How much is enough? How much is too much?
In "Enough," Beckett tells a story about someone who is totally submissive to a master. The story is couched in sexual metaphor, so it could be read with the narrator as a sexual submissive, but...
In class, Mike suggested that Beckett was up to his games again and that the narrator is a writer. This actually makes a certain degree of sense. Assuming that's true, it provides an interesting insight into how Beckett related to his writing enterprise. As many writers will probably agree, the muse can be cruel in her demands on the writer, especially when she is stirring, demanding a story be written. The writer is subjugated to the text.
This interpretation fits well with the text. It resonates with the imagery.
Of course, we know Beckett, as the narrator, did not throw off his master/muse, rather accepted this submission as part of his life.
This interpretation also makes me think of my midterm paper about "Texts for Nothing" which saw the fourth story as a struggle between character and writer. Here, the story is about the non-struggle between writer and muse. Still, it suggests that Beckett occasionally writes about writing, and that reading his stories in that context might reveal some interesting interpretations or reinterpretations of his work. Maybe Waiting for Godot is about a pair of writers waiting for the muse, feeling lost and non-existent without her. Maybe Pozzo is Lucky's muse, or vice versa.
Probably not entirely Beckett's intent, but it could make for an interesting paper. Besides, literary theory tells us the author's intent doesn't really matter.
Enough.
10 December 2008
09 December 2008
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 19: Ping
(Doing workbook entries out of order again.)
Another "out there" piece from Beckett, "Ping" is a string of words with somewhat arbitrary "sentence" endings that seems to describe one of Beckett's super-white bodies with long white hair and light blue eyes encased in a 3'x6' white box. The text is interspersed with the word "ping" at random (?) intervals.
At first I wondered if the ping was like a sonar ping, indicating something drawing nearer to or moving farther away from the subject of the text. It's possible, but if so, that something is not moving consistently toward the subject because the pings come slow, then fast, then slow, then about steady before coming fast again at the end.
Like the pings, many of the words or phrases repeat. I think it would be interesting to run a word frequency analysis on this. I suspect "white" is one of the most frequent words, definitely more frequent than "ping." Maybe later I'll see if I can find software to do the analysis. It would be nice if it looked for word clusters too. For example, the phrase "traces blurs light grey almost white," or variations of it, appear several times early in the text -- often enough that it jumped out at me.
"Traces blurs signs no meaning light grey almost white" (193) is one variation, and makes me question if Beckett used the repetition to focus on what was different. "Signs no meaning" seems to question language (a sign system) and linguistics (the study of language). Are signs without meaning really signs? Do they really have no meaning or is the meaning simply not known or not understood? Made me think of Orson Scott Card's categories framlings, utanlings, ramen and varelse for living things in Speaker for the Dead. Framlings and utanlings are categories of beings with whom one shares enough in common that communication is possible. Ramen and varelse are categories of beings who are either incapable of sentience or who are so alien that communication is impossible without some kind of transcendence or moving beyond one's world view.
"Ping" also made me wonder yet again about Beckett's fascination with pure-white bodies with long white hair and pale blue eyes. This figure appears several times in his stories -- here, "Imagination Dead Imagine," I'm pretty sure there was one in "The Lost Ones," and vestiges of the image in other stories and plays (for example, Nagg and Nell in Endgame). Is this an image of a ghost for him? Or is it something else?
The final sentence is also interesting. "Head haughty eyes white fixed front old ping last murmur one second perhaps not alone eye unlustrous black and white half closed long lashes imploring ping silence ping over." Early in the text the odd word, "unover" appears several times. In the last few lines (starting near the bottom of page 195 in our book), that changes to "over," ending with "silence ping over" as shown above. My thought is that somewhere in the text (I'd probably have to read it about 20 more times to figure out approximately where), there is a shift. This change from "unover" to "over" is obviously part of it, but there's a large chunk of text between the last appearance of one and the first appearance of the other. It is also probably worth noting that this final sentence introduces black, something that has not appeared before, though we're not sure where the black comes from (maybe the pupil of the eye?). While there have been murmurs before, this is the "last murmur." But I think the thing that jumps out is "perhaps not alone." What is Beckett getting at?
I guess one way to see this is as a metaphor for existential isolation. A 3'x6' space is about the minimum space required for an average, adult human. The body (Beckett persistently refrains from calling them a "person" in his texts) stands, boxed in, isolated, unable to connect outside the space. Isolated, as existentialism says everyone is. White surrounded by white, unable to sense anything because everything it can sense is one. Unable to sense, it is unable to be sensed, at least by others like it, so existence is in question (to be is to be perceived). Maybe the pings are the attempts by this isolated person/body to find proof of another in the surrounding space, a sonar cry hoping for a murmur of an echo. And the conclusion, "perhaps not alone," though there is no evidence that any of the pings returned any sign of anything outside.
I think Beckett, like Camus, may be hoping, maybe even praying, that he is not alone, that there is a reason for it all, even if he doesn't understand it and it makes no sense.
All I can say is, "I'm so glad I'm not an existentialist."
Another "out there" piece from Beckett, "Ping" is a string of words with somewhat arbitrary "sentence" endings that seems to describe one of Beckett's super-white bodies with long white hair and light blue eyes encased in a 3'x6' white box. The text is interspersed with the word "ping" at random (?) intervals.
At first I wondered if the ping was like a sonar ping, indicating something drawing nearer to or moving farther away from the subject of the text. It's possible, but if so, that something is not moving consistently toward the subject because the pings come slow, then fast, then slow, then about steady before coming fast again at the end.
Like the pings, many of the words or phrases repeat. I think it would be interesting to run a word frequency analysis on this. I suspect "white" is one of the most frequent words, definitely more frequent than "ping." Maybe later I'll see if I can find software to do the analysis. It would be nice if it looked for word clusters too. For example, the phrase "traces blurs light grey almost white," or variations of it, appear several times early in the text -- often enough that it jumped out at me.
"Traces blurs signs no meaning light grey almost white" (193) is one variation, and makes me question if Beckett used the repetition to focus on what was different. "Signs no meaning" seems to question language (a sign system) and linguistics (the study of language). Are signs without meaning really signs? Do they really have no meaning or is the meaning simply not known or not understood? Made me think of Orson Scott Card's categories framlings, utanlings, ramen and varelse for living things in Speaker for the Dead. Framlings and utanlings are categories of beings with whom one shares enough in common that communication is possible. Ramen and varelse are categories of beings who are either incapable of sentience or who are so alien that communication is impossible without some kind of transcendence or moving beyond one's world view.
"Ping" also made me wonder yet again about Beckett's fascination with pure-white bodies with long white hair and pale blue eyes. This figure appears several times in his stories -- here, "Imagination Dead Imagine," I'm pretty sure there was one in "The Lost Ones," and vestiges of the image in other stories and plays (for example, Nagg and Nell in Endgame). Is this an image of a ghost for him? Or is it something else?
The final sentence is also interesting. "Head haughty eyes white fixed front old ping last murmur one second perhaps not alone eye unlustrous black and white half closed long lashes imploring ping silence ping over." Early in the text the odd word, "unover" appears several times. In the last few lines (starting near the bottom of page 195 in our book), that changes to "over," ending with "silence ping over" as shown above. My thought is that somewhere in the text (I'd probably have to read it about 20 more times to figure out approximately where), there is a shift. This change from "unover" to "over" is obviously part of it, but there's a large chunk of text between the last appearance of one and the first appearance of the other. It is also probably worth noting that this final sentence introduces black, something that has not appeared before, though we're not sure where the black comes from (maybe the pupil of the eye?). While there have been murmurs before, this is the "last murmur." But I think the thing that jumps out is "perhaps not alone." What is Beckett getting at?
I guess one way to see this is as a metaphor for existential isolation. A 3'x6' space is about the minimum space required for an average, adult human. The body (Beckett persistently refrains from calling them a "person" in his texts) stands, boxed in, isolated, unable to connect outside the space. Isolated, as existentialism says everyone is. White surrounded by white, unable to sense anything because everything it can sense is one. Unable to sense, it is unable to be sensed, at least by others like it, so existence is in question (to be is to be perceived). Maybe the pings are the attempts by this isolated person/body to find proof of another in the surrounding space, a sonar cry hoping for a murmur of an echo. And the conclusion, "perhaps not alone," though there is no evidence that any of the pings returned any sign of anything outside.
I think Beckett, like Camus, may be hoping, maybe even praying, that he is not alone, that there is a reason for it all, even if he doesn't understand it and it makes no sense.
All I can say is, "I'm so glad I'm not an existentialist."
01 December 2008
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 17: Imagination Dead Imagine
Beckett's "Imagination Dead Imagine" shares a lot in common with "The Lost Ones."
First, it spends part of the time focused on the geometry and measurements of the space. "Diameter three feet, three feet from ground to summit of the vault. Two diameters at right angles…" and so on for several sentences. Several sentences may not seem like much compared to the lengthy descriptions of space in "The Lost Ones," but remember that this story is about three pages compared to 21 pages for "The Lost Ones" and suddenly those few sentences become more significant. Also note that the space is totally enclosed with no way in or out as in "The Lost Ones." Beckett says, "No way in, go in." Not only does this sentence establish the closed space, it seems to echo Beckett's "I can't go on, I'll go on," from his trilogy.
Then there's the light and the temperature. "The light that makes all so white no visible source," like the sourceless yellow light of "The Lost Ones." But wait, that light fluctuated, flashed several times per second. Well, a couple of sentences later we find, "… wait, the light goes down, all grows dark together, ground, wall, vault, bodies, say twenty seconds…" and then "Wait more or less long, light and head come back, all grows white and hot together…" So we see that the light in this story also fluctuates, though not as rapidly as in "The Lost Ones." Also in the last sentence cited we see that the temperature is increasing. This is after "the temperature goes down" at the same time as the light "to reach its minimum, say freezing-point."
There are two bodies in the space Beckett describes. A woman and a man lay back to back, squeezed into the small circular rotunda, their heads in opposite directions, knees folded, touching the perimeter of the circle, the roof arching up over them, but close. They are alive because a mirror before their mouth mists over. They are not asleep. They are merely laying in silence, never speaking. They are reminiscent of the bodies in "The Lost Ones," all of which eventually fell into immobility and whose mobility was utterly futile and pointless anyway.
The image that I get from this description is that of the interior of a skull. We've talked about Beckett trying to write what takes place inside the skull in various stories and plays. I think that here, he is literally figuratively describing the interior of the skull. The rotunda is the space wherein lies the two halves of the brain, joined at the middle by the commissural nexus.
A couple of other notes probably worth considering. Beckett describes "piercing, pale blue" eyes. I seem to remember something similar in "The Lost Ones" and perhaps other Beckett stories and plays. The other is in the first sentence of the story, wherein Beckett seems to call for the death of imagination before beginning. "… imagination not dead yet, yes, dead, good, imagination dead imagine." Why is it necessary for imagination to end before it can begin? Dunno. Finally, there was Beckett's description of the hair of the woman, which is white, but contrasts with the white background due to its "strangely imperfect whiteness." I thought this was a rather interesting turn of phrase.
First, it spends part of the time focused on the geometry and measurements of the space. "Diameter three feet, three feet from ground to summit of the vault. Two diameters at right angles…" and so on for several sentences. Several sentences may not seem like much compared to the lengthy descriptions of space in "The Lost Ones," but remember that this story is about three pages compared to 21 pages for "The Lost Ones" and suddenly those few sentences become more significant. Also note that the space is totally enclosed with no way in or out as in "The Lost Ones." Beckett says, "No way in, go in." Not only does this sentence establish the closed space, it seems to echo Beckett's "I can't go on, I'll go on," from his trilogy.
Then there's the light and the temperature. "The light that makes all so white no visible source," like the sourceless yellow light of "The Lost Ones." But wait, that light fluctuated, flashed several times per second. Well, a couple of sentences later we find, "… wait, the light goes down, all grows dark together, ground, wall, vault, bodies, say twenty seconds…" and then "Wait more or less long, light and head come back, all grows white and hot together…" So we see that the light in this story also fluctuates, though not as rapidly as in "The Lost Ones." Also in the last sentence cited we see that the temperature is increasing. This is after "the temperature goes down" at the same time as the light "to reach its minimum, say freezing-point."
There are two bodies in the space Beckett describes. A woman and a man lay back to back, squeezed into the small circular rotunda, their heads in opposite directions, knees folded, touching the perimeter of the circle, the roof arching up over them, but close. They are alive because a mirror before their mouth mists over. They are not asleep. They are merely laying in silence, never speaking. They are reminiscent of the bodies in "The Lost Ones," all of which eventually fell into immobility and whose mobility was utterly futile and pointless anyway.
The image that I get from this description is that of the interior of a skull. We've talked about Beckett trying to write what takes place inside the skull in various stories and plays. I think that here, he is literally figuratively describing the interior of the skull. The rotunda is the space wherein lies the two halves of the brain, joined at the middle by the commissural nexus.
A couple of other notes probably worth considering. Beckett describes "piercing, pale blue" eyes. I seem to remember something similar in "The Lost Ones" and perhaps other Beckett stories and plays. The other is in the first sentence of the story, wherein Beckett seems to call for the death of imagination before beginning. "… imagination not dead yet, yes, dead, good, imagination dead imagine." Why is it necessary for imagination to end before it can begin? Dunno. Finally, there was Beckett's description of the hair of the woman, which is white, but contrasts with the white background due to its "strangely imperfect whiteness." I thought this was a rather interesting turn of phrase.
LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 16: Ohio Impromptu
Ohio Impromptu echoes Footfalls and perhaps Eh, Joe (though I'm less sure about the latter because it was a bit too "out there" for me). The play shows a man being read to by his double. The story the double reads seems to be a summary version of the man's life and revolves around the loss of a love. I plan to use this as one of the texts for my final paper, but here are a few thoughts (which will be more fully developed there).
One of the questions I had that isn't explained in the text is exactly what happened to the person the listener/reader loved. Did the woman die? Did she just leave him? The text tells us that he "moved from where they'd been so long together" (285) and that the loved one left him "unspoken words" (286) that "my shade will comfort you" (286). Shade implies death, but… There's nothing in the text that says that the "dear one" is a her, or even a person. Trees cast shade. So do buildings. Building have façades. Façade derives from the same root as "face". What if this loved one was a building whose façade was changed dramatically. Or a tree whose bark looks like a face -- or even not like a face at all, but only in the man's mind? Perhaps that's a stretch, but the text is ambiguous on this point. Why not? The "dear one" is always using "unspoken words" and sends an emissary instead of coming his/her/itself, wouldn't a ghost speak?
Another question is, which is the "real" person and which is the figment of the real person's mind? Is the listener the real person? Is he trying to hold back the end of the story with his knocks that cause the reader to stop and go back? If he wanted to drag out the story, why doesn't he let the reader turn back when he references "the fearful symptoms described at length page forty paragraph four" (286)? Surely going back and reading the paragraph again, perhaps several, would delay the end even longer? Or, is the reader the real person? Is he confessing to the listener, the figment, in an attempt at self-catharsis? Are the knocks he places where the reader subconsciously feels a need to reiterate a point?
Is the story even about the listener/reader? Or is the reader an author editing his work, reading it aloud to himself? Is the listener the manifestation of the editing part of the author, the knocks a pause to review words and make sure they're the right words. If the reader has been reading this story to the listener night after night for a long time, as the story suggests, why does he stumble on part of the text? "After so long a lapse that as if never been. [Pause. Looks closer.] Yes, after so long a lapse…" (286). Surely after reading the text the implied dozens of times he wouldn't need to double check words like that.
Finally, we watched a filmed production of the play in class. I think the film may have missed something by causing the reader to fade out at the end leaving the listener alone. The text does not either by stage directions or implication in the story told suggest that the reader disappears at the end. The story ends with the reader and listener sitting together, silent. The stage directions do the same. We can say that the stage directions are constrained by the limitations of theater vs. film, but why is the story likewise constrained? Couldn't the story end saying that after they sat for a while the reader disappeared? I think this ambiguity is in the text precisely to raise some of the questions above about which is the real person, and what's really happening in the story and play.
One of the questions I had that isn't explained in the text is exactly what happened to the person the listener/reader loved. Did the woman die? Did she just leave him? The text tells us that he "moved from where they'd been so long together" (285) and that the loved one left him "unspoken words" (286) that "my shade will comfort you" (286). Shade implies death, but… There's nothing in the text that says that the "dear one" is a her, or even a person. Trees cast shade. So do buildings. Building have façades. Façade derives from the same root as "face". What if this loved one was a building whose façade was changed dramatically. Or a tree whose bark looks like a face -- or even not like a face at all, but only in the man's mind? Perhaps that's a stretch, but the text is ambiguous on this point. Why not? The "dear one" is always using "unspoken words" and sends an emissary instead of coming his/her/itself, wouldn't a ghost speak?
Another question is, which is the "real" person and which is the figment of the real person's mind? Is the listener the real person? Is he trying to hold back the end of the story with his knocks that cause the reader to stop and go back? If he wanted to drag out the story, why doesn't he let the reader turn back when he references "the fearful symptoms described at length page forty paragraph four" (286)? Surely going back and reading the paragraph again, perhaps several, would delay the end even longer? Or, is the reader the real person? Is he confessing to the listener, the figment, in an attempt at self-catharsis? Are the knocks he places where the reader subconsciously feels a need to reiterate a point?
Is the story even about the listener/reader? Or is the reader an author editing his work, reading it aloud to himself? Is the listener the manifestation of the editing part of the author, the knocks a pause to review words and make sure they're the right words. If the reader has been reading this story to the listener night after night for a long time, as the story suggests, why does he stumble on part of the text? "After so long a lapse that as if never been. [Pause. Looks closer.] Yes, after so long a lapse…" (286). Surely after reading the text the implied dozens of times he wouldn't need to double check words like that.
Finally, we watched a filmed production of the play in class. I think the film may have missed something by causing the reader to fade out at the end leaving the listener alone. The text does not either by stage directions or implication in the story told suggest that the reader disappears at the end. The story ends with the reader and listener sitting together, silent. The stage directions do the same. We can say that the stage directions are constrained by the limitations of theater vs. film, but why is the story likewise constrained? Couldn't the story end saying that after they sat for a while the reader disappeared? I think this ambiguity is in the text precisely to raise some of the questions above about which is the real person, and what's really happening in the story and play.
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