A Beckett Canon

1959–61: Fresh Elements and Motifs

1959–61
Fresh Elements and Motifs 1959
Beckett continued to think that he was at a creative impasse, but he also continued to experiment with new forms of drama and ‹ction. I draw the title of my chapter from Beckett’s translation of the foirade, “Il est tête nue,” but the phrase is applicable to other works as well. At the end of 1958 Beckett started a story, which he labeled “Pim,” and that ‹ction became his major preoccupation during 1959. However, lesser works also exhibit fresh elements—the radio play Embers and the mime play Acte sans paroles II. In the periodical Minuit, where ‹ve of his eight foirades were ‹rst published, four of them are dated “années 50,” but when they appeared in the volume Pour ‹nir encore et autres foirades, the date changed to “années 60.” Beckett wrote John Pilling that the foirades “dated from after How It Is” (Knowlson and Pilling, 132), and that novel (which began as “Pim”) was completed in French in July 1960. Of the French foirades, the only manuscript extant is “Il est tête nue,” but it is undated. Because of its position in the MacGowran notebook at OSU. I assigned it to 1955, and I suspect that three of the four early foirades were written between that year and 1959. Since there is no datable evidence, however, I am arbitrarily commenting under 1959. The last year of the 1950s would then contain and predict “fresh elements and motifs” in both prose and drama. I begin the chapter with a work that we can date approximately. Embers The BBC production of All That Fall pleased Beckett well enough to continue in the radio genre. Beckett’s early drafts of Embers have disappeared, 244 Two undated typescripts of Embers exist; the (probably) earlier one is at TCD, the later one at HRC. Embers was sent to the BBC in February 1959, and it was broad- but the script entitled Ebb was sent to the BBC in February 1959 (Pountney, 107). Of two undated typescripts, one differs from the ‹nal version in presenting voices in ›ashback. The protagonist resembles Krapp in having two voices—an older and a younger one. The music and riding lessons of the protagonist ’s daughter Addie are added to the typescript, as afterthoughts. The apparently later typescript contains proper names added in ink, and it is otherwise close to the ‹nal version. Beckett’s restlessness within a single genre is evident if we contrast All That Fall with Embers. Both plays view their respective worlds through a single consciousness—Maddy in the one, Henry in the other. However, Maddy’s mind is exuberantly inclusive, whereas that of Henry is obsessive and enigmatic. Maddy’s resonant voice responds to a diapason of nonverbal sounds, whereas Henry’s brooding voice is counterpointed mainly against the sound of the sea, which is heard during the play’s 228 pauses (Zilliacus’s count, 1976, 91). All That Fall opens on lively animal-sounds, whereas Embers opens on an unidenti‹able slurring sound, followed by footsteps on gravel. Maddy laughs at a verse from Scripture, but Henry calls upon Christ and evokes him subtly. Maddy recalls the past sporadically, but her voice on radio animates the present. Henry con›ates past and present, fact and ‹ction. He enlivens ghosts, he punctures memories with older memories, and he struggles with a composition. Critics of Embers sometimes quote Beckett’s remark to Paul-Louis Mignon: “Cendres repose sur une ambiguïté: le personnage a-t-il une hallucination ou est-il en présence de la réalité?”1 [Embers depends on an ambiguity : is the character hallucinating or faced with reality?]. However, Beckett uttered this sentence in the context of his refusal to permit the transfer of the radio play to the stage. The ambiguities of Embers are multiple, and hallucinations or imagination may be the reality of the protagonist Henry, whose name we learn only when it is spoken by the second character to be heard—Ada. Despite the pyric residue of the title Embers, the play opens and closes with the sound of the sea, and to some extent the play pits the ‹re of life against the sea of death. All sounds—bruitage and voices—are conjured by Henry to shut out the sea, which we hear before we can identify it. Henry’s abrupt opening words are at ‹rst puzzling, as they plunge us in medias res...