Beckett's Ohio Impromptu: A View from the Isle of Swans

Beckett's Ohio Impromptu: A View from the Isle of Swans PIERRE ASTIER FantOme qu'~ ce lieu son pur eclat assigne, ns'immobiHse au songe froid de mepris Que vet panni l'exil inutile Ie Cygne. Stephane Mallarrne' In an interview given the same day he had so beautifully staged the premiere of Ohio Impromptu at Ohio State University, Alan Schneider remarked: "I think the title is sort of interesting. I believe it is Beckett's first 'place' name. And I think there's a bitofajoke in il.'" Now, does the joke - if there is ajoke - refer to the word "Ohio," or to the word "Impromptu," orto both? As far as the word "Impromptu" is concerned, and to the extent that etymologically it means "on the spot," there is undoubtedly a joke in the title, for as we shall see and as Schneider and others knew, it took Beckett a long time and much pain to complete this so-called "Impromptu." !fthere is also a joke in the use of the place name, it could only be because the play has nothing to do with the State of Ohio - unless, as some prefer to think, this name is not Beckett's joke but a pleasant gesture toward the organizers of the Beckett symposium at Ohio State University. I agree that it would be perfectly in keeping with Beckett's sense of generosity to make such a gesture, or with his sense of humor to call this play "Impromptu" through the ironic use of antiphrasis and "Ohio Impromptu" just forthe fun ofit. Nevertheless, Iconcur withthose who spontaneously associated the term "impromptu" with a certain type of artistic creation, musical or literary, that is en principe improvised but actually composed or written carefully to give the feeling of improvisation: on the one hand, like the impromptus of Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Faure, or others; and on the other, like Moliere's Impromptu de Versailles (1663), Giraudoux's Impromptu de Paris (1937), and lonesco's Impromptu de l'Alma (1955). In other 332 PIERRE ASTIER words, I think that Ohio Impromptu not only is like a musical impromptu' (as far as the composition of the story within the play is concerned), but is truly, as a play, a theatrical impromptu. Through its very title, Ohio Impromptu shares a feature with the other three dramatic impromptus: the name ofthe location where it was first performed.4 It also shares two other characteristics (notwithstanding that these appear also in most of Beckett's latest plays): it is short, very short indeed; and it is, up to a point, comical. Finally, all previous impromptus have in common two other features, one apparently lacking in Beckett's play, while the other is most certainly there, although perhaps not as obvious. First, the missing link: whereas Moliere, Giraudoux and Ionesco used their respective impromptus to defend their own theater aesthetics through explicit and virulently satirical attacks against their respective critics, Beckett does not seem to defend anything or attack anyone in his impromptu.s Second, the metatheatrical dimension : previous impromptus all deal to a large extent with problems ofplayacting or play-writing through the acting or the writing of a play that turns out to be the very one performed before our eyes. So it is with Ohio Impromptu, but with two marked differences. The work within the play is not a play, but a story read from a book. Moreover, this story ends with events which the audience can witness on stage at the end of the play, yet it also seems timeless. Read aloud now by a character in the play, it is concerned with a certain "sad tale" once before read aloud by another character (the visitor in the book story), a "sad tale" ofwhich we know nothing except that it is a repetition ofthe repetition ofa repetition, and so on ad infinitum, ofthe same old "sad tale." While the story we hear might refer to the relatively recent past of the characters in the play, the "sad tale" to which it is linked refers to a past so absolutely remote that it might well go back to the very origin of time itself.6 In...