense by omitting significant features from the pictures, or even to generate symbolic meaning by intricately focusing on essential details

(Arnheim, Film 81-82). Describing the effectiveness of close-ups in silent films in an essay written in 1945, film theorist Bela Balasz emphasizes their ability to stimulate to the viewer emotionally rather than intellectually: "Good close-ups radiate a tender human attitude in the contemplation of hidden things, a delicate solicitude, a gentle handing over the intimacies of life - in-the-miniature, a warm sensibility. Good close-ups are lyrical; it is the heart, not the eye, that has perceived them" (305). One example demonstrating the effect of close-ups is from

Eisenstein's film Ivan the Terrible Part I (1944)—which J. Hoberman refers to as a "moving painting." During the Coronation scene, Eisenstein shoots the ceremony from behind to obscure the Czar's face, which he juxtaposes with close-up shots of various spectators to the event, who display great fear in their eyes, knowing what the implications of this ritual will entail. Their 181 sharp gazes bore into the viewer, transmitting the emotional resonance of the scene. According to

Arnheim, an abundance of close-ups in film, which is primarily what Beckett stages in later plays, generates a sense of uncertainty and dislocation in the recipient due to the image's disconnection from the larger environment {Film 74). While the close-up allows for extreme scrutiny of detail akin to examining an object under a microscope, such intense focus obscures one's peripheral vision, blinding him or her of the larger context. The close-up shot works on the principle of negating the macro for the micro, which is precisely what Beckett's later plays aspire to accomplish. By reducing language to sonic vibrations that enhance a visual image of a fragmented human form, Beckett communicates to the spectator a sense of the intense intricacies of the emptiness and silence that comprise the void.

§5: Reading Painting, Viewing Play

Initiated shortly after the radio plays Words and Music and Cascando in 1962, Beckett's next work for theatre, Play, represents a turning point in his development as an artist since it embodies the culmination of various aesthetic experiments from his earlier works into a distinctly Beckettian style, as Cohn explains:

[...] Play is very much a stage play, in which the eerie visual scene is counterpointed against the cliches of melodrama and the uncertainties of ontology. Play is a template for Beckett's stage plays to come - visually striking, verbally brief and strictly rhythmed, technologically demanding, situationally static, temporally floating, and humanly revealing. It is rigorous in enclosing each figure in her/his own consciousness, in spite of a quasi-continuous narrative elicited by the spotlight and absorbed by the audience {Canon 284).

Drawing from his recent experiences with radio, Beckett composes the text of Play, featuring a chorus for three voices fractured into short phrases and syllables with a repeat, to serve as a sonic assault that complements a static image. Owing to his interest in theories of the close-up in film,

Beckett also focuses the visual component of Play on the heads of two women and a man situated in urns. Additionally, the use of chiaroscuro in expressionism becomes a dominant motif 182 in Play since the protagonist is an inquisitorial light that initiates and stops the characters'

recitations; in particular, one can trace Emile Nolde's use of light and dark in his woodcut

Prophet (1912) as inspiring Beckett's use of spotlighting (see fig. 41) (Prinz 157). Inasmuch as

Cohn characterizes Play as "very much a stage play," the painterly elements that infuse its

composition attack theatricality itself, as Ackerley and Gontarski aptly express: "If WG

eliminated 'action' from the stage, 'Play' virtually eliminated motion. If WG eliminated

intelligible causality, 'Play' almost eliminated intelligibility" (see fig. 42) (444). Beginning with

Play, Beckett's late theatre reduces language to sound vibrations to accompany a static image,

allowing the spectator emotionally to absorb the aural and visual fragments for reassembly in the

imagination, similar to the way in which one reads a painting.

Again, one can trace the evolution Beckett's theatrical aim by examining the manuscript

development of his plays. To some extent, Play began as a realistic drama featuring the rival

lovers Skye and Conk, who compete for the love of a redhead named Nickie; however, even at

this initial stage, Beckett envisioned the characters encased in white boxes with a strong spotlight

on their faces. In each of the developmental phases of the text, Beckett increasingly reduced the

level of realistic detail until the characters became nameless, the grey urns replaced the white

boxes, and the spotlight developed into the protagonist. In its final form as a text, Play comprises

a drama of a meticulously rhythmic interchange of light and dark that provokes rapid-fire textual

utterances as it sweeps across the characters' faces, providing the groundwork for Beckett's

exploration of sound and silence, light and darkness, movement and stillness in his later plays

(Knowlson, Frescoes 112).

Upon a careful reading of Play, one comes to realize that the text provides details of the

banal story of a sordid love triangle between a man, his wife, and his mistress. Amongst the

fragments, one pieces together blase details of the relationship: the description of the morning

room amid the lawns, the identification of the butler Erskine, the depiction of the mistress doing 183 her nails and stitching, the revelation of the private detective pursing the adulterer, and the suggestion of release with an escape to the melodramatic world of "the Riviera or our darling

Grand Canary" (CD W310): Yet, the spectator must strain to comprehend these details in performance due to Beckett's insistence on maintaining "Rapid tempo throughout" (CDW307).

As Knowlson explains, if one is to understand the words of Play, he or she intensely must focus on deciphering the sounds, placing him or her in at a heightened level of concentration that the visual component exploits by remaining relatively static (Frescoes 114).

The words of Play defy literary interpretation, leading George Devine, who directed the play in 1964, to characterize their use in his directorial notes as a sonic assault: "words not as conveying thought or ideas but as dramatic ammunition - cf. light... words have no significance or meaning whatsoever - just 'things' that come out of their mouths - the best dramatic use - the constant shock treatment... Tonelessness - speaking to themselves - no attitude to an audience - pointless to have tone on constant repetition" (qtd. in Knowlson, Frescoes 114). As the only theatrical device, the interrogating spotlight forces the characters to relive in the present the pain of their previous decisions, downplaying the elements of parody and cliche in the text. In fact,

Beckett's direction that the characters' "response to light is immediate" (CDW307), revised from earlier versions calling for a one second delay between voices (aside from indications of longer delays), possesses important implications in the audience reception of the play, as

Gontarski explains: "If a delay exists between light's command and the response, then a certain amount of deliberation is possible among the subjects; the situation of the urn-encrusted characters is humanized. In Beckett's revision, the final vestiges of humanity (and humanism) are drained from an inquisitorial process that Beckett ironically calls Play" ("Revisiting").

One can trace the origins of Beckett's innovative use of an inquisitorial spotlight for the protagonist of Play to his interest in expressionism. As Ronald Hayman reveals, the expressionists harnessed Rembrandt's technique of using light to put a character "on the spot," 184 which eventually materialized in the theatre with visionaries like Adoph Appia and Gordon

Craig, who used the spotlight to distort and depersonalize figures (14). Pointing to Reinhard

Sorge's expressionist play Der Bettler {The Beggar, 1912), Hayman notices that the script calls for transferring light from one group of characters to another to mimic the shifting of the dreaming mind, echoing Strindberg's expressionist credo (14). He also finds in Richard

Weichert's production of Der Sohn in 1918 the use of the spotlight as a "persecutor, throwing the characters into vivid relief against the surrounding blackness of the minimal set [...]" (14). From the visual arts, Jessica Prinz considers Emile Nolde's stark black and white woodcut Prophet as an inspirational source for Beckett's use of light and dark (157). In particular, one sees a visual similarity between the coarsely gouged face of Nolde's Prophet and the dirt covered heads in

Beckett's Play. While Prophet features vast amounts of black, akin to the set ofPlay, Nolde emphasizes the white areas, primarily concentrated in the centre of the picture, which Beckett imitates by using light literally to highlight each character located "Front centre" amongst a vast amount of black {CD W 307). In Nolde's woodcut, these features generate a dramatic effect by making it seem as though the disembodied head floats into the picture frame in the same way that Beckett's talking heads appear to hover over the rims of their urns. The hollow eyes, furrowed brows, sunken cheeks, and somber expression of Nolde's figure express his deepest feelings akin to the manner that Beckett's figures, displaying earthen "Faces so lost to age and aspect as to seem almost part of urns" {CD W 307), convey an inescapable "cry of pain"

(Knowlson, Images 89).

The sum effect of Beckett's fragmentation of text, set, and figure in Play is that the reception experience resembles more the reading of a painting than the viewing of a play, an idea

I published at an early stage in this research project, which now appears here in its final form

(see "Playing" 237-244). Louis Marin describes the reading process of painting as the fragmentation of the image into its constituent details for reassembly and coherence in the 185 imagination. For Marin, the process involves two steps: first, the viewer apprehends the painting as a whole, immediately noticing all the dominant colours, lines, textures and figures noticeable; second, due to the intense impact on the eye, the viewer separates the details within the imagination, reading the painting in time (16). Combined, these steps provide a total impression to the viewer.

Beckett's design for Play resembles Marin's description of the reading process in spite of the piece's strictly determined progression from a to b with repeat. First, the choral passage that initiates Play features all three characters simultaneously speaking a summation of their physical and psychological conditions, bombarding the spectator with a barrage of sound in which the words become difficult to distinguish (CDW 319). In the same way that one encounters totality of painting upon first impression, in a performance of Play, the chorus, set, characters, and light emerge together, providing the spectator with the emotional tenor of the piece, but not its nuances. Following the chorus, Play unfurls three fragmented and intertwined monologues, one for every character, which summarizes each of their perceptions regarding their participation in the affair. Since the fracturing process often cuts off a character mid-sentence and, on occasion, mid-word, the spectator must attentively listen to reassemble mentally the passages for coherence. In fact, Beckett outlines in his Brown Notebook for Spiel (Play) that the actors must deliver the text in a "[b]roken, breathless - exhorted" manner, similar to the pattern of a lawnmower; a short burst of energy followed by pause (Shorter 188, 195 n. 43).'

According to Marin, one of the significant elements in reading a painting is the frame that situates the work within an identifiable boundary, thereby staging it as a spectacle (Sublime 14).

Also, the frame focuses the viewer's gaze on the details of the painting, providing for the

"passage from vision to contemplation, from the visibility of the picture to its readability"

(Sublime 15). As Stanton B. Garner Jr. notices, Beckett attempts to recreate the same focus of the viewer's gaze in Play by highlighting the two-dimensionality of the performance space via the 186 "generally frontal posture of figure and object, by frontal illumination, and by the arrangement of

visual objects, all of which stress lateral configuration over configuration in depth" ("Visual

Field" 363). Additionally, Beckett uses light to frame the piece by stipulating in the stage

directions that the single light source "must not be situated outside the ideal space (stage)

occupied by its victims" to frame only the three heads (CD W 318). Garner explains that

Beckett's use of faint light in absence of any visual backdrop "gives the darkness surrounding

and separating his visual objects a quality of 'depthless space' and gives the objects and figures

themselves the eerie effect of floating in an expanse outside measurement" ("Visual Field" 362).

As in painting, Beckett tightly frames the visual dimension of his plays to implicate the spectator

into the performance by locking together the gaze of the performers and spectators.

One of the primary issues with respect to comparing painting and theatre is the

supposition that experiencing theatre is a fixed and temporal encounter, while viewing a painting

demands neither any ordered reading pattern nor any time constraints. Although Beckett's plays

exhibit many representational characteristics associated with painting, Gerhard Hauck questions whether dramatic form can transcend its boundaries to become another art form (171). Hauck

argues that while Beckett's theatre moves progressively inward, reducing action, movement,

gesture, and speech to a bare minimum—from a horizontal perspective (forward action) to a

vertical perspective (static action)—ultimately it cannot transcend its formal boundaries (173-

174). He contends that while a play may suggest stasis and a painting suggest movement, the

most crucial difference "is that the former moves in time and space while the latter does not"

(Hauck 174). Hauck dismisses the recipient's subjective experience as intrinsic to an art work by

claiming that "there must be some qualities in any art form, which is essentially autonomous in

its development and the materials or techniques it employs, which allow for a more objective

definition and evaluation" (186). His concern seems to be that one's subjective response offers

little objectivity when dealing with the source itself. 187 Marin offers an explanation regarding the relationship between the composition of a painting and its readings by viewers that addresses Hauck's concern. First, Marin explains that painters must begin by deconstructing experience itself, apprehended temporally, before composing a unified image. For instance, for a painting to depict a narrative wherein the same actors perform successively different actions, painters must "displace the temporal diachronic sequences of the narrative into a synchronic, a-temporal order or into a structural organization of space based upon the rational connection of the parts in the whole" ("Theory" 297). Certainly, while painters may use techniques to suggest simultaneous action sequences within a single moment of representation, Marin recognizes that a painting cannot "presentify" time and that the viewer's imagination is integral to processing meaning. However, for Marin, when one intensely looks at a painting, a conversion occurs whereby the iconic representation becomes language, specifically a story, which he refers to as a "chiasmus" in operation ("Theory" 298). For Marin, as with Beckett, the emphasis in art is using the material of form to stimulate ideas that the imagination transforms into meaning.

In Play, one finds a consideration of form as Beckett highlights the tension between subject and object by means of light. First, Beckett requires that the light emanate from a single source because, as he rhetorically asks himself in his notebook, "if 3 spots available why single pivoting for individual]," to which he to himself responds, to create the effect "as of single gaze widening for 3" {Shorter 176-177). Beckett's comments illustrate his consideration of the light as the link between subject and object. As an illuminating object, it directs the spectator's vision.

As a single source, it duplicates the spectator's eye. As dictator of the spectator's gaze, it focuses the spectator's imagination on certain stimuli, leading Armstrong to suggest that: "Beckett seems to be describing a methodology whereby forms of the imagination are brought to the light of consciousness and then revised or edited to conform to the play he has in mind" (130). The light aims to consolidate the spectator's reading with Beckett's vision. For instance, at the conclusion 188 of the repeat in Play, Beckett changes the light cue; though M's words remain the same, Light beams a "strong spot" on the three faces.1 5 Within the variation, Light edits a cue, focusing on

M rather than Wl. M begins his next recital only to be cut off by blackout. Light serves as the liaison between the play and its reading since it is one that extracts the characters' memories.

Hence, for the spectator, who reconstructs and contextualizes the experience in the imagination, new meaning is given to lines in the text describing the relationship between the characters and

Light:

Wl: Is it that I do not tell the truth, is that it, that some day somehow I may tell the truth at last and then no more light at last, for the truth? [...] {CDW 313)

W2: Are you listening to me? Is anyone listening to me? Is anyone looking at me? Is anyone bothering about me at all? [...] (CDW314)

M: Am I as much as ... being seen? (CDW317).

Facilitated by the play's repeat, post-performance reflections of Play provide the opportunity to recognize the characters' inquiries as pleas to Light for release of control over their identities. In

Armstrong's view, the characters' complaints to Light for having to relive their "hellish" memories suggests Light's commitment to a larger, single plan irrespective of their cries (131).

Using the technical apparatus of a spotlight, Beckett creates a character that not only directs the presentation, but also implicates the spectator into the visual scene, who must then reconcile the experience within the imagination, highlighting the "chiasmus" between the piece as object and its reading.

Regarding this "chiasmus" that takes place in the imagination, Marin explains that in painting an idea or representation process possesses a double nature as both a modification of the mind and as a representation of a thing, thereby generating both a formal and objective reality

("Theory" 301). Hence, the representational process fluctuates between its existence as object and its readability, which never stops being constructed and undone, placing the viewer in the 189 position of reconciling the two to render an interpretation (Marin, "Interview" 47). Marin's notion of the difference between sight and seeing while playing with conceptions of presentation is one that materializes in the text of Play. In his Brown Notebook, Beckett divides Play into six themes concerning perception and understanding (Shorter 166-169); in particular, the heading

"Will eye weary?" implicates the spectator:

Will eye weary? Fl 2 Du wirst meiner miide ... Mich lassen. [you will weary of me ... Get off me.]

24/5 Du wirst miide werden. Miide des Spiels mit mir. [You'll weary of me. Weary of playing with me.]

F2 3/4 Wirst meiner miide. [und] erloschen ... endgiiltig. Mich aufgeben. [You will tire of me and go out.] (Shorter 167).166

Beckett's use of the homonym "eye/I," highlights the spectator's intellectual focus on the piece while also suggesting the physical eyestrain from focusing on the static visual under an intense beam of light. In Play, as with painting, no "direct" communication occurs; the narrative is stillborn within the subjective self in a perpetually frozen pseudo-dialogue of three isolated voices, as Armstrong says; it remains the spectator's choice to provide the framework that integrates Play as a drama by retracing the paths of the work's metaphor (77).

With the growing number of studies examining the intersection between Beckett's theatre and traditional Eastern forms of performance art (in spite of the vast temporal, spatial, and cultural differences between them), such as Yasunari Takahahi's studies in relation to Japanese

Noh drama, I find it useful to examine select fundamental values from Chinese aesthetics to explain the how the artist attempts to engage the recipient's imagination so that it may visualize transcending formal boundaries. Central to the Chinese tradition are the three dialect concepts of

"false but true, empty but full, and few but many" (Li 179). As Ruru Li explains, the concept 190 never aims at presenting objects within a realistic setting but rather attempts to stimulate the recipient's imagination through suggestion in the hope of generating awareness and understanding (179). Through the imagination, one can transform false elements into truth, empty space into any locale, and a few performers in large masses. The artist's objective is to balance formal likeness (ornamental beauty) and spiritual echo (inner reality) for the recipient's imagination to recognize the representation and complete the reference. Though no direct relation emerges between Beckett, Marin, and Chinese aesthetics, similar overtones emerge from these distinct conceptions toward art. First, artistic form provides a framework for merely suggesting ideas to a recipient. Second, the purpose of artistic presentation is to engage rather than indoctrinate the recipient. Third, responsibility for understanding an aesthetic experience rests solely on the recipient's willingness to engage with the work and determine its meaning.

§6: Coming and Going

Anticipating his "ghost plays" of the 1970s and 1980s, Beckett's next stage play, Come and Go written in 1965, presents three women named Flo, Vi, and Ru, "ages indeterminable," sitting next to each other on a bench under a zone of soft light. Emphasizing the interplay between the visible and invisible, presence and absence, sound and silence, each character exits and reenters, traversing between the darkness and the light. As each departs, the other two whispers information other about the third, ending each exchange audibly with "Does she not know?" By design, Come and Go precludes the audience's hearing information regarding the absent character with focusing attention on the visual dimension of the play, as Hersh Zeifman explains: "When each of the women in turn leaves the light and disappears into the darkness, we see acted out in that symbolic movement what is simultaneously being whispered about her. The verbal death verdict is thus translated into visual terms - a 'going hence'" {"Come'" 142).167 191 The original drafts of the piece reveal a different tone and texture than what materialized in the final version.168 In an early manuscript entitled Good Heavens, through empty cliches,

Beckett explicitly writes out the details of the gossip exchanged between the women, with the theme of adultery pervading the content (McMullan 84). But, with numerous revisions, totaling at least fifteen versions, Beckett pares the text of its contingent detail in layers, leaving only a skeletal outline of dramatic form; he even abbreviates the names of the characters to Flo(wer),

Ru(e), and Vi(olet), suggesting traces of Ophelia's death-flowers.1 9 Originating from a text weighed down by narrative, Beckett shapes Come and Go into a minimal but allusive text, emphasizing pattern and texture by interrelating silence and speech, light and dark, movement and stillness.170 Writing to Alan Schneider, Beckett divulges his final vision for the play: "I see

Come & Go very formal. Strictly identical attitudes & movements. The getting up, going, return, sitting, whispered confidence, shocked reaction (sole colour), finger to lips, etc. the same for all

3. Absent one not wholly invisible. Same toneless voices save for 'Ohl's. Stiff, slow, puppet­ like" (Harmon 417). Examining the diagrams in his directorial notebook for a 1978 production of

Kommen und Gehen {Come and Go) at the Schiller Theater, Beckett emphasizes the visual arc created out of the entrance and exit patterns, providing a visual and textual symmetry of heightened mathematical proportions.171 By neutralizing the emotional content of the piece,

Beckett avoids obscuring the stage image with sentimentality, as Paul Newham explicates: "The notion of character [becomes] less important than other dimensions such as kinesics, light and shape - dimensions which [have] always been the substance of sculpture and painting, but which within performance had hitherto been central only to dance" (45). For Beckett, Come and Go represents the shaping of word, movement, and silence into an aesthetic pattern of heightened visual perception producing a visual image that "not only brings together past and present but throws into relief the ephemeral quality of the life of an individual by setting against it an evocation of togetherness and endlessness" (Knowlson, Frescoes 122). Come and Go, like all of Beckett's plays, challenges the limits of "legitimate theatre" by heightening the visual image at the expense of traditional notions of theatricality; there are no sets, no costumes (since Beckett only calls for dull full-length coats and drab nondescript hats), and no apparent rings. Beckett eliminates "offstage" action by having each of the characters recede into darkness when they leave. Their voices must be "colourless except for three 'ohs' and two lines following" (CD W 357). Only the visual image receives attention; Beckett requires

"Hands made up to be as visible as possible" (CD W 356). In denuding the stage of conventional practices, the dramatic action of the piece becomes localized in its strict symmetrical visual pattern of coming and going in and out of the light. Images of circularity and recurrence dominate the dramatic structure of the play, symbolized in its powerful closing tableau of the three characters clasping hands, with Flo remarking: "I can feel the rings" (CDW355). Sidney

Homan considers Flo's final words as indicative of the Renaissance artist's task to create something out of nothing, which aids in shifting emphasis to the merging of the physical with the imaginative (115). When united, each character transcends her individuality to conjoin in an integrated emotional experience; together they can feel instead of think, they can conjure rings that are not seen. The unbroken chain of clasped hands forms a symbol of eternity, suggesting that the image constitutes the characters' past and present, offering a dual view of time. Playing with theatrical illusion, Beckett creates a stage image that challenges the boundaries between the real and imaginary. Considering that the dramatic appeal of the play resides in its immediate image of half-lit figures with faces in shadows, light "brings into focus" the perceptual difficulties of the piece: "One sees little in this light," Flo remarks, echoing the hermeneutic disposition of the spectator (CD W 355). Since the words intrude on the silence, the hazy visual display of the semi-visible women suggests their being situated in an "other-worldly" context.

Also, with the absence of light, Beckett "highlights" the excised verbal material that comprises the text, Through the darkness, one must find his or her own form of illumination: Are the 193 women doomed to a Dantean hell? Are we, ourselves, ensnared in a similar hellish half-light?

In creating the dramaticule, Beckett employs silence to divulge the dynamics of the relationships between the characters, prompting John Fletcher and John Spurling as well as

Knowlson and Pilling to compare his technique with the spare brush strokes that comprise

Chinese painting, wherein one discards all but the most essential for the purity of line and economy of means.172 As a Chinese painter uses a few brush-strokes to create a landscape on a white scroll, Beckett in one line ("Just sit together as we used to, in the playground at Miss

Wade's") delineates the characters' distant past, invokes their present, and, through the patterned movement, makes the audience consider the time in between (Fletcher, Playwright 118). Situated in a world of limbo, Come and Go features two types of silence, past and future (Fletcher,

Playwright 118). The notion of suggestion as integral to the reception of traditional Chinese art finds its place amongst Western art with the development of expressionism, leading Knowlson to consider Come and Go, after seeing Beckett's Schiller production with its three women dressed in long violet, red, and yellow coats, reminiscent of paintings by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, particularly Two Women in the Street (1914) and Berlin Scene (1913) (see figs. 43-45) {Images

91).

According to Bernard Myers, Kirchner's street scenes display a combination of Munch's frontalized forward-moving figure, displaying a strong linear, cursive, and rhythmical quality, with the use of jeweled colour inspired by French art (101). In both Two Women in the Street and

Berlin Scene, the figures wear mask-like faces, painted with distorted shapes and colours to give them clownishly exaggerated features, suggesting that their sole concern lies in their own mental worlds. Kirchner skews the perspective of the painting to suggest that his figures, representing society as he saw it, are incapable of seeing that which comes and goes due to their egotistical introspection. As Donald Gordon explains, Kirchner's street scenes show that the world of nature and its inhabitants have become alien; that in spite of beauty in composition or even in the 194 donning of fine garments on his figures, the painting portrays the angst of modern individual

(20). Finally, Peter Selz interprets Kirchner's street scenes as portraying a terrifying world in which each individual comprises part of a "lonely crowd," neither as an individual nor as a community member, but as a cog in a large robotic machine (102).

Claiming that his style of drawing originates from studies of "Rembrandt's rapid line,"

Kirchner developed an expressive compositional style that he described as "hieroglyphs"

(Rosenthal 10). Writing under a pseudonym in the 1920s, Kirchner described his paintings as

"hieroglyphs in the sense that they change nature's forms into simpler two-dimensional shapes and suggest their meaning to the observer much as the written word 'horse' places the image of horse before everyone's eyes" (qtd. in Berman 16). Writing in the third person, Kirchner comments that his drawings directly aim to transmit emotion without logical deciphering:

Kirchner's drawings perhaps are his purest and most beautiful work. They mirror the feelings of a man of our times, instinctively and without premeditation. Besides, they comprise the formal language of his prints and paintings, that other part of his work in which a conscious will operates. The vital power of this will, however, derives from drawing (qtd. in Berman 16).

As Patricia Berman explains, Kirchner uses the gestural line to express the emotional tenor of his pieces. The line becomes nominative rather than mimetic. By synthesizing objects viewed in nature, the hieroglyph operates on the semiological level as a marker. Also, the line is pure,

"unconscious." The line traces the artist's unmediated response to a motif in nature, delineating the artist's will, thereby forming an equivalency with the artist's spiritual centre. The gestural line returns the artist's hand, and the viewer's gaze, to the spontaneous sources of formal works.

As act, speech, and originating moment, the hieroglyph represents an inherently modern phenomenon (see Berman 16). 3 In Two Women on the Street, Kirchner covers the faces of the women with black veils, suggestive of the disguise of "war widows" assumed by prostitutes on

Berlin streets after 1914 (D. Gordon 94). The viewer reads the distorted figures, sharp lines, and colours in the painting like a hieroglyph that conveys the sentiment of a hostile, alienating world 195 in the same way that the visual pattern through the zone of light in Beckett's Come and Go invokes past, present, and future through a single visual motif.

§7: An Interlude, for Breath

In testing the limits of the theatre even further, Beckett's next stage play was the thirty- five second Breath, composed in 1966. The brevity of the piece has led Cohn to pronounce that

"[i]f Come and Go is a 'dramaticule,' Breath might be called a 'technicule,' dependent as it is on technology" {Canon 298). The play features detritus, lighting, and recorded sound that come together in the staging of a pile of rubbish, beginning with a faint cry and a breath of inspiration, and ending with a breath of expiration followed by another (identical) faint cry, to suggest an eternity of circularity.174 Breath actualizes Beckett's sentiment "birth astride a grave" from

Waiting for Godot by portraying life as pure being (and non-being) without clock time, raising the ancient duality of Kronos versus Kairos.175 As Beckett's most compressed, and to date, most viewed play,176 Breath stands as a testament to his aim to minimize the theatrical experience to the apprehension of an image.

§8: Images of the Void

After Breath, Beckett's next three stage plays, Not I (1972), That Time (1974), and

Footfalls (1975), represent the height of Beckett's painterly approach to the theatre in their reduction of verbal and visual images to focus on the complexity of stillness and silence resulting, as Les Essif says, in a "metadramatic focus on the empty space of the mind, one which shifts the overall quality of the stage illusion from one of fragmentation to one of concentration"

(60-61).177 In these plays, one uncovers Beckett's blueprint of his theatrical vision in the plays' use of language to construct the stage image and in their depiction of diminished figures suffering from self-division due to their futile attempt to escape their identities, creating stage 196 spectacles promoting vision as the "seeing eye" between sight and consciousness. In conjunction with the use of language for its sonic impact in combination with a static focus on a fragmented part of an individual, Beckett's elimination of any social world in his later plays shifts the spectator's vision to the interiority of the self. As dramas of consciousness, Beckett's later plays draw on the expressive ability of painting to create performances where words provide mental images of past memory to support a visual image. My analysis of Not I has been published as an independent study, which I would now like to introduce within the context of the evolution of

Beckett's dramatic corpus (see "Crossing" 61-78).

Beckett's use of techniques from the visual arts serves to fracture and divide sensory experience by generating a synaesthetic fusion between them to achieve what Clive Bell refers to as the "aesthetic emotion," the primary objective of all art. For Bell, the qualifier of all art is the manipulation of significant form to stimulate the recipient's senses to generate an emotional response. Bell's observation is applicable to Beckett, who extends Bell's insight to a larger level by freely borrowing elements from different art forms, to create an aesthetic theatrical experience for the spectator that draws on the same levels of heightened visual concentration required when viewing a painting. Beckett's aim, as with most artists, is to generate an aesthetic emotion in the spectator, which Bell describes as the feeling of leaving the world of human activity into one of pure of exaltation and bliss because "[f]or a moment we are shut off from human interests; our anticipations and memories are arrested; we are lifted above the stream of life" (25).178 The aesthetic emotion rests on the principle of experience; for Bell, art functions foremost to transport the recipient from reality into a new mental dimension of the imagination.17 Bell's theory corresponds specifically with Beckett's theatre in that it strives to affect audiences viscerally rather than present information; for instance, Esslin contends that experiencing Not I does not entail the decoding of complex story lines and intellectual puzzles embedded in the text; rather: 197 ... [W]hat the audience should experience and take home with them after their brief exposure to these dramatic metaphors is precisely the overall impact of a single overwhelmingly powerful image, composed of the startling visual element; the strange murmur of subdued voices in a dim half-light; the strange and powerful rhythms of both light and voices; the magical effect of the poetic phrasing and the richness of the images the language carries along on its relentless flow ("Theatre of Stasis" 197).

Esslin's emphasis on the play's affective qualities supports Beckett's intentions for the piece, since he told actress Jessica Tandy, who performed the role of Mouth, that the play must be affective viscerally: "I am not unduly concerned with intelligibility. I hope the piece works on the nerves of the audience, not its intellect (Brater, Why Beckett 110).180 Beckett's desire to infiltrate the phenomenological space between the art object and recipient with a direct transference of emotion indicates that his approach to artistic creation considers artistic form as mutable in service toward producing an "aesthetic emotion" for the recipient. With Not I, the spectator gains little from attempting to discern the exact details surrounding the birth of the

"tiny little thing." Instead, the rapid delivery of the text draws one's attention to the extremely tight visual focus on the performer's mouth, transferring the painful emotions resulting from years of hardship experienced by Mouth, as the sonic barrage fills in the details of the visual portrait. The fragmented text of Not I, demarcated throughout with ellipses, in conjunction with

Beckett's call to deliver the piece with rapid tempo, suppresses textual decoding for concentration on the experiential effect of viewing the staged portrait; an observation that becomes more relevant considering Beckett's rare disclosure that "[ijmage of Not I in part suggested by Caravaggio's Decollation of St John the Baptist' (Knowlson, Damned 521).

Knowlson reports that Beckett sat engrossed in front of the painting by Michelangelo Merisi da

Caravaggio for more than an hour, allowing it to work on his imagination.181 In conversation with Gordon Armstrong, Beckett described both the visceral and perspectival effect of

Caravaggio's painting. The impression left on Beckett was "that he, the spectator, had been observed watching, feeling, and experiencing in the most secret recesses of his soul, a mirror 198 image of himself - 'not I but he, watching me watch a visceral assault on another individual'"

(Armstrong 69-70).

Comparing Caravaggio's Beheading of St. John the Baptist (1608) and Beckett's Not I

(1972) reveals that Beckett captured through dramatic form both the visual effect and the themes of Caravaggio's painting (see figs. 46, 47). First, regarding the overall presentation of the works, both offer striking visual tableaux that require apprehension from a distance. Howard Hibbard suggests that Caravaggio's painting "makes its best impression from the back of the long chapel"

(230) due to its enormous size (361 x 520 cm) and spatial arrangement, while Enoch Brater similarly suggests experiencing Beckett's play from a distance to apprehend fully the sensational visual impact of "a mouth gaping out at us from a void that unexpectedly encroaches on our horizon" {Essential 110). Second, both artists utilize the colour red to accentuate their subjects.

One cannot overlook the red blood gushing from John the Baptist's neck, nor the bright red cloth draped over his body in Caravaggio's painting; the red found in these two details constitute the brightest hues on the canvas. Alec Reid similarly recalls the bright, reddish tones emanating from the protagonist's mouth, in an otherwise predominately black Beckettian piece: "I had been held spell-bound, my attention rivetted on those tireless jaws, white against black like the moon in space, on those shockingly scarlet [emphasis added] lips, and on that pink [emphasis added], desperately writhing tongue" ("Impact" 14). Third, both artists distinguish their protagonists with light. Alfred Moir notices that "Caravaggio's palette was so muted, and the density of the atmosphere so great - only the spotlight on the figures penetrates it..." (150). Though

Caravaggio casts light on all the figures, John the Baptist appears slightly brighter than the others. Similarly, Beckett's stage directions indicate that Mouth be "...faintly lit from close-up and below ..." while the Auditor be "...fully faintly lit..." (CDW 376). Fourth, both works contain an "Auditor" figure that witnesses a horrific situation. Although Beckett specifies the movement of Auditor in Not I be restricted to the "simple sideways raising of arms from sides and their falling back, in a gesture of helpless compassion" (CD W 375), Beckett himself

modified this note during a production he directed in 1978 by having Auditor raise arms over

ears for the final movement,182 resembling more closely the pictorial image where Caravaggio's

"Auditor" covers her ears. Fifth, both compositions feature sharp horizontal lines. Moir explains

that the images in Caravaggio's painting are "held together by a series of horizontals" (150),

while Mouth appears, strikingly, like a vagina turned sideways.

Interconnected with similarities of visual presentation is thematic overlap; both pieces position a human subject against a vast amount of emptiness—the indescribable void. Hibbard

notices that the figures in Caravaggio's composition are "dwarfed by empty space" which he

says presents "a growing sense of man's essential isolation and tragic destiny."184 With Beckett's

piece, perhaps the best illustration of the individual facing the void derives from his opening

stage direction: "Stage in darkness but for MOUTH ..." (CD W 376). Beckett does not even

present a complete being, only a disembodied voice, a faceless Auditor, and black, empty space.

The unsettling emotional impact arising from the visual presentation of both art works unavoidably prepares their audiences for a disturbing narrative. Caravaggio's subject matter

depicts the Biblical story of John the Baptist who loses his head at the command of Salome's

mother, Herodias, because he objected to her incestuous affair with Herod (L. Schneider 76).

Hibbard offers a graphic account of Caravaggio's portrayal of the tale: "The jailer points to

Salome's charger, lowered to receive the severed head, while the executioner, holding John by

his long hair, reaches for his knife to finish the job. All of this is gruesome ... hyperclassic

grouping mitigates horror" (230-231). In Beckett's tale, one grasps fragments of horrific details

from the poor, disembodied voice that spews out words at an astonishing pace, telling of a sad,

lonely, silent life (Knowlson, Damned 520-521). The impact of Beckett's play produces the

utmost harrowing theatrical experience as illustrated by Reid's first encounter with the play: "I

knew with every fibre of my being that I had been deluged in a flood of anguish from which I 200 could not escape even though I could not know with what or whom I was involved. My first words were, 'I have been scoured'" ("Impact" 14).185

These topographical readings of Caravaggio's Beheading of St. John the Baptist and

Beckett's Not I reveal that both artists strove to transcend the material boundaries of their art through synaesthesia. The premise of their approach rests on the principle that the properties of art primarily serve to stimulate the imagination by suggesting various ideas and relying on the spectator's active mind to develop them to fruition. Hence, while a painting may only present a two-dimensional, static representation, the mind can develop those impressions to imagine a three-dimensional, moving, living object. Additionally, while apprehending a play succumbs to the objective succession of perceptions, one can imagine the possibility of a play depicting a single moment of stasis, which aptly describes the aesthetic effect of Caravaggio's painting and

Beckett's play.

With respect to Beheading of St. John the Baptist, various imaginative transformations arise from the two-dimensional canvas. Marin explains that Caravaggio's paintings provoke an

"effect of seeing" whereby each painting "constitutes itself as a force, thereby distributing a series of visual effects" {Destroy 105). Marin recognizes that Caravaggio's paintings project a series of visual effects that serve to communicate a variety of ideas. By experiencing Beheading of St. John the Baptist, Hibbard not only recalls the Biblical story as told by Mark and Matthew, but also recognizes that the scene painted is not an exact depiction of the Biblical story, but rather the account that appears in the Golden Legend.1 Except for the title, Caravaggio's painting merely depicts a scene on a two-dimensional canvas, Hibbard, the critic, made the connections through his reading.

Further analysis of viewers' responses to the painting suggests that one can see the work as transcending its limitations of form. Take Hibbard's comment that "[b]lood runs [emphasis added] in the Malta Beheading too, a relatively unobtrusive but unavoidable detail in the centre 201 foreground" (231). Hibbard describes the image as if it were active; Caravaggio painted red on a canvas but Hibbard sees it as blood in motion. Certainly, Caravaggio intended that the spectator take his use of red as blood; the artist intended to communicate an idea. However, it is through the spectator's mind that the artist's intentions become realized; if one's mind does not engage with the sensory perceptions projected, then Caravaggio's use of red remains as mere paint fixed on a canvas. Take another account of Caravaggio's painting; Giovanni Pietro Bellori describes it as follows:

The Saint has fallen to the ground while the executioner is taking his knife from the sheath at his side, as if he had not quite killed him at once with his sword; he grasps the Saint by the hair to cut his head from his body. Salome watches intently and an old woman with her is horror-stricken at the spectacle, while the warden of the prison, in Turkish garb, points to the atrocious massacre, (qtd. in Friedlaender 211)

In isolation, Bellori's portrayal seems to be a play-by-play analysis of an actual event in motion rather than a description of static lines and colour. But Caravaggio only used line and colour—the primary properties of painting. Bellori's description shows how his mind processes Caravaggio's use of line and colour. Without doubt, the artist used his tools in such a way as to stimulate particular thoughts; however, it remains the recipient's responsibility to process his or her sensory experiences for the work to achieve its goal. The following description of Caravaggio's painting by Moir further extends the possibilities of the painting by suggesting that the silent portrait is capable of producing sound: "[The Old Woman] is horrified, the only character responding sympathetically to the execution. Incredibly, she covers her ears rather than her eyes;

are the sounds - those of the actual decapitation - worse than the sight?" (150). Caravaggio's portrayal of a woman covering her ears is filled with such horror that within the imagination of the viewer one actually can hear her cry. While Beckett's Not I contains elements from various

art forms, the work plays with these forms to stimulate other considerations. Also, because Not I presents a brilliant stage image displaying minimal existence wavering between madness and 202 nothingness, which impinges directly on the audience's imagination to communicate complex

metaphysical ideas through the senses and emotions and bypass the discursive logic of the

intellect, one can consider it capable of transcending its existence in time into a transfixed

moment of stasis.

The title itself suggests the double modality of Not I; the play demands both visual and

auditory realization. As Therese Fischer-Seidel suggests, the homophone ai as "I" and "eye"

becomes realized when seen in print as well as when heard (72). Mouth ironically plays with the

title since she refuses to use the first-person singular for the story she narrates; the refrain—

"what? ... who? ... no! ... she!"—repeats four times throughout the play. That Mouth speaks from

a third-person perspective, an outside self, enforces the perceiver-perceived division of

consciousness. Beckett's play with perceiver-perceived also suggests unity between the

characters on stage and the spectator—the protagonist represents a mouth, the Auditor represents

an ear, and the spectator represents an eye—he proposes a new Trinity requiring that a unity of the senses within the imagination is necessary for art appreciation and understanding. Beckett

implicates the spectator into the scene like the prisoner's in Caravaggio's painting; both find

themselves trapped as witnesses to a horrific scene, calling into question as to who is perceiving whom.

Considering Beckett's manipulation of the roles of perceiver and the perceived, the

overwhelming response to Not I seems to be that while it is a play in motion, its overall effect is

one of stasis. Fischer-Seidel points to the delivery of the text as one reason to imagine the play as

a fixed image: "Because of the speed of the uttering, Mouth's monologue gives the impression of

stasis, of being a segment out of a continuum, a tableau" (74). Beckett himself implies the play's

circular pattern; his stage directions state: "As house lights down MOUTH's voice unintelligible

behind curtain. House lights out. Voice continues unintelligible behind curtain, 10 seconds"—

and at the end of the piece—"Curtain fully down. House dark. Voice continues behind curtain, unintelligible, 10 seconds, ceases as house light up" (CDW376, 383). Beckett's directions suggest for Aspasia Velissariou that the narration symbolically exists as a non-stop activity exceeding dramatic time ad infinitum, painting a static picture (47). From the point of view of textual analysis, Hersh Zeifman agrees with Velissariou that Not I "ends essentially where it began; and movement that is circular is, in fact, stasis" ("Being" 39).188 However, Beckett's play merely suggests the possibility of repeating itself ad infinitum; realistically, a performance of the play ends in less than twenty minutes. The impression that the play becomes stasis from the repetitive nature of the text and its lack of movement becomes realized within the imagination of the spectator. The spectator apprehends the sensations from the play and then plays with those sensations within his or her imagination to realize the full potential of Beckett's suggested ideas.

One of Beckett's skills as an artist lies in his ability to present ambiguity so that the spectator must extend his or her imagination to make sense of the artistic presentation.

Along with the suggestive visual presentation, Not I also features an interesting textual presentation, which offers new understanding to the literal meaning of the printed words. First, echoes of Biblical language, in counterpart to Caravaggio's painting, present layers of meaning

(see P. Howard 311-320). Second, while the play contains little action—simply Mouth speaking and Auditor's minimal gestures—it conjures striking visual images. The words themselves fall out of Mouth like physical discharge: "[...] sudden urge to ... tell... then rush out stop the first she saw ... nearest lavatory ... start pouring it out... steady stream ... mad stuff... half the vowels wrong [...]' (Beckett CDW382). The words of the text also become "objects" which Mouth calls up to visualize; one "object" becomes another "object" without any relationship to each other: "a ray of light came and went," "a distant bell," "old black shopping bag," "back in the field,"

"nearest lavatory," "nothing but the larks" (Beckett CD W 376-383). The combination of seeing the writhing mouth and hearing its frantic fragments stimulates the spectator's imagination to create personal images of these scenes and objects barely suggested. The staccato delivery 204 encourages the spectator to fill in the ellipses found in the printed text, to "connect the dots," as it were.189

Having introduced the visual quality of That Time at the outset of this study, I would like to return to analyzing the painterly influence on its composition as way of revisiting the pictorial influences on Beckett's play in its chronological place. The imagistic quality of That Time originates from the image of a disembodied head, suspended between different worlds and states of being, which Beckett augments with words based on dream imagery that he recorded, compiled, and shaped. Beckett endured considerable difficulty with the continuity of the associations or contrasts that link the textual sequences, which took him approximately fifteen months to develop, suggesting his intense struggle with condensing the disparate elements into a coherent whole, even though the general image was fixed from the earliest draft {Intent 151).

That Time derives from hazy images out of the subconscious spirit world that Beckett re-worked several times in composing Listener's portrait. The strong visual centre of the piece arises from

Beckett's orchestration of the verbal and the visual texts to portray Listener in a dream-state, which is disrupted when the words stop, causing his eyes to open. Based on their interpretation of the first holograph of the play, James Knowlson and John Pilling assert, in their aptly titled

Frescoes of the Skull, that the inspiration to create a visual image of an old man in the dark with

"long flaring white hair" likely originates from one of William Blake's twenty-one engravings portraying the suffering of Job {Frescoes 206). The playback of Listener's recorded memories from three distinct audio speakers "coming to him from both sides and above" (Beckett, CDW

388) in the performance of That Time, creates a triangular sonic form that closely resembles in shape the engraving Job and His Daughters (1825), the twentieth plate in the series of twenty- one for his illustrated, reinterpretation of the Old Testament's narrative, featuring additions and enhancements to the Biblical text (see figs. 48, 49). Additionally, Beckett's description of

Listener's flaring hair "as if seen from above outspread," which several scholars compare to 205 observing a person lying on his deathbed, parallels the downward perspective generated by

looking at Blake's illustrated text. And though Blake's engraving incorporates religious doctrine in his interpretation of Job's plight, which is absent in Beckett's play, Katharine Worth asserts that Beckett privileges the audience with a "heavenly perspective" of Listener {Life 45). In fact, a fringe performance of That Time in Toronto seemed to concretize Worth's metaphor, since the director decided to stage the play in an abandoned railway car with Listener lying down and the audience hovering above him.190

True to form, Beckett simply did not covert Blake's engraving into a play. While inspired by the shape and thematic direction of Blake's work, Beckett abstracts and fragments the image and eliminates any notion of religious redemption. In Blake's engraving, Job appears cruciform in the middle of frame, looking downward on his daughters, who are kneeling at his feet. In

Beckett's play, Listener appears "midstage off centre," engulfed by the three modulating voices that come toward him from the dark. Blake's engraving clearly depicts Job as narrating his accounts to his daughters while Beckett's play features voices depicting past memories that make

Listener remember.

Both Blake's engraving and Beckett's play express the agony of suffering and the wisdom that unfolds from one's experience of anguish. To enhance the central action of Job relating his turmoil to his daughters, Blake's engraving presents two of three rear panels to right

and left of the figure depicting Job's disasters. Blake's interpretation of the Book of Job provokes

questions regarding the reasons for suffering and then renounces them altogether on the basis that God cannot be held accountable to humankind. God's voice and image, emanating from the whirlwind, confront but do not enlighten Job, considered to be a just and upright man who undeservingly has been made to suffer as a pawn between Yahweh and Satan. Perceived as a patriarch whose past has been taken away from him, Job survives several tests of his strength of

faith and receives his reward not because he comprehends, but because he endures. Blake's 206 personal interpretation of the biblical text concentrates on Job's experience and the process of transformation.

Beckett's emphasis on the visual aspect of That Time is evident: any attempt to assign order or meaning to the verbal fragments returns one to the image itself. The verbal text presents

Listener's memories of melancholy while the spectator stares at his face, frozen in midair under a tightly focused spotlight amongst an expanse of blackness. The effect creates a hallucinogenic sensation similar to the whirlwind depiction in the Blake engraving, the third rear panel that appears between the other two representing Job's suffering. According to Worth, Patrick

Magee's idiosyncratic, melodious tones augmented the hypnotic mood of That Time for the 1976 premiere of the play at the Royal Court Theatre in London (Life 45). As the voices shift among each other, creating a triangular sonic frame around the protagonist, the spectator actively follows them aurally, noticing the minute changes in pattern. As in Play, Beckett's fragmentation of the three memories in That Time requires the spectator to absorb and reassemble them in the imagination for textual coherence. When voice B, for instance, reveals the details of a love affair lacking intimacy during Listener's youth, the spectator is prevented from solely imagining the couple together; rather, he or she experiences Listener's confrontation with the past in the present. Further, voice C overtly introduces into the play a description of the act of perception by referring to an experience of viewing a portrait in an art gallery. Voice C's recollection of a security guard looking at him in the reflection of a portrait's glass arouses the audience's awareness of the visual emphasis of the piece by implicating the spectator into the perspectival act as a fourth layer in a palimpsest, or in visual terms, a pentimento, of real, imaginary, and perceived images: the audience looks at Listener, who recalls looking at a portrait, while he is being watched over by a security guard, who is noticed because his image is reflected in the glass between Listener's gaze and the portrait. Beckett's use of language promotes the interplay between words and image. The lack of punctuation in the verbal text, in combination with the 207 seemingly arbitrary pattern of its presentation, renders ambiguous the explicit meaning behind

each individual memory fragment. Though each concerns an independent subject, one

recognizes, as the play progresses, common images and recurring themes that comprise the

connective tissue between them. For instance, voices B and C constantly refer to the weather,

and similarly, A and B both mention sitting on a stone in sunlight, corresponding with C's sitting

on a stone "slab" in the portrait gallery.

Blake, in The Book of Job, assembles all his powers of "visual language" to convey the journey from spiritual blindness to acceptance, and the profundity, intensity, and inexplicable nature of human suffering. Investigating the transpersonal insights into the meaning of suffering in Blake's work, psychotherapist David Hiles, drawing on Carl Jung's essay Answer to Job,

considers the twenty-one engravings that make up the illustrated text as divided into seven

groups of three, which he interprets as reflecting a seven-state process of transformation that mirrors and extends the basic psychological model of the grieving process to include: attachment

(unconscious), loss (conscious), denial (rationalization), abandonment (spiritual emergency),

insight (revelation), acceptance (transformation), return (grace, sharing). Blake symmetrically

designed and organized the engravings; Plate 11 relates to the lowest point in Job's encounter,

and he extends the total number of depictions from nineteen to twenty-one. Foster Damon proposes that these changes describe Blake's Seven Eyes of God (Lucifer, Molech, Elohim,

Shaddai, Pahad, Jehovah, Jesus). However, as Damon continues, the division of the twenty-one

engravings into seven extends beyond simple manifestations of the God-image; they depict the

"path of experience" as a response to the meaning of suffering in the search for spiritual happiness. The last three plates mark the final phase in the protagonist's journey, illustrating the transformation experienced by the acceptance of the meaning of suffering. Plate 19 depicts Job's

* In psychology or psychotherapy, the term transpersonal is concerned with esoteric mental experience beyond the usual limits of ego and personality. 208 comprehension of his experience by revealing his humility. The return of Job to his daughters in

Plate 20, denoting a manifestation of grace, suggests that he must share his ordeal so that others may learn from the experience. And Plate 21 completes Job's transformation into a "fully alive" person. The final three engravings of Blake's illustrated text suggest that one who endures the experience of suffering feels compelled to share it with others. The return, in this case, has less to do with coming back and more to do with helping others through their suffering; an extension of the "healer" archetype. Blake conveys that suffering likely offers the most significant lesson in which one learns how to conquer self-centeredness and empathize with others. Job represents the archetype of our relationship to suffering and the insights that result from such an experience.

Since every human being can relate to experiencing and participating in suffering, each person can formulate his or her own answer to Job. Confrontation with this archetype reveals the contradictions of self and God as experienced as the dark night of the soul.

While the thirty-six memory fragments that make the verbal text of Beckett's That Time do not neatly parallel Blake's seven groupings of three engravings, they are divided into groupings of three, and their content can be seen as reflecting the grieving process. As Knowlson and Pilling illustrate, the memories are filled with images of ruination, solitude, desolation or death: "Several static tableaux emphasize the fragility and transiency of the life of the individual by setting images of a more permanent, unpeopled, petrified world alongside of absence, fragility and death: the child on the stone in the ruin, the man huddled on the doorstep in the old green greatcoat handed on from his father, the lovers who at first resemble figures in a still life composition, but later come to be described as 'no better than shades'" {Frescoes 212-213).

Aside from structural and thematic similarities between Blake's engraving and Beckett's play, one also notices that both artists offer a similar commentary regarding the creative imagination and its role in spiritual development. Blake's Job and His Daughters expresses the conviction that it is not enough to be saved and that the redeemed must show the ways to others, 209 as represented by the position of Job, facing outward with arms outstretched. The gesture of

extending outward with arms open suggests that the artist, too, reaches out to the viewer, promoting the redeeming qualities of art. In Plate 20, Job relates his experiences to his daughters

- Poetry, Painting, and Music - who vanished during the period of Job's trials but now have reappeared. Foster Damon interprets the whirlwind depiction above Job as expressing the belief that aesthetic creation stands as a lower form of mystical ecstasy. The floor under Job features a big circle tessellated with smaller interlacing circles that Damon considers as the communication

of heaven through art. He supports his interpretation by pointing to the grape vines and instruments of music in the margins of the panel, which evoke the idea that art is restorative, as is

Christ's blood. To substantiate Damon's reading, one needs only to compare the first engraving of the series, featuring musical instruments up in the tree, with the final engraving, which shows

Job and his entire family playing the instruments. The theme of Job's journey sustains Blake's aesthetic commentary, since Job's failure results from his infirmity of imagination. Job is guilty of refusing to look by contenting himself with a superficial apprehension of the world. He executes his prayers and homage to the letter and not the spirit, which supports the major theme of vision - that of seeing with the inward eye. "All we that we See is vision" said Blake in his

Laocoon, suggesting that he equates seeing with understanding, and that to see clearly is not easy.

Beckett's play also promotes the need for artistic expression as a means to purge and share one's experience of suffering. In the same way in which Job needs to relate his stories to his daughters, Listener, too, needs an avenue for self-expression. Beckett provides visual existence to inner experience, suggesting the human need to cleanse one's suffering through artistic expression. Within the memories, Beckett suggests consideration of the need for artistic expression as way of coping with life. Voice A mentions hiding amongst the nettles with a picture book and having conversations with himself to the point of becoming hoarse. Voice B 210 speaks of being alone in select scenes, "making it up that way to keep it going keep it out of the stone." Voice C, the wandering tramp, tells of escaping bad weather by hiding out in public, cultural institutions such as the Portrait Gallery, the Library, and even the Post Office. In all three cases, when the memories touch upon an occurrence of turmoil, some allusion is made to artistic expression. These references enhance the central image of Listener remembering or disremembering his experiences of suffering by establishing the dramatic action as an expression of torment to share with the audience. Beckett provides no answers on how to avoid suffering; rather, he privileges the audience with a perspective of the stage figure's mind that materializes at the completion of the play when all memories coalesce in the image of Listener's face. As an artist concerned with the human experience of confronting the void, Beckett intimates that all one can do is to purge one's emotions through artistic representation, paralleling Blake's notion that artistic expression serves as a lower form of mystical ecstasy.

Human suffering materializes in a number of ways: minor disappointments, larger frustrations, serious illnesses, loss, loneliness, identity crisis, and emotional turmoil. Viktor

Frankl points out that since human suffering essentially is pointless and meaningless, its main purpose serves to challenge the individual in strength and tenacity. In the preface to Frankl's book, Man Searching for Meaning, Gordon Allport writes: "... to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering - if there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffering and dying - but no-one can tell another what that purpose is." On this basis, one can consider suffering as necessary and universal aspect to the human condition. When experiencing suffering, one must accept and confront a situation or perish in a life of escapism and misery.

Both Blake and Beckett demonstrate through their works that one's spirituality develops through lived experience and spiritual tension. The only way to contend with suffering is to experience it, understand it, and purge it. 211 Drawing on his artistic lineage, Beckett identifies moments of sublime communication and reworks them into his own expressions. Beckett's profound appreciation for painting influenced his entire artistic outlook, and especially his drama, where the stage image can be concretized. The dramatic action of That Time concentrates on painting Listener's portrait, as

Beckett indicated in a letter to Donald McWhinnie, suggesting appropriate means to realize the piece. He writes: "To the objection that the visual component too small, out of all proportion with aural, answer: make it smaller, on the principle that less is more." Beckett's comment, suggesting further reduction of the visual image rather than counterbalancing its magnitude to the textual output, indicates that his artistic concerns favour precision and focus over volume and immensity. Rather than enlarging the image to match the text in That Time, Beckett calls for reducing the visual, suggesting that the words of the text serve the image and that "more is less"; an attitude congruent with numerous remarks he made regarding the function of the text in his late plays.

Referring to the pattern of reductionism evident in the evolution of Beckett's plays,

Gontarski explains the difficulty of comprehending the content of the works in absence of their central image: "On the page, without the full visual counterpart, the works are denuded, skeletal, finally unreadable - in any traditional literary sense, that is, if by unreadable we mean to suggest that their primary effect is extra-linguistic" (introd. Shorter xvi). Beckett concluded by 1982 that each word he used constituted a lie and that all remained for him to create were images and music (in the sense of verbal rhythm), confirming his earlier declaration to Lawrence Harvey in

1960 that "Words are a form of complacency [as if] trying to build a snowman with dust; nothing holds together" (Knowlson, Images 49). The aesthetic process employed in composing That

Time reflects Beckett's entire approach to all his theatrical creations by focusing on creating a strong visual component for each piece by relegating all other communicative vehicles to its articulation. According to Beckett, the image is more powerful and superior to the word in its 212 clarity and precision: "Thus the image of knife is more accurate than the word knife ... 'knife' has no meaning, it's a blurred image. You have to say 'butcher's knife', 'kitchen knife' 'a knife to cut the bread' so that the word takes some meaning. But when it is shown, you see at once what kind of knife it is: the image is stronger than the word" (trans, in Knowlson, Images 49).

With Footfalls, Beckett heightens his use of repetition to promote stasis in its portrayal of a distraught woman in a shabby night coat who paces an exact amount of steps, forming an elliptical pattern in the shape of the infinity symbol. In dramatizing "deterioration with visual and aural diminuendo" (Ackerley 201), Beckett composes the structure of Footfalls using a four part musical structure, as he said to Rose Hill (playing the voice of the mother) when directing the play at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1976: "We are not doing this play realistically or psychologically, we are doing it musically" (Knowlson, Images 128). Part one presents May in her forties attending to her mother in her nineties; part two introduces the mother who gives a narration about May's obsessive pacing, while May attempts to verify her existence in connection to the sound of her footsteps and the dragging of her nightgown; part three features

May's fictionalizing through "Amy"; and part four, comprising the final ten seconds of the piece, displays only the strip of light, with 'Wo trace o/MAY," illustrating that May was always "not there" (Ackerley 201-202).192 The interplay of the two voices with missing parts and details requires the spectator to concentrate on the visual component, suggesting that there is more to see than what actually meets the eye. The cyclical movements of the play introduce visual motifs and precise patterns analogous to the text that Beckett called "themes of the body," which

Knowlson attributes to Beckett's readings of Greek philosophy on repetition and pattern {Images

131). The repeated movements, actions, gestures, and sounds in Footfalls increasingly penetrate the spectator's unconscious, aided by the words, which help build the picture. Walter Asmus, in his rehearsal notes for Beckett's production of Tritte {Footfalls) at the Schiller Theatre in 1976, describes how the playwright/director explains the integration of sound, movement, and image: 213 "The position of the body will help to find the right voice." Beckett demonstrates the stance: the arms crossed, with the hands clasping the shoulders in front. "When you walk, you slump together, when you speak, you straighten up a bit." And the steps? "If the play is full of repetitions, then it is because of these life­ long stretches of walking. That is the centre of the play, everything else is secondary." "Is the posture supposed to express fear?" "No, not fear. It expresses that May is there exclusively for herself. She is isolated. The costume will look like a ghost costume. It is described in the play: 'Tattered ... A tangle of tatters ... A faint tangle of pale grey tatters'. It is the costume of a ghost" (85).

With the gradual diminution of movement, sound, and light in performance, Footfalls (similar to

Play) resembles the process of painting, ending with the complete picture in the final tableau.

Beckett calls for tonelessness in reciting the lines to create the impression that the character is unaware of how the narrative will end. As May fictionalizes, the picture fills with brushstrokes of detail, until the final image materializes. In conjunction with the metronomic pace of the steps, the text of Footfalls, with its precise, monotone rhythm, supplies details to the spectator for reassembly in the imagination into an integrated image, as Billie Whitelaw, for whom Beckett specifically wrote Footfalls, explains:

In Footfalls, I felt like a moving, musical Edvard Munch painting - one felt like all three - and in fact when Beckett was directing Footfalls, he was not only using me to play the notes, but I almost felt that he did have the paintbrush out and was painting, and, of course, what he always has in the other pocket is the rubber, because as fast as he draws a line in, he gets out that enormous india-rubber and rubs it out until it is only faintly there (Knowlson, Remembering 170).

Whitelaw's comment is central to the core of my argument in that it captures how Beckett coalesces his use of language, rhythm, and visuals into an experience that brings the spectator in front of core issues of existence itself.

Inasmuch as Beckett strove for harmony and balance in the rhythms of the text and movements, these elements combine with the visual image, which scholars trace to a number of different paintings. One of the obvious visual allusions that Knowlson points to is Antonello da

Messina's The Virgin of the Annunciation (c. 1430-1479), which Beckett saw during his travels in 1937 to the Alte Pinakotek in Munich {Images 74). Not only does one see a striking 214 comparison between May's posture of tightly folded arms with hands facing inward toward her

body in Footfalls and Mary's pose in The Virgin of the Annunciation, but also in way that both

images haunt the imagination by presenting layers of dynamic tension (see figs. 1, 2). In da

Messina's painting, the young virgin, depicted as only thirteen or fourteen years of age,

simultaneously appears solitary yet connected, caring but detached, simple though beautiful in

the same way that May in Beckett's play continually paces yet does not advance. The virgin does

not face the viewer directly, her eyes modestly gaze at an unknown presence below and to her

right, akin to the way that May looks downward to strip of light framing her walking pattern,

avoiding direct visual contact with the spectator's gaze. While the biblical narrative behind the painting focuses on Gabriel's informing Mary that she will bear God's child, da Messina positions the viewer in the angel's place to implicate him or her into the scene. Similarly,

Beckett's interplay of sound and sight challenges the spectator's perceptions, leading him or her

to question whether what is seen is real or an illusion. Both da Messina and Beckett manipulate their significant forms to implicate the recipient's imagination by positioning it opposite to

extreme sets of feelings and assumptions, drawing the recipient from the material world into one

of interior consciousness. While Beckett's figure is more abstracted and fragmented than da

Messina's Renaissance depiction of his subject, the playwright, after all, was writing four hundred years later, and his work shows the influence of expressionism. However, da Messina's picture displays a perfect synthesis of formal elements combined with a skillful treatment of

space that seems to border on abstraction, linking him to the Netherlandish style of Jan van Eyck

and Rogier van der Weyden in their common concern with technique rather than content, which

also aptly characterizes Beckett's theatrical vision.

During his stay in Naples, da Messina developed his painterly style and technique under the influence of paintings by van Eyck and van der Weyden. In particular, van Eyck concentrated

on accurately depicting light, becoming a master of linear perspective based on observation 215 rather than theory; an aesthetic outlook shared by da Messina as seen in his bust portraits (Gould

95). Combining Flemish techniques and realism with traditional Italian forms, da Messina

created simple, effective, but meticulous paintings with brilliant colours, owing to his use of oil varnishes. In conjunction with these formal techniques, da Messina also paid strong attention to the use of light and shade to generate a three-dimensional quality in his paintings. In his Virgin of the Annunciation, da Messina shines the light from the left side of the canvas, simultaneously emphasizing the direction and attention of Mary's gaze at the same time as illuminating her right

side, while filling the left area with darkness. On the one hand, da Messina's interplay of light and dark serves to add a sense of naturalism to his depiction. On the other, it also generates a sense of ambiguity in the painting since it highlights an aspect that captures the subject's attention yet is not visible to the viewer.

Similarly, Beckett uses light in Footfalls to abolish any sense of naturalism by creating an environment that "should be as weak as possible without becoming unbearably dark [...] A great coldness and tautness without sentiment" (Asmus, "Practical" 90-91). After encountering problems directing the play with the original stage directions calling for "Lighting: dim, strongest at floor level, less on body, least on head' (CDW 399) that left May's head in near darkness, Beckett modified it to: "Lighting: dim, cold, strongest at floor level, less on body, least on head. Dim spot on face during halts at R and L. Upstage left, a thin vertical beam (B) 3 metres high" {Shorter 275). This change allowed Beckett to maintain a gradual lessening of light

from the ground up without losing the complete image of a vertical figure. One finds in Beckett's design (placing a vertical figure perpendicular to a horizontal beam of light) compositionally resembles da Messina's Virgin of the Annunciation, since the painter ensured that the axis of the

centralized figure remains vertical. Da Messina subscribed to the Law of Verticality, meaning that he would ensure his figures remained vertical unless the action of the narrative demanded

otherwise. To further emphasize the role of light in Footfalls, Beckett's addition of a second 216 "vertical beam" (B) helped resolve the difficulty that the audience might confuse the final fade- up on the empty stage with the conclusion of the piece, as Asmus explains:

In order to avoid the impression that the piece was over with the second-last fade- out, a vertical strip of light should be visible in the background, which would give the impression that the light was falling through the crack of a door. Then it would add a vertical accent to the horizontal light on the strip that would remain lit after each part. At the very end of the play, the empty strip will be faded out first, then, after seven seconds, the vertical strip of light ("Practical" 92).

In both da Messina's painting and Beckett's play one finds the use of light and dark as central components in communicating the dominant emotional theme of the work. In Virgin of the

Annunciation, the contrasts of light and dark heighten the massive folds of draperies that seem carved out of a solid, smooth material, adding a quality of depth to the painting. Da Messina's use of light to accentuate these features in the cloth suggests that the figure also maintains an abundance of inner strength, especially "in light" of the responsibility she has just been given.

With both da Messina and Beckett, one finds the meticulous shaping of formal elements toward presenting a figure encapsulated within herself, confronting a significant personal dilemma.

While both images of Mary and May feature similarities in composition and technique, portraying strong characters, da Messina and Beckett differed in style. Da Messina painted in the

Renaissance, a period where naturalism was a leading objective of art. Beckett, however, undertook a more expressionist approach in his later plays by visually revealing the inner turmoil of his figures on their faces. In Footfalls May appears with bony hands, clasped to her shoulders and chest, in a gesture of anguish and concern. Tracing Beckett's haunting image to expressionism, Jessica Prinz finds that May's posture in Footfalls shares select overtones with certain expressionist paintings (164). For instance, one cannot overlook the obvious resemblance between Edvard Munch's The Scream and May's open mouth. Also, May's skeletal face strikingly resembles Erich Heckel's woodcut 'Nude (1907), featuring a naked woman in a painful stance who, though anguished, possesses the strength to bare her body as a means toward self- 217 healing by boldly displaying her sexual freedom. Beckett shared with the expressionists the idea that significant form needs to be transformed constantly to revitalize not only the expressive act itself, but also to find the most authentic expression. In this respect, Prinz's identification of

Oskar Kokoschka's emphasis of the hands in his portrait of August Forel (1910) (see fig. 50) bears a close relationship to Beckett's Footfalls, which is not surprising considering that Beckett admired Kokoschka's early work (Knowlson, Remembering 265). Kokoschka juxtaposed Forel's gentle and introspective expression with immobile, contorted hands frozen in an unnatural gesture. Kokoschka's attention to Forel's hands and face in the portrait emphasizes the figure's age, since the viewer sees little of his body, suggesting that while his mind is alert, his body has suffered physical deterioration similar to the way in which Beckett's May increasingly diminishes as the light decreases until nothing remains. In fact, one of Forel's criticisms of the portrait after its completion was that it made him appear as though he had suffered a stroke, which he did experience a short while afterward, leading some to consider Kokoschka's vision as prophetic—with his "x-ray eyes," Kokoschka sees through to the interiority of his models to reveal their innermost secrets. Kokoschka's unorthodox but imaginative application of paint with the use of a cloth and his fingers, along with his brushes, generates a unique and playful sense of depth in the paint to dramatise his subjects by rendering three-dimensional models of important features while blending other details into the background.

Kokoschka and Beckett's expressionistic use of fragmentation via isolation serves to diminish materiality and suggest interiority. In the way that Footfalls gradually diminishes in intensity until May vanishes from the stage leaving only the strip of light, Kokoschka dissolves the physicality of his subject until he becomes transparent, as Frank Whitford explains: "The paint is very thin in most areas, more like a dye than a layer of material. The drawing is inconsistent, creates a fragile and partially broken network of lines in which the face and hands

appear like islands. It is as though the sitter himself had been pressed up against the canvas and 218 left an almost ghostly impression" (51).1 3 The shared aim between Kokoschka and Beckett was not to adhere to aesthetic theories, but to depict human experience with all its faults. Their approach to art displays a transcendental, visionary understanding of human existence by expressing the emotions of the individual in a larger, universal context. Their portraits build from personal physiognomy to create chaotic portrayals, which not only illuminate an individual condition, but also show that individual emotions gain new meaning in a larger context. Herein lies the shared dramatic purview between the artists; in their portraits, both artists dramatise the inner turmoil of their figures, resulting often in graphic and horrible depictions, but ones that offer an honest portrayal of the human condition. 219 CHAPTER FIVE: BECKETT THE PAINTER

The art (picture) that is a prayer sets up prayer, releases prayer in onlooker, i.e. Priest: Lord have mercy upon us. People: Christ have mercy upon us. - Samuel Beckett, German Notebooks (qtd. in Knowlson, Damned 222)

§1: Final Stage Plays

Samuel Beckett's final plays for the stage display not only the continuation of his haunting exploration of the human condition established in the portrait plays of Not I, That Time, and Footfalls, but also the addition of select, subtle elements that elucidate his painterly approach to the theatre. Inspired by painting's ability to arouse the imagination and inspire thought from visual sensations, Beckett strove to liberate words from meaning in his plays by utilizing them as brushstrokes of sound that he paints over physical representations, juxtaposing mental images with concrete ones. With the exception of the overtly self-reflexive Catastrophe, featuring a relatively naturalistic form of dialogue describing Beckett's theatrical process, A Piece of

Monologue, Rockaby, Ohio Impromptu, and What Where all use words in a monotonous manner akin to a lament as a way of rhythmically expelling memory fragments that conjure mental images, which the spectator must reconcile with the ambiguous physical image being detailed on stage. Beckett's synchronization of disparate artistic genres and styles in the theatre paints an image of partial bodily vagueness in a hazy aura of dimness and ambiguity, bringing to light abstract thought. In particular, his final plays for the stage reveals that his aesthetic outlook aims at generating an experience that places the recipient in an imaginative state in the interspace between art object and reality. He accomplishes his artistic objective by manipulating artistic form to the extent where one mode of communication seemingly generates sensations attributed to another by presenting elements of perception that the spectator recognizes as portions of other images conjured from memory fragments. To contend with the collusion of physical and mental images, the spectator reduces the experience to a set of scattered precepts within his or her imagination. At this point, the spectator may reassemble these precepts to complete the 220 transformative process, echoing George Braque's aphorism "the senses deform, the mind forms"

(qtd. in Rogers 33). Experiencing Beckett's later plays entails a three-step process from the perception of physical and mental images, through their deformation into precepts, to their reformation in the imagination as a composite whole.

A Piece of Monologue (1979), Beckett's next stage play after Footfalls, presents words spoken by a single, motionless orator, standing two metres from a lamp of the same height, which features a faintly lit skull-sized white globe. The action of the play consists of the speaker reciting a story of birth and death, offering details that resemble those actually visible to the spectator, such as the descriptions of the faint light in the room, as well as those of the gown and socks. While the story of the text dramatises the loss of company—in the description of the destruction to the photographs, and in the recollection of the funeral in the rain—there is no movement in the play except for the speaker's lips. Beckett places the figure's inner consciousness directly on stage as means of presenting an objective self that impassively self- reflects on the nature of being. While words dominate the stage in A Piece of Monologue,

Beckett utilizes them in a manner similar to monodies, threnodies, elegies, and laments as means of generating a feeling of bereavement to augment the play's exploration of life and death

(Abbott, "Consorting" 92).194 Beckett also juxtaposes multiple occurrences of the word "black" in the text (that conjure images of darkness) to the artificial lamp light actually seen on stage, which reflects off the figure, presenting at once both the inner darkness and enlightenment of a living mind. Porter Abbott describes Beckett's synthesis of restricted narrative and suppressed dramatic business resulting from his elimination of colour from both presentation and text as transforming the theatrical experience into a "black and white object of great density" in which the spectator's primary focus remains fixed on detecting the contrasts of black, white, and grey

("Consorting" 92). As the spectator listens to the incantatory delivery of the monologue, which 221 conjures images of past memories that reverberate off the speaker, he or she finds him or herself in an eternal present in possession of omniscient sight over all elements.

Beckett constructed the text of A Piece of Monologue with a series of memory shards, which produce mental images the spectator must reconcile with what he or she actually sees.

Opening with "birth" and ending with "gone," Beckett's text presents the life cycle as little more than a series of fragmented experiences that occupy time until death's arrival. Speaker's repetition of phrases relating to birth and death contributes to the escalation of dynamic energy in performance, which stands in contrast to the static energy generated by the two vertical images of the skull-sized globes (one of which is conscious). The spectator must determine the combined effect of the words and image, the dynamic and static energy, since Beckett makes it seem (through his layering of ambiguity) that the verbal images actually materialize, rendering the total experience one where words create pictures and pictures become words, situating the spectator in the interspace between the two. One example comes from the following excerpt from A Piece of Monologue where the text conjures images similar to the visual presentation.

Within the spectator's imagination the aural and visual precepts become blurred, positioning him or her in the moment where mutations and transformations of form can easily materialize:

Bora dead of night. Sun long sunk behind the larches. New needles turning green. In the dark room gaining. Till faint light from standard lamp. Wick turned low. And now. This night. Up at nightfall. Every nightfall. Faint light in room. Whence unknown. None from window. No. Next to none. No such thing as none. Gropes to window and stares out. Stands there staring out. Stock still staring out. Nothing stirring in that black vast. Gropes back in the end to where the lamp is standing. Was standing. When last went out {CD W 425).

By interweaving words and image so that one communicative mode may seem to perform the function of the other, demonstrating the permeability of artistic form, Beckett creates a unique type of artistic expression that places the spectator in the imaginative creative state where one can perceive multiple realities. 222 In Rockaby (1980), Beckett again dramatises the space between art object and recipient by shifting the spectator's focus between the physical reality of the figure on stage and the character's inner psyche. The play features a "prematurely old" woman (CDW433), W, sitting in a rocking chair that involuntarily moves, establishing from the outset an eerie and ambiguous atmosphere for the piece. As W listens to a voice (likely her own) recount details of a sad life describing an endless pattern of going "to and fro" to the window in an unrequited search for another like herself, the spectator juxtaposes these conjured mental images with the actual one of her in the chair, wearing a gown embroidered with sequins and exhibiting an expressionless face.

The text, written as a poem, which sounds like a lullaby, conjures the image of a verbal embrace for W in its transmission of feelings of sorrow, solitude, and isolation. Beckett counterpoises this verbal embrace with the actual image of W clasping the arms of the rocker, implying that it visually embraces her. Beckett positions W amongst the worlds of past, present, and future, which is where he aims to situate the spectator's imagination, by creating an experience on the

stage where multiple temporal dimensions blend with each other. Rockaby features three characteristics that implicate the spectator into the imaginative interspace between art object and reality: first, having W's eyes open and close between stanzas suggests shifts in temporal dimensions; second, requiring the chair to rock involuntarily implicates an ambiguous force

suggesting that memory moves the rocker; and third, clothing W in a black dress with sequins creates a shimmering effect as it moves to and fro under the spotlight, creating a hypnotic visual pattern that augments the haunting visual quality of W's face rocking in and out of the tightly

focused spotlight. These attributes suggest a vacillation between inner and outer space as a means of traversing between the states of body and mind. Beckett's combination of these

characteristics with his layering of highly descriptive words that conjure mental images, which he contrasts with a relatively static physical image that encourages the spectator to create

explanations, demonstrates the ability of sound to construct sight and sight to build sound, 223 placing the spectator between the two without any interpretative clues. Since the words outline physical bodies in a perceived space, the size and shape of these figures become determined by

language, which create an imaginary space for the spectator to reconcile the clash of mental and physical images.

To emphasize the visual quality of the piece, Beckett divides Rockaby into four distinct

sections of lyric poetry demarcated with long, distinct pauses, to delineate the disparity between words and thinking. During these pauses, Beckett visually converts words into what Les Essif

calls "thought-sounds" that suggest to the spectator the existence of another layer of visual reality (73). For the duration of these moments of silence in which everything on the stage

freezes, Beckett provides the spectator with an opportunity to focus on the physical image of W's

face under a tightly focused spotlight while reflecting upon the mental images invoked by the text of the preceding stanza, which Essif considers as an opportunity to focus on the mind and

concentrate on the "picturability" of thought processes.195 In this moment, the active spectator's

imagination merges, transforms, and mutates these mental and actual images, providing a visual

image of the internal thought process that places him or her in touch with his or her inner

creative potential. The fusion of images causes a shift in the interplay between the visible

environment and the psyche, to an interplay of images within the spectator's imagination. The process develops from perception through deformation to reformation, inciting the imaginative process, as Gaston Bachelard explains:

Always one would have it that the imagination is faculty offorming images. But it is rather the faculty of deforming the images furnished by perception; it is above all the faculty of liberating ourselves from the initial images, of altering images. If there is no change in the images, no unanticipated union of images, there is no imagination, there is no imaginative process (trans, in Rogers 32).

Once again, Beckett acquired motivation from the visual arts for his artistic manipulation

of the theatre; in the case of Rockaby, scholars have identified the influence in terms of pictorial

and stylistic features on the play from a number of paintings from different historical periods. 224 Knowlson identifies Giorgione's self-portrait as David, a "tonal painting" that formulates the image based only on colour, which mesmerized Beckett during his travels to Brunswick in 1936, as inspiring his use of a sequined dress to generate shimmering effects of light and colour

{Damned 583). He also finds resemblances between Jack Yeats's painting Sleep, featuring an old woman seated by the window with her head flopped downward, and the closing moments of

Rockaby where W assumes a similar pose (Damned 583). More striking visual affinities to the play can be found in Brater's identification of James McNeill Whistler's Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother (1871) and Vincent Van Gogh's La Bergeuse (1889), to which

Knowlson adds Rembrandt's Portrait ofMargaretha Trip (de Geer) (1661), since all three works share the similarity of harmoniously integrating various painterly techniques to depict the ineffable state of matronly virtue by illustrating the internal psyche of an older woman (see figs.

51-55).

The first visual comparison one finds when examining the three paintings of motherhood and Beckett's Rockaby is their common subject. Rembrandt's Margaretha Trip depicts its subject with red-rimmed watery eyes, and a sharply-faceted flinty face, deeply carved by her years of toil. His portrait resembles the stony, weathered face of Whistler's Mother, which depicts a life of experience by focusing the figure's eyes beyond the visible space. And while van Gogh's La Bergeuse is the brightest portrait of the group with its vivid oranges for the figure's hair and strong greens for her dress, enhanced by the deep reds in the background, Van

Gogh stridently chisels the features of her face to feature a contemplative look by depicting intense blue eyes. Beckett's W, with her unkempt grey hair, huge white eyes, and expressionless face (CDW433), mirrors the facial concentration found in these three paintings. Another commonality among all four works is that the artists based their figures on real people, whom all happen to be seated in their portrayals: Rembrandt represented Margaretha de Geer (Trip),

Whister painted his mother (due to a model not arriving for a scheduled appointment), van Gogh 225 depicted Madame Roulin, while Beckett drew his figure based on his memories of his maternal

grandmother, "little Granny," and Annie Roe, "dressed in 'her best black,' sitting in a rocking

chair at the window of Cooldrinagh" {Damned 583).' A further visual similarity between all

four works is their mutual attention to hands. Rembrandt and Whistler both represent their

figures' hands as joined together with bulging veins, accented by the white handkerchiefs they

hold against their black dresses. Likewise, van Gogh emphasizes the hands of his figure by

having her clasp a cradle cord, which he emphasizes by extending it beyond the frame towards the viewer. These visual highlights on hands contribute to situating the viewer's focus on the

inner psyche of their figures since the hands often reflect a life of experience. Beckett's emphasis

on W's hands by having them clutch the arm rests of the rocker, similarly generates a clash of

mental and physical images as found in the paintings.

According to Simon Schama, Margaretha de Geer (Trip), as a study in endurance,

displays an old-fashioned conception with a modern execution in Rembrandt's artistic use of

shadow and selectively applied highlights to smooth the figure's weathered features, such as his

shadowing of his model's cheeks to plump them with vitality, in addition to his downplaying of

the elaborateness of her frills in his quest to create a simplified image, "literally without frills"

(654). Wherever harsh physical features appear, Rembrandt painted them with the gentlest touch

of the brush to capture and preserve his subject's matronly virtue and portray, in Schama's

words, "the character which the morality tracts celebrated as the unshakable foundation of their

godly commonwealth" (654). In sum, Rembrandt combines harsh features with smooth

applications to harmonize the external features with inner psyche of the figure, placing the

viewer between both. Whistler accomplishes a similar effect in Arrangement in Grey and Black

by juxtaposing smooth, thin brushstrokes of paint literally applied to the back of the canvas,

which has a rougher texture, which transfers to the side of the painting we see, adding depth to

the picture. Whistler's sheer minimalism of line and mass and sparse use of paint allows colour 226 to dominate the visual field. He further emphasizes colour with broad brushstrokes moving in all directions along the visually dominant wall, layering shades of greys and creams. Since colour dominates the visual field, Whistler juxtaposes warmer shades to soften cooler ones to harmonize the contrasts as a way of focusing the viewer's attention on the inner state of his figure. The mother avoids eye-contact with anyone in the visible space, placing her in an isolated state of contemplation, adding another layer of visual concentration. When looking at the painting, the viewer must reconcile Whistler's visual juxtaposition of paint and texture with the gaze of the figure, all of which he subsumes under the theme of motherhood.

In van Gogh's La Berqeuse, the cord of the cradle introduces the theme of maternity since it symbolizes the bond between mother and child, be it for rocking the cradle or to guide an infant's initial steps, by insinuating their original union via the umbilical cord (Graetz 165). H.

R. Graetz extends the interpretation by pointing to the horizon line that depicts two levels, which could suggest both the rocking of the cradle and the fluctuation of perspective as viewed from a ship at sea looking out at motherland. Both interpretations personify motherhood because the mother's berceuse/lullaby "was to remind the seamen, the children and the martyrs, of their infancy in the cradle with their lullabys" (Graetz 166). Combined, one can consider La Bergeuse as conjuring multiple layers of vision by superimposing the mental image of a sailor seeing home on the horizon from sea, overwhelmed with a sense of nostalgia that reminds him or her of the comforts of hearing mother's lullaby from the cradle. To bring the viewer into this imaginative sphere, the actual image conjures multiple layers of mental images that connect to each other.

Further, van Gogh signed his name on the arm of his figure's chair to align himself as close as he could with her; while not physically inscribed on her body, his signature is directly next to her, suggesting his desire to express her inner disposition. He accomplished this by synthesizing the apparently irreconcilable conventions and world-views with line and colour, combining the

Dutch use of chiaroscuro with French Impressionist ideas of colour. 227 While painting during different historical paintings using diverse techniques and styles, in their portraits of motherhood, Rembrandt, Whistler, and van Gogh all synthesize contrasting elements to overlay mental images on the depiction as a means of positioning the viewer into the essence of motherhood in their figures, which is what Beckett accomplishes with Rockaby. His repetitious use of the word "down" in the text suggests a descent through the physical and mental images to arrive at the imaginative state where boundless space meets limitless time, creating, as

Hersh Zeifman says, "a journey from the outside (a 'going to and fro' in search of another) to still deeper inside (a retreat into the room and a more passive variation of that search) to still deeper inside (the abandonment of the search through a decent into the ... [maternal] rocking chair" ("Core" 144). Beckett's synthesis of a visual and verbal elements that coalesce with each other in conjunction with the mechanical transmission of sound, light, and movement serves, as

Brater says, to "emotionalize meaning," by placing the spectator in the imaginative state between art object and reality. Due to the excess of normality in the world created on Beckett's stage, the

spectator's understanding of reality becomes a new reality by becoming more real than real, achieving the surreal, which Pablo Picasso defined as transformational perception (see 18).

With Ohio Impromptu (1981), written by request for Stan Gontarski's symposium at

Ohio State University celebrating Beckett's seventy-fifth birthday, the playwright continues his pictorial integration of word and image by denuding the theatrical experience to a series of doubles, highlighting the duality between word and image in his plays. Ohio Impromptu features two figures, identical in appearance with long white hair and long black coats, sitting at a table under a beam of light, while one, named Listener, listens to a tale read by the other, named

Reader. The narrative evokes images of loss, which start outdoors, move inside, and continue deeper into the interior of the mind. Additionally, Listener's knocks on the table serve as verbal

equivalents, since they indicate to Reader commands such as to stop or to repeat a passage until

the final one, after which "Nothing is left to tell" (CD W 44$). The play closes with the frozen 228 image of the two figures, staring at one another "as though," in Ruby Cohn's words, "they are

turned to stone" (Canon 363). As Brater identifies, Beckett strips the "dramatic bone" of Ohio

Impromptu to a glance, a gaze, a hat, a knock, and a book to create a symmetrical pattern that

demonstrates "how far an image, and a simultaneous image within that image, might be able to

go in holding the stage" (Beyond 129). By focusing the play on duality, Beckett emphasizes that

his theatre comprises the synthesis of verbal and visual images by having each mode support the

other to render any coherence to the experience. That Reader recites from a book suggests that in

Beckett's theatre the language of literature becomes visually manifest, displaying the harmonious

integration of body and spirit, word and image.

Beckett complicates the issue between the narrative and the visual in Ohio Impromptu by

doubling Reader with his mirror image, Listener, forming a stage picture of two figures with

long white hair in long black coats sitting under a pool of light where one listens to the end of a

tale read by someone of identical appearance. "With never a word exchanged," the characters

"grew to be as one" (CDW447), a concept visually sustained on stage by the single hat that

remains on the table between them. The rhythm of doubling dominates the dramatic movement;

it is contrapuntal, fugal: reading against playing, text against gest, ear against eye (Gontarski,

Intent 176). In Gontarski's view, the play presents the problems of origins, audience, and art

itself in the simple act of questioning: "Whose voice are we listening to?" and "Who is watching

what?" (Intent 111). That Beckett localizes the dramatic action of the piece in the interplay

between word and image can be seen, as with Come and Go, in the manuscript development of

the piece. Beckett's initial draft of Ohio Impromptu features an extensive text filled with nuance

and detail. In fact, the first verso contains a short introductory dialogue featuring the artist

speaking directly to his critics:

I am out on leave. Thrown out on leave. Back to time, they said, for 24 hours. Oh my god, I said, not that. 229 [Put] on this shroud, they said, lest you catch your death of cold again. Certainly not, I said. This cap, they said, for your skull. Definitely not, I said. The New World outlet, they said, in the State of Ohio. We cannot be more precise. Proceed straight to Lima [nearest campus], they said, and address them. Address whom, I said. The students, they said, and professors. Oh my god, I said, not that. Do not overstay your leave, they said, if you do not wish it to be ex­ tended. Pause. What am I to say, I said. Be yourself, they said, yourself. Myself, I said. What are you insinuating? Yourself before, they said. Pause. And after. Pause.

Not during? I said. (qtd. in Gontarski, Intent 177-178).

The play that emerges from this self-reflexive early inspiration underlines Beckett's creative process as eliminating narrative detail to refine the staged portrait. Portraying the acts of listening, seeing, and reading, Beckett stages his frustration with artistic form and the limits of communicability, prompting Daniel Albright to consider Ohio Impromptu as Beckett's return to the central artistic problem regarding the ineffable dimensions of creation that prompted him to turn to the theatre in the first place.197

Illuminating Beckett's creative process, Ohio Impromptu announces itself as a play about the communicability of artistic form by featuring word and image, the "sister arts," comment on each other as a type of "auto-critique" (McMullan 113). As per Beckett's dramatic style, the visual image remains mostly static, while the text takes the form of a monologue. The narrative of the piece describes the end of a story regarding the finding of a lost love, while the scenic dimension emphasizes the reading and reception of the narrative manifested through the onstage figures. The combined effect enacts the process of fictional creation and autobiography in particular—in McMullan's words: "the self as creator of fictional selves" (114). 230 The play's image takes on a spatial rather than temporal quality, enabling it to remain fixed in the perceiver's eye, similar to a still life (McMullan 114). Though the image remains predominantly static throughout the piece, select moments of gesture in conjunction with the details of the text prompt the viewer into a continual re-modification of the image. During the course of delivering the narrative, the relatively static image allows the imagination to envision other images that the text evokes, but the brief gestures by the characters on stage return the spectator to the immediate present of the stage itself. In the final gesture, after all the words have been read, the characters lower their right hands to the table and raise their heads to look at each other, forming a mirror image, and infusing the scene with a sense of intimacy. McMullan succinctly summarizes the evolution of the dominant visual image from a formal relationship to one invested with an emotional charge:

During the repeated phrases in particular, we construct an emotional response towards the text on Listener's part. There is therefore an evolution in our perception of the stage image. While at first it appears rather formal - its 'formality' emphasized by the symmetry - it gradually becomes emotionally invested through the growing relationship between Listener and Reader and between the narrative and the figures on stage (116-117).

At the nucleus of Beckett's manipulation of artistic form lies the desire to transfer an emotional context to the spectator. The juxtaposition of image and text leads to composition of a strict, formal image, from which to transmit other expressive forms. Toying with appearance and disappearance, Ohio Impromptu, as with all Beckett's plays, brings the spectator to the edge of theatrical definition itself, that moment when the mind's eye perceives itself seeing, and thinks itself thinking the mise-en-scene (Kubiak 108).

In tracing the visual inspiration for Ohio Impromptu, Avidgor Arikha speculates Gerard

Terborch's A Group of Monks (c. 1617-1681) as a possible source, since Beckett was familiar with the painting, having seen it the National Gallery in Ireland many times (see figs. 56, 57)

(Atik 6).198 While Terborch's painting features four figures compared to Beckett's two, the 231 Dutch painter employs a similar doubling feature one finds in the playwright's drama by duplicating the two monks with black caps and the two lay brothers with brown caps, in addition to having one of each pair be seated at a table. The long black coats of Reader and Listener in the play mirror the robes worn by the members of Order of the Capuchins in the painting, all of which suggests figures who have renounced materialism to explore the deeper recesses of existence. Within the relatively dark frame of the portrait, Terborch's uses warm crimson for the tablecloth to generate a layer of depth to the portrayal, encouraging the viewer to look beyond the literal representation. Terborch suggests this interpretation due to evidence of pentimento on the younger monk by first depicting him in profile, which creates the effect of a doubling of image that provokes the viewer to consider multiple perspectives within the overlay. Further, the elderly monk holds a book in his hands entitled Enfermero (Infermariari), which generates a layer of mental images on the representation, paralleling the same function of the book in

Beckett's Ohio Impromptu.

Inspired by the monochrome portraits of the Haarlem school, Terborch's style exchanges the dazzling brushwork of his "bravura-conscious" contemporaries for a sober, painstaking approach emphasizing subtlety and detail (Wright 190). To describe the aim of Terborch's painterly outlook, Sturla Gudlaugsson connects Dutch painting to emblematics, claiming that

"[...] the master's art defies reduction to one, unequivocal meaning [...] because he made very conscious use of the 'ambivalence' of iconographical motifs and meanings [...]" (qtd. in

Grijzenhout 216). Labeling Terborch's iconography as intentionally "ambivalent," leaving the viewer to consider the presentational form of the painting, parallels the overall ambiguity presented in Beckett's Ohio Impromptu, which leaves the audience wondering whether to concentrate on the story or the image of reading.

Knowlson also calls Ohio Impromptu "a thoroughly Rembrandtesque composition," likely deriving from Beckett's appreciation of the Portrait of Jacob Trip (see fig. 23), which 232 prominently figures in Endgame. In the case of Ohio Impromptu, it is worth revisiting

Rembrandt's technique of depth perception in Jacob Trip as a way of illustrating Beckett's transformation of three dimensions into two. In the Portrait of Jacob Trip, Rembrandt generates a sense of depth from a two-dimensional surface. To stimulate the viewer into a mode of contemplative conversation with the painting, Rembrandt scuffed the paint surface of the portrait to remove any shape or contour from the brushwork, allowing it to lead its own existence

(Schama 654). Rembrandt's approach derives from an optical principle maintaining that rough edges in painting engage and stimulate the activity of the eye more than smooth ones, generating different relationships between artist and viewer, as Schama explains:

The unequivocally completed, clear and polished work of art is an act of authority, presented to the spectator like a gift or a declaration, something requiring acceptance rather than an answering-back. The roughly fashioned, apparently unfinished painting, on the other hand, is more akin to an initiated conversation, a posed question, demanding an engaged response from the beholder for its completion. Smooth artists necessarily take pains to conceal to the utmost any of the revisions and alterations they might have made on the way to the finished object. Rough artists deliberately expose the working processes of composition as a way of pulling the spectator further into the image (654).

The Portrait of Jacob Trip also employs a range of material additives to the pigment, such as charcoal, chalk, and silica, to create a rich, varied, and complicated texture to the painting

(Schama 655). Art historians discovered the use of smalt—a blue pigment made from crushed

cobalt particles—in the underlayer of Rembrandt's portrait to give the canvas a "gritty body" from the way the painted colours dried on top of it (Schama 655). In Schama's estimation:

"Rembrandt is thinking and acting three dimensionally here, but not in an effort to make the picture plane transparent, to make it a window into illusionistically manufactured space. On the

contrary, he is blocking off that window with opaque, elaborately worked paint so that his third dimension is in the paint itself (655). The sum of Rembrandt's various techniques suggests that he used a rough surface to stimulate the viewer's imagination into focusing on the texture of the paint itself; it emphasizes presentational form in the same way that Ohio Impromptu juxtaposes 233 narrative and visual images to engender the same type of aesthetic contemplation for its

audience. The narrative of the play describes the losing and regaining of love, while the scene portrays the reading and reception of the narrative, leading McMullan to surmise that "[f]he play

can indeed be seen as a staging of the processes of fictional creation and of autobiography in particular: the self as creator of fictional selves" (114). The image and narrative become

compressed as one through the icon of the book, the pages of which are usually flat, exposing the

instability of artistic form. Drawing their audiences to consider expressive form itself, both

Rembrandt and Beckett experiment with creating the illusion of transforming one dimension into

another. Importing a general image from Terborch, and the aesthetics of depth perception from

Rembrandt, Beckett illustrates his own aesthetic frustration with artistic expression in Ohio

Impromptu by pitting reading against viewing.

With Beckett's second to last stage play, Catastrophe (1982), the seventy-six year old playwright began nearing the end of his artistic career. Having pushed the limits of theatrical

expression as far as he could, Beckett exercised the opportunity to write a play describing his

own theatrical process for an evening of performances in support of the imprisoned Czech playwright Vaclav Havel. In Catastrophe, Beckett utilizes language to detail the human sculpture that simultaneously describes his artistic process, which he admitted was painful and torturous.

The opening of the play displays a bare stage with Director, wearing a fur toque and coat, sitting

in an armchair, with his female Assistant, in white overalls, standing next him, and Protagonist,

draped in a black dressing gown topped with a black wide brimmed hat, perching midstage on an

eighteenth inch plinth. The lack of defined locale suggests that the play explores something other

than a realistic scene. The opening visual tableau of Director and Assistant contemplatively

staring at Protagonist, with head bowed to conceal view of all facial expressions, arouses

curiosity regarding the identity of this figure.199 Beckett employs a synthesis of semi-naturalistic movement, gestures, and language found in his early plays as a means to expose his staging of a 234 living portrait. The opening dialogue of the play immediately establishes its emphasis on perception:

A: [Finally.] Like the look of him? D: So so. [Pause.] Why the plinth? A: To let the stalls see the feet (CDW 457).

While Beckett establishes Protagonist as the feature of the piece, he does not give the character a verbal identity, indicating that he perceives him as an object to contend with rather than as a human being. Further, the opening visual image of Protagonist with head bowed, conceals his facial expression, and portrays a faceless figure whom Director can shape at will:

A: Like that cranium?

D: Needs whitening (CDW459).

Beckett's use of white to describe how Director wishes to see the head of Protagonist indicates his artistic motive as fixated on stimulating the spectator's imagination to where one can conjure and overlay multiple images over the actual one, as Peter Gidal explains: [...] the examples of "the white" in various representational practices (writing, painting, theatre, film) are given not as analogies for something else, but as usages inscribed in the process of making, constructing, producing as artifice, as opposed to experiencing "what is" natural (39).

In spite of Director's treatment of Protagonist as sculptural material, the spectator recognizes that the construction of this particular mise-en-scene entails the painful treatment of a human being, positioning him or her in the interspace between Protagonist's condition and Director's artistic quest.

Beckett's manipulation of words and images suggests that he views the artistic process as scientific and clinical, as aptly argued by Bert O. States. Beckett's explicit references to bodily parts such as skull, hands, toes, and shins, in conjunction with the Assistant's appearance in a white lab coat, implies that his theatre relentlessly probes the limits of artistic form to place the spectator in a heightened state of self-awareness. References to plinth, night attire, moutling, fibrous degeneration, cranium, along with the request for more nudity, not only echo the 235 influence of expressionism on his aesthetic outlook, but also lend a "clinical objectivity" to this rehearsal process, since they describe the creation of a sculptural object without offering anything regarding his true character (States, "Catastrophe" 15). The laboratory-like atmosphere created by the clinical treatment of Protagonist reverberates with the spectator by its similarity to medical examinations, localizing his or her emotional centre in the uncomfortable state of being probed and prodded by another in search for some answer, increasing the sensation of terror, aided by the images induced by the language. States also makes clear a third level of tyranny over the human body to add to those of the theatre director and the surgeon: physical torture by those who carry out the orders of political heads of state. Beckett looks back to the Nazis, and gives tribute to Vaclav Havel's enduring incarceration.

In Catastrophe, Beckett self-reflexively explores his theatre by examining his process of painting a living portrait of a figure on the stage. Of all expressive forms, the performing arts primarily rely on living people to serve as artistic form. Beckett's Catastrophe illustrates the manner in which his theatre molds actors like clay to abstract the figure from the personality in pursuit of his "catastrophe." One instance occurs when Director, seemingly assured that his artistic form will not rebel against his directions, discards Assistant's suggestion to gag

Protagonist, feeling confident that the actor will not utter a sound because he has stripped him of all human dignity. Director maintains an air of self-confidence throughout the play by never second-guessing his decisions.

In its self-reflexive look at Beckett's theatrical process, Catastrophe illustrates the extreme authority artists maintain in their manipulation of audiences. One example occurs when

Director shouts criticisms from offstage:

D: [Off, plaintive.} I can't see the toes. [Irritably.] I'm sitting in the front row of the stalls and can't see the toes (CDW 459). 236 The offstage command emerging from the darkness elicits the feeling that Director sees himself as a god possessing an omnipresent and omnipotent voice. Further, his constant monitoring of his chronometer suggests that he controls time. Beckett creates an ironic twist in which Director's desire to display the horrors of a catastrophe literally becomes a catastrophe in his brutal treatment of Protagonist, stripping him of his clothes so that he shivers, and his dictatorial conduct with Assistant, rebuking her suggestions with sarcasm. With these actions, Beckett illustrates the egotistical nature of the artist, obsessed with creating the perfect art object, and criticizes his own compulsive drive for the perfect stage image as overlooking the human concerns of the collaborative team that makes theatre happen.

Using words to paint an image in the play-within-the-play that comprises Catastrophe,

Beckett not only discloses the mechanics of his visual approach to the theatre, but also illustrates the impossibility of artists to manipulate form effectively enough to express completely their feelings, pointing to his own frustration with expressivity of language. At the end of the play, once Director has his catastrophe "in the bag," Protagonist defiantly raises his head, fixing his gaze on the audience, demonstrating in a single image the strength of the human spirit in the face of tyranny, as well as Beckett's defiance of traditional forms of representation. As Brater remarks, Protagonist performs an expressionist mime of statuesque quality, creating character via the comprehensive lexicon of silent gesture that at the same time suspends time in stage space

(Beyond 148). Inasmuch as the play operates on the literal level of criticizing Beckett's own treatment of actors and technicians in his fervent quest to condense the dramatic experience to the apprehension of an image, having brought his most revered actor Billie Whitelaw to tears during rehearsal on at least one occasion, it also shows the strong capacity of the human mind to use the imagination as way of attaining omnipotent sight. As a summative comment on his career

in the theatre, Beckett demonstrates with Catastrophe that no matter how meticulous an artist may be in shaping form, not one communicative mode adequately expresses one's true insights 237 and emotions, no matter his or her "craze for explicitation" {CDW 459). Having accepted this premise, the artist then realizes that artistic form itself demands no reverence, and that at best all he or she can do is to manipulate various communicative tools in the hope of placing the recipient into an imaginative state where all realities can be manifested.

The sculptural quality of Protagonist in Catastrophe derives from Albrecht Diirer's The

Virgin in Prayer (1518), in particular Assistant's manipulating of Protagonist's hands until they are raised mid-breast in a pose resembling Diirer's depiction of hands in prayer (see figs. 58, 59)

(Knowlson, Images 76). Dtirer emphasizes the hands by carefully modeling them, revealing that they are not the hands of a fine lady, but rather those of a peasant, suggesting that they are worn from years of toil, which resembles Protagonist's "clawlike" hands, decaying due to "fibrous degeneration" (CDW458). Another similarity between the painting and the play is that both artists reveal the inner psyche of their figures. H. T. Musper notices that in Diirer's painting, the figure wears a blue kerchief on her head, over which she has positioned her mantle in a manner that allows the viewer to see more of its orange lining, which in the shadows deepens to red, revealing her inner disposition (118). Beckett employs a similar technique to that of Diirer by having Director prompt Assistant gradually strip Protagonist's clothes until he remains shivering in a nightshirt and rolled up trousers. Diirer's figure also has rose-coloured sleeves with white highlights, which emerge through slits in her bright blue mantle that echo Director's repeated calls for more "whitening" to Protagonist's increasingly exposed body parts. An added commonality between Diirer's painting and Beckett's play is their lack of any landscape to facilitate creating the "ideal image," resulting in strict frontal positing and over-plastic modeling by displaying figures against a neutral backdrop (Panofsky 201). Heinrich Wolfflin explains this

"sculptural sense of form" in Diirer's painting:

If the idea of seeing space in a clear geometric way was to gain a footing, it had to come through an artist whose senses were directed with total commitment towards concrete, tangible objects, and who really felt that objects in space 238 displaced the air and who had a strong awareness of their swellings and curvatures. It is this sensuousness of perception which made him discover his new lines and which gives his representations their infectious feel {Diirer 277).

Diirer aimed to represent objects as they actually exist, noting their sculptural mass, rather than

as they appear, indicating that he observed them with minute precision, paying attention to the

smallest of details, ensuring "every i dotted to death," echoing Beckett's Director (CDW 459).200

However, inasmuch as both artists concentrate their focus on minuscule observations, they both recognize that the details are subordinate to the overall impression. In Virgin in Prayer, Diirer focuses on essential and decisive features to reveal the figure in perfect clarity. In Catastrophe,

Beckett has Director dictate to Assistant a number of modifications to Protagonist's stance until he is shaped into a perfect form, for display under a beam of light focused on his head. For

Director, as for Beckett, Protagonist represents the prefect sculpture, the perfect catastrophe.

Ultimately, Diirer and Beckett both painstakingly piece together particular details according to a clear conception of the object to endow the picture with a sense of simplicity that covers layers of complexity.

Catastrophe stands as Beckett's most self-reflective play that illustrates his approach to the theatre by demonstrating the great lengths he undertakes to achieve his artistic goal of staging

a living sculpture. In the play, he illustrates how he disregards artistic form, which in his theatre

includes the living actor, by mutating it to its extreme ends for the purposes of placing the

spectator in the deep recesses of the imagination by focusing concentration on a dominant stage image. Brater points out that from as early as his 1937 essay on Dennis Devlin, Beckett

considered the artistic process as a process of pure interrogation to situate the recipient in

genuine self-consciousness, which he believed was generated by the image (Brater, Beyond 145;

Beckett, Disjecta 91, 94). In addition to being self-reflexive, Catastrophe is also self-critical, as

Brater explains: "In a series of carefully calibrated movements, Beckett makes us study [...] how 239 horrifying the stage image can become, how pitiful the stimulus can be, before the audience is ready to cry, 'hold, enough'" {Beyond 145).

What Where (1983), "the last of Beckett's 'torture' pieces in which a victim is coerced to speak," is his final play for theatre (Cohn, Canon 377). As Beckett's last stage play, What Where serves as a distant reflection on his dramatic corpus. In the theatre, What Where "investigates the theatricality of a fading image on another level of reality, Beckett's own, as the playwright draws us further and further into the recesses of a single tableau" (Brater, Beyond 152). In Cohn's estimation, Beckett's final play shows the playwright's attempt to translate to the stage problems encountered in the writing of his recent fiction; she describes the play as an endeavour to be objectively self-reflective: "The imagining self seeks distance from his work, yet he tries to pierce to the whatness and whereness of that work" {Canon 'ill). On the stage, four figures,

Bom, Bim, Bern, and Bam, enter and exit in a choreography of constant permutation among them. However, when Beckett came to direct What Where for German television, he completely reworked the piece by excising one quarter of the text, and substituting the full figures for mask­ like faces. After completing the television version, Beckett considered it superior to the stage play, making the second incarnation in a different medium the definitive version. Nonetheless,

What Where maintains the visual concentration found in his later plays, and the patterned entrances and exits that create a circular feel, echoes the choreography found in his preceding works. Until the end of his artistic career, Beckett maintained his appreciation for the visual arts and employed many techniques from the genre to develop his theatrical vision.

§2: The Phenomenology of Perception

Samuel Beckett reveals his regard for works of art as living objects in his essay "Dante ...

Bruno . Vico .. Joyce" when he describes the transformation of words into hieroglyphics in the prose of James Joyce and Charles Dickens: "This writing that you find so obscure is a 240 quintessential extraction of language and painting and gesture, with all the inevitable clarity of the old inarticulation. Here is the savage economy of hieroglyphics. Here words are not the polite contortions of 20* century printer's ink. They are alive. They elbow their way on to the page, and glow and blaze and fade and disappear" {Disjecta 28).201 His mention of the "savage economy of hieroglyphics" bridges the formal differences between painting and language by pointing to an expressive form that combines both. Beckett's comment divulges his view that the function of art strives to transfer sensations directly to the recipient without relying on secondary systems of articulation. In Beckett's view, while artists confront the task of achieving pure expression by embedding their ideas into an expressive from that conceals the separation of creator and object, at best they can only aspire to "[...] express as much as possible, or as finely as possible, to the best of one's ability" {Disjecta 142-143). Accordingly, he considers the artistic project a failure, but one that must be pursued in search for the teleology of art: "The history of painting, here we go again, is the history of its attempts to escape from this sense of failure, by means of more authentic, more ample, less exclusive relations between representer and representee [...]" {Disjecta 145). Beckett's aesthetic outlook resembles imagist theory in that it promotes the harmonization of elements that comprise an art object by making transparent the disparate seams of the structure, allowing the expression to stand-alone.

Based on his view of art, Beckett appreciated the direct communicability of visual images over verbal ones, leading him to the realization of the impotence of language, as Rupert Wood elucidates: "Beckett starts from the premise that the painting is a pure object, which, as it were, waits to be disfigured by human attention. It is, in its pristine state, 'un non-sens'. The disfigurement is 'un double massacre' perpetuated by perception and conception; the 'risible impreinte cerebrate' is disfigured even futher by the 'assissinat verbal'. The object is ill seen, the image ill said" (10). A painting directly communicates to the viewer until he or she potentially destroys it by relating the experience in words. Beckett sought the same status for all works of art 241 by striving in his own artistic endeavours to confront the irreparable breakdown of subject and object. Consequently, he considered the ideal recipient to be the "hapless amateur" who experiences art without bias, and the artist as facing a situation wherein "[...] there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express" (Disjecta 139).202

Obliged to express, artists encounter the compositional problem of uncovering an alternative means to replace logic, causality, and verisimilitude in the creative process to create art that philosophy cannot adequately translate into its vocabulary. As a result, in his own artistic endeavours, Beckett sought a form of expression that develops from the writing process itself, rather than applying a formula, by looking for patterns that support the work's structure, as

Gontarski says:

Beckett's process of composition usually follows the following lines, often simultaneously: after the initial image or incident is recorded (often straight from memory or unconscious), what follows is a shaping process that includes: (1) deleting detail, explanation, and often connection; (2) rejecting, consciously destroying those artificial, manmade, extrinsic systems of chronology and causality; and (3) creating an alternative arrangement or internal relationship that will emphasize pattern if not order. This view of Beckett's creative process accounts for one of the peculiarities one notices examining his manuscripts: the core material (central situation and dominant images) is often present from the earliest draft, culled from memory or nightmare, and yet meticulous revision follows meticulous revision ("Beckett's Art" 20-21).

Based on Gontarski's assessment, one detects Beckett's deliberate distillation of the theatrical process in his quest to delimit the various communicative vehicles of the theatre from imposing their own formal structures over the complete expression. Inspired by the ability of painting to communicate ideas in a single image, Beckett adopted a reductive aesthetic methodology that produces theatre featuring a potent physical image, overlaid by various mental images, generating an aesthetic experience similar to encountering a painting (i.e. the conditions dictated by the distance between the viewer and the painting on the gallery wall and the angle of gaze that the image projects).203 In the moment of seeing, the viewer's position in relation to the picture 242 becomes indistinguishable from one's engagement with it, compressing a multi-stage process into a single act (Benton 26).

One of the fundamental qualities of painting that Beckett applied to his theatre is its ability to transmit directly the sensations of an experience without requiring an intermediary decoding process, as illustrated by Diane Collinson's comment explaining the difference between experiencing a painting and discussing it: "[...] if we think back to the remark 'Ah, that sunlit field', it is the 'Ah' more than the 'sunlit field' that reveals the sensuous immediacy of the aesthetic moment. For it is not an experience in which we formulate an intellectual judgment to the effect that a vision of a sunlit field has been wondrously depicted. Rather, we experience the vision for ourselves; we are admitted to the painter's point of view" (qtd. in Benton 27). When looking at a painting, the viewer, with his or her personal history, becomes absorbed in the

"world" of the depiction, since painting represents a place of disclosure rather than reference.

Beckett's plays strive to generate the same experience for the spectator by presenting tight, confining settings wherein the physical body becomes the point of revelation. The words in

Beckett's plays serve, as he said to Billie Whitelaw, "what pharmacists call the excipient"

(Esslin, "Towards the Zero" 35).1" In Beckett's plays, words "sweeten" the image by generating mental images to make the visual presentation palatable for theatre audiences unaccustomed to staring solely at a static image; though, one must remember that entertainment was not his primary artistic goal, as revealed in the following exchange between Whitelaw and Beckett:

At one point I told him: 'Sam, if I go any slower I'm going to grind to a halt. I'm going to bore the audience to death.' 'Bore them to death,' he said. 'Bore the pants off them.' And I thought, I'm doing this under his instructions, on his head be it, it's his play (Whitelaw 145).

In pharmaceutical terms, excipient refers to an inert substance, such as starch, that is combined with a drug to make it easier to administer. 243 Beckett's theatre strives to create experiences that transmit an experience to a spectator in the same way a painting does to a viewer by reducing action to near stasis, emphasizing the contour of his pieces, as he readily admitted: "I am interested in the shape of ideas even if I do not believe them," he said, "It is the shape that matters" (qtd. in Hobson 153). His plays require audiences to suspend logic and reason and look at the profile of the piece. To avoid unraveling the tightly woven details of his plays, Beckett superimposes mental images over the physical one, coupled with periods of silence, which give the spectator an opportunity to consolidate the ambiguities raised by this collision of images into a composite picture. The result produces a form of aesthetic distance that simultaneously admits the recipient's imagination into the material representation while maintaining his or her autonomous identity, paralleling the experience of viewing a painting; Benton elaborates:

[...] the onlooker role is not constant. Their spectatorship will vary in the intensity of its commitment and attention at different phases of the viewing process. [...] The concept of aesthetic distance expresses our sense of relationship with the depiction; it acknowledges that our sense of scene and materiality is in a state of continuous change; and it indicates the horizons beyond which the secondary world ceases to exist (34).

The process demands intermixing the immediate experience with the recipient's history, giving life to the art object, as Mikel Dufrene makes clear in relation to the visual arts: "For the painting to live in us, it must live with us as a familiar object, but one that is striking and inexhaustible"

(139). Although the general purpose of all art is to transport the recipient into new imaginative states, the fact that painting and Beckett's theatre rely on the primacy of perception in their invocation of "possible worlds" necessitates distinguishing their ability to stimulate the recipient's imagination from other art forms where the eye does not serve as the physical terminus for the stimuli released by the art work.20 The heightened visual quality of theatre offers the possibility of mirroring the display feature of painting since the constructed world is

"put on display" for audiences through ostension rather than description (Elam 110-111). Beckett 244 enlarges the visual qualities of his plays to focus them on the act of perception, since there is a relationship between vision and one's psychomotor abilities, as Dufrenne clarifies: "Certainly perception is active, and, as [Paul] Klee remarks, our eye grazes over (broute) the painting, and our entire body takes part in this exploration: vision does not involve the eye alone, it summons all our psychomotor powers [...]" (139). Though painting "celebrates the enigma of vision," vision itself transcends to focus on the mystery of appearing (Dufrenne 139), which is what

Beckett's plays accomplish in their overlay of mental and physical images. Since the theatre communicates through various means, Beckett's choice to use the stage to substantiate a visual conception indicates that he disregards the development of dramatic action in its traditional sense, to generate the act of perception similar to when one views a painting.

Beckett's admiration for painting stems from its ability to engross the viewer immediately into the world projected within the frame; a world in which all sensations coalesce into a single perception since, as Maurice Merleau-Ponty says: "[I]t is impossible [...] to decompose a perception, to make it into a collection of sensations, because in it the whole is prior to the parts" {Primacy 15). As a means toward isolating the phenomenological intersection between Beckett's visual theatre and painting, one can begin with the fact that both art forms project the presence of a hypothetical world by visual means. While evoking the act of perception, the recipient becomes self-conscious of his or her identity, actions, and sensations, making him or her reflectively aware of thought and action. This reflective self-consciousness emphasizes both the object of contemplation and the recipient's subjective reaction, forming a contraplex* process that "cannot look outward at a painting without an accompanying sense of the response evoked within; it cannot look inward without the awareness of the object out there as its catalyst" (Benton 28). The theatre, according to Kier Elam, relies on the presence of a hypothetical world, whereby the spectator accepts the characters via the actors to designate the

* The term contraplex in this context pertains to the sending of two messages in opposite directions at the same time. 245 "here and now" as a contrary construct in which to be engrossed (113-114). Enabled to view the characters in a defined environment, the spectator participates with their seeing of things through space to detect the nature and limits of their experience, as Bruce Wilshire elaborates: "Within the frame of the theatre, where there can be no enactment without typification and generalization, the particular human, either actor or member of the audience, stands open to a revealing restructuring of his humanity, a restructuring to which he allows free experimental play for the moment" (105). And through the "experimental play" generated by the theatrical moment, the spectator delves into his or her imagination to construct "possible worlds" (alternative texts) to consider the "ways things could have been" resulting from reactions to the stimuli projected from the stage (Elam 100).205

In Beckett's theatre, the human body undertakes the role of defining the situated space through its embodiedness, as Pierre Chabert remarks: "[0]ne must understand [Beckett's theatre] as a deliberate and intense effort to make the body come to light, to give the body its full weight, dimension, and its physical presence....to construct a physical and sensory space, filled with the presence of the body, to affirm., .a space invested by the body" ("Body" 24). Within the dramatic design of his pieces, Beckett emphasizes the corporeality of actor and character by highlighting sustenance as a means of embodying the created environment. The tramps in Waiting for Godot fuss over turnips and carrots while waiting on the desolate dirt road. The character in Act Without

Words I reaches for a carafe of water dangling above him from some unknown source. Figure A in Act Without Words //bites off, chews, and spits out a piece of carrot as part of the character's routine. In Endgame, Hamm deceives his father Nagg into hearing his story with the promise of a sugar plum, of which there are no more. In Krapp 's Last Tape, the voice of the character as a young man refers to having eaten three bananas with difficulty refraining from consuming a fourth one, which would be "fatal" for a man with his "condition." The audience has just seen the older figure stroke, peel, and suck two bananas, one of which he eats. Even in his plays that 246 do not highlight the act of consumption, Beckett foregrounds aspects of the body. In Play, three heads appear from urns. Not I features a disembodied mouth, while That Time depicts a severed head. Footfalls emphasizes the movement of feet. Catastrophe sculpts the human form. In foregrounding corporeality, Beckett brings to the attention of the spectator the relationship between spatiality and the human body by presenting a physical reality separated by space from the audience member's own reality. Recalling that the theatrical project materializes as an "act of giving," phenomenology's concentration on the study of "givenness" encapsulates the essence of the theatrical experience with its emphasis on the world as one experiences it, rather than objectifying, abstracting, and conceptualizing it. With its "characterological" dimension, theatre presents the experiential phenomena of corporeal presence (coupled with perceptual and linguistic procedures) into figures that comprise its represented world, contributing to the phenomenal "layering" of performance where experiential and perceptual worlds overlap

(Garner, Bodied 7).

In considering Beckett's plays as generating for the spectator the experience of viewing a painting, the phenomenology of perception helps identify the essential qualities of the act, and helps transcend considerations of artistic form by focusing solely on perception; as Dufrenne reveals, articulating the phenomenological motto: "[...] the thing it describes is entangled with man, but it is precisely the thing that is proposed to man before an objectivizing thought takes its distance from it and undertakes to reduce or explain it" (160). Phenomenology considers the imagination as distinguishing the actuality from one's preconceptions to return the meaning of the actuality itself by linking the senses with the imagination to eliminate prejudicial thought; in

Wilshire's words: "To free the senses we must free the mind - and conversely" (12). Garner's phenomenological study of performance in contemporary drama acclaims Beckett's plays for provoking their phenomenological situations, and for their expanding of the field by phenomenologizing the stage {Bodied 8).206 For the audience, situated in the phenomenological 247 continuum of space through physical proximity, theatrical mirroring links spectator with performer through corporeal mimetic identification, whereby the act of seeing discloses its source in the phenomenal realm and in the body that represents its spatial location (Garner,

Bodied 4). "The embodied /of theatrical spectatorship is grounded," Garner proclaims, "in an embodied eye" (Bodied 4); and in Beckett's theatre the I/eye homophone implied in his plays only becomes recognized when seen and experienced (Fischer-Seidel 72). Dominated by the act of perception, Beckett's plays focus on the spatiality between the phenomenal world and spectator situated in his or her own imaginative realm. Using the theatrical medium to illuminate this pre-analytic phenomenological space, his plays feature the experience of the body in the moment as the primary purpose of his art.

Merleau-Ponty locates the perceptive act within the corporeality of the human body, suggesting that this pre-reflexive act is not solely a mental or imaginative operation, but rather a function of all one's sensory, motor, and affective capacities working together. These dynamics comprise an awareness of the body's positioning and unity; an awareness that facilitates a rendering of the world into intelligible schema.2 7 The condition for this ontological reciprocity arises from the body's location in a distinct position, which organizes the perceptual field into channels according to their proximity to the perceiving body. In Merleau-Ponty's view, the demarcation of the phenomenal space does not concern the actual, physical distance between the projected stimuli from the object and the recipient, but rather the sensational environment created in that space: "The distance from me to the object is not a size which increases or decreases, but a tension which fluctuates around a norm. An oblique position of the object in relation to me is not measured by the angle which it forms with the plane of my face, but [rather] felt as a lack of balance, as an unequal distribution of its influences on me" (Phenomenology 103). The body serves as the centre for distinguishing and articulating specific objects from the multiplicity of their sensible qualities; the perceived object is, in Merleau-Ponty's words, "a totality open to an 248 horizon of an indefinite number of perspectival views which blend with one another according to a given style, which defines the object in question" (Primacy 16).

Merleau-Ponty's emphasis on the conditions of perception serves as a general premise describing the pre-scientific deconstruction of all experience. These conditions manifest themselves in the reception of painting, since in the act of perception one abstracts the elements that make up the whole to qualify the unified experience; in Michael Podro's words:

[T]he sense in which the painting selects from, connects and reconstructs the subject in the medium and procedures of painting; and, because these things are indissolubly connected, it is concerned with the way that the drawing or painting directs itself to the mind of the perceiver, who sees the subject remade within it, sees a new world which exists only in painting and can be seen only by the spectator who attends to the procedures of painting (qtd. in Benton 32).

In experiencing painting, the subject of the piece projects toward an active viewer, creating a space between object and recipient wherein essence of the experience materializes, characterizing the same qualities generated by Beckett's plays, as Garner describes:

In Beckett's dramaturgy - where light, darkness, movement, and position are given status equal to the linguistic text - performance field is rearticulated as visual field, and the plays themselves reflect an essentially scenographic conception. Even the actor's body becomes (in Beckett's hands) a kind of artistic material. In Pierre Chabert's words, the body in Beckett's theater "is worked, violated even, much like the raw material of the painter or sculptor, in the service of a systematic exploration of all possible relationships between the body and movement, the body and space, the body and objects, the body and light and the body with words" (Bodied 54-55).

Garner's account emphasizes the corporeality of the presented body; but onstage, the body becomes objectified and woven into the total presentation, thereby comprising part of the phenomenal world, which the spectator experiences and reconciles in the imagination to qualify his or her response. One must note that human perception initiates from a subjective body that structures one's phenomenal field from a defined vantage point that cannot account for the world as it recedes beyond one's body's immediate grasp. Human perception fluctuates in an ever- renewing process of restructuring—perception restructures according to variances in position, and 249 the imagination reshapes the formed impression. The world's refusal to remain fixed obliges the body to reposition itself in relation to changes in the world-at-large. Since art strives to accomplish the transference of sensation to the recipient, the reception of painting involves examining the interplay between the general and particular dimensions of bodily existence.

Because the painter transforms the visible world into new meanings or signs from his or her own acts of perception, a painter's interpretation of context becomes a crystallized form of singular perception that, when received, initiates a dialogue originating from the work itself.

In Merleau-Ponty's view, the union between art object and recipient arises from the fact that seeing necessarily denotes a reciprocal act; as one sees, one recognizes that one's self is also visible to being seen ("Am I as much as ... being seen?") leading to the conjoining of one's facticity with the experience:

The visible can ... fill and occupy me only because I who see it do not see it from the midst of nothingness, but from the midst itself; 1 the seer am also visible. What makes the weight, the thickness, the flesh of each colour, of each sound, of each tactile texture, of the present, and of the world, is the fact that he who grasps them feels himself emerge from them by a sort of coiling up or redoubling, fundamentally homogeneous with them, he feels that he is the sensible itself coming to itself (Visible 113-114).

When one sees oneself in the act of seeing, or touches oneself in the act of touching, one becomes aware of the reciprocity, and this awareness arises in the creation of painting. Artistic creation represents neither the imitation of the world as object by painter as subject, nor the subjective projection of the world according to the artist's imagination, but rather the fusion of self with world. Merleau-Ponty suggests that the "voice of the spirit" within speaking and writing inhabits the pauses and spaces between the signs and what is absent, in what is not said rather than said, echoing Beckett's comment to McWhinnie to reduce the image in That Time on the principle that "less is more." In the case of painting, silence represents that aspect of the painter's work that resists formalism and analysis, and no language, including non-fictional prose, can ever escape from the "precariousness of mute forms of expression" (Johnson 33). 250 Expressivity resides in that phenomenal space between the object and the artist's eye, between the material form of the artwork and the recipient's eye. The image, as neither a replica of reality nor a mental impression, serves as an icon depicting a mode of perception that reveals the subjective complexities of experience to viewers who focus their gaze alongside the contour of the image rather than penetrating through it.

The motivation grounding Beckett's theatre in a phenomenological context derives, as

Garner recognizes, from approaching the theatrical enterprise as a field perceptually and materially oriented in terms of spectator, actor, and character (2). Yet, there exists no "complete" phenomenology of theatrical perception, the performing body, or the stage itself (Garner, Bodied

4-5). Consequently, the drive toward considering phenomenology stems from its emphasis in examining the particular over the universal by contextualizing the general into the local instance, thereby offering precise modes of awareness rather than a succinct set of methodological aims

(Garner, Bodied 4-5). The decision to invoke the specific phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty derives from his impetus to investigate that basic stratum of one's experiences in the world as received prior to systematic interpretation via perception. Having determined that Beckett's plays strive foremost to transmit the emotional immediacy of their contexts, Merleau-Ponty's ideas regarding perception as the mode to seeing and describing the world as perceived provides a framework within which to articulate the immanence of experience without omitting its meanings and absences of meaning, which aids in aligning the experience of Beckett's plays with the phenomena of receiving painting.

Reactions to experiencing Beckett's plays inspire widespread responses because his theatre resists conventional form. The works comprise the material of the stage, but the dramatic action of the pieces does not enact the cause and effect structure of traditional drama. Rather,

Beckett's plays create a "staged painting" by using a reductive methodology to diminish dramatic action to near stasis. The works aim to transmit a pure, unmitigated emotional sensation 251 akin to one's experience when viewing a painting. The phenomenology of perception inherent in the reception of both art works provided Beckett the opportunity to shape the stage according to visual art principles, an art form with which he was enamoured for all of his life. The theatre gave Beckett the freedom to paint with the stage, creating images that resonate in the imaginations of his spectators.

§3: Beckett the Painter

Samuel Beckett's appreciation for the visual arts aided in his artistic impasse with the expressive limitations of language by showing him how the primacy of perception in visual communication can stimulate thought and meaning by directly engaging the imagination of the recipient. While the influence of the visual arts pervaded all of Beckett's artistic work including his later prose, it more concretely materialized in his works for theatre where he could juxtapose words with a physical image. His approach to and conceptualization of the theatrical performance as his plays evolve increasingly suggests that he conceived of the stage as a canvas and the communicative vehicles of performance his paint, characterizing his dramas as visual experiences where sound, light, and image combine to conjure mental images that reverberate off an ambiguous physical image. Beckett aimed to transmit pure emotional sensations to the spectator by attempting to conceal artistic form. Although Beckett's plays share select resemblances to symbolist and expressionist drama, his unique form of theatre resists categorization in his synthesis of the communicative elements of the stage to create performance paintings that place the spectator in a hallucinatory state from their clash of mental and actual images, resulting in two unique characterizations. First, Beckett's emphasis on the primacy of perception in his theatre underlines the spectator's phenomenological experience, situating him or her in the interspace between art object and recipient by highlighting ambiguity. Second, by localizing the spectator into this hallucinatory state of the imagination, Beckett creates the 252 conditions whereby the sensations from one communicative source can seemingly transform into another sensory experience. By manipulating and synthesizing the elements of performance in these ways, Beckett denudes the aesthetic experience to pure vibrations, placing the spectator in a heightened state of awareness of consciousness, thereby transforming the traditional venue of the theatre into that of an art gallery.

Beckett's dialogue with the visual arts produced portraits of humanity on stage where the differences between words and painting dissolve in the spectator's imagination, placing the recipient in the position to apprehend the artistic vision that generated the work. By encouraging the spectator to look beyond definitions of form, medium, and genre, Beckett positions the recipient in direct view of the artistic image prior to its construction in formal terms. By infusing ambiguity in his plays, the spectator engages in a transformative process within the imagination to create a composite image out of a fusion of the transformable elements. Through this alteration of form fragments within the imagination, the recipient not only participates actively in the creation of the artistic image, but also gives vibrancy and life to the artwork by continually re-engaging with it in new ways. As with painting, Beckett's plays remain incomplete without the active participation of the spectator.

The interrelationship amongst art forms, particularly between words and images in this case, becomes highlighted with the shared vocabulary used to describe similar artistic process for different art forms. Drawing on the insights of writers and artists, Franklin Rogers outlines a number of shared terms between poetry and painting that expose the creative process. Obvious examples from Rogers include: delineate, portrait, landscape, draw (42); to which I would also add based on the primacy of visual perception in Beckett's aesthetic outlook: line, colour, texture, and tone. To support his position, Rogers cites Ezra Pound's attention to the graphic quality of Chinese writing, which consists of a combination of painting, poetry, and writing, where the writing at one and the same time embodies the poetry as well as participates in the 253 painting (Rogers 45). The idea of text and image merging together to write a picture in the calligraphic arts resembles Beckett's own quest to make writing come alive by engendering words with the pictorial quality of hieroglyphs. In fact, Pablo Picasso believed that one could interchange the terms "write" and "paint" because, as he says, "after all the arts are all the same; you can write a picture in words just as you can paint sensations in a poem" (131).208

In Proust, written approximately seventeen years before Waiting for Godot, Beckett expresses his idea that the literary art object is the same as the painted one since their origins derive from the artistic vision that exists at the core of a work of art prior to its realization in formal terms:

For Proust, as for the painter, style is more a question of vision than of technique. Proust does not share the superstition that form is nothing and content everything, nor that the ideal literary masterpiece could only be communicated in a series of absolute and monosyllabic propositions. For Proust the quality of language is more important than any system of ethics or aesthetics. The one is a concretion of the other, the revelation of a world (Proust 87-88).

Beckett argues that the writer provides a verbal definition of a representation in the same way that a painter depicts it with line and colour, suggesting that the imagination filters out inessential elements of form to interpret the essence of the expression. The process relies on memory to retain the experience of the art form after completion, which is when the recipient reconstructs it based on his or her altered perceptions of it. Beckett's motivation to create striking portraits of humanity as a staged painting affords him the opportunity to have a captive audience completely absorb a single image, hauntingly hovering over the stage, allowing it to penetrate into the imagination of the spectator, who lives with and reconstructs the experience after the expressive vehicles have communicated their ideas. One finds support for Beckett's point of view in the various aesthetic discourses that describe the combined psychological and physiological reactions to'a work of art. In particular, Clive Bell's description of the "aesthetic emotion," as outlined in the analysis of Beckett's Not I, draws attention to how one physically experiences a 254 strange tingling sensation when engaging with a work of art. A. E. Housman also offers a

description of one's physical response to art that not only echoes Bell's observations, but also

develops them by describing the physiological response to the memory of an experience of a work of art:

Poetry indeed seems to me more physical than intellectual. [...] Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act. This particular symptom is accompanied by a shiver down the spine; there is another which consists in a constriction of the throat and a precipitation of water to the eyes; and there is a third which I can only describe by borrowing a phrase from Keats's last letters, where he says, speaking of Fanny Brawne, "everything that reminds me of her goes through me like a spear." The seat of this sensation is the pit of the stomach (45-46).

Bell and Housman's connections of one's aesthetic response as partly manifested in physiological reactions suggest that the artistic vision that inspired the work becomes internalized by the recipient, manifesting in physiological responses not only during the

experience of a work of art, but also afterward. In this way, an artwork continues to live in the recipient, re-engaging with its host at the discretion of individual memory.

In the interspace between recipient and artwork, the recipient forms an artistic image based on the confrontation of mental and actual images within the imagination, which undergo a process of deformation and reformation in the formation of the composite. In fact, Henri Matisse considers composition as a combination of the integrative forces that inspire the creation along with their outcome, highlighting the difference between structure (composition) and its aggregate

(disposition) (see Rogers 82). Matisse's distinction between composition and disposition aids in overcoming the formal differences between writing and painting to illustrate that the ultimate goal of all art is to transcend its form, leaving the work incomplete for the recipient to finalize.

Rogers explains this process by examining the function of the outline in both writing and painting. While in formal terms the outline in writing refers to the orderly arrangement of topics and subtopics, involving a coordination and subordination process, and in painting denotes the 255 graphic indication of the outer limits of the image, from a topological point of view, the outline

for both art forms becomes suggestive of the line or direction of the central idea of the piece (see

Rogers 84-85). By examining the topology of the outline in writing and painting, one becomes privy to viewing the transformational process of both art forms, and recognizes its similarity in their objectives. From a topological perspective, the outline denotes the contour of a piece of writing or a painting. The formation of the outline does not exist in nature; it is an artistic process. What the artist sees in the visual world are "objective" or "subjective" contours and

"virtual" lines, which Rogers explains are "three different manifestations of one central phenomenon: perception of form is the perception of discontinuities in gradients" (86). The

topologist Rene Thorn summarizes the result: "In effect, the characteristic of every form, every morphogenesis, is to reveal itself by a discontinuity in the properties of the environment" (9).

The combined phenomena of virtual lines and subjective contours that comprise a work of art

suggest that the phenomenon of linearity and the topology of the imagination originate in the part

of human mind that contends with gaps and discontinuities of information as a means to render

decisions (see Rogers 89). The outline highlights the gaps in the artwork, rendering it unfinished,

for the recipient to complete. The process unites artist and recipient. The artist's imagination becomes stimulated to create based on a gap or discontinuity of thought that becomes infused in the art object. The artist's inspirational moment is transferred to the recipient by his or her

individualized perception of the artwork, which, if the process is successful, not only presents the

artistic vision that motivated the piece, sharing in the artist's experience, but also provides the

recipient an opportunity to contribute to the contour of the idea based on his or her own

experiences. The process is a dynamic one that requires the active participation of the recipient.

Without an active consciousness to engage with a work of art, then a work is "finished"

in the sense of having no further prospect of success or development; ultimately, it is dead. For a work of art to remain alive, there must exist some conscious mind capable of apprehending the 256 sensory stimuli released by the artwork, thereby rendering it "unfinished" in the sense that there exists the potential for it to grow and develop further as new recipients engage with it and contribute to its evolution. Art that engages with the imagination taps into the creative potential of the individual, highlighting one of the fundamental essences of human life. While all artists strive to achieve this level of connection with their audiences through various artistic forms,

Beckett's meticulous workings of the mechanics of the theatre to attain the heightened visual experience of painting helps him uniquely connect with the spectator's imagination by paring the theatrical experience to the single focus of a stage portrait. Rather than sweeping the audience into a world of developing action and narrative, Beckett has the spectator repeatedly focus on aspects of the portrait until he or she renders some interpretation that is meaningful, unless he or she rejects the experience outright. In this way, Beckett forces the spectator to engage actively with his works rather than using elements of spectacle and entertainment to transport passively an audience into another world. All of Beckett's plays remain unfinished; they are alive. His staged painting presents portraits of people in stasis, and though the spectator hears of past events and future plans, the circular pattern of his plays reemphasizes the same gaps and discontinuities concerning universal ideals, rendering them unfinished for the spectator: unrequited love (Krapp 's Last Tape), material/spiritual conflict (Happy Days), rejection of self

(Not I), adultery (Play), authoritarian rule (Catastrophe), to identify a few obvious examples.

With the staged painting, Beckett positions the spectator to the forefront of universal aspects of existence, leaving him or her to contend with them in relation to his or her own individual life.

As a stage painter, Samuel Beckett establishes the primacy of perception as the principal receptive act in his plays inspired by the heightened visual concentration engendered by the visual arts. Drawing on painting's ability to suggest pictorially the outline of an idea via concentric lines, Beckett escaped the impetus to follow the traditional form of enacting a story in the theatre by using the communicative vehicles of the stage in the same way as a painter. In 257 traditional forms of theatre, the action is brought to a passive spectator. Accurately experiencing a Beckett play entails the staging of his portrait as the primary event, demanding the spectator to undertake an active role to engage with the ambiguous image that hovers over the stage. As a viewer in a gallery actively engages with the lines and colours that produce an image on a

canvas, the spectator of Beckett's plays must actively engage with the light, sounds, and movement that comprise his staged portrait. Beckett's staged painting represents the transformation of the theatre into an art gallery to present portraits of humanity that resonate in our memories, constantly reminding us to look beyond form, beyond category and genre, and beyond the particular, to the outer reaches of an idea, and to contribute our own responses.

Beckett's love of painting not only liberated him from the restrictions of language, but also helped him discover his own objectives as an artist. In doing so, Beckett presents to us the staged painting as means to empower us with the ability to see with our own eyes the greater meanings to existence than what merely appears before us. 258 APPENDIX

The following chart expands on the sixteen points Beckett identified in his Schiller notebook with a contextualization of where the waiting points appear in the development of the action. The page numbers refer to the revised text compiled by Knowlson and McMillan, and the checkmarks are the ones Beckett placed next to specific waiting points in his Schiller notebook.

Wartestellen

Number and Section Text and Page Number Action Sequence

A2 after ja meinetwegen • after Vladimir and Estragon decide to stop [All right, p. 14] talking after determining nothing concrete from their conversation regarding details of their appointment with Godot • waiting point • Estragon sleeps • the next conversation focuses on his dreams

V 2 A2 after Seinem Pferd • Vladimir and Estragon attempt to find out [his horse, p. 19] their reason for meeting Godot and how to respond to his decision • they reveal that they gave up their rights • they freeze in the moment thinking they hear Godot coming • waiting point • Godot does not materialize, the conversation switches to a discussion of their physical needs

A2 after Es ist noch Tag • an alternate placement of W2, precisely at [It is day, p. 19] the point where the conversation switches from Godot to food • as with W2, the waiting point arrives at a moment of uncertainty: Who is Godot? Why are they waiting for him? • the discussion leaves all questions unanswered • waiting point • no resolution, the topic changes

V 4 A4 after Pan schlaft • after Vladimir and Estragon meet Pozzo [Pan sleeps, p. 34] and Lucky • they ridicule the production "worse than pantomime," "the circus," "the music-hall" • Pozzo searches for his "Kapp and Peterson" pipe • Vladimir exits offstage to urinate 259 • Vladimir returns frustrated, his medical condition preventing him from relieving himself • after Vladimir regains his composure, Pozzo says: "He subsides. Indeed all subsides. A great calm descends. Listen! Pan sleeps" • waiting point • the play is bad, the pipe is lost, the pee will not flow • Pozzo says Pan, the god of flocks and shepherds who personifies nature, is asleep • their problems exist, with no solutions • nothing to but wait

A4 after soil ich es ihnen sagen • if employed, it would occur after [Shall I tell you, p. 35] Vladimir's discovery that "[t]ime has stopped" • everything seems black to Vladimir • Pozzo offers to explain what the "twilight" "can do" • waiting point • after the pause, Pozzo remarks that he cannot refuse Vladimir and Estragon followed by: "What was I saying"

A4 after schwachen Gedachtms • Pozzo waxes about the sky [memory is defective, p. 36] • Vladimir, Estragon, and Pozzo discuss whether the "weakened" ending of Pozzo's monologue was deliberate or unintentional • Pozzo responds: "You see my memory is defective" • waiting point • no clarification arrives, a moment of stillness ensues

A5 after verfangen zu haben • after Lucky's interpretative dance "The [entangled in a net, p. 38] Net" • in the Berlin production, Lucky's dance featured arches and circles and concluded with him animating the tree, looking like a stylized question mark with three arcs on top (see Gordon 140-141) • after the dance there is some discussion of Lucky's ability to dance different styles • Pozzo interprets the dance just seen as: "The Net. He thinks he's entangled in a net" • waiting point • no response, Estragon switches the subject: 260 "Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful"

A5 before Ich komme einfach nicht weg • if employed, this waiting point would [I don't seem to be able to, occur as Pozzo and Lucky depart p. 43] • they exchange thanks and salutations • waiting point • Pozzo, hesitating, says: "I don't seem to be able ... to depart" • they have nothing more to say to each other, yet they cannot depart

A6 before So ist die Zeit vergangen • a variation on W8 [That passed the time, p. 44] • after the final "adieu," when Pozzo and Lucky actually depart • waiting point • Vladimir says: "That passed the time"

10 A6 after moon up before E up [p. 48] • after the boy leaves and the moon rises • waiting point • the boy brought no answers, except the message that Godot would arrive tomorrow • Godot fails to arrive, the moon rises • Vladimir and Estragon wait

11 B1 between ach ja & es gibt was Neues • Vladimir convinces Estragon to say he is [Ah yes! & Things have happy, even if it is not true changed, p. 54] • after saying that they are happy, nothing remains but to wait for Godot • waiting point • Vladimir switchs the subject: "Things have changed here since yesterday"

A/ 12 B2 after lullaby both on stone [p. 63] • Vladimir sings a lullaby to Estragon to soothe him to sleep on his stone, away from the hardships of life • waiting point • Estragon awakes agitated and afraid, the lullaby does not bring him peace

V 13 B2 after sich armisiert • Vladimir and Estragon rehash their [one has fun, p. 69] previous day's experience with Pozzo and Lucky • the conversation transforms into an insult match • the game ends with a reconciliation • waiting point • Vladimir says: "How time flies when one has fun!" • the game passes the time, the next suggestion is to do their routine exercises

B3 after wir sind Menschen • after Pozzo and Lucky return and all four (all fallen) characters end up falling on the ground [We are men, p. 75] • Pozzo, now blind, asks: "Who are you?" • Vladimir replies: "We are men" • waiting point • the image of fallen man • Pozzo breaks the moment with: "Help!"

B5 after exit P/L [p. 81] • after Pozzo's poignant passage on departure: "birth astride a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more. On!" • waiting point • Estragon awakes: "I was asleep"

B5 after moon up before E up [p.83] • after the boy leaves and the moon rises • waiting point • the boy brought no answers, except the message that Godot would arrive tomorrow • Godot fails to arrive, the moon rises • Vladimir and Estragon wait NOTES

Notes for Chapter 1

1 Although it was common for hobos to seek shelter from inclement weather in public institutions such as libraries, art galleries, and post offices, I agree with Eoin O'Brien, who considers the reference to the Portrait Gallery in That Time as telling of Beckett's enjoyment of the solitude one can find in an art gallery: "For Beckett, impecunious and lost in uncertainty, the National Gallery in Dublin provided sanctuary on lonely wet days, as did the National Portrait Gallery in London in later years." See Eoin O'Brien, The Beckett Country: Samuel Beckett's Ireland (Dublin: Black Cat, 1986) 139.

2 The issue with describing a Beckett play becomes compounded with the fact that authorial control, however exercised textually and extra-textually, is limited.

3 In discussing Beckett's predominant use of contrasts of white light in his plays, Stanton Garner Jr. discovered in Rudolf Arnheim's writings that the art theorist's observations on the black-and-white scale in Picasso's Guernica help explain the subversion of colour in Beckett's late plays. Arnheim explains how the use of a black-and-white scale system gives a painting the "character of reduction": "This is a particular form of removal from reality in that the work does not so much present 'another world.' By comparison to a work in may colors, a monochrome is always strongly abstract, less substantial materially, closer to a diagram....Monochrome, in other words, tends to move the image in the direction of a disembodied statement of properties rather than a rendition of objects." Rudolf Arnheim. Picasso's Guernica: The Genesis of a Painting (Berkeley: U of California P, 1962) 25. Quoted in Stanton B. Garner Jr., Bodied Spaces: Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary Drama (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1994) 71, fn 37. In his text Images of Beckett, Knowlson compares similar aesthetic ideologies held by both Arnheim and Beckett. See James Knowlson, Images of Beckett (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004) 123-124.

4 Two detailed accounts focusing on Beckett's visual dimension are: Dougald McMillan, "Samuel Beckett and the Visual Arts: The Embarrassment of Allegory," Samuel Beckett: A Collection of Criticism (New York: McGraw, 1975) 121-135; and Therese Fischer-Seidel, "The Ineluctable Modality of the Visible': Perception and Genre in Samuel Beckett's Later Drama," Contemporary Literature 35 (1994): 66-82.

5 Since Beckett's memoirs of his excursion to Germany detail both paintings he saw and his personal reflections at the time, the question arises as to whether the documents should be considered "notebooks" or "diaries." Since the present study examines Beckett's comments on art rather than his private thoughts, the term "notebooks" shall be adopted as it conveys the sense of his "study" of art.

6 During the research stage of this dissertation in 2000,1 had the privilege of being one of the first scholars to examine copies of Beckett's German notebooks cataloguing the hundreds of paintings he saw during his art pilgrimage.

7 The notebooks surprisingly survived World War II when Beckett fled Paris and abandoned his belongings in order to avoid capture by the Gestapo.

Knowlson stressed the need to for an in-depth analysis of Beckett's relationship with painting (Personal Communication, October 2000).

Porter Abbott describes the freedoms Beckett found in the theatre: "What theater offered was the possibility of escaping the bondage of script by imposing it on others. To put this another way, if theater is a temptation to tyranny over others, it is a release from the tyranny of prose over oneself. The opportunity of divesting personal scripts may provide one explanation for why, tyrant though he had been in monitoring the production of his plays, Beckett was quite liberal in allowing the free adaptation of his prose pieces to the stage." Porter Abbott, Beckett Writing Beckett (Ithica: Cornell UP, 1996) 123.

10 Beckett's concern with achieving a literature of the unword originates from the inability of language to actualize rather than merely to delineate or describe. For Beckett, this meant he approached the idea of creation through decreation by exploiting the holes in language. 263

11 Martin Esslin's explicit characterization of Beckett's plays as a "theatre of images" captures the notion that Beckett invests the dramatic action of each piece into the central image: "Beckett's theatre has always been primarily a theatre of images: the waiting figures on the lonely road [Waiting for Godot]; the blind master enthroned in the centre of his circular room with its eye-windows, his aged parents peering from their dustbins [Endgame]; the old man bent over his tape recorder [Krapp 's Last Tape]; the woman sinking deeper and deeper into the earth [Happy Days]; the dead faces protruding from their funerary urns [Play]; the lonely mouth suspended in the dark void, babbling away [Not T]; the woman pacing to and fro, to and fro, with shuffling gait [Footfalls]; the old man's whitehaired face emerging from gloom, listening to his own thoughts [That Time]; the old woman rocking herself into nonexistence [Rockaby]; the miserable figure being arranged upon its pedestal [Catastrophe] - all these images, unforgettable once seen, encapsulate the essence of the meaning of whole plays more efficiently and more lastingly than even the most poetic or significant lines of dialogue." Martin Esslin, "Towards the Zero of Language," Beckett's Later Fiction and Drama: Texts for Company, eds. James Acheson and Kateryna Arthur (London: Macmillan, 1987) 35. From each of Esslin's condensed descriptions of the central image from a selection of Beckett's theatre work, one familiar with Beckett's plays can immediately identify and distinguish each piece (indicated by my parenthetical insertions of titles for each descriptive fragment). As Esslin says, Beckett's plays are "unforgettable once seen," suggesting that central stage image serves as the focal point of each piece.

12 In the complete citation to the reference, Knowlson posits that Beckett's visual inspiration for Footfalls derives from an art pilgrimage he took to Germany from late 1936 to early 1937. Knowlson reveals Beckett's reaction to the da Messina painting based on his "German Notebooks": "A few of the paintings were to become so much a part of his mental world that they resurfaced when he came to create his own visual images for the stage or to realize his plays onstage as his own director. Antonello da Messina's Virgin of the Annunciation from the Alte Pinakothek ("head and shoulders. Superb. With the aghast look, consternated skivvy") is strangely echoed in the posture of May, the pacing figure in Footfalls; Beckett, directing, had the actress Billie Whitelaw clasp her hands across her body in a gesture that seemed to encapsulate her whole being. This was stored away with other memorable images from earlier in his artistic pilgrimage: Antonello's St. Sebastian; Caspar David Friedrich's Two Men Observing the Moon from Dresden; and Giorgione's extraordinary self-portrait from Brunswick." James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (New York: Simon, 1996) 238.

13 MacGowran's comment, evoking the closeness of art forms, stimulates consideration of an Eastern aesthetic view that promotes the study of one art form by practicing another. Based on the definitive interpretation of Miyamoto Musahi's classic The Book of Five Rings for martial artists, Stephen Kaufman writes: "A man cannot understand the perfection and imperfection of his chosen art if he cannot see the value in other arts. Following the rules only permits development up to a point in technique; to advance further the student and artist must learn and seek knowledge. It makes sense to study other arts as well as those of strategy. Who has not learned something more about themselves by watching the activity of others? To learn the sword, study the guitar. To learn the fist, study commerce. To only study the sword will make you narrow-minded and will keep you from growing outward." Stephen F. Kaufman, Hanshi 1 Oth Dan, The Martial Artist's Book of Five Rings: The Definitive Interpretation of Miyamoto Musahi 's Classic Book of Strategy (Boston: Charles, 1994) 5-6. Due to the overarching idea in the citation that the study of one art aids in the practice of another, one recognizes that broadening one's focus assists in distinguishing approaches by highlighting similarities and differences amongst comparative nodes. It also evokes the notion that technique serves as only the first stage in any particular activity; what follows is learning the correct application of technique in specific contexts, which can only arise if one possesses a certain breadth of knowledge. The relevance here of the guitar/sword and fist/commerce associations is that it promotes consideration of the interrelationships and distinguishing elements between different art forms, which helps to demarcate the perimetre of Beckett's interart experimentation.

14 Beckett credits his private Italian tutor Madam Bianca Esposito for introducing him to the works of Dante.

13 As Knowlson reports, Beckett's love for Dante remained with him until death, influencing his writing at several points throughout his career: "When, following a serious fall in his eighties, he had to live in an old people's home in the rue Remy-Dumoncel, he took with him the little edition of Dante's Divina commedia that he had underlined and annotated in class with [Esposito]. Inside the book, he kept a card with a faded miniature reproduction of a painting by Giotto of St. Francis feeding the birds. On it is a message in Italian from his teacher wishing him a speedy recovery from an illness that had put him to bed at Cooldrinagh a few days before his twentieth birthday. Beckett had been using the card as his Dante bookmark for sixty-three years." Knowlson, Damned 68. Beckett's criticism of Papini's review for distinguishing Dante from literature actually stems from Benedetto Croce's distinction between literature and poetry, claiming that Dante's writing is aptly classified as poetry.

17 Sighle Kennedy offers two examples from Beckett's plays that show how details from a Dantean background points to the freedom that Beckett's characters refuse: "In Krapp 's Last Tape, during the love-scene in the boat, the couple is on the 'upper lake ... the sun blazing, a bit of a breeze, water nice and lively.' Purgatory to the life! Most purgatorial of all are 'the flags' (reeds) which every entrant to Purgatory must wear as a sign of readiness to change, to renew (humility). Krapp remembers this gracious motion of the reeds around the boat: 'The way they went down, sighing before the stem!' But Krapp has no desire to change, to renew. (He returns to his own 'iron- bound prison of self.')" Sighle Kennedy, "Beckett's 'Schoolboy Copy' of Dante: A Handbook for Liberty," Dalhousie French Studies: Exile and Transcendence 19 (1990): 11-19.

18 Kennedy describes Beckett's invocation of Dante: "In Happy Days, Winnie conjures up, toward the end of Act I, an alternative to being swallowed up by the sand. She visualizes a couple standing 'gaping at her.' They are on the move 'hand in hand - in the other bags.' She rejects them, however, as a 'coarse creature, fit mate' who 'drag up and down this fornicating wilderness.' She sees them go off still 'hand in hand,' but chooses to stay fixed, looking in the opposite from Willie. In Dante's Purgatory, the puritan ethic of rejection of sex as 'a natural good' is a far graver lapse than 'fornication,' which ranks as an 'excessive love of the good.' (Poor Willie, here, does not seem to have enough imagination to dream up alternatives to their present state, which is degenerating to Dante's infernal immobility)." Kennedy 13-14.

19 According to Helen L. Baldwin, Not I stands as an exemplar piece revealing the "most scarifying reinventions" of Dante by Beckett: "[I]t seems that Beckett has presented the drama of the Purgatorio or perhaps even the Inferno pared down to a twelve-minute recital of sin by a single mouth which refuses to admit personal guilt and responsibility." Based on Baldwin's assessment, Hugh Haughton evaluates the theatrical implications of Beckett's approach: "The speaker's narrative is both traumatic and banal - an account of some kind of breakdown of identity, or refusal of first person speech which has led to an unstoppable babble of disowned confessional autobiography. What transforms our experience of it is the theatrical spectacle itself: an apparantely disembodied mouth, relic of a head, vestige of an invisible body, spewing out language in the dark in the presence of a barely perceptible hooded figure. The situation has reminded a number of critics of Dore's illustrations to Dante's Cocytus. More precisely, the Mouth can be understood as an astonishing dramatization of the traitor Bocca, whose name is the Italian for 'mouth' and whom Dante encounters in Canto 32 as a freezing head in the ice. Dante asks the disembodied head's name and questions him with great violence, but Bocca, like the unnamed protagonist of Beckett's play, refuses to disclose his identity (it is eventually betrayed by one of the other traitors)." Both quotations from Hugh Haughton, "Purgatory Regained? Dante and Late Beckett," Dante's Modern Afterlife: Reception and Response from Blake to Heaney, ed. Nick Havely (London: Macmillan, 1998) 157.

20 Dante's reference derives from Virgil: "The sea glitters beneath her dancing beams." See Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, Volume 2, Commentary, trans. Charles S. Singleton (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1973) fn. 117, 22.

21 Singleton explains that "dolce color d'oriental zaffiro" is based on a precious stone of a light bluish colour, sky blue and is called Oriental because it is found in Media, which is in the East. It is considered to be "more noble and more beautiful to behold than any other color." Alighieri, Purgatorio, fn. 13, 6-7.

22 Bocaccio describes the dream Dante's mother had when she was pregnant with him: "This noble lady during her pregnancy saw herself giving birth to a son at the foot of a very high laurel, next to a clear flowing brook. [...] [H]e, while feeding on the berries of the laurel tree that fell down from it and on the waters of the brook, soon became a tall shepherd, who was very fond of the leaves of that tree under which he stood. While he was trying to reach those leaves, the mother thought that he fell, and suddenly her son seemed to change into a very beautiful peacock. Disturbed by this awesome sight, the noble lady broke out of her sweet slumber, seeing him no more." Giovanni Boccaccio, The Life of Dante (Trattatello in Laude di Dante), trans. Vincenzo Zin Bollettino (New York: Garland, 1990) 55-56.

23 Anne Atik posits that Dante influenced Beckett's use of mathematics: "Beckett was good at mathematics and enjoyed using them for attacking problems of choreography and dialogue in plays and novels [...]." Anne Atik, How It Was: A Memoir of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber, 2001) 79. Simon Gilson argues that Dante utilized mathematic principles in dealing with the image: "Dante's optics [...] was essentially a geometrical theory of sight concerned with the relation of objects to the observer's eye. He seems to have derived this conception of vision from an attentive reading of the many contemporary discussions of the visual pyramid and rectilinear pathway in vision. He also had a passionate interest in various other aspects of visual theory (from the anatomy of the eye to the psychology of vision), and he held a philosophically sophisticated conception of the visual act which he situated in the context of the internal senses." See Simon A. Gilson, Medieval Optics and Theories of Light in the Works of Dante (Lewiston: Mellen, 2000) 258-259.

24 The "sweet new style" that Dante popularized originated from a Bolognese poet named Guido Guinizzelli. He inspired and initiated the new poetic style cultivated in Florence by Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, Cino da Pistoia, Lapo Giani, Gianni Alfani, and Dino Frescobaldi. See Walter J. Centuori, A Concordance to the Poets of the Dolce Stil Novo, Volume 1 (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1977) vii.

25 Henrich Wolfflin opines that the emphasis visual artists placed on emotion during that time hindered the sense of form for the artwork. Notice the comparison of Pisano's work to Dante's: "Others surpassed Giotto, [Ambroiso Bondone] in fervour of emotion and in force of passion. Giovanni Pisano, the sculptor, shows more soul in his more inflexible material than the painter Giotto. The story of the Annunciation could not have been more tenderly told in the spirit of that age than by Giovanni in his relief on the pulpit at Pistoja, and in his more passionate scenes there is something of Dante's firey spirit. But this very quality was his undoing. He forced expression too far. The desire to express emotion destroyed the sense of form, and the master's art ran riot." See Henrich Wolfflin, The Art of the Italian Renaissance: A Handbook for Students and Travelers, trans. Sir Walter Armstrong (New York: Putnam, 1928) 10.

To decorate new churches and public buildings, extensive mural cycles were commissioned, such as those at S. Francesco in Assisi. Their capacity to bear long tiers of pictorial areas made them quite conducive to narrative form. Larger altar dossals devoted to the lives of various saints, the Perugia Triptych for example, and historiated pulpits that illustrate the Life of Christ against a background of Old Testament themes, such as those by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, became popular along with written compilations of these themes. See Michael Grillo, Symbolic Structures: The Role of Composition in Signaling Meaning in Italian Medieval Art (New York: Lang, 1997) 11.

Grillo continues by illustrating how increased naturalism enters other art forms, including The Divine Comedy: "Religious theater of the time offered a plethora of sensate details to the visual arts. The iconographic emblems easily absorb these touches without changing their familiar form or typical location within depictions of the Incarnation. The bridge between the terrestrial and spiritual spans in both directions, however, and imbues the physical with divine meaning, in a juncture literalized in the Divine Comedy. Such a correspondence necessitates multiple syntaxes to provide a deeper spiritual meaning to a narrative presentation of seemingly tangible events." Grillo 11.

28 The three reliefs in Purgatory parallel Giotto's Arena Chapel frescoes and the sculptures on the Perugia Fountain by Nicola and Giovani Pisano. The arrangement of these pieces invites the viewer to read the works in an episodic way, much as Dante's reader experiences the humility reliefs. See Christie K. Fengler and William A. Stephany, "The Visual Arts: A Basis for Dante's Imagery in Purgatory and Paradise," The Michigan Academician 10.2(1977) 130-131.

2 Dante's blending of the poetic and pictorial becomes exemplified in his use of the word "nose." The following page references in parentheses derive from Fengler, "Visual Arts." Sordello identifies two princes primarily by reference to their noses, Philip III ("The Bold") is nasetto (1. 103), and Charles I is referred to both as nasuto or "large-nosed one" (1. 124) as well as colui dal maschio naso or "the virile nose" (1. 113) (375). Describing physical characteristics, Peter III of Aragon is membrutto or "stout of limb" (1. 112), Henry the Fat rests his hand on his palm (1. 107-108), and William VII gazes upward (11. 133-134) (fn. 8, 378). The spatial arrangement of the group displays a hierarchical scene: Rudolph, the only Emperor among the princes, is seated in the highest position (1. 91); Alfonso III (or possibly his younger brother Peter) is located behind Peter III (1. 116), Henry III is by himself (1. 130-131), and William VII is seated in the lowest position (11. 133-134) (fn. 9, 378). Based on these descriptions, many of the figures bore nicknames that become proper names: Henry the Fat, Charles the Bald, Philip the Fair et cetera (fn. 10, 378). Given the detail exhibited in the passage, Dante's explicit depictions of the true characteristics of these monarchs likely originated from images imprinted on the coinage of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen and Venice, as well as those of ancient Rome and the Early Byzantine emperors. See R. A. G. Carson, Coins: Ancient, Mediaeval and Modern (London: Hutchinson, 1962) 300.

30 [...] io conobbi quella ripa intorno che, dritta, di salita aveva manco, esser di marmo candido e addorno d'intagli si, che non pur Policleto, ma la natura li avrebbe scorno.

[I perceived that the encircling bank (which, being vertical, lacked means of ascent) was of pure white marble, and was adorned with such carvings that not only Polycletus but Nature herself would there be put to shame.] Alighieri, Purgatorio X, 11. 29-33, 100-101.

The reference to Polycletus in the passage indicates Dante's knowledge that the Greek sculptor was attentive to the detail and finish in his work. Since ancient authors stress the lifelike qualities of Polycletus' scultptures, Dante's proclamation that Polycletus would have been jealous of the representational skills demonstrated in the Purgatory reliefs suggests the poet's awareness of the mimetic process. Alighieri, Purgatorio X, 128.

31 It is possible that Beckett saw these works of art since he stayed in Florence while preparing for his undergraduate examinations in French and Italian. See Knowlson, Damned 83.

32 In the earlier representations, those most dependent on the Byzantine tradition, the rows are clearly defined; examples include the fresco at S. Angelo in Formis and the mosaic at Torcello, which show the twelve apostles seated on thrones with, at Torcello, rows of angels behind them. The Florentine bapistry and Cavallini's frescoes in Rome also show the apostles seated on thrones, with John the Baptist and Mary standing (Cavallini) or sitting (Florence) beside them. Giotto's Last Judgment in Padua is the least structured in this way of all the Last Judgment frescoes, but he introduces more rows, this time with angels, apostles, and the blessed flying, sitting, and standing respectively, row after row, in adoration of Christ. The apostles occupy, as in Cavallini's fresco, a special place; they sit on thrones to either side of the mandorla. See Morgan, Dante 188.

33 A passage from Paradise illustrates Dante's struggle with the expressivity of language:

Da quinci innanzi il mio veder fu maggio che i parlar mostra, ch'a tal vista cede, e cede la memoria a tanto oltraggio. Qual e coliii che sognando vede, che dopo '1 sogno la passione impressa rimane, e l'altro a la mente non riede, cotal son io, che quasi tutta cessa mia visi'one, e ancor mi distilla nel core il dolce che nacque da essa. Cosi la neve al sol si disigilla; cosi al vento ne le foglie levi si perdea la sentenza di Sibilla.

[Thenceforward my vision was greater than speech can show, which fails at such a sight, and at such excess memory fails. As is he who dreaming sees, and after the dream the passion remains imprinted and the rest returns not to the mind; such am I, for my vision almost wholly fades away, yet does the sweetness that was born of it still drop within my heart. Thus is the snow unsealed by the sun; thus in the wind, on the light leaves, the Sibyl's oracle was lost.] Alighieri, Paradiso XXXIII, 55-66, 374-375.

The contrast Dante establishes at the beginning of the passage is between the growing perfection of the pilgrim's ability to see "face to face" {veder) and the proportional decline of the poet's speech {parlar), a decline accentuated by the rapid repetition of cede ... cede in 11. 56-57 (16). Charles Singleton explains that this confession of failure at the end of the canto, returns us to the opening disclaimer of Paradise 1, 4-9, which stated that memory and language were overwhelmed by their "subject." Aligheri, Paradiso {Commentary) 571. The quotation is a translation by Lucia Boldrini. The original source is: Ettore Settanni, James Joyce e la prima versione italiana delFinnegan's [sic] Wake (Venice: Cavallino, 1965) 30.

35 Beckett grounds his idea by quoting from Work in Progress a passage where Stephen says to Lynch: "Temporal or spatial, the esthetic image is first luminously apprehended as selfbound and selfcontained upon the immeasurable background of space or time which is not it... You apprehend its wholeness." The quotation strikingly resembles the core activity that takes place in the apprehension of painting. Samuel Beckett, Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment, ed. Ruby Cohn (London: Calder) 28.

36 As Rnowlson reports, Beckett was an authority on thepieta: "In 1931, at an auction at Christie's in London, the gallery bought Perugino's beautiful Pieta. This was promptly put on display, and Beckett immediately rushed round to Merrion Square to view it. 'I've been several times to look at the new Peragino Pieta in the National Gallery here," he wrote. "It's burried behind a formidable barrage of shining glass, so that one is obliged to take cognisance of it progressively, square inch by square inch.' He spent literally hours examining the painting and concluded that, although it was 'all messed up by restorers,' the dead Christ and the woman in the picture were 'lovely': 'A clean-shaven, potent Xist [his way of writing "Christ"] and a passion of tears for the waste. The most mystical constituent is the ointment pot that was probably added by Raffaela. Rottenly hung in rotten light behind this thick shop window, so that a total view of it is impossible, and full of grotesque amendments. But a lovely cheery Xist full of sperm, and the woman touching his thighs mourning his secrets.'" Knowlson, Damned 139-140.

Notes for Chapter 2

37 Knowlson exposes the behind-the-scenes drama that took place. "Three performances of the plays were given at the Peacock Theatre on February 19-21, 1931. Beckett found the first night acutely embarrassing. At the end there was a terrible scene. Professor Rudmose-Brown [Beckett's mentor], who had played no part in the choice of plays, insulted both [Georges] Pelorson [Beckett's friend and creator of the piece] and Beckett and stormed away, apoplectic with rage and disgusted by what he regarded as a stupid, shameful charade that reflected badly on the entire department. By the second night, Beckett had come to feel that the whole thing was a terrible mistake and dreaded having to face the audience again. The Friday and Saturday night performances were even more tense than the first night. Pelorson commented: 'The truth is that Beckett got terribly depressed with a deep sense of vanity of the whole thing (typical of him) -1 am pretty sure of that - and a feeling of guilt. He had been terribly affected by Ruddy's sortie the first night (though of course he never would have admitted to this).' He drank heavily before the second performance and had to be extricated from his rooms by Pelorson, who argued angrily that he would be letting the others down badly if he did not turn up. He was almost dragged along to the Peacock Theatre. He got through the performances somehow, commenting later that 'They might have gone worse' but adding pompously that 'The inevitable vulgarisation leaves one exhausted and disgusted.'" Knowlson, Damned 127.

38 In 1950, Suzanne Descheveaux-Dumensil delivered copies of both Waiting for Godot and Eleutheria to director Roger Blin for production consideration. Apparently, Blin did not understand Waiting for Godot and decided that he should begin by staging Eleutheria because it was more traditional, and easier to cope with. But, financial considerations made Eleutheria too costly to produce, as Blin recalls: "Eleutheria had seventeen characters, a divided stage, elaborate props and complicated lighting. 1 was poor. I didn't have a penny. I couldn't think of anyone who owned a theater suitable for such a complicated production. I thought I'd be better off with Godot because there were only four actors and they were bums. They could wear their own clothes if it came to that, and I wouldn't need anything but a spotlight and bare branch for a tree." See S. E. Gontarski's Introduction to the play. Samuel Beckett, Eleutheria (New York: Foxrock, 1995) x-xi.

39 Daniel Albright offers a clear and succinct historical summary of the juxtaposition of theatrical models within a single play. "Shakespeare continually juxtaposes some rigid public stage with an improvisatory private stage. On the public stage (often forensic in character), Prince Escalus struggles to settle the quarrel between the Montagues and Capulets, and Cordelia's French army contends with the forces of Regan and Goneril, and Malcolm and Macduff cut down tree branches to assault Macbeth's castle; on the private stage (often erotic or eschatological in character), Romeo and Juliet write love poems with their tongues, and Macbeth fools with annihilation, and Lear and Edgar play experimental pre-enactments of the Last Judgment. Toward the end of Shakespeare's career the development of King James's court masques, expensive and full of mechanical calculations, played on a proscenium stage, not on a platform stage like The Globe, encouraged Shakespeare to investigate the possibilities of embedding masques within his plays. The Tempest depends on the careful contrast between the scripted Jacobean pageant of harpy banquet or wedding masque and the fluently empty Elizabethan stage - figuratively, the isle that is all things to all men:

Adrian. The air breathes upon us here most sweetly. Sebastian. As if it had lungs, and rotten ones. Antonio. Or, as 'twere perfum'd by a fen ... Gonzalo. How lush and lusty the grass looks! (The Tempest 2.1.47-49, 53)

A univocal space vies with an equivocal space; a stolid domain obedient to every law of Newton and Aristotle vies with an outrageous domain subject to flagrant violations of time and space. Playwrights have often been attracted to this model of a double theatre, in which the implacable and the impromptu both find space to work." See Daniel Albright, Beckett and Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003) 34.

40 Albright argues that Eleutheria resembles a "ghastly rewriting" of Ibsen's Ghosts. Albright, Beckett 35.

41 Michael Robinson explains that the theatre emancipated Beckett from the restrictions of words with the addition of the visual dimension when he says that: "The theatre allows Beckett a double freedom; the opportunity to explore the blank spaces between the words and the ability to provide visual evidence of the untrustworthiness of language" Michael Robinson, The Long Sonata of the Dead: A Study of Samuel Beckett (New York: Grove, 1969) 230.

42 Knowlson clarifies the confusion surrounding which particular Friedrich painting inspired Waiting for Godot: "One day, when he was standing in the Nationalgalerie in Berlin with a friend, the theatre scholar, Ruby Cohn, in front of Caspar David Friedrich's painting, Mann undFrau den Mond betrachtend (Man and Woman Observing the Moon) he commented memorably: 'You know that is the source of Waiting for Godot.' The painting he had in mind was, in fact, the very similar Zwei Manner betrachten den Mond (Two Men Observing the Moon) from Dresden's Gemaldegalerie, which he had seen during an artistic pilgrimage to Germany in 1937. Friedrich's painting lay behind the way in which, when he directed the play himself at the Schiller Theatre in Berlin, Beckett imagined the scene at the end of both acts in which the two tramps, standing by a skeletal tree, were silhouetted against the moonlit sky." Knowlson, Images 53-55. According to Sabine Rewald, there exist three variations of the Moonscape series; she also offers a different translation of the title. The first is the original 1819 version Two Men Contemplating the Moon (Zwei Manner in Betrachtung des Mondes). Friedrich gave this copy to his friend and neighbour, the Norwegian painter Johan Christian Dahl (1788-1857), in exchange for one of Dahl's works. Dahl kept the picture, of which Friedrich made two more versions, until Friedrich's death, when he sold it to the Gemaldegalerie in Dresden. Friedrich painted Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon (Mann undFrau in Betrachtung des Mondes) in 1824. In this version the moon remained in the same place, but Friedrich changed the light to a rose-mauve colour, creating an interesting paradox since this type of light only occurs at dusk in spring, yet the landscape is set in autumn, like the original. In the final version of Two Men Contemplating the Moon (Zwei Manner in Betrachtung des Mondes) of 1830, Friedrich reinstates men as the two figures. He painted it without any underdrawing, thus the forms are more fluid and less detailed. Sabine Rewald, Caspar David Friedrich: Moonwatchers (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001) 30-35.

43 In total, Beckett complied four different books of notes to direct the piece. In two copies of the 1960 Suhrkamp Verlag editions, he expanded and refined the stage directions and revised the dialogue. He incorporated most of these changes into a preliminary director's notebook in a small green student's notebook. He then copied out the material in the preliminary notebook into a larger red notebook where he rearranged the order of the contents and omitted a number of items, which will be referred to as the Schiller notebook. The green notebook will be referred to as Preliminary notebook. Samuel Beckett, The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett: Volume I, Waiting for Godot with a revised text, eds. Dougald McMillan and James Knowlson (London: Faber, 1993) 3.

44 In Knowlson's words: "Beckett clearly aimed to recreate something of the atmosphere of the German Romantic painter's celebrated canvas. Even the tones of the set and the costumes in Beckett's production seem to have reflected the coloration of the original painting, with its carefully modulated greys, brown and black." Knowlson, Images 53.

45 In an essay on pure perception, philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, a contemporary of Friedrich's, coincidentally seems to capture the mood of this painting: "Why has looking at the moon become so beneficiary, so soothing and so sublime? Because the moon remains purely an object for contemplation, not of the will." Quoted in Rewald 12.

46 Friedrich took a risk referring to his figures as demagogues, especially considering the evidence identifying him as one of the individuals, since at that time term described revolutionaries resolved to incite the populace to rebellion. At the beginning of the nineteenth-century, Germany, not a unified state yet, was politically and economically weak due to religious wars from the seventeenth-century. Attacked by Napoleon in 1806, German reactionaries formed a resistance movement. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 reduced the number of German states and refused to endorse German unification or even the principle of a universal franchise for Germans. Also, Prussia/Austria committed to a "Holy Alliance" with Russia to maintain law and order through Central and Eastern Europe. For many Germans, this agreement represented an abandonment of promises made by the King of Prussia and other political leaders, inciting resentment throughout the population. By 1817, the authorities prosecuted demagogues to maintain societal control, referred to as a period of Demagogenverfolgung. Affected by the inquisition were a number of Friedrich's political associates, as well as his friend Aradt, who lost his university post. Even if Friedrich's comment that the painting of two night wanderers admiring an enchanting moonlight effect represented demagogues plotting an insurrection was intended in good humour, Cornelius was a patriot and a leading member of the Nazarene group of religious painters who could have gotten Friedrich into trouble for his artistic expression. Whether or not Two Men Observing the Moon actually depicts a subversive act, the painting conveys a sense of the continued commitment on the part of Friedrich to follow his principles. Though not a revolutionary, Friedrich remained steadfast in his democratic sympathies and persisted in wearing altdeutsch garb (old German freedom fighter ensemble) throughout his life as depicted by the figures in Two Men Observing the Moon. Interestingly, Beckett when Beckett saw Friedrich's painting in 1936, German galleries featured Friedrich's paintings to promote Nazi ideology and a strong German state. Beckett, however, responded to the "searing loneliness conveyed by Friedrich, to the anxiety that lay behind all that staring into the distance," despite any nationalist images in the picture. William Vaughan, Friedrich (London: Phaidon, 2004) 5-6; 155-158; 324.

47 It is difficult to determine exactly which waiting points Beckett used in his production. The Schiller notebook lists sixteen in total, of which four in each act have a checkmark next to them. But these highlighted points do not exactly correspond with what Beckett entered in his annotated copy of the 1963 Suhrkamp edition of the German text that he used in rehearsal. Knowlson explains: "Beckett selects sixteen such points in the text here, then, at a later stage, opted for twelve, entering most of these in the margin of his annotated copies. In addition to some of those ticked by Beckett here he also included the one numbered 11 as 'W8' in Schiller a.c. B, p. 72. 'Waiting points numbered 13 and 16, on the other hand, are not marked in Schiller a.c. B." Beckett, Godot 418.

48 Anna Cavina suggests that Elsheimer's depiction of the stars reflects the impact of Kepler (1609) and Galileo's (1610) observations and theories of astronomy on society. Anna Ottani Cavina, "On the Theme of Landscape: Elsheimer and Galileo," Burlingon Magazine 118 (1976) 139-144.

49 When asked by Klaus Herm, who played the role of Lucky in the 1975 Schiller production, if Belcher referred to the name of a historical navigator, Beckett replied: "No, Belcher, that is the opposite of Fartoy, English to fart. And Belcher, to belch." Walter Asmus, "Beckett Directs Godot," Theatre Quarterly 19.5 (1975) 22.

50 Beckett highlights the following words as the "Main shocks" of Lucky's speech that cause the other characters to react. Beckett, Godot 299.

Main shocks kwakwakwakwa [quaquaquaqua] kwakwa [quaquaquaqua] akakakakakademie [Acacacacademy] anthropopopometrie [Anfhropopopometry] gestellt [established] ter [third] was folgt [As a result] ter [third] Testu u.Conard 3-4 [Testew and Cunard 3-4] Hockey «zu land» ... in der Luft [in the airl Tennis auf Eis [Tennis on ice] «ich wiederhole 3 [I resume 3] V starts to leave» Noch Schlimmer 2 [more grave 2] Exit E 4 [more grave 4] V ich wiederhole 4 [I resume 4] Reexit E 5 [I resume 5] " V " " 8 [I resume 8] Last straw

51 Using a different layout, Beckett divides the three themes into the following five sections. Beckett, Godot 291:

Section 1: Opening to "Better than nothing but not so fast" - Indifferent heaven Section 2: "What is more" to "waste and pine" - Dwindling man Section 3: "Simultaneously" to "facts are there" - Dwindling man Section 4: "And considering" to "the facts are there but" - Earth abode of stones & cadenza Section 5: "I resume" - End - Earth abode of stones & cadenza

52 In the original version of Waiting for Godot, Lucky's speech disintegrates into a fracas until Vladimir takes off Lucky's "thinking hat." Though Beckett retained the melee in his Schiller production, he preferred only vocal protestations until the removal of Lucky's hat. See Beckett, Godot n. 1191, 137.

In a letter to Jack Yeats after introducing Beckett to him, Thomas MacGreevy wrote: "He [Beckett] was completely staggered by the pictures and though he has met many people through me he dismissed them all in his letter with the remark 'and to think I owe meeting Jack Yeats and Joyce to you.'" Hilary Pyle, Jack B. Yeats: A Biography (London: Routledge, 1970) 146. Jack Yeats was thirty-five years Beckett's senior.

There seems to be some confusion regarding which of Yeats's paintings Beckett owned and when he purchased them. Lois Gordon reports that Beckett bought Regatta Evening on Dublin Bay after their first meeting. Lois Gordon, The World of Samuel Beckett 1906-1946 (New Haven, Yale UP, 1996) 84. Whereas James Knowlson claims that the Regatta Evening purchase took place during Beckett's postwar jaunts to Ireland sometime after 1946. Knowlson, Damned 333. In an interview with Ann Cremin in 1985, however, Beckett mentions that he acquired his first Yeats painting in 1935: "Beckett greatly admired Jack Yeats' work and bought a small 1935 oil, Morning in Sligo, depicting a wide street in Yeats' hometown, which Beckett described as being 'almost a skyscape.' At the time he was impoverished and couldn't afford the price of 20 pounds, although he desperately wanted the picture. 'Seeing my fondness for the painting, Yeats told me it was mine, as I loved it so much, and he agreed to my paying for it over a long time,' recalls Beckett. T finally managed to pay for it, in installments of five pounds each.' He adds, 'Just after the war, I was in London and walking down Bond Street; I spotted a watercolor in a sort of junk shop. I went in and bought it for practically nothing. It showed two old crones in Sligo and was called, 1 think, The Fishmarket. It was one of Jack Yeats' very early pictures. Then a bit later on I was able to buy another great painting, Regatta Evening." Ann Cremin, "Friend game," Art News 84.5 (1985): 85. Knowlson's account mentions the price of Morning in Sligo at 30 pounds, based on a letter Beckett wrote to MacGreevy, dated in error as 1935 instead of January 26, 1936: "The new stuff, some of it [Jack Yeats's recent painting], is superb. One small picture especially, Morning, almost a skyscape, wide street leading into Sligo looking west as usual, with boy on a horse, 30 pounds. If I had ten I would beard him with an easy payments proposition. But I have not. I let fall hints here that were understood but not implemented. But I have not given up hope of raising it. Do you think he would be amenable to instalments [?] It's a long time since I saw a picture I wanted so much." Knowlson, Damned 662, n. 147. Beckett also owned reproductions of Yeats's Low Tide and Boy and Horse and was familiar with In Memory of Bouucicault andBianconi and The Little Waves ofBreffny. Knowlson, Damned, 670, n. 25. Gordon also mentions Beckett owning Yeats's The Corner Boys. Gordon, World 124.

The only known record of criticism on Jack Yeats prior to MacGreevy's monograph was a text written in 1911 by Ernest Marriott entitled Jack B. Yeats: being a true and impartial view of his pictorial and dramatic art, published in London by Elkin Mathews.

56 Beckett also identified the paintings of Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) as breaking the tradition of the anthropomorphic landscapes of the past. He wrote to MacGreevy on September 8, 1934: "Cezanne seems to have been the first to see landscape and state it as material of a strictly peculiar order, incommensurable with all human expressions whatsoever. Atomistic landscape with no velleities of vitalism, landscape with personality a la rigueur, but personality in its own terms, not in Pelman's landscapality." Further into the letter, Beckett chooses Jacob van Ruysdael's The Entrance to the Forest in the National Gallery in London as an example illustrating the human as separate from the foreign outside world: "Ruysdael's Entrance to the Forest - there is no entrance anymore nor any commerce with the forest, its dimensions are its secret and it has no communications to make ... So the problem ... of how to state the emotion of Ruysdael in terms of post-impressionist painting must disappear as a problem as soon as it is realized that the Ruysdael emotion is no longer authentic and Cuyp's cows as irrelevant as Salomon's [van Ruisdael's] urinator in Merrion Square except as a contrivance to stress the discrepancy between that which cannot stay still for its phases and that which can ... How far Cezanne had moved from the snapshot puerilities of Manet and Cie when he could understand the dynamic intrusion to be himself and so landscape to be something by definition unapproachably alien, unintelligible arrangement of atoms, not so much as ruffled by the kind attentions of the Reliability Joneses." Knowlson, Images 85.

57 Knowlson recognizes that Beckett's comments on painting serve as a close outline of his own world view as a "no-man's land." See Knowlson, Images 85. Beckett uses the term "no-man's land" in "Recent Irish Poetry" to describe the space between the artist and the object: "The artist who is aware of this may state the space that intervenes between him and the world of objects; he may state it as no-man's land." Beckett, Disjecta 70. The term appears again Beckett's German notebooks, volume two, November 19, 1936: "Interesting notes in Marc [Franz Marc, the German Expressionist painter] re subject, predicate, object relations in painting. He says: paint the predicate of the living, Picasso has that of the inanimate. By that he appears to mean not the relation between subject & object, but the alienation (my nomansland). The object particularizes, banalizes the 'thought' which fires me: Musik ist Satz ohne Objekt." Knowlson, Images 151, fn. 80.

58 "When Beckett later reviewed Yeats's novel The Amaranthus (1934), he praised the author for his complex, if difficult, evocation of 'the amorphous' - the verbal equivalent of his painting techniques: 'There is no allegory, ... there is no symbol... there is no satire.' Instead, there are the 'series of imaginative transactions' in the 'stages of an image.'" Gordon, World 88.

59 The textual note for this added stage direction states that Beckett desired the face-to-face confrontation be "close," as written in the margin of his annotated copy of the 1960 Suhrkamp edition of the German text.

60 I reproduce here MacGreevy's passage illustrating his reconciliation of Beckett's Yeats/Watteau comparison. "I realized that their subjects were oddly akin. Humanly speaking, it may be said that Watteau's lords and ladies and Jack Yeats's peasants differ only in externals, as Jack Yeats's clowns differ from Gilles and Mezzetin only to the degree that the human (as distinct from the animal) element in the circus and music-hall differs from the commedia dell 'arte, which is to say that it is but a question of time and place. Juan Ramon Jimenez used to tell a story of a Spanish tramp who said to a grandee, 'You are above the law and I am below the law so we are equals.' In Ireland the whole people were below the law so something of the same kind might be said in comparing Watteau's figures and Jack Yeats's. For the human beings represented in the works of the two painters are equal in that they are artists in living. No aristocracy in history has consisted exclusively of consciously beautiful people. Watteau's imaginary aristocracy does. His aristocrats are all artists living as his artists are all aristocrats in art. It is their pleasure to be, perfectly, their essential selves and that pleasure in integrity is their life, though it isolates them from everyday humanity and the sense of that isolation gives them an air of melancholy. Jack Yeats's people are frequently depicted in pursuit of pleasure, at the circus or music-hall, at race meetings, or simply in conversation with each other. Yet often the expression on their faces suggest restraint, thoughtfulness, an inner discipline. Outwardly they so obviously belong to a more primitive state of society that has ever been depicted without condescension in Western European painting that their attitude to existence, their human significance, may easily be overlooked. In reality they express a philosophy of existence all the more clearly for being untrammelled by the airs and graces, the outward mannerisms, of a privileged class in a highly organized society. Watteau's characters are so consciously pleasing that the superficial observer might miss the thoughtfulness of their expression, the discretion of their gesture, and assume that they were hedonist rather than epicurean. No such mistake is possible with Jack Yeats's characters. The epicureanism is clear. It is generally accepted that the Irish are a pleasure-loving people and Jack Yeats often represents them as such. Yet the figures in his pictures are not elegant - their clothes bag about their bodies; they are not sensual - their faces are ascetic, thin and careworn; and their expression is thoughtful - they are bemused as much as amused. Temperate people and individualistic people, in the sense that they are not mere stereotyped conventions. Pleasing, friendly, they yet have enough character to stand out in relief against each other, apart, as they are apart from landscape, though not, since they are human and the landscape is unhuman, to the same degree. Which is simply to say that they are epicurean in the primitive, virtuous and beautiful sense of the word." Thomas MacGreevy, Jack B. Yeats: An Appreciation and an Interpretation (Dublin: Waddington, 1945) 15-16.

' In MacGreevy's words: "The artist [Yeats] had always treated strollers, tinkers, gypsies and tramps of every kind, seriously, with respect. They were symbolical of the whole human odyssey. The world, after all, is no more than a temporary camping place, to which men come, and from which they go like travelling tinkers. MacGreevy, Yeats 35.

2 For an excellent account regarding Yeats's Ango-Irish depictions, see Tricia Cusack, "Migrant Travellers and Touristic Idylls: The paintings of Jack B. Yeats and post-colonial identities," Art History 21.2 (1998): 201-218.

63 Lois Gordon explains how Yeats's focus on the downtrodden derives from lived experience. Yeats, and his good friend the playwright John Millington Synge, participated in a project to establish relief works and small industry in the economically depressed areas of Connemara and Mayo. Both were affected by the hopelessness of the sociopolitical situation and especially the extreme poverty in these areas, which became expressed in their works. Committed to painting a national portrait, Yeats believed: "No man can have two countries. A man must be part of the land and of the life he paints." See Godon, World 87.

64 In MacGreevy's estimation: "I do not think I am claiming too much for Jack Yeats when I say that nobody before him had juxtaposed landscape and figure without subduing the character of either to the other. I am quite certain that nobody before him did it consistently." MacGreevy, Yeats 14.

65 Randomly selected examples include: About to Write a Letter (1935), A Westerly Wind (1921), The Illuminated Town (1922), The Flapping Meeting (1926), Here Comes the Chestnut Mare (1926), While Grass Grows (1936), Says the Shan Van Vocht (1938), The Attack on the Deadwood Coach (1943).

66 When he reviewed Yeats's novel The Amaranthus (1934) in "An Imaginative Work!" (1936), Beckett described Yeats's evocation of "the amorphous" in the novel as the verbal equivalent of his painting techniques: "There is not allegory [...] There is no symbol [...] There is no satire." What remains are the "series of imaginative transactions" in the "stages of an image" Beckett, Disjecta 90. Ackerley and Gontarski report that in private, Beckett criticized his review, writing to MacGreevy on June 9, 1936: "I was kind and it was bad. I compared him with Ariosto." C. J. Ackerley and S. E. Gontarski, The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett (New York: Grove, 2004) 273.

67 James White, past Director of the National Gallery of Ireland, recounts the origins of Yeats's trademark rose: "I received a letter from the artist inviting me to his studio in Fitzwilliam Place. He received me with his usual old-world courtesy and took me in to the private place where the painting was done - always in electric light I had heard previously and never in the presence of any one else. Tied to the top of his easel was a pink paper rose. He then recalled to me a dinner at which 1 was present and which I left in a blazing temper. It was given in the United Arts Club in Dublin in honour of Jack B Yeats and it had seemed to me that our greatest artist had been damned with faint praise by a number of condescending speakers. Later that night when he arrived home his wife gave him a pink paper rose with which someone had presented her at the dinner. He went into his studio and thereupon tied the rose to an easel. 'I made a vow then,' he told me, 'that from thence forward all my work would be sub rosa; I would never again discuss the meaning of my pictures.'" James White, JackB Yeats: Drawings and Paintings (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1971) 14.

68 Matti Megged quotes Giacometti writing on the "art of failure" in 1961 that nearly resembles verbatim Beckett's own comments on the subject. Regrettably, Megged omits the bibliographic information for the source of the quotation: "I find it harder and harder to finish my things. The older I get, the lonelier I am ... Yet, even if everything I've made up to now doesn't count at all... and in spite of my certainty that I've failed up to now, and experienced that everything I start runs between my fingers, I have more desire than ever to work ... 1 don't understand it, but that's how it is. I see my sculptures before me: each one ... a failure. Right, a failure! But in each is something of what I want to create some day ... But the sculpture I'm thinking of contains everything that makes only a scattered and fragmentary appearance in the other sculptures. That gives me a desire ... to continue my work." A year later, Giacometti remarks: "Basically, I am only working for the sake of the experience that 1 feel when working ... Success or failure is unimportant. I work only because it is impossible for me to do something else." Matti Megged, "Beckett and Giacometti," Partisan Review 49.3 (1982) 400. Writing to director Alan Schneider on January 11, 1956 after the unsuccessful premier of Waiting for Godot in the United States, Beckett's words echo Giacometti's comments regarding artistic success: "Success and failure on the public level never mattered much to me, in fact I feel much more at home with the latter, having breathed deep of its vivifying air all my writing life up to the last couple of years. And I cannot help feeling that the success of Godot has been very largely the result of a misunderstanding, or of various misunderstandings, and that perhaps you have succeeded better than any one else in stating its true nature." Maurice Harmon ed., No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1998) 8.

69 Edward Lucie-Smith explains Giacometti's artistic impasse at the time: "Like many avant-garde artists of the time, Giacometti found himself in a dilemma. His clientele was a fashionable one, and in addition he supplemented his income by making decorative objects, in collaboration with his brother Diego, for the leading decorator Jean-Michel Frank; but he was keenly aware of the class struggle in France and sympathized with the underdogs. Louis Aragon, the member of the Surrealist Group with whom he felt the closest bond of sympathy, reacted to the same tensions by becoming a committed Communist. Giacometti moved in a different direction: he gradually separated himself from the Surrealists and returned (a great heresy) to working from the model - he began with a series of portrait busts of Diego. [Andre] Breton did not like this development and Giacometti was tricked into attending what turned out to be a Surrealist tribunal. Before the proceedings could be fully started, he said, 'Don't bother. I'm going,' and turned his back and walked out. There was no public excommunication, but his friends in the movement deserted him." Edward Lucie-Smith, Lives of the Great 2(f -Century Artists (London: Thames, 1999)271.

70 Hohl points The City Square (1948) as an illustration of Giacometti's artistic goals. Though it did not develop beyond the model stage, The City Square displays four walking men and one immobile woman confronting each other on a shared platform representing the square on an otherwise empty plane. Though the individual figures witness the activity of daily life, the work as whole expresses an atemporal perspective of life by confronting the viewer with a visual portrayal of reality as it actually appears as opposed an anecdotal illustration of the artist's vision. See Reinhold Hohl, "Giacometti and his Century," Alberto Giacometti: Sculpture, Paintings, Drawings, ed. Angela Schneider (Munich: Prestel, 1994) 47.

71 Giacometti describes the moment when he had his artistic epiphany, which occurred on a specific day in 1945 after leaving a cinema in Boulevard Montparnasse: "That day, reality took on a completely new value for me; it became the unknown, but an enchanted unknown. From that day on, because I had realized the difference between my way of seeing in the street and the way things are seen in photography and film, -1 wanted to represent what I saw. Only from 1946 have I been able to perceive the distance that allows people to appear as they really are and not in their natural size." Quoted in Dieter Honisch, "Scale in Giacometti's Sculpture," Alberto Giacometti: Sculpture, Paintings, Drawings, ed. Angela Schneider (Munich: Prestel, 1994) 65.

72 As a product of his aesthetic thinking, Ackerley and Gontarski describe From an Abandoned Work as "inhabiting margins that in Samuel Beckett's future works were to become more blurred, between prose and poetry, narrative and drama, completion and incompletion." Ackerley 213.

73 The mimes that he conceived of during this time not only indicate again his frustration with the limited expressiveness of language, but also his growing awareness of the visual impact of theatre. Commenting to Bowles on his Act without Words I, written by request for Deryk Mendel who desired a scenario for "a dumb white clown," Beckett said: "It's quite a good idea: when words fail you, you can fall back on silence!" James Knowlson and Elizabeth Knowlson eds., Beckett Remembering, Remembering Beckett (New York: Arcade, 2006) 110.

74 Beckett's comment echoes Macbeth's despairing words:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle. Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. (V, v, 19-28).

75 Beckett's directions in his Schiller notebook for the opening of the play reads as follows: "[erasure'] Opening. Tableau. Clove bowed head. Then [erasure] Clov[']s eyes to Hamm, to bins (if nee. [necessary] slight move forward), to sea window (if nee. [necessary] slight move back) to earth window. Then a moment still with bowed head. Then suddenly off. Ladder to earth window. Draws back curtain. Ladder to sea window. Draws back curtain. Ladder to earth window, looks at earth. Laugh. Ladder to sea window, looks out. Laugh. Starts with ladder towards ashcans, sets it down, unveils cans. Laugh. To Hamm with can sheets, unveils Hamm. Laugh. With two sheets towards door, halts, turns and speaks. Exit[.]" Samuel Beckett, The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett: Volume II, Endgame with a revised text, ed. S. E. Gontarski (London: Faber 1992) 85.

6 In the published text of the play, Beckett initially specified that the windows be located "high up," requiring Clov to use a short step ladder to access them, which changed in his Riverside Studios directorial notebook for a 1980 production of Endgame in London, by lowering their height: "Windows not high - low steps - fixed - justifying - 'Have you shrunk?'" Beckett, Endgame 43.

7 James Knowlson explains how the set visually enhances the theme of the play: "The skull-like set of Endgame picks up visually a theme that is stated as Hamm directly associates himself with Christ, partly by his question 'Can there be misery ... loftier than mine?', which surely echoes George Herbert's poem 'The Sacrifice', in which Christ calls out as a refrain: 'Was ever grief like mine?' The names, too, in Endgame (Hamm, Clov, Nagg, Nell) are all variants of hammer and nails. For Beckett, nails invariably recalled the Crucifixion." Knowlson, Images 65.

8 Knowlson proves that Beckett experienced numerous examples of seventeenth-century Dutch art in galleries throughout Europe, in addition to having read R. H. Wilenski's An Introduction to Dutch Art in the 1930s. Knowlson, Images 81-82.

79 McMillan and Fehsenfeld summarize Beckett's segmentation of Endgame into sixteen sections as follows: 1. Clov's mime-show and first soliloquy. 2. Hamm's wakening, first soliloquy, and first [verbal exchange] with Clov. 3. Dialogue, Nagg and Nell. 4. Dialogue between Hamm and Clov including the "little turn - round the world!" and ending with Clov's ah-me, "If I could kill him ..." 5. Clov's "comedy" with ladder and telescope. 6. Hamm's interrogation of Clov, rising to the burlesque flea scene. 7. Dialogue between Hamm and Clov, ending with the ironic mirror image of the [toy-] dog episode. 8. Clov's rebellion, leading [up to] Hamm's story of the madman and trailing off into the alarm clock scene. 9. Hamm's story of the beggar. 10. The prayer, ending with Nagg's curse. 11. Hamm's and Clov's play within a play: Hamm's chronicle. 12. The second turn with the chair. 13. Dialogue between Hamm and Clov, leading [up to]: 14. Hamm's [self-defined] role. 15. Emancipation of Clov, [indicated by] his monologue and exit. 16. Hamm's final monologue.

Dougald McMillan and Martha Fehsenfeld, Beckett in the Theatre: The Author as Practical Playwright and Director (London: Calder, 1988) 206.

80 Knowlson explains Beckett's rationale for Clov's calculated steps: "He normally had a well-thought-out intellectual rationale behind everything that he did, and, in this case, this may have been provided by his readings in the 1930s in the history of Greek philosophy, which would have supplied him with an additional motivation for his emphasis on repetition and pattern. At rehearsals in Berlin, after organising Clov's steps from his kitchen to Hamm's armchair, Beckett referred to the repeated numbers as being 'Pythagorean'. Clearly what he had in mind was Pythagoras' theory in which the universe consisted of a harmonious disposition of numbers, based on the perfect number 10. Again, using such repeated patterns as a unifying feature, Beckett organized Clov's short steps when he is 'having an idea' into a series of 6+4+6+4." Knowlson, Images 133. Notes for Chapter 3

Ackerley and Gontarski provide an excellent description of how the tape-recorder allows Beckett to layer three distinct time frames into one presentation: "A single tape could capture several blocks of time, multiple levels of character, creating a triple exposure: Krapp at sixty-nine listening to Krapp at thirty-nine (earlier thirty-seven) summarizing a tape made ten or fifteen years earlier. The result is a palimpsest of personalities, a layering of character. By presenting them simultaneously SB depicted the inability of the self to perceive itself accurately. Krapp-sixty-nine sneers at Krapp-thirty-nine, who laughs at an even younger Krapp. Each sees the fool he was rather than the fool he is." Ackerley 303. Articulating the same idea in a more succinct manner, Enoch Brater describes Krapp's Last Tape as "a play for one actor, two voices, and three unities of time." Enoch Brater, The Essential Samuel Beckett: An Illustrated Biography (London: Thames) 90.

82 The description of the set in version 5 (Typescript 2) of the evolution of Happy Days changes from a specifically detailed picture to a more abstract image. In Version 5, the set was: "Expanse of scorched grass rising front to low mound. The summit 4' high and at exact centre of rise, is a flattened area about 3' square. The slopes leading up to it on either side are identical in contour. Effect of strict symmetry." In version 6, Beckett modifies the stage directions to create a more abstract visual impression: "Expanse of scorched grass rising centre to low mound. Gentle slopes down to front and either side of stage. Back an abrupter fall to stage level. Maximum of simplicity and symmetry." S. E. Gontarksi, Beckett's Happy Days: A Manuscript Study (Columbus: Ohio State U, 1977) 36.

83 Beckett wrote in his Schiller directorial notebook for Krapp's Last Tape that the repetition of poses, actions, glances, and manners of speaking in Krapp's Last Tape strive to maintain a balance between opposites: "Play composed therefore of 2 fairly equal parts - listening and non-listening." Beckett, Krapp 201.

84 In Rosemary Pountney's words: "Krapp throws away the present in favour of a moment in the past beyond which he is unable, mentally, to progress." Rosemary Pountney, Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett's Drama 1956-76 (Princeton: Princeton UP) 57.

85 Knowlson describes Beckett's variations regarding his desired choice of footwear for Krapp: "In Schiller, Martin Held wore dirty white, open plimsoll-type or tennis shoes rather than boots [...] In Orsay, Pierre Chabert also wore white tennis shoes. In San Quentin, Rich Cluchey wore dark slippers. Beckett was concerned that Krapp's footwear should make the right kind of shuffling sound and, at first, they tried attaching sandpaper, pieces of metal or solid leather to the soles. 'Beckett was not satisfied with any of these solutions. Today he brought his own slippers for Krapp: worn black leather slippers with a soft sole. Rick tries them out - the right tone has been found' [...] Because of this variation in footwear from production to production - and because Beckett did not alter any of his corrected copies and has not authorized this change - the original text has been retained here. It is, indeed, yet another example of 'Black (gown) v. white again' (note of Samuel Beckett to James Knowlson, 8 September 1986)." Beckett, Krapp 13, n. 9.

86 In the introduction to Beckett's directorial notebook, Knowlson considers Beckett's changes to the opening image of Krapp's Last Tape as achieving a "much greater simplicity and clarity of line to avoid everything that appeared to be superfluous. The cuts and changes were also aimed at establishing a more marked contrast between, on the one hand, brooding silence and immobility and, on the other, noise and rapid, purposeful activity. Beckett wrote in his production notebook that he had cut out 'everything that interferes with the sudden shift from immobility to movement or slows this down.'" Select cuts include: eliminating all action pertaining to Krapp's locking or unlocking of drawers, removing one of the two drawers from Krapp's desk, and eliminating any business involving Krapp's fumbling for an envelope. Beckett, Krapp's Last Tape, xiv.

87 Beckett's direction "He shudders" replaces the original one found in the published edition of the text, which stipulates that Krapp "heaves a great sigh."

88 Themes of light and dark appear in our earliest oral accounts, written documents, and visual displays. In ancient Egypt, many believed that the God Ra opens his eyes to start the day, and closes them to bring on night. An episode in Hindu mythology describes the Goddess Parvati innocently covering the eyes of the great God Shiva while engaging in amourous play in their home in the Himalayas, which causes the universe to become dark. In ancient Persia, one uncovers the story of Zoroaster, who was an Iranian prophet and the founder of Zoroastrianism, which served as the national religion of the Persian Empire from the time of the Achaemenidae to the close of the Sassanid period. Though accepted as a historical figure, efforts to date Zoroaster widely vary from 6000 to 600 BC, 276 with scholarly estimates placing him between 1700 and 1000 BC. According to legend, Zoroaster discovered the path toward righteousness while standing in a river drawing water during which he looks up and sees a fair, bright, and radiant man adorned in a silken gown, woven with angelic light. The individual whom Zoroaster encountered represents the divine emissary, who led him to the god of creation, the light. Zoroastrian philosophy generated many ideological descendants, principally Manichaeanism and Gnosticism, which retained the belief in the reality of angelic light in a darkened world. In the Western world, the veneration of light veered in two directions: Greek and Hebrew. The Greek tradition begins with the story of Prometheus stealing fire from heaven and bringing it to humankind in order to light the way to civilization. From the Hebrew perspective, the line in Genesis 1:3, "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light," posed an interesting paradox for the early Jewish theologians. If God did not create the other luminaries — the sun, moon, and stars — until the fourth day, then what constituted the light of the first day? The ancient rabbis debated the quandary and determined that the light of the first day represented a primordial light, emanating from a primordial force existing in the universe, which God drew upon for creation. In Christianity, the letters of St. Paul and the Gospel according to John portray the incarnation of Jesus as the light illuminating the world, which became celebrated by Christians as Christmas, also known as the festival of lights, which happens to coincide with the solstice. By the time of the Medieval period, works of art began representing the illuminating light of God with stained glass to illustrate of Biblical stories by casting multicoloured rays of light. During this period, light and dark encapsulated a complete theology in the search for the truth. Examining the striking visual representations generated by the dolce stil nuovo of Dante Alighieri, one sees that textual works embraced light imagery in their descriptions of ontological and religious issues using metaphors inspired from numerous visual art sources. According to Roman Ingarden, symbols have a literal existence as a tangible object that also possesses one or more additional meanings, especially for objects representing abstractions. In performing their symbolizing function, objects belonging to the represented world refer to objects that do not achieve any form of phenomenal appearance. When objects accomplish their symbolizing function they become subordinate to what they symbolize, serving as a means to an end. Symbols only function, however, by concretizing a metaphysical quality into a presented object, which necessarily possesses a visual component. In addition, then, to expanding the meaning associated with presented objects by endowing them with a symbolic function, symbols realize their function by transmitting an immediate visual impression to the imagination of the recipient, who then processes the association into a meaning applicable to the context. By the time of the Renaissance, the artistic and scientific study of the light of nature garnered considerable support because the new science of perspective sought to understand the dazzling qualities of light as illustrated in art, in pursuit of a deeper study of the nature of things. Although vision is impossible without light, it was not until the discoveries of Isaac Newton (1642-1727) and Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) that any reliable information on the topic emerged, in spite of centuries of speculation. Newton argued that light is a string of particles, while Huygens considered light as a string of pulses traveling along a wave. Contemporary scientists acknowledge both theories, believing that light manifests itself as both a particle and a wave. In addition to the question of what constitutes light itself, it was not until Danish astronomer Ole Roemer (1644-1710) first measured the speed of light and determined that it travels at a finite speed, refuting the belief that it is instantaneously transmitted from its source. With advances in technology and more knowledge of the solar system, modern scientists have calculated the speed of light as approximately 300,000 kilometres per second (or 3 x 1010 cm/sec), and consider it one of the basic constructs of the universe. Robert L. Solso, Cognition and the Visual Arts (Cambridge: MIT P, 1994) 7-8. In so far as the eye can perceive, however, light instantly arrives, producing the effect of instantaneousness, which explains why many consider two-dimensional art as non-temporal. Though the speed of light gives the illusion of immediacy, in reality one's experience of light is temporally displaced, as Robert Solso describes: "One implication of the finite speed of light is that we always see the past: the light striking our eyes brings us information from some finite time ago when it was reflected from or generated by some object at a distance from us" (8). Solso's comment that one's experience of light arrives from a past transmission provides interesting interpretative implications for Krapp 's Last Tape and Happy Days. In these plays, Beckett juxtaposes light and dark symbols against their traditional meanings to explore the internal condition of the characters, who find themselves trapped in the present moment with nothing to grasp but memories of the past. Beckett weaves a complex aesthetic tapestry intertwining art, science, and philosophy by implicating light and dark symbolism into an exploration of time and ontology.

89 In his study on nineteenth and twentieth-century prose, Daniel J. Schneider relates the development of symbolism in literature to the growth of idealism by analyzing the works of writers (primarily those by Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, and Wallace Stevens) that revolted against the supremacy of positivistic and materialistic views of life. In Schneider's view, the symbolists aimed to represent a higher and truer reality than what empirical philosophies could convey by subscribing to the belief that "liberation from the dead end of scientific 277 determinism lay somewhere along the road of correspondences, of mystic analogues, of the anagogic, the vague and suggestive." See Daniel J. Schneider, Symbolism: The Manichean Vision (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1975) 1. Symbolists conceived of nature not as an assembly of minute particles, but as reflection of the imagination. Reality remains inaccessible to science due to the interconnectedness of all living creatures creating a unity that exists beyond any insights that one may uncover through scientific observation. Symbolism provides the only means to attain truth because it represents the natural language of the spirit, a concept incongruent with discoveries in science, which portray the world as non-responsive to the human spirit. The symbolists embarked on converting the emptiness of the scientific world into a moral landscape by joining mind to nature, as Schneider explains: "The artist became the echo of the divine I AM, the universe became one with mind, while the scientist, the mere material of man, was doomed to the abyss of philosophy that denied spirit altogether or at least traced the origins of spirit to the concatenations of brute matter" (1-2). If one considers thought as identical with being, then the artist confidently may express his or her experience of nature as entirely not subjective due to the world conforming to the mind's projections. However, since symbolism seeks to illustrate the unity of all objects, in its search beyond the immediately visible and the immediately knowable, it threatens to displace its relationship between mind and world. Predicated on the notion that thought cannot grasp anything more than itself, thereby ascribing all experience as delusion, the artist finds no recourse but to develop an approach that admits doubt and embraces ambiguity as the object of representation.

The outcome of presenting ambiguities using symbolic representations, Schneider explains, is that the process, in part, reinstates "the old distinction between natura naturans and natura naturata: the distinction between the incorruptible essences and the world of corruptible matter". See D. Schneider 4. By the nineteenth-century, symbolist art expanded to represent the discord between "Christian or romantic and humanitarian views of experience and the new naturalism that [...] undermines all Christian and romantic assumption" (D. Schneider 4). The ideological incompatibility between the symbolist outlook and the scientific one calls into question all assertions of knowledge and the idea that there exists some divine entity that unifies everything in existence. The symbolists present these and all ambiguities in their art by subverting traditional symbolic interpretations. Schneider elucidates that anything may be represented through either dark or light imagery to show that dualisms promote ambiguities. Ambiguities pervade the literature of the nineteenth-century, demonstrating how the admixture of light and dark reveals virtues transforming into vices, and how noble intentions can produce tainted results (D. Schneider 6). Schneider uses examples from Herman Melville's Moby Dick to illustrate the manner in which nineteenth- century writers subverted traditional associations of light and dark imagery as good and bad by showing the ambiguities in the representation. "The white whale - what is it? A brute that kills, yet gives the oil to light the lamps: both destroyer and preserver, Ormazd and Ahriman. And all parts of Melville's world exhibit the dualism, the ambiguity. The sea is lovely, and it is a horror: 'its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure.' 'The calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm.' The 'graceful repose' of the whale line 'carries more of true terror than any other aspect of this dangerous affair' (p. 282). And 'who would think ... that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale! ... Now that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be found in the heart of such decay; is this nothing?' (p. 407)." D. Schneider 5.

1 Knowlson describes Beckett's background in spotlight painting: "Beckett's use of lighting in his plays from the 1958 Krapp 's Last Tape onwards may also owe something to 'spotlighting' as a technique in painting. As early as 1935 he revealed a special interest in the history and development of 'spotlight painting' as a genre. He wrote to Tom MacGreevy: 'It is very hard to see the Elsheimers in the German room [in the National Gallery in London] by the Tobias & the Angel seems quite exquisite ... The Geertgen Adoration [the Nativity by Geertgen tot Sint Jans, also in the National Gallery] must be one of the earliest spotlight paintings. Surely it is only half the story to date them from Raphael's Liberation of St Peter. I never saw the Oxford Uccello mentioned in this connection either.' He had just been reading R. H. Wilenski's An Introduction to Dutch Art (1929) and taking notes on Wilenski's discussion of how Elsheimer used spotlighting to 'evoke a mood', but his final comment to MacGreevy on the 'Oxford Uccello', which was added to his notes on Wilenski, reveals that he was also thinking widely about the genre as a whole." Knowlson qualifies these statements by explaining that while neither Caravaggio nor Rembrandt were spotlight painters per se, they "both create striking chiaroscuro effects, contrasting light and darkness, isolating figures against a dark background. Of the dozens of paintings by Rembrandt that we know Beckett knew well, I think of his famous Self-Portrait in Old Age at the National Gallery in London, where virtually only the head is at all brightly lit, and his An Elderly Man as St Paul, also from the National Gallery. For actual spotlight effects, one tends to think of paintings such as The Denial of St Peter in Amsterdam or The Adoration of the Shepherds in London." Knowlson, Images 78-79. Bird cites an example from Descartes' Third Meditation to illustrate the change in seventeenth-century metaphysics: "What natural light shows me - that, for example, because I doubt, I therefore am, and things of that nature - can in no way be subject to doubt." See Jon Bird, "Nova Descriptio ... On Jan Vermeer's The Geographer," Parallax 5.4(1999), 118.

93 Knowlson makes the connection based on the fact that the script for Un chien andalou was published in the same number of the literary magazine This Quarter in which appeared Beckett's own translations of Eluard and Breton's poems. See Knowslon, Images 92.

94 Homan's describes Beckett's microcosmic stage for Krapp 's Last Tape as follows: "We see an audience of one, Krapp, huddled over his tape recorder, that technological 'stage,' which is the 'other' player of the performance he witnesses and which is, in turn, witnessed by us, the outer audience." Sidney Homan, Beckett's Theatres: Interpretations for Performance (Lewisberg, Bucknell UP, 1984) 96.

5 Knowlson offers some examples of Dutch paintings that he considers as visual influences on Beckett's protagonists: "They sit motionless or freeze the movements into immobility, moving steadily towards, yet resisting stasis. As visual parallels, one thinks particularly of late Rembrandts or late Vermeers - those oh so familiar figures seated on a chair or at a table: the Old Man in an Armchair attributed to Rembrandt or his authenticated Portrait of Jacob Trip from the National Gallery in London, whom it is hard to resist seeing as a pre-modernist Hamm in Beckett's Endgame." Knowlson, Images 68.

96 The great masters of the Renaissance believed that the painter must copy exactly all that exists in nature and not improve or enhance it in the depiction to avoid rendering the work unnatural, and therefore not beautiful. However, as the Renaissance reached its apex, the great artists Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Titian seem to question the results of their own artistic achievements by concentrating on apocalyptic themes. In reaction, the next generation of painters attempted to either supercede the late works of the masters, or focus on fantastical themes that were avoided by the great artists of the High Renaissance. They founded a new artistic movement called Mannerism, which broke the rules of decorum, subject matter, and unity. Into this climate entered Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, who reacted to Mannerism by initiating the path toward Naturalism.

97 In The Becket Country, Eoin O'Brien provides a number of examples where Beckett mentions Rembrandt in his prose works. In the early Dream of Fair to Middling Women, Beckett refers to Rembrandt's portrait of his brother and reminds himself that he must further develop his thoughts on the work of the artist, which he does later in the novel, discussing not only this portrait of his brother, but also Rembrandt's St. Matthew in the Louvre (146-147). In Murphy, the image of truthfulness and holiness is conveyed through the creation of a fictional painting that Beckett attributes to the artist St. Luke (147). O'Brien speculates that Rembrandt's St. Luke Drawing the Virgin inspires Beckett's use of St. Luke based on the fact that he already had the St. Matthew in mind, which is located in the Louvre "where Beckett, no doubt, spent many a lunchtime (147). See Eoin O'Brien, The Beckett Country, 146-147 for textual examples of these references. Ackerley and Gontarski also notice that Beckett mentions Rembrandt's Rest on the Flight into Egypt in Molly and Watt. See Ackerley 481.

98 The entry appears in notebook III, dated January 5, 1937.

99 Leonard Slatkes provides an interesting analysis of Rubens' version of Caravaggio's Judith Beheading Holofernes: "Inspired by Caravaggio's powerful rendering of the same theme - a work Rubens must have studied in Rome - this powerful composition is still capable of evoking visceral responses from the viewer. Its strength after nearly four centuries is a tribute to Caravaggio's revolutionary artistic vocabulary: a dramatic - perhaps even melodramatic - approach to theme and composition; transitory poses tied to ongoing physical activity; striking contrasts of light and shade that intensify figural corporeality while simultaneously heightening the action; and a convincing sense of physiognomic realism in both Rubens's and Caravaggio's Judith, amplified by the contrast between the youthful features of the beautiful Judith and those of her wizened old servant woman." But Slatkes explains that Rubens' Samson andDelialah includes artificial illumination, a stylistic element rarely used by Caravaggio. Instead of dramatic natural lighting, Rubens employed several artificial light sources within his painting. See Leonard J. Slatkes, "In Caravaggio's Footsteps: A Northern Journey," Sinners and Saints: Darkness and Light: Caravaggio and his Dutch and Flemish Followers, ed. Dennis P. Weller (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1998) 36-37. Wilenski describes Elsheimer as one of the first who painted a romantic landscape, which captures through the interplay of light and dark the artist's reaction not to a form, but a mood: "In Elsheimer's 'Mountain Landscape' the front plane is indicated by the line that runs from the bottom to the top of the picture on the left, but once the eye passes this point we are in a world of undefined recession; the sky is no longer a backcloth but a symbol for boundless space, the river that passes the tree-trunk on the left disappears into undefined distance and undefined direction, and all the sections of the earth structure indicated by the light coverage toward this limitless recession. Elsheimer has here symbolized his emotional reaction to the idea of remoteness in space, and with this reaction was bound up an emotional reaction to the idea of remoteness in time." Regarding Flight into Egypt, Wilenski describes how Elsheimer plays and twists with light and dark: "[...] we are taken into undefined light on one side and into undefined darkness on the other; or in other words we have here, for the first time, an attitude of mind that reacts emotionally, not only to the idea of an escape from defined darkness into infinite light, but also to the idea of an escape from defined light into darkness and mystery." Wilenski explains: In Elsheimer's picture we find for the first time a night effect used to symbolize a mood, and in this work - as original in its way as Brueghel's 'Flight into Egypt', where the Holy Family slips away from a crowded marketplace in broad daylight - we find for the first time a concept of scene which depicts the Holy Family leaving the warmth and comfort of a home and starting on a perilous night journey into undefined space beneath a starry sky." R. H. Wilenski, An Introduction to Dutch Art (London: Faber, 1929) 62-65.

101 Arnheim explains Rembrandt's "glowing luminosity": "An object appears luminous not simply by virtue of its absolute brightness, but by surpassing the average brightness established for its location by the total field. Thus, the uncanny glow of rather dark objects comes about when they are placed in an even darker environment. Furthermore, luminosity results when brightness is not perceived as an effect of illumination. To this end, shadows must be eliminated or kept to a minimum. And the strongest light must appear within the confines of the object. Rembrandt frequently places a bright object in a dark field, keeps it almost free of shadow, and partially lights the objects around it." Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye (Berkeley: U of California P, 1974) 325.

102 Examining the manuscript development of Krapp 's Last Tape, Gontarski notices how Beckett sharpened the light and dark imagery in each revision: "In stage 4 Beckett developed the light/dark contrast in Krapp's face and clothing. The face was now pallid with a purple nose, a drinker's snout. His clothes were black and white, the boots, especially, surprisingly white. The harshness of the setting was heightened in revision. In stage 4, Krapp sat in 'strong light. Rest of stage in shadow.' In this same version 'shadow' was altered to 'darkness.' In TS 2 Beckett specified 'strong white light.' To the dark nurse, a sharply contrasting white uniform was added in TS 1, 'all white and starch.' And between TS 4 and the printed version Beckett specified that the black ball was to be given to a white dog. As Beckett wrote in his production notebook, '... if the giving of the black ball to the white dog represents the sacrifice of sense to spirit the form here too is that of a mingling.' And Krapp's reservations about the offering were stated more precisely if sentimentally as late as TS 4. 'I wish,' he noted concluding the scene, 'I had kept it.'" S. E. Gontarski, The Intent of Undoing in Samuel Beckett's Dramatic Texts (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1985)62.

103 Knowlson attributes Beckett's use of the "all the light and dark" to the following lines from Lord Bryon's Hebrew Melodies:

"She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless Climes and Starry Skies And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes"

See James Knowlson, Theatre Workbook 1 Samuel Beckett: Krapp's Last Tape (London: Brutus, 1980) 28.

104 For Rembrandt, Christianity was not related to the Church; rather it was a symbol of the mystery of life, as Wilenski says: "To Rembrandt the life of Jesus was the life of man and the life of every man was the life of Jesus." Rembrandt thought of Biblical stories in terms of daily life. See Wilenski, Introduction 125.

105 Krapp bonds with his tape recorder because it remains at his disposal without demanding anything in return. Jean Martin, who played Krapp in 1970, recalls Beckett asserting that Krapp physically bond with the tape recorder by "bendfing] more and more toward the tape recorder as the play [goes] on, in order to end up completely lying over it." See McMillan, Beckett in the Theatre 257. The original stage direction coincide with Beckett's direction smce Krapp's being "hard of hearing" causes him, by the end of the play, to sit "leaning forward, elbows on table, hand cupping ear towards machine." Although Krapp experiences erotic sensations from physically touching the machine, no true emotional bond can exist between them since an inanimate object cannot reciprocate his love. Further, Krapp's desire to become physically closer to the machine may also suggest that he wishes to renounce his human freedom to become more object-like.

106 Beckett was familiar with the Gospel source of the picture since he cited it in his 1966 teleplay Eh Joe. Knowlson, Images 68. The passage is from Luke 12:20: "But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?"

107 Regarding the final scene of the play, Beckett revealed to the actor Martin Held at rehearsal in Berlin that "Old Nick's there. Death is standing beside [behind] him and unconsciously he's looking for it." James Knowlson, "Introduction," The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett: Volume III, Krapp's Last Tape with a revised text, by Samuel Beckett, ed. James Knowlson (New York: Grove, 1992) xvi.

Believers of Manichaeanism attribute positive happenings to the "Good God," and negative consequences to the "Bad God" in consequence of the primeval conflict between light and dark, spirit and matter. The basis of Mani's system rests on his cosmogony, which he advocated as a religion of pure reason as opposed to blind faith. Manichaeanism professes to explain the origin, composition, and future of the universe; it claims to provide an answer for everything rather than accept the mysteries in lieu of explanations.

10 McMillan and Fehsenfeld conclude: "Krapp's enslavement to his memories leaves him suffering the ultimate punishment of those who fail to observe the precepts of Manicheanism. Because Krapp has not successfully rejected darkness, it still burns within him as it had from infancy. In the deleted reference to the star that burned above his bassinet in North Great George Street, fire seems a benign enough element, but in the progression of the play and of Krapp's life it becomes more evidently ambiguous and finally clearly a source of tormenting heat" McMillan, Beckett 249-250. And Sue Wilson's thesis is that "[t]he Manichaean presence is signalled in Krapp's Last Tape so that Krapp may be seen to offend against its ethical and intellectual strictures. The play, then, is a critique, not a celebration, of its protagonist' useless Manichaean, and metaphysical obsessiveness." Sue Wilson, "Krapp's Last Tape and the Mania in Manichaeism," Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui 12 (2002): 131.

110 Since Beckett determined that there are 17 minutes and 15 seconds of "non-listening," he concludes: "Play composed therefore of 2 fairly equal parts - listening and non-listening." Beckett, Krapp 77'.

Beckett introduces the tape recorder in Krapp's Last Tape as a mechanical device to represent the past. The tape recorder was such a recent invention in 1958 that Beckett had not even seen one at the time he wrote the play. Beckett sets the play in the future to avoid the objection that Krapp's earlier self could not have made the recordings because the tape recorder had not been invented. The play presents a mechanically fixed memory codified on tope while the spectator witnesses Krapp's reactions to his "retrospects." The tape recorder (as an active stage presence) allows Beckett to present on stage memories that provoke mimed reactions from Krapp-69. It also allows Beckett the opportunity to integrate monologue and mine while nearly maintaining absolute separation of voice and action.

1,2 Soren Kierkegaard's distinction between remembering past memories as repetition (the active repeating of a moment) and as recollection (the static remembering of a moment) helps to explain Krapp's situation: "Repetition and recollection are the same movement, only in opposite directions; for what is recollected has been, is repeated backwards, whereas repetition properly so called is recollected forwards. Therefore repetition, if it is possible, makes a man happy, whereas recollection makes him unhappy." Krapp cannot repeat his past experiences; he can only recollect them. Soren Kierkegaard, Repetition: An Essay in Experimental Psychology, translated by Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1946) 3-4.

The memories detailing Krapp's loss of spirit or security arise from his relationships with his mother, Old Miss McGlome, Bianca, and Fanny. Krapp's longest relationship was with his mother, but all he remembers of it was "wishing she were gone." Upon hearing of her death, Krapp revels in the word "viduity." One can consider the death of Krapp's mother as the death of his security, yet all he focuses on in his recording is reminding himself that he could have kept the black ball he gave to white dog, renouncing his only selfless act. Old Miss McGlome's disappearance from Krapp's life suggests the loss of his youthful spirit. The account first describes the happiness her singing evoked, but Krapp quickly changes his tune by wondering: "Did I ever sing? No." Krapp's memory of 281

Bianca, with whom he lived "on and off with" on Kedar Street, indicates the shallowness of the relationship. He barely recalls living with her, remembering only her eyes because he "suddenly saw them again." With Fanny, Krapp exposes his inability to conceive true love. He refers to her as a "bony old ghost of a whore," passing off the relationship as "better than a kick in the crutch." He even patronizes her by saying that he had been "saving up for her all [his] life."

11 Krapp's descriptions of the girl in the coat and the dark nurse feature imagery of physical separation. Krapp recalls seeing the girl in the shabby green coat going away by train. The relationship ended before it began. Krapp only remembers her as a passing thought when reflecting on his own misery. Krapp's encounter with the dark nurse results in her threatening "to call a policeman." Interpreting the situation from his perspective, Krapp-39 proclaims: "As if 1 had any designs on her virtue!" The effect of presenting multiple images of failed relationships is that it coincides with the central image of the circular motion of the advancing tape, suggesting that Krapp replays patterns in his life that have entrapped him in a life of misery.

115 Knowlson suggests yet another example of the influence of Dutch art on Krapp's Last Tape regarding the Beckett's introduction of a lit "cagibi," - a den or cubby-hole at the back and to stage right - echoing the zone of light over Krapp's desk: "The addition itself is highly reminiscent of the paintings of the seventeenth-century Dutch artist Pieter de Hooch, who often painted a brightly lit background scene viewed through a doorway or an archway. This provided an inner frame within the main frame of the picture and supplied another light source. We may recall in particular the painting entitled The Mother, which Beckett saw in the Kaiser Wilhelm Friedrich Museum in Berlin on his trip to Germany in 1936-7. This was also reproduced in black-and-white illustration in Wilenski's Introduction to Dutch Art. Among the many other paintings of de Hooch that use this characteristic motif are The Pantry in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, The Card Players in the Queen's Collection at Buckingham Palace, and a family group, Woman with Child and Maid, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Beckett may not have been consciously inspired by any particular de Hooch painting, but the introduction of such a lit den was the natural choice of an artist steeped in seventeenth-century Dutch art." Knowlson, Images 82-83.

11 Based on phrases implying the audience's role as onlookers in That Time ("There before your eyes"), Stanton Garner Jr. argues that Beckett calls attention to the performance field as something seen, in a medium that etymologically means "seeing-place" (theatrori). See Garner, Bodied 54.

11 Beckett literally explored the dichotomy between the need to be perceived and the agony of being perceived in Film (1963), his only work for cinema. The script for Film begins with George Berkeley's "Esse est percipi" (To be is to be perceived); however, throughout the film, the protagonist, O, constantly tries to flee the perceiving eye, E. Scholars have interpreted his pursuer not only as the external eye of the camera pursuing the object, but also as the internal eye of O, suggesting that he attempts to escape his own critical gaze.

11 Ruby Cohn notes that "Beckett insisted that the 'many colors' of Winnie's Act I voice must contrast with her usually 'white voice' of Act II. Ruby Cohn, Just Play: Beckett's Theatre (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980) 253-254.

119 Knowlson elaborates and explains Beckett's description of the function of the props: "As Beckett explains at the foot of the page, the general principle that governed the form of many of the props chosen was that the primary element has atrophied (i.e. wasted away), while the secondary element has hypertrophied (i.e. developed abnormally). In Schiller nb. (80), Beckett described this and certain of the other characteristics of the props: 'Conspicuousness. Inadequacy or exiguity of primary element (brush, glass), as compared with secondary (handle, etc.). Narrowness and elongation. Agedness, endingness.' At rehearsals for the Schiller production, Beckett explained that he did not want the props to be naturalistic but 'verfremdet' [alienated], and it is clear that this aim also applied to the Royal Court production, although perhaps less strikingly." Samuel Beckett, Happy Days: The Production Notebook of Samuel Beckett, ed. James Knowlson (New York: Grove, 1985) 185.

12 In the directorial notebooks for both Krapp's Last Tape and Happy Days, Beckett changes the position of the characters from front centre to stage left. The revised text for Krapp's Last Tape reads: "Front left of centre a small table." In the "Note on the Design" of Happy Days by James Knowlson: "Contrary to the text, Beckett did not want the mound to be positioned symmetrically on the stage either, and, as in the Schiller production, Winnie was moved over to stage left with a kind of terrace extending to her right." According to Rudolph Arnheim's reading of Mercedes Gaffron, "the observer experiences a picture as though he were facing its left side. He subjectively identifies with the left, and whatever appears there assumes greatest importance. When one compares photographs with their mirror images, a foreground object in an asymmetrical scene looks closer on the left side than it does the right. And when the curtain rises in the theater, the audience is inclined to look to its left first and to identify with the characters appearing on that side. Therefore, according to Alexander Dean, among the so-called stage areas the left side (from the audience's viewpoint) is considered the stronger. In a group of actors, the one farthest to the left dominates the scene. The audience identifies with him and sees the others from his position, as opponents." Gaffron explains that the phenomena is the result of the dominance of the left cerebral cortex, which contains the higher brain centres for speech, writing, and reading. See Araheim, Art and Visual Perception 34-35.

121 When he came to direct his own production, Beckett ensured that the audience not misconstrue the bight light with positive values by having the lighting designer Jack Raby focus fourteen, blinding bright "Par 64s" aircraft lights (rated at 1000 watts each) on Winnie in the mound. Beckett, Happy 21-22. With such intense lighting and Winnie's frontal position, especially in Act II when Winnie cannot even turn briefly from the "hellish light" (CDW 140) because she "faces front motionless throughout," (CDW 160) creates a doubling of gaze; the spectators stare at a woman staring back at them, echoed in Winnie's lines: "Eyes on [...] eyes" {CDW 160).

122 Beckett was familiar with The Myth of Sisyphus since he alludes to the character in his novel Molloy: "Because I do not think even Sisyphus is required to scratch himself, or to groan, or to rejoice, as the fashion is now, always at the same appointed places." Samuel Beckett, Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable (New York: Grove, 1955) 133.

123 In "Childhood Memories and Screen Memories," Sigmund Freud explains that "the so-called earliest childhood memories we possess" are not "genuine memory-trace but a later revision of it, a revision which may have been subjected to the influences of a variety of later physical forces." Sigmund Freud, "Childhood Memories and Screen Memories," trans. Alan Tyson, ed. James Strachey, The Psychology of Everyday Life (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991) 88.

124 Sidney Homan disagrees with interpretations considering the gaze of Shower/Cooker as a double of the audience's since Shower/Cooker cannot comprehend Winnie's situation and obsess over its meaning as the audience can (85). However, Ruby Cohn in Back to Beckett (182), and Shimon Levy in Samuel Beckett's Self-Referential Drama (95) liken Shower/Cooker to the audience, who cannot comprehend situation and thus, remain dissatisfied.

125 Dali made his first visit to Paris in 1926 where he met Pablo Picasso. Inspired by the art of both Picasso and Joan Miro, Dali created several pieces in their style as he searched for his own form of expression. One of Dali's unique abilities as an artist was his capacity to create with precision various painterly styles from classicism to the avant-garde, sometimes combining them in the same piece. In 1929, Dali collaborated with Luis Bufiuel on the short surrealist film Un chien andalou and met his muse and future wife Gala, born under the name Helena Dmitrievna Deluvina Diakonova. Gala was then married to the surrealist poet Paul Eluard. In the same year, after a number of professional exhibitions, Dali officially joined the surrealist group in Paris. However, after Francisco Franco claimed control over Spain after the Spanish Civil War, Dali found himself politically at odds with his colleagues, resulting in his discharge from the Marxist leaning group.

1 Lois Gordon explains how surrealism was in the air in Paris in 1928 and affected Beckett's aesthetic outlook: "Techniques of non-linearity in painting, accomplished through image fragmentation, dream imagery, and the intentional use of blank canvas - like atonal music achieved through the statistical arrangement of notes and incorporation of silence - influenced Beckett's use of language, gesture, and stage setting." See Gordon 33-34.

Katharine Worth analyzes at length Beckett's use of ambiguity in Happy Days. She contends that idea for Winnie's ambiguous set of circumstances may be rooted in his early article "Dante ... Bruno . Vico .. Joyce." Worth considers the line in article "The maxima and the minima of particular contraries are one and indifferent" relates to the way hell and paradise are portrayed as conditions of "static lifelessness." She writes: "(Only purgatory, the state between, can offer change and therefore life though also, inevitably, decay and death.) From this point of view, Winnie's prayer, 'World without end' takes on a dark quality. A bleak vision is evoked (for us if not for her) of grim alternatives: change, which means decay, and a stasis, whether of hell or heaven, which means endless repetition or recycling." See Katharine Worth, Waiting for Godot and Happy Days (London: Mcmillan, 1990) 51.

Knowlson explains in a note that Beckett previously had not included a section on Winnie's voices in his notebooks, though the listing evolved out of his work on earlier productions. Beckett, Happy 126. Ruby Cohn provides an account of Beckett's advice to Eva Katharina Schultz at the Schiller-Theater Werkstatt, Berlin, 1971: "She was to speak m three mam voices - a neutral prattle, high articulation to Willie and childlike intimacy to herself. In Act I she also imitates Willie's voice imploring her to take the revolver away; in Act II she imitates his proposal of marriage. Winnie's Shower/Cooker story necessitates another three voices - objective narrator, gruffly energetic man, and hostile lady companion; moreover, in Act II Mr. Shower/Cooker was to adopt an erotic tone as he asked about Winnie's legs. In the Act II story about Mildred and the doll, Winnie was to speak in an infantile voice. Further, Beckett wanted a special tone for reading the print on her toothbrush, and he wanted something like a chant for the literary quotations, not readily recognizable in German translation. On first utterance, 'happy day' and 'old style' should be stressed, and then de-emphasized on such repetition. Beckett insisted that the 'many colors' of Winnie's Act I voice must contrast with her usually 'white voice' of Act II." Cohn, Just Play 253-254.

' In fact, Beckett wrote to Alan Schneider in 1961, soon after writing the play, that monotone would serve well for Winnie's voice. However, when he came to direct the play himself, he realized that certain passages require a change of tone to create different emotional charges. Beckett's use of language to create various tones in Happy Days is unique within his dramatic corpus as I suspect that Beckett feared that modulating the voice to create different tones might encourage the spectator to search for meanings not consciously placed in the play. At this stage in Beckett's theatrical evolution, he is moving more inward on his protagonists by diminishing exterior landscapes for interior mindscapes, causing him to experiment with different tones to ensure comprehension by the audience. However, as his plays evolve, Beckett eventually exclusively opts for monotone from all his characters in his later plays, which he indicates in his letter to Schneider regarding the vocal tones for Happy Days. Schneider asks: "Page 3. Is there anything special you could or would say about sequence of lines from 'holy light' through 'blaze of hellish light?' In terms of tone you want, contrast implied, attitude, anything ..." Harmon 92. Beckett responds with: "No, just say lines, same tone throughout, polishing mechanically, no emotion on 'blaze of hellish ...' What tone? This of course is the problem. 1 can find no better word for it than 'mild.' That is the basic tone throughout and should only be deviated from as indicated (voice breaks, murmur, scream). In a word I am asking here for vocal monotony and relying on speech rhythms and speech-gesture complexes, eyes, switching on and off smile, etc., to do the work, all these in their turn requiring, if they are to operate fully, vocal tranquillity & transparency." Harmon 95.

In fact, Yoshiki Tajiri argues that synaesthesia had an important influence on early twentieth-century modernism as a way of allowing art to transcend spiritualism and theosophy. See Yoshiki Tajiri, "Beckett and Synaesthesia," Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui 11 (2001) 178-185.

Kandinsky's synaesthetic theory of art materialized over time, allowing him to develop his theoretical concepts of art based on his personal experience. Beginning his studies in painting at the age of thirty with life- drawing, sketching, and anatomy studies, Kandinsky's passion for the emotive quality generated by colour led him to experimenting with its expressive qualities, culminating in his seminal painting of the period The Blue Rider (1903), featuring a cloaked figure on a speeding horse through a meadow using blue for the rider's cloak and the shadows, suggesting that the painting is a series of colours than images. After a hiatus from painting to teach for a Russian program researching forms and colours, Kandinsky accepts Walter Gropius' invitation to lecture at the Bauhaus school in Weimar, where he taught basic design, advanced theory, and seminars combining his colour theory with advancements in psychology. After the Bauhaus closed in 1933, Kandinsky moved to Paris where he continued to develop his geometric abstract paintings as a means of expressing his subjective emotions.

1 After meeting Kandinsky in 1939, Beckett described him as a "sympathetic old Siberian." Knowlson, Damned to Fame 266. Beckett also translated Kandinsky's preface, "Abstract and Concrete Art" in the London Bulletin (May 14, 1939) for Peggy Guggenheim's exhibition of May 1939. Ackerley, Grove 294.

1 I reproduce two translations describing of the final shot of the film from the script because each emphasizes different elements in the shot to compare with Happy Days. Phillip Drummond's transcription describing the blindness of the characters reads as follows: "A still image of a desert-style landscape in medium shot. The female protagonist, and a male figure whom the scenario intends to be the male protagonist but who is difficult to identify in the shot, are buried up to their waists in the left and right foreground respectively. She is looking up, he is looking down. The scenario tells us that they have been blinded, but this is difficult to decipher in the final image. Large winged insects can be seen around their bodies. The lettering fades, leaving just the image of the couple. Fade. End title." Luis Bufluel and Salvador Dali, Un chien andalou (London: Faber, 1994) 38. In Jenaro Talens' description of the final scene, translated into English by Giulia Colzizzi emphasizes the colour of the sky and mentions the wooden bars supporting the male protagonist: "Fade-in (the words are kept in superimposition for half of the shot) to the two people on the beach sunk in the sand up to their chests, in an aesthetic attitude. On the left, a woman with her head turned to the sky; on the right, a man with his head turned to the ground. Behind his back we can see two cross-shaped wooden bars supporting him as a sort of scaffolding. There are dunes and a gray sky behind them. Fade to black. On a rough background appears the word FIN (THE END)." Jenaro Talens, The Branded Eye: Bunuel's Un chien andalou, trans. Giulia Colaizzi (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993) 120.

134 Luis Bunuel characterizes the avant-garde as directed "exclusively to the artistic sensibility and to the reason of the spectator, with its play of light and shadow, it photographic effect, its preoccupation with rhythmic montage and technical research, and at times in the direction of the display of a perfectly conventional and reasonable mood." Bunuel, Un chien andalou x.

35 Enoch Brater describes how Beckett's immediate and real images in his later plays transform a private image into a public one, expressed through an actor to an audience using the vehicle of theatre. See Brater, Beyond Minimialism 10.

136 With editing techniques becoming more sophisticated, giving directors more artistic freedom in the arrangement of images that comprise the final film, theorists such as Eisenstein, Arnheim, and Pudovkin began considering the aesthetic implications of montage on the genre.

137 Knowlson provides a good example from Beckett's art pilgrimage to Germany: "It was in the Herzog- Anton Museum gallery that he saw a painting that was to echo in his imagination for many years to come. This was Giorgione's intense, brooding self-portrait, which 'hits the moment one enters the room and is good enough to be by him and has the profound reticence that is his only.' The image obsessed him and he returned to look at it on three separate occasions. He saw there an 'expression at once intense and patient, anguished and strong' and described the image as 'an antithesis of mind and sense.' He purchased two large reproductions of it, one of which he sent to Tom MacGreevy, and the other he kept for himself, pinning it above the mantelpiece in his room in Berlin, describing it 'as a light in the dark.' Looking at the picture with hindsight, we can see the head, with its 'knitted brows' and 'anguished eyes' emerging from the dark background, as resembling one of Beckett's own late compelling dramatic images." Knowlson, Damned 225. In Berlin, Beckett encountered: "eight Botticellis, 'with a "Simonetta" portrait looking like a blond Ethna [MacCarthy] when young'; a 'wonderful roomful of Signorellis'; the Masaccio panels 'lovely'; 'the Domenico Veneziano Adoration of the Kings magnificent.' In a loan exhibition he admired an Elsheimer night landscape, which he thought 'exquisite.' The paintings of the sixteenth-century German Altdorfer were 'a revelation' to him, 'sacred subjects [a] pretext for landscape, not at all like Elsheimers, gay rather, but immediately suggesting Elsheimer. Lovely Crucifixion and Rest on the Flight [from Egypt].' His diary positively quivers with excitement at such moments, as Beckett wanders day after day around the mostly small but very tall rooms of the Kaiser-Friedrich gallery." Knowlson, Damned 221-22%.

38 Knowlson discoverd that Beckett considered poetical drama an impossibility to realize as early as his 1936-1937 German art pilgrimage. One evening during this period, Beckett attended Christian Friedrich Hebbel's poetic tragedy of jealousy and sexual tension, Gyges undsien Ring (Gyges and His Ring) 1856, starring Werner Krauss. In his private diary, Beckett protests against poetical drama: '"the poetical play,' he wrote, 'can never come off as a play, nor when played as poetry either, because the words obscure the action and are obscured by it.'" Knowlson, Images 105.

39 The practitioners Patrice Pavis identifies as theatre-of-images producers include: R. Wilson, R. Foreman, C. Regy, P. Chereau, K.-M. Griiber, P. Andrien, R. Demarcy, R. Planchon, S. Braunschweig, G. Lavaudant, P. Genty, and R. LePage. See Patrice Pavis, Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts, and Analysis, trans. Christine Shantz (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1998) 179.

140 Pozzo's tales of woe in Godot, Nagg's trouser story in Endgame, Krapp's repeated waxing eloquent over the girl in the punt memory in Krapp 's Last Tape, and Winnie's retelling of Milly's childhood serve as obvious examples.

141 Beckett describes in a letter to Nancy Cunard on July 4, 1956 his considerations regarding writing for radio: "Saw Barry of BBC TV who is interested in the mim (and why not?) and am told Gielgud wants a play for the 3rd Programme. Never thought about radio play technique but in the dead of t'other night got a nice gruesom idea full of cartwheels and dragging of feet and puffing and panting which may or may not lead to something." Ackerley 11. According to Ruby Cohn, All That Fall originates from Beckett's desire to return to writing in English after a decade's absence, though she mentions that he did write the jettisoned From an Abandoned Work in 1955.

143 With the tape recorder becoming widely available after World War II, producers uncovered the potential of electronically recording a show for later broadcast, which could be edited and modified using electronic sound effects such as echo and flutter after being taped to create new sonic effects.

144 Beckett's introduction to the world of electronically recorded sound begins with ,4// That Fall for the BBC in 1956 under the direction of Donald McWhinnie. Beckett's script calls for the authentic rural sounds of animals such as sheep, birds, cows, and cocks at the outset of the play to avoid the artificiality of pre-recorded sounds and effects that the BBC owned. However, McWhinnie was able to convince Beckett that real sounds would hinder rather than help his play, as he expressed in his book The Art of Radio: "The purpose of this prelude is not primarily to evoke a visual picture, and if it resolves itself into 'farmyard noises' it will in fact be pointless, since it is not directly linked to the action, although echoes of it are heard during the course of the play, in various contexts. It is a stylized form of scene-setting, containing within itself a pointer to the convention of the play: a mixture of realism and poetry, frustration and farce. It also demands a strict rhythmic composition; a mere miscellany of animal sounds will not achieve the effect. The author specified four animals; this corresponds exactly to the four-in-a-bar metre of Mrs. Rooney's walk to the station and back, which is the percussive accompaniment to the play and which, in its later stages, becomes charged with emotional significance in itself. But in this case it is impossible to use real animal sounds, since the actual sound of a cow mooing, a cock crowing, a sheep bleating, a dark barking, are complex structures, varying in duration and melodic shape; to put these four sounds in succession would be to create a whole which is only too obviously composed of disparate elements. The way to deal with the problem seemed to be by complete stylization of each sound, that is to say, by having human beings to impersonate the exact sound required." Donald McWhinnie, The Art of Radio (London: Faber, 1959) 133.

145 Everett Frost explains: "Sound unhindered by reductive visuals is more amenable than any other performance medium or genre to portraying interiorities - mental processes, like memories, voices in the head, soundscapes in skullscapes, including monologue, soliloquy, or, better, confession [...]" Everett Frost, "Mediating On: Beckett, Embers, and Radio Theory," Samuel Beckett and the Arts: Music, Visual Arts, and Non-Print Media, ed. Lois Oppenheim (New York: Garland, 1999) 317.

146 The date for Rough for Radio 11 is under speculation, but scholars agree to place it in the early 1960s. See Cohn, Canon 21 A.

147 States defines three phenomenal modes in which the actor appears on stage. The first is the self- expressive, wherein the audience identifies the character with the real life actor. The second is the collaborative mode, which implicates the spectator into the world of the stage through techniques privileging the audience with information, such as through an aside. The third mode is the representational, whereby the actor portrays the character with such convincing realism that the audience invests their full emotions into the character. States describes the effect Beckett creates by combining the self-expressive and the representational into the self- representational as follows: ""[...] in Beckett's case [...] the stage figure (that is, the actor-character entity) seems not simply to be a character played by an actor who is ultimately performing for us and sharing with us a certain confidence (if only that we will all behave politely); she also seems to be a character who is real, but not simply real as the actor's body, and an actor who is performing, but not exactly for us. Something in the way she comports herself, or exists on stage, leads us to feel - though this is all part of the illusion - that she is therefor herself (whatever that may be!), but that this self somehow includes a player of sorts, or someone who is motivated by the task of representing herself for herself- 'whom else'? as the Voice says in Rockaby." Bert O. States, "Playing in Lyric Time: Beckett's Voice Plays," Theatre Journal 40.4 (1988) 454.

148 Although Beckett partly went to Germany to see the Old Masters he loved, he also wanted to learn of recent developments in the art world, and see the works being declared decadent by the Nazis. Ackerley 21.

149 The Nazis labeled works by the following artists as "degenerate": Adler, Jankel; Barlach, Ernst; Bauer, Rudolf; Bauknecht, Philipp; Baum, Otto; Baumeister, Willi; Bayer, Herbert; Beckmann, Max; Belling, Rudolf; Bindel, Paul; Brim, Theo; Burchartz, Max; Burger-Miihlfeld, Fritz; Camenisch, Paul; Caspar, Karl; Caspar-Filser, Maria; Cassel, Pol; Chagall, Marc; Corinth, Lovis; Davringhausen, Heinrich; Dexel, Walter; Diesner, Johannes; Dix, Otto; Drexel, Hans Christoph; Dreisch, Johannes; Eberhard, Heinrich; Ernst, Max; Feibusch, Hans; Feininger, Lyonel; Felixmuller, Conrad; Freundlich, Otto; Fuhr, Xaver; Gies, Ludwig; Gilles, Walter; Gleichmann, Otto; 286

Grossmann, Rudolph; Grosz, George; Grunding, Hans; Haizmann, Richard; Hausmann, Raoul; Hebert, Guido; Heckel, Erich; Heckrott, Wilhelm; Heemskerck, Jacoba van; Heister, Hans Seibert von; Herzog, Oswald; Heuser, Werner; Hoerle, Heinrich; Hoefer, Karl; Hoffman, Eugen; Itten, Johannes; Jawlensky, Alexej von; Johansen, Eric; Kallmann, Hans Jtirgen; Kandinsky, Wassily; Katz, Hans; Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig; Klee, Paul; Klein, Cesar; Kleinschmidt, Paul; Kokoschka, Oskar; Lange, Otto; Lehmbruck, Wilhelm; Lissitzky, El; luthy, Oskar; Marc, Franz; Marcks, Gerhard; Matare' Ewald; Meidner, Ludwig; Metzinger, Jean; Mitschke-Collande, Constantin von; Moholy- Nagy, Laszlo; Moll, Margarethe; Moll, Oskar; Molzahn, Johannes; Mondrian, Piet; Muche, George; Meuller, Otto; Nagel, Erich; Nauen, Heinrich; Nay, Ernst Wilhelm; Neistrath, Karel; Nolde, Emil; Pankok, Otto; Pechstein, Max; Watenphul, Max Peiffer; Purrmann, Hans; Rauh, Max; Richter, Hans; Roder, Emy; Rohlfs, Christian; Scharff, Edwin; Schlemmer, Oskar; Schlichter, Rudolph; Schmidt-Rottluff, Karl; Scholz, Werner; Schreyer, Lothar; Schubert, Otto; Schwitters, Kurt; Segal, Lasar; Skade, Friedrich; Stukenberg, Friedrich (Fritz); Thalheimer, Paul; Tietz, Johannes; Topp, Arnold; Volker, Karl; Voll, Christoph; Wauer, William; Wollheim, Gert. July 21, 2004.

15 Beckett reproduces in his notebook a summation of Grohmann's reasons for staying in Germany even after he was dismissed from his post. I include it here simply because it stands as a testament to the beauty of the human spirit: "Says it is more interesting to stay than to go, even if it were possible to go. They can't control thoughts. Length of regime impossible to estimate, depends mostly on economic outshot. If it breaks down it is fitting for him and his kind to be on the spot, to go under or become active again. Already a fraternity of intellectuals, where freedom to grumble is less than the labourer's, because the labourer's grumble is not dangerous." Knowlson, Damned 233.

151 In his German Notebooks, Beckett wrote of Grimm's work that it is the "most interesting I have yet seen, of [the] Hamburg group ... Munch influence seems worked out. Toulouse-Lautrec. Exquisite colour and composition." Beckett's admiration of Ballmer's work appears in his 1945-1946 critique of the painters Bram and Geer van Velde entitled "La Peinture des van Velde, ou: le monde et le pantalon," where he described him as a "great unknown painter." Knowlson says that Beckett admired the mildness in Ballmer's work, "lost almost to the point of apathy and indifference," which he associated with Leibniz's monadology in his poem "The Vulture" in Echo's Bones: "Transparent figures before landscapes, street, town reproduced in Sauerlandt not there. Wonderful red Frauenkopf, skull earth sea and sky, I think of Monadologie [of Leibniz] and my Vulture. Would not occur to me to call this painting abstract. A metaphysical concrete. Nor Nature convention, but its source, fountain of Erscheinung [Appearance]. Fully a posteriori painting. Object not exploited to illustrate an idea, as in say Leger or Baumeister, but primary. The communication exhaused by the optical experience that is its motive and content. Anything further is by the way. Thus Leibniz, monadologie, Vulture, are by the way. Extraordinary stillness. His concern with Renaissance tradition." See Knowlson, Damned 224. Of these descriptions of Grimm and Ballmer's work, Beckett seems to appreciate the fact that they do not use their objects of representation as a vehicle to pontificate about ideas.

152 Commenting in his notebook on Feininger's use of unusual perspective in his paintings, Beckett wrote: "All about 1930, and technique perhaps less interesting than the out-and-out 'plane' technique of earlier Feininger, of which some examples here also. Diener is very trouble[d] by some perspectives that are not alas in Nature." Knowlson, Images 89.

' Formed by Dresden architecture students Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff in 1905, Die Briike {The Bridge) considered themselves a "bridge" between traditional neo- romantic German art and expressionism. The group coined themselves The Bridge from a passage in Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, which describes the human potential to act as the evolutionary "bridge" to a better future. DerBlaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) formed in Munich in 1911 as a response to the Neue Kunstlervereinigung Miinchen's rejection of Wassily Kandinsky's painting Last Judgment, though no central manifesto was ever devised. Founding members include Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin. The name originated from a combination of Marc's love of horses and Kandinsky's fondness for the colour blue, because he believed it connected one with the eternal.

154 As Gontarski says in the introduction to Beckett's theatrical notebooks for the Shorter Plays: "If Godot eliminated 'action' from the stage, Play all but eliminated motion. If Godot eliminated intelligible causality, Play all but eliminated intelligibility itself." Beckett, Shorter, xvi-xvii. Herwald Walden was the first to attribute the term "expressionism" to the movement in his magazine Der Sturm in 1912. He coined it to identify those paintings that challenged the academic traditions at the turn of the century.

156 Beckett was familiar with the ideas of Carl Jung, having attended the third of five lectures that the psychiatrist gave at the Tavistock Clinic in 1935. Ackerley and Gontarski report the event: "Jung showed a diagram he had used earlier, which became for SB a virtual archetype of the mind. It is strikingly simple: a series of concentric spheres representing gradations of the mind from the outer light of ego consciousness to the dark center of the collective unconscious. [...] SB shows little interest in Jung's archetypes; instead, he responds to the fascination of the inner dark." Ackerley 290.

157 Ackerley and Gontarski offer an example of Beckett drawing an allusion to Nietzsche thought: "Nietzsche's distinction between the Apollonian and Dionysian {Die Geburt der Tragodie, 1870-71) constitutes the 'Apollo' of Belacqua's mind {Dream 124), but SB's structure is tripartite rather than dual and the other two elements, of Narcissus and limbo, have no parallels in Nietzsche." Ackerley 407.

158 After Beckett could no longer stand aside and watch the Nazis kill innocent Jews, some of whom were his friends, during World War II, he joined the Resistance as a translator. The Gestapo knew of Beckett's involvement, forcing him and his wife Suzanne to flee for safety in Roussillon just hours before they searched their Paris apartment. Beckett also lost a number of Jewish friends during World War II.

159 Commenting on Munch in his German notebook, Beckett wrote: "In breakfast room [of a private collector in Hamburg] a superb Munch, three women on a bridge over dark water, apparently a frequent motif. Best Munch I have seen." He also described Munch's Einsamkeit {Loneliness) in the Kronprinzenpalais in Berlin as "lovely, womean in red doublet up on blue stool, rainbow coloured heap on left (bathing tent?), and pale unlimited motionless emptiness of sea." However, he too criticized aspects of this painting: "But even here the feeling inclined to be overstated into the sentimental... The Krankes Mddchen drawing also only just over the pretty line. What is it in this uncompromising Norderin [?] {Nolde & Hamsun also - Albrecht [with whom Beckett was friendly in Hamburg] was an admirer of Hamsun) - that always threatens to upset the whole apple-cart. It is in the German Gothic also, more than in the English." See Knowlson, Images 89, 151 fn. 91.

160 Ackerley and Gontarski report that Beckett visited Kleist's memorial in Wannsee, where Kleist shot himself after saying the words "O Unsterblichkeit - nun bist du ganz meine" ("O immortality, now you are mine.") Ackerley 299.

161 Bert States provides one reason for Beckett's attraction to Kleist's concept of the ubermarionette: "Being perfectly co-ordinated, it is innocent: it is free of the earth and drawn upward from above, and in this respect it is unlike the dancer or the actor who have fallen from grace into a state of self-consciousness and thus continually enact the original 'sin' of self-division." States, "Voice Plays" 462. James Knowlson offers an equally eloquent description of Beckett's attraction to the idea of the fall of humankind based on Kleist's ideas: "This discovery of self represents, of course, a Fall. Self-consciousness separates man from the rest of the world, even from his own Self since, essentially, the very consciousness of self means that he is perceiving himself as Other. Disunity, disharmony, fragmentation therefore enter, where once there was natural harmony, symmetry and grace." James Knowlson and John Pilling, Frescoes of the Skull: The Later Prose and Drama of Samuel Beckett (London: Calder, 1979) 279.

162 Unsurprisingly, Beckett describes many of his prose characters as "puppets," as Ackerley and Gontarski show: "In 'Love and Lethe,' Belacqua and Ruby Tough are like 'fantoccini controlled by a single wire.' Murphy differs from other characters as one 'who is not a puppet' (the phrase added to the typescript), though his irrational heart jumps like 'Petrouchka' in his box. SB used Valery's phrase: il avail tue la marionette {Monsieur Teste, 27) in a 1934 review of Rilke: 'popping up for a gulp of disgust.' [...] The narrator in 'Text 8' feels like 'a mere ventriloquist's dummy,' his head left in an Irish bar." Ackerley 470.

163 Though Beckett admired Pudovkin's editing, he disliked his naturalistic approach to acting as well as the didactic and propagandist perspectives imposes on his films. Knowlson, Images 119.

The Brown Notebook is the second of two notebooks containing Beckett's production notes for his October 1978 Schiller-Theater performance of Spiel {Play). 288

The light in Play must be regarded as a character. In a letter to Alan Schneider dated 26 November 1963, Beckett writes that "[t]he man on the light should be regarded as a fourth player and must know the text inside and out." Harmon 145.

166 In his Red Notebook, the first of two notebooks of his production notes for his October 1978 Schiller- Theater performance of Spiel (Play), Beckett outlines the same themes with slight differences. For instance, "Will eye weary?" was changed from the earlier "Will light weary?" strengthening the notion that the spectator is the one who actually controls the show. Beckett, Shorter 109.

167 Zeifman assumes the reader will identify the reference to Shakespeare's King Lear. The reference materializes in a passage where Edgar encourages Gloucester to triumph over his despair by saying to him: "What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure / Their going hence even as their coming hither." (V, ii, 9-10).

168 Gontarski explains that the earliest version of Come and Go was titled Good Heavens and divided the play into form and content. In this two-leaf holograph, one outlines the action, patterned into 10 beat, while the other features the gossip the women speak. Gontarski, Intent 159-160.

169 In a later draft of the piece, Beckett employs a "flower" concept for the three women, whom he names Viola, Poppy, and Rose.

170 Knowlson and Pilling explain Beckett's use of language in Come and Go: "Words seem to represent something of an intrusion into the silence that constantly threatens to become the dominant reality. The numerous marked silences are as essential to the impact of the play as are the sparse words or the repeated gestures. And yet the imposition of silence also throws into greater relief the few phrases that are allowed any resonance of their own: 'Dreaming of love', 'I can feel the rings' and the virtual refrain 'God grant not'. Finally, the criss-cross patterning of hands that links the three women physically as they are united in a common plight is moving in the theatre because it echoes the formal symmetry of the rest of the play, as well as expressing in a single image fraternal compassion and fragile mortality." Knowlson, Frescoes 123-124.

171 In fact, Beckett considers in his notebook repeating the patterns of the piece, akin to the da capo of Play, which he dismisses as "mathematically desirable [but] logically impossible." Beckett, Shorter 229.

172 Mariko Tanaka also sees a relationship between Beckett's "mysterious" art and the world of haiku: "In Beckett's plays, the characters often find it impossible to clarify what they have in mind. Unseen images come to dominate their minds. The audience and readers of Beckett plays, once pulled into their world, share the characters' experience, so that by the end of the play they are mesmerized by the aural and visual impact, experiencing the mysterious feeling of hearing something unheard and seeing something unseen. The audience of Come and Go, for example, can imagine the relation among the three women more from what is unspoken than from what is spoken. This 'mysterious' experience is regarded as spiritual enlightenment and the quintessence of art in the world of haiku. In Beckett's work, however, it appears to be closer to neurotic, or hallucinatory sensitivity. Beckett's settings are claustrophobic, his dark rooms are far from the beauty of nature that haiku poets celebrate. But just as in Basho's haiku, the smallness and weakness of human beings are revealed when set against the large scale of nature, so the sensitivity of the human soul emerges from Beckett's claustrophobic, desolate world. Beckett's art has a mysterious beauty beyond any form of Western art that traditionally demands proportion and perfection. It has a disproportionate and imperfect sense of beauty highly regarded in Eastern art and thought." Mariko Hori Tanaka, "Elements of Haiku in Beckett," Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui 11 (2001) 324.

173 Berman discovered that Louis Aragon also utilized the term hieroglyph to describe the way Henri Matisse repeatedly drew the image of a mouth until he had fully condensed and absorbed it: "He has become so familiar with it that he need not draw it, he writes it. He has developed his own hieroglyph for the mouth." Quoted in Patricia Berman, Modern Hieroglyphs: Gestural Drawing and the European Vanguard 1900-1918 (Wellesley: Wellesley College, 1994) n. 9, 100.

174 The structure of Breath echoes Shakespeare's treatment of universal pain in King Lear, in the climax of Lear's conversation with Gloucester:

Lear. If thou wilt weep my fortune, take my eyes. I know thee well enough: thy name is Gloucester. Thou must be patient. We came crying hither. Thou know'st the first time that we smell the air We wail and cry. I will preach to thee. Mark. Glou. Alack, alack, the day! Lear. When we are born, we cry that we are come To this great stage of fools. (IV, vi, 165-173).

175 Kronos stands for the ancient Greek word denoting sequential or linear time. In Greek mythology, the god Kronos, who was depicted as aged with his grey hair and beard, personified time. Kairos, among other Greek meanings, refers to the right or opportune time or moment. Kairos represents perfect time and cannot be measured, representing the perfect moment of the "here and now."

176 Ackerley and Gontarski explain that since Breath appeared as a prelude to Jacques Levy and Kenneth Tynan's Oh Calcutta where it ran from February 26, 1971 until August 6, 1989 when it moved to Broadway after thirty-nine previews. Approximately 85 million people saw 1, 314 performances, making it Beckett's most seen play. Ackerley 73.

177 Knowlson and Pilling also find a close relationship between the three plays not only because they were written sequentially after one another, but also because Beckett called That Time a "brother to Not /," and that That Time and Footfalls were conceived as a double bill at the Royal Court Theatre in London in celebration of Beckett's seventieth birthday. Knowlson, Frescoes 206, 220.

17 Though Bell's argument focuses primarily on the reception of visual art, his aesthetic hypothesis pertains to any object that provokes an aesthetic emotion. Clive Bell, "The Aesthetic Hypothesis," Art (London: Chatto, 1949)25.

179 In fact, Bell extends his argument to claim that representation and interpretation have no place in works of art. With respect to representation in art Bell says: "Portraits of psychological and historical value, topographical works, pictures that tell stories and suggest situations, illustrations of all sorts, belong to this class [called 'Descriptive Painting'] ... Of course many descriptive pictures possess, amongst other qualities, formal significance, and are therefore works of art: but many more do not. They interest us; they may move us too in a hundred different ways, but they do not move us aesthetically. According to my hypothesis they are not works of art. They leave untouched our aesthetic emotions because it is not their forms but the ideas or information suggested or conveyed by their forms that affect us [emphasis added]." Bell 17.

180 Jessica Tandy played the role of Mouth in the world premiere of Not 1 directed by Alan Schneider at Lincoln Center in New York in 1972.

181 Beckett saw Caravaggio's The Beheading of St. John the Baptist in the Oratory of the Pro-Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, La Valletta, Malta and described it as "a great painting, really tremendous." Knowlson, Damned 520.

182 Knowlson and Pilling report: "At the end of this production of the play, Auditor covered his head with his hands in a gesture of increased helplessness and despair, as if unable to bare any longer the torrent of sound." Knowlson, Frescoes 198.

183 Beckett realized, after viewing the BBC television version of Not 1 (featuring only the protagonist in close-up), that Mouth had the appearance of a large, gaping vagina. Knowlson, Frescoes 200.

184 I reproduce the entire quotation to illustrate better how the spatial arrangement serves to project this theme: "It was extraordinarily daring to leave three-quarters of the canvas essentially empty, as Caravaggio does in this painting. Probably he did this so because of an unwillingness to paint figures very much over life-size; the canvas is three and two-thirds metres high, and the foreground figures are at least as big as real people. I also suspect that Caravaggio chose this kind of composition because of a growing sense of man's essential isolation and tragic destiny." Howard Hibbard, Caravaggio (New York: Harper, 1983) 230, 232.

1851 reproduce a longer passage of Reid's review to illustrate the way Beckett's play potentially affects audience members: "Because the words had come gushing at break-neck speed, because the syntax was so compressed, because there had not been one second's respite in the past seven hundred, 1 could not grasp what I had heard. 1 had inklings of a story, - a life totally without love, a harsh childhood in an orphanage, a criminal charge, a shattering experience in a meadow one April morning, speech and feeling suddenly restored. Nothing was clear yet one thing was certain. I knew with every fibre of my being that I had been deluged in a flood of anguish from which I could not escape even though 1 could not know with what or whom 1 was involved. My first words were, '1 have been scoured.'" Alec Reid, "Impact and parable in Beckett: a first encounter with Not I," Hermathena 140 (1986) 14.

186 Hibbard writes: "The familiar story of the beheading of the Baptist is told by Mark and Matthew, but they say only that Herod 'sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John's head. The soldier went off and beheaded him in the prison, brought the head on a dish, and gave it to the girl; and she gave it to her mother' (Mark 6:27-28). The scene that Caravaggio illustrated is not in the Bible but appears in the Golden Legend, which summarizes the extended medieval accounts." Hibbard 228. The story appears in Matthew 14:1-12.

1871 reprint a portion of Moir's analysis as it depicts precisely the notion that various senses are stimulated, and various ideas are communicated despite limitations of form. Take notice of his terminology: "The dramatic impact of the composition almost obliterates its effectiveness as an abstract composition. It is a silent painting, intimate despite its great scale. The focus is first on the pointing index finger of the business-like warden, who forms the single vertical axis in the figure group, directing the operation. Only secondarily can Saint John's body be found. It is over-lifesize, and the only horizontal figure. From the centre of the warden's finger, the action fans out - to the executioner's left hand, holding Saint John's partially severed head in place like a butcher in an abattoir while he reaches with his right for his dagger to finish the process off neatly; to the platter, held low by Salome in anticipation of receiving the head; to the old woman. She is horrified, the only character responding sympathetically to the execution. Incredibly, she covers her ears rather than her eyes; are the sounds - those of the actual decapitation - worse than the sight? Or is this, like so many other gestures in Caravaggio's oeuvre, kinesthetic - is she making us aware that if we can see, we can also hear? Perhaps Caravaggio intended to stimulate a similar sense of projection in the poses of the two spectators, straining on our behalf as much as their own, curious to see what is happening. Finally, we must allow - or force - ourselves to look past the deadly line of the glittering blade at the pathos of Saint John's painfully bound body. A moment before he was a seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking human being like the others; now he is reduced to a mere fleshly carcass." Alfred Moir, Caravaggio (New York: Abrams, 1982) 150.

188 Beckett was familiar with the coincidence of contraries since he articulated Giorano Bruno's concept of it in his essay "Dante ... Bruno. Vico .. Joyce": "There is no difference, says Bruno, between the smallest possible chord and the smallest possible arc, no difference between the infinite circle and the straight line. The maxima and minima of particular contraries are one and indifferent. Minimal heat equals minimal cold. Consequently transmutations are circular. The principle (minimum) of one contrary takes its movement from the principle (maximum) of one another. Therefore not only do the minima coincide with the minima, the maxima with the maxima, but the minima with the maxima in the succession of transmutations. Maximal speed is a state of rest. The maximum of corruption and the minimum of generation are identical: in principle, corruption is generation. And all things are ultimately identified with God, the universal monad, Monad of monads." Beckett, Disjecta 21.

189 Maurice Blackman proclaims that if on one level Beckett's novels are about language, the plays are, on every level, language in action. Maurice Blackman, "Acting without words: Artaud and Beckett and theatrical language, AUMLA: Journal ofthe Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association 55 (1981) 71.

190 Threshold Theatre in Toronto, Canada staged an environmental production of That Time starring Dick Murphy in 2000.

191 Regarding the status of the panels, Northrope Frye says in Fearful Symmetry that "[fjhese pictures are on the walls of Job's mind, for the room he is in is identical with his own body. This does not make them subjective, for Job is no longer a subject: he is one with God."

192 Ackerley and Gontarski explain the difficulties Beckett encountered in staging part four: "Part IV of Footfalls has proven difficult in production, given the brief fourth chime and empty stage. SB was aware of the difficulty: 'How avoid end of play audience reaction after 3r fade-out before last chime, and fade up & final fade- out? By reducing to minimum (in all 3 cases) pause after fade-out" {Theatrical Notebook, 297). Concerned that the audience might think the play ended if the pause was prolonged, in rehearsals for the German production SB proposed a solution, shortening the two previous fade-outs then adding a vertical strip of light visible in the background, to give the impression that light was falling through the crack of a door, and that light slowly fading." Ackerley 201-202.

193 Whitford continues his description: "Forel's body, like the background, consists of thin washes, apparently random marks left by the fingers and the dabbings of a crumpled cloth, and lines and curious images scratched out with the pointed end of a brush. Some of the lines suggest beams of light falling directly on to the body. Others describe the trees and mountains of perfunctory landscape to the right of Forel's head. Such scratching appear on the hands and face, too, although here there is a greater variety in the density and quality of the paint which is limited; the painting is suffused in a pale pink and green glow." Frank Whitford, Oskar Kokoschka: A Life (London: Weidenfeld, 1986) 52.

Notes for Chapter 5

194 Highlighting the rhythmic musicality of A Piece of Monologue, Beckett said to James Knowlson that he had difficulty translating the play into French, causing him to "cut things out because [he] simply can't render in French certain sounds made by the voice in English." For instance, Beckett pointed to the plosive sound of the word "birth," as well as the "rip-word" mentioned by the speaker. Knowlson, Images 11.

195 In Essif s words: "Formalistically, the head of Beckett's marionette-like dramatic character no longer functions as part of the body, but as an iconic index of the body, an empty and framelike, yet concentrated, mise en abyme of empty body, of empty stage, and of the empty off-stage periphery. In this sense the head serves as a focalized vanishing point of two separate but analogous theatrical tableaux: an exterior empty space (stage and off­ stage) which is duplicated as psychic inner space." Les Essif, Empty Figure on an Empty Stage: The Theatre of Samuel Beckett and His Generation (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2001) 74.

196 Although Rembrandt, Whistler, Van Gogh, and Beckett all based their depictions on actual people, Henri Matisse describes how the painter, even in portraiture, does not provide a direct representation of the subject: "I am to paint a woman's body; first, I reflect her form within me, I give grace to it, charm, and there is also the question of giving something further. I am going to condense the signification of this body, in seeking out its essential lines. The charm will be less apparent at first glance, but it cannot fail to emerge in good time from the new image which I will obtain, a new image which will have a larger, more fully human significance." Trans. Rogers 34.

197 Daniel Albright: "Beckett started writing plays as a form of relief from the darkness of prose fiction. But at the end of his career, it seems the darkness spilled onto the theatre, as his plays devolved into an odd sort of prose fiction, in which the act of composing, the act of reading, and the act of listening were no longer left to the vagaries of the publishing industry and the whims of browsers, but specified, made irrevocable." Daniel Albright, Beckett and Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003) 81.

198 Regarding Ohio Impromptu, Michael Billington wrote that it is "brilliant minimalist theatre proving that Beckett uses the stage like a painter to create images that will haunt you to the grave." Knowlson adds that "[t]he setting of this 'meticulously sculpted tableau' resembles the interior of a seventeenth-century Dutch painting, and the two male figures, a Reader and a Listener, seated at the table, with their long hair and 'long black coats,' could have been borrowed from Rembrandt or, if we take away the painter's color, Vermeer." Knowlson, Damned 585.

199 In Antoni Libera's view, Beckett's Protagonist should be regarded as an ancient Greek protagonist of the theatre as both the principle actor of a theatre group and the main hero of the play. Antoni Libera, "Beckett's Catastrophe," Modern Drama 28.3 (1985) 341.

200 Beckett is similar to Durer in his ability to notice and remember details in paintings of Old Masters many years after having seen them. For instance, Knowlson recounts Beckett describing tiny details of a painting he had seen as a young man: "Even in his early eighties, Beckett could himself remember very clearly details of Old Master paintings that he had seen many years, even decades, before. As a young man, for example, visiting the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin, he had seen Salomon van Ruisdael's landscape painting depicting a coach halted at a coaching inn, entitled The Halt. Some sixty years later, Beckett could still describe to me the tiny, almost indistinguishable, figure of a boy urinating against a wall. In fact, he sometimes called this painting not The Halt but The Urinator." Knowlson, Images 58. Beckett's view aligns itself with the symbolists and other imagist followers. Pablo Picasso uncovered the collage technique as a starting point towards cubism beginning in the early 1910s, while Philippo Tommaso Marinetti experimented with the visual presentation of poetry as a means toward a new mode of image presentation. Ezra Pound's poetry strives at transforming words into hieroglyphics by his visual arrangement of letters on the page and the use of collage to produce images.

202 S. E. Gontarski offers a clear and succinct articulation of the meaning and relevance of Beckett's infamous comment: "When less is more, diminuendo becomes crescendo. The quotation anticipates the paradoxical, self-canceling nature of Beckett's middle prose and further anticipates the Beckettian aesthetic axiom on the impossibility of communication because 'there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express.' Beckett's oft- quoted statement deserves a gloss. 'Nothing to express' is also an active phrase: what remains to be expressed is nothingness, even though that needs to be done with the faulty system of language. There is 'nothing from which to express' because self is not a coherent unity but itself an absence. There is 'no power to express' because author, narrator, and characters are impotent and language is faulty. The lack of'desire to express,' however, does not necessarily suggest a lack of will to express. Derrida, for one, separates desire and Schopenhauerean will: 'The will and the attempt to write are not the desire to write, for it is a question here not of affectivity but of freedom and duty,' and 'the obligation to express' is Beckett's most explicitly expressed duty." S. E. Gontarski, "The Intent of Undoing in Samuel Beckett's Art," Modern Fiction Studies 29.1 (1983) 14-15. James Acheson similarly interprets the phrase as meaning that the expressive act cannot materialize as the artist lacks the material with which to express; for the artist utilizes paint or words in reference to perceptions of the world rather than to its undifferentiated welter of sense-data. James Acheson, Samuel Beckett's Artistic Theory and Practice: Criticism, Drama and Early Fiction (New York: St. Martin's, 1997) 98. Beckett's phrase serves well to initiate a discourse on aesthetics by positing the position that all authentic art works must derive from within the imagination of an artist.

203 In thinking about the relational distances between art object and recipient that directs attention to the phenomenal conditions of art, John Lutterbie offers a mode of conceptually distinguishing space from place based on the perspective of the subjective recipient: "To think about space, then, is to think abstractly, to assume an objective position and to frame our experience in terms of the relationship between objects, whether stationary or in motion. To think about our place in the world is to describe our subjective experiences. While space is framed in the third person, the experience of place is always in the first person." John Lutterbie, "Phenomenology and the Dramaturgy of Space and Place," Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 16.1 (2001) 128.

204 With particular reference to the visual in painting, Mikel Dufrenne explains that though the essence of the pictorial is to present something for seeing, what becomes engendered in vision is not the real but the possible: "Painting offers us a possible that informs us about the real. So does abstract painting: it does not represent the real, but announces a possible, a world that is not populated by determinate objects, but remains open and yet singular, being, rather, the atmosphere or tonality of a world. Abstraction has been a necessary moment in the history of painting: it teaches us by a retroactive effect to realize that even figurative painting also expresses rather than represents." Mikel Dufrenne, In the Presence of the Sensuous: Essays in Aesthetics, ed. and trans. Mark S. Roberts and Dennis Gallagher (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities 1987) 142.

205 "Possible Worlds" theory entails far more complex dimensions then the scant reference to the ideology cited in the text. However, for the scope of the present study, one need only recognize that the spectator "plays" with the represented world within his or her imagination, resulting in an admixture of experiential sensation and imaginative thought. For more detail on possible worlds theory consult: Tuen A. Van Dijk, "Action, Action Description and Narrative," in New Literary History 6; Janos S. Petofi and Hannes Rieser, Studies in Text Grammars, and Thomas G. Pavel, "Possible Worlds in Literary Semantics," in Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 34.

2061 here reproduce a large portion of Garner's central thesis as it details the prime phenomenological issues intertwined in the investigation, comprising the prime focus of his study: "In their increasingly pictorial use of performance space, as we shall see, Beckett's plays reveal a deepening interest not only in the absent presence of the body as staged, but also in the dynamics of vision, an interest that recalls Merleau-Ponty's concern at the end of his career (in The Visible and the Invisible and other late writings) with the phenomenology of visibility. Beckett stages his spectators as deliberately as he does his characters and actors, and with a similar phenomenological emphasis: not as the disembodied eye/I of traditional realist spectatorship but as a body situated with its own positionality and material presence. Just as his late plays reveal an increasing dispossession within bodied subjectivity on the part of 293

Beckett's characters, so these plays also involve the audience in a phenomenological displacement, disclosing the body that underlies and sustains theatrical seeing at the very moment that they subject this body to a marked perceptual displacement. Rather than signaling the exhaustion of phenomenology, then, Beckett's drama constitutes an expansion of the field, to the point where the mise-en-scene itself becomes phenomenologized and where its various elements (light, darkness, objects, sound) acquire traces of consciousness that - even more thoroughly than the phenomenological theater of Robert Wilson - layers the technological with the perceptual contours of the subjective." Garner, Bodied 36-37.

207 Merleau-Ponty compares the body not to a physical object, but rather an art work: "A novel, poem, picture or musical work are individuals, that is, beings in which the expression is indistinguishable from the thing expressed, their meaning, accessible only through direct contact, being radiated with no change of their temporal and spatial situation. It is in this sense that our body is comparable to a work of art. It is a nexus of lived meanings." Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge, 1962) 151.

208 In fact, an exhibit at the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto (March 3 to April 22, 2007) entitled Fiona Banner: The Bastard Word featured a series of nudes that were composed of words based on the artist's visual impression of the model in pose. 294 WORKS CITED

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Figure 1. Antonello da Messina, Virgin of the Annunciation, Unknown date. Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

Figure 2. Billie Whitelaw as May, Footfalls, 1976. Royal Court Theatre, London. Photo by John Minihan. 315

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Figure 3 Caspar David Friedrich, Two Men Contemplating the Moon, 1819-20. Gemaldegalerie, Dresden.

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Figure 4. Sam Coppola and Joseph Ragno, Waiting for Godot, 2005. Theatre at St. Clement's, New York. 316

Figure 5. Caspar David Friedrich, Evening on the Baltic Sea, 1831. Gemaldegalerie Neue Meister, Dresden.

Figure 6. Adam Elsheimer, Flight into Egypt, 1609. Alte Pinakothek, Munich 317

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Figure 7. Claes Berchem, Landscape with Crab Catchers by Moonlight, 1655. Trafalgar Galleries, London.

Figure 8. Adriaen Van Ostade, Landscape with an Old Oak, 1641. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. 318

Figure 9. Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition: White on While, 1918. The Museum of Modem Art, New York.

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Figure 10. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Parable of the Blind, 1568. Museo di Capodimonte, Naples. 319

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Figure 11. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Parable Figure 12. Frank Wood as Lucky, Waiting For Godot, 2004. San Fransisco of the Blind (Detail), 1568. Museo di Chronicle. Photo by Darryl Bush. Capodimonte, Naples. 320

Figure 13. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Land of Cockaigne, 1567. Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

Figure 14. Waiting for Godot, 2003. USC School of Theatre. 321

Figure 15. Jean-Antoine Watteau, Embarkation for Cythera, 1718-19. Staatliche Museen, Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin.

Figure 16. Jean-Antoine Watteau, Italian Comedians, c. 1720. The National Gallery of Art, Washington. 322

Figure 17. Jack B. Yeats, Two Travellers, 1942. Tate Gallery, London.

Figure 18. Waiting for Godot, 2003. USC School of Theatre. "•» * *•

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Figure 19. Jack B. Yeats, The Top of the Tide, 1955. Waddington Gallery, London.

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Figure 21. Alberto Giacometti, Walking Man II, 1960. National Gallery, London. 325

Figure 22. Georges Pierre, Alberto Giacometti with Samuel Beckett and Tree, 1961. Phillips, de Pury & Company, Mittwoch. 326

Figure 23. Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of Jacob Trip, 1661. National Gallery, London.

Figure 24. Michael Gambon as Hamra, Film Still: Beckett on Film: Endgame, 2001. 327

Figure 25. Rembrandt van Rijn, Old Man in an Armchair, 1652. National Gallery, London. 328

Figure 26. Jan Vermeer, The Astronomer, c. 1668. Musee du Louvre, Paris.

Figure 27. Jan Vermeer, The Geographer, c. 1668. Stadelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt. 329

Figure 28. Rick Cluchey as Krapp, Krapp 's Last Tape, 2005. Loyola Marymount University Theatre, Los Angeles. 330

Figure 29. Rembrandt van Rijn, The Money Changer, 1627. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin.

Figure 30. John Hurt as Krapp, Krapp 's Last Tape, 2000. Gate Theatre, Dublin. 331

Figure 31. Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, Film Still, Un chien andalou, 1928.

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Figure 32. Madeleine Renaud as Winnie, Happy Days, 1981. Theatre du Rond-Point, Paris. 332

Figure 33. Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory, 1931. Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Figure 34. Rene Magritte, The Betrayal of Images, 1928. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 333

Figure 35. Emil Nolde, Christ Among the Children, 1910. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Figure 36. Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893. The National Gallery, Oslo. 334

Figure 37. Sergei M. Eisenstein, Film Still, Battleship Potemkin, 1925.

Figure 38. Sergei M. Eisenstein, Film Still, Battleship Potemkin, 1925. 335

Figure 39. Sergei M. Eisenstein, Film Still, Battleship Potemkin, 1925.

Figure 40. Sergei M. Eisenstein, Film Still, Battleship Potemkin, 1925. 336

Figure 41. Emil Nolde, Prophet, 1912. Museum of Modern Art, NY.

Figure 42. Play, 2000. Maryland Stage Company, Baltimore. Photo by Damon Meledones. 337

Figure 44. Come and Go, 1986. Gate Theatre, Dublin. 338

Figure 45. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Berlin Street Scene, 1913. Briicke Museum, Berlin. 339

Figure 46. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, The Decapitation of Saint John the Baptist, 1607-08. Pro-Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, La Valletta, Malta.

Figure 47. Billie Whitelaw as Mouth, Film Still: BBC, Not I, 1977. 340

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Figure 48. William Blake, Engraving from the Book of Job, 1825.

Figure 49. Niall Buggy as Listener, Film Still: Beckett on Film, That Time (illustration superimposed), 1999. 341

Figure 50. Oskar Kokoschka, Portrait of Professor Auguste Forel, 1909/10. Arts Center, Mannheim 342

Figure 51. James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1: Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1871. Musee d'Orsay, Paris, France.

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Figure 52. Penelope Wilton as W, Film Still: Beckett on Film, Rockaby, 2001. 343

Figure 53. Vincent Van Gogh, La Bergeuse, 1889. Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Figure 54. Kay Gallie as W, Rockaby, 2005. Arches Theatre, Glasgow. 344

Figure 55. Rembrandt van Rijn, Margaretha de Geer, 1661. The National Gallery, London. 345

Figure 57. Jeremy Irons, Film Still: Beckett on Film, Ohio Impromptu, 2001. 346

Figure 58. Albrecht Diirer, Virgin in Prayer, 1518. Berlin-Dahlem, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Gemaldegalerie.

Figure 59. John Gielgud as Protagonist, Film Still: Beckett on Film, Catastrophe. 2001.