beckett in sydney

8/9/2019 Beckett in Sydney

1/24

Spring 2003Volume 26No. 1

In This Issue:

Beckett in:

Sydney

New York Paris Ussy-sur-Marne

Yasunari Takahashi

Upcoming Events

Reviews

Beckett in SydneyThe Public Face of Beckett “DownUnder”

Held for three weeks each January, the Festivalof Sydney is Australia’s most attended annu-al cultural event. This year the festival hap-pened to coincide with the 50th anniversary ofthe world premiere ofEn attendant Godot , on5 January 1953, at the Théâtre de Babylone inParis. Company B’s anniversary production

ofWaiting for Godot , directed by Neil Arm eld

at Sydney’s Belvoir Street Theatre (5 January–- 23 February), thus became the centerpiecewithin the Sydney Festival proper of a mini-Beckett Festival that also included a majorproduction of Endgame by Sydney TheatreCompany, the Biennial International SamuelBeckett Symposium, attended by more than ahundred delegates, the Aus-tralian premiere screeningof all nineteen works fromBeckett on Film , and severalother stimulating Beckett-re-

lated events. A Beckett Public Lectureheld at Sydney Town Hallfeatured the Booker-Prize-winning novelist J. M. Coet-zee (who wrote his PhDdissertation on Beckett)and the performance theo-rist and theatre practitionerHerbert Blau, Professor ofEnglish at the University ofWashington, who directedthe famous San QuentinGo-dot in 1957. Coetzee and Blauspoke on “paths to and fromBeckett.” They were joined by the prominent Frenchfeminist philosopher LuceIrigaray via video-link in aninteractive lecture on Coe-tzee and Beckett and “thephilosophical question of re-lations with other people.”

The Beckett “mini-festi-val” received widespread

advance publicity in the national mediatival director Brett Sheehy had repor“battled for two years” to obtain rightsthe Beckett estate. The Oscar-winning lmactor Geoffrey Rush had agreed to takeand was perceived as the main attraand likely “rescuer” ofGodot from its histof arcane interpretation. (Rush once pVladimir opposite Mel Gibson’s Estraga 1979 student production, and has a lontory of collaboration with Arm eld and Company B). Then, in August 2002, Rush abwithdrew from the production on accoua clash with his work on a forthcominglywood adventure movie. As it turnedArm eld’s Godot was a sell-out anyhowits own merits and led the Beckett celebto an undreamt of position as national tapoint.

Arm eld’s innovation of occasional piece

THE BECKETT CIRCLE CERCLE DE BECKETTO N e w s l e t t e r o f t h e S a m u e l B e c k e t t S o c i e t y


2/24

2

of improvised music contributed to the play’s impact onthe Australian public, after provoking Beckett’s nephewand sole executor, Edward Beckett, to threaten an injunc-tion to close the production down. Mr. Beckett was theguest of honor at the Symposium. In his speech at theopening session, he focused on what he perceives to be“aberrations” of Beckett’s work, making special mentionof productions that diverge from the speci ed numberand gender of characters, and those that attempt to stage

Beckett’s prose. Later, at the launch of the SydneyGodot ,he attracted attention by sitting “stony-faced through-out … before abruptly getting up and leaving as the restof the audience applauded,” Sharon Verghis wrote inthe Sydney Morning Herald. He refused to meet the cast backstage for a planned photo opportunity, and he toldArm eld either to remove the music before the next per -formance or else face being shut down. According toArm eld, Edward Beckett asked him whether he’d readthe contract. Arm eld said, no, he’d read the play, whichis his usual starting point. Hence, some attention was drawn away from Austra-lia’s drubbing at home by the Sri Lankan national cricketteam (where Samuel Beckett’s spirit would probablyhave been hovering, according to his nephew) by a heat-ed public dramatization of the issues of control and litiga-tion in the arts. These are already well known, of course,in the Beckett world. Australians tend traditionally tolove an underdog as much as they loathe authority, soArm eld’s role of the artist oppressed by a formidable,injunction-wielding “enemy of art” struck a sympatheticchord with the media and the public. The Symposium’sconvenor, Anthony Uhlmann, contributed a conciliatorytone, pointing out that there was more to the issue thanhad been suggested by its popular reduction to a case ofgood versus evil. Concerning the question of the currentproduction ofGodot , Uhlmann wrote in theHerald , Com-pany B were clearly in the right, since their contract didnot, in fact, prohibit music: a jet-lagged Edward Becketthad been mistaken on that point. Furthermore, Uhlmannpointed out, the issuewas far broader insigni cance thanmany seemed toacknowledge,and if one tookto its logicalconclusion theargument thatartists’ estatesshould surrendercontrol over works,“there would be no role for contracts or estates — nocopyright, in fact.” Nevertheless, on the nal day of the symposium, Arm -

eld gave an impassioned talk, claiming that the Beckettestate would eventually kill the work. He concluded, “Incoming here with its narrow prescription, its dead con-trolling hand, its list of ‘not alloweds,’ the Beckett estateseems to be the enemy of art. If there is something tohope for at this watershed 50th anniversary of the play

that broke the rules, it is that Edward Beckett gwork back to artists to work with. After all, if helet go, he’s consigning it to a slow death by a thhacks.”

The audience responded as ardently. Stan Gothought the issue a ”tempest in a billy-can” (a bis an Australian bush teapot). There was no call f

eld to be playing the role of repressed artist, and thkind of problem just goes with the territory. “Fr

are earned,” Gontarski said to me later. “If youcon dence in your work, just let it stand.” Don Andeson, Australia’s best-known and most-respectedcritic, took an opposing view, likening the praccontemporary literary executors to those of the pEast German Stasi. “They are the political politellectual debate and performance,” he told me.you’ve got is literary executors behaving in ways that completely contravene the spirit of thewhom they represent.”

Samuel Beckett Symposium, 6-9 January

The Sydney Samuel Beckett Symposium was hthe University of Western Sydney in association Sydney Festival and held at the Sydney Theatrpany’s Wharf Theatre complex. Convened by AUhlmann, the symposium featured some of the

gures in Beckett studies and theatre arts, such as HerbeBlau, Ruby Cohn, Mary Bryden, Xerxes MehtaConnor, Porter Abbot, Stan Gontarski, Colin DucAngela Moorjani, and many others. The symposidesigned not only to highlight aspects of Beckand work as such, but also to incorporate the in uencof Beckett upon various artistic elds, and “the nature the road ahead for writing, performance and thearts in the wake of Beckett.” Hence, in additionmatic sessions on Beckett’s literature, approacheizing his drama, and so on, were sessions on hi

in the United Kinghis in uence up

Australian wers, as expre by themseand meditaton ”after Bed’après Becin France an

pan. Hailed as

of the most importanmanities conferences ever to be held in Austrasymposium was intensive and stimulating, incoing lunchtime lm screenings and linking up with thSydney Festival productions ofWaiting for Godot Endgame. It was all the more vigorous for its roforum for opinions on the controversy that surroNeil Arm eld’s Godot; and from its earliest moit promised to be lively. Ruby Cohn chaired the rplenary session, which featured Linda Ben-Zv

The symposium was designed not only to highlightaspects of Beckett’s life and work as such, but also

to incorporate the inuence of Beckett uponvarious artistic elds, and “the nature of the road

ahead for writing, performance and the visual artsin the wake of Beckett.”


3/24

Hailed as one of the most important humani-

ties conferences ever to be held in Australia,the symposium was intensive and stimulating,

incorporating lunchtime lm screenings and link-ing up with the Sydney Festival productions of

Waiting for Godot and Endgame.

Duckworth, David Hayman, Xerxes Mehta, and AntoniaRodriguez-Gago, whose talks revolved about their ini-tial exposure to Beckett. Mehta said thatWaiting for Go-dot had “upended his professional life”; Rodriguez-Gagorecalled the general reaction to the play, when it was rstperformed in Spain, as “rubbish” and “Ravel’sBolero of the theatre,” though it was identi ed with by a politi -cally resistant minor-ity of intellectuals;

Ben-Zvi re ect-ed that Beckett“showed uswhat it is to feel– what it is to bea human being.”

Then Duck-worth was askedto describe his expe-rience in Paris, 1965, when Beckett allowed him threehours to examine the original manuscript ofEn attendantGodot. Duckworth said he worked furiously, in the fullknowledge that he was holding something like the equiv-alent of a contemporary manuscript ofHamlet about tobe consigned to the mists of time. “But anyway,” some-one asked, ”where’s the manuscript kept these days?”From a front row, Edward Beckett explained that it wasin safe-keeping in a deposit box, but. . . ahem, not easilyaccessed. “What . . . ?” Duckworth quipped, “Do youmean you’ve lost the key?”

Shortly afterward, an audience member demandedthat the visiting academics report back their appraisals ofthe Sydney Beckett productions, to the effect: “We wantyou experts to let us know if they are any good or not.”Dramatic criticism is not a matter of “giving grades,”came the consensual reply, which met with further fu-ror. When I later recalled to her the voluble interjections,Professor Cohn assured me she had found the sessionmarvelous.

David Hayman’s contribution to the “Genetic criti-cism andWatt” session, entitled “How Two Love LettersElicited a Singular Third Person: Generating an Ur-Watt,” was riveting. Hayman incorporated such minu-tia as manuscript doodles into his elegant and originalanalysis of Beckett’s development and, in particular, his“creative turning points.” Also most notable was Dirkvan Hulle’s talk in the same session, ”Nonetheless: TheTextual Genesis ofStirrings Still,” an extraordinarilyclose analysis of the French and English manuscripts ofthe late, very small work that took Beckett ve years tocompose. Van Hulle demonstrated the complexity of theprocess that produced the nal piece, commenting thatBeckett’s ”writing about the end proved to be an excel-lent way to delay it.”

Naturally still saddened by the recent passing awayof our great friend and mentor Professor Yasunari Taka-hashi, the contributors to two Japanese panels demon-strated the depth of content and reference in Beckett’swork, as well as something of the diversity of Beckettstudies in Japan. In the session “Seeing in Beckett,” Yo-shiyuki Inoue spoke on the nature of microscopic vision

inThe Lost Ones , with some fascinating minute referencesto Beckett’s library and the contents of an encyclopedihe once gave as a gift, and Naoya Mori saw in Beckettwindows a paradoxical use of Leibnitz’s monadologyMasaki Kondo focused on the relationship betweenIllSeen Ill Said and Mallarmé’sIgitur , and Minako Okamu-ro on Beckett’s alchemical symbolism inQuad , which, she

argued, has a sourcein his elderly inter-

est in Yeats. Onthe panel “Af-ter Beckett in Japan,” MarikoHori Tanaka, Yo-shiki Tajiri and Ipresented echoes

and interpreta-tions of Beckett to be

found in Butoh dance, and in the work of such novelistof the Japanese avant-garde as Yumeno Kyusaku andAbé Kobo, respectively. The plenary session chaired by Paul Davies, with Gerry Dukes, Stan Gontarski and H. Porter Abbott, broughtogether three wide-ranging, sophisticated and authori-tative viewpoints. Dukes’ paper emphasized the evolu-tion and mutability of theGodot playtext, with particularreference to the Pike Theatre Typescript, which is held aTrinity College in Dublin –- a rare piece of pre-publication documentation to have become publicly availableto scholars. According to Dukes, in 1953 the Dublin PikTheatre’s Alan Simpson asked Beckett for a copy of hEnglish translation, in order to produce the play at thePike (the production eventually opened a week after theopening in the Arts Club, London, in August 1955).

The typescript, with its alterations in Beckett’s handthus interacts with the French edition, the AmericanGrove Press text, and the London script, producing extraordinary historical-critical nuances in addition to theaesthetic ones (particularly given the censorship thaWatt and More Pricks Than Kicks were experiencing at thetime). Dukes related a charming, yet profound, instancewhen a Godot cast in Cork asked that Didi and Gogo’s“Tied to whom?” “To your man” be changed, becausethe expression would undermine the importance of Go-dot, due to its pejorative connotation in Cork. Insteadthe phrase “To himself ” was used. Dukes said that whenhe told Beckett about the alteration, the author approved but added he had always worried about that line, andhad another version: “We’re not tied to his nibs.” As weas the Hiberno-English sense of a VIP, “his nibs” maalso be used to refer to the Devil himself — a spine-tingling authorized connotation, indeed. Stan Gontarski spoke on Beckett’s plurality of voicethrough which the author comments on his work whileostensibly refraining from doing just that. Gontarskreferred substantially to Beckett’s early (1956-7) corrspondence with Alan Schneider, mostly onEndgame,forSchneider’s off-Broadway production (“I never talked sunrestrainedly and uncautiously as with you,” Beckettwrote) and also to Beckett’s notes for his own rst direc -


4/24

4

tion ofEndgame , asEndspiel,in Berlin, 1967. According toGontarski, Beckett took advantage of fteen opportuni -ties to direct in the theatre, and another seven to directin the television studio, enabling him “to re ne if not re -de ne the play’s creative vision, to continue to discoverlatent possibilities in the text.”

H. Porter Abbott reviewed and recreated WolfgangIser’s reader-response gap, demonstrating how Beckettseems to turn much of such theory on its head, by insert-

ing entire narratives into the gap itself. Abbott sketchedout a typology of “gaps,” the most paradoxical of whichhe terms the “egregious gap.” Abbot drew Beckett’snarrative into a traditional context of such blanks, gapswithin gaps, the semiological nature of which is simplynot to be able to know. Does Becky kill Jos Sedley in Wil-liam Thackeray’sVanity Fair? Does Heathcliff murderHindley Earnshaw in Emily Bronte’sWuthering Heights?Abbot observed that canonical instances such as thesepre gure Beckett’s egregious gap, except that “Beck -ett handles the gap by lling it. And the more he llsit, the greater and more intense our sense of ignorancegrows.”

“Beckett on Vinyl” — a contemporary installation andhappening, directed by Clara Mason, the artistic direc-tor of the James Joyce Foundation in Australia — wasa most innovative part of the symposium and festival.In 1997 Mason collaborated with the Bundjalung Ab-original community on a translation ofWaiting for Go-dot (“Ngundalelah Godotgai”) for that year’s Festival ofthe Dreaming. Mortuary Station — a disused, beautifulrococo sandstone railway station — was the venue forthe current project. A landmark half sunk in Sydney’sunconscious, the station supported a funeral-train ser-vice that operated in the city between 1867 and 1948.This would surely have been the platform on which Watt

rst appeared had he appeared in Sydney; and it wasa stroke of brilliance on Mason’s part to select it as thespace for students and DJs to engage with the in nitecreative possibilities resonating in Beckett’s novelWatt .LinkingWatt’s themes of transience and the cosmos (“. . .heavenly bodies poured down on Watt”), performancesincorporating projections and a light-show began at sun-set and nished at dawn; individual performances werescheduled to link with the phases of the moon. At thesame time, trains “coming and going” from Central Sta-tion, some hundreds of yards away, enhanced the senseof place for spectators loitering Watt-like in the Mortu-ary Station waiting-room and platform, while enjoyingservings of Murphy’s Irish Stout and sh.The installation re ected the meditative, the eccentric,and, best of all, the wonder inWatt . Mini-installationsabout the platform were mostly on a sub-theme ofMason’s, “food is not a philosophy.” One consisted ofa number of glasses of milk arranged in two perfectlyconcentric circles, evoking an image of the breast as wellas reminding us of Watt’s penchant for milk and his ac-cident with the porter when he rst arrives; another wasan ersatz Aeolian harp, which incorporated the waitingroom wall and a half watermelon as a bridge for thestrings, which were stretched across the platform. DJs

scratched over vocal samples from Alan GreGeorge Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, foregroundBeckettian features to be found in contemporarydiscourse: “There are things we know that weThere are known unknowns –- that is to say ththings that we now know we don’t know but thalso unknown unknowns. There are things we know we don’t know” (Rumsfeld, 2001). In all,onstrating something of Beckett’s potentials for

intervention at the same time as it af rmed the perennial value to be found in straying from the beate“Beckett on Vinyl” presented an ephemeral tastuncontrollable and regenerative in art.

Company B’s Waiting For Godot

The house lights are extinguished, plunging alient audience into a depth of darkness and a ssilence. Out of the blackness issues rst a whistling wind, then a rumble and sudden shriek of a genas the lights switch on, with Estragon sitting on tstruggling with his boot. Neil Arm eld’s opening transition into Beckett’s world is the rst indication of bold and decisive approach to the play. Robert Cset design in Sydney’s Belvoir Street Theatre —atre with which Arm eld is intimately familiar, havinhelped save it from demolition in 1984 — is, if l“low mound,” honest and basic. One looks dowa plain, dusty oor, rubble piled up in the rear corner othe drama space. The slender form of the tree is from the image of Christ on the cross, a series opermutations having reduced the motif to a subtrace.

The rst few seconds of the exchange between Vlamir (John Gaden) and Estragon (Max Cullen) ious, when the actors strike one as slightly off t but then all is well. In retrospect, it seems the take a moment to tune in to the tones and rhytAustralian English, in the context of a conceptiodot that is conditioned by other accents (AmericBritish at least as much as Irish ones). This is notrivial point as one may suppose, since accents evticular associations of character and culture thathelp but in uence the reception of a performance. Taccents of Vladimir and Estragon are neither br“educated Australian.” Didi and Gogo are by noof the imagination “swaggies,” the traditional Auversion of outback tramps, but gents, so-called “tards” whom we might run into at Randwick Raor the bar at Central Station, Sydney — con dent, ve bose, neurotic, sometimes extremely poetic sortsCaked with dust, yet decked out with a certain dedown-at-heel air, in dirty coat, scarf, hat, woolen veDidi and Gogo’s apparent itinerancy refers us to terable institution of the Australian travelling circ Estragon’s eyebrows in particular associate hliantly funny and canny, world-weary demeanothe folk tradition of the noble Australian clow brings a speci cally Australian avor to phrases su


5/24

as “Help me off with this BLOODY thing!” and “I re-member a lunatic who kicked the SH-T out of me!” –- thesense that resounds through his uttered words, Beckett’s“kicked the shins off me.” Pozzo (Bogdan Koca) com-pensates for his ordinary stature with a whip, an impos-ing personality and a European (or “New Australian”)accent. The working-class Aussie might tend to identifywith the hapless Lucky (Steve Le Marquand) as a kind ofcolonial second-class citizen, but at the same time expe-rience an instant of perplexity, perhaps a twinge of guilt,at this subordination of the Aussie to the European im-migrant, who was in his own day a target of prejudice inAustralia.

The production highlights the subtle possibility of a

homosexual relationship between Didi and Gogo, whichis quite clear in the text. In this performance, when thequestion of age comes up, Didi preens himself effemi-nately. On the cue to “embrace,” Didi presents an open-mouthed kiss, from which the generally more lasciviousGogo retreats (too “gritty” for him, perhaps, like theconstable in the risqué joke to which they allude, “thestory of the Englishman in the brothel”). The theme is byno means overstated, however, and we may continue tothink of them more innocently, merely as two gents whoenjoy each other’s company.

Arm eld heightens the circus element –- which is afar more familiar form “down under” (Beckett’s phrase

for Australia) than vaudeville –- with occasional piecesof improvised music based on the circus convention ofwhat Arm eld terms “supportive percussion,” punc -tuated with a raucous clown’s whistle. These effectsare associated mostly with Lucky’s movements. Onehears, too, occasional vibrato chords and melody froma keyboard. The rst occurrence is a brief, faint soundon the breeze that motivates Vladimir’s “Listen!” – andthe pair “listen, grotesquely rigid” and, hearing nothing,are relieved. Beckett’s cerebral sequence is de ated, butperhaps with good reason: Didi and Gogo fail to hear anon-signi er that doesn’t herald the entrance of Pozzo

and Lucky. Contrary to Beckett’s totalitarian director iCatastrophe who deplores the “craze for explicitation,”Arm eld uses the music to make dramatic logic of theimplicit textual link.

The percussion is vulnerable to a charge of being intrusive or distracting during Lucky’s speech, when ithreatens to obscure the words. It contributes more tothe buildup of the mêlée than the speech itself, whichgrinds along with a psychotic doggedness, while Lucky’

feet continue to batter against the rock, which blocks hiprogress. The weird keyboard effect is at its height during Pozzo’s lament about Lucky’s ingratitude, in the rstAct, where it helps exaggerate his complaints to a veryfunny melodramatic effect.

Sydney Theatre Company’s Endgame

“Between the beginning and the end lies a small distinctionwhich is that between ‘beginning’ and ‘end’” – Samuel Beck-ett

The production’s director, Benedict Andrews, has reduced the size of the auditorium at Sydney’s WharfTheatre to accommodate only a hundred spectatorsper performance, promising an “intimate experience oBeckett’s own favourite play.” One tramps over a temporary wooden bridge to enter a physically emptied and, inthis respect, alienated space. We pass through a storagearea, in which the Wharf’s comfortable theatre seats artilted over and stacked up. Inside the theatre, they have been replaced by kitchen chairs, donated or dumpedthe chairs have their own past. Andrews did not wishBeckett’sEndgame to be viewed from the point of view ofa comfortable backside. The steeply raked seating face

The Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Endgamefeatured Matthew Whittet as Clov and Jacek Koman asHamm.

Company B’s production of Waiting for Godot featured(from left to right) Bogdan Koca as Pozzo, John Gadenas Vladimir and Max Cullen as Estragon.


6/24

6

directly on to a shallow rectangular stage. “I think theywant a claustrophobic effect,” someone near me jokes.Yet we remain physically separated from the stage-space by a plane delineated by a few vertical strings, whichguide th e c u r t a i n ’ s opening fall and which will staythere throughout theperformance, an-ticipating the in-evitable end.

H a m m(Jacek Koman)cuts an extraor-dinary gure:indeed, he is soimposing in his ut-ter egotistical self-ab-sorption as to give the impression that the darkness ofthe auditorium (with “zero” outside, of course) may bean illusion within his very blindness –- as though other

gures, including ourselves, are gments of his ownsubjectivity; and it is in that sense he is the King, the ego.Clov (Matthew Whittet) is, in contrast, young and ner-vously tense, and he seems to lack any individual voli-tion except the motion his master imparts to him. Scrapsof esh peel off Clov’s poxy face, beneath the lank,greasy hair with which he dgets. The two are mutuallyinterdependent (“Every man his specialty”), or perhapsthey personify complementary, psychological functions.The chess motif reiterates the theme, and Andrews sub-tly gears the actions and gestures of the characters sym- bolically to the determined sets of possibilities inherentin pieces and pawns. Clov galvanizes the motif of thelost endgame from time to time, when he assumes anattitude of attention and positions himself at a respectfuldistance at Hamm’s side. Momentarily the two appearto be King and Bishop holed up somewhere behind twoimmobilized –- hence essentially dead –- pawns, repre-sented by Nagg and Nell in their bins.

The rectangular set looks about twenty feet by ten.Long dulled by time, drab patterned wallpaper lines thewalls beneath a picture rail, which supports a single pic-ture facing the wall. The room’s dismal mood is poignanttoo, in appearing to have been once rather cozy, perhaps brightened by the female touch of the long-deceasedMother Pegg (Hamm’s ruthlessly sacri ced queen?).Clov’s movement and behavior imply an obsessivenesswhich, given his atomistic memory, is necessary to keephim barely functioning. In the opening scene, Clov out-Becketts Beckett and counteracts the narrow dimensionsof the stage with the mind-numbingly painstaking logis-tics he needs to move the ladder back and forth betweentwo small windows set high into each side wall.

A nice running-gag on the theme of text as material“trace” dovetails into the narrative symbolism of theroom itself. Each time Clov climbs to the top of the lad-der to take a look, he comes so close to the wall that ma-nipulating the telescope is a problem, encountered eachtime as though the rst, which he solves by putting it tohis eye and pivoting toward the window. The procedure

requires him to shove the end of the instrument the wall and then scrape it roughly across, whicha white slash gouged to the front or rear of each w– further testimony to the time he has spent perfthe ritual. The gag is a good indicator of directo

dict Andrews’ stivity to the p

range of drampossibilities,

bining the disions of phyhead-bangobsession

a re ned senseBeckett’s sem

play, a combinationis at its most transparent in the script in Hamm’sic imputation of signi cance to his “dog.”

One cannot imagine a more stunning realizaNagg (Peter Carroll) and Nell (Lynne Murphy), iof both acting and direction. Andrews positionright on the edge of the stage, all but face-to-faaudience in the front row; when their heads emergeyes, which are oblivious to ours, focus on anotdistant or far-inner, horizon. The characters remquiver, gaze and strain to kiss, but can never tou

ned as they are to their bare and solitary existence this their discarded hell of representation. The lid bins are connected by hinges at the rear, so thathe actors’ heads emerge, the metal lids stand back from the perpendicular and frame their heaerously, exactly in the position of halos. In theiattitudes of grin and grimace, Nagg and Nell reByzantine icons, while the silhouettes of their opevoke the form of the Staunton pawn –- a furtheof nesse in this enthusiastically received production.

— Michael G

Yasunari Takahashi(1932-2002)Yasunari Takahashi was one of the most brilliaremarkable generation of Japanese scholars of Wculture which came to maturity about 10 years aend of the Second World War. Born in Tokyo in lost his home there in the ferocious re-bombing of ealy 1945. In the immediate post-war restructurineducational system, he managed in 1949 to gain eto what had been the old Imperial University ofat its Komaba campus. He graduated in English and then went on to study for his MA at the Hong

The characters reminisce, quiver, gaze and strain

to kiss, but can never touch, conned as they areto their bare and solitary existence in this their

discarded hell of representation.


7/24

pus of the university. It was there that I rst met himtowards the end of 1955, when my wife and I had newlyarrived in Japan. As a so-called “Visiting Professor inEnglish Literature,” I was encouraged to take on a vol-untary weekly seminar with postgraduate students, dis-cussing poems in detail. Takahashi made an immediateimpression. With bountiful gentle manners, uent buthesitantly exact English, and considerable quiet wit, heilluminated whatever was under discussion.

What I couldn’t have predicted was how widely hisliterary intelligence and skill would range. He went onwith research, and began teaching, at the Komaba cam-pus, in 1962; but almost immediately he was selectedfor one of the newly established British Council scholar-ships. He was British Council Visiting Scholar at BirbeckCollege, London, in 1962-63, where he began to extendhis interest in Shakespeare and in Coleridge in a newdirection. He discovered the work of Samuel Beckett,and soon met, talked with, and got to know Beckett: hebecame, as Takahashi’s friend and colleague YasunariTakada rightly comments, Beckett’s “translator and in-terpreter” in Japan, trusted by that secretive and taciturngenius.But Takahashi went on to extend his range: “non-sense” (particularly Lewis Carroll), John Donne, andfurther ranges of his original passion, Shakespeare. Hemade the most ingenious and brilliant version of the Al-ice books. (I have a lovely memory of Takahashi visitingus in Norfolk, when he and one of our small grandsonssimultaneously read an “Alice” poem, one in Japanese,the other in English, to see how long they took.) In theearly 1990s, he wrote a kyogen (Noh “mad” play) ver-sion ofThe Merry Wives of Windsor , which had a consid-erable success in Tokyo, Cardiff and (at the Mermaid)London. Later, he turned this into an English version,The Braggart Samurai.

His main academic base was Tokyo University, fromhis appointment as Professor of English Literature in1976; but he had visiting appointments at the Universityof Toronto in 1981, and as Visiting Fellow Commoner ofTrinity College, Cambridge, 1986-87. He was active, too,in the busy academic society world; he was Presidentof the English Literary Society of Japan, the largest andmost powerful body of its kind, from 1989 to 1992, andPresident of the Shakespeare Society of Japan for manyyears from 1989. When he retired from Tokyo Universityin 1992, he was appointed Professor Emeritus. He wenton to teach at Showa Women’s University, from 1992.Recognition of his important role in Anglo-Japanese cul-tural relations came with his appointment as an Honor-ary CBE in 1993.

None of this listing of honours and distinctions givesa proper picture of what made Yasunari Takahashi sucha brilliant companion and friend. He drew subtle anddazzling comparisons between things, such as the pieceon Beckett and the Noh (“The Theatre of the Mind”)which he contributed toEncounter in 1982. He was aprofound and knowledgeable musician, both in the areaof Shakespeare and his musical contemporaries, and of

Wagner and romanticism. The abundance of his intellectual interests is borne out in the Festschrift that was produced for his 60th birthday,Surprised by Scenes (1994):The contributions range from the Nobel Literature laureate Kenzaburo Oe (“Yasunari Takahashi My Contemporary”) through Frank Kermode, Jonathan Bate, AnnBarton, John Casey and Earl Miner, to the leading Japanese scholars of English who followed him. One of the most fascinating aspects of Takahashilife was the religious. Having discovered Beckett, an become deeply interested in him, he searched out whaBeckett was rejecting too. In the process, Yasunari joinehis wife, Michi, in embracing Roman Catholicism. Indeed, I last saw him earlier this year, in April, at thefuneral in Tokyo of our mutual friend Shinsuke Andothe Chaucerian scholar, which took place in the Catholichurch in Shibuya. By then, Takahashi was very weak but he was determined to say goodbye to his old friendas he was determined to come and see my wife Ann andme in our Shinjuku hotel — bravely towing his oxygecylinder.

— Anthony Thwaite

Reprinted fromThe Independent (London), 27 June 2002.


8/24

8

Marin Karmitz’s Co-médieIn the early 1960s, during one of my unforgettable meet-ings with Samuel Beckett on the Boulevard St. Jacques,I dared – being young and disrespectful at the time – topoint out to him how dif cult it was for actors in one ofhis plays to move around on the stage while at the sametime speaking the dialogue that he had written for them.Smiling at me in a way that was both mischievous andreassuring, he replied: “Vous ne devriez plus avoir desoucis de ce genre; je suis justement en train d’écrire unepièce où j’ai enfermé mes personnages dans des jarres.Ainsi, seront-ils d’une manière ou d’une autre à jamaisimmobilisées.” His subsequent description ofComédie greatly intrigued me.

The play itself, as is well known, had its Paris pre-miere — directed by Jean-Marie Serreau and featuring

Michael Lonsdale, Eléonore Hirt, and Delphine Seyrig— in June 1964. Much less well known is the fact that,two years later, the Roumanian-born French lmmakerMarin Karmitz used this same cast for a lm version ofComédie on which he collaborated with Beckett, to whomhe had been introduced by Jérúme Lindon. Presentedin the same year at theLa Mostra festival in Venice, this

lm provoked heated debate that led in some instances,according to Karmitz himself, to actual ghting. Aftermany years during which it was not shown at all, Kar-mitz’sComédie was featured once again at theVoilà ex-hibition held at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville deParis in 2000. Since then, it has been presented in muse-ums and art galleries (including the Anthony ReynoldsGallery in London) as well as at international festivalsof contemporary art. The award that it received at theVenice Biennal in 2001 was a much-deserved recognitionafter so many years of neglect. Adrian Searle – takingparticular aim at the Anthony Minghella version ofPlay — concluded his rhapsodic review of Karmitz’s lm inThe Guardian (London)by describing it as “a rejoinder tothe current project to lm all Beckett’s plays.”

The showing ofComédie on 15 January 2003 Théâtre de la Cité Internationale in Paris, which himself attended, drew a packed house of curio

risians, most of whom had never had the oppoof seeing it. During the discussion that followdirector explained the many technical problemsent in this project and spoke warmly of the forand generous help that Beckett gave him in dealithese. Creating a genuinely independent lm version oBeckett’s play required a number of complicateformations. The sound track, for example, was rseparately and the tempo of the voices was speeusing a “phonogène” (a special kind of tape-recorin use today, which allows the tempo of the dial be quickened without distorting the actors’ voicecreated the accelerated rhythm which Beckett but which is not possible in the theater. Having minitial recordings, Karmitz and Beckett then movthe mixing of sound and image and to a cinematien scène” whose nal result is, as the audience readiappreciated, quite extraordinary. This lm deserves, omany counts, to be of cially classi ed as belongingthe “patrimoine culturel français.”

— Bogdan Mano


9/24

MLA 2002Beckett and Bernhard Panel

Since Martin Esslin’s seminal study of the literary re-lationship between Samuel Beckett and Thomas Bern-hard in 1985, the names of the two writers have oftenappeared together (see, for example, Pierre Chabert’saccount of his stage adaptation of Bernhard’sThe Loser in the Fall 2002 issue ofThe Beckett Circle). In order to ex-amine more closely the relationship between these twowriters, Thomas Cousineau chaired a panel on “Beckettand Bernhard” at the MLA Convention in New York.

In his preliminary remarks, Cousineau spoke of hisown sense that many admirers of Beckett’s work seemalso to be drawn instinctively to Bernhard’s. He recalledhaving been told by Beckett’s French publisher JérômeLindon that Bernhard was one of the few contemporarywriters for whom Beckett had expressed high regard.He also remarked that, in an obituary tribute to Beckett,Walter Asmus recalled Beckett’s having read Bernhard’snovelWittgenstein’s Nephewwith great interest. For hispart, Bernhard is known not to have entirely appreci-ated the sobriquet of “Alpine Beckett” that the GermanmagazineDer Spiegel attached to him. Cousineau thenintroduced the panelists — who included Daniel Katz(Université de Paris VII-Denis Diderot), Tyrus Miller(UC Santa Cruz) and Jean-Michel Rabaté (University ofPennsylvania) –- and Marjorie Perloff (Stanford Univer-sity), who served as the respondent.

In “On Beckett, Bernhard, and the Imitation of Voic-es,” Katz explored the relationship in the work of bothwriters between the “missed encounter” – as found insuch works as Molloy , The Unnamable , Wittgenstein’s

Nephew and Extinction) — and the “seemingly intermi-nable and insatiable monologuing voice, which, withuncanny or perhaps even annoying regularity, recursfrom book to book.” The repetitive stories (which arethemselves repeated from novel to novel) that structureBernhard’soeuvre contribute, as Katz argued, to the dis-avowal of the status of each work as an independent,coherent and autotelic literary object. Like Beckett, Bern-hard demysti es the work as an autonomous artifact. Healso questions the concept of a stable and “real” authori-al subject situated “behind” the shallow screens formedby the multiple characters and narrators in his work.The non-coincidence between the authentic voice and its“imitators” — one thinks of Bernhard’sThe Voice Imitator as well as of Beckett’sThe Unnamable , with its desire toput away with “all these Murphys, Molloys and Malo-nes” — is inevitable. It is impossible to imitate one’sown voice, as Bernhard’s professional impersonator, or“voice imitator,” comes to realize. This is why, as Katzput it in the case of Beckett, “the person who arrives isalways someone different from the one we expect, mostespecially when it is the one we expect.” According toKatz, this feeling of an essentially failed encounter isproblematized in Beckett’s writing by strategies of de-ferral and in Bernhard’s by concern with the text as a

written trace. In “What is a Disintegration? Monologue and Sub jectivity in Beckett and Bernhard,” Miller began by aluding to the contrasting stereotypes of the two writers— “Beckett as the experimental meta ctionalist, Bern -hard as the cultural polemicist who is only marginallynovelistic” – that in uence the interpretation of the his -torical and political signi cance of their work. In con -fronting this simpli ed distinction, Miller argued that

the narrative techniques employed by both writers are“are in illuminating ways comparable” and that they both use the rst-person narrator, not so much to createa ctional character who is capable of communicatinghis insight to the reader as to “question the historicalgeneric, linguistic, and psychological preconditions andlimitations of self-knowledge.” Through his analysisMiller argued convincingly that “the gaps, the divisionsthe blank spots, the repetitions, and the syntactic oscillations of the narrating self” which one nds in Beckettas well as in Bernhard provide a gural “depiction of thestructure of domination in those societies of which thessubjects are the literary precipitations.” In his interpretation of Beckett and Bernhard, Miller also stressed thpoint that ction, instead of being removed from his -tory, is in fact a privileged entry into it. In this sense, onmight argue that reading Beckett enables us to be moreattentive to the narrative strategies which are at workin Bernhard’s writing, whereas reading Bernhard allowus to understand more fully the deeply historical dimen-sion of Beckett’s works. In the third contribution of the panel, “Walk in ProgressBeckett/Bernhard,” Rabaté suggested that the theme ofwalking offered a “fruitful comparison” between Beckett and Bernhard. He illustrated this point by juxtapos-ing the famous episode inWatt describing “Watt’s wayof advancing due east” with a passage from Bernhard’sGehen , which he described as “one of Bernhard’s mosdirectly ‘Beckettian’ prose texts.” Pointing to Beckett anBernhard’s shared vision of laughter as the highest of human achievements, he then compared Reger’s argumenin Bernhard’s novelOld Masters that “in artanything can be made to look ridiculous” with Arsene’s de nition in

Watt of “themirthless

laugh.”H efurtherarguedt h a tB e r n -h a r dshared

Beckett’s belief, as

stated in his 1937 letter to Axel Kaun, that language is “veil that must be torn apart in order to get at the things(or the Nothingness) behind it.” According to Rabaté“Bernhard would add to this program of negation a doseof anger, an ethical rage that attacks German understoodas the modern Greek, or the language of thought (for

For his part, Bernhard isknown not to have entirelyappreciated the sobriquet of“Alpine Beckett” that the Ger-man magazine Der Spiegelattached to him.


10/24

10

Heidegger at least).”Rabaté also insisted, however, on the fact that the ob-

vious proximity between Beckett and Bernhard concealsa radical difference that can be related to Gilles Deleuze’sdistinction between “exhaustion,” in which one combinesall the possible variables of a situation without makingselections or imposing a signi cance on them, and“fatigue,” which is induced by the wearying obliga-

tion of mak-

ing choices b e t w e e no p p o s -ing pos-sibilities.From thisperspec-

tive, Ra- baté argued,

“ B e c k e t t ’swork moves in the direction of exhaustion whereas

Bernhard’s is only ‘tired’ –- which is why he is also often‘tiring’ — and that makes him ‘inexhaustible.’”

In responding to these papers, Marjorie Perloff readpassages from Molloy and Bernhard’sCorrection thathighlighted important tonal differences between the twowriters. She suggested that the crucial historical eventseparating the two was the Second World War, to whichshe traced the much greater grimness and skepticismthat one nds in the work of Bernhard, whose formativeadolescent years were strongly marked by his experi-ence of the war. The discussion that followed focused onthe different forms of humor that one nds in the workof each writer, their common predilection for repetitivenarrative forms, the applicability of the distinction be-tween exhaustion and fatigue, and the comic effects towhich Bernhard turns certain properties of the Germanlanguage.

—Thomas Hunkeler

Conor Lovett’s Molloy

The vast hotel ballrooms afforded by MLA venues arenot always ideal spaces for theatrical performances, espe-cially one-man shows. Nevertheless, the staging of ConorLovett’s Molloy demonstrated how to turn an unprom-ising location into an advantage. Lovett’s slight gure,suffocatingly and amusingly over-wrapped in layers ofcoats, old black trousers and brown clodhoppers, was litfrom the front by just one angled lamp, thus throwing agigantic black shadow onto the back wall. The animatedshadow was by turns comforting and menacing; in dog-ging the actor, it seemed both to reinforce his gesturesand to loom over them. From the beginning, therefore,there was a visual doubling, on a magni ed scale, whichremoved any monolithic status from the actor.

This process continued as Lovett peopled the stagewith voices and identities who, splintering away fromhim, engaged him in uneasy transactions. There was the

squeaky-voiced mother, supposedly trained by cnicative bludgeoning, a comic gift to an actor. Tof Lousse – pronounced here like “louse” thesucker - attained an even squawkier pitch. Thewas the policeman, designated by the posture adopted of curmudgeonly, torso-bending intervOnce at the police station, Lovett alternated hila between the sergeant’s peremptory questioning, ngerhovering and jabbing over the imagined typewri

Molloy’s querulous attempts to comprehend theand challenging circumstances.Clearly, in an event with a maximum runnin

of one hour, the choice of material is an immedicern. Selections were made from only the rst, pre-Morahalf of the novel. Lovett made no attempt to cosmooth, continuous narrative, but took care to dshifts, changes of mood, and other transitions, byof pause and contrast. He demonstrated that thosenical little sucking stones – accustomed to being rasde rigueur in any reading from Molloy – could be oted, whereas the foul-mouthed, guffaw-raisingwas permitted to make its appearance. More imthan exhaustiveness was exhaustion: the ways inthe narrative is in constant danger of runningimpetus, of imploding or short-circuiting. Lovemunicated well the recurrent dilemma summedthe lines: “I avoid speaking as much as possiblalways say either too much or too little.” His dstuttered, bawled, stuttered again, always appropprovisional. Lovett may have succeeded in maintaining aimprovisational tone, but the performance wastheless meticulously prepared, as the actor explaresponse to later questions from the audience. Iengagements with Beckett, he revealed, he hadto an over-busy style, delivered in an assumed accent rather than in his natural Cork accent. Duhearsals for Molloy , he realised, in his own word“Beckett has already done it for you in his writi began then to allow the inherent rhythms to holfollowing Beckett’s dictum: “If in doubt, do nLovett applied this precept not just to the vocal but also to his on-stage movements. Though thesvary slightly from performance to performance,ulated carefully what he called “the dosage ofment,” so that a speci c move was enabled to stand oin contrast to sparser, more economical gestures Lovett is gradually building up an impressivfolio of Beckett roles, including Vladimir, HamLucky. His work on the Trilogy demonstrates asponding af nity with Beckett’s prose. Lovett still ha long way to go in the wizening process, whichthat audiences can anticipate many future engagwith Beckettian creatures endowed, as Xerxesdeliciously observed in his introduction to the mance, with “scintillating decrepitude.”

— Mary Bry

According to Katz, this feelingof an essentially failed en-counter is problematized inBeckett’s writing by strate-gies of deferral and in Ber-nhard’s by concern with thetext as a written trace.


11/24

Beckett and UssyOn the afternoon of 27 October 2001, more than one hun-dred people gathered together on the Colline de Molienin front of the high gray wall surrounding Samuel Beck-ett’s “petite maison” in Ussy-sur-Marne. On the southwall, which faces the distant “Monts Moyens” hills,branches of honeysuckle brushed against a largewhite veil behind which awaited a memorial madefrom a piece of local stone that commemorated thenearly forty-year presence of Samuel Beckett in Ussy.The weather forecast had called for wind and rain.As it happened, a few white clouds oated over -head from time to time; they were, however, quicklychased away by an autumnal breeze, so that sunnyskies were with us throughout the ceremony.

Silence fell upon the assembled group. Standingin front of the veil, Christian Xatrec, a member of theAssociation pour la Sauvegarde d’Ussy, read fromBeckett’s “mirlitonnades,” including the poem inwhich he says:

euves et océansl’ont laissé pour vivantau ru de Courtablonprès la Mare-Chaudron.

The Mare-Chaudron — within sight of which Beck-ett had his house built in 1953 — is no longer there.As for the ru de Courtablon, it still winds its waythrough the eld at the end of the rue de la Dehorswhere Beckett and Suzanne rented a house beforebuilding their own.

Guy Prisé, the mayor of Ussy, lifted the veil before theexpectant eyes of the assembled participants, who, whileapplauding, also expressed some surprise when they

saw the rough, jagged edges of the stone. Nicole Greub(who took care of Beckett’s house during his absence andis now its owner) and Paule Savane (president of the As-sociation pour la Suavegarde d’Ussy) purposely chose toleave the stone in this un nished state in order to respectas much as possible Beckett’s own predilection for un-touched nature. They had wanted a piece of sandstone,

like the one that Beckett had in his “prairie-jardin,” buwere unable to nd one capable of bearing an inscrip -tion. In keeping with Nicole Greub’s wishes, the commemorative plaque was placed next to the honesuckle bush that will wreath it during the summer months. The group of spectators included reporters, publish-ers, actors, local political gures and representatives of

various cultural associations. James Knowlson made special trip from England. Edward Beckett and JosettHayden had planned to attend but were prevented bypersonal circumstances. Nicole and Jean Greub invitedus all into the garden where Beckett used to enjoy watching and listening to the birds, along with the more mundane gardening activities of digging, planting, rakingand chasing away the moles. A titmouse had once de-cided to make its nest in the Becketts’ mailbox. No quetion, to be sure, of disturbing it! A red cloth above th box informed the mailman that he should bring the maidown to the Greubs.

There was now a slight chill in the after-noon air. The group made its way down the hilltowards “La Maison du Temps Libre,” where areception sponsored by the village awaited it.The room was decorated in the colors of Irelandand on a table next to the speaker’s platformthe Association pour la Sauvegarde d’Ussy hadplaced several of Beckett’s works along with James Knowlson’s biography, Christian deBartillat’sLes deux amis: Beckett et Hayden , andthe association’s own brochure,Beckett à Ussy.A large photograph of Beckett had been placed

The plaque commemorating Beckett’s years in Ussywill be wreathed by honeysuckle during the summermonths. Photo credit: Yvonne Ampen

James Knowlson discusses Beckett’s life in Ussywith Paule Savane and other dinner guests atAu Bon Pêcheur. Photo credit: Yvonne Ampen


12/24

12

on the wall behind theplatform where themayor, the presidentof the association, and James Knowlson wereto speak. The mayorwarmly thanked theinvited guests and thegroup as a whole for

honoring this greatwriter by their pres-ence. The presidentof the association re-called that Beckertt es-pecially appreciated,in his own words, “lecalme et la tranquilitéd’Ussy,” in which hefound, not the pretextfor a sterile withdraw-al into himself, butan alternative to thesounds and the furiesof the world. He espe-cially enjoyed his longdaily walks in the surrounding hills, which continue tooffer the “quelque chose de l’éternité et de la paix desgrands espaces” that his friend Henri Hayden had im-mortalized in his paintings. James Knowlson, who then told us the story of Beck-ett at Ussy, suggested that we should not underesti-mate the importance of “la petite maison” for his lifeas a writer. A great number of his novels and his plays,as well as some of his short poems, were written at hisold worktable there. Short prose texts such asBing andLe Dépeupleur , as well asComment c’est , were composedin large part in Ussy. As Beckett’s ve notebooks for thisnovel indicate, it simply could not have been writtenanywhere else. Likewise,All that Fall andEh Joe had their beginnings, or their “découverte,” in Ussy. Beckett alsoworked meticulously in this house on the translationsof these and other works. His visits to Ussy were some-times limited to the few days that he was able to snatchfrom his busy life lled with engagements in Paris. Moreoften, they were for longer periods during which he hadno scheduled obligations and that he could spend atUssy planning and writing his new work. Many of the participants, who warmly applaudedthese presentations, wanted to know more about Beck-ett. Some visited the display of his work and madepurchases. Others asked questions of the speakers, es-pecially James Knowlson, who was much sought after.People gathered in small groups to discuss what Beckett

meant to them personally as they nibbled on petiand canapés and sipped sparkling wine or JamIrish whiskey. This memorable day in Ussy enddinner at Au Bon Pêcheur, the café-tabac-restautel where Josette, Henri, and Sam would meetthe Haydens bought their house in the nearby viTeuil-en-Brie.

— Paule Sa

Translated by Thomas Cou

Works CitedDe Bartillat, Christian.Deux amis: Beckett et Hayden.Etrepilly: Les Presses du Village, 2000.

Knowlson, James.Beckett , translated by Bonis OrisArles: Actes Sud, 1999.

Savane, Paule et al.Samuel Beckett à Ussy-sur-Marne.Ussy: Association pour la Sauvegarde d’Ussy, 2

The “Monts Moyens” hills as Beckett would have seenthem from the window of his study.


13/24

Gielgud and BeckettThe death of John Gielgud on May 21, 2000 marked theend of a remarkable era in theater history. He was thelast of the great kings of classical drama, especially theplays of Shakespeare. When he died at the age of ninety-six he had more than seventy years of acting behind him.The very last piece of acting he did, a few months beforehis death, was in the lm version of Beckett’s Catastro-phe , directed by David Mamet and also starring HaroldPinter. This coming together of Gielgud and Beckettre ects the remarkable evolution of twentieth-centurytheater. Back in 1958 Gielgud was asked to play in theBritish premiere of Beckett’sEndgame. He refused, and itwasn’t a polite refusal—”I couldn’t nd anything I likedin the play. . . . it nauseates me.” When Gielgud’s closefriend and fellow-actor, Ralph Richardson, another giantof the theater, asked Gielgud’s advice about appearingin Waiting for Godot Gielgud dissuaded him, saying thatGodot was “sordid and pessimistic.” Later, Richardsonwas lled with regret at having, in his own words, lostthe opportunity to perform in “the greatest play of ourtime.” Years later, Gielgud himself, admitting that hewas wrong, regretted the harsh words that he had spo-ken about Beckett’s plays. Then, at the limit of his life— “the last moment” — Gielgud was asked to performthe non-speaking role of Protagonist inCatastrophe. Thecharacter is silent throughout the play, with his face con-taining and revealing all. So, the last performance of ourgreat classical actor, the one whose voice captured hisaudiences through the years, was a performance with-out voice. Gielgud moved from his early overly-elo-quent style of delivery through beautifully modulatedperformances of such remarkable artistry that he was

acclaimedthe Shakespeare actor of our time to, nally,the silence of Beckett. This is a process that began in theEdwardian era and ended in the avant-garde theater oftoday.

—Normand Berlin

AddendumThe following notes complete John Fletcher’s articl“Beckett and Burgess: A Literary Encounter,” which appeared in the Fall 2002 issue ofThe Beckett Circle:

(1) 1962 “Reprints for Novel Addicts” (review interalia of the Penguin reprint of Malone Dies).TheObserver , 30 December, p. 11.

(2) 1964 “The Universal Mess” (review ofThe Novels ofSamuel Beckett by John Fletcher).The Guardian , 24 July, p. 9.

(3) 1965Here Comes Everybody , p. 12.(4) 1966 “The First JJ” (review, inter alia, ofA Ques-

tion of Modernity by Anthony Cronin, which con-centrates on Joyce and Beckett).The Spectator , 18March, p. 332.

(5) 1966 “Enduring Saturday” (review ofThe Testa-ment of Samuel Beckett by Jacobsen and Mueller).The Spectator , 29 April, pp. 532-3; reprinted inUr- gent Copy (1968), pp. 85-7.

(6) 1967 “Master Beckett” (review ofNo’s Knife andBeckett at Sixty).The Spectator , 21 July, pp. 79-80.

(7) 1967The Novel Now , pp. 72, 75-7, 79.(8) 1973 Joysprick , p. 126.(9) 1974English Literature: A Survey for Students , pp.

206, 228.(10) 1986 “The Master of Erudite Silence.”The Times , 10

April, p. 10.(11) 1987 “Neither God nor Fish nor Flesh” (pro-

gramme article onWaiting for Godot , National The-atre, London).

OTHE SAMUEL BECKETT ENDPAGE

A multiple resource website for anyone and everyone interested in Beckett and his work, the Endpage is always in press and in nitely expandable. Contributions, postings, criticism, or suggestions are encouraged and can be made onsiteat: http://beckett.english.ucsb.eduOr by contacting Porter Abbott ([email protected]). The Endpage contains the of cial homepage of the Samu -el Beckett Society.


14/24

14

CURRENT & UPCOMING EVENTS

Page and Stage: Fifty Years of Performing BeckettRoyal Holloway, University of London, will host a day-long conference on 22 June 2002, which, taking intoaccount the two-day conference on 20-22 June 2003 atthe Workshop Theatre, School of English, University ofLeeds, will look both at Beckett’s own practice in thecreation of performance texts, the various ways in whichpractitioners have engaged with Beckett’s theatre, andissues that arise in the rehearsal rooms and auditoriawhere his work is confronted, negotiated and enjoyed.Papers at this conference, it is hoped, will take eitherof two forms: Traditional twenty-minute readings, andone-hour “workshop” papers, for which presenters willinvite delegates to participate or to witness performedinterrogations on pieces or fragments of Beckett’s writ-ings. Plenary Speakers include Enoch Brater, DavidBradby, S. E. Gontarski, Lois Oppenheim, and PhilipZarilli. For more information, visit: http://www.leeds.

Samuel Beckett Festival at the University of Delaware

Performances by Billie Whitelaw and Pierre Chabert andan inaugural lecture by Ruby Cohn headline the Univer-sity of Delaware Samuel Beckett Festival, 9-11 October2003, on the occasion of the University Library’s Exhibi-tion of the Sir Joseph Gold collection of works by andabout Beckett. Billie Whitelaw will present a retrospec-tive on her career with Beckett through commentary anda performance similar to the one she staged to great ac-claim at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1999. PierreChabert will performLa Dernière bande , reviving the playthat he performed under Beckett’s direction in 1975.Ruby Cohn will explore the Protean essence of Beckett’sartistic sensibility. In addition, re ecting the range andemphases of the Gold collection, there will be panel ses-sions on criticism (Thomas Cousineau, S. E. Gontarski,and Enoch Brater), translation (Lois Oppenheim, TomBishop, and Jean-Michel Rabaté), and performance(Pierre Chabert, Xerxes Mehta, and Daniel Labeille). TheLibrary Lecture, sponsored speci cally in conjunctionwith the Exhibition, will be presented by the co-editorsof the Correspondence of Samuel Beckett, Lois Overbeckand Martha Fehsenfeld.

Sir Joseph Gold’s wide-ranging collection of over3,000 items is notable particularly for its representationof Beckett’s livres d’artistes, the ne press editions he

produced in collaboration with visual artists, pand book designers, and also for its numerous language editions of Beckett’s poetry, ction, and drma. Playbills, photographs, and news clippingproductions of Beckett’s plays throughout themake up another important component of the tion.

The University of Delaware Samuel Beckett will run from the afternoon of Thursday, 9 Octobthrough noon of Saturday, 11 October 2003. Thefunded in part by the Delaware Humanities Foruthe Delaware Division of the Arts, are free and the public. Additional details, including a regisform to reserve a space at the performances, found on the University Delaware Samuel Becktival WEB Page (http://www.english.udel.edu/ett). Please direct questions to Robert Bennett, PCoordinator, Department of English, at 302-831email address: [email protected]. For further ition about the Sir Joseph Gold Samuel BeckettCollection, contact Timothy Murray, Head of Collections, at 302-831-6952, FAX [email protected].

Dublin Beckett ForumThe Dublin Beckett Forum, which meets monthing the academic year, tends toward informal dis

rather than presentation. We welcome new partiand discussion topics. Recent meetings have incdiscussion ofWaiting for Godot in Mongolia led by Jane Scaif and one on “Poetic Translations” b beth Drew. To subscribe to the mailing list or tomore information about the forum, please contKeatinge ([email protected]) or Elizabeth Drew tcd.ie).

ac.uk/english/activities/beckett.html. Contacts:Batty ([email protected]) and David Pattie (chester.ac.uk).


15/24

REVIEWSIt is with great pleasure – as well as with appropri-ately Beckettian belatedness — that I welcome as the

new book-review editor ofThe Beckett Circle LanceButler, who began this new service to the Beckettcommunity with the Fall 2002 issue of the newslet-ter. After lecturing for thirty years at the Universityof Sterling in Scotland, Lance was recently appoint-ed as Professor of British Literature at the Univer-sité de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour in France. Amonghis many contributions to Beckett studies, readersof The Beckett Circle will especially recall hisSamuelBeckett and the Meaning of Being: A Study in Ontologi-cal parable (1984), the three volumes of essays thathe has edited on Beckett, and the two conferencesthat he organized at Stirling University: in 1986 onthe occasion of Beckett’s eightieth birthday and in1999 on the subject of “Beckett and Religion,” whoseproceedings were published inSamuel Beckett Today/ Aujourd’hui. I was delighted when Lance acceptedmy invitation to become the new editor followingAngela Moorjani’s distinguished editorship andlook forward to continuing what has already been arewarding collaboration.

Samuel Beckett, Dante und der Hummer. Gesam-melte Prosa, tr. Elmar and Erika Tophoven. Frankfurtam Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2000. ISBN 3-518-41159-4. 365 pp. € 24.80.

This collection, which celebrates the silver jubilee of Beck-ett’s German publisher Suhrkamp on 1 July 2000, bringstogether the German translations of the author’s shorter

ctional prose. The texts range from Beckett’s parodis -tic lecture on “Concentrism,” which he presented to theModern Language Society of Trinity College Dublin in1930, to his last prose works,Worstward Ho and StirringsStill. This volume – which re ects new editorial policiesthat have made single editions (or reprints) of the shortbut complex prose texts impossible — allows one to traceelements that, as the translator Erika Tophoven pointedout in our conversation about this edition, remain con-stant throughout Beckett’soeuvre.

Most of the works in this volume are reprints of El-mar Tophoven’s translations, which makes it perhaps alittle odd that the title is borrowed from “Dante and theLobster,” one of the two stories translated by ChristianEnzensberger, whose renderings introduce a slightly dif-ferent tone. Three texts have been newly translated forthis edition by Erika Tophoven:L’Image (the prose work

which derives from Beckett’s work onComment c’est andwhich was – after its rst publication in the journal X. AQuarterly Review in 1959 – rediscovered by Les Editions

de Minuit in 1988), Beckett’s last text,Comment dire, andthe poem “neither.” While the GermanComment dire isused as an epigraph and therefore has a clear-cut func-tion to perform, the inclusion of the second poem in thiprose collection (in correct chronological order as if therwas no genre difference), which is not explained in theeditorial comments, seems rather arbitrary. But this detail does not make the ground covered by the volumeand the connections it encourages Beckett’s Germareaders to seek any less impressive. Such comparisons are invited with regard not onlyto Beckett’s works themselves, but also to their Germarenderings, especially since – apart from the new translations – Erika Tophoven has also revised her husband’1984 version of “Le Concentrisme,” originally publishein the journalAkzente in 1986. Frau Tophoven, who start-ed her own Beckett translations withAll That Fall in thewinter of 1956-57, did not contribute to this German texThe publication ofDante und der Hummer gave her thechance to revise a translation which she thought contained a number of loose ends. When reading the twotranslations together with the original, one can only conclude that she has succeeded admirably with this (de-liberately) obscure text. Many revisions serve to clarifeither grammatical relations or exact shades of meaningand some of the alterations show that — in contrast toher husband, who could only work with the French texpublished inDisjecta — she had access to Beckett’s type-script in the Reading collection.

It is also worth noting that Erika Tophoven has triedto bring out the intense “iridescent ambiguity” – as shecalled it in our conversation – of words and phrasesShe has, for instance, paid special attention to warpedproverbs like “Chacun à sa gouttière,” which abound inthe text. Such linguistic playfulness (clearly one of thconstant qualities to which Frau Tophoven alludes) is, ocourse, typical of Beckett; not surprisingly, it is especialy pronounced in this parody of the learned discourseof the imaginary gure, Jean du Chas. Beckett himselfcalled him a poet and reported amusing himself for awhile by inventing poetical works for him (those experiments unfortunately do not seem to have survived).

In “Le Concentrisme,” on the other hand, the main concerns seem to be of a philosophical nature, an emphasithat is re ected in the Latin-derived jargon permeatingthe text. As Erika Tophoven notes, this sometimes makeit doubtful whether the paper could be understood whenread aloud (though one might argue cynically that thisonly emphasizes its close relationship to “real” academidiscourse). Her German version consciously accentuate


16/24

16

REVIEWSthis obscurity by inventing complicated technical termsand by transposing some phrases in the original Frenchwith German annotations, where necessary, in a foot-

note.At the same time, she has discovered a completely dif-ferent level in “Le Concentrisme,” which already makesitself felt in the omnipresence of the pre x “con-“ that ishighlighted in the title. For Beckettians, this syllable isobviously linked with its masculine French homonym.It is, of course, also characteristic that the oscillation be-tween vulgarity and philosophy is not restricted to onelanguage. The reference to “la Chose de Kant” in the

nal sentence, for instance, produces similar reverbera -tions in English. The work itself establishes an explicitlink with Germany as well, since the mother of the imag-inary “protagonist” is of German extraction.

For Erika Tophoven, this was another reason to en-gage with the text in greater detail, especially sincearound that time she was also working on a transcrip-tion of selected passages from Beckett’s 1936 “GermanDiaries,” which will be published this year by RoswithaQuad ieg’s Raamin-Presse. Against this background, itis even possible to perceive the aristocratic French name“du Chas” as an allusion to Beckett’s connections withthe city of Kassel – among a wealth of other potentialreadings that Frau Tophoven has tracked down in thetranslation process. As she explains, the principles of her work are stillvery similar to those of the period when she and herhusband collaborated with Beckett himself. Ever sincethe GermanGodot of 1953, Elmar Tophoven would goto see Beckett with the best possible German transla-tion he and his wife could achieve on their own. Theywould then play it to him on tape and discuss his reac-tions. As in those translations, Erika Tophoven’s mainaim is to bring the German version as close as possibleto Beckett’s original; this principle governs her work inall literary genres. In this respect, Beckett’s own Englishor French renderings of his works can help the translatorto gauge how much scope for deviation is allowed.

Frau Tophoven and her husband also valued Beckett’sself-translations, because they made him sensitive to thedif culties and achievements of translating. During hisstay in Hamburg in 1936, he produced a German ver-sion of his poem “Cascando” (to be included in the Raa-min-Presse volume) that, according to Erika Tophoven,shows how much each word counts in the original. Simi-larly, in the Tophovens’ work, rhythm, the cadences ofBeckett’s language and the ow of the text were and areat least as important as the semantic level. In their expe-rience, purely lexical problems are rare with Beckett. Theetymological dictionary becomes the translator’s mostimportant tool, as the obsolete meanings listed suggest

how the word in question can be given its typicacent quality in another language.

Far greater dif culties occur with regard to senten

construction, since German tends to be both mowinded and more concrete than Beckett’s two lanWith respect to concreteness, for example, the licategory of gender forces the translator to maksions where – as, for instance, in “Bing” – the remains ambiguous. Frau Tophoven indeed remhow Beckett marked the rst version of Glückliche the corrections of which she read while in hosgive birth to one of her sons, with the self-illunote “shorten.” She now considersWorstward Ho most pointed example of this paring down of linresources, as it demonstrates how much can be even on the grammatical level.

At the same time, this work epitomizes manyrent motifs of Beckett’soeuvre. As the translator hpointed out, for instance, it takes up the chartic camera image, which she has also foregroutranslating the cinematic language ofL’image (rende“brouillard,” for example, as the more explicitly lm“Blackout”). The present volume thus allows onlow the unbroken line from the relative explicitnlinguistic abundance of the initial “Le Concentrithe penultimateWorstward Ho , where the concentrprocess implied in the title of the rst work is brought perfection.

— Merle Tön

Richard Lane, ed. Beckett and Philosophy. Hounds-mill and New York: Palgrave, 2002. 184 pp. $58.00.

This volume is an interesting addition to the e body of critical works, produced mostly sincwhich have analyzed and interpreted Beckett’s to philosophy in a (post)modernist frame. It con rmthe polyvalence of the complex theme, “Beckett losophy.” Some of the contributors make it clearissue of that “and” provides an excellent opportuinterpretation.

The rst part of the volume concerns “literatuand philosophy” in its many thematic variants “speech-writing,” “thinking and writing (aboutture),” “naming” and “voice.” The main issue ithe relation of some speci c philosophical work (oftunderstood as “the thought of an author”) to BFrench and German thought is, in that order, clared focus of the second and third parts of the vRichard Begam’s interesting opening essay provinterpretation of the “and” linking philosophy to


17/24

as follows: “A large and impressive body of commentaryexists on the subject of Beckett and philosophy. Gener-ally, this literature has proceeded along one of two lines:

either it has been genetic, detailing the kinds of intellec-tual in uencea particular

philoso-pher ex-ercisedover thewriter .. . or ithas beenintertex-

tual, map-ping areas of

theoretical con uence that connect Beckett with think -ers” (13). This is an important perspective, even if onechooses not to interpret “genealogies” strictly as “in u -ences,” nor “intertextualities” as theoretical or cogni-tive “con uence,” and even if one resists the dichotomyunderlying the notion of “two lines” of critical develop-ment.

Begam deserves praise (though he is alone in the vol-ume in this) for referring to criticism outside the Anglo-American and French-German elds. A lot of Beckettcriticism now comes from such countries as Spain, Italy,The Czech Republic and Japan. Begam is also right thatBeckett and Philosophy provides both a “philosophizingwith Beckett” and an evocation of various philosophersbrought into a dialogue with him either because of whatthey have said of his work or because of some conceptu-al af nity. The latter thematic option is more successfulin this volume because in the former case most contribu-tors do not de ne their speci c “borderlines of reading”and do not explicitly indicate what is theoretically (notthematically) at stake in their reading strategies. There isoften no discussion of the theoretical choices they makewhen they relate literature or Beckett to a philosophicalsystem.

Why, after all, should Beckett and philosophy be re-lated? Are thematic similarities to be taken as suf cientfor the establishment of a relation, with no further theo-retical “legitimizing” of this relational choice? I resist thenotion that reading practices are self-suf cient and self-legitimating. Even indicating a “ground” or “setting” forcomparison does not seem enough, if that very “ground”or “setting” is not addressed as a problematic object. If,as Mary Bryden points out in her distinguished essay,“Beckett wished to explore the process of ‘épuisement’on as many fronts as possible” it is ultimately the read-er’s responsibility to interpret this “exhaustion,” andnot merely to nd it in all its rami cations. This seems

the area in which postmodern readings can renew them-selves, and provide hermeneutical innovation.

Also, if the conceptual challenge is to address the

question of a “transitory ontology,” as Alain Badiou calit, such indetermination cannot resolve itself into a mercritique of the Cartesian cogito (present in Beckett critcism since the 1960s), nor can it t the alternative optionof the oscillation between signi er and signi ed. As Ul -rika Maude cogently points out, “In the negative bodilyexperiences we so frequently encounter in Beckett, thhabitual body, the body in its stative aspect, functions aa signi er that is out of sync with its signi ed.” I thinkit is worth asking how and why the body is the locus othat polemical gap? It is in the light of this polemic thawe can understand why habit and consciousness do notexhaust a sense of “in-body-ed” subjectivity. Maude’contribution to this volume extends the scope of thisthematic discussion, with “a distinction between beingmerely aware of the body” and “paying conscious at-tention to it.” “Habit” and “conscious attention” are nomerely exclusive categories in Beckett but have mutually negotiable implications that constitute a Beckettia“pre-re ective realm.” All of the critical readings in this volume make a common (if unstated) point: the body is a hermeneutical eld,and it is precisely in reading the body in Beckett that wrealize that generic references to indeterminacy and aporias are too metaphysical. For example, Beckett is fascinaed by Kant but does not believe in the “sublime” (a formof absolute indeterminacy), nor does he accept “aporia”as a de nitive end: “What am I to do, what shall I do,what should I do, in my situation, how proceed? By aporia pure and simple? . . . There must be other shifts” (TheUnnamable). This conception of a “shift” as the produc-tion of a “work-character work” is central to the understanding ofBeckett’swork. Iappre-c i a t eRich-a r dLane’sr e -minder,in this re-spect, of Critchley’s observation: “Derrida is suggestinthat the work of Beckett’s work, its work-character, ithat which refuses meaning and remains after one hasexhausted thematization.” Gary Banham provides anumber of accurate and relevant insights on this topicparticularly as it locates the very problem of meaningat the level of a philosophically understood “language”

Begam deserves praisethough he is alone in the

volume in this) for referringo criticism outside the

Anglo-American andFrench-German elds.

The very fact that the largertheme of “Beckett andphilosophy” is not reducibleto certain specic thematiccoordinates only highlightsthe complexity of the issue.


18/24

18

“language itself is an edge which cuts between the worldand the one who speaks.”

In the chapter on “Beckett and Foucault” Thomas

Hunkeler provides a welcome reminder of the fact thatseeking the speaker cannot simply translate itself intonding a referential or empirical subject, nor does it

warrant the understanding of such a subject as a mere“grammatical fold.” I nd it interesting that at the mo -ment in which Foucault is evoked as a reader of Beck-ett, some of the problematic aspects of his technologiesof self are re-played in a Beckettian context. Again on ameta-thematic note, one can ask: why is a certain phi-losopher related to a discussion of Beckett’s work? In a body of work that addresses the Beckett canon on thistheme, innovation could be located precisely here, in adiscussion of the singularity of the text(s) evoked.

Further, does the very de nition of “episteme” implya sharing of general cultural and conceptual presupposi-tions? If we believe that Beckett provided (new) “phi-losophemes,” we should specify whether or not theyenhance somebody’s work (in spite of the chronological

retroactivity that Richard Lane describes as “igncertain chronology”) or if they attest to an unacedged cultural “debt of thought.” Exemplary

sense is Philip Tew’s wonderful discussion of Bprose fragments via Habermas in which he a“the transformative capacity of negativity and thgarde” in cultural terms, pointing to shared socioical presuppositions. My questions transcend the thematization ofsophical implications of/in the speci cally Beckettiliterary production; perhaps though, that thematis the major scope of this volume. So, if I am ting answers here, it is probably because I am broader extra-textual questions, and I therefore not to get an answer. However, I would point oDavid Cunningham’s reading of the (im)possibunderstanding comes close to the kind of quesam posing here; his brilliant contribution addresmain issue: “on what basis is it possible to ‘tryBeckett’s work, philosophically?” The very fact that the larger theme of “Beckphilosophy” is not reducible to certain speci c thematcoordinates only highlights the complexity of thand the volume’s solid, exemplary thematic mremains. What these essays valuably highlight isthat Beckett plays with received “philosophemesBar eld’s discussion of Beckett and Heidegger providprecisely this solid mapping as a spectrum of mothemes, comparatively revisited. After all, reing the multiplicity of the interpretive readings allows is a way of keeping alive the debate abrelevance of his work and its understanding as acontribution to the contemporary episteme. Refto a variety of modern and contemporary philosin this volume highlight the “inclusive disjunthat Beckett performs, and the variety of differeings that in his brilliance he concedes.

— Carla Loc

The Beckett Festival of Radio Plays. Project Direc-tor: Everett Frost. A Voices International produc-tion presented by Evergreen Review, Inc. Six CDsfeaturing All That Fall, Embers, Words and Music,Rough for Radio II, and Cascando.

The Beckett Festival of Radio Plays was originally plafor Beckett’s eightieth birthday. Martha Fehprime mover, assembled the production and conteam. The project took some time to get off the but in April 1989 it was ready to be aired nationNational Public Radio member stations. The ca

New & Forthcomingo Brater, Enoch.The Essential Samuel Beckett: An

Illustrated Biography. London: Thames andHudson, 2003. 144 pp. ISBN 0-500-28411-3.$19.95. 122 Illustrations. Distributed in theUSA by W.W. Norton. Revised and updatededition ofWhy Beckett.

o Buning, Marius, Matthijs Engelberts, SjefHouppermans, eds.Pastiches, Parodies, andOther Imitations. Vol. 11 ofSamuel Beckett To-day/Aujourd’hui. Amsterdam and New York:Rodopi, 2002. 325pp. ISBN 90-420-1094-0(hardcover). $75; ISBN 90-420-1084-3 (pa-per). $35.

o Fletcher, John.About Beckett: The Playwrightand the Work. London: Faber and Faber, 2003.ISBN 0-571-20124-5 (paper). £8.99

o McDonald, Ronan.Tragedy and Irish Litera-ture: Synge, O’Casey, Beckett. New York: Pal-grave Macmillan, 2002. 215pp. 0-333-9293-69. $62.00

REVIEWS


19/24

replete with names of solid Beckettian standing and sowere the background documentaries broadcast after theplays. Cassette copies of the ve plays cum background

were marketed by NPR.The festival as a whole seems to have been a lastingsuccess in one very im-portant respect. All

ve productionswere nationalpremieres. Whathad been an ig-norable part ofBeckett’s work,particularly inthe US, suddenlymoved up front tocommand attention.Embers , starring Barry McGovernand Billie Whitelaw, got a gold medal from the NY In-ternational Radio Festival in 1989. The canon expanded.With All That Fall a sizeable play was added to it, andmuch unexpected motion to boot –- another “oeuvre trèsmouvementée, une sorte de western,” as Beckett oncecharacterizedGodot for Roger Blin. And the radio playsfrom the early sixties were found to be paradigmatic ar-ticulations of a focal theme, that of the compulsion tocreate. “It does in a way show what passes for my mindand what passes for its work,” Beckett said ofCascando.

This newsletter was not deaf to the virtues of the fes-tival when it came about, as witnessTBC 10:1-2 (1988-1989). But how have the productions withstood the testof time? Splendidly, I would say, but there’s no need totake my word for it: the cassettes have now been reissuedin CD format for all to hear. There is a wealth of good ra-dio acting on them. Still I do think the Whitelaw–DavidWarrilow tandem inAll That Fallshould be singled outfor special praise. Their act is convincingly underpinnedby Everett Frost’s adept microphoning (the rationale forwhich he has presented at length in Lois Oppenheim’sDirecting Beckett , 1994).

In this deft production one both hears and senses therelatedness of man falling from grace and of rain fallingfrom heaven, lapsarian and diluvian rolled into one. TheFrost version takes its time, richly pausing on its way ina manner yet unheard of on American airwaves. Frostthinks that, at 78:15, it is the longest version on recordin any language. In fact the NDR (Hamburg) 1957 pro-duction was exactly the same length.Words and Music is another festival treat. Getting a score for it from Mor-ton Feldman was Beckett’s idea: the 1961 music by hiscousin John Beckett had failed to satisfy either author orcomposer.

A festival of ve is ne, yet a whetted appetite mightask for more.Rough for Radio II is part of the programme,

the rst rough is not. It is sketchier, to be sure, than thesecond, and it is easy to see why it was abandoned:Cas-cando , a less “naturalist” thematization of ceaseless story

telling, took its place. The author didn’t want this roughto be part of the festival. Even so, he translated the orignal French into English

as late as 1975, thussomehow acknowl-edging it. And ofcourse it’s beendone on radio, inthe Netherlandsfor instance, withmusic by Richard

Rijnvos. But morethan anything else,

the difference between the rst rough and Cascando is singularly instructive about abstraction in Beckett both as precept and as practice. My other desideratumwould beThe Old Tune , a Hibernian version of RobertPinget’sLa manivelle (1963). This little text is not just atranslation but an adaptation which, as Vivian Merciersaid, has some of the purest Dublin dialect to be foundoutside O’Casey and Behan. What we do get, however, is ne enough. The pro -ductions have aged better than their entourage has.Something in the actors’ and academics’ soundbites thasprinkle the presentations and in the documentaries thatfollow the plays is a shade more reverent than one wouldwant them today. Methinks they protest too much. Theprint in which these CDs are wrapped jars badly with theproducts it is supposed to cover. What little text is provided has never seen a proofreader. The “lively banter”of the Rooneys inAll That Fall , we learn, is “sometimesheart rendering.” This may be compared with other CDproducers: Auvidis Montaigne, e.g., tucked a trilinguaseventeen-page cover booklet into their 1996 discWordsand Music , calledmorton feldman 2(1 CD MO 782084).Among other things, it includes segments of the Frost/Feldman conversation which had to be left out from theFestival documentary appended to theWords and Music CD. The Beckett festival CD release might have madmore use of this opportunity to address new audiences both in sound and in print. “The play increases in intensity and you’ll have to tune in to nd out if they [Voiceand Music] manage to nish or not.” That blurb, I think,could be bettered.

—Clas Zilliacus

With All That Fall a sizeable play was added to it,and much unexpected motion to boot –- another“oeuvre très mouvementée, une sorte de western,”as Beckett once characterized Godot for RogerBlin.


20/24

20

of how Beckett’s relationship with subjectivity mitself in self-re exive elements in his works of differegenres yields convincing results that already prmany of the points to be made later.

The main structural principle of Heinemannproach is already established here: he constantly back and forth between Jean Paul and Beckett, aneach issue rst with one author and then with the other, but failing to set up any signi cant cross-referenc

between the different parts. This leads to a fair of repetition. The binary structure becomes esproblematic when Heinemann deals with the cmanifestations of “I- gurations” in the writers’ workDoppelgänger can be found in bothoeuvres with regathe author and the artist-protagonists as well as the characters themselves, and the respective sof the study therefore go together fairly well, aanalyses of the different levels of narration con by both writers.

Heinemann’s attempt to equate metaphors of yinand seeing in Jean Paul with Beckett’s “poeticlook,” however, seems rather forced; ying is clearly t

predominant image in the rst case, but is completeabsent in the second. Similarly, Heinemann himmits that dreams, the importance of which he hexamined with regard to Jean Paul, play only a mrole with Beckett. As a result, he simply replacwith “visions” as far as Beckett’s works are conAs these rather

beckett in sydney

Documents