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Beckett's Purgatory of the Individual or the 3 Laws of Thermodynamics: Notes for an Incamination towards a Presubluminary Exagmination Round Beckett's Factification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2021

Darko Suvin
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Extract

A critic of modern dramaturgy with a bent for Brecht and O'Casey, the TNP and the Berliner Ensemble, Morgan and Frazer, Marx and Bloch, has one outstanding difficulty to come to terms with, if he is to be sincere to his trade and himself: Samuel Beckett. If the chief measure of a major dramatist is a happy union of relevance and consistency of dramatic vision, there is little doubt that in our cultural circle—middle and western Europe, based on the Mediterranean, with the massive wings of the Soviet Union and North America—the two major dramatists since World War II are Brecht and Beckett. Yet it is rare for a critic devoted to Beckett seriously and knowledgeably to face Brecht. I can think of only one such comprehensive effort—Martin Esslin's—and that one, to my mind, is finally unconvincing. Conversely, however, I can think of no critic of the Brechtian bent who has attempted a comprehensive study of Beckett.

Type
Research Article
Information
Tulane Drama Review , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , Summer 1967 , pp. 23 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © The Tulane Drama Review 1967

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References

1 Hecht, Werner, “Brecht ‘und’ Beckett,” Theater der Zeil, Vol. 14, 1966, p. 30.Google Scholar See also the similar, if politer, view of Surkov, quoted in Mélèse, , Samuel Beckett (Paris, 1966), p. 159.Google Scholar Even Lukács has at times taken up similar simplified positions.

2 This first task of identifying Beckett's Weltanschauung seems to have been very skilfully accomplished by American, French, and some other West European exegetes. I can only here refer to such critics as Anders, Cohn, Kenner, Mueller, and Jacobsen, to whom my essay is indebted although I do not share many of their presuppositions and conclusions. I hope not to be misrepresenting a certain consensus doctorum if I condense such analyses in a survey from my own vantage point.

3 Jacobsen, Josephine and Mueller, William R., The Testament of Samuel Beckett (New York: Hill ' Wang, 1964), p. 161Google Scholar

4 See, for some among a host of examples, Camille Flammarion's novel La Fin du Monde, or H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine.

5 Anders, Günther, “Being Without Time,” Samuel Beckett; A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Esslin, Martin (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965).Google Scholar

6 This has been well noted by Beckett's director Roger Blin, quoted in Mélèse, p. 149; it could also be called psychotic: see Jacobsen-Mueller, pp. 70-71.

7 Cf. “Three Dialogues—by Beckett, Samuel and Duthuit, Georges,” Samuel Beckett; A Collection of Critical Essays, p. 17.Google Scholar

8 Chapsal, Madeleine, in L'Express, Feb. 8, 1957; quoted in Mélèse, p. 163.Google Scholar

9 Cohn, Ruby, “Philosophical Fragments in the Works of Samuel Beckett,” Samuel Beckett; A Collection of Critical Essays, p. 170.Google Scholar

10 G. Sandier, quoted in Mélèse, p. 169.

11 Kenner, Hugh, Samuel Beckett (New York: Grove Press, 1961), p. 63.Google Scholar

12 I have devoted special studies to the nature, sources, and relationship of Individualism with the Gothic and Renaissance periods in the book Dva vida dramaturgije or Two aspects of Dramaturgy (Zagreb, 1964), and in the essay “On the Individualist World View in Drama,” Les Problenies des Genres Litteraires, No. 16, 1966.

13 Cf. Kenner. Also, Anders, p. 147.

14 Cf. Oswald Spengler, Der Vntergang des Abendlandes I (München, 1920); Werner Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalismus I (Munchen u. Leipzig, 1916); and Simmel, Georg, Philosophie des Geldes (Munchen u. Leipzig, 1930).Google Scholar

15 Cf. Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London, 1958)Google Scholar; Tawney, Richard Henry, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (London: Penguin, 1938)Google Scholar; and Knights, Lionel Charles, Drama and Society in the Age of Jonson(London: Penguin, 1962).Google Scholar

16 Eliot, T. S., “The Metaphysical Poets,” Selected Essays (London: Faber & Faber, 1961).Google Scholar

17 von Martin, Alfred, Soziologie der Renaissance (Stuttgart, 1932), p. 119.Google Scholar

18 Heinrich Wölfflin, Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe, 1927, p. 169.

19 Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, The Communist Manifesto, Chapter II.Google Scholar

20 Kenner, p. 132.

21 P. Maracabru, quoted in Mélèse, p. 165.

22 “Three Dialogues,” p. 17.

23 Anders, pp. 144, 151. The argument summarized here runs through most of his essay.

24 As reported by I. Shenker in the New York Times and Tom Driver in Columbia University Forum, quoted in Mélèse, pp. 137-40.

25 Cf. Martin Esslin's Introduction in Samuel Beckett; A Collection of Critical Essays, p. 14.

26 The million spectators of Waiting for Godot in its first five years cannot be dismissed out of hand; nor the fact that the Belgrade troupe Atelja 212 has been performing it on and off for ten years now.

27 Jacobsen and Mueller, p. 163.

28 Main fragments of this adaptation have been quoted in Hecht; but see also a report on a later and different plan of adapting in Rulicke-Weiler, K., Die Dramaturgic Brechts (East Berlin, 1966), pp. 154–56.Google Scholar

29 Endgame. The French text, suppressed in English, is much more explicit; e.g., see p. 304: “CLOV…. Quelqu'un. C'est quelqu'un! HAMM. Eh bien, va l'exterminer … Vibrant. Fais ton devoir!”

30 Cf. the interviews with Shenker and Driver.