I. Introduction
Definition
Firstly,
we’ll remember the definition of the Absurdism paraphrased from
the American encyclopaedia:
“The
Absurdism is the root of which is a term used originally to describe a
violation of the rules of logic, has acquired a diverse and wide connotations
in modern theology, philosophy, and the arts, in which it expresses the
failure of traditional values to fulfill man's spiritual and emotional
needs”
Beckett
became popular and well-known more because of Waiting for Godot than any
of his other works. His plays, my thesis concentrates on four of them,
placed him in the centre of the Theatre of the Absurd, one of the major
movements in modern drama since the end of World War II.
This literary dramatic movement, between 1950 and 1960, which revolutionised
both English and world drama, connected the dramatists (Edward Albee, Eugene
Ionesco, Harold Pinter, Jean Genet, Vaclav Havel...etc.) whose work is
an expression of their personal experience, which Albert Camus characterised
as Absurdity in his book of essays The Myth of Sisyphus. The author's
personal experience and intimate feelings are the central inspirational
sources of all their theatrical images reflecting both their state of mind
and their spirit. The feelings of Absurdity as a literary-creative motivation,
connecting a number of literary artists and philosophers, is also evident
in the four plays; Endgame, Happy Days, Krapp's Last Tape,
and Waiting for Godot, which I am going to deal with.
Beckett presents the reader with four different images of the same,
unforeseeable, sudden, fatal, life feeling. In the same way a painter transforms
his visions into colourful spots, he transforms his mind into the symbolic
language of an imaginary life situation. The reader or the on-looker gets
directly into the centre of the author's world as an observer. Beckett's
plays are like multidimensional theatrical pictures connecting literary
art with visual ones giving us, through the form of play, evidence about
the author's personal experience. I consider Beckett's dramatic art to
be an expression of his most intimate visions on the fundamental philosophical
question about the place of the human being in the surrounding world.
I have divided my thesis into five chapters through which I try to
introduce the main themes and motifs recurring in Beckett's plays. At the
same time, I intend to point at the way why Beckett's dramatic expression
of some basic human philosophical problems corresponds with what was formulated
in the fields of philosophy through philosophical language.
After a short introduction (chapter I) and a brief look at the life
and personality of Samuel Beckett (Chapter I)I attempt to define Absurdity
(chapter III), I deal with the problem about how and when it appears and
with what human fate it is connected.
In chapter IV I am interested concretely in Beckett's absurd character
and the concrete situation in which he is placed. That is, at the same
time, Beckett's exclusive theme he deals with in his dramatic writings
as well as in his novels.
The next chapter (Chapter V), which is the core of the whole work,
is an analysis of the motif of time and the motif of "waiting for" which
recurs in the all four of Beckett's plays. The lives of Beckett's characters
seem to be unbearable and the end, death, very slow in coming. Here I am
interested in the characters' tragic lasting between life and death, which
are not mutually exclusive; Beckett's characters live in a state which
is a combination of these two and the only thing they long and hope for
is the final arrival of "real death" which never approaches quickly.
In the last, quite theoretical chapter (Chapter VI), I deal with the
form of the Absurd Theatre which creates the world of the absurd character.
I argue that theatre is the optimal form for expressing Absurdity and also
make a comparison with epic theatre.
Since Waiting for Godot was first performed (as En attendant,
in Paris on 5 January 1953), there has been a flood of criticism, probing
not only the "real" meaning, but the influences, the symbols, the style,
and the method of Beckett's dramatic work. (As to Beckett himself, he was
quite unwilling to illuminate his writings by providing any comment explaining
the meaning of his novels and plays.)
This thesis is an attempt to look into Beckett's absurdity through
the four images of his four major plays with no exigencies to formulate
any general and definitive intellectual reflection by which Beckett could
be labelled with a specific attributes. I see Beckett's dramatic work as
art which has its own status independent of all of the additional interpretation,
as a kind of art which affects mostly the emotions perception rather than
the reason.
i
First published as Camus, Albert, Le Mythe de Sisyphe. Paris: Gallimard,
1942
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