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Samuel Beckett CHALLEWGBS TO REPRESENTATION IN SELECTED STAGE PLAYS OF SAMUEL BBCKBTT Ken Tallman A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama University of Toronto @ Copyright by Ken Tallman, 1996 Acquisiand Acquisitions et Bibliographic Services services bibliographiques The author has granted a now L'auteur a accorde me licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant a la National Li'brary of Canada to Biblioth-e nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distriiute or sell reproduire, preter, distniuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette these sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/i%n, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format electronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriete du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protege cette these. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thhe ni des extraits substantiek may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent &e imprimes reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. ABSTRACT CHALLENGES TO REPRESENTATION IN SELECTED STAGE! PLAYS OF SAMUEL BECKBTT Ken Tallman, Ph-ID., 1996 Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama University of Toronto This thesis focuses on the ways in which Samuel Beckett challenges representation in certain of his stage plays. Representation is principally associated in this study with three different modes: the mimetic, the reflexive (or self- mimetic), and the ontological, The ontological is considered primarily as a process which problematizes the very concept of representat ion. Support for this argument is drawn from the existing body of scholarship on Beckett, and, as well, from the field of philosophy. Aristotle and Plato are cited, as are Nietzsche, Heidegger and Deleuze. The first chapter evaluates Waitinq for Godot as a direct challenge to traditional, Aristotelian mimesis. The aesthetic wcantersm in which Vladimir and Estragon indulge themselves are analysed as reflexive games designed to avoid the ontological condition of wnothingness,* which provides a foundation for the play. Chapter Two studles i i Endqame as an intensification of the representational challenges initiated in Wafting for Godot. Hamm and Clov are identified as Vladimir and Estragon at a much later time, playing out the ritual of waiting as a last rite. In Chapter Three K~~DD'sLast Tam fs discussed as representing Beckett's most mimetic stage play, the one in which Beckett most closely maintains a stable relationship between the stage world and the external world. Play, the subject of the fourth chapter, is analyzed as a breakthrough play, decisively embracing the ontological mode of presentation. In this play Beckett attacks mimesis at the most foundational level to date. Chapter Five discusses both Not L and Rockaby as representing a final investment in the ontological process, leaving behind them all vestiges of representation. The Conclusion evaluates the evolution of this process, and applies the broad applications of the argument to other genres and mediums. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS I NTRODUCTI: ON Page 1 CHAPTER ONE: Waitina for dodot Page 29 CHAPTER TWO: Endqaarc Page 56 CHAPTER THREE: K~~DD'sLast Ta~e Page 82 CHAPTER POUR: Play Page 108 CHAPTER FIVE: Not I, Rockabv Page 130 CONCLUS1 ON Page 155 B I BL I OGRAPHY Page 179 INTRODUCTION "Can the imagination be mimetic under conditions of modernity?"(l) This, presented in the Afterword to Luiz Costa Lima's Control of the Imacrinary, constitutes something of a guiding question in this study of Samuel Beckett. Although we might assume that mimesis is a precondition for the theatre, that something is by necessity being Himitatedw or YepresentedW on the stage, it will be considered here that this assumption does not go unchallenged by Beckett. The two dimensions, or modes, of Beckettts dramatic craft that will be explored in order to identify this instability within mimesis will be the reflexive mode, a self-mimesis, one might say, and the ontological mode, a process which, as will be argued, threatens the very concept of representation. While this study will subsequently focus on Beckett himself, and specifically on certain stage plays written by him, there is merit at this initial stage in considering the question of representation in Costa Lima's terms, i.e., within the broader context of modernity. There is justification to be found for this in Beckett's own critical writing, which itself raises many questions regarding the status of artistic representation within this milieu. While the term modernism obviously has a vast range of connotations, its particular relevance to Beckettts aesthetics will become clear fn the following discussion. 1 Luiz Costa Lima, Control of the Imaqinarv: Reason and Imaqination in Modern Times (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), p. 203. Beckettps years as a student at Trinity College in Dublin, beginning in 1923, laid a foundation for the extremely wmodernistm Paris that he entered as Trinity9s lecteur dlanqlais at the Ecole Normale Suptrieure in 1928. At Trinity, as a student of modern languages, Beckett was introduced to Berkeley and Descartes by his tutor, Arthur Aston Luce, and under Walter Starkie, Beckett Is Italian professor, and Thomas 80 Rudmose-Brown, his French professor, Beckett had studied Dante, and presumably Corneille and Racine as well. (2) However, while learning the classics, Beckett was also discovering the modernists. Starkie lectured on Pirandello, and Beckett developed an interest in the French modernists Rimbaud, Baudelaire and Apollinaire, translating Rimbaudps Bateau ivre independently of his studies.(3) Vhen Beckett arrived in Paris in 1928, he made his important acquaintance with James Joyce. Thomas McGreevy, Beckettps predecessor as the English lecteur at the Ecole Normale, was a member of Joyce's social circle, and with McGreevyps introduction, Beckett became a somewhat regular visitor and an assistant to Joyce in various projects.(4) In 1929 Joyce asked Beckett if he would contribute an essay to a volume which Joyce was putting together as a reply to the 2 Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett (New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), pp. 37-39, 3 Bair, p. 43; p. 52. 4 Bair, pp. 68-69. critics of Work in Progress, later titled Finneqans Wake.(S) Beckett 's essay, wDante .. Bruno . Vico . Joyce, was the opening entry in the volume titled by Joyce Our Exacrmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Proqress. Joyce apparently directed Beckett during the writing of the piece, instructing him to discuss his (Joyce's) debt to Dante, as well as the influence of Giordano Bruno and Giambattista Vico on him.(6) Although it is difficult to determine where Joyce ends and Beckett begins, there are certain statements, particularly the ones regarding Joyce 's Work in Proqress, that indicate BeckettVs familiarity (and perhaps solidarity) with modernist concerns: On turning to the Work in Proqress we find that the mirror is not so convex. Here is direct expression - pages and pages of it. And if you don't understand it, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is because you are too decadent to receive it. You are not satisfied unless form is so strictly divorced from content that you can comprehend the one almost without bothering to zead the other . Here form & content, content form. You complain that this stuff is not written in English. It is not written at all. It is not to be read - or rather it is not only to be read. It is to be looked at and listened to. His writing is not about something; it is that somethincr itself.(7) Although Beckett later identif led many crucial differences 5 Bair, p, 75. 6 Bair, p. 76. 7 Samuel Beckett, "Dante . Bruno . Vico . Joyce," Dis jecta : Miscellaneous Wr itinqs and a Dramatic Fraqment, ed. Ruby Cohn (New York: Grove Press, lS84), pp- 26-27. between Joyce and himself ( 8 ), he announces here a central condition in Joyce that will be persistently emphasised and problematized in his own work: the relationship between form and content. During the course of this thesis, form and content will be considered in many respects, with particular attention to be given to its manifestation in the relationship between the stage image (the seen) and the spoken text (the said); for the moment, I will simply note Beckettvs prescient appeal to the reader of Joyce not only to read the material, but to look at it, listen to it, This advice seems particularly forward-looking for one destined later to master the language of the theatre, Beckettfs treatise on Proust's A la recherche du tem~s perdue, written in 1930 as his M.A. thesis at Trinity, offers rich evidence of Beckett's continued preoccupation with matters of a NmodernHnature(9). While the greater part of this essay is directed toward Proustrs treatment of time and memory, Beckett again addresses the connection between form 8 See, for instance, Beckettrs statement to Israel Shenker in New York Times 5 May 1956, Section 11, I, 3; reprinted in Samuel Beckett: The Critical Heritaqe, eds. Lawrance Graver and Raymond Federman (London, Henley and Boston: Routledqe & Kegan Paul), p. 148: "The more Joyce knew the more he could. He's tending toward omniscience and omnipotence as an artist. I 'rn working with impotence, ignorance, " 9 Apparently it was assumed that Beckett would write his thesis on Pierre Jouve, the French poet of the modern Unanisrne movement, but what he submitted in its place was the monograph on Proust. This is noted in Baix, p. 54; and again in Enoch Brater, Why Beckett (London: Hudson and Thames, 19891, p. 26. and content, once more Identifying champions of the modernist cause in this context: The painter Elstir is the type of impressionist, stating what he sees and not what he knows he ought to see .
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