Gestus in the Theaters of Brecht and Beckett

City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects CUNY Graduate Center 1987 Gestus in the Theaters of Brecht and Beckett Barry Joseph Batorsky The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/4269 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] INFORMATION TO USERS While the most advanced technology has been used to photograph and reproduce this manuscript, the quality of the reproduction is heavily dependent upon the quality of the material submitted. For example: • Manuscript pages may have indistinct print. In such cases, the best available copy has been filmed. • Manuscripts may not always be complete. 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For an additional charge, 35mm slides of 6”x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations that cannot be reproduced satisfactorily by xerography. 8713746 Batorsky, Barry Joseph 'GESTUS' IN THE THEATERS OF BRECHT AND BECKETT City University oi New York Ph.D. 1987 University Microfilms International300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 Copyright 1987 by Batorsky, Barry Joseph All Rights Reserved GESTUS IN THE THEATERS OF BRECHT AND BECKETT by Barry Batorsky A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Comparative Literature in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy# The City University of New York. 1987 (s) 1987 BARRY JOSEPH BATORSKY All Rights Reserved ii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Comparative Literature in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. [Signature] Date Chair of Examining Committee [Signature] (far* 2/, I9$7 Daxeiaxe Executive Officer” [Signature] [Signature] Supervisory Committee The City University of New York iii To Bertha, ein Lebenskttnstler, To Roberta, my wife and comrade, who with Victor, has seen the truer version, To Rebecca and Benjamin, my earthangels: Not a miserablist scribbler, abecedarian, or "survivor" amongst them. Contents Introduction.............................................. 1 Part I 1. Definition of the Gest............................... 8 2. Significant Comportments, not Topics.................32 3. Comportments and Topics: Gestic Revision of Mother Courage................................ 39 4. The Typical........................................... 52 5. Gest: the Scientific Comportment................... 88 6. Gesamtgestus.......................................... 95 7. Gesamtgestus and Model Books......................... 102 8. Gest: Genre and Style.................................Ill Part II 9. Story and the Plays of Samuel Beckett................ 127 10. The Gestus in Beckett.................................132 11. Plays: the Gests of Failure......................... 143 12. Directing the Gests of Endgame....................... 168 13. The "Not..., But"..................................... 196 14. Endgame as "Epic Theater"............................ 200 Works Consulted........................................... 230 v 1 Introduction This dissertation began as an attempt to contrast the "richness" of action in Brecht's drama to the "poverty" of action in’Beckett1s. I wanted to show that, more acutely than any other contemporary dramatist, Beckett's vision presented modern man as unable to act without destroying. Brecht's work, on the other hand, was to show how action could create meaning. Beckett's subjective idealism, I felt, had led him to the impasse that was vividly presented in his work and this subjective idealism could only reflect the impasse. Beckett's empiro-critical vision could not get beyond itself and eventually ran down into Worm and the Unnamable. Brecht too had experienced the impasse: the individual's desires came back to him distorted, twisted; his action produced only destruction and dissolution. But Brecht's materialism brought him beyond that impasse. Action created social meaning, and human reality was objectifiable. Brecht's materialist position made drama possible. This contrast fell apart when I realized that Beckett's dramas were full of action, and not all futile. The action was there, even if only as narrative, and it was frantic and continuous in the face of the failure that 2 narked the impasse. Failure, I saw, was Beckett's proper topic only because it is necessarily historical and social, while success could be instantaneous and personal, a Humean miracle, a Geulincxian occasion. Beckett's plays do not overwhelm one with the futility of all action in the manner of absurdist drama. But neither do they make one feel that simply by being a better person one could change the plight of his figures. Beckett's plays were not simple to get out of. They were not Maeterlinckian chamber dramas as Nabokov once called them (24). Beckett's figures lost their "character", but the action did not fall into meaningless absurdity. The question for me became how and why the plays of Brecht and Beckett presented such similarly distinct visions. I thought to define their drama through a treatment of the theme of control. The struggle for meaning seemed only one aspect of the struggle for control. In fact, human control still seems to me to define dramatic genres. Tragedy presents man in control. In the last ditch, the tragic hero recognizes what necessity demands and acts freely to fulfill his destiny. Things as they are, Antigone does not cut a deal. Comedy, on the other hand, presents man out of control. It is full of plots and intrigues. Some succeed; most, the comic ones, fail. Plots and counter-plots go astray until, in most cases, man wins a victory over himself. With this idea, the two great 3 genres of drama were two visions of human control. The dissertation ceased being a philosophical thesis and became a genre study, which in a way it still is. Beckett and Brecht, however, wrote in an intermediate form between tragedy and comedy. The concept of control didn't distinguish their plays from other intermediate types which, since the drame serleux of Beaumarchais, have dominated European theater. Control in these dramas, I felt and still feel, was thematized. Recognizing a role for itself as an entertainment for a " .artain class of society, theater presented not mankind the poor forked creature, but the bon homme whose ability and right to control was put into question. Control became then a question of educated sensibilities. Dramatic crises occur or rather permanent crisis becomes apparent when bonhommie fails, as it does periodically, but the issue remains one of who controls and how to control, rather then whether. Control, in any case, failed to distinguish or define the theaters of Brecht and Beckett. My eye then turned toward the thing itself, the content of the plays to try to ascertain what made them different from other dramas and similar to one another. The evidence of my eyes and ears was that Brecht and Beckett shared an aesthetic vision that could not be described in philosophical or political-economic terms. In spite of much criticism that holds that there is no meaningful similarity 4 between Brecht and Beckett, I became convinced of a common aesthetic sensibility. Their counter-posed visions of the human condition only made their common aesthetic vision more apparent. The final clue was the descriptions and transcriptions, notes and model books, which presented the authors at work directing their plays. The parallels were unmistakeable. The aesthetic unit with which both worked and to which both appealed as an authoritative text was what Brecht called the gest fGestusl, historically significant human behavior. My thesis became the assertion that the gest was the benchmark of Brecht's theater, and that it was a basic element of the Beckettian vision. In presenting this thesis, the problem is two-fold. First, to define the gest, rather than Verfremduna or story as the characteristic Brechtian device. Second, to show its relevance to the Beckettian drama. The two playwrights deal with different material, different themes, and— most important— they write for different audiences and societies. Brecht's material and themes, always gestic after a certain point, varied; Beckett's dramatic vision focussed on failure and survival. Brecht wrote and directed for and among communists, Beckett for and among capitalists. These things influenced what the writers say with gests, and how they say it. Brecht's desire to cultivate an audience, Beckett's despair of an audience, his positive rejection of audiences, resulted at least in 5 part from writing for a particular

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