Memory Plays:

The Theater of Samuel Beckett

by

Katherine H. Vellis

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of

The Schmidt College of Arts and Humanities in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the

Degree of Master of Arts

Florida Atlantic University

Boca Raton, Florida

April1992 © Copyright by Katherine H. Vellis 1992

ii DEDICATION

This work is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother,

Edith H. Malanos (Graw)

and

to the loving example set by my mother,

Margaret M. Vellis Memory Plays:

The Theater of Samuel Beckett

by Katherine H. Vellis

This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Dr. Carol McGuirk, Department of English and Comparative Literature, and has been approved by the members of her supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of The Schmidt College of Arts and Humanities and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts.

SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE:

Thesis Advisor

~Chairpersons, Departrllet~ of~ English and Comparative Literature ~Ql~~~~

iii ABSTRACT

Author: Katherine H. Vellis

Title : Memory Plays: The Theater of Samuel Beckett

Institution: Florida Atlantic University

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Carol McGuirk

Degree: Master of Arts

Year: 1992

Samuel Beckett's plays reverberate with a recurring memory motif.

Recollections offer hope, rejuvenation , or in some cases simply the strength to carry on through what Beckett calls the "mess of life ." The memories of

Beckett's characters help them to transcend or to at least deal with the past.

Close study of the plays points out this glimmer of hope in reminiscent memories, sensory memories, and creative memories. Even the bleakest recollections offer the possibility of future memories. In the ten plays examined, the use of memory varies. An exploration of the plays in terms of Proustian memory, autobiographical documentation, and psychological research offers insight into the often hopeful memories of Beckett's characters.

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1: lntroduction ...... 1

Chapter II : Nostalgia and Reminiscence ...... ?

Chapter Ill: Sense Memory: Visual, Aural, and Beyond ...... 17

Chapter IV : Memory, Creativity, and lmagination ...... 28

Chapter V: The Amnesia Factor ...... 37

Chapter VI: Conclusion ...... 44

Notes ...... 48 lllustration ...... 49

Works Cited ...... 50

v Chapter I

INTRODUCTION

Samuel Beckett's plays resonate with a recurring memory motif. Through the use of elderly reminiscences, sensory memories, creative and imaginative memories, and the antithesis of memory--amnesia, Beckett illustrates the powerful force of memory.

As A. Alvarez once noted, Beckett's Master's thesis, "Proust" (1931) is "a blueprint for everything he has done since" (83). This is certainly true in terms of the memory motif, in which Beckett defines two types of Proustian memory: voluntary and involuntary. According to Beckett, voluntary memory "presents the past in monochrome" (18). It is memory by rote, the memory of habit.

Nicholas Zurbrugg explains, "voluntary memory is a rational casual process, or to use Beckett's terms 'the uniform memory of intelligence"' (Proust 121 ). In

"Proust," Beckett clarifies his distaste for voluntary memory: "It ignores the mysterious and registers only those impressions of the past that were consciously and intelligently formed" (32). Voluntary memory, habit, and time are in Beckett's view a devilish trini.ty that usurp man's ability to create art, understand reality, and cope with life.

On the other hand, involuntary memory is characterized as the great emancipator: "Involuntary memory is an unruly magician and will not be importuned. It chooses its own time and place for the performance of its miracle" ("Proust" 33-34). Involuntary memory comes from a deep source: This brief eternity of remembrance is said to free us from ''the darkness of time and habit" and to reveal"the brightness of art" (57). The characters in

1 2 Beckett's plays reveal aspects of voluntary and involuntary memory in what they remember and what they forget. Furthermore, some characters are creatures of ritualized habit in their efforts to pass time, escape suffering, and avoid reality-­ the essence of truth.

Beckettian characters also engage in nostalgic reminiscence, and since many of Beckett's characters are elderly--50 or more--this impulse is not surprising. These characters' memories could be called "remember whens?" and are both voluntary and involuntary in the Proustian sense. When the memories are involuntary, they can become very much like Wordsworthian

"recollections in tranquility." For example, consider Winni.e's ''tone of fervent reminiscence" when she recalls bucolic evenings with her lover, Charlie Hunter

(Happy~ 15). On the other hand, as Herbert Blau has noted, the memories of the elderly may result in a sort of alienation: "The elderly can be doubly impaired, self-deprived and twice distanced" (26). So the nostalgic memories of the elderly may reveal a double-edged blade : pleasant recollections can result in peaceful bliss, but sometimes nostalgia leads to the conclusion that the

"double headed monster of damnation and salvation--time" has led to a path of no return (Beckett "Proust" 30). Beckett's characters also remember sensory experiences. Sight and sound are the primary sources of sense memory: colors, light and dark imagery, and noises evoke vivid memories. Beckett also delves into the sensory deprivation effects of silence. Characters of all ages engage in acts of sensory memory. Many sense memories are drawn from

Beckett's life. In some of Beckett's plays, memory is linked with imagination and creativity: characters use imagination to visualize how others feel or to ferret out the truth or falsehood of memories. The finest memories evoke creative thoughts. For instance, Speaker's recollection of missing photographs in A 3 Piece Qf Monologue involves creativity and imagination in conjunction with memory (266). Finally, Beckett's characters--notably Estragon in Waiting fQL

Godot--lapse into periods of amnesia in order to escape reality and suffering.

Ironically, it is the marginal character, Pozzo, who enjoys the brief respite of involuntary memory in Godot.

In Chapter Two, I will consider the nostalgic memories of elderly characters in five plays: Endgame, Krapp's !..as!~ Eh J..Q.e., N.Q1!. and I.b..ill

Time.1 In Endgame, Nagg and Nell are the parents of the protagonist, Hamm; they live in ashbins on the stage and are at their son 's beck and call. Their only refuge is their memories, especially of the tandem crash in which they lost their legs. Michael Robinson notes that Nagg and Nell "linger on only in the extent of their memories" (270). Among their other memories are an April afternoon on

Lake Como and an engagement--memories that temporarily rejuvenate them.

Memories also rejuvenate in Krapp's !..as!~ in which "a wearish old man" named Krapp engages in a tape recorded sifting process to evaluate the important memories of his life. As the play opens, Krapp is celebrating his 69th birthday by listening to a tape made thirty years earlier that recalls a memorable equinox, a dark young nurse, a woman named Bianca, a woman on a boat, his mother. According to Katharine Worth, the significance of this sifting process is that "memory is an active force , not just a passive reverie" ("Past" 18). Further, the play's operative words are "Be again ," underscoring Krapp's continuing desire for future memories. Eh J..Q.e., a television play , has been called Krapp's

!..as!~ from a woman's perspective. In ten increasingly tight camera shots, a woman's voice taunts Joe with his own memories. The opening lines "Thought of everything? ... Forgotten nothing?" set the tone. Joe recalls his parents and 4 an affair that ended with the woman's suicide. These reminiscences are definitely not rejuvenating: he is tormented by them. Joe is an example of one who is trying to hide from his memories. N.Qll is one of Beckett's most daring one act-plays; it is the monologue of a seventy-something woman represented only as "Mouth." Like .E.h .J..Q,a, N.Qll considers a character who refuses to accept her own memories. With a barrage of words that serve to "drag up the past,"

Mouth comes to terms with painful memories. Ruby Cohn points out that Mouth moves "forward from pale past events" (El.ay 71 ). This moving forward can be interpreted as a form of rejuvenation. In I..b.a1 Time , Beckett presents an old man disconnected from his body. He is "Listener." "Voices A, B, and C are his own coming at him from both sides and above," the voices representing his life as a child, a lover, and an old man. In the end the listener masters his memories and accepts his mortality with the words "come and gone in no time."

Chapter Three will consider sensory memory in Eh .J..Q,a, I..b.a1 Time, N.Q1

1, Krapp's .l...as1 ~ A Piece Qf Monologue, and Happy~· In addition, I will consider Embers, a radio play. As is appropriate for its medium, Embers uses sight and sound imagery throughout and adds visual imagery as well. The protagonist, Henry, talks to himself, telling stories to keep from hearing the sea, which reminds him of his father. Memories are generated by the sound of horse's hooves and sights of a white world and flickering flames. Chiaroscuro and color (notably green) play an important role in evoking memories in Embers. Sensory memory is also evident in E.I.ay, which delves into the memories of an affair from the point of view of a man, his wife, and his mistress.

The three characters are buried in urns and only their heads show: minds and memories are highlighted. Sense memories are evoked through the recall of colors (especially green), light, darkness, and noises (such as, paradoxically, 5 the sound of lawn mowers.)

Chapter Four will explore creativity and imagination as a part of the memory process for Beckett's characters. Three plays will be considered: Happy .D.ay_s_, A Piece Qf Monologue, and .E.Jru!. In Happy .D.ay_s_, Winnie is buried in a mound of dirt. She recalls her past as she conducts her stage business of praying, looking at pornographic postcards, brushing her teeth, and pondering the bristles of the tooth-brush. In Act II, Winnie is buried up to her neck. Her literal paralysis or stasis does not hinder her creative ability to remember as well as to compose and embellish stories. In A Piece Qf

Monologue, memories of things past become linked with imagination and creativity when the sole actor, considering death, tears family photographs off the wall. This does not stop the flow of memories, however, the speaker still recalls family members by interpreting the faded outline remaining after the pictures are removed. In~. imagination and creativity merge with memory.

Each of the three members of the love triangle interprets memory differently.

This becomes prominent during the chorus, when all the characters recall their version of the affair simultaneously: one character remembers "hellish half light" while another recalls "happy memories."

Chapter Five will consider memory and forgetfulness, or amnesia. The text in this chapter is Waiting .f.Qr Godot; again, I will use Beckett's thesis on

Proust to illuminate the memory motif. Voluntary and involuntary memory, habit, and time are the keys to understanding Vladimir's memory, Estragon's forgetfulness, and Pozzo's transformation in Act II.

My concluding chapter will summarize the patterns of memory uncovered in the plays. My main object in this thesis is to note the varied, recurrent, and critically neglected theme of memory in Beckett's plays; a secondary goal is to 6 point out that Beckett's plays often utilize memory to suggest there is a glimpse of hope in an otherwise desolate existence. While the majority of critics portray

Beckett's works as a negative statement on humanity, I view the plays as a testament to the innately hopeful facet of human nature. In Beckett's plays, something positive comes out of the negative: he situates "his people" in the most desolate circumstances, but when the ray of light appears it is highlighted.

Often this ray of light appears in the form of memories. Although remembering involves much that is painful, confused, and anxious, the lighted ray of memory also offers insight. As the character actor Jack MacGowran has noted, "The key word in all of Beckett's plays is 'perhaps"' (McCrory 172). Chapter II

Nostalgia and Reminiscence: The Realm of the Elderly

"Such is my hope, the spirit of the Past, For future restoration." Wordsworth "The Prelude"

A longing for the past or an attempt to escape from nostalgic memories is particularly evident in several of Beckett's plays. Nostalgic memory is the arena of the elderly in that their memories take the form of reminiscences. When the reminiscences are Proustian involuntary memories, they can be like Joycean

"epiphanies" or Wordsworthian "recollections in tranquility." On the other hand,

Beckett's elderly characters sometimes engage in painful recollections that lead to alienation. Nostalgic reminiscences of the elderly occur in Endgame, Krapp's l.as.1 ~ E h J..Q.e., t!Q.tl, and Ib.a1 Time. Endgame, written in 1957, exemplifies one aspect of Beckett's use of memory: nostalgia can be rejuvenating. Elderly characters, Nagg and Nell, engage in a nostalgic repartee that is painful yet rejuvenating. Cohn has noted,

"Nagg and Nell speak almost entirely of the past" (~ 147). Residing on stage in two aluminum garbage cans, Nagg and Nell poke out their heads only to answer their son, Hamm, and to recall the past. In an early scene, the realization that their senses have dulled causes Nagg and Nell to recall another loss:

Nagg: Do you remember-- Nell: No. Nagg: When we crashed our tandem and lost our shanks. 7 8

{They laugh heartily.) Nell: It was in the Ardennes. (They laugh less heartily.) Nagg: In the road to Sedan. (They laugh still less heartily.) (Endgame 16)

This is an example of Proustian voluntary memory--a deliberately conjured recollection. As the memory becomes more vivid, Nagg and Nell's enjoyment falters because their pain has become more real; that realization evokes the decreasing laughter in the stage directions. Significantly, this memory comes to

Nagg's mind as the result of his pondering his loss of teeth, sight, and hearing: one loss conjures up the recollection of another. Such memory Beckett terms

"an instrument of reference" ("Proust" 30). In other words, '"Voluntary memory' is the uniform memory of intelligence; and it can be relied on to reproduce for our gratified inspection those impressions of the past that were consciously and intelligently formed" ("Proust" 19). Such artificial memory offers no solace.

Later in the same scene, Nagg insists upon telling Nell his favorite story: "It always made you laugh. (Pause.) The first time I thought you'd die" (Endgame

21 ). This comment jolts Nell into a Proustian involuntary memory: "It was on

Lake Como. (Pause.) One April afternoon" (21 ). Nagg and Nell continue to recall their engagement, rowing on the lake and the water "deep," "white," and

"clean" (21 ). Nature is remembered in vivid detail, so that the recollection of

Lake Como becomes an "instrument of discovery" for Nell ("Proust" 30).

Zurbrugg clarifies the significance of involuntary memory in Beckett's drama:

"Involuntary memory appears to retrieve the mysterious reality that [Beckett] optimistically evinces as 'the best of our many selves'; the "deep source" (32) that he envisages as 'that ultimate and inaccessible dungeon of our being"' 9

(Proust 122). Nagg and Nell's involuntary memories allow them a

momentary "recollection in tranquility." While the mention of Mother Pegg, the

boy, and the flea are often cited as the only rays of hope in Endgame, the pleasant, nostalgic recollections of the elderly characters Nagg and Nell are further evidence that Endgame is, among other things, "a play about hope" (Bair

469).

Krapp's ~ I.aQ.e. is "a recollection in tranquility with an automaton's vengeance," wrote Hugh Kenner of Beckett's 1958 monodrama (Beckett 185).

In the play, Krapp is celebrating his 69th birthday by listening to a tape recording made thirty years earlier: he is nostalgically sifting and sorting through memories. As Worth has noted, Krapp's ~ I.aQ.e.is "a memory play if there ever was one" ("Past" 18). Krapp's first memory is a sketchy recollection of a "memorable equinox" (57). This is significant because the equinox highlights the "double-headed monster of damnation and salvation--time"

("Proust" 30). The passage of time and the resulting nostalgia of Krapp's backward glances are the very essence of the play. Once the "mood of nostalgia" has been established, an array of memories begins to emanate from the reel to reel tape recorder (Fletcher Beckett 89). The memories are of three overlapping varieties: erotic, familial, and futuristic. Erotic memories begin with the recollection of Bianca. Krapp's youthful voice recalls: "Just been listening to an old year, passages at random . I did not check in the book, but it must be at least ten or twelve years ago. At that time, I think I was living on and off with

Bianca in Kedar Street. Well out of that, Jesus yes! Hopeless business" (58).

This fragment spurs another dubious snatch of memory: "A girl in a shabby green coat, on a railway platform?" (58). Later, a recollection of his mother's illness in a hospital produces memories of her death: "I was there when the 10

blind when down" (60}. Next, Krapp's tape recalls his immediate reaction to his

mother's death. He remembers throwing a black rubber ball for a

little white dog: "Moments, Her moments, my moments [Pause.] The dog's

moments" (60). These painful recollections are cathartic for the jaded Krapp in that they cause him to reevaluate their meaning. Another memory that haunts

Krapp involves a girl in a boat. He listens to this portion of the tape again and

again:

upper lake, with the punt, bathed off the bank then pushed out into the stream and drifted. She lay stretched out on the floorboards with her hands under her head and her eyes closed. Sun blazing down, bit of breeze, water nice and lively. I noticed a scratch on her thigh and asked her how she came by it. Picking gooseberries she said. I said again I thought it was hopeless and no good going on and she agreed, without opening her eyes. (Pause.] I asked her to look at me and after a few moments--[Pause.]--after a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the glare. I bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened ... I lay down across her with my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to side. (61)

As Bair has noted, "With Krapp, there is an overwhelming sense of emotion, but it is an emotion recollected in tranquility" {491 ). Krapp's "emotional recollection in tranquility" allows him to endure, overcome, and master painful memories.

The final aspect of memory in Krapp's Last Tape is the desire for future memories. While Krapp's tape laments that "Perhaps my best years are gone," he ends with the desire to "Be again" (63). As Steven Rosen explains, Krapp

"looks down on the past and future from a sort of summit 'at the crest of the wave,' as he says" {115}. Hope for the future is evident in these nostalgic, hopeful lines: "Be again in the dingle on a Christmas Eve, gathering holly, red 11

berried. [Pause.] Be again on Croghan on a Sunday morning, in the haze, with the bitch, stop and listen to the bells. [Pause.] And so on. [Pause.] Be again, be again"(63). This hopeful emphasis on the future suggests that life is worth the struggle of enduring "all that old misery" (63). As Worth has aptly noted, "trivial things flood back with memories and are also seen anew, seen with such intensity that life begins to appear infinitely worth living, whatever its hazards and miseries, even the miseries of old age" ("Space" 195). At the core of these fragmented recollections there is an aura of hope because Krapp realizes that life is worth the struggle.

"Thought of everything? ... Forgotten nothing?" These are the opening taunts of the woman's voice in the 1965 "piece for television," Eh ~ (202).

Alvarez points out that Eh ~is "Krapp turned inside out, a similar story, but from the girl's point of view" (1 01 ). In .Ell~ only a woman's voice is heard, but ironically the woman's voice is Joe's own conscience in the form of his memories. In ten increasingly tight camera shots, Joe's face shows the effects of reliving memories. Eugene Webb characterizes Joe as "another man in flight"

(127}, hiding from the voice of painful memories of his mother, his father, and most importantly, his women. The woman's voice taunts Joe, "You know that penny farthing hell you call your mind ... That's where you think this is coming from, don't you? ... That's where you heard your father . . . Isn't that what you told me? ... Then your mother when her hour came ... Throttling the dead in his head" (203). The badgering voice does not awaken memories recollected in tranquility, but rather it awakens "masks that a deeper level of his mind uses to try to call his attention to certain truths about himself that are tied up with the memories they represent" (Webb 129). Joe's most painful memories are of 12

relationships. The voice taunts: "Anyone living love you now, Joe? . ..

Anyone living sorry for you now? . . . That slut that comes on Saturday, you pay

her, don't you?" {203). The tape's language becomes a mnemonic exercise

that allows Joe to torment himself. As S. E. Gontarski has noted, Eh ~is a sort of "verbal Esher drawing, or an extension of Lacan's dictum that the

subconscious is structured like a language [and] is a verbal construct"

("Anatomy" 427). Another possibility is less complex and equally plausible: Joe

is guilty. The woman represented by the voice survived after her affair with Joe :

"I found a better . . . As I hope you heard .. . Preferable in all respects . .. Yes ... I did all right" (204). Another ex-lover of Joe's, however, did not thrive, and she

is the source of Joe's guilty memories: "But there was one didn't . .. You know the one I mean" (205). The audience learns of the other woman's suicide when the voice says: "Gets out the Gillette . . . There's love for you . . . Isn't it Joe?"

(204-5). In "The Anatomy of f.b. ~." Gontarski quotes Beckett: "It is his [Joe's] passion to kill the voices which he cannot kill" (425). His failure to "kill the voices" causes him to become alienated, but not completely without hope because he tries to understand his painful past. Joe's efforts to comprehend his memories serve as a further example of the hopeful strain in Beckett's plays.

Like Krapp, Joe evaluates the painful memories and realizes that life is worth enduring the "mess."

In her biography of Beckett, Bair explains the memories at the root of

Beckett's NQ!l: "In Malta he had seen Caravaggio's painting of the beheading of St. Jerome, and said he was struck by it as 'a voice crying in the wilderness.'

Then , in Morocco, he saw .. . an Arab woman shrouded in a djellaba hunkered down on the edge of the sidewalk 'crouched in an attitude of intense waiting .'

Every so often she would straighten up and peer into the distance. Then she 13 would flap her arms aimlessly against her sides and hunker down once again" (622). These are the cryptic beginnings of N.Qll. a 1972 one-act play that takes the form of a monologue. Mouth is a "seventyish Irish woman, an orphan from birth, who has spent her life more or less in silence" (Alvarez 136). Only her mouth is visible to the audience, and the other figure on stage is that of the

Auditor, "a tall, standing figure, sex undeterminable, enveloped from head to foot in loose black djellaba, with hood" (216). The Auditor's only direction is

"Movement: a simple sideways raising of arms and their falling back, in a gesture of helpless compassion" (215). The movement can be interpreted as

Auditor's reaction to the play's only action: the barrage of words that are

Mouth's memories. She recalls words, seasons, places, and shopping excursions, but the words are the key to Mouth's nostalgic memories. This previously mute character finds words and their related memories gushing forth:

"realized ... words were coming ... imagine! ... words were coming ... a voice she did not recognize .. . at first ... so long since it had sounded . .. then finally had to admit . .. could be none other than her own" (219). Words, voice, and memory fuse into one entity characterized by Mouth. As Audrey McMullian has noted, "History and memory are presented both as a means of restoring the past and as the collected debris of the present. The only access to history or memory that Beckett's characters have is through language. Language determines the human subject's experience of reality" (426). This is certainly the case in N.Qll. Mouth's reality is determined through the discovery of words.

Consequently, words are the key to unlocking the meaning of her memories.

For instance, soon after discovering her voice, Mouth recalls a speechless shopping excursion : "busy shopping centre ... supermart ... just hand in the list ... with the bag ... old black shopping bag . .. then stand there waiting ... 14

any length of time .. . middle of the throng motionless ... staring into space ...

mouth half open as usual ... till it was back in her hand ... the bag back in her

hand ... then pay and go ... not so much as goodbye" (219). This memory

dredges up more intense memories: "dragging up the past flashes from all

over" (220). These "flashes from all over" are rejuvenating recollections for

Mouth. With the support of the compassionate motions of the Auditor, Mouth

accepts her memories in a rapid succession of "flashes from all over." Unlike

Joe, Mouth is focused on her memories and, quite literally, she is facing them.

As Linda Ben-Zvi notes, the five refusals of self in .NQ.tl merge inner and outer

voices as Mouth "recalls events of her past" (165). This is Proustian involuntary

memory in its purest sense. Mouth's rejuvenating reminiscences echo an early

Beckett poem, "Casket of Praline for a Daughter of a Dissipated Mandarin," "My

memory's involuntary vomit --/violently projected,/ oh beauty!" (Zurbrugg

Beckett 145). The poem exemplifies Beckett's deeply rooted belief in the

uncontrollable, unrehearsed moments of freedom afforded by involuntary

memory.

"The three [vocal] images intertwine like the strands of a melody in a symphony. [They] recur and are varied into a tapestry with a clearly perceptible pattern of tensions, emotional colors and structures of life's essential experiences"--these are Martin Esslin's impressions of That Time, a 1975 one­ act play (196). I.b..ill Time excavates the memories of a man known only as Listener. He hears the voices of A, B, and C emanating from different parts of the stage as well as from his life. Three voices fuse as a representation of a life's memories. The voices represent the Listener as a child, a lover, and an old man. As A. Takahashi has noted, 'That Time is an amalgam of Krapp and Eh J.o..e. , for here is an old man sitting in the dark just listening to his own voices 15 from three periods in his life" (1 05). Consider these memories from the three periods of Listener's life. Voice A remembers childhood: "that time you went back that last time to look was the ruin still there where you hid as a child when was that [Eyes close.] grey day took the eleven to the end of the line and on from there no trams" (228). This rambling account jogs another memory. Voice

C represents old age looking for comfort, saying: "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" (228). This memory in turn conjures up the memories of

Voice B, the lover: "on the stone together in the sun on the stone at the edge of the little wood and as far as eye could see the wheat" (228). Each voice is a stage of development in the elderly Listener's life. Or, as Ben-Zvi has pointed out, "Each vo ice has its own fractured memories and verbal signs" (167). The play gives equal time to each voice, and the Listener's face reacts to these memories only with audible breathing and the blinking of eyes. At the end of the play, however, the Listener's reactions become more profound. Elderly

Voice C is the last to speak:

not a sound only the breath and the leaves turning and then suddenly this dust whole place suddenly full of dust when you opened your eyes from floor to ceiling nothing only dust and not a sound only what was it said come and gone was that it something like that come and gone come and gone no one come and gone in no time in no time [Silence 10 seconds. Breath audible. After 3 seconds eyes open. After 5 seconds smile, toothless for preference. Hold 5 seconds till fade out then curtain.] (235)

Several aspects of this final monologue are noteworthy. It is apparent that the dust and leaves are symbolic of mortality. It is also apparent that the elderly 16

Listener has relived his important memories. Life seems to have "come and gone in no time," yet Listener smiles. Critics have pondered the meaning of the smile. Ben-Zvi sees it as "unexpected, disorienting, shocking. Is the listener smiling with happiness, with resignation or with relief? The audience is not sure" (167). Worth is more decisive: "The old man is panting, breathless, perhaps dying. However, he is not unhappy because he has come to terms with his memories. He masters his memories" ("Play"). Further, "Though

[Listener's] memory contains so much that is painful, confused, anxious, the relentless flood of time has been subdued, turned into 'That Time'; the jewels of memory" (Worth Irish 264). I.b.a1 Time condenses Beckett's nostalgic memory plays, minimizing the extraneous elements of the theater to focus entirely on the nostalgia of his elderly characters. From Nell and Nagg in ash bins (1957) to the disembodied face of the Listener (1975), Beckett shows both the alienating and rejuvenating power of memory in his elderly characters. Unlike Swift's Struldbruggs, whose

"memory will not serve to carry them from the beginning of a sentence to the end," (Gulliver's Travels 172) Beckett's people revel in or revile their memories.

Enoch Brater concludes, "Memory can work wonders, especially when it has been so explicitly crafted to do so" (168). In the nostalgic plays, Beckett intricately crafts the memories of his elderly people: rejuvenation is their reward. Chapter Ill

Sense Memory: Visual, Aural, and Beyond

"The play is memory. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted."

Williams Ih.e. Glass MenaQerie

It is commonly understood that the senses generate many memories:

"Sensory memory holds the image in rich detail, as would a photograph. But the contents of this memory constantly change as new stimuli arrive. The image lasts very briefly, and unless it enters short-term or long-term memory, it is lost"

(Loftus 16). Beckettian characters are constantly "taking mental photographs" and storing the information for short-term or long-term retrieval (Fig. 1). In fact, sensory memory is a distinct kind of recall for Beckettian characters. Almost all of the plays contain some aspect of sensory memory, especially visual and aural. This chapter considers sensory memory in Embers, .El.ay_, Illill Time, A

Piece .Qf MonoloQue, Krapp's .L..asl~ and Happy Qay_s_. As opposed to nostalgic memory, solely a faculty of the aged, characters of all ages experience sensory memory. Many of the characters' sensory memories are drawn from

Beckett's own experiences. 2

Two types of sensory memory that concern Beckettian characterizations are iconic and echoic memory. Iconic memory is short-term visual memory; echoic memory is short-term auditory memory. When iconic or echoic memories are especially vivid, they are stored in the brain's long-term memory banks. In The PsycholoQy of Human Memory, Arthur Wingfield explains:

17 18

The presentation of a stimulus irritates processes of analysis beginning with analysis of physical form and characteristics of the object (e.g. color, lines, angles) and continues through categorization of the object and its relationships with other objects ....This is known as deep memory processing. (148)

The vivid visual memories of Beckett's characters are evoked through visual imagery involving chiaroscuro and color. Shades of black, white, and gray are evident as well as an abundance of green: sporadic splashes of other colors such as lavender, red, and blue complete the palette. Alan Baddley explains the process of visual color memory: "If you move a brightly glowing cigarette-end around in a darkened room, it will leave a glowing trail, and if it is bright enough, you can write in the air" (14). "Visual persistence" explains long- term visual sense memory.

In Embers, a 1959 "piece for radio," Henry is alone with his memories.

Paradoxically, this radio play is fraught with visual imagery. Henry attempts to escape from the traumatic memory of his father's drowning, which he connects to memories of light, dark, and color: Henry remembers details about his father:

"You [his drowned father] always loved light, not long past noon and all the shore in shadow" (93). Later, the visual memory of contrasting light and dark helps Henry recall more details, and this memory is so vivid that Henry corrects his own recollections: "Before the fire with all the shutters ... no, hangings, hangings, all the hangings drawn and the light, no light, only the light of the fire, sitting there in the ... no, standing, standing there on the hearth rug in the dark before the fire" (94). As Henry's monologue continues, the contrast of dark and light intensifies: "bright winter's night, snow everywhere, bitter cold, white world, cedar boughs bending under load ... white world, Holloway with his little black bag" (94-95). As the visual memories gain momentum, they become 19

more intense. Beckett reinforces this intensity through repetition: the image

"white world" is remembered eight times. As the play concludes, the

recollection of contrasts is reinforced again: Henry recalls details of an incident

in terms of contrasting black and white:

Bolton starts playing with the curtain, no, hanging, difficult to describe, draws it back, no, kind of gathers it towards him and the moon comes flooding in, then lets it fall back, heavy velvet affair, and pitch black in the room, then towards him again, white black, white, black, Holloway: 'Stop that for the love of God, Bolton do you want to finish me?' [Pause.] Black, white, black, white, maddening thing. (1 04)

Henry's first recollection of the contrasts in the room begins with moonlight. As his memories become more vivid and troubling, the room becomes "pitch black" and the contrast begins with black. With the repetition of these visual memories of contrast, Beckett begins to sketch the memories of Henry.

"Hellish half light" and darkness also stimulate memories in Play, a one­ act written in 1962-63, which concerns three conflicting memories of an affair.

The three characters are buried in gray urns and can only remember when a bright light shines on them. Beckett's metatheatrical production involves the memories of M, a man, W1, his wife, and W2, his mistress. It is significant that

W1, the wife, recalls in terms of darkness or "Hellish half light" (156). W1 remembers incidents in somber tones: "Shadow stealing over everything.

Creeping. Yes ... Dying for dark--and the darker the worse" (156-57).

Similarly, M remembers his guilt in shades of darkness: ~~Down, all going down, into the dark, peace is coming, I thought, after all, at last" (152). As Jane Alison

Hale has noted, Play "seems to be another manifestation of the light of consciousness" (116). Yet, in the case of this guilt-ridden man and his despondent wife, Play is better seen as a manifestation of the darkness of 20

consciousness. Darkness is interspersed with light, however, because the

characters come to terms with their memories. Beckett's other plays also reflect this preoccupation with chiaroscuro and memory. In f.h J.Q.e., Joe's haunting memory of the "pale one's" suicide is

recalled as "light gone" (206). Similarly, in Krapp's .1..a.s1 ~the memory of the little white dog and the black ball shows Krapp's contrasting mental state:

He is relieved, yet grief-stricken over his mother's death. The character Mouth

in NQ11 remembers "all the time this ray or beam ... like moonbeam ... now bright . . . now shrouded (218). Later, Mouth vividly recalls blinking her eyes in

response to brightness, "just the eyelids . .. presumably .. . on and off shut out

· the light" (218) . Similarly, in Happy~. Winnie opens Act II with memorized

lines of "fractured Milton" while absentmindedly cleaning her spectacles, "holy

light--(polishes)--bob up out of the dark--(polishes)--blaze of Hellish light" (11 ).

The preponderance of shades of black, white, and gray in the memories of

Beckett's characters proves that their sense memories are long-term examples

of visual persistence.

This emphasis may be partly explained in terms of autobiographical

details: Beckett suffered from severe "glaucoma in both eyes" (Bair 598). In

1970, Beckett had corrective surgery. Bair notes that, "He had grown so used to

seeing through a thick gray film that the sudden onslaught of normal light was

staggering . ... [Beckett] exclaimed in a bewildered voice, 'The light--the light. I

had forgotten there could be such light"' (615). It is no wonder that Beckett's

characters recall their memories in shades of grey, black, and "hellish white light."

Green imagery also reverberates in the memories of Beckett's

characters. As Samuels notes, "Psychologists believe that color affects a 21 person directly, below the level of rational thought and that color is one of the

most universally recognized types of symbolism" (93). Going on to categorize colors in terms of their symbolism, Samuels argues that the color green

symbolizes, "Earth, fertility, sensation, vegetation, death, water, nature,

sympathy, adaptability, growth, the planets Jupiter and Venus, and the musical

note 'G"' (96). Green memories are echoed again and again in

Beckett's plays. In Embers, Henry's memories include the repetition of the

words: "Vega in the Lyre very green [Pause.] Vega in the Lyre very green" (95).

These words, coupled with the sea imagery, recur throughout the play. Green

seems to have a temporary calming or rejuvenating effect on Henry. Also, in

~. M remembers a "spot of time" from his affair, a memory sparked by the

recollection of green tea. M says, "Perhaps they [his wife and mistress] meet,

and sit, over a cup of that green tea they both loved ... happy memories.

Personally I always preferred Lipton's" (154). M is self conscious because of

the guilty memories of his affair, but green sense memory offers him a temporary, lighthearted respite from his guilt: the memory of the green tea

soothes an otherwise sordid recollection. Memories of green are also evident

in Eh J.Q.e.. The feminine conscience reminds Joe of a "spot of time": "Those

summer evenings in the Green" (203). This "green" memory is particularly

pertinent because it involves the suicidal love affair. In fact, the young woman who commits suicide after an ill-fated love affair with Joe is described as "the green one" (205). Memories of her and hours spent "back down the garden and under the viaduct" prove to be "gangrene" for Joe (206). Joe is haunted because he will not accept these memories. This refusal to accept memories categorizes Joe as one of Beckett's alienated characters, but he is not without hope because he interprets, analyzes, and ultimately comes to terms with his 22 memories. Green memories continue to dominate in I.b..a1 linN, Voice C remembers being huddled up in "the old great green coat" (228). This is the pleasant memory of an old man and it is significant that this happy sense memory is sparked by a childhood recollection. As Bertram Lewin notes, earliest memories are visual and visual memory is a sort of "pictorial past" (1 0). Voice

C's visual memories of such a "pictorial past" offer a respite from his current tribulations. In A Piece Qf Monologue, Beckett focuses on natural green memories again as the Speaker remembers, "new needles turning green"

(265). This is a moment of temporary relief or rejuvenation for the Speaker, who will undergo a catharsis in the remainder of the monologue. Finally, green imagery is seen in Happy~ when Winnie remembers an early love affair:

"the happy memories of the back garden at Borough green" (15). The green sensory memories of Beckett's characters are twentieth century Wordsworthian

"spots of time." Mary Wedd explains, "My picture of the 'spots of time' is of one initiating and tremendously powerful memory which attracts to itself other allied memories as iron filings fly to a magnet" (52). This is the effect of the green sensory memories: they are the springboard for more vivid, specific memories.

Some of the green sensory memories are drawn from nature, but there are autobiographical echoes of green from Beckett's own past: "The Ireland that affected his senses was the landscape he wrote about in his books--the familiar country side .. . the quiet lanes" (Bair 47) . Beckett's memories of green Ireland correspond with the his characters' green sensory memories.

While green is the predominant sensory color, Beckett's characters also remember in splashes of other colors. In Embers, shades of red create memories. Henry recalls, Bolton "before the fire in his old-red dressing gown" 23

(94). Throughout the play there are memories of the dying embers of the flame.

Henry says, "fire, no flames now, embers" (95) .

The color lavender emerges in E.h J..Q.e.. The memory of the "pale, green one" intensifies as the feminine voice continues to taunt Joe: "All right ... Warm summer night ... All sleeping . .. Sitting on the edge of her bed in her lavender

slip ... You know the one" (205). According to Samuels, violet or lavender symbolizes "water, nostalgia and memory" (96). This certainly corresponds with

Beckett's characterization of Joe's haunting memories.

Finally, in That Time, Voice B, the lover, recalls memories of love in terms of nature's colors : "on the stone in the sun gazing at the wheat or the sky or the eyes closed nothing to be seen but the wheat turning yellow and the blue sky vowing every now and then you loved each other" (230). The preceding examples are evidence that Beckettian characters' visual memories often involve darkness and light with splashes of color. As Wingfield explains,

"subjects can retain and use mental images in the form of visual memory"

(306). Visual memories and the corresponding colors sometimes offer relief for

Beckett's characters.

Beckett once commented, "I could not have gone through the awful wretched mess of life without having put a stain upon the .silence" (Bair 640) .

One way Beckett uses silence in his dramatic works is with auditory memory images. Characters evoke memories through sounds and silence.

Since Beckett called Embers a "piece" for radio, it is natural that aural memories are prominent. Henry dreads silence because it allows him to hear the sound of the sea, which reminds him of his father's drowning.

Consequently, Henry creates voices and noises to avoid the sounds he cannot bear to hear. Ada, (Henry's wife) chastises him: "You should talk to a doctor 24 about your talking, it's worse, what it must be like for Addie? [Pause.] Do you know what she said to me once, when she was quite small, she said Mummy, why does Daddy keep on talking all the time?" (1 00). Ada might have answered that Daddy cannot stand the voice of silence, memory. Cohn has noted, "[Unlike] T.S. Eliot's Prufrock--'Till human voices wake us, and we drown'

Beckett's Henry fears to drown without human voices; even his own is preferable to the incessant sea sound. Paradoxically, a phrase repeated often in the play is 'not a sound"' (J..u..s.t 118). Yet Cohn fails to consider the reason for

Henry's incessant noise: he is trying to silence the memories of his father.

There are other sounds in Embers that temporarily silence Henry's memories : the sounds of his daughter's music master and riding master, both of them marking time. The Riding Master says, "Now Miss! Elbows in Miss! Hands down Miss! [Hooves trotting.) Now Miss!" (99). It is significant that all of the noises and voices that Henry's memory conjures are measuring time in this way. The "double headed monster of time" mentioned in Beckett's "Proust" essay is prominent here. Despite all of Henry's efforts, Embers ends on a tacit chord, "Nothing, all day nothing. All day all night nothing. Not a sound" (1 04).

Yet there is also a paradoxical note of hope when Henry looks forward to

"Tomorrow, tomorrow" (1 04) .

~also contains examples of auditory memory. In one scene, the drone of a lawn mower jogs the memory of an extramarital breakup:

W2: He went on and on. I could hear a mower. An old hand mower. I stopped him and said that whatever I might feel I had no silly threats to offer--but not much stomach for her leavings either. He thought that over for a bit.

Then M recalls the same sensory impression: 25

M: When I saw her again she knew. She was looking-­ [Hiccup.] -- wretched. Pardon. Some fool was cutting grass .... (150-51)

As Webb has pointed out, "Not every experience is equally important, and memory automatically brings to the fore those that are. Secondly, it accrues to itself other allied memories which become 'incapable of being disentangled"'

(52). This is especially true of traumatic memories. Brown and Kulik call th is type of memory "flashbulb memory" (Baddley 21 ). Baddley gives as his example "where were you when Kennedy was assassinated?" Most subjects can give vivid sensory details about that day. In a similar way the sound of the lawn mower in .EJ.gy is "incapable of being disentangled" from the memories of the man and his mistress. It is a "flash bulb" memory. In fact, it can be argued that all of the characters have experienced sensory flashbulb memory, because short-term sensory memories usually become long-term memories.

There are also distinct auditory memories in Eh ~- Joe is barraged with auditory memories when he remembers a woman with "a voice like flint glass" (203). Later Joe remembers the "faint lap of the sea through the open window" (205). This is the sound Joe remembers when the "pale, green one" commits suicide. Once again, sound and color have adhered long enough to become deeply processed long-term memories. This scene corresponds with

Baddley's finding that, "we often retain information about voices for long periods of time" (35). In That Time, sounds and silence also evoke memories. For instance, Voice B, (the lover) recalls the sound of an owl. Later, when the love affair has soured, Voice B remembers no sound: ''the owl flown to hoot at someone else or back with a shrew to its hollow tree and not another sound hour after hour hour after hour not a sound" (234). Similarly, Voice C, the old 26 man, remembers "not a sound" (235). In both .Eh~ and Ib..a1 Ii.m..e., sounds are often a hopeful auxiliary benefit of the memory experience because they recall vivid memories.

In N.Q11, sound and silence are taken to extremes. Mouth recalls the buzzing sounds that ended her self-imposed muteness: ''the buzzing? ... yes all the time the buzzing ... so-called . . . in the ears" (218). Later, the aural memories of Mouth become more bucolic. Mouth remembers "Nothing but the larks" (223). On the other hand, Mouth vividly recalls the lack of sound that held her prisoner, "so disconnected .. . never got the message ... or powerless to respond ... like numbed . .. couldn't make the sound . . . not any sound . . . no sound of any kind" (218) . Beckett scores his character's auditory memories like a symphony. He utilizes various tempos and timbres to evoke the painful yet rejuvenating memories of the characters he referred to as "his people."

Robinson has noted, "each voice is used as an instrument to follow its own score, picking its way among the debris of memory and it is allowed to speak its recollections with just so much colour as is compatible with its individual character" (295-96). Beckett's repertoire is so varied, however, that sometimes the "stain upon the silence" is silence itself, as in N.Q1 1and Embers.

Scents are sometimes used to enhance memories, evoked by visual or auditory means. One good example occurs in .E.l.ay, when a vivid olfactory memory sparks specific details. After the affair ends, W2 [the mistress] remembers: "I made a bundle of his things and burnt them. It was November and the bonfire was going. All night I smelt them smoldering" (150). This is quite effective, since the smoldering imagery is reminiscent of both her memory and her ex-lover. W2's memory of the affair's demise is precipitated by the scent of the November bonfire coupled with the waning embers of their affair. 27

Visual and aural memories are interwoven into Beckett's characterizations. In Happy~. Winnie reminisces, "Sounds are a boon.

Yes, these are happy days when I hear sounds" (54). With sound, silence, and color, Beckett places an indelible "stain upon the silence." His characters engage in sensory "spots of time" that have the power to rejuvenate.

Wordsworth anticipates the hope hidden within Beckett's characters' sensory memories in "The Prelude," "The are in our existence spots of time,ffhat with distinct preeminence retain/a renovating virtue . . . that lifts us up when fallen"

(255) . Chapter IV

Memory, Creativity, and Imagination

The existence of Mnemosyne, the Greek personification of memory and mother of the muses, indicates that from earliest times, memory itself was viewed as a creative art.

Weber "The Poetics of Memory"

Memory is a creative and imaginative force in several of Beckett's plays. Winnie embellishes her memories in Happy Qm; Speaker restructures his memories in A Piece Q.f Monologue; and the adulterous trinity acts out variations of memories in ~· Liberation is the form of hope pertinent to this form of memory. As we will see, characters who play with or interact with their memories are rewarded with temporary freedom from memory's debilitating effects.

Winnie's creative, imaginative raptures liberate her from interment in the mound. When Willie reads the obituary of "Dr. Carolus Hunter," Winnie is catapulted into a reverie of her first social occasion :

Charlie Hunter! (Pause.) I close my eyes--and am sitting on his knees again, in the back garden at Borough Green under the horse-beech ... Oh the happy memories! .. . My first ball! My second ball! (Long pause. Closes eyes.) My first kiss! (Pause. WILLIE turns page. WINNIE opens eyes.) A Mr. Johnson, or Johnston, or perhaps I should say Johnstone. Very bushy moustache, very tawny. (Reverently.) Almost ginger! (Pause.) Within a toolshed, though whose I cannot conceive. We had no toolshed. (Closes eyes.) I see the piles of pots. (Pause.) The tangles of bast. (Pause.) The shadows deepening among the rafters. (Pause. She opens her eyes.) (.Q.ay~ 16)

28 29 As John Fletcher notes, the pots, tangles, and shadows allow Winnie's

reminiscence to become "genuinely lyrical. The memory is lost once she opens her eyes" (Guide 158). It is also important to recognize that Winnie is temporarily liberated from servitude. For a moment, it is not the bell that orders

Winnie to open and close her eyes. Instead, creative, liberating memories usurp the powers of the bell, Willie, and the mound. Winnie explains her delight in remembering: "that's what I find so wonderful, all comes back. No not all.

(Smile.) No no. (Smile off.) Not quite. (Pause.) A part. (Pause.)

Floats up, one fine day, out of the blue. (Pause.) That's what I find so wonderful" (20). Throughout Act I, Winnie's black bag of props assists her recollections. The black bag is a memory inducing talisman. In fact, Winnie warns herself, "do not overdo the bag" (32). Although the liberating power of the bag is too strong, Winnie decides to take "one quick dip" (32). A revolver is produced from the quick dip, and it sends Winnie into another liberating reverie:

You again! (She opens eyes, brings revolver front and contemplates it. She weighs it in her palm.) You'd think the weight of this thing would bring it down among the ... last rounds. But no. It doesn't. Ever uppermost, like Browning. (Pause.) Brownie ... (Turning a little towards WILLIE.) Remember Brownie, Willie? Remember how you used to keep on at me to take it away from you? Take it away, Winnie, take it away, before I put myself out of my misery. (Back front. Derisive.) Your misery! (To revolver.) Oh I suppose it's a comfort to know you're there, but I'm tired of you. (Pause.) I'll leave you out, that's what I'll do. (She lays the revolver on the ground to her right.) There that's your home from this day out. (Smile.) The old style! (Smile off.) And now? (Long pause.) Is gravity what it was, Willie, I fancy not. (Pause.) Yes, the feeling more and more that if I were not held--(gesture)--in this way, I would simply float up into the blue. (Pause.) And that perhaps some day the earth will yield and let me go, the pull is so great, yes, crack all round me and let me out (33).

Several points make this a significant monologue. For instance, a random 30

object retrieved from a bag sends Winnie on a mnemonic exercise linking

armaments and literature. Fletcher has noted that Winnie jumps "From

Browning, an automatic pistol invented by J.M. Browning of Utah to 'Ever

Upmost' [which] refers to the poet Browning, whose Paracelsus reads 'I say

what comes uppermost"' (Guide 161 ). Memory and creativity are linked, as

Winnie engages in a free association that allows her memories to multiply and

flourish. This is dramatic because it gives her temporary freedom from her

physical immobility. Of course, the fact that Winnie plucks the revolver from the

bag is ironic because the audience does not expect a gun to lead to a

monologue involving Robert Browning, gravity, and freedom .

The monologue is effective on many levels because it links one memory

(Browning) with a related memory (Brownie--the revolver) and explodes into

Winnie's creative and liberating dream ("floating up into the blue"). Later,

Winnie merges creativity and memory with the use of the word "caught": "I

speak of the days when I was not yet caught--in this way--and had my legs and

had the use of my legs, and could seek out a shady place or a sunny place ... It

is not hotter today than yesterday, it will be no hotter tomorrow than today, how

could it, and so on back into the far past, and forward into the far future" (38).

Mnemonic rambling connects memory, time, and creativity. Further evidence of

Winnie's creativity is her consciousness of her own creative powers: "I hope you caught something of that, Willie, I should be sorry to think you had caught

nothing of all that, it is not every day I rise to such heights" (39). Here, too, creativity and memory are linked. Winnie's memory of the good old days spurs

her creative interpretation of life. She is fully aware of her creative powers, but she is not aware of the role memory plays in her creation. For instance, at the end of her philosophical rambling of the days before she was caught, Winnie 31

revels in the enjoyment of her creativity and asks Willie to take note. It is

interesting to note that Winnie calls Willie's attention to her creative prowess

with the word "caught." She is physically "caught," her memory is "caught," and

"caught" is the word she uses to ask Willie if he is listening to her recollections.

Winnie's creativity and memory are a complex fusion that momentarily frees her

from her mental anguish.

In Act II, Winnie is buried up to her neck and the black bag and its props

are no longer accessible. Now memory and creativity are escalated to the

forefront. In one scene, Winnie reprises her memory of the gaping spectators

mentioned in Act I. They are identified as "the last human kind to pass here"

(58). Winnie's embellished recollections of the gaping on lookers contain

several "creative" judgments:

I call to the eye of the mind ... Mr. Shower--or Cooker. (She closes her eyes. Bell rings loudly. She opens her eyes.) (Pause.) hand in hand, in the other hands bags. (Pause.) Getting on ... in life ... Standing there gaping at me. (Pause.) Can't have been a bad bosom, he says, in its day ... Has she anything on underneath . . . Ask her yourself, she says. Let go of me for Christ sake and drop! (Pause. Do. ) Drop dead! (Smile.) But no. (Smile off.) I watch them recede. (Pause.) Hand in hand--(58).

Winnie's memory of Mr. Cooker's response to her misery is embellished with her own imaginings, as is evident in the discrepancies between the two versions. In Act I, the account of the onlookers emphasizes details such as "big brown grips," "must have been man and wife" (42). On the other hand, the Act II account is less logical, when Winnie makes judgments about the couple "not yet old ," and "hand in hand" (implying instead of stating their relationship) (58). The juxtaposition of Winnie's varied versions supports the contention that memory and creativity merge. As Winnie explains,"Strange thing, time like this, drift [sic) 32 up to the mind" (44). These strange things can sometimes be imaginative. As

Worth notes, "Associations evoked by memories often go beyond the specific memory. Again in Happy D..ay_s, memory and creative power are linked" ("Play"). Nowhere is the fusion of memory and creativity more evident than in Winnie's

"story." Saved as a last resort, the story seems to free Winnie from the clutches of the earth, "There is my story of course, when all else fails" (54). The story is obviously an autobiographical memory for Winnie but it is embellished with a pseudonym and vivid details: Mildred has memories, she will have memories of the womb, before she dies, the mother's womb. (Pause.) She is now four or five already and has recently been given a big waxen dolly. (Pause.) Fully clothed, complete outfit. (Pause.) Shoes, socks, undies, complete set, frilly frock, gloves. (Pause.) White mesh . (Pause.) A little white straw hat with a chin elastic. (Pause.) Pearly necklet. (Pause.) A little picture book with legends in real print to go under her arm when she takes her walk. (Pause.) China blue eyes. That open and shut. (Pause. Narrative.) The sun was not well up when Milly rose, descended the steep . .. (Pause.) ... slipped on her nightgown, descended all alone the steep wooden stairs, backwards on all fours, though she had been forbidden to do so ... entered the nursery and began to undress Dolly . . . Suddenly a mouse (55).

Here Winnie's memories become entangled with her creative approach to dealing with her current plight. Winnie is Milly. Evidence supports this contention: Cohn points out Winnie's name was Mildred in an early draft of

Happy D..ay_s_ (.B.aQ!s. 183). It is clear that Winnie's memories of the child and the doll reflect both reality and fiction. For instance, the doll is described specifically. These pleasant memories allow Winnie/Milly to temporarily free her mind. Once again memory is a force that generates creativity, and in

Beckett's drama, creativity is liberating. Winnie's memories represent a stoic approach to adversity: "Her voice breaks eight times, but she smiles thirty-one 33 times" (Cohn .6.aQ.!s 193). Her creative mind is fraught with memories because these are the tools she uses to survive. By combining memory and creativity,

Winnie engages in poetic tangents that are sparked by memories. Creativity and memory are the "great mercies," the rays of hope, the liberating forces of

Winnie's "happy days." Gontarski offers the rather sinister interpretation that "Hope is [Winnie's] narcotic" (Manuscript 21 ).

A Piece .Qf Monologue considers memory and creativity from a different vantage point, when the Speaker in the play inadvertently uses an ancient system of creativity and memory. It is uncanny that a sophisticated system for memory was discovered by accident. When the Ancient Greek poet Simonides left a banquet hall where he was performing, the roof caved in and crushed all of the guests to death. According to Cicero, the corpses were so mangled that the relatives could not identify them, but "Simonides remembered the place at which they had been sitting at the table and was therefore able to indicate to the relatives which were their dead" (Yates 2). Simonides, the inventor of the art of

memory, realized that arrangement and visualization is essential to memory.

During the sixteenth-century, Simonides's art of memory was fine tuned.

Historical research proves that the Jesuit Matteo Ricci "brought to the people of

China a wonderful memory system that had been used in the West since the days of Ancient Greece. To improve their powers of retention, people would build imaginary palaces, huge imaginary buildings they kept inside their heads.

After years of practice, the images would become so vivid that a person could close his eyes and picture his palace. Eventually, these mental architectures would become impossible to erase" (Johnson xiii).

It is impossible to know for certain whether Beckett was aware of the palaces of memory, but the Speaker engages in and undergoes similar creative 34 exercises in spite of his evasive tactics. In one profound scene, the Speaker recalls his family members:

Stands facing blank wall. Covered with pictures once. Pictures of ... he all but said loved ones. Unframed. Unglazed. Pinned to the wall with drawing pins. Down one after the other. Gone. Torn to shreds and scattered ... Ripped from the wall and torn to shreds one by one. Over the years ... Nothing on the wall now but pins ... So stands there facing a blank wall ... Blank pinpocked surface once white in shadow. Could once name them all. There was father. That grey void. There mother. That other. There together. Smiling. Wedding day. There all three that grey blot. There alone. He alone. So on (Monologue 266).

Empty splotches on the wall are the Speaker's palaces of memory. In an attempt to escape painful family memories, Speaker tears the photos off the wall. His efforts fail because his mind remembers these structures automatically. Johnson explains, "As we move through the world, experience is transformed into memories. Neuron by neuron, we snap together mental structures, constantly evolving palaces of memory that we carry with us until we die" (xiv). What Johnson's scientific explanation overlooks is the fact that this is an inherently creative activity, not simply a matter of data retrieval. Speaker's reconstruction of memories while looking at a blank wall is an imaginative, cognitive process. As Worth points out, "A Piece of Monologue proves the past is the eternal present. Speaker remembers where the photos were and accepts family memories. The 'thousands of shreds under the bed with dust and spiders' are whisked into the forefront and confronted" ("Play"). Speaker's restructuring of the past is a liberating, creative mnemonic process.

Play approaches the motif of creativity and memory ironically. In fact, this could be termed a one-act play about "convenient memory"--certainly a creative process for anyone who has experienced it. Perhaps the most effective way to 35

investigate the creative memory process in~ is to consider true and false

aspects of memory. Or, as Jonathan Morse points out, "In art and memory, we

may say we are presented daily with images ranging from the wholly fictitious to

the most wholly true" (81 ). The memories of~ are problematic because we

are presented with three conflicting versions. Naturally it is impossible to

ascertain whose point of view is accurate. Instead, the audience must be

content with noting contradictions and evasions. The role of imagination and

memory is clearly evident in the chorus portion of the text :

WI Yes strange darkness best and the darker the worse W2 Yes perhaps a shade gone I suppose some might say M1 Yes peace one assumed all out all the pain

W1 till all dark then all well tor the time but it will come W2 poor thing a shade gone just a shade in the head M1 all as if never been it will come [Hiccup.] pardon (Play 159).

This scene calls to mind the song "Yes I remember it well" from the musical, Gigi

because these stock characters do not have the story-line straight. As the

spotlight moves from one gray urn to the next, the inconsistencies in their

memories are almost comical. Worth notes that "The spot has great fun pointing

up the phoniness of their memories" ("Shape" 201 ). This too is a form of creativity or imagination and memory because each character imagines the affair in terms of what is comfortable. The wife uses words such as "dark,"

"sour," "shadow"; the mistress remembers "smoldering ," and "a scorching day"; the man recalls "happy memories," "peace," and "All this [was] just play?" (151 -

157). Thus, each character remembers the affair with an egotistical convenient memory that allows each to escape from the painful aspects of the past. This approach to the memories exonerates each character from the guilt and pain of 36 remembering an affair that was supposed to be "just play?"

Husserl once commented, "Time is, time was, time is past. Memory recaptures time past" (Brough 40). Fusion of the creative and imaginative process with memory can make recollections a liberating, hopeful experience of recapturing lost time. The characters utilize their recollections to escape uncomfortable life situations. Winnie liberates herself mentally from the mound with stories in Happy~; Speaker comes to accept his family memories in A

Piece Qf Monologue; and the three characters in~ remember various versions of "truth." All of these forms of memory involve creativity or imagination. As Coleridge explains in a view congruent with Beckett's,

"Imagination I hold to be the living power and primary agent of all human perception" (452). Chapter V

The Amnesia Factor

"My memory is so bad, that many times I forget my own name."

Cervantes Don Quixote

The Godot equation is never simple: memory, amnesia, time, habit, and hopes are all emphasized in Waiting for Godot, creating an enigmatic play. The quantity of criticism on Godot proves only that there is no single meaning in the play. It is too simplistic to explain the play as a Biblical allusion, an experiment in existentialism/nihilism, or a parody of Laurel and Hardy. Instead, an awareness of these obvious echoes allows the reader/audience to observe yet another pattern. My reading of Waiting .fQI Godot perceives the memory motif as separating into distinct parts: voluntary and involuntary memory. In Godot,

Beckett shows the bleak rewards of voluntary memory and the considerable rewards of involuntary memory. In addition, Beckett dramatizes the desolate ramifications of temporal uncertainty with one repeated image: forgetfulness.

As we will see, hope is subtly present in a single contrasting example of involuntary memory.

Beckett uses Vladimir and Estragon to exemplify the inherent limitations of voluntary memory. Often seen merely as Chaplinesque tramps, these characters are the pawns in a complex game about memory. Throughout the play, Estragon forgets and Vladimir remembers. The following music-hall style dialogue is repeated six times during the course of the play:

37 38 Est rag on: Let's go. Vladimir : We can't. Estragon: Why not? Vladimir : We're waiting for Godot. Estragon : (despairingly.) Ah! (Pause.) You're sure it was here? Vladimir : What? Estragon : That we were to wait. Vladimir : He said by the tree.(They look at the tree.) Do you see any others. (1 0)

This interchange is interesting in two respects. First, the "oh yeah I remember­ style" of recall is a clear example of voluntary memory, which offers no relief from life's tribulations. This obsessive and simplistic pattern of recall and forgetfulness keeps Gogo and Didi earthbound and imprisoned by their habitual inertia. As Alvarez has noted, "The talk ..is kept going by a simple device: forgetfulness. [It] is the cement binding their relationship together. [Estragon] continually forgets, Vladimir continually reminds him; between them they pass the time" (78-79). The burdens of interminable time and habit are the result of voluntary mnemonic acts. In Act I, the tree where Vladimir and Estragon presume Godot will meet them is a bare, lifeless willow. In Act II, the change in the willow highlights the passage of time, reiterates Vladimir and Estragon's habitual waiting game, and foreshadows the glimpse of hope ahead. Other acts of voluntary memory occur in the play as ploys to pass time, as when Vladimir tells St. Augustine's story of the two thieves: "Ah yes, the two thieves. Do you remember the story?" (9). Of course, Estragon does not remember and Vladimir tells the story, which comforts him because "one out of four" was saved. This respite is fleeting because Vladimir questions the story's outcome, "Out of the four Evangelists only one speaks of a thief being saved. The four of them were there--or thereabouts--and only one speaks of a thief being saved" (9) .

Vladimir's voluntary memory does not offer a positive reward. Later, Vladimir 39 appears as a pundit when he questions Estragon's gloomy mood:

Vladimir: What's the matter with you? Estragon: I'm unhappy. Vladimir: Not really! Since when? Estragon: I'd forgotten. Vladimir: Extraordinary the tricks that memory plays! (33)

Despite the ravages of time, habit, boredom, and dreary voluntary memories, hope glimmers at times. At the end of Act II, Vladimir comforts Estragon, "Ah Gogo, don't go on like that. Tomorrow everything will be better" (35). Hope is

present in the anticipation of what might happen in the future.

Amnesia and the unredemptive voluntary memories of Vladimir and

Estragon are correlated with the unmarked passage of time. Nowhere is this more evident than in the beg inning of Act II. "A country road, A tree, Evening" is the minimalist description of Act I (6) . Overnight the scene changes to "Next day. Same time. Same place" (38). What is not the same is the tree , which now "has four or five leaves" (37). How did this happen overnight? Or has more than one night elapsed in the minds of Vladimir and Estragon? Memory and time merge to become a confusing frame of reference for the characters: Vladimir: Look at the tree. Estragon: It's never the same pus from one second to the next. Vladimir: The tree, the tree. Estragon looks at the tree. Estragon: Was it not there yesterday? Vladimir: Yes of course it was there. Do you not remember? We nearly hanged ourselves from it. But you wouldn't. Do you not remember? Estragon : You dreamt it. Vladimir: Is it possible you've forgotten already? Estragon: That's the way I am. Either I forget immediately or I never forget. (39) . 40

This scene exemplifies the power of what Beckett calls the "'vulgar

phenomenon' or the delusion that occurs from habitual logical processes of

voluntary memory" ("Proust" 40). In short, voluntary memory is of no use as a

hopeful tool of memory evocation. Vladimir and Estragon's temporal confusion continues as they ponder the tree. Vladimir says, "But yesterday evening it was all black and bare. And now it's covered with leaves in a single night" (43).

Estragon replies, "It must be Spring" (43). Here, voluntary memory is a routine function of habit and such memories can easily become confused. In "Proust,"

Beckett clarifies this point, "The paen of [voluntary] memory is 'I remember as well as I remember yesterday.' This is also its epitaph, and gives the precise expression of its value. He cannot remember yesterday any more than he can remember to-morrow [sic]. Memory is obviously conditioned by perception"

(17). In other words, voluntary memory is "infallibly complacent" and therefore useless as a creative or rejuvenating force. Once again this is evident in Act II when Vladimir attempts to piece together the events of yesterday. Naturally he obtains no assistance from Estragon, who tells him, "I'm not a historian" (42) .

Undaunted by the task at hand, Vladimir tries to put the pieces together:

"Wait ... we embraced ... we were happy happy ... what do we know now that we're happy ... go on waiting ... waiting let me think .. . its coming . .. ah! The tree! (42). Estragon puts Vladimir's recognition into perspective: "Yes, now I remember, yesterday evening we spent blathering about nothing in particular.

That's been going on now for half a century" (43). In the end, Vladimir has the final decisive word on the communion of time and memory: "Time flows again already. The sun will set, the moon rise, and we away from here" (50).

In addition to the inexorable passage of time, habit is a contributing factor forcing the characters to remain forgetful, or trapped in voluntary memory. 41

Beckett explains, "Memory and Habit are attributes of the Time cancer. The laws of memory are subject to the more general laws of habit" ("Proust" 7). Repetitive habit becomes apparent in Act II, when the reader/audience has

endured the inactions of the characters for more than fifty minutes. Vladimir

appears as a fractured Hamlet when he speaks about habit in conjunction with

time: "What are we doing, that is the question. All I know is that the hours are

long , under these conditions, and constrain us to beguile them with proceedings which--how shall I say--which may at first sight seem unreasonable,until they become habit ... We wait. We are bored .. . No don't protest, we are bored to death, there's no denying it" (51-52). The antidote to passing time and breaking the boring routine is forgetfulness. Thus, each time

Vladimir reminds Estragon that they are "waiting for Godot," both are utilizing

habit to pass time. They are also engaging in voluntary memory. More importantly, they are "making strange," to use the terminology of the

structuralists. By "making strange," Vladimir and Estragon believe they are engaging in different habitual actions each time. Therefore, inaction can be

endured over and over again. Estragon habitually forgets and Vladimir

habitually reminds, forming their convoluted yet, symbiotic relationship. This

cycle occurs again and again to alleviate suffering. Suffering is defined as the

free play of every faculty (Beckett "Proust" 16). Beckett further clarifies this point:

"suffering opens a window on the real. Habit is a compromise effected between the individual and his environment, the guarantee of dull inviolability" ("Proust" 16). Vladimir is more succinct: "Habit is a great deadener" (59) . It can be

deduced, then , that Vladimir and Estragon engage in repetitive non-actions

punctuated by voluntary memories and amnesia in order to free themselves from suffering, which is the key to what is real. Voluntary memory and its 42

henchmen (time, habit, and boredom) "chain the dog to its vomit" eliminating the opportunity for the rejuvenating feeling of involuntary memory ("Proust" 8). Or as Richard Schechner notes, "time, habit, [and] memory form the texture of the play" (271 ).

While it is not immediately obvious, hope is a motif in WaitinQ .f.QL Godot, just as it is in all the plays discussed in this thesis. Enter Pozzo who is characterized as slave-master, philosopher, and entertainment-monger. Pozzo is the only character who enjoys a momentary involuntary memory in the scene.

I consider this scene the climax of the play. In Act II, Pozzo returns with his slave, Lucky. This time, however, Pozzo is blind and has no conception of time or habit. He is free to "suffer" now that the demons of habit and time have been eradicated. By contrast, in Act I Pozzo continually speaks of "touch of autumn in the air," "sixty years ago," and the watch his grandpa gave him; his habits are pipe smoking and tormenting his slave, Lucky. In Act II, however, Pozzo admits to "a defective memory." Instead of forgetting to deaden his faculties, Pozzo is free to engage in involuntary memory:

Vladimir: You were saying your sight used to be good, if I heard you right. Pozzo: Wonderful! Wonderful, wonderful sight! Silence. Estragon: (irritably). Expand! Expand! Vladimir: Let him alone. Can't you see he's thinking of the days when he was happy. (Pause.) Memoria praeteritorum bonorum--that must be unpleasant.3 Estragon: We wouldn't know. Vladimir: And it came on you all of a sudden? Pozzo: Quite wonderful! (55)

Vladimir and Estragon have no inkling of the effect of an involuntary memory.

Vladimir assumes it is unpleasant, but Pozzo's reverie appears otherwise. 43

Although we do not discover the contents of Pozzo's meniory, it is most certainly involuntary because it was not conjured by any artificial means and also it is said to be "wonderful." Of further significance is that Pozzo has lost his obsession with time and habit. "Don't question me! The blind have no notion of time. The things of time are hidden from them too," he "violently" screams at the tramps (56). Later, Pozzo becomes "suddenly furious": "Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time!" (58). Therefore, time is not the master of Pozzo and neither is habit: Pozzo no longer is directed to light his pipe in Act

II. Pozzo's involuntary memory is surely the climax because it occurs at the end of the play and it offers the surest relief from deadening habit and repetition.

When the boy arrives to say that Godot will not see the tramps today, the involuntary memory of Pozzo is highlighted as a hopeful climactic action.

Vladimir and Estragon ring the curtain down as slaves to time, habit, amnesia, and voluntary memory, but Pozzo breaks the repetitive pattern of the play as the blind man who sees with a "wonderful" involuntary memory.

The play brings to life all of the major contentions set forth in the "Proust" essay. As Kenner notes, "Paradise ... if there ever was one, has been lost, and the subtle argument of "Proust" is that only involuntary memory can restore it"

(Beckett 199). While Vladimir and Estragon wait for their salvation in a quandary of time, habit, and voluntary memory, Pozzo opens himself up to the reality of life, the inevitability of suffering, and enjoys a "wonderful"--hopeful-­ moment. Chapter VI

CONCLUSION

"Past and present are brought together in a work of art," according to

Hans-Georg Gadamer (139). Beckett achieves this goal in his plays when

memories "glimmer again in lieu of going out" (Fizzles 55) . The "glimmer"

represents a return of the past in the present: reminiscent memories, sensory

memories, and creative memories link the past with the present. Beneath the surface of Beckett's plays, hope, rejuvenation, and liberation exist, but the characters must suffer to earn these rewards.

As we have seen, each critic places Beckett's work in a particular niche:

Cohn stresses Biblical and Shakespearean allusions; Esslin categorizes the works as "absurdist"; Worth views Beckett as the modernist heir of the Irish tradition ; and Zurbrugg casts Beckett as a disciple of Proust. While all of these interpretations are worthwhile, they are also limiting. The recurring motif of memory and the auxiliary benefit of hope have been neglected by critics. My interpretation has emphasized this neglected facet in Beckett's plays. In his characters, Beckett has integrated the inner voice of the past and outer voice of the present, and these voices battle in an effort to converge. When a character fights the inner voice of the past as in the case of Joe or Krapp, the merging of the two voices is violent, painful, and unsettling. Once the convergence takes place, however, the result is always pleasant. Beckett is trying to show that the past must be understood in order to allow present and future peace of mind. Coming to terms with difficult memories is a hopeful experience in Beckett's plays. 44 45

The means Beckett's characters use to come to terms with their

memories are significant. When the characters remember easily or

inadvertently, the process is pleasant. Winnie's passive reverie in Happy Qm§.

merges inner and outer voices of the past and present with relative ease,

resulting in her mental liberation. Another character "in extremis" is Mouth in

NQ11: her memories flow in a stream of consciousness and she is rejuvenated.

On the other hand, when characters stifle the flow of memories or conjure them

artificially, the inner and outer voices clash--the convergence eventually occurs,

but it is more agonizing. Speaker in A Piece Qf MonoloQue engages in this

process when he tears the photographs off the wall : the inner and outer voices

fuse when he finally remembers and accepts his family.

Beckett chooses to show us characters under extreme pressure; their circumstances highlight the inner workings of their memories. Consider th e

immobility of Winnie, Nagg, Nell, Listener, and the adulterous trinity. Since there is no escape, Beckett forces them to watch, listen , and reevaluate. The

plays are a testament to the fact that once the inner voice of the past and the outer voice of the present converge, a "healing vision" lingers (Worth l.ri@ 261 ).

This healing vision is the beacon of hope.

In richly resonant dramas about the elderly and their memories, Beckett offers a glimpse of characters engaged in fervent retrospection . Looking back from a distant vantage point, these characters relive events. When the recollection is pleasant, the memory is involuntary and not produced by artificial means. Among the characters who engage in this rejuvenating form of memory are Nagg , Nell, Krapp, Mouth, and the Voices. While some of their memories are painful , recollection appeases their pain and gives them strength to continue living. On the other hand , in Eh J.Q.e. , Joe resists the flow of involuntary 46 memories, becoming alienated. Beckett explains the dilemma facing Joe in The

Expelled: "Memories can be killing. So you must not think of certain things, or

those that are dear to you, or rather you must think of them, for if you don't there

is the danger of finding them in your mind, little-by-little" (Bair 355). This is

precisely what happens to Joe: His attempt to hide from his memories causes

them to become "killing" because he resists the merging of his inner voice (past)

and his outer voice (present). The other elderly characters allow involuntary memory's recollections in tranquility to flow: the result is alleviation of their suffering.

Sensory memories evoke distinct memories for Beckett's characters:

these memories are deeply processed long-term memories. Beckett's own

recollections of his family and of Ireland are often the genesis for his characters'

memories. In 1962, actor Jack MacGowran performed a composite sketch of

Beckett's "people" that included biographical "reminiscences of his [Beckett's)

mother, father, and youth. A key to this performance was to show that there is

more hope than despair in Beckett" (qtd. in Bair 555). Indeed, sensory

memories offer hope as seen in Embers character, Henry: the merging of his

inner and outer voices is complex because he attempts to silence the past with

noises and colors. Henry suffers the consequences of not dealing with his

memories: he cannot fully appreciate his life or his family. Henry's memories

are bleak, yet even for him there is hope for "tomorrow."

When memory expands into the realm of creativity and imagination, the

result is often downright liberating. Winnie's stories, Speaker's photographs,

and the adulterous trinity's evasions all reflect the interesting consequences of a fusion of memory and creativity. In all cases, this amalgamation results in a

liberation--a subtle, but positive benefit because the characters are freed from 47 stasis and have restored dynamic life to their memories.

In a London Times review, Hobson wrote that Waiting fQI Godot is

"something that will securely lodge in a corner of your mind for as long as you live" (Graver 95). We remember Godot because it is a play about memory and a map of Beckett's theory of memory. Time, habit, voluntary memory, and amnesia all have a role--Vladimir, Estragon, and Pozzo act out the benefits and detriments of voluntary and involuntary memory. Estragon's amnesia proves that suffering results from resisting memory and Vladimir's repetitive recall proves that there is no solace in artificial memory by rote. Paradoxically, the minor character, Pozzo's memories are involuntary and offer delight, solace, and "wonderful sight."

It is counterproductive to "explain" Beckett's plays. Instead, as Kenner notes, "like primitive astronomers we are free to note recurrences" (Beckett 10).

Memory and hope are noteworthy recurrences because Beckett is so frequently cast as a pessimistic sage of doom. Perhaps this is because Beckett's plays dramatize characters in extreme situations. While at first glance the characters and settings may appear negative, the characters' extreme situations serve to highlight their memories. Beckett subtly shows that the treasures of memory can become "nourishment for the soul" (Postlewait

481 ). Although memories often contain much that is painful, puzzling, or anxious, the mastery of one's memories can result in the acceptance of "'that time' the jewels of memory" (Worth lri.s.b. 264). NOTES

1 Abbreviations for Beckett's longer titles are as follows: Days: Happy

~; Godot: Waiting fQr Godot; "Proust": "Essay on Proust"; Tape: Krapp's

~Tape: Time: I.b..ru Time. The shorter titles are cited in full.

2 Beckett's own memories of Ireland are vivid and should not be discounted. In a lighthearted moment, Beckett commented, "a very fair scholar I was too, no thought, but a great memory" (Hardy 137).

3 Fletcher translates this line as "memory of past happiness" (Beckett 73).

This is further evidence of the scene's positive aspects of involuntary memory.

48 Illustration Struc tura 1 mode 1 of sensory memory process Source: (Wingfield 146) Attentional Processes

Long-term sensory short-term ... memory memory memory

t feedback t

t feedback t

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