Samuel Beckett
Waiting for Godot (collection)
Waiting for Godot
Characters
Tarragon.
Vladimir.
Pozzo.
Lucky.
Boy.
Act I
Village road. Tree. Evening. Estragon sits on the ground and tries to take off his shoe. Breathing heavily, he pulls it off with both hands. Exhausted, he stops, takes a breath, and starts over. The scene repeats itself.
Included Vladimir.
Tarragon(stopping again). Lost business.
Vladimir(approaches him in small steps, spreading his stiff legs wide). It's starting to feel that way to me too. (Silent, thinking.) How many years have I pushed this thought away from myself, I kept convincing myself: Vladimir, think, maybe all is not lost yet. And again he rushed into battle. (Thinks, remembering the hardships of the struggle. To Estragon.) I see you’re here again.
Tarragon. Do you think so?
Vladimir. Nice to see you again. I thought you wouldn't come back again.
Tarragon. Me too.
Vladimir. We need to celebrate our meeting somehow. (Thinks.) Come on, get up, I’ll hug you. (Offers his hand to Estragon.) Tarragon(irritated). Wait, wait.
Vladimir(offended, cold). May I ask where Monsieur deigned to spend the night?
Tarragon. In a ditch.
Vladimir(in amazement). In a ditch?! Where?
Tarragon(without moving). There.
Vladimir. And you weren't beaten?
Tarragon. They beat me... Not very hard.
Vladimir. All the same? Tarragon. The same ones? Don't know.
Vladimir. So I’ve been thinking... I’ve been thinking for a long time... I keep asking myself... what would you have turned into... if not for me... (Decisively.) Into a pathetic pile of bones, you can be sure.
Tarragon(touched to the quick). So what?
Vladimir(depressed). This is too much for one person. (Pause. Decisively.) On the other hand, it seems like there’s no need to be upset now. It was necessary to decide earlier, an eternity earlier, back in the year one thousand nine hundred.
Tarragon. Okay, that's enough. Help me better remove this rubbish. Vladimir. You and I would hold hands and almost be the first to rush Eiffel Tower. We looked pretty good back then. And now it’s too late - they won’t even let us climb it.
Estragon begins to take off his shoe with renewed vigor.
What are you doing?
Tarragon. I'm taking off my shoes. You might think you haven't had to do it yourself.
Vladimir. As many times as you can repeat, you need to take off your shoes every day. I might finally remember.
Tarragon(complainingly). Help me!
Vladimir. Are you in pain?
Tarragon. Hurt! He still asks.
Vladimir(with bitterness). You might think that you are the only one suffering in this world. The rest don't count. If he had been in my shoes at least once, he would probably have started singing.
Tarragon. Did it hurt you too?
Vladimir. Hurt! He's still asking!
Tarragon(pointing finger). This is not a reason to walk around unbuttoned.
Vladimir(leaning over). Well, yes. (Buttons his trousers.) You shouldn’t let yourself go even in small things.
Tarragon. Well, what can I tell you, you are always waiting for the last moment.
Vladimir(thoughtfully). Last moment... (Thinks.) You can wait, if there is something to wait for. Whose words are these?
Tarragon. Don't you want to help me?
Vladimir. Sometimes I think, because someday it will come. And I feel kind of strange. (Takes off his hat, looks into it, puts his hand in it, shakes it, puts it on again.) How can I say this? It seems to become easy and at the same time... (searches for the right word) creepy. (With force.) Creepy! (Takes off his hat again and looks into it.) Wow. (Knocks on the hat, as if hoping to shake something out of it, looks into it again, puts it on his head.) Well, well...
Tarragon(at the cost of incredible efforts, he finally takes off his shoe. He looks into it, puts his hand inside, turns it over, shakes it, looks to see if anything has fallen out of it, finds nothing, puts his hand in it again. There is a blank expression on his face). So what?
Vladimir. Nothing. Let me see.
Tarragon. There's nothing to see here.
Vladimir. Try putting it on again.
Tarragon(after examining the leg). Let it air out a little. Vladimir. Here, admire the man in all his glory: he pounces on a shoe when his foot is at fault. (He takes off his hat again, looks into it, puts his hand in, shakes it, knocks on it, blows on it, puts it on his head.) I don’t understand anything.
Pause. Estragon, meanwhile, is stretching his leg, moving his fingers so that the wind will blow them better.
One of the robbers was saved. (Pause.) In percentage terms, it’s quite fair. (Pause.) Gogo...
Tarragon. What?
Vladimir. Maybe we should repent?
Tarragon. What?
Vladimir. Well, there... (Tries to find a word.) Yes, it’s hardly worth going into details. Tarragon. Isn't it because we were born into the world?
Vladimir begins to laugh, but immediately falls silent, clutching his lower abdomen with a distorted face.
Vladimir. I can't even laugh.
Tarragon. That's the trouble.
Vladimir. Just smile. (He stretches his mouth into an incredibly wide smile, holds it for a while, then just as suddenly removes it.) But this is not at all the same. Although... (Pause.) Gogo!
Tarragon(irritated). Well, what else?
Vladimir. Have you read the Bible?
Tarragon. Bible? (Thinks.) Probably looked through it once.
Vladimir(surprised). Where? In a school for atheists?
Tarragon. For atheists or not, I don’t know.
Vladimir. Or maybe you're confusing it with prison?
Tarragon. Maybe. I remember the map of Palestine. Colored. Very beautiful. The Dead Sea is pale blue. Just looking at him made me want to drink. I dreamed: this is where we will spend honeymoon. Let's swim. Let's be happy.
Vladimir. You should have been a poet. Tarragon. I was. (Pointing to his rags.) Can't you see?
Vladimir. So what was I talking about... How's your leg?
Tarragon. Swells.
Vladimir. Oh yes, I remembered those robbers. Do you know this story?
Tarragon. No.
Vladimir. Do you want me to tell you?
Tarragon. No.
Vladimir. So faster time will pass. (Pause.) This is a story about two villains who were crucified along with the Savior. They say…
Tarragon. With whom?
Vladimir. With the Savior. Two villains. They say that one was saved, and the other... (searching for the right word) was doomed to eternal torment.
Tarragon. Salvation from what?
Vladimir. From hell.
Tarragon. I'm leaving. (Does not move.)
Vladimir. Only now... (Pause.) I can’t understand why... I hope my story doesn’t bore you too much?
Tarragon. I'm not listening.
Vladimir. I cannot understand why out of four evangelists only one reports this. After all, all four of them were there, well, or nearby. And only one mentions the saved robber. (Pause.) Listen, Gogo, you could at least keep the conversation going for the sake of decency.
Tarragon. I'm listening.
Vladimir. One of four. The other two have not a word about it at all, and the third says that both robbers slandered him.
Tarragon. Whom?
Vladimir. What when...
Waiting for Godot is a play by Samuel Beckett.
A little about the author
Many researchers of theater of the 20th century. The lineage of its new branch dates back to January 5, 1953, when the premiere of Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot” took place at the Babilon Theater in Paris, directed by Roger Blain, an associate of Antonin Artaud and Jean-Louis Barrault. The text of the play was published in 1952 even before the premiere, which is a very rare case for France. But the publishing house “Le edition des minuis” had already published by that time two novels by an Irish writer who had settled in France since 1937 (“Murphy” 1947 and “Molloy” 1951) and intended to publish everything that would come out of its pen, seeing in him a talented successor of Kafka and Joyce. Beckett was also very familiar with the latter and translated it into French. It must be said that publishing experts very accurately determined the scale of the personality and talent of the new author. In 1969 S. Beckett was awarded Nobel Prize according to literature. Devoting himself almost exclusively to dramatic creativity, the writer became the most famous (along with E. Ionesco) author of the “theater of the absurd,” as the famous English critic Martin Esslin defined this phenomenon in the late 50s.
The “theater of the absurd”’s conquest of the world stage, at first scandalous and then triumphant, ensured the author’s fame as a “classic of the 20th century.” The play Waiting for Godot has been recognized as one of his masterpieces.
Plot and characters
There are only four characters in a two-act play, almost devoid of external action. The main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, are waiting for a certain Mr. Godot, who must solve all their problems. They are lonely and helpless, homeless and hungry; fear and despair at the prospect of continuing to drag out a miserable existence more than once returns them to the thought of suicide. Every day they come in the morning to the agreed meeting place and every evening they leave with nothing. Here they meet Pozzo and Lucky, whose relationship model (one decides everything, the other unquestioningly obeys) can probably serve as a prototype of what awaits Vladimir and Estragon when Godot comes. But the play ends with a new “non-meeting”.
Like Maeterlinck, Beckett is little concerned with the external plot. It conveys a state of mind in which, even in the most desperate moments, there is hope and expectation of change. “Waiting for Godot” (even the name) echoes Maeterlinck’s “theater of waiting,” and, just as in the finale of Maeterlinck’s famous drama “The Blind,” we are not given the opportunity to find out who came for them, so in Beckett Godot will not appear, remaining inaccessible to the heroes and the audience, and plunging critics into endless debate about what this character, not clothed in flesh and blood, symbolizes.
The history of the creation of "Waiting for Godot"
At first, Beckett wrote his first play as a response to very specific events: having participated in the French Resistance with his wife during the war, he was forced to hide from the Nazis. The motive of expectation, endless conversations during the days of forced self-imprisonment, became the content dramatic work, one of two central characters which was (as in life) a woman. Gradually discarding all specific details, the writer developed the situation and attitude associated with certain temporary conditions, and transferred them to existential problems. Thus was born one of the most tragically poignant works of literature of the 20th century, in which, despite everything, hope glimmers. No wonder Beckett said that the key words for his work are “maybe, perhaps.”
Productions
The uncertainty of the place and time of action, the openness of the endings of almost all of Beckett's plays, seemed to provide their directors with scope for the play of imagination. But the playwright is so precise and definite in his stage directions that the director’s freedom of action is always limited by rigid boundaries. The figurative expressiveness secured by the author's will is such that photographs of scenes from performances staged based on Beckett's plays, in different countries, V different years, make it possible to immediately find out - even if there are no signatures under them - which play we are talking about. For example, a deserted landscape with a lonely tree and two men under it - “Waiting for Godot”, or a woman covered in sand up to her waist in a flirty hat, and with an umbrella over her head - “Oh, beautiful days" (All the more striking is the “courage” of the Russian translation of “Waiting for Godot,” where the genre, defined by the author neutrally as “play,” turned into “tragicomedy.”) Only a small number of directors manage, following Beckett, to show their creative individuality. After Blain's standard production, the most notable phenomenon was the performance of the Czech director Ottomar Krejci, who staged "Waiting for Godot" in 1979 with excellent French actors, Georges Wilson, Michel Bouquet, Rüfüs, André Burton.
Source: Encyclopedia of Literary Works / Ed. S.V. Stakhorsky. - M.: VAGRIUS, 1998
Village road. Tree. Evening. Estragon sits on the ground and tries to take off his shoe. Breathing heavily, he pulls it off with both hands. Exhausted, he stops, takes a breath, and starts over. The scene repeats itself.
Included Vladimir.
Tarragon (stopping again). Lost business.
Vladimir (approaches him in small steps, spreading his stiff legs wide). It's starting to feel that way to me too. ( He is silent, thinking.) For how many years I pushed this thought away from myself, I kept convincing myself: Vladimir, think, maybe all is not lost yet. And again he rushed into battle. ( He thinks, remembering the hardships of the struggle. Tarragon.) I see you are here again.
Tarragon. Do you think so?
Vladimir. Nice to see you again. I thought you wouldn't come back again.
Tarragon. Me too.
Vladimir. We need to celebrate our meeting somehow. ( Thinking about it.) Come on, get up, I’ll hug you. ( He extends his hand to Estragon.)
Tarragon (irritably). Wait, wait.
Pause.
Vladimir (offended, cold). May I ask where Monsieur deigned to spend the night?
Tarragon. In a ditch.
Vladimir (in amazement). In a ditch?! Where?
Tarragon (without moving). There.
Vladimir. And you weren't beaten?
Tarragon. They beat me... Not very hard.
Vladimir. All the same?
Tarragon. The same ones? Don't know.
Pause.
Vladimir. So I’ve been thinking... I’ve been thinking for a long time... I keep asking myself... what would you turn into... if it weren’t for me... ( Decisively.) A pathetic pile of bones, you can be sure.
Tarragon (touched to the quick). So what?
Vladimir (depressed). This is too much for one person. ( Pause. Decisively.) On the other hand, it seems like there’s no need to be upset now. It was necessary to decide earlier, an eternity earlier, back in the year one thousand nine hundred.
Tarragon. Okay, that's enough. Help me better remove this rubbish.
Vladimir. You and I would hold hands and almost be the first to throw ourselves off the Eiffel Tower. We looked pretty good back then. And now it’s too late - they won’t even let us climb it.
Estragon begins to take off his shoe with renewed vigor.
What are you doing?
Tarragon. I'm taking off my shoes. You might think you haven't had to do it yourself.
Vladimir. As many times as you can repeat, you need to take off your shoes every day. I might finally remember.
Tarragon (plaintively). Help me!
Vladimir. Are you in pain?
Tarragon. Hurt! He still asks.
Vladimir (bitterly). You might think that you are the only one suffering in this world. The rest don't count. If he had been in my shoes at least once, he would probably have started singing.
Tarragon. Did it hurt you too?
Vladimir. Hurt! He's still asking!
Tarragon (pointing finger). This is not a reason to walk around unbuttoned.
Vladimir (leaning over). Well, yes. ( Buttons his pants.) You shouldn’t let yourself go even in small things.
Tarragon. Well, what can I tell you, you are always waiting for the last moment.
Vladimir (thoughtfully). Last moment... ( Thinking.) You can wait if there is something to wait for. Whose words are these?
Tarragon. Don't you want to help me?
Vladimir. Sometimes I think, because someday it will come. And I feel kind of strange. ( He takes off his hat, looks into it, puts his hand in it, shakes it, puts it on again.) How can I say this? It seems to become easy and at the same time... ( looking for the right word) creepy. ( With strength.) Creepy! ( He takes off his hat again and looks into it.) Wow. ( He knocks on his hat, as if hoping to shake something out of it, looks into it again, puts it on his head..) Well, well...
Tarragon (At the cost of incredible efforts, he finally takes off his shoe. He looks into it, puts his hand inside, turns it over, shakes it, looks to see if anything has fallen out, finds nothing, puts his hand in it again. Facial expression is absent). So what?
Vladimir. Nothing. Let me see.
Tarragon. There's nothing to see here.
Vladimir. Try putting it on again.
Tarragon (after examining the leg). Let it air out a little.
Vladimir. Here, admire the man in all his glory: he pounces on a shoe when his foot is at fault. ( He takes off his hat again, looks into it, puts his hand in, shakes it, knocks on it, blows on it, puts it on his head.) I don’t understand anything.
Pause. Estragon, meanwhile, is stretching his leg, moving his fingers so that the wind will blow them better.
One of the robbers was saved. ( Pause.) In percentage terms, it’s quite fair. ( Pause.) Gogo...
Tarragon. What?
Vladimir. Maybe we should repent?
Tarragon. What?
Vladimir. Well, there... ( Trying to find a word.) Yes, it’s hardly worth going into details.
Tarragon. Isn't it because we were born into the world?
Vladimir begins to laugh, but immediately falls silent, clutching his lower abdomen with a distorted face.
Vladimir. I can't even laugh.
Tarragon. That's the trouble.
Vladimir. Just smile. ( He stretches his mouth into an incredibly wide smile, holds it for a while, then just as suddenly removes it.) But this is not at all the same. Although… ( Pause.) Gogo!
Tarragon (irritably). Well, what else?
Vladimir. Have you read the Bible?
Tarragon. Bible? ( Thinking.) Probably looked through it at some point.
Vladimir (surprised). Where? In a school for atheists?
Tarragon. For atheists or not, I don’t know.
Vladimir. Or maybe you're confusing it with prison?
Tarragon. Maybe. I remember the map of Palestine. Colored. Very beautiful. The Dead Sea is pale blue. Just looking at him made me want to drink. I dreamed: this is where we will spend our honeymoon. Let's swim. Let's be happy.
Vladimir. You should have been a poet.
Tarragon. I was. ( Pointing to his rags.) Isn't it visible?
Pause.
Vladimir. So what was I talking about... How's your leg?
Tarragon. Swells.
Vladimir. Oh yes, I remembered those robbers. Do you know this story?
Tarragon. No.
Vladimir. Do you want me to tell you?
Tarragon. No.
Vladimir. It's faster this way time will pass. (Pause.) This is a story about two villains who were crucified along with the Savior. They say…
Tarragon. With whom?
Vladimir. With the Savior. Two villains. They say that one was saved, and the other... ( looking for the right word) was doomed to eternal torment.
Tarragon. Salvation from what?
Vladimir. From hell.
Tarragon. I'm leaving. ( Doesn't move.)
Vladimir. Only now... ( Pause.) I can’t understand why... I hope my story doesn’t bore you too much?
History of creation
According to Beckett himself, he began writing “Waiting for Godot” in order to escape from prose, which, in his opinion, then ceased to work for him.
The play was published as a separate edition on October 17, 1952 by the Minuit publishing house. The premiere took place on January 5, 1953 in Paris, with the first performance in English on August 3 in London.
Characters
- Vladimir
- Tarragon
- Pozzo
- Lucky
- Boy
Plot
The main characters of the play “Waiting for Godot” - Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo) seem to be stuck in time, nailed to one place by waiting for a certain Godot, a meeting with whom, in their opinion, will bring meaning to their meaningless existence and relieve them from the threats of a hostile the surrounding world. The plot of the play does not lend itself to unambiguous interpretation. The viewer, at his own discretion, can define Godot as a specific person, God, a strong personality, Death, etc. Over the course of some time, two more strange and ambiguous characters appear - Pozzo and Lucky. Their relationship with each other is quite difficult to determine; on the one hand, Lucky is a silent and weak-willed slave of Pozzi, on the other, his former teacher- but even this interpretation is doubtful.
After chatting and reasoning with the main characters for quite some time, Pozzo invites Lucky to think and dance, to which he meekly agrees. Lucky's monologue is a witty parody of Beckett's dissertations and popular scientific articles, and is also a striking example of literary postmodernism. After Lucky is exhausted, he and Pozzi leave, and Vladimir and Estragon remain to wait for Godot.
Soon a messenger boy comes running to them, informing them that Godot will come tomorrow. The boy works as a shepherd, and his brother is beaten by his owner, Monsieur Godot. Estragon gets tired of everything that is happening and decides to leave, leaving Vladimir with his shoes, which are too small for him, in the hope that someone will come and take them, leaving his larger ones in exchange. When morning comes, Gogo returns beaten and reports that ten people attacked him. She and Didi make up. Pozzo and Lucky come again, greatly changed - Pozzo is blind and Lucky is speechless. This couple does not recognize (or pretends not to recognize) the main characters and continues on their way.
Didi and Gogo pass the time by playing and exchanging hats, one of which Lucky forgot. The boy comes running again and says that Monsieur Godot will come tomorrow. He doesn’t remember Vladimir or that he came yesterday.
The heroes decide to go in search of rope to hang themselves if Monsieur Godot does not come tomorrow. But the play ends with the words “they do not move.”
Theater productions in Russia
- - Theater “On the Kryukov Canal”, dir. - Yu.Butusov (graduation performance)
- - Theater named after Lensovet, dir. - Yu. Butusov
- - UT MGUKI, dir. - L. I. Shaeva
- - Lysvensky Drama Theater named after Anatoly Savin, director. - Vakhtang Kharchilava
- - Tyumen youth theater"Burim", dir. - Nikita Betekhtin
Screen adaptation
The play was filmed in 2001 by Irish director Michael Lindsay-Hogg. Starring:
- Barry McGovern
- Johnny Murphy
- Alan Stanford
- Stephen Brennan
- Sam McGovern
The film adaptation preserves the minimalism of Beckett's work, the main means of holding the audience's attention are dialogues, acting, and thoughtful shots and mise-en-scène.
In 1989, the play was filmed on Canadian television. The role of Lucky was played by Roman Polanski.
Notes
Links
Categories:
- Literary works alphabetically
- Plays of 1949
- Plays of the 20th century
- Plays by Samuel Beckett
- Plays of Ireland
- Plays in French
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
See what “Waiting for Godot” is in other dictionaries:
From French: En attendant Godot. The title of the most famous play (1952) by the Irish writer and playwright of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1969) Samuel Beckett (1906 1989), typical of the theater of the absurd. The main characters of the play are tramps... Dictionary winged words and expressions
Wait for Godot Album by Vadim Kurylev Release date 2001 Recorded by DDT Studio, 2001 ... Wikipedia
- (Beckett) (1906 1989), Irish playwright. Wrote in French and English languages. One of the founders of the absurd drama of the play “Waiting for Godot” (1952), “The End of the Game” (1957), the heroes of which experience despair and horror from meaninglessness... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary
Konstantin Khabensky ... Wikipedia
Samuel Beckett Samuel Beckett ... Wikipedia
At the “Top X Sexy” award ceremony Birth name: Konstantin Yurievich Khabensky Date of birth: January 11, 1972 (37 years old) ... Wikipedia
Konstantin Khabensky At the “Top X Sexy” award ceremony Birth name: Konstantin Yurievich Khabensky Date of birth: January 11, 1972 (37 years old) ... Wikipedia
Beckett is a writer of despair. It does not suit self-satisfied eras. But his almost indistinguishable voice is heard when we stop believing that “man sounds proud.” In any case, historical cataclysms help critics interpret Beckett's incomprehensible masterpieces, about which the author himself never spoke out.
A trip to Germany in 1936-1937 plays a certain role in Beckett’s life. Germany was imbued with the spirit of fascism, and Beckett was always disgusted by any manifestations of xenophobia, so he finds an outlet in the works of the old masters.
Two paintings especially strike him: a self-portrait by Giorgione and Caspar David Friedrich’s painting “Two Men Contemplating the Moon.” A person is lonely, closed in on himself, communication between people is impossible - Beckett finds confirmation of this thought in the contemplation of Friedrich’s painting, which depicts two human figures bathed in moonlight, strikingly similar to Vladimir and Estragon, frozen in anticipation of Godot.
The play "Waiting for Godot" ("En Attendant Godot"), written in 1949 and published in English in 1954, brought international recognition to the writer. From now on, Beckett is considered the leading playwright of the theater of the absurd. The first production of the play in Paris is carried out, in close collaboration with the author, by director Roger Blain.
The play "Waiting for Godot" created a sensation. The remark of one of the characters “Nothing happens, no one comes, no one leaves - it’s terrible” became business card Beckett. Harold Pinter said that Godot changed the theater forever, and the famous French playwright Jean Anouilh called the premiere of this play “the most important in forty years.”
In "Godot" one sees the quintessence of Beckett: behind the melancholy and horror of human existence in its most unsightly and honest form, an inevitable irony emerges.
“Waiting for Godot” is a static play, the events in it seem to go in a circle: the second act repeats the first with only minor changes. To deepen the suffocating atmosphere of pessimism, Beckett inserted elements into the play musical comedy and several lyrical passages. “This play forced me to reconsider the laws by which drama had previously been built,” wrote the English critic Kenneth Tynan. “I was forced to admit that these laws were not flexible enough.”
Thus, “Waiting for Godot” was considered by many to be a war drama, allegorically describing the experience of the French Resistance, in which Beckett took part. War, veterans say, is, first of all, a stupefying expectation of the end.
"Waiting for Godot" has no plot: it examines a static situation.
The main characters of the play "Waiting for Godot" - Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo) seem to be stuck in time, nailed to one place by waiting for a certain Godot, a meeting with whom, in their opinion, will bring meaning to their meaningless existence and relieve them from the threats of a hostile the surrounding world. Over the course of some time, two more strange and ambiguous characters appear - Pozzo and Lucky. Their relationship with each other is quite difficult to determine; on the one hand, Lucky is Pozzi’s silent and weak-willed slave, on the other, his former teacher - but even this interpretation is doubtful.
Throughout the entire play, a boy appears twice who supposedly comes from Godot and says that he will come tomorrow, but today he will not be there. The second time he interacts with them as if they were strangers. They also meet Pozzo and Lucky for the second time. But this time Pozzo is blind and Lucky is mute. And they also don’t recognize the main characters.
The heroes decide to go in search of rope to hang themselves if Monsieur Godot does not come tomorrow. But the play ends with the words “they do not move.”
"Waiting for Godot" is an account of what happens (and nothing happens) when they finally "stabilize" at one, arbitrarily chosen point in space. The whole world is compressed to the size of this point, existing as if outside of time.
Beckett said that he began writing Waiting for Godot to overcome the depression into which his work on the Molloy trilogy plunged him. In fact, the refusal of the image outside world, the desire to “impoverish” and “belittle” objective reality, acceptance of ignorance and powerlessness as a fundamental principle artistic creativity brought Beckett to the brink of mental collapse. The process of degeneration of the author into a scriptor led to the fact that the text became an independent reality, not subject to the will of the writer.
Who is Godot? Who are Vladimir and Estragon waiting for?
Many ingenious attempts have been made to establish the etymology of the name Godot, to find out whether Beckett’s intention was conscious or unconscious to make him the object of the search for Vladimir and Estragon. It can be assumed that Godot is a weakened form of God, diminutive name by analogy Pierre - Pierrot, Charles - Charlot plus an association with the image of Charlie Chaplin, his little man, who in France is called Charlot; his bowler hat is worn by all four characters in the play. (note: S. Beckett was a fan of Charlie Chaplin’s work). It has been suggested that the title of the play, “Waiting for Godot,” evokes an allusion to Simone Weil’s book “Waiting for God,” which gives rise to another association: Godot is God.
As they say, as many people as there are, so many opinions. Godot can be anyone or anything. But main theme The play is not Godot, not the very fact of waiting. And the fact is that we all wait for something throughout our lives, and Godot is the object of our waiting. Be it some event or thing, person, or death.
Moreover, in the act of waiting, the passage of time is felt in its purest, most visual form. If we are active, then we tend to forget about the passage of time, not paying attention to it, but if we are passive, then we are faced with the action of time.
And because Vladimir and Estragon's vow of expectation is Godot, then naturally he is beyond their reach. Therefore, every time the boy comes to them and says that Godot will not come.
And yet, Vladimir and Estragon continue to hope and wait for Godot, “whose arrival can stop the passage of time.” “Maybe today we will sleep in his palace, warm, on dry straw, on a full stomach. That’s what it means to wait, don’t you agree?” This line speaks of a longing for a break from waiting, a feeling of being in heaven; and Godot will provide all this to the tramps. They hope to escape from the frailty of the world and “the fragility of the illusion of time and to find peace and immutability of the external world.” They will cease to be vagabonds, homeless wanderers and will find a home.
When Alan Schneider staged Waiting for Godot for the first time in America, he asked Beckett who Godot was or what Godot meant, the playwright replied: “If I had known, I would have said it in the play.”
This is a useful warning to anyone who approaches Beckett's plays with the intention of finding the key to understanding them and discovering exactly what they mean.
The play has two acts. They are almost identical: they meet Pozzo and Lucky - master and slave, a boy who tells them that Godot will not come; two attempts to commit suicide that end in failure, at the end of each act they get ready to go and stay put. Only the sequence of events and dialogues in each act are different.
In constant verbal skirmishes, Vladimir and Estragon exhibit individual traits. Vladimir is more practical, while Estragon claims to be a poet. Estragon says that the more carrots he eats, the less he likes them. Vladimir’s reaction is the opposite: he likes everything familiar. Tarragon is flighty, Vladimir is constant. Estragon is a dreamer, Vladimir cannot hear about dreams. Vladimir has bad breath, Estragon’s feet stink. Vladimir remembers the past, Estragon instantly forgets everything. Estragon loves to tell funny stories, they drive Vladimir crazy. Vladimir hopes that Godot will come and their lives will change. Estragon is skeptical about this and sometimes forgets the name Godot. Vladimir is having a conversation with the boy, Godot’s messenger, and the boy addresses him. Tarragon is mentally unstable; every night some unknown people beat him. Sometimes Vladimir protects him, sings him a lullaby, covers him with his coat. The dissimilarity of temperaments leads to endless squabbles, and every now and then they decide to separate. They complement each other and therefore depend on each other and are doomed to never separate.
A characteristic feature of the play is the assumption that the best way out from the situation of tramps - and they express this - to prefer suicide to waiting for Godot: “We thought about this when the world was young, in the nineties. ...To join hands and jump from the Eiffel Tower among the first. Then we were still quite respectable But now it’s too late, they won’t even let us in.” Committing suicide is their favorite solution, impossible due to their incompetence and lack of suicide instruments. The fact that suicide fails every time, Vladimir and Estragon explain by expectation or feign this expectation. "I wish I knew what he would suggest. Then we would know whether to do it or not." Estragon has less hope for Godot than Vladimir, and he reassures himself that they do not owe him anything.
"Waiting for Godot" creates a sense of uncertainty, its ebb and flow - from the hope of finding Godot's identity to endless disappointments, and this is the essence of the play. Any attempt to establish identity. Godot is speculative - the same stupidity as trying to find the outline of chiaroscuro in a Rembrandt painting by scraping off the paints.
Chapter 3. Comparative analysis works
Ionesco's plays "The Bald Singer" (1949) and Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" (1952) were created almost simultaneously. They are considered to be the main and representative plays of the “theater of the absurd.”
M. Esslin names the motives and techniques that unite these works as “refusal to use characters and the principle of motivation, focusing on the eternal states of the human mind and moving away from plot development from exposition to denouement, devaluation of language as a means of communication and mutual understanding, abandonment of didactic goals "
A general tragicomic attitude towards the world as an incoherent system without stable spatiotemporal supports. IN artistically The primary task for these authors is to recreate broken connections on a different plane and by means different from those used by traditional art.
It should be emphasized common features plays to understand the essence of the “absurd” drama.
1) the theme of time gone wrong.
The plays lack local and historical specificity.
And in "The Bald Singer" and "Waiting for Godot" there was no chronological order. In Ionesco's play, the clock on the wall always showed an absurd time, living on its own. Or 4 years after death, the corpse turns out to be warm, and it is buried six months after death. And in Beckett's play, a supposed day passes between the first and second acts. But no one really knows how much time passes.
2) the problem of language as a means of reflecting, describing and recreating oneself and the world around
Ionesco's play belongs to the period of his work, which can be called "linguistic absurdity." The whole point of it lies in the author’s language game. And Beckett’s work as a whole represents a continuous movement towards the destruction of speech, taking it beyond the boundaries of theater and literature.
3) two levels of reading the plot - as a parody of the world and as a parody of literature.
The need to create multiple layers of reading is caused by the lack of a reliable language to express the true idea, if any, in their artistic world.
4) nonsense and combination of incongruous things
5) a person in the theater of the absurd is not capable of action.
The heroes of works of absurd art cannot complete a single action, are unable to carry out a single plan.
For example, in Waiting for Godot, the characters wanted to commit suicide, but could not do it.
6) The heroes are absurd characters, they do not know anything about the world and about themselves, declassed elements, or philistines, there are no heroes who have ideals and see the meaning of life. People are doomed to exist in an incomprehensible and unchanging world of chaos and absurdity.