Masarykova univerzita Filozofick fakulta

Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky

Magistersk diplomov prce

Vital Voranau

2010
2010

Vital Voranau

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature

Vital Voranau

Drama of Repetition Repetition as a Dramatic Tool in Samuel Becketts Writing

Masters Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph.D.

2010

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
.. Authors signature

Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................... 1 INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................... 2 CHAPTER 1: THE THEATRE OF THE ABSURD .................................................. 4 CHAPTER 2: THE DRAMA OF SAMUEL BECKETT ......................................... 32 CHAPTER 3: REPETITION AS A DRAMATIC TOOL IN SAMUEL BECKETT'S WRITING .............................................................................................. 48 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 65 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................... 67

Nothing is absurd in a world bereft of judgement. Samuel Beckett

Introduction
The aim of this work is to show that linking Samuel Becketts drama to the theatre of the absurd, and interpreting his plays through the prism of this convention, runs counter to attempts at unbiased reading of this author. The inescapable subjectivity derived of reading Beckett, is exemplified through Martin Esslins discussion of the theatre of the absurd as compared with Samuel Becketts own dramatic works, demonstrating fundamental incongruities between the two. This will be followed by an analysis of Becketts use of repetition, his primary dramatic tool, as that which facilitates and provides for those subjective interpretations beyond the theatre of the absurd. Source materials dealt with are mainly Becketts dramatic works, since that is where his use of repetition reached nearest to perfection, while his prose, poetry and essays are taken into consideration where they serve to farther illustrate his use of the stylistic device. Chapter One characterizes the theatre of the absurd, its language, humour and various formal aspects as organized and understood by Martin Esslin. Then, those characterizations are traced in history through traditional drama, from Greek drama and Medieval theatre, through Commedia dellarte and Shakespeare, by way of Camus and Sarte, to Chaplin and Keaton. This is followed by a study of Becketts writing in the context of the theatre of the absurd and an analysis of four common elements: absurd, tragicomedy, symbolism and avant-garde. On the whole, the survey of this chapter explores Samuel Becketts writing within the context of the theatre of the absurd, showing both, how Beckett pertains to it, and in what ways he is detached. Ultimately,

Chapter One concludes with a criticism against the attribution of Samuel Beckett to the theatre of the absurd. In Chapter Two, by contrast to Chapter One, Becketts drama is presented out of the context of the theatre of the absurd. Here, priority is given to the scope and specifics of traditional disciplines having common influence with Becketts works, e.g., philosophy, art, religion and certain aspects of drama, such as silence, language, light etc. The final section, Chapter Three, focuses on repetition in Becketts writing. Discussion centres on repetition here for being the tool most specific to his dramatic work. It has become conventional to divide Becketts writing career into three periods: early works, middle period and late works, and this is normally useful enough a division for the sake of a general study of the whole of his oeuvre. For the study of his drama, however, a tri-part division is more practical between his major works (Waiting for Godot, Happy Days, Endgame), short pieces and plays for radio and television.

The Theatre of the Absurd

The theatre of the absurd is a term which usually refers to a type of drama which dominated West-European literature between the years 1940-1960 and is most often associated with the names of famous writers, such as: Samuel Beckett, Eugne Ionesco, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Edward Albee, Arthur Adamov, Fernando Arrabal, Friedrich Drrenmatt, Witold Gombrowicz, Sawomir Mroek, Vaclav Havel and many other less famous playwrights. However, as any characterization of genre, attempts to encompass its abstract relations and phenomena, this term has many inconsistencies. Unlike other coinages used to describe different kinds of theatre in the XX century such as: prose drama, kitchen-sink drama, theatre of menace, or theatre of cruelty, which mainly refer to a few, or even singular, plays or playwrights, of distinguished manner, in close time proximity, or being clearly associated with a specific literary movement, the theatre of the absurd tends to entail too many features, authors, and spans of time. The term was first introduced by the dramatist, critic and scholar, Martin Esslin, in his book titled Theatre of the Absurd, which, in the 1960s, became an influential dramatic critique. In this book, the author sets out a re-framing in light of misconceptions and confusions connected with the new type of theatre:

A public conditioned to an accepted convention tends to receive the impact of artistic experience through a filter of critical standards, of predetermined expectations and terms of reference, which is the natural result of the schooling of its taste and faculty of perception. This

framework of values, admirably efficient in itself, produces only bewildering results when it is faced with a completely new and revolutionary convention a tug of war ensues between impressions that have undoubtedly been received and critical preconceptions that clearly exclude the possibility that any such impressions could have been felt. Hence the storms of frustration and indignation always caused by works in a new convention. (Esslin 28)

The purpose of his book as he puts is to provide a framework of reference that will show the works of the Theatre of the Absurd within their own convention (Ibid.). To give a framework of reference, Esslin first explains what the difference between traditional theatre and the theatre of the absurd is:

If a good play must have a cleverly constructed story, these have no story or plot to speak of; if a good play is judged by subtlety of characterization and motivation, these are often without recognizable characters and present the audience with almost mechanical puppets; if a good play has to have a fully explained theme, which is neatly exposed and finally solved, these often have neither a beginning nor an end; if a good play is to hold the mirror up to nature and portray the manners and mannerism of the age in finely observed sketches, these seem often to be reflections of dreams and nightmares; if a good play relies on witty repartee and pointed dialogue, these often consist of incoherent babblings. (Esslin 21, 22)

The difference between the traditionally well-made drama and the drama to which Esslin refers, lies, as he argues, in the dissimilarity of their purposes. Traditional criticism, Esslin says, cannot be applied to the evaluation of the dramas described by him as the theatre of the absurd. Therefore, he provides a set of references, which according to the author coincide in plays of the theatre of the absurd. These references encompass a variety of features based on the quality of language, form and style. The largest focus is on language:

The Theatre of the Absurd tends toward a radical devaluation of language, toward a poetry that is to emerge from the concrete and objectified images of the stage itself. The element of language still plays an important part in this conception, but what happens on the stage transcends, and often contradicts, the words spoken by the characters. (Esslin 26)

The role of language in this theatre, due to its incapability of illustrating reality, is reduced to a minimum and devalued of its traditionally preconceived weight. On the stage, language can be put into a contrapuntal relationship with action, the facts behind the language can be revealed. Hence the importance of mime, knockabout comedy and silence... (Esslin 85). Therefore, according to the author some functions of language are transferred to other dramatic tools. Esslin cites Ionesco: Just as words are continued by gesture, action, mime, which at the moment when words become inadequate, take their place, the material elements of the stage can in turn further intensify these (Ionesco, cited by Esslin 186).

Humour is one of the tools, which compensates for the limited language of the drama of the absurd. It serves both to release the tension of and to balance the tragic part of such plays:

Humour makes us conscious, with a free lucidity, of the tragic or desultory condition of man It is not only the critical spirit itself but humour is the only possibility we possess of detaching ourselves yet only after we have surmounted, assimilated, taken cognizance of it from out tragicomic human condition, the malaise of being. (Ionesco, cited by Esslin 186)

In the theatre of the absurd humour is not applied for the sake of fun, as in traditional theatre. Here it serves another purpose: To become conscious of what is horrifying and to laugh at it is to become master of that which is horrifying (Ionesco, cited by Esslin 186). Laughter has a revealing and strengthening function against unbearable misery and despair. It saves the character of the drama of the absurd from craziness and self-annihilation. Also connected with illogical communication and incomprehensible language is the lack of linear plot. Again, this absence is compensated for with circularity of actions and dialogues. Many of the plays of the Theatre of the Absurd have a circular structure, ending exactly as they began; others progress merely by a growing intensification of the initial situation (Esslin 405, 406). Since, the linear development is absent; there is also no typical resolution, or culmination in a classical meaning of these words.

Still another feature is the absence of Aristotles unities of place, time, and action. The theatre of the absurd usually distorts all the dramatic rules described in Poetics. Absurdist drama does not need to be attached to one realistic scene, often does not need any stage props at all; the actions become distorted, and time changes its primarily function.

While the play with a linear plot describes a development in time, in a dramatic form that presents a concretized poetic image the plays extension in time is purely incidental. Expressing an intuition in depth, it should ideally be apprehended in a single moment, and only because it is physically impossible to present so complex an image in an instant does it have to be spread over a period of time. The formal structure of such a play is, therefore, merely a device to express a complex total image by unfolding it in a sequence of interacting elements. (Esslin 394)

Hence, as time depends on unreal images it becomes deformed and is often marked by its absence. For the characters of this theatre, time is not to be counted or referred as to some reality, but simply to pass or fill with irrelevant actions. As the author admits his term does not refer to those contributing, in his view, to the theatre of the absurd, but rather to a common basis for their works, which is illustrative of the preoccupations and anxieties, the emotions and thinking of many of their contemporaries in the Western world (Esslin 22). He also acknowledges that such an illustration is always relative:

It is an oversimplification to assume that any age presents a homogenous pattern. Ours being, more than most others, and age of transition, it displays a bewilderingly stratified picture The Theatre of the Absurd, however, can be seen as the reflection of what seems to be the attitude most genuinely representative of our own time. (Esslin 22, 23)

Therefore, in his book, Esslin does not seem to aspire to giving an exclusive and homogenous name to the group of writers, as if placing them in the same school or convention. On the contrary, he is rather describing the receptions of such dramatic pieces, which according to classical conventions, are deemed absurd in their nature. Instead of saying what the aesthetics of the theatre of the absurd are, assuming that such aesthetics exist at all, he is rather saying what they are not, in contrast to the aesthetics of a well-made drama in the conventional meaning. Although, Esslin introduces a series of characteristics which, in his opinion define the essence of the drama of the absurd, they are always discussed in the terms of absence or contradiction to traditional ones, rather, than possessing sustainable quality of their own. Although the theatre of the absurd is often viewed as a purely avant-garde creation, its elements can be found in the variety of theatrical traditions. Esslin comments that the novelty of this theatre is rather in the audiences perception than in the theatre itself:

If there is anything really new in it, it is the unusual way in which various familiar attitudes of mind and literary idioms are interwoven. Above all, it is the fact that for the first time this approach has met with

a wide response from a broadly based public. This is characteristic not so much of the Theatre of the Absurd as of its epoch. (Esslin 388)

According to Esslin the public plays an important role as far as writers inspirations and applications are concerned. Absurdist elements are already to be found as early as in Greek drama. Similarly to the theatre of the absurd, Greek drama is preoccupied with language: With respect to Greek tragedy, which, of course, comes to us only as a drama of words (Nietzsche 199). Another focus of absurdist drama is on laughter, which in many senses echoes with a specific usage of laughter in Greek drama. As Erik Segal puts it: All Comedy aspires to laughter although not all laughter is related to Comedy (Segal 23). This evokes the association of laughter as applied in the theatre of the absurd in order to achieve a sort of cathartic effect. However, the most astounding commonality between the two theatres is the domination of merging quality:

The wearing of masks, symbolizing changes of personality, a practice of multi-levelled cross-dressing, the presence of a chorus (giving out its commentary, plus an argument in the form of parabasis (a pronouncement of advice, often seemingly unrelated to the rest of the play), a widespread tone of vulgarity (evident both in stage-props and dialogue), and various metatheatrical devices were all prominent features. The more unusual the combination of such elements contained in a particular play or performance, the closer such a drama (the Greek

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drama, meaning something done) might approximate to our modern understanding of Theatre of the Absurd. (Cornwell 34)

Alike Greek drama the theatre of the absurd is a certain fusion of sometimes loose and seemingly unrelated elements of performance. Elements of the theatre of the absurd can be also traced to the medieval theatre, in the form of allegorical farces, which represents a world gone wrong; social institutions and people in general are in the grip of vicious folly from which no one is able to break free... often peopled with wise or benign fools, clowns, and acrobats, whose function is to reveal, ridicule, and censure the folly around them (Knight 80). Such plays are closely intertwined with performances of travelling clowns, which became extremely popular in The Middle Ages. Commedia dell'arte was another source of inspiration for the writers of the theatre of the absurd. Commedia dell'arte has three main stock roles: servant, master and innamorata (Katritzky 104), which reminiscent of many stock characters in Beckett, Pinter and Stoppards plays. Similarly to the theatre of the absurd, in commedia dellarte the characters themselves are often referred to as "masks", which according to John Rudlin, cannot be separated from the character. In other words the characteristics of the character and the characteristics of the mask are the same (34). The characters of the theatre of the absurd also tend to exemplify a type of an individual, rather than a singular individual, but at the same time cannot be separated from its mask. Commedia dellarte made use of different types of humour, including prepared jokes, physical gags, as well as improvised, practical jokes, which is still another parallel to the theatre of the absurd.

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Absurdist elements also abound in Shakespeares tragicomedies, in which tragic elements are fused with comical ones in such a way, that they often bring about an ambiguous effect. Shakespeares devotion to meaningful names, when a name serves as a label of a persons character, is also typical for the theatre of the absurd. These plays brought about the low and mad characters typified of quaint humour, ranging from bastards to fools, which later became illustrative of the drama of the absurd. Tom Stoppards reference to Shakespeare notes the absurdist potential of Shakespearian characters as well. Plays by Shakespeare and other Jacobean playwrights often, like plays of the absurd, are illogical and lack realism. Major philosophical influences come from the writings of existentialists, mostly of Camus and Sartres interpretations. Camus makes an elaborate description of the absurd in his work The Myth of Sisyphus.

Camuss starting point is a dichotomical all or nothing: life has meaning, or to go on living is pointless. This formulation of the question grows from existence, characterized by a deep sense of despair and an inability to find purpose in lifes everyday moments. (Sagi 48)

According to Camus the absurdity of life lies not only in the alienation caused by living in a hostile and inhuman world, but also in language, which does not mean what it is supposed to mean: When things have a label, arent they lost already? (155). For Camus there are two options in response to human anxiety cause by absurdity, either to find the answer to existence or to commit a philosophical suicide. Sartre seems to go even further in his pessimism: For Sartre, absurdity is a state of affairs. Existence is absurd because it lacks any inherent design, meaning, or end point. In Being and

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Nothingness and elsewhere, Sartre links the notion of absurdity to the notion of contingency (Conard 110). Sartres solution is not in looking for a non-contingent answer to our existence, but in realization of its contingency: I do not have nor can I have recourse to any value against the fact that it is I who sustain values in being... In anguish I apprehend myself... as not being able to derive the meaning of the world except as coming from myself (Sartre 40). Whereas for Camus the absurd is contextual and usually lies in the dichotomy between the inner and the outer worlds for Sartre it is ubiquitous, thus including our innate selves. Although they have a different perception of absurd, they agree upon the expository potential of absurdity. Sartre and Camus are alike in an important respect. Specifically, in their literary works, both illustrate how susceptible individuals are to the menace of absurdity and how powerful the revelation of absurdity can be (Conard 111). In this respect, they also agree with many authors associated with the theatre of the absurd. Still more non-literary influences can be found in vaudeville comedy style, particularly as it transitioned from stage into the silent film era by Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton; frequently associated props, including the derby hat, walking stick, and baggy trousers, are also very often encountered in theatre of the absurd. There is also a noticeable relation between silent movies and the use of silence by many authors writing absurdist plays. Samuel Becketts desire to see Chaplin as an actor of Film is an example of such relations. Another similarity, originating from Commedia dellarte, and popularized by Chaplin and Keaton, is usually referred to as slip stick and describes a type of comedy involving exaggerated physical violence and, often, irrational acts. Ever since the first edition of The Theatre of the Absurd with which Martin Esslin coined the name, invoking the meaningless of life as thematically consistent with

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the plays of Beckett, Adamov, Genet and Ionesco, Becketts name has been forever linked. Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless (Esslin 23). Absurdist theatre echoes all other genres, literary techniques and philosophical schools, which stand in opposition to realism. It explores Bertold Brechts alienation effect, the aim being to distance the audience from the reality of the stage, and to perform a study in the philosophy of existentialism, the key concepts of which were dread and nothingness. One of the most important features of this theatre was a denial of the communicative function of language.

The Theatre of the Absurd constituted first and foremost an onslaught on language, showing it as a very unreliable and insufficient tool of communication. Absurd drama uses conventionalized speech, clichs, slogans and technical jargon, which it distorts, parodies and breaks down. By ridiculing conventionalized and stereotyped speech patterns, the Theatre of the Absurd tries to make people aware of the possibility of going beyond everyday speech conventions and communicating more authentically. (Culk 2000: http://www.samuel-beckett.net)

Samuel Beckett uses this unconventional language thusly, in order to create the specific atmosphere of his plays, which consist of numerous misunderstandings and endless misinterpretations based on language defect structure. Camus concluded that: our situation is absurd because our longing for clarity and certainty is met with, and forever thwarted by, the irrationality of the universe into which we have been thrown; we can neither rid ourselves of the desire for order nor overcome the irrationality that stands in

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the way of order (Camus, cited by Brockett 1988: 226). Thereof Beckett not only denies definiteness, but he also questions the reality of human life. In Becketts plays, the absurdity of life does not end with death. Death does not reveal the rationality of peoples lives or give any sort of solace, but rather makes ridicule of any preconceptions of any function, such as in Christianity: death, in which one will come to oneself and meaning will arise (Butler 112). Beckett agrees with Sartre on this issue:

Thus, for Sartre, death, far from being an end that gives a meaning to life, is absurd. We are like the condemned man who is preparing to give a meaning to his life, to close the account satisfactorily, by making a good showing on the scaffold and who is then carried off by a flu epidemic. (Sartre, cited by Butler 112)

For Beckett, however, unlike for some existentialists, death, though meaningless, is not a matter of dread, and it is not a final destination, by no means. Becketts characters are preoccupied with waiting for death, not by death itself, which serves completely different aims:

Thus death becomes the main subject of the Trilogy, but not in any ordinary sense. Not one of Becketts people is afraid of death. Some long for it (Hamm, for instance), but all, without exception, are desperately puzzled about its meaning and its mechanism. (Coe 59)

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Death is neither the end to existence nor a transitory state. Becketts usage of death is to mark the absence of real life: All [characters] think of life as an exile, a punishment for some unknown crime, perhaps the crime of being born, as Estragon suggests an exile in time from the reality of themselves, which reality is, and must be, timeless (Coe 59). Hence, his characters think rather in terms of life, than in terms of death. Estragon and Vladimir are able to commit neither a real nor a philosophical suicide, in terms described by Camus. Death is never that which gives life its meanings; it is, on the contrary, that which on principle removes all meaning from life (Heidegger, cited by Butler 112). Here, Beckett is closer to Sartre who says: Since the for-itself is the being which always lays claim to an after, there is no place for death in the being which is for-itself (Sartre, cited by Butler 112). Therefore, Beckett focuses on the process of waiting, but not on the object of waiting: if Godot came there would not be a joyous revelation of the meaning of the waiting (i.e. of suffering, life). On the contrary, it would only confirm the absurdity of existence (Butler 113). Becketts characters hope is in what is ahead of them, not behind. Another difference between Becketts and the existentialists attitudes toward absurdity is brought about by Adorno:

Becketts oeuvre has many things in common with Parisian existentialism But whereas in Sartre the form that of the pice these is somewhat traditional, by no means daring, and aimed at effect, the form overtakes what is expressed and changes it For Beckett absurdity is no longer an existential situation diluted to an idea and then illustrated. (Adorno, cited by Lane 131)

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Hence, Becketts preoccupation with form and themes, like absurdity, is somewhat different from the existentialists approach and illustration.

While Sartre and Camus express the new content in the old convention, the Theatre of the Absurd goes a step further in trying to achieve a unity between its basic assumptions and the form in which these are expressed. In some sense, the theatre of Sartre and Camus is less adequate as an expression of the philosophy of Sartre and Camus in artistic, as distinct from philosophic, terms than the Theatre of the Absurd. (Esslin 24)

As such, the difference between the authors lies not only in their approach to reason and absurdity, but is also evident in their forms of expression. Becketts absurd works deny meaning and protect themselves against interpretation, but provoke and entice interpretation (Buning and Engelberts 317). Potential literary expression is less confined in its formal representation than philosophical works on the absurd. Tragicomedy is another link between Samuel Beckett and the theatre of the absurd. Tragicomedy is not only a compound word in lexical terms, but it also carries a twofold semantic meaning. It is popularly understood as a combination of tragedy and comedy. Sometimes, when the combination is not so obvious, balanced or visible, it can be defined as neither a pure tragedy nor a classical comedy. Ristine explains this mixture as follows:

What we consider as tragic and comical have a way of shading into one another by imperceptible advances, until the juncture is lost; or what

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may appeal as tragic to one will be comic to another. Many a serious event has its humorous side; that the pathetic is akin to the comical and laughter neighbour to tears are truisms of long-standing acceptance; while the comparison of life to a tragicomedy is almost as old as the world itself. (Ristine ix)

In his terms, both tragic and comic have more than one effect or meaning. Neither laughter, nor tears should be taken for granted, as they are peoples reactions, which are highly subjective and individual in every case. Although the heyday of tragicomedy is considered to have been in XVII c., Beckett revived and substantially refreshed the genre in the fifties of XX c. Whereas, classical tragicomedy moves towards catastrophe, but results in a happy ending, brought by some fortunate events, Becketts tragicomedy has rather a reversed nature:

He would allow the dark into his work, the chaos, pain, and painful comedy of existence as he experienced it, and thereby make a new kind of art, one that depended not on Joycean richness and playfulness, but on deliberate shrinkage of material and elimination of literary ornament, an art that sought its apotheosis in failure an art shot through in equal measure with unassuageable anguish and bleak humour. (Banville 1996: http://www.samuel-beckett.net/banville.html)

In contrast to classical tragicomedy, Becketts plays depict comic events with a rather tragic result or ending. Beckett makes the combination between funny and sad even more intensive and the boundaries between the two yet more blurred. Since the

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publication of Waiting for Godot (A Tragicomedy in Two Acts) critics often cite Samuel Becket as having provided its definitive, updated form. In many works by Beckett, this blur between laughter and crying ascends beyond its threshold, where it is virtually impossible to say which is which, and is best described as crying with laughter.

The dislocations of language that follow are serious but, given the playfulness of the Anglo-Irish tradition, hardly ever solemn. Humour runs across almost every episode or scene in Becketts novels and plays. Even when it is no laughing matter, a tragicomic language is created that is constantly at play, as if acting out the mutilated Nells response to Naggs laughter: Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. But (Kennedy 6)

The reason for which Beckett is popularly perceived as a gloomy and pessimistic writer grows from the fact that his plays tend to overshadow his prose, in which he often appears almost a comic writer.

There are books Proust, More Pricks Than Kicks, and various collections of poems in which he is not clear whether he is a comic writer or simply a bitter one, and his first comic book, Murphy, achieves its daft freedom in a kind of air pocket, while simultaneously poems precipitate into three or four hundred words his mounting nausea with the human state. (Kenner 35)

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This confusion lies in the nature of tragicomedy, as well as in the usage of various comic tools, ranging from clowning, through slip stick, to farce.

Act Without Words I and II are perfect clowning: in the second, the two clowns come out of their sacks, go through the days work and back into the sacks, in possibly ten minutes Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot seem to be outside any definition of clowning; perhaps we should be content with calling them clownish actors, but they do an act rather than play a part. In fact, Beckett has been careful to insert enough farce to discourage pathos in spite of the pathetic elements in the text. Thus the pulling off of a stubborn boot, the horse-play with Lucky, and the kicks and howls and the tumbling of all the characters in a heap, and the juggling interlude involving two heads and three hats, are carefully inserted with a dual purpose (Mayoux 29)

As suggests Mayoux, all such applications have twofold purpose: reduction of tragic pathos and elimination of unwanted realism: Moreover, aesthetically speaking, clownish clothes and clownish acting are part of the rejection of all realism (30). Moreover, Beckett does not avoid dirty humour. The examples of this could be Hamms pee without catheter, Lousses eloquent parrot, and Murphys taste for Glimigrim, Gullivers diuretic wine (Tindall 36). According to Tindall another purpose of such combinations is the analgesic or aggravating effect: A guaranteed painkiller, humour makes horror bearable or, as Yeats has it, transfigures dread. Yet humour also intensifies what it guarantees relief from (Tindall 32). In these terms, Beckett can be described not only as the successor of

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a great legacy of tragicomedy but also as a contributor to its development and a precursor of a sort. Still another feature that serves as a common platform for Beckett and the theatre of the absurd is symbolism. This kind of symbolism says that truth cannot be logically grounded, but should be sought with the help of intuition. Different symbols can be indirect hints in the quest for the ultimate truth. Symbolism in the theatre changed the view of many traditional aspects in this genre.

The Symbolists believed that scenery should be confined to draperies or undefined forms which evoke a sense of infinite space and time. Historical detail was avoided because it tied plays to specific periods and places rather than bringing out their timeless qualities. Dcor was reduced to elements giving a generalized impression appropriate to the ideas and feelings of a play. Similarly, costumes were usually simple, draped garments of no particular period o place; colours were dictated by the plays mood. (Brockett 1969: 318)

That is why sceneries of Becketts plays are usually either undefined or limited to some symbolic elements, like a bare tree or trash scattered over the scene. Similarly, language in the dialogues of his heroes is more metaphorical and vague than literary. Maeterlinck referred to this in the following way:

Side by side with the necessary dialogue you will almost always find another dialogue that seems superfluous; but examine it carefully, and it

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will be borne home to you that this is the only one that the soul can listen to profoundly, for here alone is the soul that is being addressed. (Brockett 1969: 310)

Becketts dramas abound in symbolic meanings and exploration of suggestiveness. All the elements that appear in them are motivated by the writers intentions. No symbol where none intended (Alvarez 86). Becketts works are so symbolic that sometimes it makes all interpretations virtually impossible or erroneous.

This is why the many and elaborate interpretations that have been foisted on Godot seem particularly superfluous. Pozzo and Lucky may be Body and intellect, Master and Slave, Capitalist and Proletarian, Colonizer and Colonized, Cain and Abel, Sadist and Masochist, even Joyce and Beckett. But essentially and more simply, they embody one way of getting through life with someone else, just as Vladimir and Estragon more sympathetically embody another. (Alvarez 86)

Becketts symbolism is particularly hard to discern, as it is multilayered and often simultaneously expressed through many different media, such as language, gesture, sound and visual signs. Therefore, Becketts works give endless opportunities for varied, sometimes contrastive, readings. On the other hand, Becketts attitude towards symbolism is not passive and merely derivative, but also critical: Symbolism was an art movement originally designed to resist the discursive, the prosaic, to edge toward silence, but Beckett finds that the symbolic method hinders the symbolists from attaining their goal (Albright

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13). Long before Beckett wrote the majority of his pieces, he became not only captivated by the potential of symbolism, but also quite cautious about its traps, which is conspicuous in his essay on Proust. The symbol, he says, must be reduced to autosymbolism (Becketts own term). A fiction purged of mimesis and symbol alike would seem to deny itself every resource Becketts chief mode of self-entertainment was to refine the procedures through which a text can reflect its lack of content, the central absence (Albright 13). Therefore, symbolism in Becketts realization has a dual function, in a traditional and figurative, self-deniable senses. Consequently, Beckett is one of the most over-interpreted authors ever. A final important correlation between Beckett and the theatre of the absurd that is considered here is the avant-garde element. The nature of avant-garde art is to criticize established canons and replacing them with new alternatives. Although the term is applied to many different artistic acts and forms, it can be described as follows:

Avant garde has become a ubiquitous label, eclectically applied to any type of art that is anti-traditional in form. At its simplest, the term is sometimes taken to describe what is new at any given time: the leading edge of artistic experiment, which is continually outdated by the next step forward. (Innes 1993: 1)

Avant-garde usually bears on provocative message, which aims to evoke repugnancy, bewilderment and anger. In these terms, Becketts writing can be labelled as avantgarde. Throughout his entire career, experimentation remained the most important catalyst of his art. In each play he has successively pushed out the limits of

abstraction His work has continually extended the frontiers of modernism, to the

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point that his later plays barely belong in the theatre at all (Innes 1995: 428). Although there are no stylistic features, which would describe an avant-garde drama, it does manifest in the desire for transformation of every genre as well as in the revolt against the status quo of mainstream culture. The outlines of his concerns must have been obvious We need not expect any Victorian three-deckers, any engage pamphleteering, any autobiography or any bourgeois melodramas from Paris this year; yet the uncompromisingly experimental products of Becketts ontospeleology have become, with time, entirely unpredictable (Pilling 184). Becket would not comply with any, even his own conventions in his art. However, as with absurd, tragicomedy and symbolism, Becketts avant-garde is not univocal either. First, although avant-garde is a pretty fuzzy notion, Beckett is rather not a typical representative of avant-garde movement:

Part of Becketts importance as a cultural figure is that he blurs ordinary distinctions between mainstream and avant-garde. Because he was embraced so readily as a classic he was able, in effect, to smuggle certain progressive ideas across the border of mainstream culture, and that achievement is, rightfully, his most celebrated: he has actually changed many peoples expectations about what can happen, what is supposed to happen, when they enter a theatre. Not surprisingly, then, many avant-gardists, true to the bohemian habit in mind that considers any work compromised as soon as it attracts a wide audience, perceive this achievement as already ancient history and assume that their own work represents a radical departure from Becketts. (Kalb 157, 158)

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Second, in distinction from his balancing on the edge of avant-garde and nonideological innovativeness, intrinsic to many ambitious writers -

Perhaps the most significant assumption he does not share with the avant-garde is that artistic goals must be pursued in a spirit of aggression and panic, which is really part of Artauds legacy: the conviction that the world and the theatre have deteriorated to such a state that the only appropriate response is to scream. Beckett inner calm, his unceasing effort to pare down, to weed out every inessential syllable, discarding all technical gimmicks, stand diametrically opposed to the ethic of eclecticism and entropy in what is sometimes called pluralistic performance (Wilson, Squat Theater). The avant-garde had in fact ceased to search for the icon, as does Beckett in his late works, since that search represents a quest for unity, and unity is antithetical to the model of a radiating action that explodes from a center. (Foreman, in Kalb 159)

With these arguments in mind, Beckett can be regarded as an avant-garde writer only to some extent. A more precise statement would be to say that he was a consistent and inherent practitioner of avant-garde art, but not its typical representative or artistic ideologist. Having seen how different elements of the theatre of the absurd are altered in Becketts realization it is necessary to look at how various critics perceived his contribution to this theatre from the very introduction of the label. Dan Rebellato, for instance, says that In their early days, there was felt to be some overlap between the

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work of Beckett and Ionesco and the movement inspired by Look Back in Anger (Rebellato 145). However, as the critic admits the authors associated with new drama were too antagonistic in the terms of what is fictional and real in their writings: Vaughan Williams, in this sense, is simple by contrast with the liturgical Beckett, the discordant wilfulness of Ionesco, and the peremptory sourness of Brecht (Osborne, cited by Rebellato 145). OHara draws attention to discrepancy between Beckett and other associated authors:

The universe of Samuel Beckett is certainly as complex as that of any other living writer. Yet it is not a dream universe, like that of Jarry or Ionesco. It is a metaphysical vision of ultimate reality, constructed out of innumerable threads of logic tightly interwoven, out of fragmented arguments... (OHara, cited by Butler 195, 196)

OHaras point, that Beckett is much more preoccupied with real than unreal, is confirmed by another critic Kenneth Allsop, who says that [Beckett] is in his technique an obsolete writer... ...his standpoint is a surprisingly orthodox one in the environment of the fifties (Allsop 37). Tindall, on the other hand, emphasized the fact that any tendency to group writers into a movement is a relative endeavour, based on peoples preferences:

Occasional resemblances to Ionesco have led critics to place Beckett in the school of the absurd. This is worth looking into; for if there is such a school-indeed, if schools, such as those of the metaphysical or symbolist poets are more than academic conveniences for ignoring peculiarity-

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Beckett might belong to this school. The critical mind, amorous of categories, wants to put him there. Amorous of individuality, Beckett rejects membership: I dont think I deserve a place in this school. (Tindall 12)

Richard Coe agrees with Tindall, saying that the term despair, which is closely connected with another term, absurd, is a sweeping statement, when applied to Beckett:

...but to class Beckett himself as the simple incarnation of despair is a drastic over-simplification. To begin with, the concept of despair implies the existence of a related concept hope, and hope implies a certain predictable continuity in time-which continuity Beckett would seriously question. Despair, with all its inherent moral overtones, is a term which is wholly inadequate to describe Becketts attitude towards the human condition; nor is this condition, in the most current sense of the definition, absurd. It is literally and logically impossible. (Coe 1)

According to both critics, Beckett was a follower of Euclidean reason, which stands in opposition to absurd, the latter being dependent on the presence of a judging mind (Tindall 13). In Coes opinion, Becketts method is rationalistic, before mystic:

This is one of the factors [validity as a method] which sets Beckett apart from the writers of the Absurd. For the Absurd is a method which proceeds, by means of the annihilation of rational concepts, to a point

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where ultimate reality, irrational by definition, may be glimpsed through the wreckage. But Beckett, by contrast, cherishes rationality above all things, but drives it to the point at which just as moving particles are transformed as they approach the speed of light reason itself is transmuted into the still vaster reality of the irrational. (Coe 20)

The inconsistency of including Beckett into the theatre of the absurd reveals itself in the abundance of various illusive terms referring to his writing: ...there was also a theatrical movement [associated with Beckett] that went by various names, including a-theatre, anti-theatre, theatre of the absurd, experimental theatre, method theatre or the theatre of ridicule (Cronin 424). All of these names besides being self-inclusive are equally misleading as the analyzed term. This is also visible in Anthony Cronins account of Becketts attitude towards such clichs, and the absurd in private.

The passive characters of Godot, as well as the music-hall and circus associations and the fact that there was no action in the ordinary sense of dramatic action, gave plenty of excuse to critics to make Beckett part of a movement. ...Beckett would assent to and even encourage the association of his name with the nouvelle vague in the novel and would become friendly with other members of the movement, the public association with Ionesco, Adamov and theatre of the absurd would always annoy him and he would discourage it in every way possible short of public dissociation. (Cronin 424, 425)

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Samuel Becketts biographer, also attaches such categorization of Beckett to some facts of his life; one being a conversation between Samuel Beckett, trying to find a reason for an attack, and his assailant: The reply, according to these later stories, was I dont know, a rejoinder on which a great deal of criticism about the theatre of the absurd and the meaninglessness of all action has been founded (Cronin 290). Such, almost anecdotal associations do not speak in favour of any labels of this sort. Not without certain reason is the authors opinion on his belonging to the theatre of the absurd. It is a rare case when an author, regardless of his unequivocal and persistent repudiations, is enduringly attached to this label.

One can not define them [moral values]. To define them it would be necessary to produce a judgement of value and that can not be done. It is why I have never been in agreement with this notion of theatre of the absurd, because there, that is a value judgement. One can not even speak of the truth that is part of the distress. Paradoxically it is in form that the artist can find a sort of solution. In giving form to the unformed. It is only at this level that there could be a kind of underlying affirmation. (Becket, cited by Cronin 512)

The reasons for Samuel Becketts rejection of the concept might have varied from those connected with his striving for ultimate originality as an author to ones of more vague importance, like the danger of misinterpretation. Every literary classification bears in itself the potential for constrained interpretations of the classified authors or their works. The theatre of the absurd is no exception. Before going into an analysis of the characteristics, which are beyond the

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context of the theatre of the absurd, it is necessary to show in what ways the ascription of Samuel Beckett to this theatre might lead to misinterpretations of his writing. Here Beckett, again, was very cautious and taciturn. When an American director, Alan Schneider, asked Beckett a questions about Godots nature, the answer was: If I knew I would have said so in the play. Beckett seemed perfectly willing to answer questions specific meaning or reference but would not go into questions of larger or symbolic meaning, preferring his work to speak for itself and letting the supposed meanings fall where they may (Cronin 454). The wave of misinterpretations started with the reaction to Waiting for Godot

...at once an elaborate nothing and a possible something, were various, as a series of letters to the Times Literary Supplement in 1956 makes clear. Each correspondent, trying to make sense of what he saw or read, came up with his hypothesis. One thought the play deeply Christian. Another found it an existential parable. Others found it a social and economic allegory, a tract on spiritual awareness, something too deep for words, and a hoax upon the highbrows. There was no better agreement among professional critics. To each his guess, the less certain, the more dogmatically propounded. (Tindall 6)

Supposedly, most of these misinterpretations could have given basis for a term like the theatre of the absurd but, what is more likely, is that the term itself attended an affirmative rooting of misinterpretations of all sorts. Such interpretations, within a certain constraint, are usually prone to preconceived and erroneous statements. The new situation has brought with it the risk of over-interpretation: it is possible that in

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Beckett criticism more is less, while the inner law of Becketts work is less is more (Kennedy 1). More examples of such misconceptions will be analyzed in further chapters. Considering Samuel Becketts affiliation with the theatre of the absurd and its outstanding elements aside from him, regarding both his inspiration and contribution to it, it should be said, there is no indication of his being an exemplary agent of any of these elements. On the contrary, in each of its instances, including absurd, tragicomedy, symbolism and avant-garde he rather remained a sufficiently outstanding and peculiar associate, but not greater than that. Furthermore, the authors own resentment of his affiliation with the theatre of the absurd, was supported by many renowned critics. Becketts involvement should be farther perceived as that of a highly sovereign author, whose attachment to any particular current, school or movement would be counterproductive to his attributable originality. Besides his evident interests for potential variations of a range of aspects and elements of existing modes of theatre, Becketts input is by and large corollary to his qualities of a stand-alone author.

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The critical mind, amorous of categories, wants to put him there. Amorous of individuality, Beckett rejects membership Beckett wants to be alone. William York Tindall

The drama of Samuel Beckett

The aim of this chapter is to consider Becketts cultural asset through the prism of certain semi-literary domains, such as philosophy, art, and religion, as well as through some literary and dramatic aspects, like time, language, light etc. Each of these concerns featured here go beyond the notion of the theatre of the absurd in order to avoid, what is sometimes taken as a schematic reading or statement, inspired by the dogmatic nature of categorization. That is why, for example, this chapter discusses only those relations of Beckett to philosophy, which do not overlap with ones covered in the context of the theatre of the absurd. Becketts relation to philosophy as to many other arts, is not categorically expressed, neither by the author himself nor by the scholars studying his oeuvre. Their positions, often radically, depart from those considering Beckett a philosophical thinker, who expressed his ideas in literary genres, as they strongly deny any philosophic influences and contributions. John Butler in his book Samuel Beckett and the Meaning of Being says: However close the parallels are we must remember that Beckett has disclaimed any philosophical achievement (Butler 4). Butler cites two of Becketts own statements regarding his attitude towards philosophy, one of them with Tom Driver, an American theologian, and critic: I am not a philosopher. One can only speak of what is in front of him, and that is simply a mess. (Beckett, cited by Bishop

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and Federman 219). Another of his disclaimers of philosophical interest comes from an interview in 1961, conducted by Gabriel dAubarde, for the French journal Les Nouvelles Littraires,: I never read philosophers... I never understand anything they write... I wouldnt have had any reason to write my novels if I could have expressed their subject in philosophic terms (Beckett, cited by Bishop and Federman 240). Cronin seems to confirm Becketts words by saying: In general too much has been made of Becketts interest in philosophy and too little of his impatience with it (Cronin 231). However, Cronin acknowledges: Yet he did take some interest in the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, Zeno the Eleatic, Parmenides, Democritus of Abdera (Cronin 232). At the same time, Cronin undermines these interest and citations claiming that Beckett was more interested in the shapeliness of ideas, rather than in their philosophic inclinations. Mary OHara, in a thesis from 1974, says something very contradictive to Beckett and Cronin: So close is Heideggers thinking to Becketts that the latters work could almost be seen as a literary exploration of Heideggerian metaphysics (OHara, cited by Butler 4). Finally, Butler seems to express the most negotiable position towards Becketts affiliation with philosophy: I do not see that Becketts dismissal of philosophy need deter us unless we think the Intentional Fallacy unfallacious (Butler 5). Still another point of view could be summarized by Michle Le Doeuffs words from The Philosophical Imaginary: Imagery and knowledge form, dialectically, a common system. Between these two terms there is a play of feedbacks. Literature and philosophy could be as inseparable from each other as the language they use from the thoughts signified. That is why it is difficult not to perceive Becketts heritage in both literary as well as in philosophical terms. Arthur Schopenhauer is considered to have influenced Samuel Beckett the most. Schopenhauer was an important discovery for him, perhaps indeed the most important

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literary discovery of his life (Cronin 120). Beckett admired his intellectual justification of unhappiness the greatest that has ever been attempted (Cronin 121). This philosopher appealed to Beckett for many different reasons, but the strongest influence or similarity, as Cronin claims, is to be observed in their attitude towards suffering.

Suffering is for the German philosopher the principal fact of human existence, and he attacks as absurd the idea which underlies almost all metaphysical systems... Suffering, he says, is the positive thing, the norm. Pleasure is the purgative: usually the mere abolition of a desire or cessation of a pain. We are for the most part hardly aware of happiness or satisfaction, but we are acutely aware of pain and deprivation, dissatisfaction and desire, which are with us nearly all time. (Cronin 121)

Maybe that is why Becketts characters are the most suffering creatures in the world, though they are still able to take their fate in a Schopenhauerian way, as something given to human existence. Many of Schopenhauers ideas came to Beckett via another associate Marcel Proust and revealed themselves in Beckett through one of his first written works Proust: Here the artists role is considered in terms primarily derived from Schopenhauer, with Prousts romanticism, relativism, and impressionism having their roots in the doctrine of pessimism (Ackerley and Gontarski 512). It is a general agreement between scholars that Schopenhauers philosophy was more attractive to writers than professional philosophers, and that is in keeping with Becketts being influenced not only by his ideas but also by artistic expression of those ideas:

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Schopenhauer suggests that limited transcendence may be attained through aesthetic contemplation. Some of SBs [Samuel Becketts] dramatic moments are rooted in this paradox, in his acceptance of the experience... but also his distrust of its value (Ackerley and Gontarski 512). Although Beckett equally acknowledged his interest in Schopenhauer: I always knew he was one of the ones that mattered most to me (Knowlson 248); he [Beckett] was not reading philosophy and had no interest in whether Schopenhauer was right or wrong as a metaphysician (Cronin 121); still, there is a clear, possibly coincidental, connection between Schopenhauers doctrine of the lack of ultimate purpose and most of Becketts characters. Another early discovery for Beckett was the Dutch philosopher Arnold Geulincx and his maxim Ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil velis1 echoing with Becketts own Nothing to be done.

Geulincx said that this injunction was the highest principle of ethics from which easily follows each and every obligation, for if nothing ought to be done in vain, one ought to accept both death and life, not struggling against death when God called one away, nor against life when it was given one. And if nothing ought to be done in vain, one ought to accept both death and life... (Geulincx, cited by Cronin 239)

Becketts man seems to follow this ethical obligation in a very exact way. Geulincxes influence is also traceable in what is considered to be an improvement on Descartes, regarding the split of a man into two separate parts: mind and body (Cronin 231). This duality, in Becketts works, is visible not only in the inner world of his characters, but

Where you can do nothing, there wish nothing as translated by Ronald Begley.

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also manifested in their outer duality, represented by complementing, and often seemingly inseparable pairs. Like with Schopenhauer, Geulincxes influence cannot be claimed as unequivocally apart from the maxim Ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil velis, which was deeply in tune with his own quietism and seems to have struck him with great force, though it is difficult to register how much he was really influenced by Geulincx (Cronin 230). Nevertheless, Beckett read, enjoyed, and to certain extent shared Geulincxes philosophy. Becketts later interests shift towards Heidegger, whose philosophy often very closely intertwines with Becketts middle and especially late oeuvre. One of these interconnections is present in the being-there quality of Becketts characters, described by Heidegger in the concept of Dasein: ...Didi and Gogo in Godot are not going anywhere and not doing anything they are just there with a vengeance (Butler 10). This is how in depriving them of noticeable motion and visible aspirations Beckett brings them closer to the real existence symbolized by Heideggers notions described in German as Selbstein (being onself), Das Man (they) and Existenz (existence). Dasein, being based on the given quality of facticity and limited possibilities of free choice is well represented by the concern of Becketts people with their past, as well as by the physical limitation of their presence: The factical situation is usually illustrated by physical limitation amputation, paralysis, blindness. On this level Beckett is a pessimist if it is optimism to minimize facticity and maximise possibility in ones account of man (Butler 15). Doomed to disabilities of all kinds, together with mental incapability and general impotence of their will, Becketts characters have to compensate their Dasein with verbal existence, which takes the form of the storytelling and fantasizing that makes up so much of the novels and a good part of the plays (Butler 15). This is the point where mockery of existence, symbolized by

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pointless dialogues meets with another alternative - being silent. The call does not report events; it calls without uttering anything (Heidegger, cited by Ronell 37) is what can be described as the Heideggerian call of conscience so often symbolized through meaningful silence in Becketts writing. It calls even, though it gives the concernfully curious ear nothing to hear which might be passed along in further retelling and talked about in public... The call discourses in the uncanny mode of keeping silent (Heidegger, cited by Ronell 37). Realizing this, Beckett arrived at what became a widely quoted idea of his, an alternative to the plane of the feasible, which comes from Three Dialogues of Samuel Beckett with Georges Duthuit: ...there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express (Beckett, cited by Harrison, Wood 617). This, as Butler claims:

...is similar to Wittgensteins point of view... speech, language, words are the only way we have of capturing Being, they are certainly all that an author or narrator has to use, and at the same time they are exactly what separates us from Being whence the simultaneous talking and yearning after silence. (Butler 62)

The masterful combination of talk and silence will become a recurring motif regarding not only the inner qualities of Becketts writing, but also his attitude towards it. In Becketts case the obligation to express, or putting it more precisely, the obligation to repeat to express, leads to the habitual quality of the lives created by him, probably best illustrated by Act Without Words I and II. In these mimes the characters silently undergo a series of routines, in one play induced by a mysterious whistle, in the other

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by a goad coming from an unknown source. In both pieces, with every act and deed, the characters seem to escape from routine, only to be thrown back into it at the end of every endeavour. Here, the central focus is neither on utterance, nor on silence, but on repetition, which will be discussed in detail in the last chapter. There are additional parallels between Samuel Beckett and such thinkers as Ren Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Gottfried Leibniz, and others; however, none of their impacts should be overrated. William Tindall puts this concern in the following way:

The trouble with Beckett, for those intent on affinities or influences, is that he seems to have read everything all the novels, plays, and poems and that, whatever the echoes, his work is like nothing else. All philosophy seems his province, from the pre-Socratic fragments to Heidegger and Sartre; all psychology from William James to Freud and the Gestalt. References to these, improving the pedantic air of novels and plays, have led some to think Beckett more of a thinker than he is. Whatever the air, he is first of all an artist... Not ideas but particulars are his concern, not systems but arrangements... Concept and logic, says Beckett, are helpless in a confusion that the artist must order without them. (Tindall 4)

Yet, a mere shift of Becketts oeuvre from the domain of philosophy into the domain of art does not answer many a crucial questions about the nature of his art. Becketts art seems to be even more difficult to classify than his philosophical views. Beckett caught the fever of innovation from various avant-garde movements of the interwar period the expressionists, surrealists and dadaists without becoming a

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devotee of any one ism (Kennedy 21) observes Andrew Kennedy. Anthony Cronin as well is prone to believe, that Beckett is more an artist than a philosopher, and says that Becketts answer to suffering is: through art; but it is an art of a special kind, open to, and reverent before, the operations of involuntary memory, those moments of evocation of the past when the veil of habit is pierced... and almost unbearable nature of reality is perceived (Cronin 145). Butler, in his turn, notices that Becketts art aspires to the nature of existence or being as such: The overall impression gained is that Beckett is asking here for an art that will confront ultimate reality, and art that will correspond not to the socialogical or natural structure of the world, but to its ultimate structure, its ontology (Butler 161). On the other hand, Beckett himself is very conscious of arts inabilities and flaws: The artist is driven by the very fact of being an artist to realise, to create in art, that which is not, which cannot be, because, as soon as it is realised in concrete terms (paint or words) it ceases to be itself. Consequently, it must fail (Beckett, cited by Coe 4). However, even assuming that Becketts writing is an essentially artistic prerogative, it is still quite impossible to stay away from a nondescript quality and multi-referential nature of his writing. Perhaps another difficulty, connected with literary and formal classifications is the blur of the borders between literary genres in some pieces by Beckett. A good example is Whoroscope, a poem, which concerns a philosopher, is a dramatic monologue in free verse, with footnotes more grotesquely pedantic than Eliots (Tindall 4). Therefore, Whoroscope could be considered by critics as a free verse poem, a monodrama, an informative article in prose on Descartes or a mixture of all of these. As it had been said in Chapter One Beckett was equally avant-garde and to some extent, also traditional. He was writing modernist literature in post-modernist times, though some scholars disagree about these epochal classifications. Debuting with

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literary criticism, Beckett continued as a poet and later a novelist, to end up as a playwright. However, his last novel How It Is, was written after he had received worldwide recognition for his best plays. His final work, a year before his death was a poem again What Is the Word. Coe argues that Whereas much of his prose is superb poetry, most of his poetry is a second-rate verse (Coe 14). Talking about his plays, they underwent a continuous evolution. And, paradoxically, the later plays tend to become more theatrical, though less substantially flesh and blood. The plays get nearer to pure theatre, in the sense that they could not function in any other genre or medium... (Kennedy 23). Having in mind Becketts passion for painting and music, it can be said without exaggeration that he was more of a multiple-vector artist than just a playwright. Similar classificatory problems arouse concerning religious motifs in his oeuvre. Here the opinions of scholars are more or less unified, but often differ with audiences responses, especially from his first and early performances, which often varied very radically, from those regarding Beckett as a deeply atheist writer to those ascribing him multiple Christian symbols. However, having received a strictly protestant upbringing from his mother, a well known as a devotee, and living among a Catholic majority, first in Ireland, then in France, it would be hard to isolate himself from Christian symbolism. Butler argues Beckett is not devoid of an interest in religion, but he is certainly not an orthodox Christian (Butler 56). In Waiting for Godot, Tindall notices a variety of theological analogies, suggesting, however, that do not have to be religiously bound:

Lucky speaks of a personal God... with a white beard. The messenger boy and angels are messengers thinks Mr. Godot has a white beard.

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What is more, separating the sheep from goats, he punishes the shepherd, capriciously. Cain, Abel, Adam, Christ, tree, prayer, and repenting the original sin of being born thicken the holy atmosphere. But these hints, proving nothing about Godot, may be there to reveal Vladimirs state of mind, to tease the audience, or to indicate mans hopeless hope. All we know for sure is that waiting for Godot is like waiting for God, that Godot is a kind of nothing. (Tindall 9)

Cronin links these references to Becketts biography: Becketts Christian upbringing and his familiarity with the sacred texts of Judaism and Christianity is evident and is used in all his work... (Cronin 391, 392). Nevertheless, Christianity and Judaism are not the only sources for Becketts religious overtones and go much further beyond these religions. Something else that escaped everybodys notice until much later is the use made of Manichaean ideas in the construction of the work [Krapps Last Tape] (Cronin 485). Cronin draws attention to Becketts use of the three prohibitions of Manichaeanism, one of the major Iranian Gnostic religions, which is preoccupied with the symbolism of light and darkness: ...Krapp is in violation of the three seals or prohibitions of Manichaeanism for the elect: the seal of the hands, forbidding engagement in a profession, the seal of the breast against sexual desire, and the seal of the mouth, which forbids the drinking of wine (Cronin 485, 486). Mayoux seems to be sceptical about any theological implications in Becketts works, perceiving them more like literary myths:

Much has been said of the theological implication of the play, which are almost too obvious. Their purport is another matter. There is nothing

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here except the authors images, cosa mentale. So we can only speak of theological images, and pass on from one more mythology. (Mayoux 31)

The presence of religious connotations is here undeniable, but it is also quite evident that the connotations are reduced by Beckett to laic symbols, which do not have their converting purpose. Becketts religious quests go beyond the scope of traditional beliefs and cults. There are interesting implications on other realms which received a great deal of attention from scholars and resulted in numerous publications: Beckett and politics, Beckett and aesthetics, Beckett and music, Beckett and love, Beckett and myth, Beckett and mathematics, Beckett and Joyce, and even Beckett versus Beckett, and many other contextual studies. It is not the aim of this chapter to present the majority of the studied frameworks of Becketts oeuvre, but rather to show the omnitude of his works, and to underline the variety of nearly endless connotations, references and links. As it has been presented in brief on the basis of Becketts treatment of philosophy, art and religion, he is an author who expands any existing confines of perception and experience. In order not to get lost in the studies of Beckett it seems to be necessary to engage a close reading of his texts, with a focus on certain aspects and tools only. Finally, before proceeding towards a discussion of the tool of repetition, it is necessary to give some consideration of some aspects of his dramatic craft which override the theater of the absurd, such time in opposition to timelessness, language in opposition to silence, and light in opposition to darkness. Becketts use of time is probably the most mesmerizing application in his writing of all. Referring to Becketts lecturing experience Cronin says:

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His [Becketts] lectures contained a good deal of reference to the philosopher Henri Bergson and his distinction between spatial time, which could be measure by clocks, and duration time as it is really experienced by human beings. Bergsons ideas had an immense influence on all the French writers of the early twentieth century... They seem to have remained with Beckett and it is impossible to see later works like Happy Days, Play, and How It Is as being set not in any sort of eternal after-life, as some critics have assumed, but simply as reflecting Bergsonian ideas about time. In the Bergson/Beckett view, the intensities of an experience transcended time. (Cronin 127)

Therefore, time for Beckett is unlikely not linear. Nor are his characters simply reduced to the time experienced by them. Beckett often marks this duality by pointing at two dimensions of time, inner and outer, marking them in different ways. In Waiting for Godot real time is marked by the day and night cycle. Another dimension, the time of nature, is marked by the cycle of a tree and its leaves. All of these are complicated by the characters vague perceptions of time: Estragons reduction to short memory. This is very reminiscent of Schopenhauers doctrine of the eternity of the present: As the ideal limit which separates the past from the future the present is as unreal for the senses as a point in mathematics. But if it is inaccessible to empirical consciousness it can be seen as the superior reality for the metaphysician (McQueeny, 133). Becketts characters seem to exist in such an eternity of the present, where their past and future are often symbolized by their quasi progression in time. Another of Becketts interests

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in time was a philosophical notion the heap of millet, studied by a Greek philosopher Zeno.

Take any finite quantity of millet, and pour half of it into a heap. Then take half of the remaining quantity, and add that to the heap. Then half the remaining quantity again... and so on. In an infinite universe, the heap could be completed; in a finite universe, never, for the nearer it gets to the totality, the slower it increases. (Coe 89, 90)

The scenery of Happy Days, as notices Richard Coe, is the heap of time represented by the heap of sand, which is covering Winnie with the progression of the real time of the play. Although it accumulates with time, the end of the play will not mark the end of Winnie and Willies happy suffering. Pretty early in his writing career, Beckett became fascinated by what Proust called that double-headed monster of damnation and salvation Time (Proust 17). The French author invoked the aid of involuntary memory, and, much later, of art. Both, he believed, had the power to enable the subject to relive instantaneously in the present a total sequence of experience belonging to a past Self, thus enabling the true and extra-temporal Self to escape... (Coe 17). As Coe remarks Beckett was not completely satisfied with such an escape. The mortal microcosm cannot forgive the relative immortality of the macrocosm (Beckett, cited by Coe 19). Becketts answer to this problem lies in his accommodation of repetition as a remedy against the oppression of time. Language is another aspect that distinguishes Beckett from many other writers, including those associated with theater of the absurd. Cronin writes in Becketts biography he [Beckett] had, he said, a particular memory of being at the

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dinner table in his mothers womb shortly before birth. There were guests present and the conversation was, perhaps needless to say, of the utmost banality (Cronin 2). This banality is what constitutes the body of his literary language. Words are here uttered for the purpose of killing time, as well as to mark silence. Throughout his writing career Beckett was striving between these two opposites: talk and silence:

He yearned for silence, the blank white page, the most perfect thing of all... The principal failing of his earlier work, so knowing but also so self-revealing in all the wrong ways, is the failure to achieve a form and a tone of voice which would allow him to express his particular truths. Perhaps this repeated failure made him feel more acutely than most the torment of marred utterance, of false utterance, of would-be significant utterance; and to feel also more intensely than others that the object of true, achieved and necessary utterance is silence in some sense or other, a permission to be silent... (Cronin 376)

That is maybe why his late works seem to be progressing from utterance to silence. However, with Beckett, silence can be more meaningful than talk, and the pauses between utterances do not always go to represent dumbness. In an intrinsic manner to himself, Beckett plays with reversions of these two. Whereas in early prose he speaks to become silent: The analysis of silence in the trilogy shows how the texts tend to undermine any straightforward signification. There is no shared community of meaning that Becketts readers can take shelter in (Loevlie 209); in plays he becomes more silent in order to say more, and to achieve the so-called meaningful silence. The main character of The Unnamable says: All my life... there were three things, the inability to

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speak, the inability to be silent, and solitude... (Beckett, The Unnamable, 389). In the constant fight between this binary opposition Beckett once again comes to repetition; if it is not possible to keep silent, and there is no need to speak, one can repeat what has been already said. With regard to the opposition of light and darkness, and as it has been already hinted earlier, by the mention of the allusion in Krapps Last Tape to Manichaeanism, Becketts drama, unlike any other, makes an extensive use of darkness and light. In some plays the hints concerning the use of light during performances occupy the major part of stage directions. What is more, some of his plays, like Breath or Catastrophe are predominantly set in light for the achievement of a dramatic effect. Jean-Jacques Mayoux suggests that light represents consciousness, so as, to represent outer world.

Desert. Dazzling light: such are the first words of Act without Words I. Expanse of scorched grass... Blazing light is the stage direction to Happy Days. Table and immediately adjacent area in strong white light, that to Krapps Last Tape. This mime should be played at back of stage violently lit in its entire length, to Act without Words II, and it is the obstinate light of consciousness that seems in Play to persist compellingly after death. (Mayoux 8)

Nonetheless, light rarely, maybe with the exception of Happy Days and a few shorter plays, dominates Becketts scene. In most of the plays light is surrounded by darkness, and as in Leibniz virtual, corresponds to the dark zone of the mind and the actual to the light one: Krapp and his tape recorder occupy a circle of bright light surrounded by darkness... For Krapp light means identity and consciousness, but without darkness,

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that he tries to keep under, light would lack all meaning (Tindall 44). Therefore, as Tindall suggests, for Beckett light and darkness never go in isolation; they never go to represent black and white, they are usually supposed to complement each other, forming grey colour. It corresponds well with Becketts famous remarks to the actors when directing his own plays: Too much colour, meaning the limitation of theatrical playfulness. Becketts light and darkness are in a constant move, as darkness changes into light only to be substituted by it in the following round. This repetitive nature of the usage of light in Becketts plays is best illustrated in stage directions for Breath: MAXIMUM LIGHT No bright. If 0 = dark and 10 = bright, light should move from about 3 to 6 and back (Beckett, 371). This also serves to reveal the repetitive nature of Becketts drama and a use of balance in stage-craft which goes beyond a mere will to provoke with absurd differences. All binary oppositions, including time and void, speech and silence, darkness and light, in Becketts use, seem to be based on the mechanism of repetition. Beckett rarely uses them in isolation and often only to mark the absence of the opposite. The utmost of his dramatic effect is, though, achieved by the swinging of these oppositions into constant rotation, which will be specifically analyzed in the following chapter.

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Estragon: I can't go on like this. Vladimir: That's what you think.

Repetition as a dramatic tool in Samuel Becketts writing

The survey of different aspects of Becketts drama to this point has lead to repetition as the most relied upon dramatic tool and catalyst in the plays of Samuel Beckett. As indicated in the analysis in the latter part of the previous chapter and what will be set out and examined in this chapter, are specific examples of repetition in various dramatic works by the author. The preliminary, theoretical part of this chapter will be based on a book, Samuel Beckett: Repetition, Theory, and Text, by Steven Connor, a professor of modern literature and theory at Birkbeck in London. However, given that this book has been devoted for the most part to repetition in Samuel Becketts prose, it will be referenced only for theoretical orientation, and treated rather as a springboard than as the proof for the following considerations, in the context of Becketts plays. The focus will be given to repetition as a dramatic tool, and not to repetition as a concept in itself. For that reason criticism of repetition in the theatre, such as that of Antonin Artaud in his essay The Theatre of and its Double will be omitted. Samuel Beckett: Repetition, Theory, and Text was first published in 1988 and then republished in 2007. Thus far, it has probably been the only published study to have argued that: ...Samuel Beckett, the writer who in this century has most singlemindedly dedicated himself to the exploration of what is meant by such things as being,

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identity and representation, should have at the centre of hs work so strong and continuous a preoccupation with repetition (Connor 1). In the first chapter of the book Difference and Repetition the author claims Becketts world is one of linguistic repetitions... (Connor 2). Connor notices that at the beginning of Becketts writing career, his texts in prose were continually referring to, or repeating texts of other authors, whereas with time it shifted to the reproduction of Becketts own oeuvre. For Beckett repetition was not only a literary tool but also the fundament of his art as such. Therefore, while in texts it would manifest in the constant reappearance of the same, though often obscured under different names, characters, reoccurring situations, motifs, and symbols, beyond them repetition would emerge salient amongst his creative principles. Beckett would constantly recreate his own work, first as a written text, later in the form of a performance, often directed by himself, finally, as a film, as in case with What Where. As a mature playwright he frequently came back to his first and published only posthumously text Dream of Fair to Middling Women in order to rework and make use of some, as he put it, of the craziest ideas. He would not be afraid to give his works the same names, like with Cascando, which he mutated from a poem into a play. Becketts devotion to repetition did not influence only his art, but became a leitmotif of his life: To an extraordinary extent he was a creature of habit (Cronin 504) says Becketts biographer, who gives copious examples of writers habitual procedures, ranging from having a certain amounts of glasses of wines in a cafe to a particular way of making appointments. This quality also reveals itself in Becketts self-translations from French to English, a fastidious duplication of sorts, which he would rarely, with but a few exceptions, confide to others.

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Steven Connor gives an account of the ideas of other thinkers, concerning repetition in philosophical context. According to him, Jacques Derrida sees the double nature of repetition as follows:

Repetition is at one and the same time that which stabilizes and guarantees the Platonic model of original and copy and that which threaten to undermine it... Repetition is therefore subordinated to the idea of the original, as something secondary and inessential. For this reason, repetition is conventionally condemned in Western culture as parasitic, threatening and negative. (Connor 3)

Moreover, this problem can be reversed to the other direction, in which a copy would question and challenge its original. Derrida traces this dichotomy back to the opposition between spoken and written texts. However, he says there is a certain difference between mere copying and a repetition: the same line is no longer exactly same, the ring no longer has exactly the same centre, the origin has played (Derrida 296). For Derrida repetition is in the process of circularity, and not in a beginning or an end. Another philosopher cited by Connor is Deleuze. Deleuze says he, distinguishes two forms of repetition: mechanical or naked subservient to its original and clothed or disguised repetition, which tries to bring some kind of modification. Delueze claims, though, that repetition can never be the same: In order to be recognizable as such, a repetition must, in however small a degree, be different from its original... Repetition is difference without force or without force to guarantee identity and therefore a principle which can force identity apart (Connor 7). Connor says that for Deleuze and his associate, Foucault, nomadic difference is seen as a liberation

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from the constricting untruth of difference and repetition in the service of the Same (Ibid.). Finally, Deleuze brings back his analysis to Nietzschean eternal recurrence, a simulacrum of some sort in which the very opposition between original and copy is done away with (Ibid.). In this sense, repetition becomes a powerful, liberating tool.

Repetition in eternal recurrence presents itself under all its aspects as the essential power of difference; and the displacement and disguise of that which repeats itself act only to reproduce the divergence and decentring of the different, in a single movement which is the diaphora or transport. Eternal recurrence affirms difference, affirms dissemblance and disparity, chance, multiplicity and becoming. (Deleuze, cited by Connor 8)

This takes repetition a step further, to the point where it is perceived as a process, a continuum which transfers the centre of gravity from an original and subsequent reproductions. Such a change of the focus allows Ruby Cohn to see repetition as the central point between a predecessor and a successor. Repetition is above all intensification and magnification of a centre, so that, in the end it is a metaphorical device which collapses art and life into unity... (Connor 12). In Connors understanding Cohns point is closer to Deleuzes term, clothed repetition, the one that is based upon symmetry. This as, Connor argues, allows perception of Becketts works a whole unity and guarantees the originality of every separate work. The last consideration in the first chapter of Connors book is that of Bruce Kawin, who distinguishes destructive repetition of habit, from two forms of constructive repetition in film and writing. The first concept as Connor reports is

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based on the principle of integral memory, and certain totality. The other one: considers the present to be the only apprehensible tense and deals with each instant and subject as a new thing, to such an extent that the sympathetic reader is aware less of repetition than of continuity (Kawin, cited by Connor 13). This, as Connor says seems to correspond to Deleuzes distinction between habit and memory and reminds one of Bergsonian dure, the merging of past and present. Kawin praises Becketts work as exemplifying that intense being-in-the-present which can free us from dead repetitions of habit (Connor 13). All these are plausible arguments, but do not give enough attention to the very alternations occurring from one repetition to another. Steven Connor notices this and proposes:

...to move towards a consideration of the principle of repetition as it operates upon Becketts texts, as well as within them, in the work of displacement involved in the production and reproduction of dramatic text, and the displacements and reapproapriations effected by criticism and commentary... At this point, repetition will emerge as something more than a principle of inert, indifferent plurality, and become and become visible as a principle of power, embodying authority, subordination, conflict, and resistance. (Connor 14)

Such an argument, however, assumes that there is some form of tension in the process of repetition as well as in the course of getting critical feedback. A potential commentary could hence influence the repetition itself, which introduces still another binary opposition of repetition within the work and out of it.

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Connors considerations will therefore stay out of the focus of this argument, as the latter is concerned with Becketts art, through the prism of his drama works, and in certain isolation from criticism. Another difference with Connors attitude lies in his statement:

But if repetition is by its nature dual, concerned with relationship rather than essence, then to restrain analysis to the effects of repetition within texts is to run the risk of reinstating the subordination of repetition to the Same, creating of Becketts oeuvre a closed system which both permits and precludes the play of repetition. (Connor 13, 14)

The argument of this chapter implies something rather opposite; Becketts repetition never comes to the Same, as it may grow in a cumulative way, and therefore never comes to the end. That is why, although Becketts oeuvre is a completed and formally closed set of works, it never stops to proceed from the inside, repeating itself, but in such a way, that it is getting beyond the closed system of completed circles. New critical books and an unrelenting interest in his works over time seem to support this hypothesis. Waiting for Godot, the second of Samuel Becketts plays, and the first one ever staged, was also the first to exploit the tool of repetition on such an ambitious scale. Beckett introduces in it, that which reappears in most of his ensuing plays, and what was coined in Beckett country as SBs [Samuel Becketts] psychological landscape... replete with bicycles, dogs, dustbins, and destitutes in hats, greatcoats, and ill-fitting boots (Ackerley and Gontarski, 40). Waiting for Godot stage directions concerning landscape are very minimalistic: A country road. A tree. Evening. (1).

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Later, only a few additional props add to this wretched and humdrum view. Becketts attitude to scenery is best described by his own account of landscapes in Czannes paintings: Atomistic landscape with no velleities of vitalism, landscape with personality la rigueur (Knowlson and Haynes 84, 85). In Endgame this scenery is described as Bare interior (Waiting for Godot 92); in Happy Days illustrated as Maximum of simplicity and symmetry. Another recurrence in the major plays is Beckett man:

Beckett man is a lone individual who regards other with fear, hatred, impatience or contempt... He does not believe in the brotherhood of man; and questions of equality are disposed of by the eager admission that he is, in all respects, inferior. He lays no claim to any virtue that can be named except to a rather dubious humility and a too eagerly embrace resignation.... The Beckett man has usually no past except, since he has been born, a mother or mother memory. He belongs to no recognizable community. He has no employments or qualifications for employment . Nor has he any sources of income except charitable ones. (Cronin 379, 380)

Vladimir and Estragon, the two main characters of Waiting for Godot, have their counterparts in Hamm and Clov in Endgame, and Winnie and Willie in Happy Days. Secondary characters from Endgame, Nagg and Nell, presage the appearance of a married couple in Happy Days. Repetition is also revealed in the very titles of the plays. Whereas waiting implies some iteration in time, endgame describes a situation in the game of chess when the final result of a game, except for a draw, is hard to achieve

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and usually takes a great deal of, and potentially, an amount infinite time, while Happy Days is an ironic metaphor for the previous two never-ending recurring in time. The patterns of repetition are present also in the naming of the characters, usually, being based, on mutual adjunctions: Didi and Gogo, as in French dis-dis for talk-talk and English go-go. In Endgame, the characters names circle around the semantic connection between a nail and a hammer (Humm): Nagg (German nagel - nail), Clov (French clou - nail) and Nell (English nail). Winnie and Willie - are another pair of rhyming and complementing pairs. The metaphorical significance of names in Becketts writing is one of the most regular patterns. Concerning the non-formal patterns of repetition, all major plays open and close in order to acquire circular structure. Waiting for Godot opens with Estragons words: [Giving up again.] Nothing to be done (Waiting for Godot 11), and ends with his Yes, lets go [They do not move.] (Waiting for Godot 88). Endgame starts with the metaphor for the heap of millet: Clov: Finished, its finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished. [Pause.] Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there is a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap (Endgame 93), and closes with the Hamms monologue, which ends with the words: You... remain. (Endgame 134). Another heavenly day says Winnie at the beginning of Happy Days, and Oh this is a happy day, this will have been another happy day!... (Endgame 168). In all three plays opening and closing lines form bracket structures, which like in Endgame almost literally suggest that these plays begin where they end. The readers and viewers are informed at the very start that what they have in front of them are elements chosen, maybe incidentally, of an endless series. In order to achieve that, Samuel Beckett uses repetition not only within a single act, as in Endgame, usually by referring to a closed circle pattern of a day or another period of time, but also shows repeating regularity

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between two acts, which evokes an association with a mathematical equation that progresses towards perpetuity. Therefore, Waiting for Godot and Happy Days, and to some extent also Endgame, assume that there is some informal point of division into two within the text of the play. What allows for repetition between the acts, and still maintains some variations between them, is the motif of destroyed memory. The characters of Becketts plays have little or no memory of the past, which dooms them and makes them happy at the same time. On one hand, they are condemned because they are unconscious of the sameness of their existence, on the other hand, it allows them to survive this dreadful monotony. That is why they always add some new, at least in their own perceptions, quality to the following day. They entertain themselves or kill their time using the same patterns, making use of the same games and rituals, however, always filled with new rules and content. This quality guarantees the survival not only of the characters but also of the viewers, and this makes Becketts art inimitable. In terms of the technical aspects of repetition, they rarely alter from one major play to another. In Waiting for Godot, Vladimir and Estragon often resort to dull exchanges, in the form of dialogue, however devoid of its traditional function communication.

Estragon: What is it? Vladimir: I dont know. A willow. Estragon: Where are the leaves? Vladimir: It must be dead. Estragon: No more weeping. Vladimir: Or perhaps its not the season.

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Estragon: Looks to me like a bush. Vladimir: A shrub Estragon: A bush. Vladimir: A -. What are you insinuating? That weve come to the wrong place? (Waiting for Godot 15, 16)

These pseudo dialogues, as a rule, lead to wrong or no conclusions, which in turn initiate further senseless talk and further bewilderment. Very often they become musiclike, as with the case of seven times repeated adieu, by Estragon, Vladimir and Pozzo, which rhymes with thank you and closes with, again, meaningless repetitions of yes, yes and no, no phrases (Waiting for Godot 45, 46). Such song-like fragments are often based, on the repetition of the same initial or end sounds, and syllables:

Estragon: A relaxation. Vladimir: A recreation. Estragon: A relaxation. (Waiting for Godot 64)

The specificity of this type of repetition is that it is usually performed by pairs of characters, as if a song or a poem, which is performed separately but in perfect unison.

Hamm: How are your eyes? Clov: Bad. Hamm: How are your legs? Clov: Bad.

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Hamm: But you can move. Clov: Yes. (Endgame 95)

In Happy Days, where Willies partner does not take an active part in such exchanges this function is condensed in Willies monologues. Once again, it is repetition, which allows for this: My arms. [Pause.] My breasts. [Pause.] What arms? [Pause.] What breasts? [Pause.] Willie. [Pause.] What Willie? [Sudden vehement affirmation.] My Willie! [Eyes right, calling.] Willie! [Pause. Louder.] Willie! (161). This not only brings poetic features into Becketts drama, but also attracts attention to the repetitious nature of his characters. It is worth pointing out that such strains tend to sound like one text, but performed by two, or more characters. This strengthens repetition. Still another tool for stressing repetition is Becketts use of different symbolic props, some of which are movable, some of which remain still until the ending. The movable objects might be contingently divided into different categories, such as: food (including painkillers), pieces of clothes (especially hats and shoes), bags and boxes (often in the form of dustbins) and weapons (which are often of no use, or out of reach). Certain of these props might change from act to act, as in Waiting for Godot, where carrots and turnips change into carrots and radish; or from play to play, like in Endgame, in which vegetables are substituted by biscuits, given by Clov to Nagg and Nell. Such objects might be exchanged between characters, as in Estragon and Vladimirs five-time exchange of bowlers in act two of Waiting for Godot. Immovable objects, on the other hand, in Becketts plays often mark repetition but have a little bit different function. Immobile props, like a tree in Waiting for Godot, windows in Endgame, a heap of sand in Happy Days, being static in their nature, cannot move but still can and might alternate. The tree grows a few leaves in act two, a heap of sand grows in size, windows

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are repeatedly closed and opened by Clov. Functioning as points of reference, they make semi-plots circulate around them. In this manner, Vladimir and Estragon want to use the tree as the gallows, try in vain to hide behind it, attempt to imitate it in the exercise of balance. Other powerful markers of repetition are connected with time. These are the Moon and Pozzos watch in Waiting for Godot, the Sun, which is visible only to Clov in Endgame, or an alarm clock which wakes up Winnie and Willie in Happy Days, stressing repetition by regular drawing attention to real time. Certain types of repetition are based on listing: list of dances Lucky could have been once able to perform, according to Pozzo, or the list of sports, from Luckys monologue: tennis football running cycling swimming flying floating riding gliding conating camogie skating tennis of all kinds dying flying sports of all sorts autumn summer winter tennis of all kinds of hockey... (Waiting for Godot 42). Again, such lists are organized upon the principle of alliteration, rhymes, and rhythms. Becketts short pieces, including mimes, and experimental sketches are sometimes very different in their qualities; however, some patterns of repetition are still comparable in many of these plays. Most of these works were written in the third stage of Becketts writing career when his writing was becoming more and more minimalist. Beckett country is pruned to a plain background with different variations of grey colour. Beckett man changes from a lone individual (character) into an everyman (player) devoid of individualism, whose face is either indistinguishable from other faces in the play, half seen, or reduced to specific body parts, such as the mouth, in Not I, or the hands in Nacht und Trume. In these types of plays, as in one of his titles, A Piece of Monologue, dialogues morph into mechanical self-repeating pieces of monologues. In the minimal surrounding of such plays, sparse props and brisk phrases begin to take on a highly symbolic role. Even the smallest sighs, as in Rockaby or

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breathing in Breath might assume a central place in a play. Repetition thus becomes even more pronounced. It can be marked by a whistle sound, as in Act Without Words I, in order to signal different things to the main character, or by a goad, as in Act Without Words II, which ruptures the sacks with people to emphasize their responses. Moreover, if, in major plays repetition stresses monotony, in short pieces it rather breaks it, and functions to establish changes. In Come and Go, the leaving and arriving of three women sitting on a bench-like seat breaks the play into three facile parts, which repeat, with slight, but very meaningful alterations. The fact, that the plays are short dramatizes repetition and makes it easier to grasp. Some characters in short plays become aware of repetition themselves: Flo: I can feel the rings (Come and Go 355); some stay unconscious. One short play What Where is to a great extent based on repetition. At its beginning, the voice of Bam, seemingly the main character and a director of the play, speaking with a small megaphone, says:

We are the last five. In the present as were we still. It is spring. Time passes. First without words. I switch on. (470)

Players as alike as possible (469), named Bem, Bim, and Bom reappear to be asked questions and given orders by Bam:

Bam: Well?

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Bom: [Head bowed throughout.] Nothing. Bam: He didnt say anything? Bom: No. Bam: You gave him the works? Bom: Yes. Bam: And he didnt say anything? Bom: No. Bam: He wept? Bom: Yes. Bam: Screamed? Bom: Yes. Bam: Begged for mercy? Bom: Yes. Bam: But didnt say anything? Bom: No. (472)

As time passes through summer, autumn and winter, some new allegorical questions arise, like what and where, however, none of them are ever answered. At the end when all characters seem to be dead, Bam reappears, and his voice from a loudspeaker says: That is all. Make sense who may (476). Without the instrument of repetition in Becketts works this sense would be very hard to grasp. Beckett well understood the value of technology and its potential for innovation in theatre. With that, sound, image and lighting effects afforded new experimentation in the tool of repetition. Becketts works for radio, like Rough for Radio I, Rough for Radio II, Embers, Words and Music, Cascando, use various

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auditory techniques. In the radio plays, being limited to sound only, Beckett makes a full use of pauses, silences and music. Theatre practice can never by pause or silence effect a total cessation of impulses: only radio can (Zilliacus 159). Pauses and silence, which had always been an important part of Becketts plays, take a central part in radio productions.

The tempo of Mr. Rooneys [All That Fall] stick and his feet establishes itself; it is repeated in the same way as Mrs. Rooneys footsteps earlier on, in the sequence of four phrases, then in the same tempo and without any glossing over it a purely percussive and unrealistic pattern replaces it. The sudden jump from real to symbolic, unmodified by any attempt to make the transition palatable, is in itself dramatic, and registers emotionally as a turning-point in the play. From this point on, we use the symbolic footsteps as a purely musical device, and sometimes simply for the sake of their own musical effect. (McWhinnie cited by Zilliacus 71)

Beckett gives pauses and silences repetitive structure, serving to illustrate Martin Esslins comment: sound effects can be used most tellingly in radio drama, but only if they have been orchestrated into the total structural pattern, if they play the part of a refrain, a recurring image... (Esslin cited by Zilliacus 71). The same structural pattern is used in Krapps Last Tape, which due to its extensive use of a tape recorder can be included into the radio plays; tape allows Beckett to increase the effect of repetition. Here, not only does Krapps real voice keep repeating the same stories of his life, but also his recorded voice from the past. As the play was written in the last stage of

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Becketts life, some images and motifs now reappear from his earliest works. For instance, the name Krapp comes from Becketts first play, Eleutheria. The highest mastery of repetition that Beckett achieves occurs in his film productions: Film and Quad. In Film Beckett plays with Bishop Berkeleys Esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived). The main character has a specific vision, E which is his eye, represented by the cameras lens, and O = himself, who is being chased. The utmost effect of repetition lies in changes of perspective, to visions represented of other living creatures (cat, dog, parrot and a fish), non-living objects (window, glass, picture) and finally himself the protagonist. All of these visions are intertwined with each other, making escape virtually impossible. Here, words are substituted by a vista, hence all repetition in Film is optical as well. An even more allegorical and condensed function of repetition occurs in Quad, A piece for four players, light and percussion (451) in which The players (1, 2, 3, 4) pace the given area, each following his particular course (451). In Quad Becketts move towards abstractness reaches perfection. The four players do not utter a word; pauses and silence balance sounds of percussion and steady, synchronized walking tempos. Players do not move chaotically, but according to a very specific series represented by numbers and geometric coordinates. The tool of repetition in the play is based on mathematical combinations and the doctrine of relativity. However, as with some kind of abstract painting, it is not regularity, which matters, but a work of art composed of numbers, arrows, letters, latitudes and traces. Players in Quad are moving from an outer square to an inner one. Taking for granted that they came out of a bigger, invisible quadrate a viewer can feel that such quadrates are infinite, although the number of movements within them, as in life, are always mathematically restricted.

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The tool of repetition in each of the three kinds of Becketts plays can be summed up by directions from Words and Music As before or only very slightly varied (294). As it has been shown, Becketts repetition is never the same and has specific patterns of development. Circularity revolves not only within single acts but also from act one to act two, from one play to another, from one form to a different one. These differing manifestations speak against the argument that Becketts repetition works in a closed system. The oeuvre works as closed system; however, it has a perpetual motion quality, which allows it to go beyond itself.

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Conclusion
This thesis has been concerned to show Samuel Becketts distinction from typically associated writers, as revealed by the novel use of repetition in his plays. Chapter One presented Martin Esslins definition of the theatre of the absurd, emphasizing an evolutionary manner in its development, rather than a revolutionary one. From that point of departure, consideration moved to a comparison and contrast of Becketts oeuvre with the basic fundamentals of the theatre of the absurd, concluding Becketts difference from it. Chapter Two looked at Becketts drama beyond the frames of the theatre of the absurd, showing most aspects of his writing are held in repetition. Finally, in Chapter Three, repetition is evinced in fact, as the very dominating tool of Samuel Becketts writing. In exploring Becketts writing, only a few aspects are shown to be fully characteristic of the theatre of the absurd. Most other features, distinctly Beckett, go beyond Martin Esslins conception a heuristic that pivoted on functions of the theatres prior development, and more concerned with responses to Becketts works, than with the works themselves. In contemporary criticism, viewing Beckett through the prism of the theatre of the absurd, can lead to unnecessary over-interpretations or, on the other hand, it might narrow the potential interpretations to the limits of its own range. Inasmuch as Becketts oeuvre forms a sort of unified whole, based on the tool of repetition, then, this repetition starts to lose its meaning as soon as any fragment is considered in the context of the theatre of the absurd, and other associated authors, as their works do not resonate with Beckett in the way intended by the critics. The theatre of the absurd necessarily drives any potential study of Becketts works toward a

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comparison with other authors and works in frames typifying the theatre. Therefore, the study of Beckett, if it is to be done justice, is in need of being taken a step further from what has become a conventional perspective. The tool of repetition is proposed herein as that potential step.

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