Beckett and Expressionism

BECKETT AND EXPRESSIONISM* IT IS AMONG NORTHERN PEOPLES that imaginative creation has most often taken the Expressionist path, first in the plastic arts, and then in literature. A certain amount of light seems to impose the conviction that the exterior world exists and that bodies are bodies. In contrast, the Irish philosopher, Berkeley, elegantly formulated the theory of the absence of the perceived world.... For the Northerners, the physical corporeal objects in the work of art are not reflections of the same kind of reality; nor are they manifestations of a spiritual reality, a corresponding Idea; instead, they emanate by projection from the artist's feelings. In literature, from Romanticism on, one can trace the transition of many kinds of realism (including Impressionism) toward what one might call meaningful hallucination, by the end of this systematic deformation. Faust or Flaubert's Temptation of St. Anthony herald an Expressionism which will explode differently in and outside of Germany -Strindberg and ] arry, for example. First and foremost, there must be affective surexpression, and true Expressionism emerges when that surexpression moves from the feeling subject to the objects which are evoked by strong and disturbed feelings. Thus, Jarry's burlesque Expressionism of King Ubu, with its phantasms of conflict and destruction , is parallelled by the non-burlesque Expressionism of Nights and Days, with its essential characteristic of this mode: like wishes in fairy tales, these fears, desires, and hatreds take form and become "reality," but a different kind of reality, in which every form is dedicated to deforming itself in the sense of the emotion it expresses. In Happy Days we find the clearest indication of how we must read Beckett's books and see his plays, of what sense we must attribute to them. Winnie, "imbedded up to above her waist in exact centre of mound," who has been in this condition for some time, calls to mind two passersby; seeing her, they exchange remarks: "What's she doing ? he says-What's the idea? he says-stuck up to her diddies in the bleeding ground.... What does it mean? he says-What's it meant to mean? . . . And you, she says, what's· the idea of you, she says, what are you mea'nt to mean?" [Mayoux' italics] ""These pages relevant to Beckett's drama are excerpted and translated from a longer study "Beckett and the Paths of Expressionism," written in French but published only in German. Ruby Cohn translated from the French. 238 1966 BECKETT AND EXPRESSIONISM 239 The reader, the spectator, the average man, believing himself normal, does not ask questions about what life means, because he has two arms and two legs, and his viscera function-more or less. But the "And you" should enlighten us. The average man ignores his condition . In the horrible distorting mirror which Beckett places before him, inviting him to look at himself, must we not see a mirror of truth? Must we not perceive that it reflects the depths, cutting through appearances to what is hidden? Though Beckett may not seem obscure at first glance, his surface does not correspond to his profundity; he must always be translated into common speech. W(oman) 1, W(oman) 2, M( an): three "faces 50 lost to age and aspect as to seem almost part of urns" in which their bodies are buried, but who do not attain lasting peace through forgetting sin, unhappiness, hatred-this is Play, that Ghost Sonata. Above a paralyzed body, a blind figure, grimacing in agony, finally veiled by a bloody cloth recalling Christ's Passion-this is Endgame, with its two legless old people who finish dying, each in his own ashbin.... Beckett is not a realist but a symbolist, and the way he has a character say, "I am dead," should enlighten us on how to interpret that character's appearance, bearing, infirmities.... This remarkable, ambiguous , aggressive writer, cultivating provocation instead of concession , was virtually ignored before he turned to the theater, where his symbols took the physical form of tramps, mutilated and moribund beings; the obvious expressive strength compensates for what one is not sure of understanding. Beckett stands between the most intangible idea and its most...