The language of Beckett

‘Vladimir: Say something!

Estragon: I’m trying!

[Long silence]’ (54)

The play ‘En attendant Godot’ (‘Waiting for Godot’) written by Samuel Beckett was firstly staged in Paris in the year 1953.  Vladimir (‘Didi’) and Estragon (‘Gogo’) are waiting for Godot in two Acts, but he never comes. Instead, they are meeting Pozzo and Lucky and a Boy who brings the message of the delay of Godot. Beckett presents with his play a realm in between, difficult to define or to locate, and in which “nothing happens twice” as famously described by Irish critic Vivian Mercier. The first sentence of the play “Nothing to be done” uttered by Estragon, introduces the paradigm of the following.

But what are the protagonists doing on the edge to nothingness?

I argue that the play, in which obviously somehow ‘Something’ happens, surrounds the topic of langue. Vladimir and Estragon are talking the whole time and there are methods with which Beckett problematizes language itself.

Vladimir and Estragon have problems understanding each other: ‘I don’t understand a word you’re saying’ (13) but continue speaking. Their plaintive parlando style conveys a mood of uncertainty and meaninglessness. There are many pauses between the mostly short utterances of the characters. Their usage of language implies a strangeness to the intended meaning.  They repeat some words and split them into syllables:

 ‘Vladimir: Tied?

Estragon: Ti-ed’ (13)

The split and redundancy reveal the materiality of the words, and thus violate the unity of signifier and signified. Another example is the play with homophonic names:

‘Estragon: [Pretending to search.] Bozzo….Bozzo…

Vladimir: [Ditto.] Pozzo… Pozzo… 

Pozzo: PPPOZZZO!

Estragon: Ah pozzo… let me see… Pozzo….

Vladimir: Is it Pozzo or Bozzo?’ (15).

The words lose their initial meaningful purpose, becoming mere sounds in an empty space, or simply just printed marks.

These are assaults against the grounding, the stability of language itself. Didi and Gogo are stuck in between the usage of the language as a habit filling the silence and the real process of symbolizing which can touch or move. ‘But habit is a great deadner’ as Vladimir says, and a few moments later: “I can’t go on! [Pause.]’ (83). He speaks as a subject seemingly conscious about what he said. But in the next moment, he is uncertain asking himself the comedic question of ‘What have I said?’ (83). For me, this part stands characteristically for the potential alienation of language, the strangeness of ourselves, the otherness within the subject. We touch something by symbolizing it and in the next moment we are alienated from it or language was lacking representing what we really wanted to utter. We are Estragon and Vladimir, waiting for the impossible moment of clarity where everything seems alive in contrary to the dead habits.  But we maybe couldn’t stand it, as well as Didi and Gogo protesting Lucky’s torrent of words. Beckett succeeds to presents the slipperiness and artificiality of representation and meaning within and through language.

But just as Estragon tries to follow Vladimir’s imperative to ‘Say something’ as quoted in the first sentence, Beckett tries to follow the obligation to express, answering a question about the makers’ possibilities and told what he preferred:

‚The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express.‘

 

Sources:

Mercier, Vivien: “The Uneventful Event”. The Irish Times, February 18, 1956

Beckett, Samuel: Waiting For Godot. faber and faber, London 2006

Gontarski, S.E.: Beckett and the ‚Idea‘ of theatre. In: The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Beckett. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1015

Beckett, Samuel and Duthuit, Georges: Three Diologues.

Fotos: https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/photographs-of-waiting-for-godot-by-samuel-beckett-1953

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1433597.Samuel_Beckett