Samuel Beckett
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Gustav Meyrink

    Gustav Meryink (b. 1868, Vienna; d. 1932, ??city??)

Best know for his novel "The Golem"  (1916) about a frankenstein-like
man who causes no end of havoc. Based on ancient Hebrew (et al) tales
of "THE GOLEM". Cf/qv Frankenstein (Mary Shelly), robot stories, etc.

Wrote for the influential German gazette: "Simplicissimus", as well.


On this page:  {B/G}
               {Hobson's review and i/v with Beckett}
               {Notes on Watt
               {Quotes}  (it's the shape man, it's the shape ;)


SB: Dramatist of the Year
by Harold Hobson (Theatre Annual, Pp. 153-155) 

NOTE: Format edited for FORM slightly; Frank.
[P.153]
I began this conversation with Samuel Beckett one summer morning in the 
bar of the Coupole, whilest a man on the opposite side of the 
Boulevard Montparnasse climbed a lader in order to lop off some of
the branches of a too burgeoning tree; and finished it, on a duller, 
drabber day, in Madam Purnier's in St. James' Street.

"You have lived in France a long time", I said. 

"Yes", he replied. "But I still have my green Eire passport".

"What we all are arguing about in London", I went on, "is the meaning of
Waiting for Godot".

"I take nop sides about that", he quickly responded.

"There is", I went on, "the incident of Estragon's boots". (The tramp
Estragon was always having trouble with his boots. One of them would 
go on comfortably, and the other would not go on at all. In despair,
Estragon used to leave the boots in front of the curtain at the 
Criterion Theatre during the interval.

"One of Estragon's feet is blessed, and the other is damned. The boot
won't go on the foot that is damned; and it will go on the foot that
is not. It is like the two thieves on the cross".

"You wre brought up a Protestant?", I enquired.

"Yes. Almost a Quaker. But I soon lost faith. I don't think I
ever had it after leaving Trinity [College]".

"And yet the theieves on the cross interest you. Vladimir is troubled
to account for one of them being lost and the other saved. How can you
be so pre-occupied with this when you do not believe in salvation?"

It was at this point that Beckett became eager, excited. His sharp,
rugged face leaned over the table. "I am interested in the shape of
ideas even if I do not believe them. There is a wonderful sentence
in Augustine. I wish I could remember the Latin. It is even finer in
Latin than in English. [Note 1] 

   'Do not dispair; one of the thieves was saved.
    Do not presume; one of the theives was damned.'

That sentence has wonderful shape [Note 2] It is the
shape that matters".

In all the sentences that Beckett writes [Note 3] it is the shape
that matters. His work is founded on an anti-thesis; he has
established in literature the importance of the contradition,
the contradition that can range from "She loves me, she loves me  
not" to "Godot will come, Godot will not come". 

Augustine recalls, immediately he has stated one fact, that the 
impression creates will not be a ture one unelss he immediately 
recalls another which qualifies it. There is no such thing as simple
certainty; at least there is no such thing as imple certainty for 
Samuel Beckett. We can see this [P.154] in "Watt". 

   "Finally, to return to the incident of the Galls father 
    and son, as related by Watt, did it have that meaning
    for Watt at the time of its taking place [Note 4], and then
    lose that meaning, and then reeover it? Or did it have some 
    quite different meaning, and then recieve that, alone or 
    among others, which is exhibied in Watt's relations? Or 
    did it have no meaning whatever for Watt at the moment
    of its taking palce, were there neither Gallas nor piano
    then, but only an un-intelligible succession of changes,
    from which Watt finally extracted the Galls and the piano,
    in self defence? These are most delicate questions".

When the crippled, destitute bedraggled heor of Molloy is lost
in the forest, the same process of the refinement and qualification of
thought, the same process of anti-thesis, of the oppostion of word and
phrase, goes on in his balled brain. "And having heard, or more probably
read somewhere, in the days when I thought I would be well advised to
educate myself, or amuse myself, or stupefy myself, or kill time, that 
when a man in a forest thinks he is going forward in a straigh line, in 
reality he is going in a circle, I did my bestto go in a circle, hoping
in this way to go in a straight line". 

Here again, it is the balance of words that matters, the shape and the
cadence of the phrases. Henri Peyré, in The Contemporary French Novel,
a book I admire very much, says of Beckett:

      He sprang to glory with Molloy, which attracted 
      readers to his earlier Murphy and to Malonone 
      Meurt. ... Molloy is an epic of  nothingess about
      an ill man, whose memory has been destroyed and who rides 
      on a bicyle to visit his dying mother;. He will never reach 
      his goal, like Kafka's surveyor ???*** REF ***???.  He getst lost
      in a forest, falls into a ditch and stays there, mumbling 
      to himself. Meanwhile, a man and his sone have been asked to
      go after Molloy, of whom they had never heard. Both become
      afflicted by paralysis, are separated, involed in a murder,
      and reduced to the the lowest level of degradation. The
      voluntary obscurity of the novel has spurred commentators
      to ingeneous exegreses. THe underlying assertion, if one 
      may use such a term for a literature of total negation [!], 
      seems to be that everything and everybody is in a state of
      disentegration and that yielding to some object nirvana is
      perhaps the only relief from anguish and absurdity that man 
      can seek. [Note 5]

Just as M. Peyré tries to extract from Molloy a series of sharp,
destinct, and un-contradictory ideas [(ie, the search for *coherence*,
*continuity*, and *clarity* ! ;)] so the audiences at Waiting for
Godot tormented themselves with the question, what does the play
mean? SOme peopel thaought tha tGodot was God, some that Lucky was
Godot; some tha tPozzo represented Capitalism, and Lucky Labour; 
some that Estragon and Vladimir were material and spiritual aspects
of the sam eperson; whilst one admireer of the play, more ingenious
than most, divined that the bully Pozzo was the U.S.S.R., the 
enslaved Lucky the satellites in eastern Europe, that the two 
tramps were Great Britain and France, both waiting for Godot,
or the United States, to come to their help.

Now, I neither agree not disagree nor dis-agree with these explanations
of Waiting for Godot, just as I neither agree nor dis-agree
with Monsieur Peyré's interpretation of Molloy. They seem to me
merely besie the point. I believe that Waithing for Godot has a 
little or as much meaning as a fugue, or a sunset, as a rainbow or a
Chippendale chair. there are pople who think that a rainbow is God's 
assurance that there will never be a Flood. I know; I have talked
to them. There are others who think it is merely an optical phenomenon.
The raninbox may be equally beautiful to both classes of people, 
beacause its beauty has nothing to do with its meaning, if it has
meaning. [contrast this to the "beauty" of ab ex paintings] 

Nor has the beauty of Waiting for Godot anything to do with
its meaning, if it has a meaning. THis beauty depends [P.155] on
symmetry, on balance, on shape; on the the anti-thesis between the
triumphant Pozzo and the beaten Lucky in the first act, and the 
reversal of their positions in the second; [Note 6]
on the balance between the boy's appearance at the end of the first 
act and his re-appearance at the end of hte second; on the strophe
and anti-strophe of the speeches of the two tramps; on the musical
inter-play of words and silence[s]. The play is not an appeal to
reason, nor is it a puzzle. To search fro its meaning will reduce
to futility the acutest intellect, just as to yield to the
exquisite ordering of its ideas, its echoes, and its associations
will exalt the humblest spirit.

[needless to say, i *do* think it has meaning, and much of its 
 equisit ordering of the ideas has to do with that at no time
 is a duck required for the performance!  2005.11.18, Dallas, Terra]
    

Need to look up:  M. Anouilh's plays (ref to P. 54; op. cit.)

J.W. Lambert, P.55:  "Lucky became in TRimothy Batesen, with his tiny
                      pinched face, and the halting voice of an old,
scratched, worn-out gramophone record, a frightening crature -- as
frightening in his determination to server as in his evident decay,
and somehow made more horrible by his master's shame on his behalf."

Notes
(This section only)

[1] Now if *that* isn't a call for a librarian, then i don't
    know the cost (in herrings) of a towel!

**** FIND LATIN CONTENT ****

{Back to the TEXT}


[2]  This (for some reason) strikes a very strong chord in me
     as to the fate of the Bakku in "Star Trek Insurrrection".
Choosing the quiet path *** must research ****  crafts, artisans,
and then the contrast of ultra technology -- that [F. Murray Abrahm's
character] wants to use this vastly destructive machine to save himself.
It's as if to twist the fates (that the two thieves be saved -- and
he is the one that is damned (hubris, yes; but more by the person
who he has become: the leader who is driven by hatred) -- and at
what cost? his past, the denined past; eg, the changed names). 

The phrase:  that sentence has a wonderful shape.

{Back to the TEXT}


[3]  Alas, "In all [of] the sentences that Beckett has Written..."  If
     only we could model *that* equation. PKD-A --> SB-A (ala Borges).
QQ: If we make a JLB-A what does that tell us? Imagine an entire room
of such robots (androids) conversing in a space!  Twain/Douglass, 
Borges/Dick, Beckett/Ionesco, Picasso/Stein, Emily/Langston, etc!

{Back to the TEXT}


[4]  Again this goes back to Point #2 in Michael Kirby's
     "aethetics of the avant guarde" [Here]

Thus, the "current perception" (eg, "well, it wasn't funny at the
time", etc) vs. the *recalled* perception in the future (and of
course, "Yojimbo"

{Back to the TEXT}


[5] Compare this with Ibsen's idea of the "life-sustaining illusion". For
    example, in "The Wild Duck", Hialmar sustains his mundane life by
the "illusion" that fiddling with lenses and such, that he might one
day invent a new kind of camera. Indeed, Greggers can not (at the very
end of the play) accept what he has done -- his own life sustaining
illusion that "the truth will set you free" is but yet another blindness
that we create to shield ourselves from the *actual* truth. It is 
arguable (i would maintain) that as artists/poets/etc it is this
un-willingness to embrace these lies and cause us to go mad. A van 
Gogh that can accept a "comfortable middle class life", settle down,
take a wife, get a job is not the van Gogh of our world. And yet
is Picasso that other-world van Gogh who found a way to live a
comfortable life by sheer in-exhaustible production. And what of
David Smith who produced a work a day? Are the rest of us just
slackers? 

{Back to the TEXT}


[6] Actually, i would argue that Lucky is worse off than he was before. Thus,
    far from *his* fate being "reversed", it's taken a turn for the worse. As
Pozzo is "brought down", he drags Lucky down as well; eg, the shorter rope.
Also the fact that Lucky is deprived of his ability to speak (ie, think) is
another indication of this. 
  
{Back to the TEXT}


[7] 


{Back to the TEXT}

Next: Watt.

  

Watt

PR 6003.E282'W32'1970 -- Watt

"Samuel Beckett's Novel Watt", by Gottfried Büttner,
PR 6003.E282'W3432'1984

ALso refer to "shape" essay in:


PQ 2603.E378'E677'1987, Edited by (big drum roll here!)
       Harold Bloom (natch -- tips towel to "H.B."

"The Language of Myth" by Bert O. States; Pp. 79-94.

(oddly enough he starts the novel but does NOT give Hobson 
 credit for the i/v !!!)

"Merlin junviniles"

****** NEED TO RESEARCH Gottfried Büttner **** ??who??

Notes
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[6] 


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[8] 


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[9] 


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[10] 


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"One cannot speak anymore of being, one must speak only of
the mess. When Heidegger and Sartre speak of a contrast 
between being and existence, they may be right. I don't know,
but thier langauge is too philosophical for me. I am not a
philosopher. One can only speak of what is in front of him,
and that now is simply the mess. ... [It] invades our 
experiences at every moment. It is there and it must be 
allowed [into art].  ... What I am saying does not mean 
that there will henceforht be no form in art. It only
means that there will be a new ofrm and that this form
will be of such a type that it admits the chaos and
does not try to say that the chaos is really something 
else. The form and the chaos remain separate.  ... That 
is why the form itself becomes a pre-occupation, because
it exists as a problem separate from the material it 
accomodates. To find a form that accommodates the
mess, that is the task of the artist now.
  -- as quoted in "Reading Godot", by Lois Gordon
LCCN PQ 2603.E378'E644'2020, ISBN 0.300.09286.5
(Yale Univ, 2002)

Quotes

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