tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-527704937152876752024-03-13T13:40:25.588-07:00Beckett and Companysozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770493715287675.post-30855867600538120082008-11-04T07:37:00.000-08:002008-11-11T08:26:11.077-08:00Beckett & company<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 21.0px Verdana; color: #686868"><b>Beckett & Company</b></p> <p color="#686868" style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 17.0px Verdana; color: #686868"><b>A Centenary Conference on Samuel Beckett and the Arts</b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana; min-height: 16.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">6- 8 October 2006</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana; min-height: 16.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p> <p color="#686868" style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Verdana; "><span style="color:#c59d24;"><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Tate Modern</span></b></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, the </span><a href="http://www.londonconsortium.com/"><span style="color:#c59d24;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">London Consortium</span></b></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, </span><a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/"><span style="color:#c59d24;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Birkbeck</span></b></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> and </span><a href="http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/"><span style="color:#c59d24;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Goldsmiths, University of London</span></b></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, in association with </span><a href="http://lcace.org.uk/"><span style="color:#c59d24;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">LCACE</span></b></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">, are hosting an interdisciplinary conference to celebrate the importance of Samuel Beckett's work for the arts in the twenty-first century.</span></p> <p color="#686868" style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Verdana; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">One hundred years after Samuel Beckett was born, his work continues to inspire artists of all kinds. Uniquely for a writer, Beckett is as significant today for those working outside the forms of which he was such an extraordinary innovator and master - the play for theatre, radio, television or film, the novel, the prose fragment - as he is for writers, the possibilities of whose practice Beckett vitally transformed. Beckett was passionate about art and music, and their importance to him is reflected throughout his critical and creative writing. His plays were described by one director as 'choreography', and Beckett himself described the movement of his characters on stage as 'balletic'. Beckett's work has provided a lasting and provocative influence on contemporary art. International artists like Jasper Johns, Bruce Nauman, Steve McQueen, and Doris Salcedo have have indicated their indebtedness to Beckett's work. Composers like Philip Glass, Morton Feldman, Mark-Anthony Turnage, filmmakers like Atom Egoyan and dancers like Maguy Marin have all worked with Beckett's writing to produce pieces of extraordinary power.</span></p> <p color="#686868" style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Verdana; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Beckett and Company, an interdisciplinary conference to mark the centenary of Beckett's birth, will situate Beckett in the company not only of writers and philosophers, where he is most often to be found, but also of visual artists, composers, musicians, dancers, choreographers, architects, and other artists. It will provide an opportunity to explore, question, celebrate and debate Beckett's continuing relevance for the arts in the twenty-first century.</span></p> <p color="#686868" style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Verdana; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">We begin on </span><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/talksdiscussions/6295.htm"><span style="color:#c59d24;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Friday 6 October</span></b></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, with an event in the Starr Auditorium, Tate Modern, 14.00-18.00. The artists Dorothy Cross, Atom Egoyan, Michael Craig-Martin, and Shahram Entekhabi will discuss their relationship with Samuel Beckett in a series of discussions chaired by Dr Derval Tubridy of Goldsmiths, University of London. Tickets cost £8 (£6 concessions), and can be booked by calling 020 7887 8888 or </span><a href="https://tickets.tate.org.uk/performancelist.asp?ShowID=2402&Source=web"><span style="color:#c59d24;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">online</span></b></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">.</span></p> <p color="#686868" style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Verdana; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">On Saturday 7 October and Sunday 8 October we migrate to the award-winning Ben Pimlott building at Goldsmiths, University of London, where academic papers will be interspersed with award-winning film screenings, musical performances, and artistic interventions by Balázs Kicsiny, Santiago Borja, c.cred, Michael Rainin, Jenny Triggs, Manuel Sosa, and others. Speakers include Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes (author of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Joyce in Art</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">), Séamus Kealy (curator of 18: Beckett at the Blackwood Gallery, Toronto), Catherine Laws (Dartington College of Arts) and Professor Steven Connor (Academic Director of the London Consortium). Among the contemporary contexts to be considered are minimalism, theories of theatre and the body, and those provided by such artists as Jasper Johns, Bruce Nauman, Manuel Ocampo, Damien Hirst, Orlan, Stelarc, Francis Alÿs, Ugo Rondinone, John Barbour, Morton Feldman, and Woody Allen.</span></p> <p color="#686868" style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Verdana; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Tickets are available for the three-day event (including tea/coffee, lunch on Saturday, and a reception on Saturday evening): the price is £45 (£35 for studentsconcessions). If you prefer, you may also buy tickets for Saturday and Sunday only, at £37 (£29 for students/concessions).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Verdana; color: rgb(197, 157, 36); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p color="#686868" style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Verdana; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">For further details, contact </span><a href="mailto:beckettandco@hotmail.co.uk"><span style="color:#c59d24;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">beckettandco@hotmail.co.uk</span></b></span></a></p> <p color="#686868" style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Verdana; min-height: 16px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p color="#686868" style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Verdana; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Beckett & Company</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Programme</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#8a6e1a;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Friday 6 October 2006</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Starr Auditorium, Tate Modern</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">13.00-14.00</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> REGISTRATION </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">14.00-18.00</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> Dorothy Cross, Atom Egoyan, Michael Craig-Martin, and Shahram Entekhabi in conversation with Derval Tubridy </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#8a6e1a;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Saturday 7 October 2006</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#c59d24;"><a href="http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/artscomplex/pages/homepage.php?page=homepage"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Ben Pimlott Building</span></b><span style="color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, Goldsmiths, University of London</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></a></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">9.00-9.30</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> TEA/COFFEE </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">9.30-9.45</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Welcome and Introduction</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, Dr Laura Salisbury </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">9.45-10.45</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Panel: Beckett and Contemporary Arts</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Dr Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes (University of Ulster), 'Reciprocity: Beckett Interpreted in the Context of Contemporary Art' </span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 10px/normal Verdana; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Dr David Cunningham (University of Westminster), 'Beckett as Literalist: Minimalism Across the Arts' </span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">10.45-11.00</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> TEA/COFFEE </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">11.00-12.30</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Parallel Panel: Bodies and Minds 1</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Dr Kathy Smith (London Metropolitan University), 'Abject Bodies: Beckett, Orlan, Stelarc and the Politics of Contemporary Performance' </span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 10px/normal Verdana; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Dr Russell Smith (The Australian National University, Canberra), 'Walking… Stumbling… Falling… Lying Down: Beckettian Operations in the Work of Ugo Rondinone and John Barbour' </span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 10px/normal Verdana; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Dr Nikolai Duffy (Goldsmiths, University of London), 'The Anonymous Company of Samuel Beckett' </span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Parallel Panel: Bodies and Minds 2</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Ondrea E. Ackerman (Columbia University, New York), 'Beckett's "Relentless Cycle of Configurations": Nothingness and the Iterative Moment' </span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 10px/normal Verdana; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Jorge Gutierrez Burgueño (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid),'Grammatical Bodies: A Reading of Physicality in the Beckettian Stage and Contemporary Plastic Aesthetics' </span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 10px/normal Verdana; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Dr Daniel Watt (Loughborough University), '"We must have thought a little": Beckett's Legacy of Fragments' </span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">12.30-13.00</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> Christopher Poulson, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">There's a bucket in my hole</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (performance) </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">13.00-14.00</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> LUNCH </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">14.00-15.00</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> Séamus Kealy, 'Samuel Beckett and Contemporary Arts: Organizing 18:Beckett' </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">15.00-15.30</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> c.cred, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Beckett Borderwords</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">15.30-16.00</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> TEA/COFFEE - (including </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Waiting for Woody Allen</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, (dir. Michael Rainin, 2004) (16' film) </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">16.00-17.00</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Panel: Music and Sound</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Dr Catherine Laws (Dartington College of Arts), 'Beckett - Feldman - Johns' </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Steven Barfield (University of Westminster), '"All the dead voices": Samuel Beckett and Bruce Nauman's </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Raw Materials</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">' </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">17.30-18.30</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> RECEPTION </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">18.30-19.30</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> Manuel Sosa (The Julliard School, New York), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">in-Sounds</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (for clarinet, reader, and tape) </span></p> <p color="#686868" style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 10px/normal Verdana; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Rhian Samuel, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Flowing Sand</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (for baritone and piano) </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#8a6e1a;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Sunday 8 October 2006</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#c59d24;"><a href="http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/artscomplex/pages/homepage.php?page=homepage"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Ben Pimlott Building</span></b><span style="color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, Goldsmiths, University of London</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></a></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">9.30-9.45</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> TEA/COFFEE </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">9.45-10.45</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> Balázs Kicsiny and Dr Garin Dowd (Thames Valley University), 'Time Unhinged: Experiments in Navigation and Chronometry in Samuel Beckett and Balázs Kicsiny' </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">10.45-11.00</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> TEA/COFFEE </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">11.00-12.30</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Parallel Panel: Breath, Death, Film, and Failure 1</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Takeshi Kawashima (Waseda University, Toyko), 'What Does a Ghost Mean? Beckett and the Spectral Imagination' </span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 10px/normal Verdana; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Lee Scrivner (London Consortium), 'Excavating Zeno's Heap: Breathing, Burial, and Beckett' </span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 10px/normal Verdana; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Cristina Cano Vara (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid), '"Concomitant Relationship": the Spanish director Javier Aguirre adapts Samuel Beckett's Company for a film version entitled Voz (Voice)' </span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Parallel Panel: Breath, Death, Film, and Failure 2</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></p> <p color="#686868" style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 10px/normal Verdana; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Richard Cope (South Bank University), 'Is the failure to express its expression?: Manuel Ocampo and Samuel Beckett's </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Dr Matt Paproth (National University of Ireland at Galway), 'The Death of the Author: The Problem with Beckett on Film' </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Sozita Goudouna (Royal Holloway, University of London), 'Theatricality and the Look of Non-Art in Beckett's </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Breath'</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">12.30-13.00</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> Siobhan Tattan, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Brilliant Failures</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (lecture/performance) </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">13.00-14.00</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> LUNCH </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">14.00-14.30</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Unnamable</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (dir. Jenny Triggs) (film plus discussion) </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">14.30-15.30</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> Santiago Borja, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Said and Done</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (film, paper, and questions) </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">15.30-16.00</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> TEA/COFFEE </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">16.00-17.00</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> Steven Connor and Co. (London Consortium and Birkbeck, University of London) </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#686868;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">17.00 END OF CONFERENCE</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 13.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; color:#c59d24;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p> <p color="#686868" style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 10px/normal Verdana; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">For further details, contact </span><a href="mailto:beckettandco@hotmail.co.uk"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#c59d24;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">beckettandco@hotmail.co.uk</span></b></span></a></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana; min-height: 12.0pxcolor:#686868;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 10px/normal Verdana; color: rgb(104, 104, 104); min-height: 12px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Verdana; color: rgb(104, 104, 104); min-height: 16px; "><br /></p>sozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770493715287675.post-58045274905189934702008-11-04T07:30:00.000-08:002008-11-11T09:02:19.016-08:00The Unnamable (1999) Jenny Triggs<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family:'Trebuchet MS';font-size:13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:13px;">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbZjFa3H0As</span><br /></span></div>sozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770493715287675.post-35674280897098352782008-11-04T06:47:00.000-08:002008-11-04T07:55:50.496-08:00MP3 recordings of this event<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Times;"><h3 style="text-align: justify;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold; font-size: 1.1em; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0.2em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.2em; margin-left: 0px; ">Beckett and Company</h3><table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="image_right" style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 1em; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; float: right; "><tbody><tr><td width="225"><img alt="Samuel Beckett, 1976" height="125" src="http://www.tate.org.uk/images/cms/small/6968w_samuelbecket.jpg" width="225" style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; " /></td></tr><tr><td class="credit_cell" width="225"><div class="credit" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); padding-top: 1px; padding-right: 1px; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 1px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:0.7em;"><span class="nothing">Samuel Beckett, 1976<br />Photo: © Jane Bown</span></div></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="text" style="text-align: justify;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.75em; margin-top: 0px; ">Friday 6 October 2006, 14.00–18.00<br /></div><div class="text" style="text-align: justify;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.75em; margin-top: 0px; "><br /></div><div class="text" style="text-align: justify;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.75em; margin-top: 0px; ">http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/talksdiscussions/6295.htm<br /></div><div class="text" style="text-align: justify;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.75em; margin-top: 0px; "><br /></div><div class="text" style=" margin-top: 0px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:0.75em;"><div><div id="mp3box" style="padding-bottom: 2px; padding-top: 2px; border-top-color: rgb(204, 0, 102); border-right-color: rgb(204, 0, 102); border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 0, 102); border-left-color: rgb(204, 0, 102); border-left-width: 1px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 10px; border-top-style: solid; border-right-style: solid; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: solid; background-color: rgb(247, 193, 219); border-top-width: 1px; width: 197px; border-right-width: 1px; border-bottom-width: 1px; "><span style="text-align: justify;float: left; "><img alt="Listen to MP3 recordings of this event" border="0" height="30" src="http://www.tate.org.uk/learning/worksinfocus/images/ipod.gif" width="19" style="padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; " /></span><strong><div style="text-align: justify;">Listen to MP3 recordings of this event<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><strong><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents/podcast/mp3/6-10-2006_Beckett_and_co_Part1.mp3" onclick="openMP3('http://www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents/podcast/mp3/6-10-2006_Beckett_and_co_Part1.mp3'); return false;" style="color: rgb(204, 0, 102); text-decoration: none; ">Part 1</a></strong> (84.9MB) <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents/podcast/mp3/6-10-2006_Beckett_and_co_Part2.mp3" onclick="openMP3('http://www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents/podcast/mp3/6-10-2006_Beckett_and_co_Part2.mp3'); return false;" style="color: rgb(204, 0, 102); text-decoration: none; "><strong>Part 2</strong></a>(84.6MB)</span><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents/podcast/mp3/6-10-2006_Beckett_and_co_Part1.mp3" onclick="openMP3('http://www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents/podcast/mp3/6-10-2006_Beckett_and_co_Part1.mp3'); return false;" style="color: rgb(204, 0, 102); text-decoration: none; "><br /></a></div></strong><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents/subscribe_podcast" style="color: rgb(204, 0, 102); text-decoration: none; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); "></span></a><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/onlineevents/subscribe_podcast" style="color: rgb(204, 0, 102); text-decoration: none; "><strong>Subscribe to the podcast</strong></a>.<br /></div></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Samuel Beckett was an acclaimed genius in both the literary and theatrical realms and is acknowledged as one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. Beckett's brutal, sometimes even blasphemous rendering of suffering, loneliness and deprivation caused shock and sensation. He was also a radical and remorseless experimenter, whose influence on contemporary visual art has often been overlooked.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Beckett's continuing impact is the subject of this discussion between artists </span><strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Dorothy Cross</span></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, </span><strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Atom Egoyan</span></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, </span><strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Michael Craig-Martin</span></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> and </span><strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Shahram Entekhabi</span></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, chaired by </span><strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Derval Tubridy</span></strong><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> from Goldsmiths College.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Part of the 2006 global Samuel Beckett Centennial celebrations and in collaboration with the London Consortium; Birkbeck, University of London; and Goldsmiths, University of London</span></em></p></div></div><div class="text" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; "><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Tate Modern Starr Auditorium<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">£8 (£6 concessions), booking required<br /></span></div></div><div class="text" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; "></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div class="text" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.75em; margin-top: 0px; "><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Beckett and Company is part of a three-day celebration of Beckett's work and contemporary art. Further events – academic papers, film screenings, musical performances, and artistic interventions – take place at Goldsmiths, University of London on Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 October 2006. Among those participating are Balázs Kicsiny, Santiago Borja, c.cred, Manuel Sosa, Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes, Séamus Kelly, Catherine Laws, and Steven Connor. For further information about these events and registration details, please visit </span><a href="http://www.beckettandcompany.co.uk/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(204, 0, 102); text-decoration: none; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">www.beckettandcompany.co.uk</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">, or email </span><a href="mailto:beckettandco@hotmail.co.uk" style="color: rgb(204, 0, 102); text-decoration: none; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">beckettandco@hotmail.co.uk</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">.</span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div></span>sozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770493715287675.post-26908445489240628972008-11-04T06:06:00.000-08:002008-11-04T13:18:57.751-08:00Balázs Kicsiny poster photo<div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 0px; font-family:Verdana;font-size:13px;"><img id="lightboxImage" galleryimg="false" src="http://artportal.hu/files/imagecache/ill_big/files/kepillusztracio/becket.jpg" style="display: inline; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; " /></span><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 0px;font-family:Verdana;font-size:13px;"><br /></span></div>sozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770493715287675.post-30586322672547829742008-11-04T05:31:00.000-08:002008-11-04T09:50:16.415-08:0018:Beckett—Séamus Kealy<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXHATfEz_NyQbKZ1hGcO5V6LyHmkFtqHQBU_IHJ4T0hyZpjHqj5raEUiyZsml0SjFlmWysVj-S7oGPRcUbb6u-LDt3UfewNAZVZ-dBEsFrCitMoirg6t7hKlaPRIJR6_jHhB16IQRWyy0/s1600-h/18--bec-c05831-d.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 259px; height: 259px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXHATfEz_NyQbKZ1hGcO5V6LyHmkFtqHQBU_IHJ4T0hyZpjHqj5raEUiyZsml0SjFlmWysVj-S7oGPRcUbb6u-LDt3UfewNAZVZ-dBEsFrCitMoirg6t7hKlaPRIJR6_jHhB16IQRWyy0/s400/18--bec-c05831-d.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264849930391967778" /></a><br /><tr><td class="c2" valign="top" style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; -webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; vertical-align: top; background-position: initial initial; "><div id="content" style="text-align: left; margin-top: 20px; margin-right: 24px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 26px; list-style-type: none; list-style-position: initial; list-style-image: initial; "><div id="rightbox" style="float: right; width: 208px; border-left-width: 0px; border-left-style: solid; border-left-color: rgb(223, 223, 223); padding-left: 8px; font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 8px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(223, 223, 223); "><img src="http://www.banffcentre.ca/wpg/exhibitions/2007/18beckett/Nauman3180.jpg" width="180" height="77" /><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 0.7em; line-height: 1.2em; text-align: right; ">Bruce Nauman, <em>Clown Torture</em>, 1987, four-channel video installation, G00159, <br />The Art Institute of Chicago</p><img border="0" src="http://www.banffcentre.ca/wpg/exhibitions/2007/18beckett/wall-1-larger-180.jpg" width="180" height="122" /><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 0.7em; line-height: 1.2em; text-align: right; ">Gary Hill, <em>Wall Piece</em>, 2000, Single-channel video/sound installation</p><img src="http://www.banffcentre.ca/wpg/exhibitions/2007/18beckett/chiasm1a.jpg" width="180" height="309" /><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 0.7em; line-height: 1.2em; text-align: right; ">Dorothy Cross, <em>Chiasm</em>, 1999 Single-channel video of performance Courtesy of the artist & Kerlin Gallery, Dublin</p><img src="http://www.banffcentre.ca/wpg/exhibitions/2007/18beckett/winplaceshow180.jpg" width="180" height="162" /><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 0.7em; line-height: 1.2em; text-align: right; "><em>Allison Hrabluik and Zin Taylor, Samuel Beckett and His 18 Eye Balls</em>, 2007</p><img src="http://www.banffcentre.ca/wpg/exhibitions/2007/18beckett/winplaceshow180a.jpg" width="180" height="91" /><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 0.7em; line-height: 1.2em; text-align: right; ">Stan Douglas<br /><em>Win, Place or Show, </em>1998 <br />Two-channel video/ four-channel soundtrack. Installation dimensions variable <br />Courtesy of the artist & David Zwirner, New York</p><p align="right" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 0.7em; line-height: 1.2em; text-align: right; "><br /></p></div><div style="width: 310px; "><h2 style="letter-spacing: 1px; color: rgb(138, 169, 28); font-weight: bold; margin-top: 14px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 4px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">18:Beckett</span></h2><div style="margin-left: 15px; "><p face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="70%" style=" line-height: 170%; margin-top: 2px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">March 31 to May 27, 2007</span></p><p face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="70%" style=" line-height: 170%; margin-top: 2px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Opening Reception: March 31, 2 – 5 p.m.<br />Curator’s tour: March 31, 2 p.m.<br />Curated by Séamus Kealy<br /></span><a href="http://www.banffcentre.ca/media_room/Media_Releases/2007/0322_18beckett.asp" style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(138, 169, 28); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">News release</span></a></p><p face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="line-height: 170%; margin-top: 2px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; "><a href="http://www.banffcentre.ca/wpg/public/default.asp#beckett" style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(138, 169, 28); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Beckett, Contemporary Art, Film, and New Media</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: May 19, 2 p.m.</span></p></div><p style="text-align: justify;line-height: 170%; margin-top: 2px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">18:Beckett</span></span></em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> explores the legacy of the work of Irish writer Samuel Beckett as it appears in the contemporary visual arts. </span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This exhibition concentrates on how contemporary artists have applied methods that Beckett worked with — not so much Beckett plays as “readymades” nor literal re-workings of his work per se, but revitalizations of a number of themes along with an algebraic, austere clarity associable with Beckett’s writing and productions.</span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;line-height: 170%; margin-top: 2px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Although it is misleading to identify them, these themes include: using repetition to unmask constructions of reality; expressing determination in the face of despair; generating observations on perception and philosophy; giving desires free expression; employing irrationality; rejecting the principle of knowing more as a way of creatively understanding the world and controlling it; focussing on poverty, failure, exile, and loss; applying Democritus’s credo that “nothing is more real than nothing”; and generating an elegant, stylized, often irreverent scepticism of the world at large.</span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;line-height: 170%; margin-top: 2px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Beckett’s iconoclastic, evolving aesthetic of impoverishment — however conversant he was with more grandiose questions in art, history, philosophy, or psychoanalysis — acts as a withdrawal from modernism’s promises of grandeur and happiness. It continues to provoke and splinter humanity’s idealizations, which themselves arguably trap thought delusively. With Beckettian space and “tableaux,” identifiable in his plays, teleplays, and novels — at times identifiable in this exhibition — one may find an opening beyond questions of ideology and rationality. This aesthetic is rarely beatific or redemptive, but consists of radical doubt; fractured precision; crippled bodies in muck; obsessed, vanquished minds; traumatized, sputtering voices; the shades of the real and the unreal; and most of all onwardness: the lost, forsaken, and unredeemed, within an unwinding, questioning order.</span></span></span></p><p align="right" style="text-align: justify;line-height: 170%; margin-top: 2px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">—Séamus Kealy</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;line-height: 170%; margin-top: 2px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Artists: Martin Arnold, Dorothy Cross, Stan Douglas, Stéphane Gilot, Gary Hill, Bruce Nauman, Nikos Navridis, Michal Rovner, Gregor Schneider, Ann-Sofi Sidén, Magdalena Szczepaniak, Zin Taylor, and Allison Hrabluik.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;line-height: 170%; margin-top: 2px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Organized by the Blackwood Gallery at the University of Toronto at Mississauga<br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;line-height: 170%; margin-top: 2px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p></div><div style="clear: both; width: 520px; height: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></div></div></td></tr>sozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770493715287675.post-53998687512727252872008-11-04T05:14:00.000-08:002008-11-04T11:51:03.980-08:00Steenbeckett<img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 177px; height: 247px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRglDFbOh9sxQkg3UrSP24TY6l8ck1XHb22BktGM7hfmqmeyvjFAcvSS_jFbnAmJ3w2RRtXlzAtuy_4lGPHLMtJrq9FdPxAuZP_8qf9qHlinzFXmLq48cLraPUZdrgkGQ5gba3FvRc56s/s400/Steenbeck.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264837718070550450" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 16px; font-family:Arial;font-size:13px;"><span class="artpast" style="color: rgb(51, 153, 153); font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; letter-spacing: 1pt; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">ATOM EGOYAN<br /></span></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Steenbeckett</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /><br />15 February - 17 March 2002<br />Former Museum of Mankind, Burlington Gardens, London W1</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 16px; font-family:Arial;font-size:13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">An obsolete machine in a forgotten room of the former Museum of Ethnography. An old man eavesdrops on a younger man: we watch through glass. Cannisters of celluloid and audio tape combine in a forest of memory. Rewind. Play. Shuffle. Delete. Random storage on shelving systems and in book-racks, exit past the technician's room. A ledger that ta<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 48px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; ">ils off in 1974; a complete card index; foreign classics; someone's pram. And then the old man's voice, re-formatted. Atom Egoyan's </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; ">Steenbeckett </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; ">wasa labyrinth in miniature; a route round an archive of personal history, down empty corridors and up flights of stairs to the abandoned projection booth of a hidden cinema.</span></span></b></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Steenbeckett</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> was a monument to analogue. It demonstrated two increasingly obsolete technologies, film and tape, in all their cumbersome glory.</span></span></div></b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">We used to record on spools. We filmed on reels. Our memories fell out of cans, unspooled on the floor, got caught in projectors.<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">They used to sound scratchy. They would dim with age. Now digital technology, bearing none of the signifiers of our natural mental process, is erasing the 'graven image' in the recording of experience and the function of memory. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Steenbeckett</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> is a monument to the thousand natural shocks that analogue was heir to.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div></b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Steenbeckett</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> launched a sequence of ambitious new projects for 2002, marking ten years of groundbreaking Artangel commissions. </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Steenbeckett <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; ">had the full support of the Royal Academy of Arts, which now owns 6 Burlington Gardens, and the British Museum, whose ethnography department is still based in the building.</span></span></b></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 345px; height: 230px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQpsY4TEhc6Ia8XDiaqOsuI6j8-HqqVgwJnl2eckvmN1WlVFUuPSdiB1Gn0W_xXf4mgrf_Tj0I9kuxDrAL4edWroB0hfucr4DHbtxo2GCgiFm-5_9xKaz68Pn3EhywwxxU0AWDaymL1wk/s400/01_ego.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264838963961215426" /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: normal; font-family:Georgia;font-size:12px;"><h3 style="font-weight: normal; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; color: rgb(0, 51, 102); margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; font-size: 30px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 7px; padding-left: 0px; ">Atom Egoyan</h3><p class="category" style="text-transform: uppercase; font-family: Verdana, Georgia, serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 6px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; width: 380px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">FORMER MUSEUM OF MANKND, <a href="http://www.frieze.com/issue/back/category/london_uk/" style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153); text-decoration: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-color: rgb(198, 198, 198); ">LONDON, UK</a></p><p style="margin-top: 12px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; width: 380px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 13px; ">‘Behind every hot new working computer is a trail of bodies’, writes Steward Brand in The Clock of the Long Now (1999): ‘… extinct computers, extinct storage media, extinct applications, extinct files.’ Atom Egoyan’s Steenbeckett (2002), installed in the former Museum of Mankind in central London, addressed this issue of technological obsolescence, taking Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape (1958) as its starting point and muse. In Steenbeckett, Egoyan’s own film of Beckett’s play was employed as one of several linked elements which he framed and reframed in a complicated meditation on the nature of memory, technology and the preservation of the past. <br />Steenbeckett took its title from a combination of the playwright’s name with that of the Steenbeck editing table, a much-respected machine employed, before the advent of digital technology, in the preparation of processed film. Beckett’s play, which Egoyan has manipulated using this device, concerns the musings and confusions of an old man, Krapp, as he listens to reel-to-reel tape recordings of himself speaking, 30 years earlier, about a highly emotional moment in his life. Sitting at a table stacked with tapes, Krapp scans mental and aural images of his past in an attempt to muster the energy to make, in the present moment, one more tape. Memory and recording do not, however, entirely coincide; the unreliable nature of human memory is thus emphasized, but the frailty of the recording medium - its thin and insubstantial form - is also brought to the fore. Loading the tape is an act lovingly carried out, existentially connected to the brute physicality of the recorded voice and the actions and persona it describes.</p><p style="margin-top: 12px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; width: 380px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 13px; ">Once inside the defunct museum, visitors are directed through a door labelled ‘Film theatre’. They pass into darkness, before emerging among piles of chaotically stacked canisters, photocopied instructions for threading film, tables and shelves supporting broken tools, and a number of apparently discarded editing and recording machines. Small rubber balls, discreetly placed, recall the ball in the play, a trivial gift for a long dead dog: ‘In the end I held it out to him and he took it in his mouth, gently, gently. A small, old, black, hard, solid rubber ball.’ The empirical nature of this object, its mundane but persistent state, acts as the anchor or literal trace of a reality remaining only as memory. In the second space Egoyan’s now digitized film fills an entire wall, one side of a narrow corridor through which we may either hurry or pause. Although benches are provided, it is difficult to sit and focus on the screen, and to read the huge images with which it is filled, as the viewer is forced up close against the flickering pixels. A sharp contrast is provided by the third and final section of the piece. In this much larger room Krapp’s Last Tape is again the implicit centre of attention, though this time its tragicomic plot is being spun out on a Steenbeck editor, its screen a small glowing rectangle at the far end of the set. Marking the distance between viewer and machine was a series of runners and pulleys through which the 2000 feet of film were threaded relentlessly into the Steenbeck.</p><p style="margin-top: 12px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; width: 380px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 13px; ">Exposed as it is to the air and dust of the musty museum, the sensitive film sustains ever-increasing surface alterations, which will in time result in a deeply distressed, potentially illegible print. Next door the digital image will, in contrast, continue on its course, immune to the vagaries of temperature and dirt, a pristine but doubly distanced encoding of Beckett’s earthy, recursive script.</p><p style="margin-top: 12px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; width: 380px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 13px; ">These variously stacked, cleverly contrasted versions of Beckett’s text, out-of-date or up-to-the-minute containers of cryptic prose, raise, in their emphatic alignment, many questions: on the nature of memory and its mechanical reproduction, on trace and reference, on the allegedly authentic voice and its historical transmission, and also, inevitably, on the problem of the staging of Steenbeckett itself. Egoyan is intrigued and deeply affected by the hands-on attributes of the fingered reel, the vivid physicality of celluloid and metal. One feels he loves this technology even as he realizes it has entered its decline. But the project, expensively entertained by Artangel, is somehow overloaded, too spectacular, too intense. If this is a meditation on how less can equal more, concision, I feel, should be the order of the day.</p><p style="margin-top: 12px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; width: 380px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 13px; "><br /><br /></p><div class="footnotes"></div><p style="margin-top: 12px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: 0px; width: 380px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 13px; "><strong>Peter Suchin</strong></p></span></span></div></b></span></div>sozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770493715287675.post-61418391609224920662008-11-04T04:34:00.000-08:002008-11-04T08:36:32.682-08:00Dorothy Cross and the Chiasm<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; "><table width="625"><tbody><tr valign="top" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><td><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; "><strong>CIRCA 112 Article</strong></p><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; "><strong class="articletitle" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 6mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 8mm; font-weight: bold; ">DOROTHY CROSS AND THE ART OF DISPOSSESSION</strong></p><table width="216" border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tbody><tr><td width="212"><img src="http://www.recirca.com/illus/c112/7_fmt.jpeg" height="329" width="212" /></td></tr><tr><td><p class="imagecaption" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; line-height: 4mm; font-weight: lighter; ">Dorothy Cross: <i>Virgin shroud</i> , 1993, cow hide, satin train, steel structure; courtesy Kerlin Gallery</p></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; ">Four exhibitions of the work of Dorothy Cross in the spring and summer of 2005 provide the opportunity for an overview of the diverse career of this prominent international artist. A retrospective at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, a survey of site-specific projects at McMullen Museum in Boston, a show of new work entitled <b><i>L'Air</i></b> at Frith Street Gallery in London, and Cross's collaboration with Fiona Shaw on <i>monte notte</i> for the <b><i>Cork 2005</i> </b>culture festival - all illustrate the strength of her past work and her ongoing creative process.<sup class="superscript" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 3mm; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: super; ">1</sup></p><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; ">The dynamic evolution of her career over the past twenty years makes it difficult to categorize an artist like Cross. Simon Morley has described her as an "artist of the 'optical unconscious'"<sup class="superscript" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 3mm; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: super; ">2</sup> who explores the blindspots that distort human perception. She has also been recognized as an artist of the "trace," who creates beauty out of memory and absence.<sup class="superscript" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 3mm; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: super; ">3</sup> One might ultimately characterize Cross as an "artist of dispossession," because although the Dublin and Boston exhibitions serve a valuable archival function, Cross herself is more committed to dissemination than to preservation.</p><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; ">In her dedication to an artistic practice that is transformative, that "confirms uncertainty,"<sup class="superscript" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 3mm; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: super; ">4</sup><b> </b>Cross has turned her attention to what is destabilizing in our common psychic experience - of repression, desire, and loss - and to what is disorienting in our encounters with the complexities of nature. Further exploration of these themes will reveal both their constancy and the richness of their variation in Cross's work.</p><table width="212" border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tbody><tr><td><img src="http://www.recirca.com/illus/c112/9_fmt.jpeg" height="259" width="212" /></td></tr><tr><td><p class="imagecaption" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; line-height: 4mm; font-weight: lighter; ">Dorothy Cross: <i>Amazon</i> , 1992, cowhide and tailor’s dummy; collection of Avril Giaccobi; courtesy Kerlin Gallery</p></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; ">Cross first began to explore the return of the repressed in relation to gender and sexual identity, most notably in a series that came to be known as her 'udder' works. During the 1990s, Cross covered a variety of familiar objects with cowhide, udder and teats intact. Using sexual ambiguity as a deconstructive tool, she cleared a path within each gender stereotype for the return of the repressed other / udder.</p><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; ">In <i>Virgin shroud </i>(1993), for example, she draped a tall form in a cowskin, with four teats crowning the figure's covered 'head', and the artist's grandmother's silk wedding train extending onto the floor from beneath the hide. The refined wedding gown that seals the fate of the virgin bride is dominated here by the return of an animal body traditionally denied by that white silk purity. The feminine ideal represented by figures such as the Virgin Mary is superseded in <i>Virgin shroud</i> by the horns of the virgin goddess that restore to the figure a more aggressive and powerful aspect. In <i>Amazon </i>(1992)<i>,</i> a dressmaker's mannequin, another emblem of female domesticity, is metamorphosed into a warrior bearing on her chest a huge udder with a single erect teat. What emerges in these works is an image of primitive female fecundity, aggressive sexuality, and power.</p><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; ">It is important to note, however, that Cross used the transformative power of the udder to perform the same liberating, subversive work on stereotypes of masculinity: the workman's boots (<i>Spurs</i>), the gymnastic 'horse' (<i>Vaulting horse</i>), the dart board (<i>Bull's eye</i>), <i>Rugby ball</i>, and even <i>Pap</i>, a Guinness bottle fitted with a teat - all these accoutrements of masculinity are returned to a dependence on the nipple. Cross insinuates into each gendered image the potential otherness of the udder - which becomes phallic on the dressmaker's dummy, maternal on the Guinness bottle. It is not Cross's intention simply to reverse these stereotypes but to dismantle and confuse sexual dualism itself.</p><table width="380" border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tbody><tr><td><img src="http://www.recirca.com/illus/c112/dcboots.jpg" height="246" width="380" /></td></tr><tr><td><p class="imagecaption" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; line-height: 4mm; font-weight: lighter; ">Dorothy Cross: <i>Spurs </i>, 1993, cow teats , string, boots; courtesy Kerlin Gallery</p></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; ">In her site-specific work, Cross often shifts her attention from individual psychology to collective memories buried in public sites. For the <b><i>Edge Biennial </i></b>(1992), held simultaneously in London and Madrid, Cross sought out in each city an architectural site where the culture's repressed fantasies lay buried. Pairing a nun's residence in Madrid and an abandoned men's public urinal in London, Cross brought together church and state, private and public, spiritual and corporeal, female and male. As she bridged the geographical and ideological distance separating these sites, the artist also discovered a breach deep within each one, where everything designated as 'other' had made its secret habitation.</p><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; "><i>La primera cena </i>(1992), or <i>The first supper</i>, installed in a twelfth-century convent in Madrid, consisted of a table draped with cowskin, udders uppermost, and twelve silvered glass chalices arranged in a circle on the floor below, each with a small hole for sucking its contents. This humorous play on the Last Supper set the stage for the viewer's encounter with a pre-Christian fantasy of maternal sacrifice. In this melancholy crypt something cherished, but long lost, quietly came to light.</p><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; ">For the London installation, entitled <i>Attendant</i> (1992), viewers entered a male preserve where rigid definitions of masculinity and national identity were exposed. Signs at the entrance directed visitors not to "Gentlemen" or "Ladies" but to "English" or "Irish." Both choices led to the same lower region where Cross had installed a pair of bronze urinals in the shape of England and Ireland, each country's central bowl draining out through a penis-shaped pipe. Contrary to above-ground hostilities, the penises inclined toward each other and aimed at the same hole in the floor. In these and related works by Cross, the ideologies of church and nation are laid bare, revealing at their secret core the very elements they were constructed to exclude.</p><table width="212" border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tbody><tr><td><img src="http://www.recirca.com/illus/c112/8_fmt.jpeg" height="217" width="212" /></td></tr><tr><td><p class="imagecaption" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; line-height: 4mm; font-weight: lighter; ">Dorothy Cross: <i>Bull’s eye</i> , 1992, dartboard, cow’s teat, 26 darts, 46 x 8.5 cm; courtesy Kerlin Gallery</p></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; ">The repressed always returns - not just in the form of buried histories but in resurgent desires as well. Cross often turns to nature for images that evoke the dynamic energy of the sexual drives, the vulnerability of love, and the impossible desire to immerse oneself in the other. The sculpture <i>Passion bed</i> (1991), for example, is a fragile and inaccessibly high woven wire construction within which glasses that have been sandblasted through with images of man-eating sharks are precariously arrayed - dysfunctional objects that remind us of the dangers of desire. These deadly sharks also appear in the site-specific installation <i>Slippery slope</i> (1990), where steel shark silhouettes were suspended by chains down the side of a spillway, straining to reach the river below. Here the sharks figure vulnerability and frustration more than danger. Attached to their source in a sewage outlet at the top of the two-hundred-foot gorge, the sharks will never reach their desire, and their bodies are gradually eroded by the contaminants that are endangering the natural terrain.</p><table width="212" border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tbody><tr><td><img src="http://www.recirca.com/illus/c112/4_fmt.jpeg" height="319" width="212" /></td></tr><tr><td><p class="imagecaption" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; line-height: 4mm; font-weight: lighter; ">Dorothy Cross: <i>Attendant,</i> 1992, cast bronze, underground toilet, 46 x 25 x 20 cm; courtesy Kerlin Gallery</p></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; ">The impossibility of desire is given its most complex elaboration in a site-specific work entitled <i>Chiasm</i> (1999). This multi-media piece was performed in Galway, in a pair of abandoned open-air handball alleys onto which Cross projected mirror images of a limestone tidal pool, the Worm's Hole, filmed on the Aran Islands. This image of nature in embrace, water penetrating stone and stone containing water, suggests the potential transformative interaction of beings in desire, yet its power is constrained here within the man-made structure of the handball courts.</p><table width="212" border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tbody><tr><td><img src="http://www.recirca.com/illus/c112/10_fmt.jpeg" height="279" width="288" /></td></tr><tr><td><p class="imagecaption" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; line-height: 4mm; font-weight: lighter; ">Dorothy Cross: <i>Rugby ball,</i> 1994, mixed media, 30 x 18 cm; courtesy Kerlin Gallery</p></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; ">On this transformed stage, a tenor and a soprano sang fragments from ten tragic romantic operas.<b> </b>The shifting juxtapositions of the collage text, the random blocking of the singers' movements, the open seating that offered viewers different points of view - all of these effects highlighted the role of misunderstanding and accident in the vicissitudes of love.</p><table width="212" border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tbody><tr><td><img src="http://www.recirca.com/illus/c112/12_fmt.jpeg" height="213" width="212" /></td></tr><tr><td><p class="imagecaption" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; line-height: 4mm; font-weight: lighter; ">Dorothy Cross: <i>Passion bed</i> , 1993, steel wire, sandblasted wine glasses, 254 x 53 x 170 cm; courtesy Kerlin Gallery</p></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; ">When the voices of man and woman come together across different plots and languages, love seems to triumph. Yet the singers remain on opposite sides of the dividing wall, blind to each other despite the fact that they stand within the same projected landscape. <i>Chiasm</i> dramatizes the limitations of our ability to know and be known by the other. The natural cycle of the ebb and flow of water in the tidal pool is repeated in the inevitable alternations of love and loss.</p><table width="212" border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tbody><tr><td><img src="http://www.recirca.com/illus/c112/17_fmt.jpeg" height="240" width="339" /></td></tr><tr><td><p class="imagecaption" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; line-height: 4mm; font-weight: lighter; ">Dorothy Cross: <i>Chiasm </i>, 1999, performance in handball alley; courtesy Kerlin Gallery</p></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; ">Cross's video <i>Come into the garden Maude</i> (2001) also brings together nature and the limitations of desire. This work draws on the documented and imagined life of Maude Delap,<b> </b>a late-nineteenth-century self-taught scientist who succeeded in breeding jellyfish in bell jars in her father's house. The story of her experimental and scholarly achievements, against all odds, is interwoven with fragments of the story of her unrequited love for an English zoologist to whom she sent wild violets on his birthday every year until his death. This chiasmic intertwining of science and passion, of knowledge and its limits, is also central to the related video <i>Medusae</i>(2003). Made in collaboration with her zoologist brother, this project documents the scientific illumination of the fascinating mechanics of how jellyfish swim, but never eradicates the persistent mystery of this almost bodiless creature. Desire and the desire for knowledge both encounter their limits.</p><table width="212" border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tbody><tr><td><img src="http://www.recirca.com/illus/c112/16_fmt.jpeg" height="223" width="315" /></td></tr><tr><td><p class="imagecaption" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; line-height: 4mm; font-weight: lighter; ">Dorothy Cross: <i>Medusae</i>, 2003, DVD; courtesy Kerlin Gallery</p></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; ">That sense of limitation invariably brings desire face-to-face with absence and loss in Cross's work. Influenced early on by Beckett's unflinching view of the death we inherit at birth, Cross created a composite image of an X-ray of an adult human skull overlaid with an x-ray of a fetus curled up within the womb-like brain cavity. Death lurks in our brains and in the most banal activities of daily life - a shark fin cutting across the surface of a bathtub, a scene of imminent shipwreck projected into a fine china teacup.<sup class="superscript" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 3mm; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: super; ">5</sup></p><table width="212" border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tbody><tr><td><img src="http://www.recirca.com/illus/c112/15_fmt.jpeg" height="162" width="212" /></td></tr><tr><td><p class="imagecaption" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; line-height: 4mm; font-weight: lighter; ">Dorothy Cross: <i>Teacup</i>, 1997, DVD; courtesy Kerlin Gallery</p></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; ">In her sited works, Cross turns from the individual's intimacy with death to explore the broader cultural means by which we try to evade its inevitability. In the Texas installation <i>CRY</i> (1996), Cross explored different attitudes toward death: a large freezer filled with frozen snakes alludes to a belief in the science and technology of<i>CRY</i>onics, and a nineteenth-century Irish apocalyptic painting, Francis Danby's<i>The Opening of the Sixth Seal</i>, printed onto sheer fabric and kept in motion by a pair of oscillating fans, depicts an immersion in narratives of salvation and damnation. All scientific and religious efforts to preserve life against mortality collapse, ultimately, into the six-foot vertical tomb dug by the artist into the gallery floor, concretizing what she describes as the "rot and reality" of death.</p><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; ">In what is probably Cross's best known work, <i>Ghost ship</i> (1999),<b> </b>the beauty of loss is stunningly realized. This project involved coating with phosphorescent paint a decommissioned lightship discovered by the artist in a Dublin dockyard. The ship was set afloat in Dublin Bay where every evening for three weeks it was alternately illuminated and left to glow and fade. Cross's goal was not to recreate the ship's outmoded function, but rather to illuminate its disappearance. <i>Ghost ship</i> offered viewers the gift of time slowed down for the contemplation of loss - an ongoing process with its own poignant beauty.</p><table width="212" border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tbody><tr><td><img src="http://www.recirca.com/illus/c112/13_fmt.jpeg" height="191" width="332" /></td></tr><tr><td><p class="imagecaption" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; line-height: 4mm; font-weight: lighter; ">Dorothy Cross: <i>Ghost ship</i> , 1999, decommissioned lightship, paint, Dún Laoghaire harbour ; courtesy Kerlin Gallery</p></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; ">In her study of melancholia and art, Julia Kristeva proposes that "beauty emerges as the admirable face of loss, transforming it in order to make it live."<sup class="superscript" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 3mm; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: super; ">6</sup> This seems a fitting description of much of Cross's work, including her staging of Pergolesi's<i>Stabat Mater</i> in a cave on Valentia Island (August 2004) - an unforgettable spectacle in which mourning was transformed through art so that passion might be retrieved and shared.</p><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; ">Cross's video <i>Jellyfish lake</i> (2003) creates a very different representation of shared passion: a naked woman floats in turquoise waters of Palau with hundreds of jellyfish, her undulating hair in harmony with their pulsating bodies in an erotic underwater ballet. And most recently, in <i>Antarctica </i>(2005), a video premiered at the artist's Frith Street exhibition, several anonymous figures submerged in Antarctic waters dive amongst the icebergs. These images are projected in negative, a fantasy world of black ice illuminated from below and haunted by spectral divers in white.</p><table width="212" border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tbody><tr><td><img src="http://www.recirca.com/illus/c112/14_fmt.jpeg" height="278" width="204" /></td></tr><tr><td><p class="imagecaption" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; line-height: 4mm; font-weight: lighter; ">Dorothy Cross: Untitled, 1995, black-and-white photograph, 81 x 61 cm; courtesy Kerlin Gallery</p></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; ">In the context of the religious austerity of <i>CRY</i>, the tropical paradise of <i>Jellyfish lake</i>, or <i>Antarctica</i>'s world of icy darkness, passion demands the same self-annihilation of the desiring subject. But that sacrifice is repaid, in Cross's work, by the promise of a temporary immersion in the fragile and awesome beauty of nature.</p><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; ">In her explorations of repression, desire, death, and nature, Cross's aesthetic practice of transformation and transmission remains enigmatic. Somehow her art makes the return of the repressed productive rather than merely repetitious, keeps faith with desire even in the face of desire's impossibility, and renders the wounds of loss bearable and communicable to others. No matter how conceptual her work becomes, Dorothy Cross never loses sight of the materiality of history, the complexities of nature, and the 'bursting into beauty' that can occur in the most unexpected places.</p><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; "><b>Robin Lydenberg</b> is Professor of English at Boston College; she is the author of<b>GONE: Site-specific Works by Dorothy Cross</b> (Boston: McMullen Museum and University of Chicago Press, 2005).</p><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; "><span class="footnote" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; line-height: 4mm; "><sup class="superscript" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 3mm; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: super; ">1</sup> The Dublin and Boston exhibitions have each produced a substantial catalogue, richly illustrated and with extended critical commentary: <b>Dorothy Cross </b>(Milan: Irish Museum of Modern Art and Charta, 2005), including essays by Enrique Juncosa, Patrick Murphy, Ralph Rugoff, and Marina Warner; and <b>GONE: Site-specific Works by Dorothy Cross</b>, by Robin Lydenberg (Boston: McMullen Museum of Art and University of Chicago Press, 2005). Other catalogues with important critical essays on Cross's work include: <b>Dorothy Cross: Ebb</b>, edited by Patrick T. Murphy and Tom Weir (Dublin: Douglas Hyde Gallery, 1988); <b>Dorothy Cross: Power House</b>, edited by Melissa Feldman (Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Philadelphia, 1991); and <b>even; recent work by Dorothy Cross</b>, edited by Tessa Jackson and Josephine Lanyon (Bristol: Arnolfini, 1996).</span></p><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; "><span class="footnote" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; line-height: 4mm; "><sup class="superscript" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 3mm; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: super; ">2</sup> See Simon Morley, <i>Irish art international</i>, <b>Art Monthly</b>UNo. 196 (May 1996), pp. 13 - 16. Morley borrows this concept from Rosalind Krauss's <b>The Optical Unconscious </b>(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993).</span></p><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; "><span class="footnote" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; line-height: 4mm; "><sup class="superscript" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 3mm; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: super; ">3</sup> See <b>TRACE: 1st Liverpool Biennial of International Contemporary Art</b>, curated by Anthony Bond (Liverpool: Liverpool Biennial of International Contemporary Art and Tate Gallery, Liverpool, 1999).</span></p><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; "><span class="footnote" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; line-height: 4mm; "><sup class="superscript" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 3mm; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: super; ">4</sup> Cross quoted in Libby Anson, <i>Cross talk</i>,<b> Art Monthly</b>( No. 203 (February 1997), pp. 20 - 21</span></p><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; "><span class="footnote" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; line-height: 4mm; "><sup class="superscript" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 3mm; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: super; ">5</sup> The x-ray composite (<i>Untitled</i>) was part of a solo exhibition entitled <b><i>Inheritance</i></b> (1995); the shark in the tub is<i>Bath</i> (1988), and the video work is <i>Teacup</i> (1999).</span></p><p class="maintext" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 4mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; "><span class="footnote" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; line-height: 4mm; "><sup class="superscript" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 3mm; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: super; ">6</sup> See Julia Kristeva, <b>Black Sun: Depression and Melancholy</b> (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989).</span></p><p align="right" class="footnote" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; line-height: 4mm; ">Article reproduced from CIRCA 112, Summer 2005, pp. 24 - 33 <br /></p></td></tr></tbody></table></span>sozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770493715287675.post-68742662881607465792008-11-04T03:42:00.000-08:002008-11-04T08:46:08.894-08:00c.cred<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;font-family:Times;"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 18.0px Impact"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">C . C R E D </span><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">x</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> | </span><span style="color:#ffffff;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">x</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> Collective CREative Dissent</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Arial;"><span style="text-decoration: underline"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><b></b></span></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 18.0px Impact"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Arial;"><span style="text-decoration: underline"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">What is C.CRED?</span></b></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 9.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">C.CRED | Collective CREative Dissent started out in the late 90s as an artistic collaboration and developed, in the early 00s, into an artist collective in the broader sense of the word. Based in London, UK, but operating largely as a nomadic and event-based platform for the development of critical forms of dialogue and conviviality, self-organized modes of collective learning, and collaborative forms of social and political research and intervention, the overriding concern of the collective was to foster links between art and aesthetic practices and the wider socio-political contexts in which they are situated. Since 2001 various people were involved with the collective in different capacities, some more permanently, others on a project by project basis. During 2007-2008 the core members of the group gradually got involved in other projects and so C.CRED currently remains largely inactive.</span><span style="font: 9.0px Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Arial;font-size:10px;"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 9.0px Arial"><span style="text-decoration: underline"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">C.CRED Projects & Websites</span></b></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 9.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">C.CRED worked almost exclusively with long-term, research based projects, structures and practices. For more information about specific initiatives, please visit the individual project websites listed below.<br /><br /></span><a href="http://www.ccred.info/pi.html"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#831610;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Permanent Ignition:</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> Premised on the notion that in order to construct a critical and reflective space for contemporary forms of cultural and socio-political dissention one needs to seriously and continuously explore various historical formations of resistance and opposition in different fields, the Permanent Ignition project emerged as a platform for collaborative forms of research on specific historical manifestations of dissention, often including both reading and discussion based research, and conversations, dialogues, interviews and other forms of direct collaboration with people involved in or affected by the historical moments and processes engaged with. The earlier manifestations of the Permanent Ignition project include: Permanent Ignition: Turin, a collaboration with former activists involved in the radical left-wing movement in Turin in the 1960s and 70s, revisiting sites in the city associated with this period thus generating photo and text collages superimposing a plurality of narratives and perspectives on the movement and its history, collages that were later projected onto public buildings and sites around the city in conjunction to a public micro-conference and discussion; Permanent Ignition: Stuttgart-Stammheim, a project involving three trips through Germany, building up a photo and text archive contextualizing the alleged 1976-77 suicides of the core group of militant activists of the first generation of the Red Army Faction in the prison in Stuttgart-Stammheim, an archive that was later used for displays and presentations, and as a basis for a series of public discussions of the historical narratives implied and the way they have been commemorated; and Permanent Ignition: The Stasi Edits, exploring dissention within the framework of the former GDR and, in particular, the repressive control and surveillance system developed by the Stasi, including the phenomena of so called informal co-workers and conspiracy dwellings, through a series of recorded conversations with people taking different positions and adopting specific perspectives on the system as well as the meaning and form of dissentious practices, conversations that were then edited into a multi-layered and polymorphous sound-collage presented to the public in the form of an audio-installation, a small booklet and a public round-table symposium. </span><a href="http://www.ccred.info/pi.html"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#831610;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">VISIT THE PERMANENT IGNITION WEBSITE. </span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#33320b;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><a href="http://www.ccred.info/cc.html"><span style="text-decoration: underline"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Counter.Cartographies:</span></span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> Counter.Cartographies is an overall framework linking several walking and mapping based projects initiated by the artist collective C.CRED [Collective CREative Dissent], often in collaboration with other groups, collectives and spaces. This site documents these various projects and archives some limited commentary and theoretical elaboration on issues raised and addressed at different stages of its development. It is not an exhaustive account, nor a final project output, but a very partial engagement with a working process and its development, an engagement we hope will continue to expand, creating spaces and sites for the further development of cartographical and peripatetic artistic practice. Some of the material on this site has been published elsewhere in different versions and edits. Please see the 'thanks' section of this site for an exhaustive list of publications linked to the Counter.Cartographies project. </span><a href="http://www.ccred.info/cc.html"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#33320b;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">VISIT THE COUNTER.CARTOGRAPHIES ARCHIVE.</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /> </span><a href="http://www.altspace.info/"><span style="color:#001ee6;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#5c3764;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The alt.SPACE Network of Artist Research Groups:</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> In face of the increasing commodification and capitalization of the knowledge and cultural industries, the alt.SPACE Network is an international, transdisciplinary formation of self-organized, non-institutional research groups with the collective aim of exploring cultural production through a variety of different media and through a range of contextual and theoretical approaches. It is our shared belief that in a time that stands witness to the increasing entrenchment and subsumption of research and criticality into the manufacturing processes of global, profit-driven corporate industries, self-organization and the non-totalizing, informal networking of micro-practices offer a site of resistance and dissent. </span><a href="http://www.altspace.info/"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; color:#5c3764;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">VISIT THE alt.SPACE WEBLOG</span></span></a></p></span></div></span>sozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770493715287675.post-36069064618862824522008-11-04T02:04:00.000-08:002008-11-06T16:55:09.650-08:00Garin Dowd- Abstract Machines<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC1PC8tHsaBqXnCEN2LbHYs2hhm1pW3zXYTgVtSjmiJ5LApaaoMvcH3LC833enR86FQrzoNhyzQy2zLTJFupg4-GYzBzqRP0WWbk9AZGH0WgWinPeCKTuQXy4od7FkaaIuaKdKyJp8fmw/s1600-h/400.jpeg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC1PC8tHsaBqXnCEN2LbHYs2hhm1pW3zXYTgVtSjmiJ5LApaaoMvcH3LC833enR86FQrzoNhyzQy2zLTJFupg4-GYzBzqRP0WWbk9AZGH0WgWinPeCKTuQXy4od7FkaaIuaKdKyJp8fmw/s400/400.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264849557003625442" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Arial;font-size:13px;"><div><p style="text-align: justify; margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Dowd, Garin. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Abstract Machines: Samuel Beckett and Philosophy after Deleuze and Guattari</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify; margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify; margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify; margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify; margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">http://www.rodopi.nl/senj.asp?BookId=FAUX+295 <span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:13px;"></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify; margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:13px;">What can philosophy bring to the reading of Beckett? Combining intertextual analysis with a ‘schizoanalytic genealogy’ derived from the authors of L’Anti-Œdipe, Garin Dowd’s Abstract Machines: Samuel Beckett and Philosophy after Deleuze and Guattari offers an innovative response to this much debated question. The author focuses on zones of encounter and thresholds of engagement between Beckett’s writing and a range of philosophers (among them Spinoza, Leibniz and Kant) and philosophical concepts. Beckett’s writing impacts in a variety of ways on Deleuze and Guattari’s thought, and, in particular, resonates with Deleuze’s contributions to the history of philosophy (in books such as Le Pli: Leibniz et le baroque), and his ‘critical and clinical’ approach to literature. Furthermore, the books co-written with Guattari, concerned as they are with the ‘molecularization’ of the discipline of philosophy in the name of ‘thinking otherwise’, reveal themselves in a new light when explored in conjunction with Beckett’s œuvre. With its arresting perspectives on a wide range of Beckett’s works, Abstract Machines will appeal to academics and postgraduate students interested in the philosophical aspects of his writing. Its engagement with alternative contributions to the question of Beckett and philosophy, including that of Alain Badiou, renders it a timely and provocative intervention in contemporary debates on the relationship between literature and philosophy, both within the field of Beckett studies and beyond.</span></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 11px; white-space: pre; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; ">http://books.google.com/books?id=ayzHHqtFAF0C&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=garin+dowd+book+review&source=web&ots=5JpPD_1Lph&sig=xIYBTHd858osM0tR2HU_nknmPEc&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=9&ct=result#PPT1,M1</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div></span>sozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770493715287675.post-29605892514018281882008-11-04T01:47:00.000-08:002008-11-04T10:52:29.112-08:00Derval Turbridy<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB0x5Be4UY1RxuQnsijScu4vZMc2krVaOXhwI0M0HIThuxtMl_yvWyh3qlNMhi3_AS3ONwu7FnXv8eYwMvxDquuSE7eEnunaH56WQW4gWA5Pv4BKUVJI08lfSwJMg0IyFnSh9SqBzrLmg/s1600-h/River+2002+r.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB0x5Be4UY1RxuQnsijScu4vZMc2krVaOXhwI0M0HIThuxtMl_yvWyh3qlNMhi3_AS3ONwu7FnXv8eYwMvxDquuSE7eEnunaH56WQW4gWA5Pv4BKUVJI08lfSwJMg0IyFnSh9SqBzrLmg/s400/River+2002+r.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264876887860375410" /></a><br /><div>http://www.dervaltubridy.com/<br /></div>http://technorati.com/videos/youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DNJcMz0zVaJg<div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(85, 0, 0); line-height: 17px; font-family:Verdana;font-size:12px;"><table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" width="100%" align="center" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica;font-size:11px;"><tbody><tr><td colspan="2" valign="top" class="black_text" width="400" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 17px; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica;font-size:12px;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" style=" ;font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica;font-size:11px;"><tbody><tr><td colspan="3" style="color: rgb(85, 0, 0); line-height: 17px; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica;font-size:12px;"><span class="red_title" style=" color: rgb(190, 0, 40); font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica;font-size:18px;">Artist Profile</span><br /><br /></td></tr><tr><td width="10%" style="color: rgb(85, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; "> </td><td class="black_text" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; "><div>Exploring the relationships between time, chemistry and form, Derval’s work is intense yet beautifully simple.</div><div>Quietly violent in its combination of media, her work is inspired by meditations on subjects ranging from the human body to light and landscape.</div><div> </div><div>Metal, suspended gold, gloss paint, blackboard and varnish are amongst the media that Derval uses to create her finished works.</div><div> </div><div>Born in Ireland, Derval studied in France, Canada, the United States and Dublin. Now living in London, she regularly lectures in art at the prestigious Goldsmiths College at the University of London.</div><div> </div>Original artworks are mixed media on canvas. Commissioned original artwork is also available by this artist.<br /><br /><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Arial"><b>Research interests </b><br />My research focuses on the intersection between language, materiality, process and topography in twentieth-century and contemporary Visual Culture, Philosophy, Theatre and Literature with particular emphasis on Samuel Beckett and Thomas Kinsella. I have completed a manuscript on the relationship between language, subjectivity and the body in Beckett’s prose and drama. My current research projects include a book called Art after Beckett, an examination of Beckett’s influence on contemporary aesthetics. I am editing a special Thomas Kinsella issue of Irish Studies Review, and a collection of the proceedings of the 2006 centenary conference Beckett and Company</p><br /><br /></td><td width="10%" style="color: rgb(85, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; "> <br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></span></div></div>sozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770493715287675.post-71297590024429113042008-11-04T01:46:00.000-08:002008-11-04T11:47:57.276-08:00Is the failure to express its expression?<img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 263px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbuVCkVFMfqBFQkVTC1WtdNZ3cFkkH4BPuGtxJFiiJPHZT3kRDTpZNEoTse3_EvawUjDjXdjPEixGorNyWNs-V3526QNlLIHjkFDFKRqH1yPFlizlZeVspNxweMYr-uZgXz_4I7eyGjXU/s400/ocampo-2b.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264860622838535282" /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_xUG0yT_591a1zC8LQEDhQoEnbsXdGbxltnd_d0x12sJo-_W3es3VDKvMHqXN2UWlPiGHhqIu4XNVCG0s45fV2cjanVdJ0n5XtQhQqI9vxxboGQ6Br2RaUKv0lqai6KQR85wg7pL0CaI/s1600-h/ocampo-1b.jpg"></a><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Trebuchet MS"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; ">Dr Richard Cope </span><br /></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;">(South Bank University, London)<br /></div></b><p></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 10.0px Trebuchet MS"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; ">‘Is the failure to express its expression?: Manuel Ocampo and Samuel Beckett’s </span><br /></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;">“Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit”’<br /></div></b><p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 10px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; ">What does it mean for an artist to fail ‘as no other dare fail’? While Beckett’s prose and drama has become a source of inspiration for artists who aim to practice and to understand various forms of artistic failure, it is his ‘Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit’ (1949) in particular that theorises the path to failure by making a case for the impossibility of success, the impossibility of expression. Since 1965, <span style="">‘Three Dialogues’ has become something of a crutch [crux???] for Beckett scholars, but what of its possible influence on the arts? </span>Many artists echo or engage with Beckettian themes and are, as a result, considered to be engaging with the notion of an ‘aesthetics of failure’, but are they taking the idea of failure to the same extreme as expressed in ‘Three Dialogues’? <span style="">Are these artists failing ‘as no other dare fail’ or are they merely involved in the continuing creation of an art whose history is ‘the history of its attempts to escape from this sense of failure’?</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 10px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; ">This paper will explore the work of the contemporary painter Manuel Ocampo through a reading of ‘Three Dialogues’ in order <b>to highlight and compare the differences between a general ‘aesthetics of failure’ and the particular problems raised in ‘Three Dialogues’.</b></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 10px/normal 'Trebuchet MS'; "> By reading Ocampo’s work beside the ideas within (and the idea <i>of</i>) ‘Three Dialogues’, I shall argue that, more than merely engaging with an ‘aesthetics of failure’, Ocampo reflects the paradox of ‘Three Dialogues’ in an exploration of the possibility or impossibility of an ‘aesthetics of failure’ and the problems inherent within these. By highlighting the extremity and the absurdity of the argument in ‘Three Dialogues’ through the work of Ocampo, and in the process exploring the implications this has on aesthetics, it may be possible to understand the difference between those who merely fail and those who fail ‘as no other dare fail’.</p><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 360px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKfOueFDIV3OXurq4x4nDH88vjIUe36rTJGTEOjV12Nkg-uVD3omzjd8ebvaXGygHVmEUsivEIBMRnKO_P776O-6giabmm7GSGBBmkZGiHMbh7JQpdQ44zZQ7XnNenDq108PQUosEC_D8/s400/ocampo-1b.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264891390780540290" /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Trebuchet MS';font-size:10px;"><br /></span></div>sozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770493715287675.post-50230587908894834352008-11-04T01:36:00.000-08:002008-11-04T10:40:47.729-08:00Thomas Mansell Beckett’s Alarm<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(67, 77, 88); font-family:Verdana;font-size:11px;"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The London Consortium </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Static</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. Issue 06 – Alarm </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Palatino; min-height: 16.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">http://static.londonconsortium.com/issue06/ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 20.0px Palatino; min-height: 26.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 20.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Beckett’s Alarm </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Sections of this article have appeared in Thomas Mansell, ‘Hard-to-Hear Music </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">in Endgame’, in Mark Byron (ed.), Samuel Beckett’s Endgame (Amsterdam </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and New York, NY: Editions Rodopi B.V., 2007), pp. 1—21. The author </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">wishes to thank the publisher and editor for permission to reprint them here in </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">revised form, and also the A.H.R.C. for supporting his research. </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">http://static.londonconsortium.com/issue06/mansell_beckett.html </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">© Thomas Mansell / Static / London Consortium / December 2007 </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Static is the web resource of the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">London Consortium, a unique </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">collaboration between the Architectural </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Association, Birkbeck College </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(University of London), the Institute of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Contemporary Arts, The Science </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Museum, and Tate. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Aiming to initiate interdisciplinary </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">intellectual debate about paradoxes of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">contemporary culture, Static presents </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">contributions from an international </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">team of academics, artists and cultural </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">practitioners. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The materials, assembled for each issue </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">around a theme, include analytical </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">essays and articles, interviews, art </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">projects, photographic images, etc. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Static welcomes feedback, argument </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and commentary from scholars, artists, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and other readers, and will be regularly </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">updated in order to communicate the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">most recent and relevant ideas and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">interpretations on the chosen topic. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">http://static.londonconsortium.com</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The London Consortium – http://www.londonconsortium.com </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Architectural Association – http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Birkbeck College (University of London) – http://www.bbk.ac.uk/ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Institute of Contemporary Arts – http://www.ica.org.uk/ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Science Museum – http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Tate – http://www.tate.org.uk/ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 11.0px Palatino; min-height: 14.0px"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Sounds, signs, and symbols</span></b><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1</span></b></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 11.0px Palatino; min-height: 14.0px"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Alarms occupy an ambiguous place between sound, sign, and symbol. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Bells can convey a number of quite specific messages to a community, but </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the tocsin or alarm signal is the most easily recognised and responded </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">to. In his history of bells in France, Alain Corbin writes that although </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the tocsin was not rung everywhere with precisely the same rhythm, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘it was defined almost everywhere by hurried, redoubled, and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">discontinuous strokes’. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This was an abrupt, irregular peal that was heard </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">intermittently and was executed, whenever possible, with </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">a small bell. The alarm bell was hurried. It seemed to urge </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">on and instill anxiety. It is highly likely that it made </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">hearts beat a little faster. Its pauses caused listeners to </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">hold their breath and prick up their ears. By contrast </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">with the other secular peals, the alarm transcended the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">territorial limits of the community.’</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">2</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Originally an alarm was a call to arms: the word comes from the Old </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">French, ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">à l’arme</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’, ‘to the weapon’. If it no longer has this precise </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">meaning, it still inevitably provokes the ‘fight or flight’ response. The </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">word ‘tocsin’ also derives from Old French, ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">touque-sain</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’: ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">signe</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’ is </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">modern French for ‘signal’, and the verb ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">toquer</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’ means ‘to strike’, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">though is closely related to ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">toucher</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’, ‘to touch’. The ambiguity </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">toquer/toucher</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’, the juxtaposition of the most delicate with the most </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">violent physical impact, encapsulates that of the alarm itself, which </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">functions both as a mediated signifier and as a direct sonic assault on </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">our nervous system. We set alarms to remind us of various things; but to </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">be effective the sound itself must by-pass or short-circuit the filter of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">reason, causing the hearer themselves to become ‘alarmed’. Corbin’s </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">description of the tocsin indicates the intimate relationship of the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">alarm and the alarmed: the hurried bell urges on whoever hears it; a </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">symptom of the anxiety it instils is a quickening of the pulse. While </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the rapidity of the alarm bell is beyond that of human capability, the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">mechanism therefore has a real connection with the natural world </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Unlike church-bells, which are rung with physical effort by a ringer </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">pulling a bell-rope, modern alarms can be activated by a simple </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">mechanical or electrical switch by a remote or unknown agency, which </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">adds to their ominous nature. The alarm is relentlessly repetitive, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">resounding with an unpleasant hardness, sometimes creating the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">illusion of a single, constant tone. One of the reasons it is so difficult to </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">ignore an alarm is that its second, third, fourth, twentieth stroke is as </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">loud as its first, unlike, the ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[f]aint single chime</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’ of Beckett’s </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Footfalls </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(1975): </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Faint single chime. Pause as echoes die</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">3</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Chime a little fainter. Pause for echoes</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">4</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> The phrase ‘alarming conviction’ is taken from Samuel Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Murphy </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1936, pub. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1938] (London: Calder Publications Ltd, 1993), p. 125.</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">2</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Alain Corbin, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the Nineteenth-Century French Countryside</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1988], trans. Martin Thom (London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd [Papermac], 1999), p. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">192 (p. 358 n. 145). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">3</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Samuel Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Footfalls </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1975], in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Complete Dramatic </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Works (London: Faber and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Faber Limited, 1986, paperback 1990), pp. 399—403: p. 399. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Chime a little fainter still. Pause for echoes.</span></i><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">5</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Chime even a little fainter still. Pause for echoes</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">6</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">If the echoes did not, like the chimes themselves, get fainter and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">eventually die, the result would be an alarm. The moment when the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">echoes finally merge with silence is virtually imperceptible; the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">entrances and</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the exits of a modern alarm bell, in contrast, are sudden. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">However, sometimes one continues to hear the alarm even after it has </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">ceased to ring, continuing in the dinning and deafening tinnitus of the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">ears. This paper will focus on Beckett’s alarms in two plays: </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(1957) and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (1961). Before considering them, it is necessary to </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">sketch the background (noise) of language and music, meaning and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">sound. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Theories of the Symbol </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(1977), Tzvetan Todorov documents and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">contrasts classical and modern accounts of the functioning of language. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Aristotle believed that despite the differences in both written and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">spoken languages, they directly symbolized mental experiences, which </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">were the same for all.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">7</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Linguistic theories of the early eighteenth </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">century, such as that of Abbé Dubos (1670—1742), had interposed </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">various junctures in this apparently straightforward process centred </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">around the arbitrary nature of verbal signs. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Literature would thus be distinguished from the other arts </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">by its oblique, indirect mode of representation. Sounds </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">evoke meaning; but the latter in turn becomes a signifier, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">whose signified is the world represented. In this sense, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">poetry is a </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">secondary</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> semiotic system.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">8</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">What at the time seemed to threaten the ontological status of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">literature came, in the early twentieth century, to be considered its </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">most prized quality. In 1919, Roman Jakobson celebrated poetry (i.e. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">literature) as the form in which ‘language is perceived in itself and not </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">as a transparent and transitive mediator of “something else.”’.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">9</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Jean-</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Paul Sartre expressed very similar ideas in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">What Is Literature? </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(1948): </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘Poets are men who refuse to </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">utilize</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> language…. The poet </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">has withdrawn from language-instrument in a single </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">movement. Once and for all he has chosen the poetic </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">attitude which considers words as things and not as signs. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">For the ambiguity of the sign implies that one can </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">penetrate it at will like a pane of glass and pursue the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">thing signified, or turn his gaze toward its </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">reality</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">consider it as an object.’</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">10</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">4</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Footfalls</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 400. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">5</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Footfalls</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 402. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">6</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Footfalls</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 403. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">7</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> See Tzvetan Todorov, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Theories of the Symbol </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1977], trans. Catherine Porter (Oxford: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Basil Blackwell Publisher, 1982), ch. 1 ‘The Birth of Western Semiotics’, pp. 15—59: p. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">16. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">8</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Todorov, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Theories of the Symbol</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, ch. 5 ‘Imitation and Motivation’, pp. 129—46: pp. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">131—32. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">9</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Todorov, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Theories of the Symbol</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, ch. 10 ‘Jakobson’s Poetics’, pp. 271—84: p. 272. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">10</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Jean-Paul Sartre, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">What Is Literature? </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1948], trans. Bernard Frechtman – as quoted in </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Todorov, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Theories of the Symbol</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, ch. 10 ‘Jakobson’s Poetics’, pp. 271—84: p. 273. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">One could also approach this issue using Julia Kristeva’s account of the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘symbolic’ and the ‘semiotic’ in ‘Revolution in Poetic Language’ (1974). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The ‘symbolic’ is the primary constituent of language used to articulate </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">meanings by means of signifiers; whereas the ‘semiotic’ is the ‘space </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">underlying the written […] rhythmic, unfettered, irreducible to its </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">intelligible verbal translation; it is musical, anterior to judgement’.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">11</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘[S]o-called “natural” language’, Kristeva argues, ‘allows for different </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">modes of articulation of the semiotic and the symbolic’.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">12</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> In most </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">discourses there is a ‘necessary dialectic between the two modalities of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the signifying process, which is constitutive of the subject’.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">13</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Because the subject is always </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">both </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">semiotic </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">symbolic, no </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">signifying system he produces can be either ‘exclusively’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">semiotic or ‘exclusively’ symbolic, and is instead </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">necessarily marked by an indebtedness to both.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">14</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Kristeva’s use of the terminology virtually inverts their historic </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">meanings: what Todorov calls the ‘semiotic’ she calls the ‘symbolic’, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">with ‘semiotic’ now taking on a new role, representing the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">unrepresentable. Kristeva’s ideas have been extremely influential, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">despite their complexity. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘“Kristeva has thus divided language into two vast </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">realms, the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">semiotic</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> – sound, rhythm and movement </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">anterior to sense and linked closely to impulses [that is, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">drives] … – and the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">symbolic</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> – the semantico-syntactic </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">function of language necessary to all rational </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">communication about the world. The latter, the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">symbolic</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">usually ‘takes charge of’ the semiotic and binds it into </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">syntax and phonemes, but it can only do so on the basis of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the sounds and movements presented to it by the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">semiotic.”’</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">15</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Indeed, the sense of language’s becoming increasingly like music is one </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">point where these differing theories converge – albeit from opposing </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">directions. For Kristeva music is the clearest example of a ‘non-verbal </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">signifying system […] constructed exclusively on the basis of the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">semiotic’;</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">16</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> and, as Daniel Albright explains in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Modernism and Music</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(2004), </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[t]he linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein […] tend to cut the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">word free from any reference in the physical world; […] as </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">language becomes a deferentialized, self-enclosed system </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">of signs – signs that point at other signs, never at concrete </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">objects – speech becomes more and more like music.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">17</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">11</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Julia Kristeva, ‘Revolution in Poetic Language’ [1974], trans. Margaret Waller [1984], in </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Kristeva Reader</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, ed. Toril Moi (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd, 1986, repr. 1987), pp. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">90—137: p. 97. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">12</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Kristeva, pp. 92—93. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">13</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Kristeva, pp. 93. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">14</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Kristeva, pp. 93. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">15</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> ‘White, 1977, quoted in Hebdige, 1979, p. 164’ – as quoted in John Shepherd and Peter </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Wicke, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Music and Cultural Theory </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997), p. 77. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">16</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Kristeva, pp. 93. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">17</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Daniel Albright, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (Chicago and London: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 24—25. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">If music’s ability to incorporate these largely contradictory senses of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">language were not already confusing enough, the twentieth century also </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">saw a transformation of the meaning of music itself. As Albright </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">ponders, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[i]f the history of music is a story about the continual </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">expansion of the idea of consonance, at first limited to </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">fourths and fifths, then granted to thirds and sixths, and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">finally to tone clusters of seconds, what is the last </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">chapter?</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">18</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Schoenberg’s serial dodecaphony and Hába’s microtonality were, in </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">part, attempts to answer this question; but perhaps the most radical </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">innovators in music of the early twentieth century were those who </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">embraced noise. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Listen to a locomotive, a steel mill, a circular saw: these </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">are the highest sorts of musical instruments, if dissonance </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">is the criterion of excellence. If we want to be </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">overwhelmed by sound, sound we can feel through our </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">diaphragms, sound that so fills the mind that there is no </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">room left for anything else, a boiler room can do more than </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Bruckner.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">19</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The clearest statement of this idea is Luigi Russolo’s Futurist Manifesto </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘The Art of Noises’ (1913) and the ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">intonarumori</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’ or ‘noisemakers’ he </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">devised.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">20</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Russolo argued that the established dualism between </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘musical sound’ and ‘noise’ was false: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[…] noise is differentiated from musical sound merely in </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">that the vibrations that produce it are confused and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">irregular, both in tempo and in intensity. Every noise has a </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">note – sometimes even a chord – that predominates in the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">ensemble of its irregular vibrations.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">21</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This fact makes it possible to incorporate factory sirens, alarm bells, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and any other noises into the musical fabric – but it is no less disruptive </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and destabilising for that. Certain sounds continue to strike us as </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘unmusical’: consider Primo Levi’s experience of the ‘infernal’ music of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the camps, recounted in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">If This Is A Man</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (1958): </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[…] the reveille catches me in a deep sleep and its ringing </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">is a return from nothingness. As the bread is distributed one </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">can hear, far from the windows, in the dark air, the band </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">beginning to play: the healthy comrades are leaving in </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">squads for work. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">One cannot hear the music well from Ka-Be. The beating of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the big drums and the cymbals reach us continuously and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">monotonously, but on this weft the musical phrases weave </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">a pattern only intermittently, according to the caprices of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">18</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Albright, p. 172. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">19</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Albright, pp. 172—73. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">20</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> See Albright, p. 174. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">21</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Luigi Russolo, ‘The Art of Noises: Futurist Manifesto’ (1913), trans. Stephen Somervell </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">– reprinted in Albright, pp. 177—83: p. 181. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the wind. We all look at each other from our beds, because </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">we all feel that this music is infernal.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> 22</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The infernal music is ‘the perceptible expression of its geometrical </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">madness, of the resolution of others to annihilate us first as men in </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">order to kill us more slowly afterwards’,</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">23</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> an effect intensified by the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">fact that it is the percussion instruments which can be most clearly and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">constantly heard. Furthermore, Levi not only distinguishes between the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">different instruments in the band, with the implication that </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘continuous’ and ‘monotonous’ instruments are not properly ‘musical’, but </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">considers even this mingled yarn as qualitatively distinct from the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">mere ‘ringing’ of the reveille. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Other artists, however, were increasingly attracted to the non-musical </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">aspects of music, even the notoriously noise-sensitive Franz Kafka. As </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Deleuze and Guattaricomment in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(1975), </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[i]t is certainly not a systematized music, a musical form, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">that interests Kafka (in his letters and in his diary, one </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">finds nothing more than insignificant anecdotes about a </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">few musicians). It isn’t a composed and semiotically </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">shaped music that interests Kafka, but rather a pure </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">sonorous material.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> 24</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Another writer who arguably produced a ‘minor literature’, albeit </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">voluntarily, is Samuel Beckett (1906—1989). Despite Beckett’s avowed </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">love of music, particularly that of the classical and romantic periods, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">such music rarely appears in his works, and then only problematically. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Instead, one finds passages such as this, from his early novel </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Dream of </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fair to Middling Women</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (1932, published posthumously): </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Plane of white music, warpless music expunging the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">tempest of emblems, calm womb of dawn whelping no sun, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">no lichen of sun-rising on its candid parapets, still flat </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">white music, alb of timeless light. It is a blade before me, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">it is a sail of bleached silk on a shore, impassive </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">statement of itself drawn across the strata and symbols, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">lamina of peace for my eyes and my brain slave of my eyes, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">pressing and pouring itself whiteness and music through </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">blindness into the limp mind. It is the dawn-foil and the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">gift of blindness and the mysteries of bulk banished and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the mind swathed in the music and candour of the dawn-</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">foil, facts of surface. The layers of Damask fused and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">drawn to the uttermost layer, silken blade. Blind and my </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">mind blade of silk, blind and music and whiteness facts in </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the fact of my mind. Douceurs…</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">25</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In this passage, music, the most overtly formal of all the arts, has </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">itself become ‘warpless’ – a stage beyond Primo Levi’s later description </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">of ‘weft’ of percussion on which the ‘music’ of the instruments was only </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">22</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Primo Levi, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">If This Is A Man </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1958], trans. Stuart Woolf [1969] in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">If This Is A Man and </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Truce</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (London: Little, Brown and Company [Abacus], 1987, repr. 2000), pp. 17—</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">179: p. 56. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">23</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Levi, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">If This Is A Man</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 57. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">24</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1975], trans. Dana </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Polan (Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), p. 5. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">25</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Samuel Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Dream of Fair to Middling Women</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> [1932], ed. Eoin O’Brien and Edith </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fournier (London: Calder Publications Ltd, 1996), p. 182. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">intermittently woven. This from a writer who in his pomp would tell </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">an interviewer, ‘“[t]o find a form that accommodates the mess, that is </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the task of the artist now.”’.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">26</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> One is minded less of ‘white music’ than </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">of ‘white noise’ – a concoction of sounds of every frequency within the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">range of human hearing, in which all frequencies have an equal </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">probability of being heard at any moment. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This ‘music’ is valued precisely for ‘expunging the tempest of emblems’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">– language that recalls both Beckett’s 1929 essay </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘Dante…Bruno.Vico..Joyce’ and his ‘German Letter’ of 1937 to Axel </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Kaun. In the former, commissioned by Joyce for a volume on his </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Work In </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Progress</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, Beckett summarised Giambattista Vico’s (1668—1744) </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘treatment of the origin of language’: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[…] he rejected the materialistic and transcendental </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">views; the one declaring that language was nothing but a </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">polite and conventional symbolism; the other, in </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">desperation, describing it as a gift from the Gods. As </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">before, Vico is the rationalist, aware of the natural and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">inevitable growth of language. In its first dumb form, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">language was gesture. If a man wanted to say ‘sea’, he </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">pointed to the sea. With the spread of animism, this </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">gesture was replaced by the word: ‘Neptune’.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">27</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">When, on the following page, Beckett writes ‘[t]he root of any word </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">whatsoever can be traced back to some prelingual symbol’,</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> 28</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> it is </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">unclear whether the opinion is Vico’s, Joyce’s, or his own. Certainly </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">this was the philosophy underpinning what would become </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Finnegans </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Wake </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(1939), a book which Beckett did much to help prepare and was </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">one of the first to attempt to translate. As Beckett emerged from Joyce’s </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">life-changing influence, he eventually took a different path, telling an </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">interviewer in 1956 that Joyce was ‘“tending toward omniscience and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">omnipotence as an artist”’ whereas he was ‘“working with impotence, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">ignorance”’.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">29</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> The Second World War marked a decisive phase in </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Beckett’s development. In 1941, while on the run in Roussillon (and at </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">around the time that Joyce died in Zürich), Beckett began work on the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">weird and wonderful </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Watt</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (1945), with its famous final addendum ‘no </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">symbols where none intended’.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">30</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> The apparently simple motto is, of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">course, entirely impractical – how is the reader to recognise an </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">intentional symbol? Presumably the ring of ‘cymbals’ is unintentional – </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">yet is no less present for that, especially in the context of the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">relationship between language and music, signs and sounds. I must be </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">one of the ‘hard of hearing’ people of whom Beckett complained in his </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1937 ‘German Letter’ to Axel Kaun: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">26</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Tom F. Driver, ‘Beckett by the Madeleine’, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Columbia University Forum</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> 4 (Summer 1961) </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">– quoted in J. E. Dearlove, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Samuel Beckett’s Nonrelational Art </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(Durham, NC: Duke </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">University Press, 1982), p. 12 and in John Fletcher, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">About Beckett: The Playwright and the </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Work</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 2003), pp. 66—67. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">27</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Samuel Beckett, ‘Dante…Bruno.Vico..Joyce’ [1929], in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and a Dramatic Fragment</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, ed. Ruby Cohn (London: John Calder (Publishers) Ltd., 1983, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">repr. 2001), pp. 19—33: p. 24. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">28</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, ‘Dante…Bruno.Vico..Joyce’, in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Disjecta</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 25. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">29</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Israel Shenker, ‘Moody Man of Letters’, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">New York Times</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, 06 May 1956 – quoted in </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">James Acheson, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Samuel Beckett’s Artistic Theory and Practice: Criticism, Drama, and Early </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fiction</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (New York, NY: St Martin’s Press, 1997).</span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">p. 6. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">30</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Samuel Beckett,</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Watt</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> [1945] (London: John Calder (Publishers) Ltd., 1976, repr. 1998), </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">p. 255. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I know there are people, sensitive and intelligent people, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">for whom there is no lack of silence. I cannot but assume </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">that they are hard of hearing. For in the forest of symbols, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">which aren’t any, the little birds of interpretation, which </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">isn’t any, are never silent.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">31</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In the forest of Beckett-interpretation, the ‘symbols’ are as noisy as the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">birds. John Hollander hears the complementary echo, ‘the secret tinkle </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">of “symbols”’, in the phrase ‘“secret cymbals round”’ in Wallace </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Stevens’s ‘Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction’ (1942).</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">32</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Stevens himself </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">would later comment that ‘ “there has been a change in the nature of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">what we mean by music”’: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘If occasionally the poet touches the triangle or one of the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">cymbals, he does it only because he feels like doing it. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Instead of a musician we have orator whose speech </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">sometimes resembles music. We have an eloquence and it is </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">that eloquence that we call music every day, without </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">having much cause to think about it.’</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">33</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Charles Krance is just one of many critics who have attempted to define </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘Beckett Music’: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">What Beckett ‘listened for’ in the writing and sounding of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">his own works was a music that would compel his </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">reader/perceiver/auditor to a particular form of listening, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">a form that could ‘accommodate the mess,’ enabling one to </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">hear, as if refracted through the process of listening, the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">silence within: a purified, residual resonance of the din </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">without, caught in a fleeting moment of grace, sounding the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">harmonic </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">wherein the ‘[ear] of mind’ and the ‘[ear] of flesh’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">may be one.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">34</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In Beckett’s works, instead of ‘music’ itself, one more often finds an </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">intense concentration on sonorous material, both natural and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">mechanical. Like Stevens’s Canon in ‘Notes Towards A Supreme </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fiction’, Beckett </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[…] chose to include the things </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">That in each other are included, the whole, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The complicate, the amassing harmony.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">35</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Among the sounds to which Beckett gave voice were footsteps, frogs, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">tides, thuds, murmurs, bells – and alarms. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">31</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Samuel Beckett to Axel Kaun, 09 July 1937, trans. Martin Esslin, in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Disjecta</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, pp. 170—</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">173: p. 172. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘Ich weiss, es gibt Leute, empfindsame und intelligente Leute, für die es an </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Stillschweigen gar nicht fehlt. Ich kann nicht umhin anzunehmen, dass sie </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">schwerhörig sind. Denn im Walde de Symbole, die keine sind, schweigen die Vögeln </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">der Deutung, die keine ist, nie.’ (Samuel Beckett to Axel Kaun, 09 July 1937, in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Disjecta</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">pp. 51—54: p. 53). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">32</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> John Hollander, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Vision and Resonance: Two Senses of Poetic Form</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (London and New </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Haven, CT: Oxford University Press, 1975, 2</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">nd</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> edn 1985), p. 133. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">33</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Wallace Stevens, ‘Effects of Analogy’, in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Necessary Angel</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (1965) – quoted in </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Hollander, p. 8. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">34</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Charles Krance, ‘Beckett Music’, in Mary Bryden (ed.), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Samuel Beckett and Music</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 51—65: p. 56. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">35</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Wallace Stevens, ‘Notes Towards A Supreme Fiction’ [1942], in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Collected Poems of </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Wallace Stevens </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1945, repr. 1959), pp. 380—408: p. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">403. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Many of the above themes are at play when Beckett attends to alarms, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">as he does in the stage-plays </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(1957) and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (1961). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Beckett’s relationship with alarms goes right back to his days as a </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">postgraduate exchange-student at the École Normale Supérieure in </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Paris, where he and his colleagues staged a parodic adaptation of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Corneille’s </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Le Cid</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> called </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Le Kid</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. Beckett’s biographer James Knowlson </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">relates that Beckett played the part of Don Diègue, sporting ‘a long </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">white beard in imitation of Old Father Time’, and ‘carried an umbrella </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">instead of a sword and, like Clov, in Beckett’s 1956 play, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, an </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">alarm clock’.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">36</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It was Beckett’s own idea to bring an alarm clock on stage </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">with him for Don Diègue’s monologue in the first act: he </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">knelt down, placed the clock very carefully on the floor </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and was midway through his famous ‘Ô rage! ô désespoir! </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">ô vieillesse ennemie!’ speech when the alarm went off </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">infuriating him and waking up the man on the ladder. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This, combined with the speeded-up movements of the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">hands of the big clock, forced him to go faster and faster </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">until he built up a wild, crazy momentum, producing a </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">torrent of sound that has been aptly compared with the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">effect of Lucky’s extravagant monologue in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Waiting for </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Godot</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">37</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This episode also links with the following strange scene during </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">rehearsals for </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">in London in 1962. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Allowed by [George] Devine more or less to take over as </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">director, he [Beckett] became increasingly unhappy as </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Brenda Bruce struggled with a text that she had had far </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">too little time to learn, let alone fully absorb, and with </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">lines that Beckett tried to induce her to speak to a </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">metronomically strict rhythm; at one stage he even </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">brought a metronome into the theatre and set it down on </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the floor, saying ‘This is the rhythm I want’. To the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">actress’s astonishment, he then left it ticking relentlessly </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">away.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">38</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">However, these effects owe more to the clock than to the alarm – </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">whereas the following exchange in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">concerns the alarm itself. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[H]e was not alarmed, unduly’</span></b><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">39</span></b></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (1957) </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Clov has threatened (not for the first time, we gather) to leave Hamm, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">his blind and immobile master. To Hamm’s question how will he know </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">that Clov has left him, Clov at once answers ‘you simply whistle me </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">36</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> James Knowlson, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (London: Bloomsbury </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Publishing plc, 1996), p. 124 (p. 727 n. 21). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">37</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Knowlson, pp. 124—25 (p. 727 n. 21). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">38</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Knowlson, p. 501 (p. 799 n. 115). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">39</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett,</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Watt</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 27. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and if I don’t come running if means I’ve left you’.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">40</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Hamm’s subsequent </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">question, however, proves a greater challenge: how will he know, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">when Clov doesn’t respond to his call, whether Clov has indeed left </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">him or has instead merely died in the kitchen. After a good deal of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">pacing to and fro with his ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[s]tiff, staggering walk</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’,</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">41</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Clov finally has an </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">idea. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Wait! [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">He meditates. Not very convinced</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] Yes… [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pause. </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">More convinced</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] Yes! [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">He raises his head</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] I have it! I set the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">alarm. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pause</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">HAMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: This is perhaps not one of my bright days, but </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">frankly – </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: You whistle me. I don’t come. The alarm rings. I’m </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">gone. It doesn’t ring. I’m dead. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pause</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.]</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">42</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Even in the world of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, where all is ‘corpsed’,</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">43</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> the alarm </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">nevertheless continues to accrue potential significations. The scene Clov </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">conjures is somehow both ruthlessly cruel and yet almost tenderly </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">imagined: the alarm ringing in the silence would be the last sound </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Hamm would ever hear, as he is utterly dependent on Clov. The pause </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">that follows allows one to imagine the alarm ringing in the silence – </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and allows Hamm to come up with possible objections to the plan. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">HAMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Is it working? [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pause. Impatiently</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] The alarm, is it </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">working? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Why wouldn’t it be working? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">HAMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Because it’s worked too much. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: But it’s hardly worked at all. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">HAMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Angrily</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] Then because it’s worked too little!</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> 44</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This irritable and irritating conversation is typical of their dialogue </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">throughout the play. Both men are at once insensitive and over-</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">sensitive: Clov seems to take offence at Hamm’s doubtful questions, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">which themselves seem to be prompted by fear that the alarm – and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the plan – will indeed work. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: I’ll go and see. [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Exit</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. <</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Brief ring of alarm off.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Enter </span></i><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></i></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">with alarm-clock. He holds it against </span></i><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">HAMM</span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’s ear </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and releases alarm. They listen to it ringing to the end. Pause.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">] </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">40</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Samuel Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1957 (pub. 1958)], in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Complete Dramatic </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Works (London: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Faber and Faber Limited, 1986, paperback 1990), pp. 91—134: p. 114. After Samuel </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fin de partie </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1950—1957]</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1957). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">41</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 92. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">42 </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: p. 115. Cf. Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fin de partie</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 66: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">C</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">LOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Attends. (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Il se concentre. Pas très convaincu</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.) Oui… (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Un temps. Plus convaincu</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.) </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Oui. (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Il rélève la tête</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.) Voilà. Je mets le réveil. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Un temps.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">H</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">AMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Je ne suis peut-être pas dans un de mes bons jours, mais – </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">C</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">LOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Tu me siffles. Je ne viens pas. Le réveil sonne. Je suis loin. Il ne sonne pas. Je </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">suis mort. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Un temps</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">43</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 106. The word in the original is ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Mortibus</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’ – a dead language for a </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">dead world (Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fin de partie</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 46). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">44 </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: p. 115. Cf. Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fin de partie</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, pp. 66—67: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">H</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">AMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Est-ce qu’il marche? (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Un temps. Impatient</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.) Le réveil, est-ce qu’il marche? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">C</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">LOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Pourquoi ne marcherait-il pas? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">H</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">AMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – D’avoir trop marché. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">C</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">LOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Mais il n’a presque pas marché. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">H</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">AMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">avec colère</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">). – Alors d’avoir trop peu marché! </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fit to wake the dead! Did you hear it? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">HAMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Vaguely. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: The end is terrific! </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">HAMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: I prefer the middle. [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pause</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.]</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">45</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">There is something distinctly incongruous in Clov’s asking Hamm if he </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">heard this alarm which he has already said is ‘[f]it to wake the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">dead’. If Clov’s praise is somewhat exaggerated, it is actually Hamm’s </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">more measured response which really strikes us as odd – especially </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">since he would only admit to having heard it ‘vaguely’. Just as in his </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">tour of the room, Hamm states ‘I prefer the middle’. On one level, this </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">could be bitterly sardonic, denying Clov’s remark (and attendant </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">pleasure) what small legitimacy it had. However, Hamm’s comment </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">suggests that he can distinguish amidst the uniformity and insistence of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the alarm’s hammering some ebb and flow, some variety. The alarm is </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the very epitome of a uniform, insistent, hammering, mechanistic </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">sound, whose effectiveness as a tool relies entirely on its being heard as </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">a noise rather than listened to as music. Hamm’s perverse attitude </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">threatens the established categories of noise and music, of sign and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">symbol, and even of the tragic and the absurd. As Nell (knell) says, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘[n]othing is funnier than unhappiness’:</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">46</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">NELL</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Yes, yes, it’s the most comical thing in the world. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">it’s always the same thing. Yes, it’s like the funny story </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">don’t laugh any more. [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pause</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.]</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">47</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Nell’s attitude contrasts with Hamm’s reaction to the alarm: beneath </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the multifarious accidents of human unhappiness Nell detects the same </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">fundamental form, whereas Hamm hears in the relentlessly repetitive </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">sound of the alarm an implausible variety. These are the poles of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">perception: perceiving difference </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">as</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> the same, and difference </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">in</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">same. Both, one suspects, is voluntarily adopting a perverse position to </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">defend themselves from the recognition of deeply uncomfortable truths </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">– which paradoxically means that both extreme attitudes are true. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The dark humour of the alarm-clock continues to resound throughout </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the play even if the alarm itself does not: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pause. </span></i><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> starts to move about the room. He is looking for a </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">place to put down the alarm-clock</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">45 </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: p. 115. Cf. Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fin de partie</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 67: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">C</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">LOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Je vais voir. (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Il sort. Jeu de mouchoir. Brève sonnerie du réveil en coulisse. Entre Clov, </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">le réveil à la main. Il l’approche de l’oreille de Hamm, déclenche la sonnerie. Ils l’écoutent sonner </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">jusqu’au bout. Un temps.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">) Digne du jugement dernier! Tu as entendu? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">H</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">AMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Vaguement. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">C</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">LOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – La fin est inouïe. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">H</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">AMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Je préfère le milieu. (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Un temps</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.) </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(The passage in angled brackets is printed in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Complete Dramatic Works</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, but was cut </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">during production.) Ruby Cohn cites this passage as evidence of ‘Clov’s innocence </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">about the language that Hamm and Nagg can manipulate playfully’: ‘[h]e sees </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">nothing incongruous in […] designating the sound of the shrill alarm clock as “inouie” </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[unheard].’ (Ruby Cohn, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">A Beckett Canon </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Press, 2001), p. 229). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">46</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 101. Cf. Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fin de partie</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 33: ‘Rien n’est plus drôle que le </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">malheur’. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">47</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 101. Cf. Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fin de partie</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, pp. 33—34: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">N</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">AGG</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Si, si, c’est la chose la plus comique au monde. Et nous en rions, nous en rions, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">de bon cœur, les premiers temps. Mais c’est toujours la même chose . Oui, c’est comme </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">la bonne histoire qu’on nous raconte trop souvent, nous la trouvons toujours bonne, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">mais nous n’en rions plus. (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Un temps</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.) </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">HAMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Soft</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] What’ll I do? [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pause. In a scream</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] What’ll I </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">do? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[</span><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> sees the picture, takes it down, stands it on the floor with </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">its face to wall, hangs up the alarm-clock in its place</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">What are you doing? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Winding up.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">48</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Beckett’s translation adds an extra twist to the French original, where </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Clov’s answer was ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Trois petits tours</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’:</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">49</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Clov’s winding-up of the alarm-</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">clock also signals both the winding-up (and the winding-down) of the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">play itself. Incidentally, Conor McPherson was also looking for a place </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">to put down the alarm-clock when he directed </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">for the ‘Beckett </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">on Film’ project in 2001. He settled on the lid of Nell’s urn – resulting in </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">a continuity error pointed out (unhappily, funnily) by a member of the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">audience at the film’s premiere.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">50</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">That the episode with the alarm is a key structural moment in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">is indicated by Beckett’s division of the play into sections for rehearsal </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">purposes: parts 1 to 8 form what Beckett called the ‘exposition’, the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">culmination of which is marked by the alarm.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">51</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> The alarm also </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">underlies or illustrates many of Theodor W. Adorno’s main arguments in </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">his 1958 essay ‘Trying to Understand </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’. For Adorno, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’s </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">importance lay in its determined acceptance of the lack of meaning in </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the modern world. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The less events can be presumed to be inherently </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">meaningful, the more the idea of aesthetic substance as </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the unity of what appears and what was intended becomes </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">an illusion. Beckett rids himself of this illusion by </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">coupling the two moments in their disparity.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">52</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">All that remains is ‘sensuous immediacy’ (‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">sinnliche Unmittelbarkeit</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’),</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">53</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">a subject which Heinrich Rickert had considered in his posthumously </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">published work </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Immediacy and the Interpretation of Meaning </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Unmittlebarkeit und Sinndeutung’</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (1939)), from which Adorno later </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">quotes.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">54</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">48</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 127. Cf. Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fin de partie</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, pp. 94—95: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Un temps. Clov commence à tourner dans la pièce. Il cherche un endroit où poser le réveil. </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">H</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">AMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Qu’est-ce que je vais faire. (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Un temps. Hurlant.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">) Qu’est-ce que je vais faire? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Clov avise le tableau, le décroche, l’appuie par terre toujours retourné contre le mur, accroche le </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">réveil à sa place</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. Qu’est-ce que tu fais? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">C</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">LOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Trois petits tours. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">49</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fin de partie</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 95. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">50</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Irish Film Centre (now the Irish Film Institute) 2001. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">51</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> ‘8. ‘I’ll leave you.” To “Silence!” (Mother Pegg-Boathook-mad painter-alarm clock).’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(Dougald McMillan and Martha Fehsenfeld, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Beckett in the Theatre: The Author as </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Practical Playwright and Director</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, Vol. 1: From </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Waiting for Godot</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> to </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Krapp’s Last Tape</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(London: John Calder (Publishers) Ltd, 1988), ch. 4. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, pp. 163—240: pp. 188 </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and 189.) </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">52</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Trying to Understand </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’ [1958], trans. Shierry Weber </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Nicholsen, in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Notes to Literature</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, vol. 1, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (New York, NY: Columbia </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">University Press, 1991), pp. 241—75: p. 242. (The essay is also reprinted in Jennifer </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Birkett and Kate Ince</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(eds), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Samuel Beckett: Longman Critical Readers</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (Harlow: Pearson </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Education Limited, 2000), pp. 39—49.) </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">53</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Adorno, p. 243. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">54</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Adorno, p. 253 (p. 280 n. 7). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Understanding it can only mean understanding its </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">unintelligibility, concretely reconstructing the meaning of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the fact that it has no meaning.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">55</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The object of Adorno’s sentence is </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">– but he could be speaking of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the alarm itself, which represents in microcosm the play as a whole. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">contains rapid-fire [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Zug um Zug</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">] monosyllabic </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">dialogues like the play of question and answer that once </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">took place between the deluded king and the messenger of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">fate. But whereas in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Oedipus</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> that served as a medium for a </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">rising curve of tension, here it is a medium in which the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">interlocutors slacken.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">56</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Adorno’s comparison of the different effects such stichomythia can </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">produce and induce is illuminated by the possibilities of preferring the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">end or the middle of a monotonously ringing alarm, and also the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">paradoxical synonyms of ‘winding up’ and ‘winding down’. The back-</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and-forth banter of Hamm and Clov may be compared to the clapper of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the alarm-clock shuttling from bell to bell to produce its unwanted but </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">necessary din. When Beckett directed </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endspiel</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> in Berlin in 1967, he </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">instructed his actors, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘[s]ay it in monotone and rhythmically, please. The words </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">are blows, dry blows. One hammerstroke is like the next </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">one.’</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">57</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The request was noted by Michael Haerdter in his rehearsal diary, as </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">were the remarkable results thereby achieved: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It is incredible how many subtle nuances of diction and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">action Beckett can work out of a few minutes of dialogue </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">exchanged by two unmoving heads in monotone. Here </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">instead of small hammerstrokes of rectification one must </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">rather speak of a watch-maker’s technique: the precise </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">adjustment of a miniature movement.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">58</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The ‘two unmoving heads’ correspond to the stationary bells of the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">alarm-clock – a parallel Beckett stressed when Clov held up the clock </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">between his head and Hamm’s. However, Haerdter flinches from the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">full force of his own logic: there is no need to speak of ‘a watch-maker’s </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">technique’ ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">instead of</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> small hammerstrokes of rectification’, since these </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">are precisely the means by which a watch-maker fashions his </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">intricate pieces. Beckett’s insistent repetitions raise (or lower) the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">audience’s sense-perception to the level of Hamm’s: they too perceive </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">difference in the same, meaning in the merely material. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Instead of trying to liquidate the discursive element in </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">language through pure sound, Beckett transforms it into an </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">instrument of its own absurdity, following the ritual of the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">55</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Adorno, p. 243. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">56</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Adorno, p. 260 [German pp. 192—93]. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">57</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Dougald McMillan and Martha Fehsenfeld, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Beckett in the Theatre: The Author as </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Practical Playwright and Director</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, Vol. 1: From </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Waiting for Godot</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> to </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Krapp’s Last Tape</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(London: John Calder (Publishers) Ltd, 1988), ch. 4 ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’, pp. 163—240: p. 225. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">58</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> McMillan and Fehsenfeld, p. 211. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">clown, whose babbling becomes nonsense by being presented </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">as sense.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">59</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The very structure of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> challenges our sense-making capacities. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Of the play’s conclusion, Adorno writes that ‘[a]side from differences </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">which may be decisive but may also be completely irrelevant, it is </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">identical with the beginning’, and uses another image that refers to </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">domestic time-pieces. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">No spectator, and no philosopher, would be capable of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">saying for sure whether or not the play is starting all over </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">again. The pendulum of the dialectic has come to a </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">standstill.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">60</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, writes Adorno, ‘[t]houghts are dragged along and distorted, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">like the residues of waking life in dreams, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">homo homini sapienti sat</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">61</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> – </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">much as dreamers are sometimes able to weave the interruption of the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">alarm into the fabric of their dream. Adorno quotes Marie Luise </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Kaschnitz’s description of Hamm as, ‘“[o]f all Beckett’s bizarre </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">instruments, […] the one with the most tones, the most surprising sound </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Klang</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">]”’,</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">62</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> extending her thought to all of the play’s characters. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Subjects thrown completely back upon their own resources, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">worldlessness [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">sic</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">] become flesh, they consist of nothing but </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the wretched realities of their world, which has </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">shrivelled to bare necessity. They are empty </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">personae</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">truly mere masks through whom sound merely passes </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">hindurchtönt</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">]. Their phoniness is the result of the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">disenchantment of spirit as mythology.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">63</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The word/world relationship which necessitates double-checking is </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">not present in the original German, though the German language has its </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">own version of this trope in the verbs ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">schein</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’ and ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">sein</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’ (the theme of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">appearance and reality). The characters’ ‘deadliest fear’ ‘is the fear, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">disguised as humor, that they might mean something’:</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">64</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> in being </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">reduced to mere vessels of sound, the characters are exposed as truly </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘phony’. Indeed, according to Adorno, the whole of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> is </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">constructed on the basis of its key prop: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">There is a constant monitoring to see that things are one </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">way and not another; an alarm system with a sensitive </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">bell indicates what fits in with the play’s topography </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and what does not.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">65</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It is only fitting, given Beckett’s exacting economy, that Adorno’s </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">metaphor for the system by which the metaphor of the alarm is </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">maintained should itself be an alarm. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">59</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Adorno, p. 262 [German p. 195]. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">60</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Adorno, p. 269. [‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Von Unterscheidenabgesehen, die entscheiden mögen oder ganz gleichgültig </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">sein, ist sie identisch mit dem Anfang. […] Dialecktik pendelt aus</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.’ [German p. 205].] </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">61</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Adorno, p. 244. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">62</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Adorno, p. 269 (p. 280 n. 17) [German p. 205]. Incidentally, Kaschnitz’s essay is </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">collected in the volume </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Zwischen Immer und Nie</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">N/ever</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’, perhaps?) – a wonderfully </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">suggestive description of the paradoxical but mundane place of the alarm in time. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">63</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Adorno, p. 251. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">64</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Adorno, p. 261 [German p. 194]. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">65</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Adorno, p. 248. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Adorno saw in the following rapid-fire exchange ‘a belated </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">legitimation of Fichte’s free activity for its own sake’</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">66</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> – albeit in the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">form of an ironic </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">reductio ad absurdum</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.</span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">HAMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Open the window. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: What for? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">HAMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: I want to hear the sea. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: You wouldn’t hear it. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">HAMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Even if you opened the window? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: No. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">HAMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Then it’s not worth while opening it? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: No. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">HAMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Violently</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">) Then open it!</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">67</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">When he writes of ‘the senselessness of an action [having become] the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">reason for doing it’,</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">68</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Adorno refers both to non-sense and to that of the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">eventual removal of even our most basic capacities to perceive ‘sensuous </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">immediacy’.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">69</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Hamm hears nothing, which leads him to doubt </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">whether in fact Clov has done as he was asked – a paranoia </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">exacerbated by his blindness. The stage directions indicate that Clov </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">has indeed ascended his ladder and opened the window; tThough there </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">is nothing to indicate that the sea becomes audible even to the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">audience. The ensuing discussion of the incredible calmness of the sea </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and the lack of navigators has a certain morbid plausibility – but </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">again, as with the alarm, it is possible that the audience is simply in a </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">similar sensory situation to Hamm. The theme of sensory deprivation is </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">developed in the exchange that immediately follows. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">HAMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Father! [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pause. Louder</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] Father! [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pause</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] Go and see </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">did he hear me. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[</span><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">goes to </span></i><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">NAGG</span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’s bin, raises the lid, stoops. Unintelligible </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">words</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. </span><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">straightens up</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. ] </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Yes. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">HAMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Both times? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[</span><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">stoops. As before</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Once only. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">HAMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: The first time or the second? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[</span><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">stoops. As before</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: He doesn’t know. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">HAMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: It must have been the second. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">CLOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: We’ll never know. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">He closes lid</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.]</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">70</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">66 </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Adorno, p. 265. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">67</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 124. Cf. Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fin de partie</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, pp. 86—87: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">H</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">AMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Ouvre la fenêtre. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">C</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">LOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Pour quoi faire? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">H</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">AMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Je veux entendre la mer. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">C</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">LOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Tu ne l’entendrais pas. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">H</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">AMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Même si tu ouvrais la fenêtre? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">C</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">LOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Non. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">H</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">AMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Alors ce n’est pas la peine de l’ouvrir? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">C</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">LOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Non. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">H</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">AMM </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">avec violence</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">). – Alors ouvre-là! </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">68</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Adorno, p. 265. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">69</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Adorno, p. 243. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">70</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, pp. 124—25. Cf. Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fin de partie</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, pp. 88—89: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">H</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">AMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Père! (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Un temps. Plus fort</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.) Père! (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Un temps.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">) Va voir s’il a entendu. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Clov va à la poubelle de Nagg, soulève le couvercie, se penche dessus. Mots confus. Clov se </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">redredsse.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">C</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">LOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Oui. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">H</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">AMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Les deux fois? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Even to cite, never mind comment on, such ridiculous exchanges </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">implicates one in the senseless sense-making described by Adorno. The </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">above passage receives less attention than the old music-hall joke </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">which, according to Ruby Cohn, Beckett only added in the final draft:</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">71</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">NAGG</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Can you hear me? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">NELL</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Yes. And you? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">NAGG</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Yes. [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pause</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] Our hearing hasn’t failed. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">NELL</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Our what? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">NAGG</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Our hearing. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">NELL</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: No. [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pause</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.]</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">72</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Echoes of both passages can be heard in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (written a few </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">years after </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, in 1961), to which we now turn our attention. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘[M]ore alarm, more pain’:</span></b><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">73</span></b></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (1961) </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">WINNIE</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Can you hear me? [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pause</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] I beseech you, Willie, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">just yes or no, can you hear me, just yes or nothing. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pause</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">WILLIE</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Yes. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">WINNIE</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Turning front, same voice</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] And now? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">WILLIE</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Irritated</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] Yes. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">WINNIE</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Less loud</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] And now? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">WILLIE</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">More irritated.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">] Yes. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">WINNIE</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Still less loud</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] And now? [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">A little louder</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] And now? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">WILLIE</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Violently</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] Yes!</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">74</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Beckett referred to this passage as the ‘[a]udibility test’.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">75</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> It is </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">followed by a monologue delivered in a ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[n]ormal voice</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’, but ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">gabbled</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’,</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">76</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">realising a scene imagined by Hamm in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">HAMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Breath held and then… [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">he breathes out</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] Then </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">babble, babble, words, like the solitary child who turns </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Clov se penche. Mots confus. Clov se redresse.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">] </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">C</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">LOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Une seule. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">H</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">AMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – La première ou la seconde? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Clov se penche. Mots confus. Clov se redresse</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">C</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">LOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Il ne sait pas. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">H</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">AMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Ça doit être la seconde. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">C</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">LOV</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – On ne peut pas savoir </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Clov rabat le couvercie.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">71 </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">See Ruby Cohn, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Just Play: Beckett’s Theater</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1980), pp. 183—84. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">72</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 99. Cf. Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fin de partie</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, pp. 30—31: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">N</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">AGG</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Tu m’entends? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">N</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">ELL</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Oui. Et toi? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">N</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">AGG</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Oui. (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Un temps</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.) Notre ouïe n’a pas baissé. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">N</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">ELL</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Notre quoi? </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">N</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">AGG</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Notre ouïe. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">N</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">ELL</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Non. (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Un temps.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">) </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">73</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett,</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Watt</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 157. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">74</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, Act One, pp. 147—48. For reasons of symmetry, Beckett would </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">later cut the last exchange, leaving ‘three “Yes” answers from Willie’ (Knowlson (ed.), </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 173 n. 3). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">75</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> James Knowlson (ed.), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days: The Production Notebook of Samuel Beckett</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (London: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Faber and Faber Limited, 1985), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Page 41</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 95. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">76</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 148.</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">himself into children, two, three, so as to be together, and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">whisper together, in the dark. [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pause</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.]</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">77</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Beckett himself referred to Winnie’s monologue as the ‘Babble’.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> 78</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Like </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Lucky’s speech, it can be traced back to his own performance as Don </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Diègue in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Le Kid</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, accompanied by alarm clock. In his production </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">notebook, Beckett wrote, ‘[b]abble: 7 x 16—20 + 50’,</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">79</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> which he </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">explained to James Knowlson as follows: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘The 1</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">st</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> section of babble consists of phrases of roughly </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">equal length, i.e. from 16 to 20 words each. Followed after </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">3 single words by an unbroken babble of 50 words (51 </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">actually if I count right).’</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">80</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The ‘3 single words’ which puncture the gabbled babble (‘Doubt’, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘Here’, and ‘Abouts’) act like chimes and are accompanied with an </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">unusual gesture resembling those of the hands of a clock: ‘[</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Places index </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and second finger on heart area, moves them about, brings them to rest.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">]’</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">81</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">When he directed the play at the Schiller-Theater in 1971, ‘Beckett </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">had stressed that [Winnie’s] awakening should not be played </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">realistically, but should follow the principle of grace and economy of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">movement’.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">82</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> ‘Straightens slowly. i.e. hands to mound & bust vertical. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Single movement.’,</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">83</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> noted Martha Fehsenfeld in her diary. The </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">smooth, mechanical action recalls Michael Haerdter’s description of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘the precise adjustment of a miniature movement’</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">84</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> with which Beckett </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">directed </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. One might have thought that a major difference </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">between that play and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> is that the alarm-clock in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">is visible and that of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> is not; indeed, at the bottom of his </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">page of notes on the bell, Beckett wrote ‘Whence? High above stage.’</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">85</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">– in other words, out of sight of both the play’s characters and its </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">audience, a mysteriously absent presence. The closest object to an alarm-</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">clock on stage is Winnie’s wind-up musical box – or is it? Winnie’s </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">strange gestures and mechanical way of moving suggest a time-piece, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the gently sloping scorched grass in which she is increasingly buried </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">resemble a sand-timer, Beckett even suggests she has an hourglass </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">figure.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">86</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> If Hamm and Clov sometimes resemble an alarm-clock, Winnie </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">is perhaps time itself. There is a similar situation in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Malone Dies </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(French 1948, English 1956). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In the old days I used to count, up to three hundred, four </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">hundred, and with other things too, the showers, the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">bells, the chatter of the sparrows at dawn, or with </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">77</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 126. Cf. Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fin de partie</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, pp. 92—93: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">H</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">AMM</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. – Le souffle qu’on retient et puis… (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">il expire</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">). Puis parler, vite, des mots, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">comme l’enfant solitaire qui se met en plusieurs, deux, trois, pour être ensemble, et </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">parler ensemble, dans la nuit. (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Un temps</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.) </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">78</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Knowlson (ed.), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Page 41</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">) p. 95. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">79</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Knowlson (ed.), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Page 41</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">) p. 95. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">80</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Samuel Beckett to James Knowlson, 2 December 1983 – quoted in Knowlson (ed.), </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Page 41</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">) pp. 173—74 n. 4. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">81</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 148. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">82</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Knowlson (ed.), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 159 n. 2. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">83</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Quoted in Knowlson (ed.), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Page 36</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">) p. 85. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">84</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Michael Haerdter on </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> – quoted in McMillan and Fehsenfeld, p. 211. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">85</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Knowlson (ed.), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Page 14</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">) p. 51. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">86</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Embedded up to above her waist in exact centre of mound, </span></i><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">WINNIE</span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. About fifty, well-</span></i><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">preserved, blonde for preference, plump, arms and shoulders bare, low bodice, big bosom, pearl </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">necklace</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.’ (Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, Act One, p. 138. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">nothing, for no reason, for the sake of counting, and then I </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">divided, by sixty. That passed the time, I was time, I </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">devoured the world.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">87</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Dividing by sixty only makes sense if Malone was counting at the rate </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">of one per second (or less plausibly, per minute), in which case ‘I was </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">time’ ceases to be hyperbole. Though her life is ruled by the bell, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Winnie has no conception of time. As Beckett wrote in his production </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">notebook at the Schiller-Theater, ‘“her time experience, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">incomprehensible transport from one inextricable present to the next, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">those past unremembered, those to come inconceivable”’.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">88</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, there is another ‘Shower’ – the name Winnie gives to an </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">imaginary spectator: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">WINNIE</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: Shower – Shower – does the name mean anything </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">– to you, Willie – evoke any reality, I mean – for you, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Willie.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">89</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Winnie is unsure she has the name right and soon suggests an </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">alternative, seeking confirmation from Willie with an interesting </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">idiom: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">WINNIE</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Turning a little towards </span></i><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">WILLIE</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] Cooker, Willie, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">does Cooker strike a chord? [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pause. Turns a little further. </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Louder</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] Cooker, Willie, does Cooker ring a bell, the name </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Cooker? [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pause</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.]</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">90</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The metaphor of the ringing bell encompasses both a successful act of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">intellection and recollection and its opposite: to have one’s bell rung is </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">to have received such blows as to be unable to make sense of the world. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Winnie’s struggle to remember these unusual names has encouraged </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">clever critics to hear in them echoes the German verbs </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">schauen</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">gucken</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, which both mean ‘to look [at]’. Apparent arbitrariness is </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">therefore made to contribute to the sum of meaning, highlighting the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">play’s theme of seeing and being seen. However, the punchline of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Winnie’s anecdote undermines such efforts. Winnie imagines Shower </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(or Cooker) looking at her and asking rhetorically ‘[w]hat’s it meant to </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">mean?’;</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">91</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> and goes on to imagine his wife’s devastating response: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">WINNIE</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Stops filing, raises head, gazes front</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.] And you, she </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">says, what’s the idea of you, she says, what are you meant </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">to mean?</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">92</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Mrs Shower/Cooker’s retort short-circuits the search for meaning, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">triggering a sense of alarming uncertainty. The sonic material Beckett </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">serves hovers ambiguously between meaningful music and sensuous </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">immediacy. Just as in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, the issue of sense (perception and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">coherence, and the perception of coherence) is explored in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">by means of an alarm-bell. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">87</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Samuel Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Malone Dies</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Trilogy: Molloy,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Malone Dies, The Unnamable </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(London: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Calder Publications Ltd., 1994), pp. 177—289: p. 202. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">88</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Knowlson (ed.), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Page 22</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">) p. 150 n. 1. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">89</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, Act One, p. 156. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">90</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, Act One, p. 156. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">91</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, Act One, p. 156. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">92</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, Act One, p. 156. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The most prominent alarm of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, however, is the ‘piercing’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">bell which opens both acts and closes the play, and forms the subject of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">so much of Winnie’s thinking-aloud. In his edition of Beckett’s </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">production notebook for the play, James Knowlson’s ‘Note on the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Design’,</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> 93</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> the ‘Set’, ‘Lighting’, and ‘Make Up’, but says nothing about </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the bell, despite the fact that Beckett devoted the whole of page 14 to </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">it.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">94</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> After a long pause, it is the bell which announces the start of the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">action of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Long pause. A bell rings piercingly, say ten seconds, stops. She </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[Winnie] does not move. Pause. Bell more piercingly, say five </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">seconds. She wakes. Bell stops. She raises her head, gazes front. </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Long pause.</span></i><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">95 </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In one sense, the audience cannot know that the bell rings ‘piercingly’ – </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">but in another, the fact is inescapable. It is confirmed later in the play </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">by Winnie’s description: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span style="font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">WINNIE</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">: The bell. [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pause.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">] It hurts like a knife. [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pause.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">] A </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">gouge. [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pause.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">] One cannot ignore it. [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pause.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">]</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">96</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Beckett insisted on this point in correspondence with the American </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">director Alan Schneider, specifying on 17 August 1961 ‘[t]he bell as </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">shrill and wounding as possible’.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">97</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> It is therefore surprising that ‘ignore </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">it’ is precisely what Winnie manages to do at first: ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[s]he does not move</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Of course, one can become inured to anything, no matter how painful. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Nevertheless, when Beckett himself came to direct the play at the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Royal Court in 1979, he made a significant alteration: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">After the first bell, contrary to the text, which states, ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">She </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">does not move</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’, Beckett introduced a spasmodic twitch of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">her right hand, noted as </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">slight start 1</span></i><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">st</span></i></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> bell – RH </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[right </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">hand] (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Page 37</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">).</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> 98</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Though Beckett tinkered with the duration and volume of the bell, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">their variability did not change (so to speak).</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">99</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> The bell rings ‘</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">more </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">piercingly</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’, Winnie wakes up, and the bell stops – a sequence from which </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the audience concludes that the bell </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">means </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘wake up, Winnie!’.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">100</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> This </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">inference is supported by what Beckett said in rehearsals, noted by </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Martha Fehsenfeld in her diary: ‘“She has three seconds to obey the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">93</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Knowlson (ed.), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, pp. 21—22. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">94</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> See Knowlson (ed.), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Page 14</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">) p. 51. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">95 </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Samuel Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> [English 1961, French 1963], in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Complete Dramatic </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Works</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1986, repr. 1990), pp. 137—68: Act One, p. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">138. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">96</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, Act Two, pp. 162—63. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">97 </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Samuel Beckett to Alan Schneider, 17 August 1961; in Maurice Harmon (ed.), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">No </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(Cambridge, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 94. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">98</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Knowlson (ed.), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Page 36 and 37</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">] p. 159 n. 1. In his summary of ‘Cuts and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Changes’, Knowlson therefore notes ‘[a]dd “except for a slight twitch of her right </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">hand”’ (Knowlson (ed.), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 189). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">99</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> ‘This duration is considerably shorter than the English and American texts prescribe </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(i.e. bell 1, 5 seconds [actually 10]; bell 2, 10 seconds [actually 5]) and shorter than the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">modified French text (i.e. bell 1, 5 seconds; bell 2, 3 seconds). It would be unbearably </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">hard on the ears of the audience to combine the longer ring and the cutting quality </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">that Beckett wanted.’ (Knowlson (ed.), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 142 n. 3.) </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">100</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> One of the most significant ‘Cuts and Changes’ noted by Knowlson is that Winnie </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">now wakes ‘only</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> after </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the bell stops.’ (Knowlson (ed.), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 189). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">bell. If she hasn’t obeyed, it goes again,” stated Beckett.’</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">101</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> The </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">audience is relieved that by the opening of Act Two, Winnie has, like a </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">rat in one of B. F. Skinner’s behaviourist experiments, apparently </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">learned her lesson: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Bell rings loudly. She opens eyes at once. Bell stops. She gazes </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">front. Long pause.</span></i><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">102</span></i></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">By opening her eyes Winnie is able to put an end to this painful </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">stimulus. However, it could be that by submitting to this painful </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">physical prodding Winnie is able to avoid the psychic wounds which </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">might result from stepping outside the rules of the game. Jean-Paul </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Sartre, who was a year senior to Beckett at the École Normale </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Supérieure, wrote the following in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Being and Nothingness</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (1943): </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[t]he alarm which rings in the morning refers to the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">possibility of my going to work, which is </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">my </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">possibility. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">But to apprehend the summons of the alarm as a summons </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">is to get up. Therefore the very act of getting up is </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">reassuring, for it eludes the question, ‘is work </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">my </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">possibility?‘</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">103</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Nevertheless, however much we may complain and put up a show of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">resistance when we hear the alarm, ultimately the routine it </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">establishes, the implied lack of choice and overriding of the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">individual will, is somehow reassuring. This is the reverse of the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">situation in Beckett’s late prose-work </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Stirrings Still </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(1987), where the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">striking clock is ‘in a sense at first a source of reassurance till finally </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">one of alarm’.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">104</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> In </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Anatomy of Melancholy </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(1621), which Beckett </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">read in the 1930s, Robert Burton included a section on the dangers of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘overmuch Study’ and ‘the Misery of Scholars’: a circumstance with </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">which both Burton and Beckett were familiar: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Hoc est cur palles? cur quis non prandeat hoc est? </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[Is it for </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">this we have pale faces and do without our breakfasts?] </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Do we macerate ourselves for this? Is it for this we rise so </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">early all the year long, ‘leaping’ (as he saith) ‘out of our </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">beds, when we hear the bell ring, as if we had heard a </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">thunderclap?’</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">105</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Why </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">does</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Winnie carry on? She cannot actually ‘get up’, of course, since </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">she is buried up to the waist (then neck) in the earth. Some find </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Winnie’s indefatigability an inspiration; to examples of human </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">courage in the face of overwhelming futility or pain Beckett was less </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">likely to respond with an expression of admiration than with ‘a gesture </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">of helpless compassion’.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">106</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Furthermore, in Beckett’s opinion Winnie </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">101</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Knowlson (ed.), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, [</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Page 36 and 37</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">] p. 159 n. 1. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">102</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, Act One, p. 160. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">103</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Jean-Paul Sartre, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1943], </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York, NY: Washington Square Press, 1966, repr. 1969), pp. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">75—76. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">104 </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Samuel Beckett, ‘Stirrings Still’ [1987], in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Complete Short Prose 1929—1989</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, ed. S.E. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Gontarski (New York, NY: Grove Press Grove Atlantic, Inc., 1995), pp. 259—265: p. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">262. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">105</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Robert Burton, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Anatomy of Melancholy </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1621], ed. Holbrook Jackson (New York, NY: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The New York Review of Books, 2001), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1.2.3.15</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 312. [‘E lecto exsilientes, ad subitum </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">tintinnabuli plausum quasi fulmine territi.’ (Notes, p. 501).] </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">106</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Samuel Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Not I </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1972], in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Complete Dramatic </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Works (London: Faber and Faber </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Limited, 1986, paperback 1990), pp. 375—83: p. 375. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">had not even attained the dubious distinction of a stoic: ‘“[s]he’s not </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">stoic, she’s unaware,” he commented at rehearsal.’</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">107</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The bell of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">is hence both an intrusive, incisive shard of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">sound, and a kind of aural envelope marking the limits of Winnie’s </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">world. The fanciful paradoxes of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Dream of Fair to Middling Women</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> have </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">here been realised: ‘[i]t is a blade before me, it is a sail of bleached silk </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">on a shore […]’.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">108</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Just as Beckett’s ‘German Letter’ of 1937 had sought a </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">means to ‘represent this mocking attitude towards the word, through </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">words’, bells can be used both to bind together a community, and to </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">slash it in two. Nor is this the only way in which Winnie and the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">alarm fulfil some of the aspirations of the ‘German Letter’. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Is there any reason why that terrible materiality of the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">word surface should not be capable of being dissolved, like </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">for example the sound surface, torn by enormous pauses, of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Beethoven’s seventh Symphony, so that through whole </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">pages we can perceive nothing but a path of sounds </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">suspended in giddy heights, linking unfathomable abysses </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">of silence? An answer is requested.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">109</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Critics tend to cite this fascinating letter as early evidence of Beckett’s </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">later commitment to pauses and silence. However, it is important to </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">note that these are the means of dissolving or tearing the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">sound </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">surface; </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">word </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">surface can be punctuated just as effectively by sounds and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">noises. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Let us hope the time will come, thank God that in certain </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">circles it has already come, when language is most </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">efficiently used where it is being most efficiently misused. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">As we cannot eliminate language all at once, we should at </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">least leave nothing undone that might contribute to its </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">falling into disrepute. To bore one hole after another in it, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">until what lurks behind it – be it something or nothing – </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">begins to seep through; I cannot imagine a higher goal for a </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">writer today.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">110</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The antithesis of sound is silence; the paradox of language is that it </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">consists of what is also its antithesis, namely sounds and noises. At this </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">point it is worth returning to Deleuze and Guatari: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">107</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> James Knowlson, ‘Introduction’, in Knowlson (ed.), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, pp. 11—18: p. 17. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">108</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Dream</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 182. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">109</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Samuel Beckett to Axel Kaun, 09 July 1937, trans. Martin Esslin, in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Disjecta</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, pp. 170—</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">173: p. 172. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘Steckt etwas lähmend Heiliges in der Unnatur des Wortes, was zu den Elementen der </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">anderen Künste nicht gehört? Gibt es irgendeinen Grund, warum jene fürchterlich </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">willkürliche Materilität der Wortfläche nicht aufgelöst werden sollte, wie z.B. die von </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">grossen schwarzen Pausen gefressene Tonfläche in der siebten Symphonie von </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Beethoven, so dass wir sie ganze Seiten durch nicht anders wahrnehmen können als </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">etwa einen schwindelnden unergründliche Schlünde von Stillschweigen </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">verknüpfenden Pfad von Lauten? Um Antwort wird gebeten.’ (Samuel Beckett to </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Axel Kaun, 09 July 1937, in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Disjecta</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, pp. 51—54: pp. 52—53). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">110</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, ‘German Letter’, trans. Martin Esslin, in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Disjecta</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, pp. 171—72. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘Hoffentlich kommt die Zeit, sie ist ja Gott sei Dank in gewissen Kreisen schon da, wo </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">die Sprache da am besten gebraucht wird, wo sie am tüchtigsten missbraucht wird. Da </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">wir sie so mit einem Male nicht ausschalten können, woollen wir wenigstens nichts </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">versäumen, was zu ihrem Verruf beitragen mag. Ein Loch nach dem andern in ihr zu </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">bohren, bis das Dahinterkauernde, sie es etwas oder nichts, durchzusickern anfängt – </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">ich kann mir für den heutigen Schriftsteller kein höheres Ziel vorstellen.’ (Beckett, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘German Letter’, in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Disjecta</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 52) </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">What interests Kafka is a pure and intense sonorous </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">material that is always connected to </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">its own abolition</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> – a </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">deterritorialized musical sound, a cry that escapes </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">signification, composition, song, words – a sonority that </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">ruptures in order to break away from a chain that is still </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">all too signifying.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">111</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In calling the alarm in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘the bell for waking’,</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">112</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Winnie (and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the audience) retain the comfortable assumption that sounds have </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">meaning. However, by naming the same sound ‘the bell for sleep’,</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">113</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Winnie drives a wedge in the functioning of language. How can the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">same sound have two contradictory meanings? One could instead choose </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">to render the bell’s signal as ‘if you are asleep, wake up; if you are </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">awake, sleep!’ – but this would be to attribute agency to the bell, an </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">equally troubling consequence. While using a piercing bell to say ‘wake </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">up!’ makes sense both in terms of convention and natural instincts, the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">notion that the same sound could be employed to send someone to sleep </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">creates a distinct ‘dissonance between the means and their use’.</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">114</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> On </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the other hand, it is precisely this potential to interpret sounds </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">according to arbitrary convention which distinguishes specifically </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">human language. It is the instinctive, the animal in us that responds to </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">a lullaby, its rhythms and tones inducing a corresponding relaxation </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and slow regularity in our breathing and pulse; whereas only the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">human can even attempt to respond to this ‘bell for sleep’, the bell </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">thereby operating not as sound but sign. In any case, all Winnie’s talk of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">a ‘bell for sleep’ is probably just wishful thinking: from what we </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">observe of her situation, her world consists of unremitting light; and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">whenever she closes her eyes, a bell sounds that makes her open them </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">again: either the ‘bell for sleep’ is wholly ineffectual, or there is no </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">such thing. To take Winnie at her word is to protect ourselves from the </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">truth that Winnie is trapped in a world of unforgiving repetition, like </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">that of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Play </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(1963).</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">115</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Winnie mentions the ‘bell for sleep’ far more </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">frequently than the ‘bell for waking’ – inevitably, one might say, since </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">her day did not begin until the ‘bell for waking’ had already sounded, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and she spends the entire day anticipating its end. When he came to </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">direct the play, Beckett cut one of the bells, just after Winnie once </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">again ‘call[s] to the eye of the mind… Mr Shower – or Cooker’,</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">116</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> to </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">place further emphasis on the bell at the end of the play. When it </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">finally rings, it is indistinguishable from the ‘bell for waking’, both in </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">sound and meaning. Despite Winnie’s anxieties about singing too early, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">or too late, just one pause separates the end of her song from the onset of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the bell: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">111</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Deleuze and Guattari, p. 6. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">112</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, Act One, p. 145. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">113</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, Act One, p. 145. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">114</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, ‘German Letter’, trans. Martin Esslin, in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Disjecta</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, p. 172. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘Selbstverständlich muss man sich vorläufig mit Wenigem begnügen. Zuerst kann es </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">nur darauf ankommen, irgendwie eine Methode zu erinden, um diese höhnische </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Haltung dem Worte gegenüber wörtlich darzustellen. In dieser Dissonanz von Mitteln </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">und Gebrauch wird man schon vielleicht ein Geflüster der Endmusik oder es Allem zu </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Grunde liegenden Schweigens spüren können.’ (Beckett, ‘German Letter’, in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Disjecta</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">p. 53). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">115</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Samuel Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Play </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1963], in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Complete Dramatic </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Works (London: Faber and Faber </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Limited, 1986, repr. 1990), pp. 307—20. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">116</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, Act Two, pp. 164—65; see Knowlson (ed.), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, pp. 141—</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">42 n. 2. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Pause. Happy expression off. She closes her eyes. Bell rings </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">loudly. She opens her eyes.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[…)]</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">117</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">When he was not communicating with her by means of a metronome, one </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">of the things Beckett actually told Brenda Bruce, who played Winnie </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">at the Royal Court in 1962, was this: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘“I thought that the most dreadful thing that could </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">happen to anybody, would be not to be allowed to sleep so </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">that just as you’re dropping off there’d be a ‘Dong’ and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">you’d have to keep awake; you’re sinking into the ground </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">alive and it’s full of ants; and the sun is shining endlessly </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">day and night and there is not a tree… there’d be no shade, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">nothing, and that bell wakes you up all the time and all </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">you’ve got is a little parcel of things to see you through </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">life.” He was talking about a woman’s life, let’s face it. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Then he said: “And I thought who would cope with that </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and go down singing, only a woman.”‘</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">118</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘Dong’? One might render the ‘piercing’, ‘wounding’, ‘gouging’ bell any </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">number of ways, but ‘Dong’ is not one of them. Has something been lost </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">in transmission, somewhere along the chain of communication from </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Beckett to Bruce to Knowlson, from whom I take this story? The first </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">entry made by Beckett on the page of his production notebook headed </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘Bell’ is the unnerving ‘[w]rong word.’;</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">119</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> but Beckett’s attempt to render </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">in syllabic sound the alarm he heard and saw so acutely is truly </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">alarming. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Works cited </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino; min-height: 13.0px"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Acheson, James. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Samuel Beckett’s Artistic Theory and Practice: Criticism, </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Drama, and Early Fiction</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. New York, NY: St Martin’s Press, 1997. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Adorno, Theodor W.. ‘Trying to Understand </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’ [1958], trans. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Shierry Weber Nicholsen. In </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Notes to Literature</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, vol. 1, ed. Rolf </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Tiedemann. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1991: pp. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">241—75. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[Adorno, Theodor W.. ‘Trying to Understand </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’ [1958], trans. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Shierry Weber Nicholsen. In Jennifer Birkett and Kate Ince</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(eds). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Samuel Beckett: Longman Critical Readers</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. Harlow: Pearson Education </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Limited, 2000: pp. 39—49.] </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Albright, Daniel. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Beckett, Samuel. ‘Dante…Bruno.Vico..Joyce’ [1929]. In </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Disjecta: </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, ed. Ruby Cohn. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">London: John Calder (Publishers) Ltd., 1983, repr. 2001: pp. 19—33. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">---. ‘German Letter’ [to Axel Kaun, 09 July 1937]. In </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Disjecta: </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, ed. Ruby Cohn. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">London: John Calder (Publishers) Ltd., 1983, repr. 2001: pp. 51—54 </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(trans. Martin Esslin, pp. 170—73). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">---. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Company </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1979]. In </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Nohow On: Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, Worstward </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Ho</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. London: John Calder (Publishers) Ltd, 1989: pp. 5—52. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">117 </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, Act Two, p. 168. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">118 </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Quoted in Knowlson, p. 501 (p. 799 n.114). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">119</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Knowlson (ed.), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Page 14</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">) p. 51. As Knowlson explains, in Beckett’s </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">shorthand ‘A’ stands for Act One, and ‘B’ for Act Two (p. 125 n. 2). </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">---. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, ed. Ruby </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Cohn. London: John Calder (Publishers) Ltd., 1983, repr. 2001. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">---. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Dream of Fair to Middling Women</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> [1932], ed. Eoin O’Brien and Edith </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fournier. London: Calder Publications Ltd, 1996. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">---. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1957 (pub. 1958)]. In </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Complete Dramatic Works</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. London: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Faber and Faber Limited, 1986, repr. 1990: pp. 91—134. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">---. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fin de partie </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1950—1957]</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1957. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">---. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Footfalls </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1975]. In </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Complete Dramatic Works</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. London: Faber and </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Faber Limited, 1986, repr. 1990: pp. 399—403. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">---. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> [English 1961, French 1963]. In </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Complete Dramatic </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Works</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1986, repr. 1990: pp. 137—</span><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">68. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">---. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Malone Dies</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. In </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Trilogy: Molloy,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Malone Dies, The Unnamable. </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">London: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Calder Publications Ltd., 1994: pp. 177—289. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">---. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Murphy </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1936, pub. 1938]. London: Calder Publications Ltd, 1993.</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">---. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Nohow On: Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, Worstward Ho</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. London: John </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Calder (Publishers) Ltd, 1989. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">---. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Not I </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1972]. In </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Complete Dramatic Works</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. London: Faber and Faber </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Limited, 1986, repr. 1990: pp. 375—83. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">---. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Play </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1963]. In </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Complete Dramatic Works</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. London: Faber and Faber </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Limited, 1986, repr. 1990: pp. 307—20. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">---. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Stirrings Still</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> [1987]. In </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Complete Short Prose 1929—1989</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, ed. S.E. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Gontarski. New York, NY: Grove Press Grove Atlantic, Inc., 1995: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">pp. 259—265. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">---. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Complete Dramatic Works</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. London: Faber and Faber Limited, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1986, repr. 1990. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">---. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Complete Short Prose 1929—1989</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, ed. S.E. Gontarski. New York, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">NY: Grove Press Grove Atlantic, Inc., 1995. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">---. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Trilogy: Molloy,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Malone Dies, The Unnamable. </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">London: Calder </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Publications Ltd., 1994. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">---. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Watt</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> [1945]. London: John Calder (Publishers) Ltd, 1976, repr. 1998. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Bryden, Mary (ed.). </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Samuel Beckett and Music</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. Oxford: Clarendon Press, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1998. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Burton, Robert. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Anatomy of Melancholy </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1621], ed. Holbrook Jackson. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">New York, NY: The New York Review of Books, 2001. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Cohn, Ruby. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">A Beckett Canon. </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Ann Arbor, MI: The University of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Michigan Press, 2001. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Corbin, Alain. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the Nineteenth-</span></i><span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Century French Countryside</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> [1988], trans. Martin Thom. London: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Macmillan Publishers Ltd [Papermac], 1999. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Dearlove, J. E.. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Samuel Beckett’s Nonrelational Art</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. Durham, NC: Duke </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">University Press, 1982. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1975], trans. Dana Polan. Minneapolis, MN: University of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Minnesota Press, 1986. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Fletcher, John. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">About Beckett: The Playwright and the Work</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. London: Faber </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and Faber Limited, 2003. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Harmon, Maurice (ed.). </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider. </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Cambridge, MA and London: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Harvard University Press, 1998. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Hollander, John. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Vision and Resonance: Two Senses of Poetic Form</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. London </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and New Haven, CT: Oxford University Press, 1975, 2</span><span style="font: 7.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">nd</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> edn 1985. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Knowlson, James. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. London: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1996. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Knowlson, James (ed.). </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy Days: The Production Notebook of Samuel </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Beckett </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1985. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Krance, Charles. ‘Beckett Music’. In Mary Bryden (ed.). </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Samuel Beckett </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and Music</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998: pp. 51—65. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Static 06: Alarm </span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Mansell, ‘Beckett’s Alarm’ </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 8.0px Palatino; min-height: 11.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Kristeva, Julia. ‘Revolution in Poetic Language’ [1974], trans. Margaret </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Waller [1984]. In </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Kristeva Reader</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, ed. Toril Moi. Oxford: Basil </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Blackwell Ltd, 1986, repr. 1987: pp. 90—137. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Levi, Primo. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">If This Is A Man </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1958], trans. Stuart Woolf [1969]. In </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">If This </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Is A Man and The Truce</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. London: Little, Brown and Company </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[Abacus], 1987, repr. 2000: pp. 17—179. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Mansell, Thomas. ‘Hard-to-Hear Music in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’. In Mark Byron </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(ed.). </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Amsterdam and New York, NY: </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Editions Rodopi B.V., 2007: pp. 1—21. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">McMillan, Dougald and Martha Fehsenfeld. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Beckett in the Theatre: The </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Author as Practical Playwright and Director</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, vol. 1 (From </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Waiting for </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Godot</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> to </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Krapp’s Last Tape</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">). London: John Calder (Publishers) Ltd, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1988: ch. 4. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Endgame</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, pp. 163—240. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Russolo, Luigi. ‘The Art of Noises: Futurist Manifesto’ [1913], trans. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Stephen Somervell. In Daniel Albright. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Modernism and Music: An </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Anthology of Sources</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. Chicago, IL and London: The University of </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Chicago Press, 2004: pp. 177—83. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Sartre, Jean-Paul. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Ontology </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1943], trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New York, NY: Washington </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Square Press, 1966, repr. 1969.. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Shepherd, John and Peter Wicke. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Music and Cultural Theory</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Stevens, Wallace. ‘Notes Towards A Supreme Fiction’ [1942]. In </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The </span></i></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. London: Faber and Faber Limited, </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1945, repr. 1959: pp. 380—408. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Todorov, Tzvetan. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Theories of the Symbol </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[1977], trans. Catherine Porter. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Palatino"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publisher, 1982.</span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></b></p></span>sozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770493715287675.post-75809523088931700212008-11-04T01:11:00.001-08:002008-11-04T13:18:05.469-08:00Balázs Kicsiny: Experiment in Navigation<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8CwTmlGsruvQ9gKXLs0275cKMbV0B22CeWZanC8XPL2h0UgvgWgGR5UgfByg_mzG5Vb4OEDycz90PYSlGXUiEPJh6txRWWxhEdukWJVsZNwDBfoJbNnMH_6TVPMOrlfm9mLXVmG54oyc/s1600-h/2002_work_in_progress_pecs2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 264px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8CwTmlGsruvQ9gKXLs0275cKMbV0B22CeWZanC8XPL2h0UgvgWgGR5UgfByg_mzG5Vb4OEDycz90PYSlGXUiEPJh6txRWWxhEdukWJVsZNwDBfoJbNnMH_6TVPMOrlfm9mLXVmG54oyc/s400/2002_work_in_progress_pecs2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264914651606545602" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMxm8g_pc0yUNplvBq3IoSedWTzT0Q1KgnFwxosf4kXh-Ivo-urY1oJYosn844LojO_dAQFF2UhhlZo8wm6z81At4V4wrc1ECGchYglhLISSGkxjju2Um9QVPSG8XndbXOfpT41cG9dTY/s1600-h/2002_work_in_progress_winch1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 260px; height: 391px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMxm8g_pc0yUNplvBq3IoSedWTzT0Q1KgnFwxosf4kXh-Ivo-urY1oJYosn844LojO_dAQFF2UhhlZo8wm6z81At4V4wrc1ECGchYglhLISSGkxjju2Um9QVPSG8XndbXOfpT41cG9dTY/s400/2002_work_in_progress_winch1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264914558231677218" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxGjcN93vgfjC8JGozgvh3eFE3aVt-1jjbqq5fOD3xMU4R4K9_scvynUDeJRbKdjLpO5EN8qYzoyMROtYDwC5W0yPYejXTjkTBMxch3Cm7uB03M1jyZ6YPDuEUSJsP9ECqqv6XhXi5V30/s1600-h/2002_work_in_progress_winch2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 279px; height: 391px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxGjcN93vgfjC8JGozgvh3eFE3aVt-1jjbqq5fOD3xMU4R4K9_scvynUDeJRbKdjLpO5EN8qYzoyMROtYDwC5W0yPYejXTjkTBMxch3Cm7uB03M1jyZ6YPDuEUSJsP9ECqqv6XhXi5V30/s400/2002_work_in_progress_winch2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264914491807277138" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:verdana;"><br /><table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="2"><tbody><tr><td align="left" valign="top"><span class="cim1" style=" color: rgb(0, 102, 153); line-height: 18px; font-weight: normal; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: normal; font-family:verdana;font-size:16px;">http://www.biennale2005.hu/kicsiny_b/navigation_11_e.htm<br /></span>An Experiment in Navigation</span></td></tr><tr><td align="left" valign="top"><span class="text2" style=" color: rgb(0, 102, 153); line-height: 15px; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10px;">radio interview with the curator, the artist and the writer</span></td></tr><tr><td align="left" valign="top"><span class="text1" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10px;">20 February 2005</span></td></tr><tr><td align="left" valign="top"> </td></tr><tr><td align="left" valign="top"> </td></tr><tr><td height="1501" align="left" valign="top"><p justify="" class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; "><em>You are preparing for the 51. Venice Biennale which is always a period of great excitement. It is a very important occasion.</em></p><p class="text1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="10px" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; ">Péter Fitz (curator): Absolutely. The Biennale gives an outline of what is happening in visual arts in the world today. Many question what sort of an outline it can be. Each nation wishes to show something of its art - this is the outline that can be seen here. The Venice Biennale has a long tradition since the late 19th century and Hungary has been present ever since that time. The enormously beautiful Hungarian pavilion was erected in 1909 after the plans of Géza Maróti, so this is one of the oldest places operating in the exhibition park.</p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; "><em>When the director of the Műcsarnok Art Gallery, who is at the same time the national commissioner of the exhibition, announced the competition you submitted your application with Balázs Kicsiny's project not as the director of the Kiscelli Museum (Budapest) but as an independent art historian.</em></p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; ">PF: That's right. Kicsiny had a very large-scale exhibition in the Kiscelli Museum in 1999, and we have kept in touch ever since. He lived and worked in England in the past few years, and has won a good reputation. I knew that he was able to put together a project that could make an impression on international level as well.</p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; "><em>What is going to happen in Venice? As far as I know, the artist does not intend to give a panoramic view of contemporary Hungarian art. His works are more universal than that.</em></p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; ">PF: Kicsiny created mainly sculptures and installations these years, which tells much about the state of art today. Now he will be represented by four entirely new works, three sculptural installations and a video-installation.</p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; "><em>Not so long ago, on the occasion of the Hungarian Cultural Season in Leiden, Holland, we could see one of Balázs Kicsiny's most staggering works in an enormous cathedral. Twenty-three anchored sailors lying on the church floor. Their heads were illuminated, which is not unfamiliar to your recent sculptures, I think. The religious setting gave an especially particular effect to your work. We are standing now in the Kiscelli Museum where one of the four new works is on a test display here.</em></p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; ">Balázs Kicsiny (artist): Yes, what you can see here is Winterreise.</p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; "><em>It reminds one to Schubert.</em></p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; ">BK: Yes. It is about the idea of "seeking my exact place".</p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; "><em>Dressed in priest's black robes and donning a helmet there are two figures in the middle of the space skiing in opposite directions using the same pair of skis. They might be looking for their way in the darkness - it is a very impressing scene in this enormous ex-church. At the moment the artist is talking to the writer, László Krasznahorkai, about the passage he is about to write in Kicsiny's catalogue. Do you already know where to look for the sentences?</em></p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; ">László Krasznahorkai (writer): I am strolling around here searching for them. One might find various directions to take here. Kicsiny's works have been characterized by very powerful meanings so far, and he is astonishingly consistent in that in this new work.</p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; "><em>Although he can be considered a rather successful artist, for some reason Balázs Kicsiny's works are scarcely known in his homeland, Hungary. Would you mind giving our listeners an idea about his place in contemporary art history!</em></p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; ">LK: I think his proper place is among the best. But this is something everybody recognizes in the moment they get in touch with his works either as a spectator or as a writer of art. It is interesting that there is no discussion about that. Kicsiny has a childlike, even naive relation to that rather concrete fact that each of his works represent that set up his entire life-work. The works he has produced up to now stand for specific things, like in the case of the two priests which we can see here, or the drinking figures donning a diver's helmet, or even the sailors whose limbs end in anchors. His figures are always extremely concrete, astonishingly living creatures, without even a touch of abstraction. In Kicsiny's art abstraction emerges not in the particularities his using, but in what one can see for example here in Winterreise, where the two figures are heading for opposite directions on the same pair of skis, where these figures are holding in their hands not ski poles but a specific navigational instrument which was widely known and even used up to the 17th century, but which had a drawback, that one had to see through it against the sun, so it caused serious damage to the eyes or even blindness. One thing is certain though: this instrument, which can also be seen as a variation of the cross, is a deeply suggestive object.</p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; "><em>What does the artist say to the writer?</em></p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; ">BK: I provide him with background information about the work. However, many times the result is perfectly independent of such motivations.</p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; "><em>Am I right when I sense a kind of spiritual relationship between the two of you?</em></p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; ">BK: You are most probably right. In the early nineties when I had been reading László Krasznahorkai's novels I felt that we would meet sooner or later. Perhaps my English residence and Krasznahorkai's travels in Asia have extended the problems of Hungarian visual art and literature to much wider horizons. I think this is surely one aspect in which we have met our match.</p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; "><em>Could you lend us a hand in what points of reference does the spectator have about you as an artist apart from your paintings and sculptures?</em></p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; ">BK: The space is something very important I think. The space itself and the artwork in it, the ranging of that space and its cultural and social background. For me it is important where the specific institution is located geographically, I am interested in it from a social point of view, and I like to know the people who go there. Many times it is a dilemma for myself, too.</p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; "><em>How much does seeking your place and your way influence the work?</em></p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; ">BK: It is unquestionable that my case is different from that of other Hungarian artists who worked in Western-Europe in the sixties, seventies and eighties. When I left this country I considered everything I was taking with me, and it has not been questioned at all. I think instead of a political determination I am now characterized by an awareness of the things that being Eastern or Middle-European involves. Having acknowledged that, it was less difficult for me to find my place in Western Europe, and it also helped me to look at the western part of Europe with a critical eye.</p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; "><em>You have just moved back to Hungary. Is it a transitory state?</em></p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; ">BK: Perhaps it is. I would very much like to maintain this freedom of movement.</p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; "><br /></p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: normal; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; font-family:verdana;font-size:16px;"><table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="2"><tbody><tr><td align="left" valign="top"><span class="cim1" style=" color: rgb(0, 102, 153); line-height: 18px; font-weight: normal; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11px;">János Sturcz: Travelling Still</span></td></tr><tr><td align="left" valign="top"><span class="text2" style=" color: rgb(0, 102, 153); line-height: 15px; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10px;">The Art of Balázs Kicsiny</span></td></tr><tr><td align="left" valign="top"> </td></tr><tr><td align="left" valign="top"><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; ">Balázs Kicsiny has won reputation and acknowledgement in Hungary and abroad with installations full of dramatic power and archetypal situations, which are rich in symbolic references. Kicsiny's protagonists are, like in his earlier works, part of his already well-known iconography, they wear uniform and practise characteristically male professions, they are lonely heroes who used to be in a sacral position in the 19th century but are now fighting against elements, and are battling for identity and lost faith; they are priests, miners, firemen and sailors, in the figure of whom the artist continually contrasts sacral and profane features by instilling absurdity and irony into their heroism. Although they have lost orientation and self-confidence in this post-modern world, their sense of duty has remained unchanged. A further meaning is added to their figure now: they have become travellers, and, as a consequence, they perform absurd activities which do not lead them directly to their purpose. Kicsiny's priests are doing sports, they are skiing, fencing, navigating, his firemen are dozing in the middle of the city on fire. But these are not at all free-time activities. It does not matter what Kicsiny's figures are doing, what counts is the simple fact that they are acting somehow, they fight, they struggle, and although they often lose sight of their end they never abandon it. They all wear a uniform, these uniforms, however, can be swapped over and over again because their characters are totally alike, all self-denying, living in deliberate solitude, and obsessively looking for mission and challenge.</p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; ">The fact that Kicsiny's protagonists are travellers has surely to do with the artist's own experience, as he lived for ten years in a foreign land, in the misty Albion surrounded by the sea (the first line of <em>Winterreise </em>runs as follows, "I've arrived as an alien, and now I depart as such"). Behind it, there might hide a somewhat deeper, perhaps more universal understanding of man's earthly existence, of finding one's own way, of wandering - Franz Kafka, who defined himself as Robinson, drawn back on his own desert island, put it as follows in a letter to Max Brod in July 1922: "All I have ever written is like Robinson's flag on top of the island".</p><p class="text1" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 15px; ">The historical period and location where we feel ourselves at our spiritual home is encoded deep in our psyche. Balázs Kicsiny and the turn of the 18-19th century, Swift, Blake, Füssli, the German and English romanticism that discovered the subconscious and created visionary images, Friedrich, Schubert, Müller, Weber, E.T.A Hoffmann, Wagner and their spiritual successors are of the same spiritual habitat. In Kicsiny's works practical experience blends with mythic figures and subjects that are borrowed not from masterpieces of art, but mostly from engravings, words, prints and newspapers of the 18-19th centuries that reveal some naive popular fantasy topics. He is captivated with crushing force by images that depict unknown objects or ones whose functions are obscure, but suggest some deep existential or spiritual meaning, such as practical instruments shaped like a cross; on the other hand, Kicsiny finds the symbolic potential in the most common objects of our time as well, like in the case of the current collectors of Budapest trolleys, or the divers' and fencers' helmets. Practical instruments that have some symbolic meaning appear on many of Kicsiny's works, such as scales, lamps, clocks or anchors which, becoming attributes of protagonists they are connected with, reinforce their meanings and touch the deepest roots of existence - like orientation, finding one's way physically and spiritually, struggle, labour, fight, travel, sin, judgement and time - all these embodied in the accurately elaborated iconography of the artists's protagonists. Kicsiny's anonymous priests, firemen, miners, sailors are at the same time wandering Jews, deceived lovers or Marksmen who are hopelessly and restlessly travelling still. Just the way we all are.</p></td></tr></tbody></table></span></p></td></tr></tbody></table></span>sozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770493715287675.post-83551941821054334012008-11-04T01:11:00.000-08:002008-11-04T09:24:46.514-08:00Shahram Entekhabi<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7NkRkxBfr2d0agzVpa_RYUmKBdjqoNT7sX1U4wIHiz8GxgvaoOROAcyiwj439TZ_e735V2WTQZefOi4yOhveTZUduc5F4-pYBaGr20RQLFSFjN_nknjwtVXZdwWiqphQ37-j4QPKh7eY/s1600-h/i_film.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 383px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7NkRkxBfr2d0agzVpa_RYUmKBdjqoNT7sX1U4wIHiz8GxgvaoOROAcyiwj439TZ_e735V2WTQZefOi4yOhveTZUduc5F4-pYBaGr20RQLFSFjN_nknjwtVXZdwWiqphQ37-j4QPKh7eY/s400/i_film.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264854453651558834" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: bold;font-family:Arial;font-size:18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; font-family:Times;font-size:16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px;"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Arial"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:16px;">video i?</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:16px;"><br />Year: 2003-2004 / Original format: video on dvd / Duration: 4:17 min</span><br /></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.0px Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Times;font-size:16px;"><div style="text-align: justify; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; width: auto; font: normal normal normal 100%/normal Georgia, serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; font-family:Arial;font-size:18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; font-family:Times;font-size:16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; "><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">Biography</span></b></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;"> </span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">Shahram Entekhabi is an Iranian artist living and working in London, Berlin and Tehran. He is active in the fields of video art, photography, painting, drawings, installation, performance art and community art.<br />He studied graphic-design at the University of Tehran, Iran in and studied architecture, urbanism, and Italian language in Perugia and Reggio Calabria, Italy. Works as independent architect on residential projects and competitions. Currently active in the fields of video art, photography, painting, drawing, installation, performance and community art. He received a 2004 fellowship at the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA. 2007 Live Art UK Touring Commission R&D (Research and Development grants).</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;"> </span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">About the artist<br /> </span></b></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">The main premise of his work is the transportation of ideas via live art and performative, elements, fusing video, architecture, sculpture, drawing and photography. In particular, his work is always framed within an urban setting and inspired by Charles Baudelaire's writings on the 19th century concept of the Flaneur and diffusing the idea of urban space being reserved for the practice and performance of the white, middle class, heterosexual male. Instead he choose to highlight those individuals who would ordinarily be marginalized, made invisible or forced into self-ghettoisation from the urban domain such as migrant communities and their culture, particularly the communities from the Middle East and their diaspora. The question of visibility and invisibility, therefore, has been a situation that he actively explores within his practice. With reference to his earlier video works.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;"> </span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">Since the video work "i?" he started a big series with the so-called "migrant-figure" that embodies clichés of the West on behaviours of various migrants, especially those from the Middle East. While women from this region are often seen as oppressed with all freedom taken away and forced by their fundamentalist men or fathers or family to wear the chador men are seen as the aggressor, the potential fundamentalist, the terrorist.The migrant figure is a somewhat minimalist version of what Western Europeans imagine as the migrant (the so called "guest worker"): a cheap suit, old-fashioned shoes, a suitcase.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;"> </span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">While "i?" has a complex narration and deals with a twin migrant-figure (as if a split personality) the later videos with the migrant figure show him in very reduced but somewhat typical actions: walking down a road ("Road movie-2"), walking through deserts ("Gold"), failure when celebrating a birthday party ("Alcazar 2450-2"), walking through the territory of an abandoned factory ("Rockefeller boulevard-2"), making a statement by using caution tape as if raising claim for his own territory ("Caution-2", "Attenzione"). He is always on the move, mostly with his belongings in a suitcase in his hand. Recently I started a new series, with new figures of migrants, also meeting the various prejudices: the Islamic fundamentalist, the Kurdish activist, the Guerrilla-guy, the criminal from the Balkans. Here the conception of the figures is radicalized: they are no longer the almost invisible friendly helper of the German reconstruction. Some of these figures are having an enormous auto-aggression, burning themselves, firing a grenade next to themselves… In "Islamic star", the figure is showing the stigma of an Islamic star on his shirt (with an "m" for "Muslim" on the star, similar to the ones that German Jews were forced to wear during the Nazi regime). What does it mean if I as a (male) artist am putting myself in the position of a "criminal" and a negative element in societyDoes this mean to repeat the aggression of Western society and direct it against myself as an act of catharsis?</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;"> </span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; text-align: center; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;"><br />video still<br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">Dead Satellites</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">, 2007, 24:00 min., HD, 16/9 video, colour, sound</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;"><br />Shahram Entekhabi: "In my eyes it is quite rare that a male artists works with his personal body in this sense (beyond the fetish). Therefore I think that it is an interesting question in terms of analyzing the position of migrants, especially if you compare my auto-aggressive behavior to the one of the female artists since the 70s. I transport this confrontation also in my sculptures and para-architectures. In installation "M" (based on five lockers which four of them content the outfit and equipments of my performed different migrant figures and an empty one, and five large mirror framed by lights bubbles) I construct a sculpture of memories of myself and the others, trans-identity, xenophobia, and Sinophobe.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;"> </span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">In the par-architectures series Caution-Place, is the abstractive-sculptures build during the performance series like "Attenzione' or "Caution" developed in a usable architectures building made of the caution taps. This par-architectures/public-spaces give a temporary platform for different performances uses by myself, other artists, and public."<br /><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 48px; font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; text-align: center; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;"> </span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">Entekhabi was more interested in the conceptual nature of FILM than in any of its more modernist features. This concept includes the enlisting of a Hollywood star, of course, thus making a pre-post-modernist claim for the abolition of that boundary between popular and high culture. But the primary element of that concept is the unlikely combination of going around in the public space of the city while never revealing the face. For today, it is of crucial importance to reflect on the relationship between the individual subject whose life the constitution demands we respect, and the larger communities whose members the Western World denies that individuality. For, as "i?" in its intertextual relationship to FILM seeks to explore, it is not productive to remain obsessed with the individual face as long as a true Levinasian face-to-face cannot occur.<br /> </span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">The mechanics of a conceptual exploration, abolishing the heroizing individualism that subtends Hollywood stardom along with elite notions of artistic genius, offer an opportunity to do research on identity without sentimentalizing that concept, reclaiming it from abuse in identity politics and its backlash. In this sense, "i?" reclaims the complex meanings of, and intricate relationships among, post-structuralism (the concept), postmodernism (the philosophy of the subject) and postcolonialism (the reclaimed, literally re-incorporated search for identity in a culturally hybrid world).</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;"><br />This intertextual relationship to both Beckett and Keaton, two stars of modernist as it tips over into postmodernism, is at the heart of a "new historicism" that is not an attempt to reclaim history as if poststructuralism had never happened, but instead claims a historical position for the acknowledgement of the contemporary in all historical relationships to the past. This pre-posterous historicity anchors the present in a firm bound to the past of the American West woven into Beckett's FILM by means of Keaton's particular acting style and his by 1965 pre-posterous movements, to the past the migrant carries on his back, from the western-exploited middle East and the traces of its own popular culture in small tokens we see here and there, shimmering through their insignificance.<br /> </span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">"i?" is not a remake of FILM. The differences between FILM and "i?" are important. Beckett filmed in black and white, I filmed in color. In spite of the passers-by in the frame, the figure in Beckett's film is primarily alone with his identity crisis; his running, climbing and scuttling around appears to merge from an inner need. Mine is examining identity in the midst of the turmoil of the multicultural city. To Beckett's twenty-two minutes, He substitute a 4.17 minute's film on a loop, increasing narrative pace while slowing down diegetic pace. The explanatory ending is gone, and replaced by a circular structure. The beginning, when the figure looks into the mirror while shaving, is buckled up to the ending, which is double. First, he enters his home through the door, then arrives there and cannot open the door. Looking into the mirror is completely different after having been a mirror to others all day long.<br /> </span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">Those differences turn the later film into a critical commentary on the earlier one, in true postmodernist fashion. But it is also clear that this is a dialogue, not a rejection, of everything that Beckett's film contains but keeps implicit: most importantly, the rationale of the combination of going out in a public space while hiding of the face. The later film brings out these implicit elements, pre-posterously revising the earlier work instead of treating it like a corpse ready for dissecting. This is an approach to a cultural artifact that supplements, but also constitutes, academic scholarship – indeed, revealing aspects of Beckett's work that the written word would have a mighty hard time articulating.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;"><br />Entekhabi's project was also to foreground the crossing, in culture, of two systemic relationships: vertical so to speak, to other artworks from the past, here, Beckett's and Keaton's FILM, and a horizontal one, in the present, between art and the popular culture that populates the urban space and that none of us can esoterically ignore. Both relationships already cross when Keaton, belatedly by forty years, reenacts his past as a comic, a star of the silent film with its particular loaded movements, and his significance as the figure of the migrant going West.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;"> </span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;"> </span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; text-align: center; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;"><br /></span><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">Playboy Cards</span></i></b></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;"><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">Exhibitions</span></b></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;"> </span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">2007</span></b></p><ul style="list-style-type: disc; "><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">Bare Life, curator Raphie Etgar — Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem, Israel</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">PAN Opere e documenti 2005-2007 — curator Marina Vergiani, alazzo delle Arti Napoli, Neapel, Italy</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">Mahrem, curators Emre Baykal in collaboration with Nilufer Gole — santralistanbul, Istanbul - Turkey</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">Krieg der Knöpfe (War of the Buttons. Children and the World of War) — Landesmuseums, Linz, Austria</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">LED-Wall, Zeithaus, VW Autostadt, Wolfsburg, Germany</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">HAZARD: Performance Festival— Manchester City Centre, UK</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">Commè amaro stu ppane — Centre d'art Nei Liicht, Dudelange, Luxembourg</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">Sin cobertura. Independent Video from the Middle East— Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">War of the Buttons. Children and the World of War — Århus Kunstbygning Center for Contemporary Art, Århus, Denmark</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">LOOP — Espace Croisé, Roubaix Cedex 1, France<br /> </span></li></ul><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">2006</span></b></p><ul style="list-style-type: disc; "><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">been a long way, baby (solo exhibition) — Bunkier Sztuki, Krakow, Poland</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">der Knöpfe (War of the Buttons) — Ursula Blickle Stiftung, Kraichtal-Unteröwisheim, Germany</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">Land Is My Land (II/ Berlin) — Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (NGBK), Berlin</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">Biennale — Busan Museum of Modern Art, Busan Yachting Center, Korea</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;"> : Visual sound — Ljubljana, Slovenia.</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">TAG = 100 VIDEOS — Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg, Germany</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">III — Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (NGBK), Berlin</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">- Dévoiler — Villa du Parc- Centre d'art Contemporain, Annemasse, France</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">X - zu Rassismus und Ausgrenzung — Nikolaikirche, Rostock, Germany</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">Land Is My Land — Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Germany (catalogue)</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">— La Capella, Barcelona, Spain (catalogue)</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">Artists Residency Exhibition — Vasl Art, Haveli Baroodkhana, Lahore, Pakistan</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">In Space. 19th Annual Images Festival — Vtape, Toronto, Canada</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">Media Arts international, the Middle Eastern Video Project — Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">in Common (solo exhibition) — Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt/Main, Germany</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">Art — Slought Foundation, Philadelphia, USA</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">Creatures — Pori Art Museum, Pori, Finland (catalogue)</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">Collections — CentrePasquArt Kunsthaus/ Centre d'art, Biel/Bienne, Switzerland</span></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">- The View Behind the Make-up — Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt/Main, Germany</span></li></ul><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;">Shahram Entekhabi's web site: </span></b><span style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(87, 15, 11); "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:16px;"><a href="http://www.entekhabi.org/">www.entekhabi.org/</a></span></b></span></p><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(87, 15, 11); text-decoration: underline;font-family:Arial;font-size:16px;"><br /></span></div></span></span></span></div></span></p></span></span></span>sozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770493715287675.post-8670027844025012662008-11-04T00:57:00.001-08:002008-11-04T13:09:46.964-08:00Ugo Rondinone/ Lessness<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRUFxTS-zjs_nlQSPX1MbYXb22f0MJL3GbHzvPc8tJ-xR5856kKQmos4Txc8dLDyt-iY6ghWAzMk8491n1mD6_oxd57iSIgShwTsMKmB0nb_Spr8z-NemKYs3eBepvlI7xNEwv893HF3k/s1600-h/AR-Rondinone-17N.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 250px; height: 219px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRUFxTS-zjs_nlQSPX1MbYXb22f0MJL3GbHzvPc8tJ-xR5856kKQmos4Txc8dLDyt-iY6ghWAzMk8491n1mD6_oxd57iSIgShwTsMKmB0nb_Spr8z-NemKYs3eBepvlI7xNEwv893HF3k/s400/AR-Rondinone-17N.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264911713209797954" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKvkJisIXJ86B_LpSKkQKelXX9FGO1M9N2VvDD5znvhCH12EEuELKpwey0spPByrVapv6QiikRd4nXSQBNVr2fvnHMJhkt_gLDYsvw78RDckPepwT_x7bTuCMDGMjiXz24vL-GFTdVFWk/s1600-h/ugo1.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br /></span></a><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; line-height: 18.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana; color: #333333"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKvkJisIXJ86B_LpSKkQKelXX9FGO1M9N2VvDD5znvhCH12EEuELKpwey0spPByrVapv6QiikRd4nXSQBNVr2fvnHMJhkt_gLDYsvw78RDckPepwT_x7bTuCMDGMjiXz24vL-GFTdVFWk/s1600-h/ugo1.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family:Georgia;font-size:16px;"></span></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKvkJisIXJ86B_LpSKkQKelXX9FGO1M9N2VvDD5znvhCH12EEuELKpwey0spPByrVapv6QiikRd4nXSQBNVr2fvnHMJhkt_gLDYsvw78RDckPepwT_x7bTuCMDGMjiXz24vL-GFTdVFWk/s1600-h/ugo1.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;"></a></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; text-align: justify; font: normal normal normal 48px/normal Verdana; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKvkJisIXJ86B_LpSKkQKelXX9FGO1M9N2VvDD5znvhCH12EEuELKpwey0spPByrVapv6QiikRd4nXSQBNVr2fvnHMJhkt_gLDYsvw78RDckPepwT_x7bTuCMDGMjiXz24vL-GFTdVFWk/s1600-h/ugo1.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;">Lessness 01 mars - 19 avr. 2003 Paris. Galerie AlmineRech</a></span></b></p><div>L’installation <i>Lessness</i> (néologisme anglais dû à Beckett) donne son titre à l’exposition dans laquelle les œuvres sont réunies sous le signe de la vacuité, de l’absence, des ruines. Terrain vague métaphorique, l’exposition est également le champ d’une reconstruction ou plus exactement d’un devenir.<p></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; line-height: 18.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana; color: #333333"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; line-height: 18.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana; color: #333333"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; line-height: 18.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana; color: #333333"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; line-height: 18.0px; font: 13.0px Verdana; color: #333333"><br /></p><img style="text-decoration: underline;display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 167px; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKvkJisIXJ86B_LpSKkQKelXX9FGO1M9N2VvDD5znvhCH12EEuELKpwey0spPByrVapv6QiikRd4nXSQBNVr2fvnHMJhkt_gLDYsvw78RDckPepwT_x7bTuCMDGMjiXz24vL-GFTdVFWk/s400/ugo1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264911510086979346" /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Verdana;font-size:13px;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" height="100%" style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 13px; "><tbody style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size:13px;"><tr style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size:13px;"><td height="100%" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 13px; "><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="660" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 13px; "><tbody size="13px" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><tr style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><td valign="top" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><br /></td></tr><tr size="13px" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><td style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size:13px;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" height="100%" width="667" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size:13px;"><tbody size="13px" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><tr style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size:13px;"><td valign="top" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size:13px;"><div class="info4" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size:13px;"><div name="tailleVariable" id="tailleVariable" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 14pt !important; font-size:13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><br /></span></div><div name="tailleVariable" id="tailleVariable" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14pt !important; "><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Verdana; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">PROFILE: UGO RONDINONE</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Pádraig Timoney enters the artist’s labyrinthine world</span></b></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">One of the problems with formal eclecticism in an artist’s practice is the difficulty it presents in terms of identifying a unifying pattern or trajectory, if one exists at all. It’s a problem because the expectation of such a unity can be unflattering for individual works, especially if unsponsored by them. Ugo Rondinone orchestrates his many varied strands of production so that a continual oscillation between heterogeneity and unity is fully consistent with his emergent themes. One of Rondinone’s obvious abilities is to be able to temper an immense material and theatrical facility with this level of cohesion, while maintaining a key that is at times minor, at times discordant.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">His installations have usually featured an arrangement of some of the following types of work: videos, various series of photographs, circular concentric paintings and rectangular stripe paintings, large ink landscapes, life-size sculptures of inert clowns, broken mirrors, interferences with the access points to the gallery, coloured Perspex over windows autographing the light, rough wood stud walls, speakers emitting repetitive texts, songs, or short conversations.<br /><br /><br />None of these media, the various platforms that make up any given show, are signature ‘finds’ in themselves: well-hammered foils and fully comprehensible types of work, they announce their familiarity first. And like many a night with a bottle of wine and your favourite vinyl albums, stylus wearing the grooves down so that original quality becomes swapped for fondness and indelibility, the run through of these tropes is reproductive as opposed to evolutionary. Rondinone, in one of many guises, is a ventriloquist, lending his disembodied, disturbing vocalisation and manipulative invigoration to the limp and scrawny dummies which art history left, just yesterday, in the attic.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">It is hardly surprising that in one or two works (e.g. IN THE SWEET YEARS REMAINING) he references landscape-dependent northern Romanticism. The image of a single figure alone in a beautiful yet hostile landscape is traditionally encoded shorthand for a yearning for spiritual accommodation in the natural. Rondinone multiplies the image in a series of photographs of black verticals on white ground; forest trees and figure stark against snow. Mounted on a rough hewn timber wall, illuminated from behind by coloured lights, no viewpoint is exclusive: there are many surroundings and dispersals in them, the supporting planks are too present and too ‘metaphoric’ to allow the photographs to indicate much depth. The result is a flattening, a superficial dispersal of the iconographic, an exasperating choice of insufficient elements. The movement is from shorthand Romanticism to alienation: paralysis (frozen); devastating and unopposable atmospheric conditions (fatalism); emptiness (disturbing unfamiliarity).</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Over the last decade, Rondinone’s exhibition titles have included FAR AWAY TRAINS PASSING BY, DAYS BETWEEN STATIONS, MEANTIME, WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? BONJOUR TRISTESSE, THE EVENING PASSES LIKE ANY OTHER, IN THE SWEET YEARS REMAINING, GUIDED BY VOICES, KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE, and, most recently, NO HOW ON. It’s impossible to overlook the indication of a sentimental and existential leaning, but, as with most situations delivered by Rondinone, the ground is shifty; the indication is often a sign of warning that a tendency to look at the works as ‘expressionism’ – as self-indulgence and primarily autobiographical – is not guaranteed to suffice. No one ever meant to say that a spider’s web was expressive before functional. The difficulty extends from the fact that, in whatever way, we are usually determined to make understanding palatable. With regard to this, the work makes words of approximation appear, and these words – like alienation, isolation, dislocation, melancholy, and neurosis – are those words to which everyone has a register of personally meaningful experience. (This must be what they mean by alienation.)</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Rondinone’s position seems that of ‘sensitive’ personality, mixing an innocent need to source meaning with an ironical and worldly-wise knowledge that the production of objects is indulgent, pointless, ludicrous and lucrative. It’s a short step from here to attesting that this very situation of impossibility, as the true subject, needs expressing. Samuel Beckett, in his third dialogue with Georges Duthuit in 1949, deems such an attestation beyond him: ‘I know that all that is required now, in order to bring this horrible matter to an acceptable conclusion, is to make of this submission, this admission, this fidelity to failure, a new occasion, a new term of relation, and of the act, which, unable to act, obliged to act, he makes, an expressive act, even if only of itself, of its impossibility, of its obligation. I know that my inability to do so puts myself, and perhaps an innocent, in what I think is still called an unenviable situation, familiar to psychiatrists.’ Beckett is never far from Rondinone.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Rondinone’s paintings spoil the opportunity of the possible. There is just the relationship of a certain number of colours screened out on an iconic zone, different colours in the simplest positioning of variations. Pure notes, but oppressed by relationship. Never escaping, slickly or fuzzily, from materiality. Tiredness, limpness, misdirection, modesty, haunting traces, emptiness in full light, fully spectacular, apparatus of appearance. A very simple way of making something that doesn’t take more than a certain allowed time, aims for and accepts all it can in the space it’s introduced to, plays with ideas of paintings as being meaningfully larger than their fabrication.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">The best description of an influence is often just its name; and the titles of Rondinone’s paintings are dates. Do you remember what you did on ACHTZEHNTERAUGUSTNEUNZEHNHUNDERTNEUNZIG? (1991). In this case the painting is made in the year after its title. Sometimes it is made in the same year, maybe on the same day (like the circle painted on a wall of the Vienna Kunsthalle, titled 27th June 2002, for NO HOW ON which opened the following day). If occasion and subject are distanced by a year, or if they are not, the painting is still in no situation; it either isn’t anything other than a stylistic corruption of memory, or a subject identical to its occasion: the subject is the time of making. What could be solely self-referential is rescued from self-congratulation into uncertainty; if the original referent, a day, though once universally shared, is now inexistent, then the quality of the representation is undecidable.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">As well as the named days, Rondinone inhabits the night with his forms of illuminated address: neon rainbows, arcing over the rooftops, spelling out instructions and phrases such as Hell, yes! (2000), or A HORSE WITH NO NAME (2002). These phrases, perhaps worn out, once ringing with communication, are now only reinvigorated by their colourful illumination, but for half-time only; the sun also rises, blanketing everything with illumination from above, squeezing the signs’ little emission into bare perceptibility. (The same feeling of existential nausea you get looking at the yellow wheeze of a flashlight switched on in daylight). Waiting for the kiss of night, a state of constant recurrence but not permanent. After-hours rainbows that don’t last long are hard to leave and hard to forget, but you don’t have much choice. Seen more coldly, the universe that Rondinone presents is like a swinging beehive of movements; geometrically literal in the pulsing tondo paintings and speedy horizontal stripes, arcs, lazily sloping walls, to the right-angled logic snakes of his most recent mirrored installations (if the logic was that each progression of the form would adopt perpendicularity to both remaining planes as the quickest means of getting far away from what is already there).</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Movement is echoed at the level of subject too: circlings, emergings, wanderings, repulsions, stoppages, great and little cycles, in-and-outs, back-and-forwards, dances, attractions and paralyses, erosions, maintenances. Making nothing less than a laboratory of rejections, a concentration on movements which are everywhere identified as the tensions between a recognisable, comfortable, yet unmaintainable status (identity) and its location or surroundings which can supply nothing to it but the circumstances forcing change.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">For MOONLIGHT AND ASPIRIN (1997) speakers hanging from two spindly trees, divided by a leaning, twisted wall, reiterate a conversation between a man and woman, to the effect that the woman doesn’t want the man to go get a cup of coffee for fear that he’ll take the chance to skedaddle. The conversation is cyclical, in that the question/answer session leads to the last line being the same as the opening, and the whole sorry story begins again. Desire and complicity in maintaining what feels good, nice, now; the demand for development (or just the wish for coffee) measured against the narrowness of a focus on what is presently evident: which is preferable? A battle between the sensibly evident and the imaginative; permanent vacillation between impermanent but solid states. Neither of which is winning in this dead, but critical, period of time. The protagonists sound first ridiculous, then horrifying, then thankfully forgettable: the repetition amplifies neurosis until it bursts into banality. We at least, choosing, may move on, the work’s format of duration provides for its content’s eventual erosion.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Every work is quickly indicative of something taken from a certain surrounding: the viewer is constantly put in a situation of corrosive outside influences and their erosion of what can try only to be a sufficient and replete entity: this most obviously evident in the cast river boulders of THE EVENING PASSES LIKE ANY OTHER (1998) or in the black-and-white photographic series MOONLIGHTING, where a figure in full black bondage exoskeleton is seen, trapped at the moment of exposure, emerging from the integrity of soft black grounds. A full suit internalises and amplifies stimulation, working as an insulated battery to contain all the charge. On the other hand, it’s difficult to express when the breath is needed to just avoid suffocation.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 10.0px Verdana"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">In general, the exhibitions are not so much a quiet display by Rondinone as an opened studio, an experimentation of paralysed forms, diagrammatic movement and the movement of light, the entrances and exits carefully membraned; revealing the sometimes horrible architectural remnants left exposed when the orchestra of works has been arranged. Transitory settings that are taken to be critically incidental, not totally transformative of the solidity of material underpinnings. A ‘re-evaluation’ of this underpinning, something secure, permanent, outlasting the merry-go-round of ‘shows’, is pitched against the works’ Winterreise. The resulting situation is not so horrible as to make a return to the real world welcome; neither is quite ideal.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 16.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 13.0px Verdana"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Pádraig Timoney is an artist based in Liverpool</span></p></div><div name="tailleVariable" id="tailleVariable" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14pt !important; "><table width="1120.0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="width: 1120.0px"> <tbody> <tr> <td valign="middle" style="width: 1070.0px; margin: 12.5px 12.5px 12.5px 12.5px; padding: 0.0px 5.0px 0.0px 5.0px"> <p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">I invented it all, in the hope it would console me, help me to go on, allow me to think of myself as somewhere on a road, moving, between a beginning and an end, gaining ground, losing ground, getting lost, but somehow in the long run making headway. All that is nothing but lies. </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"> Samuel Beckett</span></span></p> <p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> </span></p> <p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 19px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Roundelay,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">1 Rondinone’s new installation at the Centre Pompidou, is a like a modernday split rendering of that same wandering. Like two sleepwalkers, a man and a woman walk within the architectonic labyrinth of the urban desert of Beaugrenelle, in Paris. As if driven by an interior force, their fragmented movements appear in sequence on six screens. The rhythm with which the images change reveal the characters to be </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">pourvus de pieces manquantes </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">(endowed with missing pieces – Samuel Beckett): a wide shot here, and there, followed by a close-up and then a medium shot. We see them face on, from the back, in profile, then catch a rapid glance at their shoes, from the back, from the front. We are familiar with Rondindone’s way of telling a story through isolated snapshots, but this is the first time that the images come to life. The viewer becomes the scrupulous observer of a very personal work and, simultaneously, an eyewitness of the following statement, “In the domain of art as in life, of everything that happens in time […], we can, at best, possess it bit by bit, but never as a whole at any one time.”</span><span style="font: 11.0px Arial"><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">2</span></sup></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> That is how Samuel Beckett, being a great source of inspiration for Rondinone, summed up the aesthetic process he himself used for work he intended for cinema and television. With Rondinone, the motion of walking is shown to be psycho-aesthetic: a movement in which to find reassurance and restored strength, and also a way of escape, or an exercise in remembering or forgetting oneself. They could well be considered fortunate walking around with purpose but no goal. If that is the case, then Rondinone’s “seekers” differ to the “figures lying down”: life-size clowns and artist’s alter ego, all shown in a state of relaxation with their waiting and dreaming. These are considered today as “trade marks” of Rondinone’s work. Focused on their own spirit and their own body as unique sources of awareness, they float in a sort of limbo, somewhere between time and space. They are frequently seated or lying down beside walls that shine with fragments of mirrored glass, or beneath the magical glare of hypnotic, coloured circles. In this relaxed position they can then embark on a journey within their interior universe, where we can imagine that they work on their self-awareness. That is the main aim expressed in Rondinone’s work.” Through its repetitive form, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Roundelay </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">cuts its links with conventional, filmed narrative. But we, nevertheless, begin to sense the fragments of images, their rhythmic composition, like </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">objets trouvés </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">or found objects,</span><span style="font: 11.0px Arial"><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">3</span></sup></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> rich with suggestion, which provide us with a point from which to begin inventing a story. We are actively encouraged to enter this sphere of imagination by watching the flux of images from the hexagonal space suffused with a strange orange light and whose materials are of unexpected softness (canvas, jute and felt), all of which combine to liberate our senses from the exterior world. Our normal perception is further disoriented by the ceiling, carpeted with woolly cobwebs. Finally, the impression gained is further emphasized by the enigmatic silence of the video (a silence made more profound by the minimalist and suggestive musical composition). Such are the foundations that help liberate the imagination, so that we can “hear the movement” and “see the sounds”.</span><span style="font: 11.0px Arial"><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">4</span></sup></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> Numerous aspects of Rondinone’s work can therefore only properly be understood by actually looking at it. Ambiguous as it is, wavering between art and lyrical prose, his work as a whole undermines our ordinary expectations. The floating floors symbolize this aesthetic of uncertainty. Rondinone’s works are often permeated with an extraordinary atmosphere of uncertainty. They appear elusive and confused. Frequent changes of role, or personalities, as illustrated in the series of photographs </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">I Don’t Live Here Anymore </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">(1995-2000), or in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">I Never Sleep </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">(1998), evoke the theme of the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">double obscur</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">, or dark, vampirish activities. In </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Moonlight and Aspirin </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">(1997), sculptures of skeletal trees are placed in pairs or small groups and whisper excerpts of texts that once again remind us of that notion, so cherished by the Romantics, of the migration of souls or of animated life (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">beseelte Natur</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">). Rondinone’s viewers are often taken by surprise, like detectives groping for clues in a place unfamiliar to them, we trip over strange things in a strange world – over phenomena that we need to experience before even beginning to understand them. The romantic desire for that sixth sense, for a confrontation with the unknown, the intangible and changeable is one of the principal preoccupations throughout Rondinone’s work. Could this be the reason for its magical attraction? Proust’s assertion that “We love what we do not wholly possess […] [Love] only lasts if one part remains still to be conquered”5 seems a reasonable explanation of the drive that animates Rondinone’s figures in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Roundelay</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">. And maybe ours too?</span></p> <p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> </span></p> <p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Gaby Hartel</span></p> <p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> </span></p> <p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Translated by Diana Tamlyn</span></p> <p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> </span></p> <p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Excerpt from “Devoting oneself to an illusion…” in the booklet </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Ugo Rondinone: Roundelay</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">, Editions Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2003</span></p> <p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> </span></p> <p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">1. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Roundelay </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">is the title of a 13-line poem written by Samuel Beckett in 1976 (while expressing the idea of circularity, the word “roundelay”, literally “rondeau”, can be understood together with the word “delay”, as the action of turning around with no end result.)</span></p> <p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">2. Samuel Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Proust</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">, translated and presented by Edith Fournier, Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1990, p.28.</span></p> <p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">3. The text is in French.</span></p> <p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">4. Sergei Eisenstein, “An Unexpected Juncture”, in Angela Moorjani, Carola Veit (ed.), </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Samuel Beckett Today / Samuel Beckett aujourd’hui</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">, vol. 11 (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Endlessness in the Year 2000/Fin sans fi n en l’an 2000</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">), New York / Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2001, p. 328. 5. Samuel Beckett, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Proust</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">, op. cit., pp. 61-62.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 13px/normal Arial; "></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 12.0px Lucida Grande; color:#333333;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Ugo Rondinone</span></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 12.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333">Elizabeth Janus</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 12.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333">In his 1960 novel, La noia (Boredom), Alberto Moravia blamed the existential ennui of postwar Europe on a reality that had grown patently absurd. For Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone, too, reality's failings are at the heart of our present-day malaise, which he wholeheartedly accepts as an aspect of the human condition. Taking this premise as his point of departure, Rondinone creates mixed-media installations that run the gamut of artistic genres and techniques - including landscape drawing, abstract painting, photographic portraiture, realist sculpture, and video - and reflect the belief that the artist's role is to reinvent reality rather than just mediate it. To this end, he often takes his own subjectivity as an artist as a starting point, in part embracing, in part resisting bourgeois notions about the artist as clown/entertainer, as marginalized visionary, or as conduit for the sublime. In his installations, he exposes the mechanisms of style, technical bravado, and presentation as aesthetic contrivances, which, like language for Samuel Beckett, may be worn-out and trite but remain the artist's only means of coming to terms with the alienating forces of our technology-driven times.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 12.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333">For his first one-man show at the Galerie Walcheturm in Zurich, in 1991, Rondinone made a series of sketches of the Swiss countryside in an idealized style reminiscent of early nineteenth-century plein-air painting. He then enlarged the notebook-size originals to a monumental scale by projecting a photographic negative of each drawing onto a huge sheet of paper and copying, in ink, the negative image. Before hanging the enormous, framed landscapes, Rondinone covered the gallery's large picture window with whitewashed planks, which blocked out most of the natural light, exaggerating the artificiality of the environment and heightening the contrast between his highly stylized depictions of nature and their "true-to-life" scale.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 12.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333">Rondinone's interest in provoking confrontations between the real and the artificial also informs his more complex installations, which owe much to the artist's early dabbling in performance art. (Before he began his studies at Vienna's Hochschule fur angewandte Kunst in 1986, he did a short stint working with Hermann Nitsch and his Orgies Mystery Theater.) The influence of performance was most apparent in one of Rondinone's first institutional exhibitions ("dog days are over"), in 1996, at Zurich's Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, where he created an installation that brought together live actors, sound, painting, and video and took the figure of the clown as its centerpiece. At the show's opening, several paunchy, middle-aged men made up as clowns lounged lazily on the floor of one of the museum's galleries, moving only to change position or to yawn. Fits of hysterical laughter could be heard from hidden speakers activated by sensors whenever a visitor entered. (For the rest of the exhibition's run, the clowns were replaced by their videotaped likenesses on monitors set up precisely where each clown had sat.) On the walls behind the clowns, Rondinone spray-painted huge blurry "targets," series of concentric circles that were color-coded to match the giddy combinations of blue, orange, brown, green, and yellow used in the clown's costumes and makeup.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 12.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333">If the ensemble's initial effect was carnivalesque, with time, a creeping sense of unanswered expectations, boredom, and emptiness took over. This was due partly to the fact that the clowns never performed (they barely moved) and partly to their pathetic appearance. Rondinone's buffoon is a tragic everyman caught between the banality of his own life and his job of making us forget the banality of ours; a role, one senses, that Rondinone identifies with. In a later version of the same installation, done for a show in 1997 at Le Consortium in Dijon, Rondinone worked on a grander scale, now presenting the videos as gigantic wall projections. He also included a selection of photographs from a series he had begun in 1995, titled "I don't live here anymore." In these, Rondinone used digital imaging to superimpose his face onto photographs of the lithe, childlike bodies of female models taken from fashion magazines. Leaving traces of five o'clock shadow on his face, he called attention to the fact that the photographs had been manipulated. Seemingly unrelated, these two sets of images - of dejected, marginal men and idealized feminine beauties - are manifestations of the artist's conflicted nature, his internal anxieties and desires writ large - a public offering of an intensely subjective alternative "reality."</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 12.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333">Lately, Rondinone has turned to translating his psychological states into environments that are intended to provoke a corresponding mood in the viewer. For his contribution to the group show "An Unrestricted View of the Mediterranean" at the Kunsthaus Zurich last June, Rondinone took three stones found in a country stream as models, from which he made enlarged plaster replicas; he coated them with a shiny lacquer and embedded several audio speakers into their surfaces. The plaster "stones" were then suspended in the center of a white room with harsh yellow trim which the artist flooded with fluorescent light. An almost despondent voice endlessly droned from the speakers, "What could be better? Nothing is better." Hanging near the stones, placed in such a way that the viewer could only see one at a time, four white video monitors each played a continuous loop - of car lights approaching in a snowstorm, a man opening and closing a door, a half-naked woman pushing up a crumbling photo backdrop, or a man floating underwater with his eyes open - that had been isolated from a film (Antonioni's are a favorite source) and then slowed down and repeated. By disrupting normal filmic progression, Rondinone created a sense of suspended, cyclical time, which became the installation's dominant motif. This state of suspension, echoed by the floating rocks (symbolic of the weightiness of time), worked in combination with the installation's hot light and color, its meaningless, incantatory sound and pointless imagery, to evoke an undeniable feeling of hopelessness and alienation, and to create an unexpectedly austere and eerie beauty.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 12.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333">If Rondinone's art seems elusive, it is perhaps because the forms he uses, culled from both high art and popular culture, meld into a composite vision that, like reality itself, is increasingly difficult to grasp as a whole. Rather than concoct a strategy to critique the complexities and contradictions of life, Rondinone offers instead a highly personal, parallel reality, which - filled with fantasy, angst, monotony, and despair - may be closer to the truth than we'd care to admit.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 12.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333">Elizabeth Janus is a frequent contributor to Artforum.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 19.0px; font: 12.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333">COPYRIGHT 1998 Artforum International Magazine, Inc.<br />COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning</p><p></p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr><tr style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 13px; "><td height="100%" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 13px; "><br /></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></span></div>sozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770493715287675.post-19866007782222622072008-11-04T00:57:00.000-08:002008-11-04T10:00:27.643-08:00MOMENTUM 2006<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir1Vk_-G2vR7nQypAZyuP936_U6dJdHuwTqWXVd5t9-J9rf8YLJvYcx0dgYz4gcF0MsFFMnkS6MQxAD7Az6JID_pHxfynu2XC0oQwj35Olp1NTtftzpCL9c6g7_DtVlmFY39IrkEEFNVo/s1600-h/0000015144.jpg"><img style="text-align: justify;display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; cursor: pointer; width: 279px; height: 320px; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir1Vk_-G2vR7nQypAZyuP936_U6dJdHuwTqWXVd5t9-J9rf8YLJvYcx0dgYz4gcF0MsFFMnkS6MQxAD7Az6JID_pHxfynu2XC0oQwj35Olp1NTtftzpCL9c6g7_DtVlmFY39IrkEEFNVo/s400/0000015144.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264863111435850066" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Verdana;font-size:11px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:11px;"></span><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="text-align: justify;color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11px;"><tbody><tr valign="top"><td colspan="2"><span class="mh" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(255, 51, 0); margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">MOMENTUM 2006<br />4TH NORDIC FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY ART, MOSS, NORWAY <br />“TRY AGAIN. FAIL AGAIN. FAIL BETTER.”<br />SEPTEMBER 2ND – OCTOBER 15TH</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /> </span></td></tr><tr valign="top"><td colspan="2" align="left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">by </span><a href="http://www.artnews.org/powerekroth" target="_blank" class="l" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Power Ekroth</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> <br /> </span></td></tr><tr valign="top"><td colspan="2" align="left"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Oslo, 13 Sep 2006, in English, published in Flash Art <br /> </span></td></tr></tbody></table><table width="100%" align="center" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="t" style="text-align: justify;font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><tbody><tr valign="top"><td colspan="2" align="left">The Momentum Festival of Contemporary Art started off as promotional machine of Nordic art and artists Biennial in the backwater of the so called “Nordic Miracle” – a term originating from Hans Ulrich Obrist in the nineties. This idea seems today helplessly outdated, and actually it did already at the time too. This year’s curators Annette Kierulf and Mark Sladen picked up on this notion and decided to open up the national borders for a more natural selection of artists. The result of their united effort is a rather small exhibition with in total 31 international artists entitled “Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better.”, a title borrowed from Samuel Beckett. The nod to Beckett reflects the curators’ interest for artists and art works that engage with absurdity in a wide variety of ways, where the notion of playful surrealistic expressions flourish. Absurdity can take many forms and when it is good, like with Beckett, it reflects something else than the obvious, something vital that becomes addressed in an intelligent way and leaves one startled and with some major questions about the larger issues in life. <br /><br />An example of an included work that makes this kind of connection is Gerard Byrne’s film(s) 1984 and Beyond (2005-06). The script is based on a round table discussion which took place in 1963 between well-known science fiction writers that was published in Playboy at the time, about how the future in 1984 and beyond would look like. Byrne has re-staged the conversations with actors in high modernist settings and buildings. Generally the thinkers are of course hopelessly stuck in their own timeframe and society of thinking – which certainly adds value to the line of thought on what a similar situation would sound like today – and if Playboy would be able/interested in staging or publishing it? <br /><br />Unfortunately Byrne’s splendid work – where fantasy and fiction challenge reality – represent a minority in the exhibition, where many work live up to the absurdist fashion in a less intelligent and more crude way. This is a strange situation since many artists that ordinarily make mind-blowing work are included like for instance Jeppe Hein, Tue Greenfort or Egill Sæbjörnsson but this time their participation does not either measure up or can bear the burden of a lot of work that is absurd to the point their being unnecessary. Why they don’t live up to expectations this time is obscured. My guess is that it has to do with the context of a lot of dry work with literal connotations or the so called “one-liners” like the stuffed boar head by Lithuainian artist Juozas Laivys, Kleopas (2005) which has a long background story and will be given to a Museum in the year 2128 and by that become a piece of contemporary art. Or Edvarrd Gran’s series with ten photographs entitled adequately enough As if there was a layer behind appearances that had no qualities, but took on the character of its surroundings (2006) where he has depicted the last ten letters of the English alphabet embedded naturally in landscape images (like the letter Y represented by a tree log in the shape of Y). According to the catalogue: “The artist is fascinated by the viewer’s experience of dissatisfaction and anticlimax.” and the question is why the viewer should care at all? <br /><br />The curators shall have kudos for making a very nice catalogue with Q&A with the artists included, a nice essay by Kierulf, and an absolutely cool looking and multi-layered cover which is the 2006 Turner-prize nominee artist Mark Titchner’s contribution to the exhibition. But will someone please tell me what went wrong from the great outline of the curator’s in the production phase of the exhibition, because just like with the work of Gran’s I cannot think of many reason’s (apart from single art pieces like Byrne’s of course) why the viewer should care at all?<br /> </td></tr><tr valign="top"><td colspan="2" align="left"><a href="http://www.artnews.org/powerekroth" target="_blank" class="l" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">www.artnews.org/powerekroth</a></td></tr><tr valign="top"><td colspan="2" align="left"> </td></tr><tr valign="top"></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></span>sozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770493715287675.post-41203039761599693302008-11-04T00:34:00.000-08:002008-11-04T12:38:04.852-08:00Failing Better - Salcedo's Trajectory<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhliNEb5GTIb0J9mm7bb2b3gYIZKCuOHeM3iaEHRMC-FezAzPW-2u_JTOkRAY3Qf0xhP2LpEzrhwfsvXE7gYuFEBPoUt5LXxUDnlOP_ZiLYwSHIyX0GzHpgNXL14DviszqI3m6NkiY771E/s1600-h/dos_lrg_003.jpg"><img style="display:block; 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margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 209px; height: 279px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiELLOYRUWWRozHAN-IJ7I-0cP4qzwwxbK4ZTrnMfeXrs8CUlK3pIYFCaETsyy8B8pfAs3VWfNKTEZc8awqoRBrpbadtAPvECZTIR8azeyh3a7_dft3PFGLjoOKZ2vJprKMYZ6RLiMlfNw/s400/dos_lrg_010.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264903592021671842" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:11px;"><div id="news_t" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Helvetica, Arial, sans; font-size: 11px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; position: relative; float: left; width: 825px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 50px; "><h1 style="text-align: justify;font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Helvetica, Arial, sans; font-style: normal; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; position: relative; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; ">Doris Salcedo</h1><h2 style="text-align: justify;font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Helvetica, Arial, sans; font-style: normal; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; position: relative; color: rgb(153, 153, 153); margin-top: 2px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; font-weight: normal; ">Failing Better - Salcedo's Trajectory by Rod Mengham</h2></div><div id="artist_text" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Helvetica, Arial, sans; font-size: 11px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); position: relative; float: left; width: 530px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 50px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 30px; padding-left: 0px; "><p class="answer" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Helvetica, Arial, sans; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; position: relative; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14px; "></p><div style="text-align: justify;">Up until 2002, the work of Doris Salcedo consisted largely of installations in galleries: assemblages of objects whose relationships of part to whole could be transferred from one location to another. In the main, these coordinated objects were relics of a kind: fragments, sometimes very large fragments, of furniture torn from its original context and function; fractions of tables, cupboards and chairs, all compacted together; uncertain components, interlaced, pressured and cajoled into various forms of precarious mutuality. The prosthetic inventiveness with which Salcedo combined and re-combined the same motifs and materials turned a succession of installations into a ritual sequence. The ritual concerned was that of commemoration, the testing of memory whose proportional relationship to the risk of forgetting was constantly challenged and reconfigured. The objects being recalled were the victims of the protracted violence that had afflicted Colombian society for over five decades. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The research that Salcedo always conducts for each of her projects traces the histories of individuals, gauges the effects of those people's loss on others, and makes use of extensive interviews with survivors. Yet despite this concentration on specific identities, the artist's work rarely evokes the singular; it quite literally homes in on the communal aspects of daily life, reminding the viewer of what is lost when an individual is subtracted from the community. Social structure is undermined and social bonds weakened; state force and guerrilla and paramilitary violence both contribute to the chronic destruction of the social.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A significant number of the hybrid objects in Salcedo’s work of the 1990s utilised sets of tables and chairs. This powerful use of metonymy – employing motifs that do not merely symbolise social relationships but which are materially involved in them – provides the most concise expression of the bond between the individual and the social unit. Single chairs evoke and stand in for single persons, while their being placed around a table is a primary instance of what draws the individual into the social group. In the work from this period, strange versions of both chairs and tables were forced into unnatural and disturbing combinations.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 2002, Salcedo abandoned her usual ensembles and moved dozens of chairs out into an open, public space which dwarfed these objects, conceived of on a domestic scale. The occasion was the seventeenth anniversary of the events of the 6 and 7 November 1985, when the supreme court in Bogotá was seized by Leftist rebels; the subsequent counter-offensive by government troops produced over 100 fatalities. Salcedo’s performance, entitled Noviembre 6 y 7 (2003), conveyed a sense of the scale of the massacre by using 280 chairs, lowering these piecemeal over the facade of the new Palace of Justice, during a 55 hour period that corresponded to the length of the original siege. The dual temporality of the performance subjected the viewers to a real-time experience of duration inflected with a sense of historical displacement. Siege and artwork were implicated in the same historical narrative as complementary events. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The simultaneous experience of a length of time unfolding in the present, and of an equivalent amount of time folded up in the past, is a crucial element in Salcedo’s conception of the function of art. There has always been this duality in her work, which relates to history as to a condition of viduity.1 (This word is central to Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, which is a classic instance of the art of commemoration in all its postmodern ambivalence.) For Salcedo, viduity is not confined to specific individuals but is the underlying, general condition of society as a whole. One of the most important of her works of the early 1990s was La Casa Viuda (‘The Widowed House’), a title that renders widowhood an environmental condition. For the widowed society, history revolves around the moment of loss, which the imagination returns to with obsessive intensity across ever-increasing intervals of time. The general experience of time is thus one of simultaneous convergence and divergence, at a level and to a degree that a normally functioning society could not tolerate.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Less than one year after Noviembre 6 y 7, Salcedo created her largest installation to date, which lasted for the duration of the 8th International Istanbul Biennale (2003): a huge stack of 1,550 chairs that occupied the vacant space between two buildings on a commercial street in the centre of the city. The chairs were piled anyhow, in a spectacle of chaos that was nonetheless subject to rigid controls. The work filled the interstice between two buildings, its surface rendered perfectly flat. The combination of human chaos, precision engineering and the sheer size of the operation prompted comparison with the intimidating paradox of the mass grave. Salcedo has confirmed that the work was in some sense an epitaph to historical atrocities. The contradictory structure of the installation, which meant that each of the 1,550 standard units was placed in an intricate, unrepeatable relationship with those surrounding it, echoes the tension between commemoration and anonymity that has always problematised the social psychology of cenotaphs and the graves of unknown soldiers – the temporary nature of the installation underlines the fragility of commemoration. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Modern arts festivals, like the Dionysian festival of ancient Athens, provide a means for art to question the presiding values of any given ideological formation. The most enduring works of art, irrespective of the time it takes to perform them, are those that do not defuse the questions they address, but keep them open. Salcedo’s work always agitates the relation between art and history, between performance and pretext, occupying a temporality that does not end with exit from the gallery or with the dismantling of the installation, but which brings to the surface a process of psychological resistance that is deeply embedded in the social consciousness.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Embeddedness and emergence are literal components of Salcedo’s latest project, Neither (2004), installed recently at White Cube. Here, industrial quantities of chain-link wire fence appear to have been embedded into the gallery wall, although they have in fact been pressed into a skin of plasterboard that stands just in front of it. The entry into this wire compound does not exactly match the outline of the entry into the gallery’s main exhibition space. Two of the dozens of panels that comprise the work’s continuous mesh have been lifted away slightly from the plasterboard substructure. They suggest a possible escape route from the perimeter fence – they might have been loosened in an escape attempt. However, any attempt to puncture the barrier is met with denial: beneath one layer of wire is another, firmly ensconced in the plaster. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The chief material used in this installation is the most common type of fencing now being produced in unimaginable quantities by manufacturers in the security industry. It has been seen increasingly on our television screens, as a means of confinement in concentration camps in Bosnia and Guantanamo Bay, and in various parts of the world in the form of holding pens for illegal immigrants. However, a more widespread although less spectacular use has been as a means of exclusion from private property as a result of an increasingly paranoid insistence on non-permeability. From the back-garden fence to the border between the Israelis and Palestinians, the twenty-first century understanding of security renders the relationship between inclusion and exclusion increasingly ambivalent. This ambivalence is present in Salcedo’s wire cage, which reverses the architecture of the White Cube building, shifting the barrier between exterior and interior from the outside wall to the perimeter of its innermost recess. This hesitation of thresholds, rendering uncertain the point at which security is an issue, suggests the extent to which the contemporary self has interiorised a defensive posture. The precise degree of emergence from plaster that Salcedo has extablished for the wire mesh posits the security fence as a symbolic structure for our everyday habitus, deeply embedded in homes, workplaces, minds.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The fusion of wire and plaster also invokes the tension between opacity and transparency. Foucault has argued that the carceral imagination of the late twentieth century originated in the early-nineteenth-century's investment in panoptical systems of control. Restraint of the individual prisoner was ensured not by physical force but by conspicuosness. In a panoptical society, subjectivity was formed by awareness of exposure to the gaze of power, and provoked resistance in the form of inscrutability, of lack of amenability to surveillance. Salcedo’s hybridised barrier both obstructs transparency and suggests the degree to which it has been psychologised, rendering solid walls permeable to ideas, perceptions, fears of control. The predominance of surveillance in nineteenth-century society was commensurate with the development of other forms of visual culture, including the origins of practices used in modern museums. Display became a means of imposing taxonomies of order. The gallery predisposes its visitor to understand the work of art as part of a specific history and topography whose connection with more explicit forms of power and control can be made more or less obscure. Neither is aptly titled in the context of an exhibition strategy that reverses the polarities of inside and outside, of implicit and explicit.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is not unusual in the contemporary art world to encounter works for which a radical meaninglessness is claimed. But it is extremely rare to engage with works whose resistance to meaning is subject to such specific historical constraints. Salcedo has spoken of the degree to which this resistance seemed to mount in proportion to the effort required to produce the work: the installation period proved to be insufficient, requiring ever-increasing amounts of assistance. But the more time and effort given to the project, the less it seemed to give back. ‘This is a piece that I don’t understand,’ Salcedo concluded, at the end of a process of dehumanising work which involved its creators in progressive isolation from anything that did not contribute directly to its installation. The more sinister undertones of the end result call to mind places in which the rhythms and interactions of daily life are completely suspended. But the incongruous overtones of the gallery space all too often obliterate evidence of the ways in which the process of composition can involve a parallel form of suspension. This work, which empties the gallery and forces the viewer’s imagination outside, returns ultimately to the history and conditions of its own construction – paradoxically, one of collaboration and communality. One remaining sign of the human cost expended on this re-casting of the space of art is the uneven suturing of the individual wire panels, patched together in slightly varying configurations that hesitate the viewer’s sense of horizontal and vertical hold. These marks of fabrication contrast with the high technological finish of the overall design. The inhumanity of the material is offset by teamwork and individual variation.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But perhaps the most disturbing form of intervention in the conditions of the production of contemporary art is that which gives no clue to its temporality. As the simulacrum of concentration camp confinement, Neither evokes those spaces in which nothing is done except waiting; time is suspended, the prisoner’s life is on hold, and history unravels into an interminable present tense. The visitor to White Cube can step in and out of the exhibition at a moment’s notice, but however brief the visit, she or he can never be certain of the length of time required to make the work begin to speak, or to realise it will say nothing. If the temporality of the postmodern is that in which the relations of past, present and future cannot be made coherent, then Neither is the epitome of the postmodern interval, grasped and recognized for what it is, as something produced by the ruthless logic of history, in which the meanings of history are all lost.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Notes:<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">1 The state of widowhood<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Rod Mengham is Reader in Modern English Literature at Cambridge University where he is also Curator of Works of Art at Jesus College.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">http://www.whitecube.com/artists/salcedo/texts/134/<br /></div><p></p></div></span>sozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770493715287675.post-24577246917182502092008-11-04T00:27:00.000-08:002008-11-04T11:46:28.452-08:00Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family:Times;"><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px;">CIRCA <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; ">Article reproduced from <a href="http://www.recirca.com/index.shtml" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(187, 16, 16); ">CIRCA</a> 104, Summer 2003, pp.47-50.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; "><b><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;"></span></b></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 22px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; "><b><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;">C104</span></b><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;"> <b>article</b></span></span></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="articletitle" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 8mm; font-weight: bold; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:6mm;">Nauman .. Beckett ... Beckett . Nauman: the necessity of working in an interdisciplinary way</span><span class="superscript" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 3mm; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: super; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:3mm;">1</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><b class="subheading" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, mono; font-size: 5mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 0, 0); text-transform: none; text-decoration: none; margin-top: 10mm; ">Bruce Nauman has taken much from Beckett, who himself was very aware of issues within the visual arts. Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes explores the links between the two creative intellects.</b></p><blockquote><div align="left"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-style: italic; line-height: 22px; font-family:Arial;font-size:15px;">[...] the expression that there is nothing to</span><br /></div><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">express, no desire to express, together with</span><br /></div></span><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">the obligation to express</span><br /></div></span></div></blockquote><div align="left"><p align="RIGHT" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;">Samuel Beckett,<i> Aspen 5&6,</i> Section 3</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;">When creating <i>Slow angle walk (Beckett walk)</i> in 1968, Bruce Nauman was a young and as yet far from successful American artist pioneering the use of video - or was he just bored in his studio, pondering the futility of creating anything in an empty, white space? The feeling of inevitable failure he found mirrored in Samuel Beckett's <b>Watt</b>. For his video he therefore chose to adopt the demeanour of some of Beckett's characters: he did not bend his knees, but held his trunk forward at a right angle, while retracing his steps repeatedly. The viewer's perspective is also affected, as the camera was placed on its side. Nauman performs his walk within the confines of the square field which the static camera shows us.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;">Having written Film in 1963, Beckett himself created a work for a television camera in 1982, <i>Quad</i>: four actors shuffle in a choreographed manner around a square in an empty room, which they enter and leave through a curtain serving as the background.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;">Although Nauman (born 1941) belongs to a younger generation and different (American) culture from Beckett (born 1906), their engagement with each other's media and motifs could be called reciprocal inspiration. The question pursued here, however, is not so much whether Beckett knew of Nauman's work on him and was inspired by it, but what such a complicated relationship between literature and the visual arts can tell us. Some theoretical aspects will thus be presented briefly towards the end.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;">Nauman is innovative within the context of visual art by using a relatively new technique, video. That <b>Watt</b>inspired him is clear, but he was also very probably affected by plays such as<b> Endgame</b> and <b>Happy Days</b>, in which the characters' physical disabilities give expression to a human inability to act. The writer is apparently Nauman's source of inspiration in the area of imagery or motif.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;">In terms of medium, Beckett, on the other hand, used the opportunities presented to him in<i> Quad</i> for others to film his work, which remains largely stage-based, as is shown by his having a curtain and using actors in identical clothing. Therefore, Beckett, who knew a great deal about visual art, does not seem to have changed his genre fully. He did not actually create a work, which could only be understood with reference to the History of Art. Television was, moreover, a medium which was already well known to artists. For example, Gerry Schum's <i>Television Gallery</i> was broadcast in the Netherlands in 1971.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;">During <b>documenta X</b>, 1997, Beckett's <i>Quad</i> was, however, shown within a visual-art context (and that of Ireland, as the monitor stood opposite James Coleman's slide projection entitled<i> Connemara Landscape</i>). This would indicate that, at least retrospectively, it can be interpreted as a film or video work or a performance recorded in such a way. The borders between the genres seem to have shifted somewhat further for the different context and starting point (on Beckett's part and that of the visitor to the <b>documenta</b>expecting visual art) almost not to be noticed any more. Is the distinction between the genres then obsolete? Has it any importance for an artist's choice of strategy?</span></p><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="7" style="text-align: justify;"><tbody><tr><td><div align="center"><img src="http://www.recirca.com/illus/c104/samuel-beckett.jpg" width="300" height="533" /></div></td></tr><tr><td><p align="center"><span class="imagecaption" style=" line-height: 4mm; font-weight: lighter; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:3mm;color:#17100B;">Samuel Beckett: Quadrat I, 1981, stills;<br />courtesy Editions de Minuit/Südwestrundfunk</span></p><span class="imagecaption" style=" line-height: 4mm; font-weight: lighter; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:3mm;color:#17100B;"></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;">Beckett has approached an 'un-literary' silence in several works, be it the white noise-like waterfall of language in<b> Not I</b>, the solitary "sssh!" in<b> Film</b> or the shuffling in<i> Quad</i>. His later work came to rely less on 'literary' aspects and more on visual and even musical aspects like this shuffling and the <i>'percussion' </i>in<i>Quad I</i> (or <i>Quadrat 1&2</i>, since both versions were filmed in Germany and were titled in German for the Suddeutscher Rundfunk). <i>Quad II </i>is, in typical Beckettian manner, once again a reduction of means, an even sparser piece. The percussion and changes to the lighting were removed and the whole piece was transposed into black and white.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;">I would argue that the choreographic aspect of Nauman's <i>Slow angle walk (Beckett walk) </i>is even more appropriately 'Beckettian' than Beckett's own later piece. While the actors in <i>Quad </i>shuffle around a focal point - although this seems to be shunned in<i> Quad II</i> - there is still a stabilising centre. Nauman's movements are more peripheral and seemingly random, thereby not affirming a spatial anchor, while still retaining the repetitive aspect. Could this distrust of a centre be a result of the visual artist's even greater reliance on space, even in comparison with the stage-aware playwright, who nevertheless works from a textual background?</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;">Nauman has continued to work on the darker side of life. His videos show falling clowns, spinning heads screaming "Anthro/socio" (reminiscent of<b> Not I</b>) and stylised violence in a domestic setting (Violent incident, 1986), which can easily be compared to Lucky and Pozzo's exchanges in<b> Waiting for Godot. </b>Nauman's drawings and titles often include wordplay like the anagram <i>DEATH HATED, HATED DEATH, 1974.</i> He thus still shows a clear interest not only in 'Beckett's' subject matter, but also in language itself. He makes use of that aspect of a visual artist's practice, which can be called literary, while reducing the 'visual' often to a minimum, relying for example only on very simply and even crudely sketched outlines in his drawings. These incidentally resemble Beckett's doodles on manuscripts, especially <b>Watt</b>, where there are words in capital letters, arranged in squares together with their anagrams.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;">The noise of Nauman's Anthro/socio would also indicate a move away from a distinctly visual preoccupation. It is hardly bearable for the visitor and plays as much on the nerves of the viewer as Beckett stated <b>Not I</b> should function. Even in his early work, Nauman employed 'musical' means - interestingly combined with a linguistic interest. In Violin tuned <i>D.E.A.D.</i>, he plays the violin, without his head being visible, in the black-and-white video. What he plays is the cacophony of the notes d, e, a and d played in succession. Only the title will tell the viewer why he or she is subjected to such 'musical torture'. Silence itself was the topic when Nauman created a <i>Concrete tape recorder piece</i> in 1968. He made sure that the tape was on a loop and thus playable if plugged in. But nothing would be heard and not much - apart from a concrete cube and cable with plug - can be seen. This seems to be a final tape, Nauman's not <b>Krapp's Last Tape.</b></span></p><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="7" style="text-align: justify;"><tbody><tr><td><div align="center"><img src="http://www.recirca.com/illus/c104/bruce-nauman.jpg" width="380" height="282" /></div></td></tr><tr><td><div align="center"><span class="imagecaption" style=" line-height: 4mm; font-weight: lighter; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:3mm;color:#17100B;">Bruce Nauman: Concrete Tape Recorder Piece,1968, concrete, tape recorder, tape, 30.5 x 61 x 61 cm; photo A. Burger, Zurich; courtesy Flick Collection</span></div><span class="imagecaption" style=" line-height: 4mm; font-weight: lighter; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:3mm;color:#17100B;"></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;">There really are remarkable coincidences in Beckett's and Nauman's preoccupations. Even that reluctant symbol of hope, the tree in<b> Waiting for Godot,</b> appears in Nauman's work - but once again with a telling difference: <i>Tree standing on three shoulder points</i>, 1967, appears to be related to that famous tree from Beckett's play, in fact so much so that the appearance of anthropomorphic shapes at its base (shoulder points) would almost amount to locating God(ot) in this tree as much as the single leaf appearing in the play does.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;">While Beckett and Nauman do share a vaguely existentialist outlook on life, the conclusion one is to draw is that the notion of futility and exhaustion is in the first instance a reflection on the condition of their own art form, i.e., the genre each has departed from in their career. It seems that, when trying to show failure, exhaustion and the impossibility of being affirmingly creative, this would first relate to the means of an art form with which one has occupied oneself for a long time. The last straw as it were, the ultimate possibility (despite all impossibilities) of creating something is then provided by another art form. This appears to be fresher and to include newly available tools.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;">The point at which Beckett's and Nauman's practices converge is performance - a term used in visual art and music (one could think of John Cage's work on silence, 4'33'', 1952), as well as the theatre. While composers and playwrights have always had performance at their disposal as a matter of course, in the History of Art, 'theatrical' and 'literal', as well as, of course, 'literary' approaches were shunned in the middle of the twentieth century by the then prevailing high-Modernist approach. Subsequently, Nauman and other artists in the 1960s rebelled against having to remain within the close confines of what modernist artistic practice was made out to be. The energy which the visual artist's new (and by definition interdisciplinary) performance genre generated for all arts at the time seems to have informed the playwright's performance in turn.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;">Furthermore, in criticism - to put this very briefly - the focus has moved from those preoccupations in the 1960s to what was called the 'linguistic turn' in the 1970s. Here, the focus was the structures of signifiers in any context. Everything, not just language in a more limited sense, was termed a text and thus differences between the genres appeared to be less important. Anything within culture could be 'read' and - later again - deconstructed, in order to expose 'subtexts', etc. From this historical point of view alone it appears that Art Historians would be well advised to be familiar with approaches to texts, approaches still largely at home in and developed by literary scholars.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;">Recently (in the 1990s), a "performative turn"<sup class="footnote" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; line-height: 4mm; ">2</sup> has modified and complemented earlier findings. This change in research subjects and procedures seems to me to echo what has been found here: a turn towards performative strategies in Beckett's and Nauman's works, as well as an interest in silence, a forfeiting of the nicely finished product. A tension can be observed between textuality in literary and visual genres and this performative drive. Materiality and mediality, play and spectacle, as well as nonart phenomena like rituals, dances, games, etc., have entered the centre of attention in cultural terms. This again requires new kinds of interdisciplinary co-operation. Theatre studies and anthropology seem to take a lead, although the History of Art could very well claim expertise, especially when looking at the recently published first two volumes of Aby Warburg's collected writings (he died in 1928). For the nonwestern world a performative sense of identity has long been noticed. Regarding this performative turn, European and North American culture appear to have joined the rest of the world - and this not only in Warburg's estimate, but widely acknowledged. (Coincidentally, Ireland could be at the forefront in taking account of this performative nature of culture, as monumental artworks have traditionally been of lesser importance than Gaelic games, wakes, music sessions and storytelling.)</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;">From the perspective outlined, interdisciplinary approaches are more central than their still often-marginal position in criticism would lead one to believe; they are to be included in a genre's history as something which is necessitated by the state of affairs within that genre. While the historic distinctions between the arts have enabled artists to continue to create, they do not present barriers which interpreters should not dare to cross. Their existence as historical givens may be a point of contention so strong that rebelling against it can keep even the most exhausted, misanthropic and pessimistic artist producing. The borders between the arts are thus all-important and simultaneously null and void.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;">Dr.<b> Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes</b> is Government of Ireland Post-doctoral Fellow in History of Art at University College, Dublin, and author/curator of a forthcoming book/exhibition on 'Joyce in Art' at the RHA, Dublin.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="footnote" style=" line-height: 4mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:3mm;">Some valuable work has been done on the Beckett/Nauman relationship, most notably Beate Kleinert-Engel's MA thesis, University of Cologne, 1993, unpublished. An excellent exhibition (with a comprehensive catalogue) was shown in Vienna in 2000, but unfortunately not in Ireland. Michael Glasmeier, Christine Hoffmann et al. (eds.), <b>Samuel Beckett Bruce Nauman</b>, Exhib. Cat., Kunsthalle Wien, 4th February - 30th April 2000, Vienna 2000. The present author was one of the selectors of the interdisciplinary<i> PictureBook</i> project initiated by the Arts Office and Public Library Service of Carlow County Council. This text grew out of her choice of Beckett's Quad for that project.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;"><sup class="superscript" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 3mm; font-style: normal; line-height: 3mm; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: super; ">1</sup><span class="footnote" style=" line-height: 4mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:3mm;">The format of the title is borrowed from Beckett's own essay on Dante .. Bruno ... Vico . Joyce in: <b>Our Exagmination round his Factification of Work in Progress</b>, London 1929.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="maintext" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 6mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:4mm;"><span class="superscript" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 3mm; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: super; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:3mm;"><sup>2</sup></span><span class="footnote" style=" line-height: 4mm; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:3mm;">See, e.g., Erika Fischer-Lichte, <i>Vom "Text" zur "Performance": Der "Performative Turn" in den Kulturwissenschaften,</i> <b>Kunstforum International</b>, Vol. 152, 2000, pp. 61-63</span></span></p></div></span>sozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770493715287675.post-80208514847793466472008-11-04T00:26:00.000-08:002008-11-04T12:31:02.205-08:00fizzles<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl_9bc1VizHu_19siig-krTT_pbi5r15etmLFb5O6a4sYgK6CA19IDNG7vfO5veeYMZIxQyWy8u6zHvCrMrGJvbG4ZJzMZi9y-nB9HkF5KwajlaAjnxsA9YFfFsP9v2K3siBHACYVXtWI/s1600-h/09a.jpg"><img style="text-align: justify;display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 232px; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl_9bc1VizHu_19siig-krTT_pbi5r15etmLFb5O6a4sYgK6CA19IDNG7vfO5veeYMZIxQyWy8u6zHvCrMrGJvbG4ZJzMZi9y-nB9HkF5KwajlaAjnxsA9YFfFsP9v2K3siBHACYVXtWI/s400/09a.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264901997135670674" /></a><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><img style="text-align: justify;display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFcPX01vm68SaGSuHmAiKR8zszHMiQzXc0K2piw0Djh0PoNOPIXKtOUoAjfWFbQJuvvk2XBKv0tIKweShSLpYZPriiCRZLGlzsVx2039Ps-ita45qzBRbzOkXbbQWlCuQapjX5DiLvPKo/s400/9.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264901760849329250" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 18px; font-family:Palatino;"><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">http://www.joshuahellerrarebooks.com/catalogues/32/9.html<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(Jasper Johns) </span></b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Foirades/Fizzles. </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">[Texts in French and English.] Five prose fragments [”Foirades”] by Samuel Beckett, selected from his </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Pour finir encore et autre foirades</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">. Original prints by Jasper Johns. Petersburg Press S.A. London. 1976. 13.5” x 10.5”. 57 pages [on double leaves]. 13” x 10”. Twenty-six lift ground aquatints (most with etching, soft ground etching, drypoint, screenprint and/or photogravure); five etchings (some with soft ground etching and/or drypoint); one soft ground etching and one aquatint. Color lithographs for endpapers and box lining on Richard de Bas Auvergne paper. Text pages handprinted at the Atelier Crommelynck, Paris, on handmade Richard de Bas Auvergne paper watermarked with the initials of Beckett and the signature of Johns. In a beige linen-covered solander box, with purple silk tassle. With an internal case lining of color lithographs by Jasper Johns. With original interleaving tissues. One in an edition of 250 copies. Signed by both Beckett and Johns. There are also 30 artist’s proofs and 20 “hors-commerce.” </span></span><br /></div></span></b></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 18px;font-family:Palatino;"><img style="text-align: justify;display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; cursor: pointer; width: 218px; height: 300px; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5o5E5zOIXN91w_VRgrX5xXfw8YPu0dEDKgZR8dqDH7CvFaLh_QX_40hokhdcWsf6wfxsRt3ngramo3bg16miSBxn30aKJTv_1znwOwzVvfSZN8ywnaz4f59eQXC4PfdbU9CGjfTmXUMc/s400/09b.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264901924380227218" /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 18px;font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 18px;font-family:Palatino;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: normal; font-family:Times;"><div id="content" style="margin-left: 128px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><div class="wrapper" style="margin-bottom: 40px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><div class="book_wide" style="margin-bottom: 45px; margin-right: 20px; margin-left: auto; clear: none; width: 552px; "><p style="text-align: justify;line-height: 140%; font-family:Palatino, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">“Two of the most enigmatic artists of our time, Samuel Beckett and Jasper Johns, collaborated on this complex yet elegant artist’s book. Originally written in French ..., the brooding essays were rewritten in English by Beckett for this project. Nevertheless, Johns decided to include both texts that expanded his own involvement to thirty-three etchings and aquatints plus color lithograph endpapers. Johns’s imagery is based on a major four-panel painting, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Untitled </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(1972), along with his classic imagery related to numbers and body parts. This cerebral volume that provokes more questions than it answers is considered one of the greatest artists’ books of the second half of the twentieth century.” -</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Artists’ Books in the Modern Era 1870-2000, The Reva and David Logan Collection of Illustrated Books, </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">p. 254-5. “The prose pieces of Beckett in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Fizzles </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">were mostly written in French in the 1960s and early 1970s, some of them for Jerome Linton’s periodical </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Minuit</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">. Beckett’s links with Linton went back to 1951, when the Editions de Minuit published </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Molloy </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Malone Meurt</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">. The author described his method of producing </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Fizzles </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">as ‘breaking wind quietly, hissing, spluttering; a failure or fiasco.” - </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">From Manet to Hockney, Modern Artists’ Illustrated Books</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, p. 354. Considered one of the great artists’ books of the latter half of 20th Century, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Fizzles </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">developed an international reputation for its complexity. It was included in the important Museum of Modern Art exhibition, </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">A Century of Artists’ Books </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(1995). Copies are in major institutions worldwide.</span></p></div></div></div><div id="footer" style="clear: left; padding-bottom: 25px; "><hr size="1" noshade="" style="text-align: justify;"><div><p face="Palatino, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif" style="margin-left: 18px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 18px; line-height: 140%; "></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Joshua Heller Rare Books, Inc. </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">PO Box 39114, Washington DC 20016-9114 USA.</span></b></span><br /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Joshua & Phyllis Heller<br /></div></span><p></p></div></div></span></span></div>sozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770493715287675.post-64893299470570540342008-11-04T00:14:00.000-08:002008-11-04T13:23:22.037-08:00Beckett and Company PARTICIPANTS<p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; text-align: center; font: 8.5px Tahoma"><b></b></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; ">Ondrea E. Ackerman </span><br /></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;">(Columbia University, New York)<br /></div></b><p></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; ">‘Beckett’s “Relentless Cycle of Configurations”: Nothingness and </span><br /></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;">the Iterative Moment’<br /></div></b><p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Self-proclaimed as ‘America’s finest news source’, The Onion is a New York-based satirical newspaper that marked the centennial of the birth of Samuel Beckett with an article headed, ‘Scholars Discover 23 Blank Pages That May As Well Be Lost Samuel Beckett Play.’ With its ‘bare-bones structure and bleak repetition of what can only be described as “nothingness,”‘ these twenty-three ‘white, uniform, non-ruled pages, which […] were left unbound, unmarked and untouched,’ according to the article’s lead authority, Trinity College’s fictional Professor Fintan O’Donoghue, attest to Beckett’s ‘trademark style of “paring down” to really get at the core of what he was trying to not say.’ Alluding to Beckett’s own rare published statement on art (‘There is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, together with the obligation to express’), this Onion article highlights Beckett’s shift in genre from the novel to the theatre, which he himself explains in a conversation with Mel Gussow as a preference for ‘the limitations of theatre as compared to the non-limitations of prose. I turned to theatre,’ Beckett explains, ‘as relief – from the blackness of prose. After fiction, “theatre was the light.”‘ </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">This paper will begin with the literal ‘blackness of prose’, the ink on the page, tracing the thematization of nothingness in the trilogy from Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable, through to Beckett’s later plays where that nothingness re-emerges, not as a negation through language, but instead through the specific, task-oriented actions infinitely repeated in the real time of the stage. From Murphy’s rocking and Molloy’s sucking stones to the paced strip of Footfalls, the rocking of Rockaby, and the walking and dredging of Quad I and II, these systematic structures that Beckett constructs via the precision of the printed page come into conflict with the indeterminacy of performance. Forming a dialectic of control and lack of control, Beckett’s rigid structures - what Mary Bryden calls ‘the relentless cycles of configurations’ – provoke an inevitability of chance that undermines both the static literary text and the temporal performative process to achieve, in effect, the ‘blank page’ proposed in jest by The Onion. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><b></b><br /></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><b></b><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Dr Steven Barfield </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">(University of Westminster, London)<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘“All the dead voices”: Beckett and Bruce Nauman’s Raw Materials (2004—2005)’</span></span></b></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Samuel Beckett has been an important inspiration for Bruce Nauman, as attested to by familiar works that show deliberate correspondences (such as Slow Angle Walk [Beckett Walk ] (1968)). The relationship has also been explored by critics such as Steven Connor (2000) and was the subject of a significant 2000 exhibition, Beckett/ Nauman, that was held in Vienna. In particular, the critical relationship between Beckett and Nauman has been analysed through their shared interests in the use of the body, of clowns/ tramps, and the often unsettling humour of repetition in both their works (in particular where repetition in Nauman’s works of everyday remarks and objects becomes frightening and/or disorientating for the spectator).</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Rather than exploring more obvious or general affinities between their whole oeuvres, I wish to focus on just how the recent sound installation Raw Materials exhibited at Tate Modern in 2005 can be read in terms of Beckettian themes. Raw Materials was a series of repurposed fragments of voices and words from Nauman’s previous works in a large-scale installation (‘an aural collage’) for the Turbine Hall, that was also affected by the listener’s own movement through the space and included found sound from the visitor’s voices. Among the themes in the installation which I will demonstrate and discuss are</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 14.2px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">The relationship between the subject and the polyphony of fragment voices in the world and the exteriority of language as a prominent figure in many Beckett texts (such as Waiting for Godot and The Unnamable). </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 14.2px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">The importance of self-quotation/ citation to both artists in their later works. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 14.2px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">The relationship between the individual fragments of voices and the overall sense of a unifying sound as possible in the exhibition and what this might say about Beckett and Nauman in terms of their generally different approach to mourning and melancholia between the subject and the world, and to repletion and absence in works of art.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><b></b><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Santiago Borja</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">with Javier Bassas Vila, Gabriela García Hubard, and Joana Masó<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Our project consists in the projection of Santiago Borja’s film Said and Done, the reading of a text that will analyse this video-piece related to Samuel Beckett’s work, especially with the concept of suspension, and to Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze’s thought of the visible, in order to open a round-table where the subjects for discussion will be: the possibilities and/or consequences of the ‘epochetique perspective’ and the ‘ephectic violence’ concerning visual arts, literature, philosophy, and politics. For this purpose we intend to invite three or four scholars to nourish the discussion. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Said and Done (a 5-minute video-piece)</span></span></b></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">This video is based on the polemic photograph of scholar Edward Said throwing a stone in Lebanon in July 2000. Set against a blue-screen background (as used in commercial cinema) a man is in the very moment of throwing a stone. He painfully tries to stay in the same position, as if motion has been suspended and image-time has gone through another axis. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Being a false still-image, all the tension is given by the physical effort of keeping this awkward position, plus the noise produced by its own heartbeats and disgruntled respirations. In this video-piece there is a serious attempt to explore the possibilities of isolation and neutrality in artistic imagery, as if one could conceive a non-narrative image. As Deleuze wrote in Francis Bacon, ‘Isoler est donc le moyen le plus simple, nécessaire quoique non suffisant, pour rompre avec la représentation, passer la narration, empêcher l’illustration, libérer la figure: s’en tenir au fait’</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 11px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘From Now Say To Be Missaid’</span></span></b></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 14.2px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">On dirait cette fois qu’une image, telle qu’elle se tient dans le vide hors espace, mais aussi à l’écart des mots, des histories et des souvenirs, emmagasine une fantastique énergie potentielle qu’elle fait détoner en se dissipant. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 14.2px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Gilles Deleuze, ‘L’épuisé’</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">A gesture is frozen in suspension. The gesture of throwing a stone is a quotation suspended within a blue-screen background, prompting a figure in tension. A ‘muscular dialogue generated by gesture’ – something which Beckett stressed in his lectures on Molière – and the possibility of isolating the figure involve an interaction between Santiago Borja’s video piece Said and Done and Samuel Beckett’s oeuvre. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Next to the darkness that suspends Beckett’s mouth and head – reminiscent of Not I and That Time –a blue-screen, that is normally used as a film’s background in order to be substituted later by an actualised landscape, is used to explore the possibilities of des-contextualization or neutralization of an image in Said and Done. Through different paths, both suspensions point towards the ephectic attitude announced by the Unnamable and Derrida’s epochè, adjourning or postponing the assumption of position. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Ephecticism means suspension, and more explicitly suspension of judgement, decision, conclusion, or intentionality when the Beckettian ‘character’ asks: ‘Can one be ephectic otherwise than unawares?’ Such a question, answered with the suspended ‘I don’t know’, focuses on the ironic complexities of an ephectic attitude being either intentional or unintentional. In Memoirs of the Blind, Derrida relates the sceptical epochè , which also means interruption or cessation of judgement, to the ‘skepticism’ concerning vision (from the Greek verb skopeo, ‘to gaze’). Therefore, farther from fixing a thesis or a position, the image, like the judgement, ‘depends on the hypothesis’.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Under the light of this suspension, the title Said and Done evokes a sentence, in more than the everyday sense, appending word, interpretation and fact, where the participles ‘said’ and ‘done’ suggest that the epochè or the ephectic attitude might permeate not only the present but also the past or the finished action. Nevertheless, Beckett’s accomplishment of the image has also been interpreted as a movement exhausting its possibilities in ‘L’épuisé’. Following Deleuze, does Beckett’s and Borja’s images detonate ‘a fantastic potential energy […] while being dissipated’? Do these images become ‘like a possible event’ no longer concerned by the realization or the accomplishment?</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Bearing in mind the problematic of ‘suspension’ and the impossible achievement in Beckett’s work, the violence of the gesture showed in the video-piece is then visualised in what we could call an ‘epochetique perspective’. What are the possible effects of this perspective vis à vis the image and even the judgement that Said and Done stages through a quotation of the political context? What quotes and precipitates this ‘ephectic violence’ on an opened/opening blue-screen?</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">C.CRED</span></span></b></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Beckett Borderwords</span></span></b></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Beckett Borderwords is a performance by the artist collective C.CRED based on the novel Molloy, the first part of Samuel Beckett’s extraordinary trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable). Taking each of the novel’s pages, spreading them out on a 3m x 2m ‘plane’, C.CRED generates a short, incoherent and often non-syntactical text by using ‘trans-textural lines’, that is, simple line drawings (diagonals cutting and breaking the progression of the text, minimal shapes and diagrams, etc.) superimposed upon the original text. The words the lines transect are extracted from the novel to form the basis of the re-written script that is then published in the form of basic instructions, easily staged by anyone in any site or environment.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">For the Beckett and Company conference, C.CRED has put together a new version of the Beckett Borderwords piece. This version involved a large number of performers walking around the building hosting the conference, reading lines from the re-written script thus intervening into the texture and nature of the space itself as well as the event of the conference. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Bearing in mind that Beckett’s writing itself flickers, makes obscure and traces the possibility of animating words as speech issuing from a body, our attempt at infusing these words with an excess that refuses to submit to signification, a kind of peculiar embodiment refusing to give in to the totalising logic of a transmission of original meaning, we hope produces somewhat an intensification of what is already a particular and peculiar quality in Beckett’s work – its affective register; its minor, exilic qualities; its stuttering and stammering – a quality as frail as it is powerful; a borderline that exiles us from all possible meaning at the same time as it produces a germinal state where words link, mutate, and radicalize outside of their original narrative. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">(C.CRED, from flyer produced in conjunction to the performance of Beckett Borderwords at Camberwell Arts Festival, 2006)</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Considering the original novel was written in two chapters, each with a separate main character – Molloy, who is lost, wondering around aimlessly, and Moran, the private detective hired to find him – Beckett Borderwords involves two actors reading out this rewritten and staged version of the novel. Standing next to one another, the two actors deliver the lines of each character as two simultaneous monologues, thus exploring the sound of voice and the power of words through the impossibility of a transmission of original meaning and a refusal to submit to its totalising logic. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Thinking of Beckett’s novel as a portrait of the paradoxical nature of human language as both liberating and imprisoning; as both a vehicle for and a limitation upon reasoning; as simultaneously a link and a gap between experience and expression, we wanted to amplify these sub-currents of Beckett’s work ad absurdum by making each character’s words step out into the other’s as well as by foregrounding the immediately affective register of Beckett’s language (its minor, exilic qualities; it’s stuttering and stammering). Bearing in mind that Beckett’s writing itself flickers, makes obscure and traces the possibility of animating words as speech issuing from a body, our attempt at infusing these words with an excess that refuses to submit to signification we hope produces somewhat an intensification of what is already a particular and peculiar quality in Beckett’s work, a quality as frail as it is powerful; a borderline that exiles us from all possible meaning at the same time as it produces a germinal state where words link, mutate, and radicalize outside of their original narrative. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Cristina Cano Vara </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">(Universidad Autonoma de Madrid)<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘“Concomitant Relationship”: </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Javier Aguirre adapts Beckett’s Company <br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">for the film Voz (Voice)’<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">This paper will explain how the Spanish director Javier Aguirre established – in his own words – a ‘concomitant relationship’ with Beckett when making the novel Company into a feature film. Voz was completed in 1999 and had its premiere at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid in 2000. It was the first film version of Company, and consisted of one fixed shot lasting about eighty minutes; at also featured one of Spain’s greatest living actors, Fernando Fernán Gómez. According to Aguirre, he chose Beckett’s Company because in its ideas related to his main artistic interests, namely time and space. In this sense, I will analyse to what an extent the director’s artistic concerns and Beckett’s own poetics seem to have merged in Voz. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Aguirre usually works for the commercial cinema and television in order to make money, thus allowing him to do other more interesting and risky projects, some of which are named ‘Anti-cinema’ by the director himself. The fact that the novel and the film have different titles is due to the director’s assumption that his film is not a standard adaptation of a literary work. As in music, the director describes Beckett’s text as an appoggiatura that served his goal of experimenting with time and space as he had done in previous works. However, as the critic José Henriquez suggests, the image of Voz would have been hardly conceived without bearing Beckett’s text in mind. Aguirre’s film was shown in Madrid, Barcelona, and some other Spanish cities, but its distribution was and still is very difficult and reduced. It is a film which apparently breaks with all the cinematographic conventions, as Beckett once did in the theatre. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><b></b><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Dr Richard Cope </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">(South Bank University, London)<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘Is the failure to express its expression?: Manuel Ocampo and Samuel Beckett’s </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">“Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit”’<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">What does it mean for an artist to fail ‘as no other dare fail’? While Beckett’s prose and drama has become a source of inspiration for artists who aim to practice and to understand various forms of artistic failure, it is his ‘Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit’ (1949) in particular that theorises the path to failure by making a case for the impossibility of success, the impossibility of expression. Since 1965, ‘Three Dialogues’ has become something of a crutch [crux???] for Beckett scholars, but what of its possible influence on the arts? Many artists echo or engage with Beckettian themes and are, as a result, considered to be engaging with the notion of an ‘aesthetics of failure’, but are they taking the idea of failure to the same extreme as expressed in ‘Three Dialogues’? Are these artists failing ‘as no other dare fail’ or are they merely involved in the continuing creation of an art whose history is ‘the history of its attempts to escape from this sense of failure’?</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">This paper will explore the work of the contemporary painter Manuel Ocampo through a reading of ‘Three Dialogues’ in order to highlight and compare the differences between a general ‘aesthetics of failure’ and the particular problems raised in ‘Three Dialogues’. By reading Ocampo’s work beside the ideas within (and the idea of) ‘Three Dialogues’, I shall argue that, more than merely engaging with an ‘aesthetics of failure’, Ocampo reflects the paradox of ‘Three Dialogues’ in an exploration of the possibility or impossibility of an ‘aesthetics of failure’ and the problems inherent within these. By highlighting the extremity and the absurdity of the argument in ‘Three Dialogues’ through the work of Ocampo, and in the process exploring the implications this has on aesthetics, it may be possible to understand the difference between those who merely fail and those who fail ‘as no other dare fail’.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Dr David Cunningham </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">(University of Westminster, London)<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘Beckett as Literalist: </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Minimalism across the Arts’<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">The description of Beckett’s work – particularly the later writings – as minimalist is a commonplace one, and, critically, serves to open up a network of potential relations with other work broadly contemporaneous with his writings. One thinks, most obviously, in this regard, of the use of the term ‘Minimalism’ to denote particular forms and practices within post-war music and the visual arts. And, in fact, the connection of such work to Beckett’s is not without some historical justification. Rosalind Krauss, for example, notes Beckett’s ‘veneration’ by those visual artists identified as Minimalist, during the 1960s, locating in their ‘object-world’ the ‘correlative’ of Beckett’s characteristic modes of ‘the deadpan, the fixed stare, the uninflected repetitious speech’.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">This paper seeks to develop and extend such claims in relation to the well known description of minimalism as a literalist art in Michael Fried’s 1967 critical essay ‘Art and Objecthood’; an attack on the work of a certain generation of artists – including Frank Stella, Carl Andre, Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Dan Flavin, and Sol Le Witt – which nonetheless provided many of the terms that were to be embraced by these artists and their supporters. In an earlier essay from 1966 Fried argued that ‘[n]o single issue has been as continuously fundamental to the development of modernist painting as the need to acknowledge the literal character of the picture-support’. Yet it is precisely this registering of the literal that ultimately becomes the threat to modernism’s own art status, insofar as such literalism becomes indistinguishable from what Fried calls mere ‘objecthood’ as ‘the condition of non-art’. Once art’s ‘literal character’ is immanently registered by the work, the literal object becomes readable as ‘art’, in a way that is, simultaneously, ‘antithetical to art’ itself. ‘Minimal works’, Fried quotes Greenberg, ‘are readable as art, as almost anything is today – including a door, a table, or a blank sheet of paper’. Art’s reduction to its literal form risks its becoming indistinguishable from the negation of art itself – that is, the paradoxical negation of art as art.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Focusing in particular on the radio plays and on the late television pieces Quad and Ghost Trio, this paper will argue that this problem of the literal finds some parallel in the notorious difficulties associated with critical reading of Beckett. This is less about a similar rhetoric of the literal to be found in Minimalism – exemplified by, for instance, Stella’s ‘what you see is what you see’ – and in, say, Beckett’s famous renunciation of symbolism in the Addenda to Watt, than it is about what seems most literalist in the development of Beckett’s own forms. How does one ‘interpret’ what Bersani and Dutoit call the (paradoxical) ‘stupefyingly literal allegories’ of Beckett’s late works? What does it mean to receive such works as works of art?</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Dr Garin Dowd [see Balázs Kicsiny]</span></span></b></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Dr Nikolai Duffy </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">(Goldsmiths, University of London)<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span style="letter-spacing: -0.2px"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘The Anonymous Company of Samuel Beckett’</span></span></b></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Focussed around parallel discussions of ‘Still’ and ‘Neither’, this paper will consider the concepts of anatomy, anonymity, and antihumanism in Beckett and the ways in which these intervene critically in contemporary literary-philosophical debates surrounding the relation between aesthetics and politics. Rather than rehearsing discussions of humanism and depersonalisation in Beckett, however, this paper seeks to address the ways in which anonymity functions for Beckett as a separate discursive field that resituates the parameters of the speaking being outside notions of negation or affirmation. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">In order to lay the contextual groundwork for this discussion, brief reference will be made to Adorno’s and Blanchot’s respective readings of destitution and neutrality in Beckett before these figures are situated in differential relation to Jacques Rancière’s more recent engagements with the interface between literature, indifference, and democracy. Key to this argument will be the ways in which Beckett’s elaboration of literary anonymity in ‘Still’ and ‘Neither’ can be seen to both reflect and inflect the very conditions of possibility of the political subject in contemporary philosophy. As Rancière reflectively comments in interview, ‘humans are political animals because they are literary animals’ in the sense that, firstly, humans ‘have the power to put into circulation more words, “useless” and unnecessary words, words that exceed the function of rigid designation’; and secondly, ‘because this fundamental ability to proliferate words is unceasingly contested by those who claim to “speak correctly” – that is, by the masters of designation and clarification.’ </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Returning to Beckett’s texts in light of this argument it will be suggested that, at least on one level, part of the continued force of Beckett’s writing rests with the ways in which his ambivalent handling of anonymity not only typifies but can also be brought to bear critically on contemporary attempts to think the relation between words and bodies, literature and politics, being and company. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Sozita Goudouna </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">(Royal Holloway, University of London)<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘Theatricality and the Look of Non-Art </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">in Beckett’s Breath’ <br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">During the twentieth century, the very foundations of theatre were turned upside-down, as were those of the visual arts. The mid-1960s was a period of significant activity, debate, and ultimately crisis in the art world, as curators and critics tried to come to terms with recent developments in the visual arts. This expanding site of practice marked a time of intense controversy about the nature of modernism. The aim of the modernist work was to explore its medium, whilst artists seemed to defy conventional formal categorizations. Late modernist critical discourse, in this context, is narrowed down to the dominant critical tendency in the New York art scene of the 1960s, which commended on Abstract Expressionism. However, I would like to explore some ramifications that go well beyond the confines of the post-war American art world.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">This critical edifice built up around methods of perceiving and conceptualising the art work in the visual arts and established a set of basic terms for understanding key issues in high modernism: the relationship between work and beholder, the nature of pictorial and sculptural abstraction, temporality and the role of theatricality in the visual arts. At the same time, post-war European and American sculptors became interested both in theatre, as a durational encounter and in the extended experience of time, which seemed part of the conventions of the stage, theatricality was the term that was used to describe this phenomenon. Theatricality turned into a polemical term in the criticism of modern sculpture, as in the essay ‘Art and Objecthood’ by the formalist art theorist Michael Fried. His polemic was directed not against the theatre per se, but against certain types of painting and sculpture, ‘the new art of minimalism’ which he labeled ‘theatrical’, as regards the terms of its appeal to the viewer. Fried characterized the inclusion of the viewer as ‘presence’. Presence, suggested the bodily impact of the artwork, an experience akin to encountering another person, for Greenberg ‘presence’ was the ‘look of non-art.’ </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">This paper charts a historical parallel between Fried’s writing in 1967 of Art and Objecthood and Beckett’s piece Breath, as a representative piece of minimalism in the theatre (the shortest stage piece ever written and staged), written two years later (1969), in an attempt to formulate a basic framework for thinking about the intersection of critical discourses on theatricality in the visual arts and the theatre, specifically about the notion of anti-theatricalism in the theatre and the modernist anti-theatrical impulse in the visual arts. The significatory modes that operate in Breath may be understood in terms of this intersection in a process of reduction, given that it consists solely of stage directions, no literary text and total absence of plot, action, dialogue, and character, hence visual and acoustic (non-textual) processes of signification. In Breath Beckett comes perhaps as close as a practicing dramatist can to defining the boundaries between a theatrical performance and a purely visual representation. Breath is not performed it is displayed, it internalizes the critique of representational processes, yet it cannot resist the allure of the look of non-art. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Jorge Gutiérrez Burgueño </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">(Universidad Autonoma de Madrid)<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘Grammatical Bodies: A Reading of Physicality in the Beckettian Stage and Contemporary Plastic Aesthetics’</span></span></b></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Artistic avant-garde movements have transformed our traditional view of the body. In the theatre, the body was previously a mediator, and in art the body was considered to be a container of meaning, often a very specific meaning in the case of figures represented in painting. In contemporary art, however, bodies have turned into transmitters of sense and meaning by themselves. As the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty pointed out in his work The Primacy of Perception:</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 14.2px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">It is not to the physical object that the body may be compared, but rather to the work of art. Our body is not in space like things; it inhabits or haunts space. It applies itself to space like a hand to an instrument, and when we wish to move about we do not move the body as we move and object. We transport it without instruments as if by magic, since it is ours and because through it we have direct access to space. For us the body is much more than an instrument or a means; it is our expression in the world, the visible form of our intentions. Even our most secret affective movements, those most deeply tied to the humeral infrastructure, help to shape our perception of things.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">These ideas are present in the transformation of both art and theatre and it are probably sufficient grounds for the confirmation of a complementary aesthetic. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">It could be said that the body in art goes through an anatomical excision, changing from signifier to signified, ‘from being a machine to be[ing] a grammar’. In this transition we cease to have a merely descriptive anatomy were the body is like a catalogue and instead develop a more dynamic and functional notion. In this dynamic perspective of the body, the materials of study are not physical elements alone, but also the process of sensation, the actions and passions of the human being. These theoretical arguments are based on the research on the body in contemporary art by the fine-art professor Antonio Rabazas Romero. From my point of view his reasoning deserves to be applied to Beckett’s use of the human body on stage. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Samuel Beckett’s experiments with the human body on stage represent human actions and passions to the extent of actually transmitting them, constituting the processes of meaning through a dynamical perspective of the body by a constant emphasis on the physical gesture. It might be argued that Samuel Beckett is one of the first playwrights for whom the body is a theme; in Katherine M. Gray’s words, </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 14.2px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Beckett’s plays develop a human body that functions in multiple modes simultaneously. In some of these modes, the stage body works as a signifier; in others it works as DO-er that materializes the effects of its performative relationship with its environment, describing that relationship with its movements. In Beckett’s most extreme experiments, the body’s performative movement intensifies the focused energy of the actor’s material body to the point at which we become aware of the animated immateriality. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">According to Rabazas, the body in art goes through an anatomical excision, changing from signifier to signified, ‘from being a machine to be[ing] a grammar’. In this transition we cease to have a merely descriptive anatomy were the body is like a catalogue and instead develop a more dynamic and functional notion. In this dynamic perspective of the body, the materials of study are not physical elements alone, but also the process of sensation, the actions and passions of the human being. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Beckett’s experiments with the human body on stage represent human actions and passions to the extent of actually transmitting them, constituting the processes of meaning through a dynamical perspective of the body by a constant emphasis on the physical gesture.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><b></b><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Balázs Kicsiny & </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Dr Garin Dowd (Thames Valley University)<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘Time Unhinged: Experiments in Navigation and Chronometry in Samuel Beckett and Balázs Kicsiny’</span></span></b></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">In the form of a ‘dialogue’, sometimes with the sound turned down and the image turned up, Garin Dowd and Balázs Kicsiny will discuss the shadowy companions from Beckett’s oeuvre which occupy parts of the body of work (and parts of the ‘bodies’ which populate that work) created by the Hungarian artist. In this session, through a ‘voice-over’ in part dictated by a range of texts (contending for attention with Beckett in the artist’s work in some instances and clamouring ruinously in the ‘commentary’ here presented in others) by, inter alia, Shakespeare, Mallarmé, Deleuze, Derrida, and Proust, the interventions will convene on two related thematic strands: navigation and chronometry. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Kicsiny’s entire Venice show (at the 2005 Biennale, where he represented Hungary) was devoted to navigation, in an intersection of one of his abiding themes and the specific location of that maritime city. The work of Beckett comprises many wandering figures, often moribund, wheeling about a central point; likewise we encounter in the work of Beckett, as we do in Kicsiny, figures mired in the condition Beckett called ‘gression’. In Beckett navigation is often focalised as orientation or simply direction. There are occasions in Kicsiny’s recent work which bring it into insistent dialogue with the literary ‘rabble’ which Beckett conjures in the midst of vectors, signs, ciphers, courses, and paths. The onward, backward, and sometimes ‘worstward’ displacement of Beckett’s ‘delegates’ is of course both a spatial and a temporal matter. After all, it’s only human. It is striking, then, that both bodies of work under consideration in this session should feature superimposed instances of chronometry and navigation, as well as instruments pertaining to these activities. The session will be prone to the hiatus and ‘silence’ that must occur when company of this sort is devised.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Séamus Kealy </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">(University of Toronto)<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘Samuel Beckett and the Contemporary Arts: </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Organizing “18:Beckett”‘<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">As curator of the Blackwood Gallery, I am organizing an exhibition of contemporary art that responds to and has been influenced by Samuel Beckett’s oeuvre. 18:Beckett (November—December 2006) is an inter-disciplinary, multi-partner visual-arts project to mark the centennial year of Samuel Beckett’s birth. The title refers to the eighteen years since Beckett’s death and the eighteen sites where this project will take place in Mississauga and Toronto. These sites are seven artist projects, six weekly film/video art events, three film screening evenings, a publication, and a symposium; all of which arise from Beckett’s influence. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Beckett has become a touchstone for contemporary artists who employ new media as a form of cultural critique. The exhibition highlights formal and conceptual strategies that artists are exploring in relation to Beckett’s work. Some artists have been directly inspired by Beckett’s writing, and thus utilize themes that Beckett employed in his writing and films. These themes include use of repetition to unmask behavior and constructions of reality, representing catastrophe ‘negatively’, tropes of absurdity and onwardness in the face of despair, observations on perception and modern philosophical ideas, and an ongoing, often poetic and elegant criticism of the world at large. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">To date, invited artists include:</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 14.2px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Martin Arnold (Austria), Maja Bajevic (Bosnia), Gerard Byrne (Ireland), Dorothy Cross (Ireland), Stan Douglas (Canada), Atom Egoyan (Canada), Gary Hill (U.S.A.), Antonia Hirsch (Canada), Stacey Lancaster (Canada), Bruce Nauman (U.S.A.), Nikos Navridis (Greece), Daniel Olson (Canada), Hans Op de Beeck (Belgium), Anri Sala (Albania), Tilo Schultz (D) </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">This project aims to avoid an essentialization of Beckett’s modernist sprit of opposition, repetition, and re-coding. It would also, in this regard, resist casting a portrait of the man. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">The international 2006 ‘celebration’ of Beckett will be taken a step further by way of an examination of his modernist strategies as they have influenced contemporary artists and continue to be exploited, renewed, re-engaged and/or developed. In all, this project emphasizes new media and video art, film as well as critical discourse on this topic via the symposium and publication (exhibition catalogue). </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">I propose to present my research from this exhibition in roundtable form, including a visual presentation of the artists to be represented, and discussing some of the themes that these artists are exploring in relation to Samuel Beckett’s oeuvre. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><b></b><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Dr Catherine Laws </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">(Dartington College of Arts)<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘Beckett – Feldman – Johns’</span></span></b></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Three of Morton Feldman’s late works (Neither, Words and Music, and For Samuel Beckett) owe their existence to Beckett, and the text of Neither was written by Beckett in response to a request from Feldman. Much of Feldman’s late work is also strongly influenced by the crosshatch paintings of Jasper Johns. Crosshatching first appeared in one section of Johns’s Untitled (1972), which subsequently formed the basis for his contribution to Foirades/ Fizzles, a joint venture with Beckett. In no sense did these three ever truly collaborate. However, a triangle of association and influence is apparent; in each case, certain works from the 1970s and 1980s were developed at least partly in response to work by one of the others. What remains debatable is how far these associations arose as a result of affinities already independently manifested, and to what extent the direct contact led to actual changes in artistic approach and method. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">A close examination of these works illuminates this question. In each, the apparent drive towards self-reflexive abstraction belies a more complex relationship with the role of echoing and memory, through both formal and allusive repetition and difference. In turn, this very complexity exposes the difficulty of placing the three artists within any of the possible canons; each sits uneasily within either purely Modernist or Postmodernist boundaries, while Feldman’s late work also complicates his relationship with American Experimentalism, as does Beckett’s with the European Avant-Garde. Central to this, inevitably, is the question of how similar artistic concerns and techniques may or may not be translated between different media and across continents, and how each draws upon precedents and in turn influences new developments: how do these ideas mutate as they are mapped from language and to visual art and/or sound (and back again), and between North American and European experimental traditions.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><b></b><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Dr Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">(University of Ulster, Belfast)<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘Reciprocity: Beckett Interpreted in </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">the Context of Contemporary Art’<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">When an artist’s work centres around the impossibility to express, coupled with the obligation to do so nevertheless, trespassing on the territory of the other arts may seem as though it could provide new and untainted tools and motifs. What happens if this ‘trespassing’ is then understood and interpreted within the context of that other art’s history?</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">In relation to film- and video-art, the late Beckett was contemporary with ‘Beckettian’ creators like Bruce Nauman and Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland. When their visual (and occasional literary) formulation show approximations, the visual artists often seem more faithful to Beckett’s literary legacy than the writer himself, when working in the visual field. They also often pre-empt Beckett’s formulations (sometimes by decades). General word-and-image issues arise, as well as questions concerning Beckett’s writing’s role for the generation of Minimalists and first-generation conceptual artists, as well as their own legacy within Beckett’s ‘visual’ oeuvre. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Dr Matt Paproth </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">(National University of Ireland, Galway)<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘The Death of the Author: </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">“The Problem with “Beckett on Film”‘<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">My paper explores the authorial image that Beckett constructed throughout his life and its influence on the way we see him today. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Beckett continually presented himself as essentially a figure like those in the trilogy and his other fictional works. While in his writing Beckett certainly does obliterate notions of authority and autonomy in the author-function, in his life Beckett was quite the opposite, maintaining an obsessive and unhealthy desire to control every aspect of his work. As his writing entered the cultural field – through the publication of his prose and the performance of his plays – Beckett was unwilling to abandon the authorial control that his work constantly questioned. Examples abound, particularly in the famous stories of his tantrums during early productions of his plays. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Several of Beckett’s plays – for example Krapp’s Last Tape, Not I, and Play – demonstrate the impossibility of communicating (through utterance on the stage, through writing in narratives, through failed dialogues, through speeches given directly to the audience, even through recorded speech). None of these media allow the author to retain his/her authority, to capture reality for all to hear, understand, and experience. Rather, these plays often directly show the impossibility of such endeavours. However, when we turn to Beckett’s treatment of these plays in performance, it becomes clear that his relinquishing of authority does not extend to his own texts. Beckett’s behaviour is often written off as a symptom of the tortured existence that we see in any of his narrators (a tortured existence that is often mistakenly extended to Beckett), and rarely seen for what it really was: a carefully crafted attempt to construct a deliberate authorial image, a positioning of himself as the anti-Joyce (the “Nayman of Noland”). </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">The most recent iteration of the fissure between Beckett’s textual and metatextual practices is the Beckett on Film series. Beckett’s manic desire for control has extended beyond his death, and the critical fear of interpreting his plays in a way that Beckett wouldn’t have wanted is imprinted all over this collection of films. The problem is that the plays being filmed are about the impossibility of controlling the same things that Beckett insists on controlling. How can we take seriously the production of plays that preach the death of the author when, although the author is literally dead, he is still attempting to control them?</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Kit Poulson</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">(Middlesex University)<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘There is a bucket in my hole’ </span></span></b></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">An exploration of non-transcendence through seven actions with a bucket.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">A lecture in which images, text, and action fold into one another. An attempt to describe a sense of the physical and mental movements that might constitute memory and recognition.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">In these explorations elements of Beckett’s writing (focussing on his discussion of painting) are considered alongside sixteenth-century Protestant emblems. These emblems are themed around fire and water, and especially the image of the well. These emblems developed from the Stoic tradition and were used as a basis for the development of a non transcendental meditation, which focussed on revealing the limitations of human perception and reason, working a kind of sophisticated internal iconoclasm as part of a daily practice.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">This work addresses extension and fragility; the fascination of the point of intersection of memory, perception, and the persistent power of illusion. Simple functioning patterns grow, reach a limit and then collapse. These might be manifested as images, loops of sound or attempts at conversation. How much can be apprehended, repeated?</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Each section is an attempt at a different kind of communication with the bucket, to establish some kind of conversation. The actions performed to/with the bucket will include getting inside it, filling it with water, trying to set fire to the water, singing to it, placing a stone bowl within it, placing a voice inside it, putting it inside a box, and sealing it up.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">The titles for each section, drawn from a set of painted panels originally sited at Hawstead House in Suffolk, are:</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 14.2px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘By descending I become fuller’<br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘Thou dost but alter air’<br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘But it imparts nothing’<br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘Faithful servants but harsh masters’<br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘At last enough’ <br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘I am drawn up with difficulty’<br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘It has blazed, crackled and gone out’<br /></span></span></div><p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Each motto is accompanied by the image it was originally paired with.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Michael Rainin</span></span></b></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Waiting for Woody Allen</span></span></b></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">I directed a 16-minute short film entitled ‘Waiting for Woody Allen’, a parody of Samuel Beckett’s classic play Waiting for Godot . It is a tragic comedy starring Modi Rosenfeld and Joseph Piekarski as Mendel and Yossel, two quarrelsome Hasidic men. Disillusioned with religion, therapy, and their own friendship, they wait on a bench in Central Park for Woody Allen to come and give meaning to their lives. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘Waiting for Woody Allen’ garnered me the D.N.A. (Discovering New Artist) Award at the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival, was screened at Lincoln Center, and was an official selection at more than 40 film festivals worldwide.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">The idea for the film came from Woody Allen’s long-time admiration of Samuel Beckett and a famous photo of Woody and Samuel. I was reading an L.A. Times article on Beckett and Woody Allen and on their upcoming schedule celebrating Beckett’s centenary: I hope you will agree that my film is a fitting way to help celebrate Beckett’s anniversary.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Rhian Samuel </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">(City University, London)<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">The Flowing Sand (2006)</span></span></b></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">The Flowing Sand is a setting for baritone and piano of five of Beckett’s poems: ‘what would I do without this world faceless incurious’; ‘my way is in the sand flowing’ (which gives the work its name); ‘Da Tagte Es’; ‘Roundelay’; and ‘saying again’. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">It was commissioned by the School of European Studies, Cardiff University with funds from the Arts Council of Wales, and was first performed, by Adam Green and Indre Petrauskaite, at the Gala Concert Proust, Beckett, Deleuze in Music on 09 March, 2006, at the Temple of Peace, Cardiff. Its performance on Saturday is the London premiere. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Lee Scrivner </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">(The London Consortium)<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘Breathing in Beckett’s Breath’</span></span></b></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Following Deleuze’s lead, my paper draws parallels between Beckett’s materialism and that of the Greek Stoics. It compares the various breathings in Beckett’s work with the Stoic notion of pneuma (or ‘breath’). </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">As Steven Connor points out, breath for Beckett is not only the precursor to life, but also represents ‘the immanence of death to life, since there is a little death in every breath’ (‘Beckett’s Atmospheres’, p. 1). Beckett’s short play Breath references this identity between life and death through the medium of breath. For example, the play begins and ends with ‘an instant of recorded vagitus’, which is the first breath taken by a newborn. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">I will assess varied aspects of breathing in Breath, focusing primarily on Damien Hirst’s film version, to show how breath, like pneuma, represents for Beckett an intermediary not only between life and death, but also between the visible and the invisible, and between matter and an animating ‘spirit’. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Dr Kathy Smith </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">(London Metropolitan University)<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘Abject Bodies: Beckett, Orlan, Stelarc, and the Politics of Contemporary Performance’</span></span></b></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Jeanie Forte (in the context of feminist theatre praxis) describes her search for ‘those circumstances where the body is undeniable, when the body’s material presence is a condition of the circumstance. Interestingly, one is that of pain, and another is that of live performance; two cases when the body must be acknowledged, when it becomes visible/palpable through inhabiting temporally a process that depends fundamentally on its presence’ (1992).</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Orlan, a French multi-media artist working since the 1960s, began a project in 1990 of body modification through plastic surgery, raising complex questions about sexuality, beauty, subjectivity, gender and technology. Stelarc, an Australian performance artist, has been ‘extending’ his body through performance since the late 1960s, using both flesh and technology to interrogate the body/discourse relation. Samuel Beckett, through his later writings for the stage, foregrounds the troubled relationship between the body-in-discourse and the body-in-performance. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Contemporary performance constantly challenges boundaries and limits of understanding, constantly questions the dynamics, the politics of the body – the relationship of the material body to discursive formations in currency, the dynamic, constantly shifting relationship between performance/representation, the culture which both accommodates and provokes the representation, and the spectating subject. The body becomes both site of enquiry and gaping interstice through which the workings of our culture are momentarily thrown into relief. Schisms and ruptures are where this politics reveals itself: in the moments of visceral response, where bodies ‘speak’ directly to one another.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">The theatres of Orlan, Stelarc and Beckett each explore aspects of the representational limits of the body. Certain common themes recur through all three; and this paper seeks to demonstrate that, in spite of appearances to the contrary, the disparity between the Beckettian body-in-performance and those found within the theatres of Orlan and Stelarc is not as great as might initially be anticipated, and that the reading of one through the others might offer an interesting insight into all three, and into the politics of contemporary performance.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Dr Russell Smith </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">(Australian National University, Canberra)<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">‘Walking … Stumbling … Falling … Lying Down: Beckettian Operations in the Work of Ugo Rondinone and John Barbour’</span></span></b></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Rather than seeing Beckett’s influence on visual art in terms of recognisable visual elements (especially those derived from Beckett’s works for stage and screen such as geometric minimalism; monochromatic composition; extremes of light and dark; manipulations of the human figure), or in terms of dominant structuring principles (symmetry; repetition; permutation; disintegration), this paper seeks to explore the notion of a Beckettian aesthetic in terms of characteristic operations expressed as verbs: walking, stumbling, falling, lying down. Modelled on Yves-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss’s taxonomy, in Formless: A User’s Guide, of the ‘operations’ of George Bataille’s notion of l’informe, this paper seeks to isolate a few ‘operations’ – walking, stumbling, falling, lying down – that might be seen in combination as characteristically Beckettian, and to use these operations as a way of tracing the various manifestations of a post-Beckettian aesthetic. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">I will discuss the work of two contemporary artists whose work in might be seen in this light: Ugo Rondinone’s recumbent clowns can be seen as a rewriting Bruce Nauman’s Clown Torture as Waiting for Godot, while works such as Roundelay reproduce the endless aimless trajectories of the late theatre and prose works. John Barbour’s various sculpture, installation and fabric works explore a ‘syntax of weakness’, a tragicomic persistence in the face of falling down and falling apart. In each case, I will argue that it is the presence of a particular kind of humour, associated with the stumble and fall as narrative events, that produces a peculiarly Beckettian resonance.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><b></b><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 8.5px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Siobhan Tattan </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">(Middlesex University)<br /></span></span></div></b><p></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span style="letter-spacing: -0.1px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Siobhan Tattan’s performative lecture will be delivered as a formal lecture, detailing new writings, Failure Analyse in Performitivity, and extracts from her ongoing practice-led Ph.D. research.</span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 11px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">However, a disruption will occur within this lecture. A voice, a recording of the director’s notations, directing the artist at the lectern, will interject with the artist’s speaking voice. The time-lapses between each of the director’s notations varies between 45” and 3’20” as it corresponds with the original lecture. For Tattan, this negation is a pivotal point of the performance, deploying it as a tool of interrogation into the role and function of the voice – the voice as informer, narrator, raconteur, seanchai. The performance here lies, not in the visual action of performers, but in the rhythmic lyrical quality of the oral performance.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Jenny Triggs </span></span></b></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 15px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Samuel Beckett: The Unnamable (2000)</span></span></b></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Rough for Television (2006)</span></span></b></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">Jenny Triggs’s film Samuel Beckett: The Unnamable (2000) animates body parts, chess pieces, and mechanical motifs as life’s conveyor-belt threatens to grind to a halt, without ever actually doing so. It has been shown at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (2000), the Beckett Time Festival (Glasgow Film Theatre), the Leeds International Film Festival, the Leicester Short Film Festival, and at Kinofilm (Manchester 2001). </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">The visual imagery of Rough for Television (2006) (subtitled ‘A response to “Ping” by Samuel Beckett’) centres on a female figure created from a series of negatives which fluctuates between a state of recognisable (trapped) object of the gaze and a more enigmatic (released) representation. The 8-minute, looped film picks up on Beckett’s use of negation/ambiguity as a narrative technique, and aims to reflect the focus-promised-and-withheld aspect of the text which substitutes for a traditional narrative. The viewer's focus of attention is constantly interrupted or obscured, creating a disorientation and progression of doubts in the viewer as much as a description of a definite picture. Despite this, narrative desire and the directional nature of viewing pulls the reader forward, and the build-up of visual information, emotion and memory with each non-similar repetition forms an alternative visual narrational arc. The eyes that interrupt are both the eyes of the body the viewer is watching, and the eyes of the creator/artist figured at the beginning and end. This blurring (indeterminacy) of the narrator/creator relationship and character (discernable in Beckett’s Ping) is extended out into the space of the viewer by situating him/her within an enclosed space (with flickering light) sporadically being observed by/perceiving a “black eye long lashes imploring” (film B). The viewer is situated as object /character and narrator/creator (the latter suggesting creation/narration involved in the act of viewing). </span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 8.5px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 8.5px/normal Tahoma; min-height: 11px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Tahoma; min-height: 11.0px"><br /></p>sozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770493715287675.post-47746084876330352472008-11-04T00:09:00.000-08:002008-11-06T16:56:31.380-08:00Centennial Beckett<p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "> Copyright © 2007 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; ">Modernism/modernity 15.1 (2007) 179-187</p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Centennial Beckett:</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The Gray Canon and the Fusion of Horizons</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; ">Reviewed by</p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; ">Ulrika Maude</p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; ">University of Durham</p><p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><br /></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Beckett after Beckett. S. E. Gontarski and Anthony Uhlmann, eds. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006. Pp. ix + 227. $59.95 (cloth).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">"Notes diverse holo": Catalogues of Beckett's Reading Notes and Other Manuscripts at Trinity College Dublin, with Supporting Essays. Matthijs Engelberts and Everett Frost, with Jane Maxwell. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006. Pp. 391. $104.00 (cloth).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Samuel Beckett and the Prosthetic Body: The Organs and Senses in Modernism. Yoshiki Tajiri. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Pp. ix + 200. $65.00 (cloth).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Samuel Beckett and the Philosophical Image. Anthony Uhlmann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. viii + 191. $85.00 (cloth).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Zone of Evaporation: Samuel Beckett's Disjunctions. Paul Stewart. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006. Pp. 211. $55.00 (paper).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Beckett and Badiou: The Pathos of Intermittency. Andrew Gibson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. xiii + 322. $95.00 (cloth).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><br /></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">2006, the centenary of Beckett's birth, saw at least two dozen Beckett conferences, symposia, and colloquia organized in various parts of the globe, including Tallahassee, Reading, Dublin, Buenos Aires, London, [End Page 179] Paris, Prague, and Tokyo. What characterized these gatherings was the strength, vigor, and variety of new approaches to Beckett's work, also reflected in the sheer number of monographs and collections of essays on Beckett published in the centenary and its wake. If early approaches to Beckett's work might best be characterized as humanist-existentialist, and if the second wave of critical work on the author could broadly be described as poststructuralist, this third wave of Beckett criticism is more liberated from critical orthodoxies, and can broadly speaking be divided into two schools that also at times productively overlap: empirical criticism which relies heavily on biography and the vast number of manuscripts, notebooks, and letters Beckett wrote, and an imaginative "fusion of horizons," to quote Beckett's French critic, Bruno Clement, consisting of readings produced by critics and philosophers "who have known how to see in the oeuvres . . . that which was appropriate to them" (Clement in Beckett after Beckett, 131). Clement's examples, cited in his essay, "What the Philosophers Do with Samuel Beckett," are French and include three major thinkers, namely, Didier Anzieu, Gilles Deleuze, and Alain Badiou, all of whom offer oddly compelling and vastly different, if not incompatible, readings of Beckett's work. This characterization of the third wave of French Beckett criticism applies equally to critical approaches to Beckett's work in the English-speaking world and beyond.</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The publication, in 1996, of James Knowlson's authorized biography, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett, has had a considerable impact on Beckett criticism, in providing scholars with an informed understanding of Beckett's formative reading, interest in art, working habits, and preoccupations.1 The wealth of archival material, whether in the form of correspondence, notebooks, or manuscript drafts, referenced in Knowlson's biography, together with the archival material made available to critics in recent years, has itself triggered a rise in what could be labeled a new empiricism as well as the prominence of genetic criticism in Beckett studies.</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Beckett after Beckett is a collection of fourteen essays and a letter Beckett wrote to Georges Duthuit in March 1949, preceding the famous Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit, first published in transition in 1949, signed by Beckett and Duthuit.2 The publication of Beckett's letter to Duthuit, which sheds light on his thinking about aesthetics, is proof of the growing importance of what one of the coeditors of the volume, S. E. Gontarski, refers to as the "grey canon" (143). In his essay, "Greying the Canon: Beckett and Performance," Gontarski demonstrates Beckett's contradictory relation to his own work in his resistance to exegesis and his belittling of the role of author as authority, while simultaneously maintaining a puzzlingly strict control over even the smallest details of the various productions of his plays. In 1954, for instance, Beckett wrote to his American publisher, Barney Rosset, that he had "had a highly unsatisfactory interview with SIR Ralph Richardson who wanted the low-down on Pozzo, his home address and curriculum vitae," which clearly annoyed the author immensely (141). When Rick Cluchey asked Beckett, as late as 1980, if the little boy who appears in Hamm's "chronicle" in Endgame was Clov as a child, Beckett responded, "Don't know if the little boy is the young Clov, Rick . . . simply don't know" (142). Yet in a 1957 letter to Alan Schneider, Beckett's foremost American director, the author had stated that Hamm's chronicle was about "events leading up to Clov's arrival, alone presumably, the father having fallen by the way . . . . It also allows Clov's 'perception' of boy at end to be interpreted as vision of himself on last lap to 'shelter.'"3 As Gontarski demonstrates, through a discussion of Beckett's comments on various stage productions of Endgame, the author was often "uncautious" in what he did disclose about his plays, and a careful piecing together of theatrical notebooks, letters, and private conversations with actors and directors reveals that "Beckett's comments finally form something like traditional exposition, more Ibsen than he was wont to acknowledge" (143). The strict manner in which the author controlled the rights to his own plays, and the ever-growing persistence on the "primacy of the playwright in the process of performance," is exemplified in Beckett's growing involvement in productions, first as "advisor," then as "primary director," and finally, through the growing prominence of the gray canon, "as a spectre, a ghost of authority, into the après Beckett" (143). In an insightful discussion of a topic that has puzzled critics for decades, Gontarski compellingly argues that the</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">public posture of diminished authority often became a useful means of deflection for [Beckett], that is, itself a performance, inseparable from the mystique of the work . . . . as more of the peripheral, secondary, or what we might call the ghost or grey canon comes to [End Page 180] light and is made public (letters, notebooks, manuscripts and the like), it inevitably interacts with and reshapes, redefines, even from the margins (or especially from the margins), the white canon (or the traditional canon), and the more apparent it becomes that Beckett's voice was aporetic, as plural if not contradictory as that of his (other) characters.</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">(143)</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">A case in point of the re-evaluation of Beckett's work triggered by the gray canon is the significance of Fritz Mauthner (1849–1923), the Austro-Bohemian philosopher, whose major work, Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache, Beckett is known to have at least "skimmed through," as the author himself put it in a 1978 letter to Ruby Cohn.4 Beckett also made notes on his reading of Mauthner in his "Whoroscope Notebook," now held at the Beckett International Foundation at Reading, and there is an explicit reference to the philosopher in Rough for Radio II, written in the early 1960s and first published in French in 1975. In light of John Pilling's meticulously researched essay, "Beckett and Mauthner Revisited," which relies heavily on the gray canon, however, Mauthner's direct influence on Beckett may finally have been less significant than previously assumed, "a wild goose & a red herring," as Beckett himself put it in the 1978 letter to Ruby Cohn. Pilling, however, acknowledges that "the spectre of Mauthner has, for quite understandable reasons, . . . continued to loom large in the thoughts of Beckett's commentators" (165). Chris Ackerely's discussion of Max Nordau's Degeneration—which Beckett read in the early 1930s—as a source of medical terms, images, and curiosities, is another example of the growing prominence of the gray canon in Beckett studies.5 Beckett took eight pages of notes on Degeneration in his so-called "Dream Notebook," also held in the Beckett International Foundation collection.6 In "Samuel Beckett and Max Nordau," Ackerley casts light over four of Nordau's "images of degeneracy" that appear in Beckett's work, namely "sausage poisoning, the bloodied rafflesia, conaesthesis, and the Not-I" (169). Other highlights of Beckett after Beckett, less indebted perhaps to the gray canon as to an imaginative sensitivity to the primary texts, include Steven Connor's essay, "Beckett's Atmospheres," on Beckett and the air, and the wonderfully suggestive introduction to the volume, "Afterimages: Introducing Beckett's Ghosts," written by the two editors, Gontarski and Uhlmann.</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">In 1989, after Beckett's death, the executors of the Beckett Estate, Edward Beckett and Caroline Beckett Murphy, discovered, in Beckett's cellar, a collection of notebooks and manuscripts that Beckett had wrapped in brown paper and tucked into a trunk. These manuscripts were presented to Trinity College Dublin in 1997, and Notes diverse holo, which derives its title from the words Beckett had written on the brown wrapping paper in which the manuscripts were enclosed, is a catalog of this material, now available for consultation to scholars at Trinity College Dublin. In addition, Notes diverse holo contains nine essays on various Beckett manuscripts, written by prominent scholars in Beckett studies. The volume also contains a comprehensive catalog, compiled by Jane Maxwell, of the Samuel Beckett manuscripts held at Trinity College Dublin, previously unavailable outside the premises of the library. This alone would make the book an indispensable resource on the gray canon, one that complements the already-existing Beckett at Reading catalog, published in 1998, and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center catalog, available online.7</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Notes diverse holo, however, offers far more than a mere list of archival documents. The book consists of a meticulous mapping and description of the twenty-one manuscripts acquired in 1997, which contain outlines, summaries, and transcriptions of Beckett's reading, whether in Latin, Italian, German, French, or English, during his sophister years at Trinity College Dublin, from 1925 to 1927, and the period from 1930 to 1936, during which Beckett read intensively—a time which was, as Beckett himself put it in a letter to Thomas MacGreevy, "soiled . . . with the old demon of notesnatching" (21). There do not appear to be any notes from Beckett's period at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris (1928–1930), during which he is likely to have read Bergson, Scopenhauer, Vico, Bruno, Descartes, and Kant. These notebooks, regrettably, have not been recovered. The ones that have, however, offer fascinating insight into Beckett's formative years. The material cataloged in Notes diverse holo comprises philosophy, psychology, various Italian subjects, and the history of English literature, as well as observations on Irish and European history. They also contain a reproduction of a rather moving map the young Beckett drew of "the geographical location of the philosophers" (76), in which names such as Xenophanes, Democritus, [End Page 181] Hippias, and Parmenides appear dotted over a map of southern Europe. They also contain Beckett's hand-drawn diagram of the subconscious, as well as one of Dante's Inferno (160, 40). Although the young Beckett made a well-known reference to the "loutishness of learning" in his early poem, "Gnome" (1934), he was certainly no stranger to its compulsions.</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The most important documents cataloged and described in Notes diverse holo are Beckett's philosophy (MS 10967) and psychology notes (MS 10971/7 and MS 10971/8). The "Philosophy Notes" were begun, in typescript, after the summer of 1930, but the bulk of the work, handwritten, was probably completed in London, where Beckett spent six weeks of the summer of 1932, much of it in the British Library reading room. The notes consist largely of transcriptions of Wilhelm Windelband's History of Western Philosophy in two volumes, which date from 1893, and were revised for a second edition in 1901. Beckett used the Dublin University Calendar, which included "prescribed reading at Trinity College for the courses in the various disciplines," as a guide for much of the reading he undertook in this period; Windelband's book, at the time, formed part of the philosophy syllabus (21). Two other major sources for Beckett's "Philosophy Notes" were Archibald B. D. Alexander's A Short History of Philosophy and John Burnet's Greek Philosophy, Part I: Thales to Plato, both from 1908. It is striking that the bulk of the notes are on Greek philosophy, especially the presocratics, whose importance to Beckett's work Matthew Feldman has recently emphasized in his monograph on the interwar notes, Beckett's Books.8 The principal source of Beckett's "Psychology Notes," in turn, was Robert S. Woodworth's Contemporary Schools of Psychology, from 1931. Other substantial sources include Karin Stephen's Psychoanalysis and Medicine: The Wish to Fall Ill, from 1933, and Otto Rank's The Trauma of Birth, from 1929. Beckett also took notes on Freud's essay, "The Anatomy of the Mental Personality."9</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The first set of "Psychology Notes" (MS 10971/7) contains descriptions of the major schools of psychology, with the headings "Psychoanalysis," "Behaviourism," "Purposivism," "Existentialism," and "Gestalt psychology" (159). The second set of notes (MS 10971/8) is dedicated to Ernest Jones, Wilhelm Stekel, Alfred Adler, and Otto Rank. As Everett Frost remarks in the preface to Notes diverse holo, Beckett's notes, somewhat surprisingly, "rarely contain an interpretive appraisal of what he was reading and are almost entirely without assessment or analysis of it" (20), although the notes do include the occasional delightful Beckettian pun or quip. The passage on Ernest Jones, for instance, begins with the heading "Erogenous Jones" (164); later in the manuscript, Jones is referred to as "Freudchen." Mostly, it transpires, Beckett copied large chunks of the books he consulted. This may partly have been due to the simple reason that Beckett could not have afforded, as a student and later as an aspiring writer, to purchase personal copies of all of the books he read. Furthermore, Beckett had fallen under the influence of Joyce in Paris, and as Frost remarks, "he had come to know intimately what was required to enter the tradition of learned writers with an encyclopaedic knowledge of their intellectual heritage" (23). Frost also mentions the probable influence of Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent." Beckett's close friend, the poet and critic, Thomas MacGreevy, who had been Beckett's predecessor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, was writing a book on Eliot for Chatto and Windus at the time Beckett was writing his book on Proust for the same publisher, which would have ensured Beckett's knowledge of Eliot's essay. As other critics have shown, amongst them Chris Ackerley in his introduction to Demented Particulars: The Annotated Murphy, Beckett's early style and method were influenced by Joyce, and Beckett's reading, much like Joyce's, found its way into the early fiction he wrote, Murphy (1938) being precisely a case in point.10Beckett's early method, in other words, was one of mild pilfering, which also explains Beckett's reference to "the old demon of notesnatching" (21).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The nine essays in Notes diverse holo include Mark Nixon's analysis of Beckett's reading of Goethe and German literature, in which Nixon draws on Beckett's "German Diaries" and his correspondence of the 1930s. Daniela Caselli, a specialist on the influence of Italian literature on Beckett's writing, advances the argument that, rather than existing on the margins of Beckett's work, manuscripts form "part of the poetics of marginality central to the Beckett canon" (237). Dirk van Hulle, a leading expert on genetic criticism, writes on Beckett's notes on Goethe's Faust, which he compares with Joyce's contemporary reading notes, while Anna MacMullan, who is an expert on Beckett and performance, contributes an essay on the manuscript of Beckett's "J. [End Page 182] M. Mime." John Pilling's essay on Beckett and English literature draws on Beckett's entries, in the "Whoroscope Notebook," from Elizabethan, Jacobean, and eighteenth-century English literature, which Beckett probably originally intended to incorporate into his novel, Murphy. Lois Overbeck and Martha Fehsenfeld draw on Beckett's soon-to-be-published correspondence and the light the letters cast over the publication history, translation, and production of Beckett's works, revealing Beckett's "evolving" rather than "iconic" texts. What all nine essays in Notes diverse holo have in common is the centrality the authors give to the gray canon. The essays provide valuable insight into material which can often be difficult to access.</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Yoshiki Tajiri's book, Samuel Beckett and the Prosthetic Body, although theoretical in its approach, represents the move towards more carefully contextualized and historicized readings of Beckett's oeuvre. Tajiri takes care to situate Beckett's work in the modernist context it rightfully belongs, drawing connections and points of convergence between Beckett and a host of other modernist and late-modernist writers and artists, such as Bataille, Bellmer, Duchamp, Eisenstein, Kafka, Marinetti, Moholy-Nagy, and Nabokov, as well as theorists such as Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, and Kittler. Tajiri also draws on Beckett's own reading, for instance of Degeneration and Otto Rank's The Trauma of Birth. Much early critical work on Beckett suffered precisely from a tendency to discuss the author's work out of context; one of the strengths of Tajiri's book is its careful contextualization of the argument it advances.</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The book's main concern, as the title indicates, is the prosthetic body, which in Tajiri's reading, is "a body that has the inorganic other or the outside within it" or, more precisely, is itself "the locus for dynamic interactions between the body and material objects (including machines and technological devices), inside and outside, self and other, and for the concomitant problematisation and blurring of these distinctions" (6).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The book opens with a consideration of Beckett's first, posthumously published novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women (1992; written 1932), which Tajiri has translated into Japanese. The chapter focuses on autoeroticism, the "masturbation machine," which Tajiri links to notions of control, and the often-evaded question of Beckett's early misogyny, which here leads to a mechanization of male sexuality, also manifested in Beckett's early short story, "Assumption," dating from 1929. In Beckett's early writing, Tajiri argues, the defensive mechanization of the body, prominent as it is, is nonetheless forever threatening to break down, which distinguishes it from the work of such reactionary modernists as Wyndham Lewis and Marinetti, in whose work these defenses are more rigidly maintained. For Tajiri, a change occurs "from Watt onwards," where the obsession with the mechanized masturbating body declines and the "simple dichotomy of the threatening woman and the introvert misogynist recedes from the foreground" (34). One could take issue, however, with the dating of this shift in Beckett's work. First Love, written in 1946 after Watt, is after all one of Beckett's most misogynistic works, and Molloy (1951), written after the Four Novellas, fares no better.11 The shift away from misogynistic male characters and a hostile representation of female characters occurs later, around the time Beckett wrote his first radio play, All That Fall(1956), which features the female protagonist, Maddy Rooney. More compellingly, however, Tajiri concludes the chapter with a brief consideration of the permeable male body of The Unnamable (1953), which complicates gender boundaries by being governed by "uncontrollable flows" (38).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The second chapter of Tajiri's book is dedicated to the disorganized body of Beckett's trilogy. In Tajiri's reading, negative prostheses in the trilogy, "such as sticks or crutches . . . as well as 'positive' ones, such as the bicycle, tend to have an uncanny congeniality with the body," which ultimately obscures the boundaries between body and world, self and other (42). However, against the current grain of Beckett criticism, Tajiri's analysis is oddly Cartesian in its claim that "Beckett inherits from Descartes a completely detached, observing attitude towards the body, the deficient machine" (43). This seems at odds with the general spirit of Tajiri's book, and one wonders whether, were this indeed the case, Beckett's bodies would not always already form part of res extensa—Descartes's extended matter—which in turn would make the principal argument of the chapter redundant. Tajiri proceeds, nonetheless, with an interesting discussion of the confusion of the organs, most prominently bodily orifices, in The Unnamable and Not I (1972), where language becomes scatological, and tears, semen, and excrement are routinely conflated. "In the prosthetic body, whose boundaries are problematised," Tajiri argues, "the holes, the flows [End Page 183] and the surface are highlighted as particularly prosthetic parts because of the ambiguity of their being both inside and outside the body" (54).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The chapter dedicated to synaesthesia is compelling. Tajiri's starting point is that "[d]espite their differences," artists such as Bellmer or writers such as Bataille "shared with Beckett a conception of the body as fundamentally fragmented, disintegrated, formless and subject to arbitrary reorganisation" (79). This, in turn, entails the dislocation of the senses, which gives vent to a confusion of various forms of sensory perception.</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Tajiri's chapter opens with a rigorous introduction to symbolist, modernist, and theoretical treatments of synaesthesia, which ranges from a consideration of Baudelaire and Rimbaud to Merleau-Ponty, McLuhan, and Kittler. Beckett's interest in synaesthesia begins early, and can be found in his critical monograph,Proust (1931), in which, Tajiri argues, Beckett's treatment of Proust's involuntary memory is essentially synaesthetic, in its transgression of "ordinary sensory division" (94). As we know, the young Beckett read Degeneration in the English translation of 1895. Beckett's notes on the book include a definition of the term "conaesthesis," which can be understood as the interplay between the various senses—a state broadly speaking similar to accounts of the semiotic or imaginary, though in Nordau with very different, negative connotations. The term finds its way into Dream of Fair to Middling Women and More Pricks than Kicks (1934) twice. It also appears in Molloy, and in Three Dialogues, the mock-Socratic tract on art, it emerges in the slightly altered form of "conaesthesia." Tajiri argues that the "images of disintegration, punctuation and surface piercing in [Beckett's] early work, which were equally connected to literature, music and painting, also suggest that his sensibility was conaesthetic or tactile before being specifically visual or aesthetic" (103). Somewhat surprisingly, then, unlike a number of his contemporaries, Beckett was not amenable to mixed-media collaboration, as Tajiri is careful to acknowledge. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Not I, as an example of a type of performative synaesthesia in Beckett's late work.</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The remaining chapters are dedicated to the camera eye and the prosthetic voice. The former focuses on the manner in which technology permeates self-consciousness in Beckett's Film (1964), his first TV play, Eh Joe (1965), and a late prose text, Mal vu mal dit (1981), translated by Beckett in 1982 as Ill Seen Ill Said. In these works, the "prosthesis is incorporated into the inner world of self-consciousness," but this inner world is also exteriorized through the use of prosthetic devices (128). The final chapter opens with the curious claim that, in Beckett's work, "the physiological ear or 'the ear of flesh' does not appear to be important" (138). A number of critics would beg to differ, and there is ample evidence, for instance in Beckett's Theatrical Notebooks, of the importance of the "ear of flesh" in his works.12 One wonders, too, what Tajiri would make of Beckett's famous observation to Alan Schneider, in a letter of December 1957: "My work is a matter of fundamental sounds (no joke intended)."13 Tajiri's focus, instead, is on the familiar relationship between the prosthetic voice and the voice of the skull, on which he however does find new and compelling things to say, in his reading of Beckett in light of différance, Derrida's ideas of telecommunication, and Kittler's "discourse network of 1900."</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It would have been interesting, by way of conclusion, to read about the wider significance of Tajiri's findings to our understanding of Beckett's oeuvre. The book, however, is valuable and stimulating in addressing a host of largely neglected aspects of Beckett's writing. Tajiri's book is also a good example of the third wave of Beckett criticism that productively combines a form of empiricism with informed theoretical analysis.</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Philosophical readings of Beckett's work continue to flourish, and Anthony Uhlmann's Samuel Beckett and the Philosophical Image opens up new and unexplored ground. What is interesting about Uhlmann's approach is that, while it is theoretical in its orientation, it too relies heavily on archival (empirical) material, such as Beckett's Latin notes on Arnold Geulincx—which were amongst the "Notes diverse holo," discovered after Beckett's death—and Beckett's letters to MacGreevy and Duthuit. Philosophical images, which Uhlmann takes great care to define, are as important to literature as they are to philosophy, and hence offer a point of convergence and interaction between the two, although they also function differently in the two disciplines. As Uhlmann puts it, "[i]mages can pass between literary and philosophical discourse, no doubt being transformed in the process of translation, but also carrying with them something in common, a translatable component which inheres in the image which is put into circulation" (3). [End Page 184]</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Uhlmann's book begins with a discussion of philosophical images in light of Bergson's and Deleuze's theories. These are brought to bear on Beckett's own observations on aesthetics in works such as his well-known essay, "Peintres de l'Empêchement," written in 1948 on the art of the van Velde brothers, Bram and Geer. The third chapter traces Beckett's own aesthetic development from an early style which, in Uhlmann's reading, relies on relation and allusion, to a mature style which draws on non-relation. Chapter four, the highlight of the book, is dedicated to Geulincx's (1624–1669) recently-translated Ethics, and Beckett's detailed Latin notes of his own reading of the philosopher's work.14 Geulincx is already familiar to most Beckett critics because of his moral premise, "Ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil velis," which Beckett himself cited as key to understanding Murphy. Uhlmann's reading, however, reveals a new dimension of Geulincx's impact on Beckett. One of the novelties of Uhlmann's analysis is his persuasive argument that "Beckett draws more heavily on the image of Geulincx's cogito than on the image of Descartes's cogito," which provides a useful corrective to much Beckett criticism (77).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">In Geulincx's Ethics, the image of a mother or nurse rocking a cradle appears three times as a figure of limited individual freedom and God's will. This image, Uhlmann suggests, reappears in Beckett, in the image of the ubiquitous rocking chair. In an analysis of Murphy, Film, and Rockaby (1980), all of which feature the rocking chair as a central image, Uhlmann advances a striking reading of Beckett's work, one in which Geulincx's cradle, with its connotations of birth, is transformed into Beckett's rocking chair, associated with death. However, as Uhlmann skillfully demonstrates, the association with death was always already present in Geulincx's image, in his preoccupation with the question of suicide which "invades the image of the powerless child at birth" (84). This is one of the most compelling readings offered on Beckett and Geulincx and, for this reason alone, will render the book indispensable to Beckett critics. Other philosophical images from Geulincx that Uhlmann discusses include the ship, which Beckett's Molloy makes a well-known reference to: "I who had loved the image of old Geulincx, dead young, who left me free, on the black boat of Ulysses, to crawl toward the East, along the deck. That is a great measure of freedom, for him who has not the pioneering spirit."15 In a letter to the first German translator of Molloy, Dr E. Franzen, Beckett explains this image in the following manner:</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This passage is suggested (a) by a passage in the Ethics of Geulincx where he compares human freedom to that of a man, on board a boat, carrying him irresistibly westward, free to move eastward within the limits of the boat itself, as far as the stern; and (b) by Ulysses' relation in Dante (Inf. 26) of his second voyage . . . . I imagine a member of the crew who does not share the adventurous spirit of Ulysses and is at least at liberty to crawl homewards . . . along the brief deck.</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">(78)</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The strength of philosophical images, Uhlmann explains, lies in the fact that, while they are used to establish a connection, they simultaneously offer us instability and nonrelations. In their ability "to paper over cracks," philosophical images also betray "a problem which may be insoluble within a logical system," an aporia, therefore making "contradictory connections possible" (66). One example is precisely the above-mentioned image of the cradle in Geulincx's Ethics, a point of tension in the philosopher's argument, which for this precise reason is adopted by Beckett in the form of the rocking chair. For Uhlmann,</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Beckett's use of occlusive images points us to a properly philosophical problem which is not solved, either in the Beckett text or the source from which it is drawn (though usually with the difference that, while the Beckett text acknowledges and draws attention to the problem of the problem, the source of the image might pretend that no problem exists).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">(68)</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The remainder of Uhlmann's book is dedicated to Bergson's notion of intuition which he applies to Beckett's adaptation of Berkeley's "Esse est percipi" in Film, and to the Stoics' thinking on [End Page 185] bodies and incorporeals, and the light this sheds on Beckett's late drama, in particular his last play, What Where (1983). Uhlmann discusses Beckett's television plays in relation to Deleuze's analysis of them in his famous final essay, "The Exhausted," but it would have been interesting to learn more about the philosophical images they might evoke, haunting as they are in their striking imagistic power.16 Trinity College Dublin, which houses Beckett's notes on Geulincx, also holds Beckett's notes on Gestalt theory, which form part of the "Psychology Notes" catalogued in Notes diverse holo. A discussion of the relevance of Beckett's early interest in Gestalt theory to his own image-creation would have made intriguing reading.</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">If a certain kind of aporia and non-relation is at the center of Uhlmann's thesis, then Zone of Evaporation has a closely-related focus, namely that of Beckett's disjunctions. Paul Stewart concentrates on Beckett's prose, from his first, posthumously published novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women to How It Is (1964), the English translation of Comment c'est (1961); these works, Stewart argues, are marked by various modes of disjunction. The prose works of the late 1970s and 1980s, in turn, are tonally different, often incorporating "[i]mages of communion" (13), a case in point being the late prose text, Company (1980). Stewart's argument progresses chronologically, culminating with a discussion of Beckett and Derrida, joined together by disjunction. Stewart, however, finds the phenomenological impact of Beckett's work more powerful than that of Derrida, due to its performative nature which involves the reader in "the zone of evaporation" (182). A fine example of Beckett's disjunctions is offered in Stewart's reading of Beckett's ubiquitous Three Dialogues, which he characterizes as "a series of dramatic arguments," in which D., the avatar of Duthuit, aims towards "reintegration," "continuity and relation," while B., Beckett himself, refuses to offer full arguments and insists, both formally and thematically, on non-relation, inconsistency, and disjunction (187, 189). The importance and novelty of Stewart's argument lies in the fact that, while Three Dialogues, as the author acknowledges, is critical commonplace in Beckett studies, its formal and perfomative nature has tended to be overlooked. Stewart demonstrates how much of the power of this play-like text, a "drama for two persons, in three acts," derives precisely from its formal qualities (187).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Andrew Gibson's Beckett and Badiou: The Pathos of Intermittency, offers an ambitious assessment of Alain Badiou's reading of Beckett, and the manner in which Beckett can be read in light of Badiou's philosophy. Gibson, in other words, not only discusses Badiou's own analysis of the author, but also at times critiques it, for instance in terms of its "pathophobia," an aversion to pathos or melancholy that Badiou inherits from the left. Gibson also points to fissures and omissions in Badiou's analysis, offering his own carefully considered suggestions. The book is an example of a "fusion of horizons," and parts company with the bulk of current Beckett criticism in its bold allegiance with a form of subtraction leading to abstraction.</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Badiou's Beckett is a different creature from first and second generation critical conceptions of the author's work. Although Badiou's Beckett has some points of convergence with poststructuralist theory, his could more rightly be described as an ethical reading, in which Beckett emerges as a writer of ascesis and vigilance. Central to Badiou's Beckett is the possibility of the event, prominent in Beckett's mature writing from Texts for Nothing (1950–1952) onwards. Closely related to the event is the question of its seeing and naming, a misseeing and a missaying, "[f]or le bien dire, proper speech, always constitutes a return to well-established and familiar meanings" (127). The verbal expression of the event is therefore improper speech, le mal dit; the late Beckett is perhaps its major proponent and practitioner. In Mal vu mal dit, Badiou argues, the event emerges as a "surprise in language" (127).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Unlike most of the texts under review here, Gibson's project does not call for a study of Beckett's correspondence, manuscripts, or notebooks. The book, however, is impeccably researched. Badiou's mathematical Beckett, whose aesthetic method is paralleled with axioms from set theory, will not appeal to everyone, and Badiou's reading of the author has hitherto been less influential in the Anglo-Saxon (empirical) context than it has in le monde francophone. Gibson's book constitutes the first sustained study of the subject. In its depth of analysis, it will be difficult to surpass.</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The third wave of Beckett criticism, which draws more freely on a combination of empirical research and theoretically informed analysis than its humanist and poststructuralist forebears, has generated new readings of Beckett's work which have not only revitalized Beckett studies, [End Page 186] but renewed the oeuvre itself. In the wake of the centenary, in the après Beckett, Beckett studies are thriving, as these fresh approaches attest.</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Notes</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">1. James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">2. Republished as Samuel Beckett, Proust and Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit (London: John Calder, 1965).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">3. Maurice Harmon, ed., No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 22–23.</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">4. Fritz Mauthner, Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache, 3 Volumes (Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1923).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">5. Max Nordau, Degeneration (London: Heinemann, 1913).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">6. An annotated edition of the notebook has been published as Samuel Beckett, Beckett's Dream Notebook, ed. John Pilling (Reading: Beckett International Foundation, 1999).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">7. Mary Bryden, Julian Garforth and Peter Mills, Beckett at Reading: Catalogue of the Beckett Manuscript Collection at The University of Reading (Reading: Whiteknights Press and the Beckett International Foundation, 1998).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">8. Matthew Feldman, Beckett's Books: A Cultural History of Samuel Beckett's 'Interwar Notes' (New York and London: Continuum, 2006).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">9. Sigmund Freud, "The Anatomy of the Mental Personality," in New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, transl. W. J. H. Sprott (London: Hogarth Press, 1933), 78–106.</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">10. Chris Ackerley, Demented Particulars: The Annotated Murphy (Tallahassee: Journal of Beckett Studies Books, 2nd ed., 2004).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">11. First Love, a novella, was written in French in 1946 as Premier amour, but not published until 1970; the English translation, by Beckett himself, had to await publication until 1973. The narrator of the novella, for instance, considers kicking his first love "in the cunt" and observes, in a casual manner, that "women smell a rigid phallus ten miles away." Samuel Beckett, The Complete Short Prose: 1929–1989, ed. S. E. Gontarski (New York: Grove Press, 1995), 31.</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">12. See, for instance, James Knowlson, ed., The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett III: Krapp's Last Tape (London: Faber, 1992).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">13. Harmon, No Author Better Served, 24.</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">14. Han van Ruler and Anthony Uhlmann, eds., Arnold Geulincx's Ethics with Samuel Beckett's Notes, transl. Martin Wilson (Leiden: Brill, 2006).</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">15. Samuel Beckett, Molloy (New York: Grove Press, 1955), 68.</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">16. Gilles Deleuze, "The Exhausted," in Essays Critical and Clinical, transl. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 152–74</span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';font-size:12px;"><br /></span></div>sozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770493715287675.post-13033997614672426752008-11-04T00:05:00.000-08:002008-11-04T11:06:50.674-08:00Beckett's Atmospheres<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Times;"><div align="center"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: bold; font-family:Helvetica;font-size:13px;">Beckett’s Atmospheres</span><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:-1;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/skc/">Steven Connor</a><br /></div></span></div><span style="font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:-1;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In what follows, I will want literally to to be taken up in the matter of Beckett, and in particular, by the appearances and etiology in it of what used to be thought of as the element of air. Though Beckett’s work is less well-ventilated than that of almost any other writer, air and breath are still everywhere in it, as they must be for any kind of life to be sustained. In its enterings into air, Beckett’s work seems to define for itself and work within the terms of an extreme materialism. My concern with air forms part of an exercise in understanding what Gaston Bachelard calls the ‘material imagination’ in Beckett, a phrase which names not only the way in which the material world is imagined, but the materiality of imagining itself, the way in which materiality must continue however obliquely and tenuously it may be to insist, through every effort to imagine what it would be like to be, as Heidegger says of the animal kingdom, ‘poor in world’. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That then is the proposition. Beckett’s work is sustained upon an imagination of air. What kind of imagination is this, so matter-riddled? A kind of its own? Not quite. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In English, French and other Romance languages which are heir to the Greek word ‘aer’, and all its manifold meanings, there are two distinct but conjoined accents of the airy. One concerns the life-sustaining substance drawn in and exhaled through the mouth and nostrils, the air we breathe and on which we subsist. In the humoralist theory which dominated medicine in Europe from the Hippocratic corpus long into the eighteenth century, the body was thought to be not only nourished by air but engaged in the production of air. The purpose of blood was not to convey air, but to refine it, into the etherial animal and intellectual spirits. The nerves were thought to be hollow channels for the conveyance of these attentuated spirits from the heart and liver to the brain and the soul. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The other dimension of air concerns the values signified by airinesss, values which include lightness, expansiveness, eminence, lift, luminosity, spirit. But air mediates between substance and value, because air is traditionally the element which embodies the threshold or transition between the elemental and the immaterial. For writers before Descartes and for plenty after him, the soul was not immaterial, but an infinitely fine state of matter. Perhaps some trace of this lingers in the bitter characterisation of the eyes in <i>Ill Seen Ill Said</i> not, as is traditionally as the windows which let the soul be seen, but the soul’s drain or valve: ‘fit ventholes for the soul that jakes’. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Murphy indulges himself in a cod etymology wich associates chaos, ‘superfine chaos’, with gas. When Beckett speaks of boring through language to let out the something or the nothing that lies behind it, he is perhaps committing himself to having to keep drawing on and drawing out some kind of similarly superfine, attenuated element. But air is never in this work, thin air. Beckett’s work has a strong sense of the materiality of air, which has the kind of substantiality as it did for some of the pre-Socratics of the Milesian School, especially Anaximenes, who made air the primary element. For Anaximenes, air was not merely the gap between things, but the substance of which all other substances were made, by a process of thickening and attenuation, notions which anticipate Boyle's demonstrations in the 1640s on the elasticity of air. Light and darkness themselves were explained as thinnings and concentrations of air. This notion is carried forward into Stoic cosmology, in which spirit is recognised as a certain kind of etherial substance or vapour, the pneuma, which is taken up into Christian thought and, however relentlessly spiritualised it was, could never entirely free itself from the materiality of vapour or breath. Prompted by Deleuze's attention, we can begin to see how close Beckett's materialism is close to that of the Stoics and of their pre-Socratic ancestors. Everything in Beckett's world can lapse or lift into matter, though, unlike Anaximenes, who proclaimed that the primary element was air, or Heraclitus, who thought it to be fire, the primary matter of Beckett’s work is usually thought of as earth or mud, rather than anything more aerial. But even in How It Is, we may imagine mud as itself a precipitate raher than primary substance, a kind of agglutination of murmurs and gasps churned into miry indifference.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">One can see Beckett’s work as suspended between the dream of an air of infinite lightness, and extensibility – the ‘pure plateau air’ of which Malone has a glimpse at the end of his narrative, the ‘air of the heights’ (TFN VII, <i>CSP</i>, 93), and a heavier, more oppressive kind of air that, while it makes breathing possible, is itself an impediment to breathing. This aura of breath can be both narcissistically sustaining, and toxic or oppressive. 'Is this stuff air that permits you to suffocate still, almost audibly at times, it's possible, a kind of air' (TFN II, <i>CSP</i>, 76). In Beckett’s earliest work, a stagnant miasma of air that will not diffuse is the distinguishing feature of Dublin, which features as a sink of obnubilating suffocation: <br /></div></span><blockquote style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:-1;">For his native city had got him again, her miasmata already had all but laid him low, the yellow marsh fever that she keeps up her sleeve for her more distinguished sons had clapped its clammy honeymoon hands upon him, his moral temperature had gone sky-rocketing aloft, soon he would shudder and kindle in hourly ague. (<i>DreamI, </i>169)<br /></span></blockquote><span style="font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:-1;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Beckett’s characters desire and aspire to the condition of expiry. We hear in the<i> Texts For Nothing</i> of '[t]he chest expanding and contracting unaided, panting towards the grand apnoea' (TFN VIII, <i>CSP</i>, 98). Mr Kelly, who wishes to be lost as a mote in the immensity of the sky where air has become refined into light, shares in this aspiration. And yet there is also a kind of agoraphobia in Beckett, which dreads this exposure, and prefers murmuring immurement, prizes the thick, nourishing Irish Stew of an atmosphere to airlessness. Beckett wrote that the Irishman could not give ‘a fart in its corduroys’ for art, though Beckett is never quite able itself to relinquish that comfortable self-enclosure, evn if the reliable impermeability of the <i>Times Literary Supplement</i> takes the place of the corduroys..<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The movement of Beckett's work is from the searing mistral that blows through <i>Dream</i>, whirling everything away and apart in angry disfaction, 'tattered starlings in the devil's blizzard' to the almost windless calm of the later works. Anthony Uhlmann reminded us yesterday of the ‘howling wind…the wind-gauge spinning like a propeller’ of the young Krapp’s vision on the jetty (<i>CDW</i>, 220). But that loud vision is wound forward into the quieter respiration of the scene in the punt, with the sound of the flags that ‘went down, sighing, before the stem’ (<i>CDW</i>, 221), and the broken-winded croaking of Krapp’s own vesperal hymn. We might say that Beckett's work is between winds: the Romantic winds which signify expansion, inspiration, aspiration and interfusion, and the feebler kinds of sour hiccup, sulkily reluctant expulsion, foirade. 'Not a breath', we are assured repeatedly through <i>How It Is</i>. If there are stirrings still in his later works, they are rufflings of the tranquillity of decomposition by the actions of the most costive sort of pentecost. ‘Even so a great heap of sand sheltered from the wind lessened by three grains every second year and every following increased by two if this notion is maintained’ (<i>Lost Ones</i>, <i>CSP</i>, 167)<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The young Beckett, whose psychosomatic crises of the early 1930s included spasms of breathlessness as well as paroxysms of palpitation, seems to have experienced air as an alien element, and to have sought relief from the occupation of breath in fantasies of absolute expiration. Derrida has analysed a similar phantasmic pattern in the he work of Artaud, in his essay ‘La parole soufflée’. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Wilfred Bion would write, some two decades after his experience of analysing Beckett of the attacks on the idea of bodily integrity and integument that characterised the thoughts and desires of psychotic patients, who would be consumed with the idea of being emptied out or vacuumed, with tears and sweat gushing through their ears, nostrils and the pores of their skins. Didier Anzieu has suggested that Beckett’s sufferings took the form of a ‘toxic skin’, in which the phantasmal epidermis that should serve as a model of containment and communication between self and world was both itself lacerated and acted as a suffocating constriction on the self. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The ideas of integument and of breath come together in the notion of an atmosphere. Indeed, the links between breath and the skin exist elsewhere than in psychoanalysis. Hippocrates believed, like other ancient physicians, that human beings respired through their skins, and was one of many in the ancient world who reported the case of a woman who lived for three days without drawing breath, apparently because she was breathing through her skin. This idea seems to be necessary to the conception of the aura as an ‘atmosphere’, a sort of cadence of glory, a perspiration of breath. The idea of the human aura, which began to be popularised in Theosophy, spiritualism and other forms of popular occultism of the late nineteeth century, resembles the etheric or phantasmal body, versions of which are to be found in many mystical systems. But, where the etheric body is a second, as it were three-dimensional body which doubles the body's volume; the auric body doubles the body's contour. It is the outside of the outside, the higher skin breathed out by the skin itself. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The idea of an aura, or visible emanation of light, from divine or human creatures, may also have received some impetus from Epicurean atomism, which imagined visibility itself to be achieved by means of the shedding from the skin of filmy casts of atoms, in the form of second skins, called, variously, species, simulacrae, eidola and effigies. To this day, we call things specious which have this filmy, insubstantial quality.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Breath is a kind of skin: in its ideal form it is a magic atmosphere that can sustain one without the need for respiration, a contour of solid air, at once nutriment and support. But in the form in which it appears in Beckett it is tattered, held together in mere flitters like the cobwebby scraps of spitstuck black paper of <i>All Strange Away</i>.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Returning to Dublin suffering from an unpleasant rash affecting his face and scalp, Beckett said that he looked like 'a scrofulous gargoyle' (Knowlson, 119). Malone's 'gurgles of outflow' can be heard in the gargoyle, while the scrofula provides an image of the skin torn as the cry is lacerated. Belacqua's indisposition as extravagantly enlarged in <i>Dream</i> combines disturbances of the skin and the breath:<br /></div></span><blockquote style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:-1;">the Muttering Delirium and the Summer Diarrhoea and confluent noli me tangere rodent ulcers lancinating his venter, incubating the nits what nits bloody well you in the scarf of his cuticle, the black spots encrimsoned on his sacrum, his mouth a clot of sordes, his clubbed digits pluckiing at the counterpane, his rhonchi not to mention his inspirating (there's no call to labour this particular aspect of his malaise) crepitus mucous sonorous sibilant crackling whistling wheezing crowing and would you believe it stridulous, strangled with the waterbrash and a plumjuice sputum, the big slob of a catamite, dear oh dear how did he ever get himself into such a state (<i>Dream</i>, 85)<br /></span></blockquote><span style="font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:-1;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Consumption, the disease of which Beckett’s cousin Peggy Sinclair died in 1931, which is so named because in its commonest form it consumes the membrane of the lungs, seems to provide another link between the tearing or giving way of physical fabric and the choked utterance: through the many coughs from which Beckett characters suffer. The speaker of <i>Texts for Nothing</i> III imagines a coughing companion for himself:<br /></div></span><blockquote style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:-1;">He's gone in the wind, I in the prostate rather. We envy each other. I envy him, he envies me, occasionally. I catheterize myself, unaided, with trembling hand, bent double in the public pisshouse, under cover of my cloak, people take me for a dirty old man. He waits for me to finish, sitting on a bench, coughing up his guts, spitting it into a snuffbox which no sooner overflows than he empties it into the canal, out of civic-mindedness. (<i>TFN</i> III, <i>CSP</i>, 80) <br /></span></blockquote><span style="font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:-1;"><div style="text-align: justify;">The one exception to the prevailing problem in <i>Dream</i>, that none of the characters will pipe their assigned notes, is the figure of the postman, with his 'keen loud whistling: The Roses are Blooming in Picardy… No man had ever whistled like that and of course women can't' (<i>Dream</i>, 146). The paragraph is set off by itself as a mark of reverence, says the narrator, for the postman is now dead. We learn the cause of his death in Arsene's evocation of 'the consumptive postman whistling The Roses are Blooming in Picardy', but we might perhaps have guessed it from the epitaph Beckett forges: 'The dead fart, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities, and the quick whistle.' (<i>Dream</i>, 146)<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;">Take Into the Air<br /></div></b><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Beckett’s alternating sense of the desperate craving for air and air’s equally desperate oppression is focussed upon a phrase from Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ which recurs in his writing in the 1930s. <br /></div></span><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:13px;">for many a time </span><br /></div><span style="font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:-1;"><div style="text-align: justify;">I have been half in love with easeful Death, <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">To take into the air my quiet breath; <br /></div></span></blockquote><span style="font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:-1;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Beckett wrote to Tom McGreevy of his unsophisticated pleasure in the poems of Keats, conflating significantly the Autumn and Nightingale odes in evoking<br /></div></span><blockquote style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:-1;">that crouching broding quality in Keats - squatting on the moss, crushing a petal, licking his lips and rubbing his hands 'counting the last oozings, hours by hours.' I like him the best of them all, because he doesn't beat his fists on the table. I like that awful sweetness and thick soft damp green richness. And weariness: 'Take into the air my quiet breath.' (quoted Knowlson, 117)<br /></span></blockquote><span style="font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:-1;"><div style="text-align: justify;">When he evokes the same passage from the ‘Ode to Autumn’ in <i>Proust</i>, it is more complicated, for panic has joined with the voluptuous languor, and odour has been added too: 'the terrible panic-stricken stasis of Keats, crouched in a mossy thicket, annulled, like a bee in sweetness, 'drowsed with the fume of poppies' and watching 'the last oozings, hours by hours' (<i>PTD</i>, 90-1)<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The bubbling, gurgling, aromatic atmosphere of the Ode, in which odour and murmur brew and thicken together becomes the eroded atmosphere of breath in Beckett's work, in which the air will be panted rather than poured out. The 'pouring forth' of the nightingale's voice become Malone’s ‘gurgles of outflow', and the sucking of the sea at the end of Embers, conjoined with and interpreted by Henry’s recall of the plumber’s visit to deal with the ‘waste’, or drainpipe (<i>CDW</i>, 264). Keats imagines himself in 'embalmèd darkness'. The word is apt, for he is not merely wrapped as well as enraptured in the sound, he is also surrounded by odours. Unbearably slavered over by the Smeraldina, all Belacqua wants is to 'to know a good few prods of compunction and consider how best his quiet breath, or, better still, his and hers mingled, might be taken into the air' (<i>Dream</i>, 107). Belacqua's 'prods of compunction' may be a transformation of the fourteenth-century Ayenbite of Inwit, or Remorse of Conscience, as well of course as an anticipation of the title, <i>More Pricks Than Kicks</i> and its wry reangling of Acts 9.5 and 26.14: 'And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks'. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The association of air and lacerated skin recurs in the torment to which the lobster will be subject at the end of ‘Dante and the Lobster’, in which Keats’s words are once again evoked, but contorted into cruel incongruity: 'Now it was going alive into scalding water. It had to. Take into the air my quiet breath' (<i>MPTK</i>, 21). Even the boiling seems to have reference to Keats's Ode, with the stintless ebullition of the birdsong, and the 'beaded bubbles winking at the brim' of the analgesic Hippocrene for which it prompts desire (though we remember that nightingales traditionally sing from the pain of a heart pierced with thorns). The air in question is more than the stuff snuffed and puffed by the lungs; since an air is a song as well as the breath from which it is shaped. If Keats is looking for blissful midnight surcease in asking that his quiet breath to be taken into the air, he may also presumably be asking for his words to be taken up into the bird's song.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;">Fiasco of Oscillation<br /></div></b><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Not only does air permeate the thought of the spiritual, which is to say the imagination of the material, the symbolism of breathing suffuses Western and Eastern cultures. Breath is not only a substance, it is also an action, the most primary action. If the imagination of air is always involved in the imagination of value, the twofold action of breathing establishes an unresolvable dualism at the heart of life and matter. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Though breathing itself may not be named or represented directly in Beckett's work, it has become a commonplace to make out the breath's periodicity in the characteristic alternating currents of his work, the 'dreary fiasco of oscillation' spoken of in <i>Dream</i> (121): the synchronised fluctuations of light and heat in <i>The Lost Ones</i>, the clenched and unclenched hands, the weary succession of left and right, the pushemepullyou of the heart, the alternation of dish and pot of <i>Malone Dies</i>, and all the patterns of coming and going which come and go throughout his work. The secret ministry of breath peeps out in the discussion of the synchronicity of the 'two storms' of light and temperature in <i>The Lost Ones</i>: 'The two storms have this in common that when one is cut off as though by magic then in the same breath the other also as though again the two were connected somewhere to a single commutator' (<i> Lost Ones</i>, <i>CSP</i> 171). Breath is indeed the 'commutator', the switch. For the taking of breath is a continual switching across. Breath is of life, but is also the immanence of death to life, since there is a little death in every breath. Breath is matter temporised, chronical stuff. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Invigorating air is air we take in to us. The air we give out is in varying degrees, waste, or noxious. We breathe in oxygen and produce carbon dioxide: trees and plants take up carbon dioxide and give out oxygen. ‘Breathe on me, breath of God’, goes the hymn. Medieval devils were known by their sulphurous stench and break intemperate wind in imagery and drama – their association with the vulgar, visceral-looking bagpipe also expresses their windiness. Incense and sweet odours come to be thought of as the most appropriate offering to the nostrils of the gods. Even Christianity, which began by turning its nose up fastidiously at the incenses used by Greeks and Jews, eventually developed its own traditions of the odour of sanctity, with its many stories of fragrant saints, and of bodies, like those of St.Isidore and St. Francis Xavier, miraculously preserved in a freshly-laundered condition. St Paul refers to the sweet fragrance (<i>osme</i>) of the diffused word of God. . <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Indeed, Beckett connects with this olfactory tradition of conceiving divinity, when in Company he imagines apprehending his creator through the office of the nose:<br /></div></span><blockquote style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:-1;">Smell? His own? Long since dulled. And a barrier to others if any. Such as might have once emitted a rat long dead. Or some other carrion. Yet to be imagined. Unless the creator smell. Aha! The crawling creator. Might the crawling creator be reasonably imagined [pp] to smell? Even fouler than his creature. Stirring now and then to wonder that mind so lost to wonder. To wonder what in the world can be making that alien smell. Whence in the world those wafts of villainous smell. How much more companionable could his creator but smell. (<i>Company</i>, 51-2).<br /></span></blockquote><span style="font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:-1;"><div style="text-align: justify;">In most of the theological systems in which life or sanctity is conferred through divine breath, God appears to have a vegetable conformation, in that the breath of life which he inspires is in fact respired. The Catholic liturgy retains the rite of ‘insufflation’, in which the priest’s breath acts as a benediction; the blowing on cards or dice, that is part of a magician’s repertoire, preserves this sense of the emanative power that inheres in what is exhaled. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;">Exhaustion<br /></div></b><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Breathing is laboured in Beckett's work, and breathing is part of the labour of that work. If drawing breath is an agony, then releasing it is often a relief. The speaker in 'From An Abandoned Work' insists that he must have been 'quite one of the fastest runners the world has ever seen, over a short distance, five or ten yards, in a second I was there', but that he could not sustain the pace, though this is, he insists, 'not for breathlessness, it was mental, all is mental' (<i>CSP</i>, 131). The point of these surging 'flashes, or gushes' is perhaps to allow him to 'vent the pent, vent the pent'. Beckett seems to have been attentive to the crossroads in that word. Giving vent means opening out, letting in the wind and letting it out. But giving vent in Beckett is as likely to come from the lower man of the viscera, the venter which gives the word 'ventriloquist', as from the upper man of the heart or chest. We have heard that even eyes are excretory ventholes at times. A vent is the conventional abbreviation of a ventriloquist. This derives from the Latin ventriloquism, itself a translation of the Greek <i>engastrimythos</i>, both of which mean the word, or the voice, in the belly. There is no etymological warrant for it, but we nevertheless hear the gas in the gastric, and the wind in the bellows and the belly. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In my book <a href="http://www.dumbstruck.org/"><i>Dumbstruck</i></a> (2000), I tracked the history of conceptions of the profane voice, issuing either from the genitals, the anus, or from other non-oral regions. The vagitus itself can be thought of as a kind of speaking out from the belly, and prmpted the author of the entry ‘engastrimism’ in the <i>Encylopédie</i> to discourse about the possibility of a child crying audibly within the womb. One of the most oddest of the many odd explanations for ventriloquism was that it was effected by speaking on the inbreath, or through literal inspiration, or backwards breathing. The idea of speaking while breathing in belongs to the diabolical economy of saying the Lord’s Prayer backwards and other such demonic shifts. Belly-talk was profane because it disprupted or bypassed the normal system by which breath was lifted in speech through respiration. Instead of refining breath into logos, it degraded logos into stench and slaver. Beckett’s desire for a language that could so to speak dispose of itself in the same breath it took to express itself draws on this economy of inversion. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Leslie Hill has pointed to the consonantal system in Beckett that associates mammiferous 'm's with the enclosure of the womb and the cacophonous, expectorant 'c's, 'g's and 'k's, which seem to cough up the very vocality of which they are made. One can add a function of sufflation to that of expectoration. The ejaculations which pepper Beckett's work are full of more or less violent expirations of air: 'phew'; 'pah'; 'hah'; ‘shhhh’ and the remarkable, mysterious 'aha' of <i>All Strange Away</i> and <i>Company</i>. This kind of belly-speech.is much in evidence in Beckett, in the many evocations of the fart. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;">Foirade<br /></div></b><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></span><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:13px;">A philosopher French named Descartes</span><br /></div><span style="font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:-1;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Was explaining himself to a tart<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">'When I think, I exist',<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He remarked, as he pissed:<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">'But what does it mean when I fart?'<br /></div></span></blockquote><span style="font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:-1;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Farting is an example of a bodily quasi-speech, an inversion of the logos, or breath of God. The fart resembles the cough. Aristotle defines a ‘voice as a sound with soul in it, but also makes it clear that not all the sounds made by ensouled creatures have soul in them – he instances coughing and sneezing, and might have included farting. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Beckett has an extraordinarily highly-developed sense of the density or materiality of words. Murphy feels spattered by words that are half dead. Farting converts language into smell – which has not always been thought of as profane, as is the tendency in our deodorised times. Unlike speaking, which transfigures bodily sound into meaning, farting seems to transfigure language downwards, in a belly-speech which materialises words as a kind of aery, odorous semi-vapour. In the case of the particular kind of fart known in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a fizzle, or in Beckett’s French version, a foirade, the breath does not become properly distinct. Rather it clings noxiously but narcissistically to its point of issue, ‘like something almost being said’ (to borrow a phrase from Philip Larkin). ‘Breaking without fear or favour wind’, we read in the poem ‘Echo’s Bones’. The wind that fails to break, to become audible, aptly evokes the broken-winded lingering of so many of Beckett’s undead, or uncertifiably quasi-deceased. It is there in the tuneless barrel-organ which accompanies and joins with the wheezy craic of the two old codgers in <i>The Old Tune</i>, Beckett’s rendering of Pinget’s <i>La Manivelle</i>. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I mst wind this up, or down, not with crack, but a fizzle. The eighteenth-century word ‘fizzle’ perfectly embodies the failed emanation: an utterance that is doubly unconsummated, first of all in that it comes from the wrong orifice and secondly in that it fails to leave the body, but cleaves to it in a dankly autistic atmosphere. The Swiftian logic seems to be elaborately staged in the opening poem of a popular pamphlet entitled <i>The Benefit of Farting Explain'd</i>, which was once and for all I know by some still is, attributed to Swift:<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></span><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Helvetica;font-size:13px;">On Miss V___e's F--T. </span><br /></div><span style="font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:-1;"><div style="text-align: justify;">In the PHILIPPICK STILE<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Lovely Babe of Maid of Honour,<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Every Grace shall smile upon her,<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sweetest Warbler of the Tail,<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Soft as Breeze of Southern Gale;<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Or the fanning Zephyrs Blast,<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Over Beds of Spices past;<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Gentle Puff of fragrant Air,<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Squeez'd from Breech of Virgin Fair;<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">'Tis by Thee the Fair discover,<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Proof of Vigour in a Lover;<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Silent Fizzle; or Speaking Fart,<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Easily both Ease impart;<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sweet Fore-boder, joyful Sound,<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">To the Belly that's hard bound;<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Cure of Cholick, Cure of Gripes,<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Tuneful Drone of lower Pipes.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Thus the Winds in Cavern pent,<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Widen Holes, and force a Vent;<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Stealing Whisper, 'scape of Bum,<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Soft as Flute, or loud as Drum;<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Downwards breathing, backwards sigh,<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Happy Smock that lies so nigh;<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Happy she that can this Way,<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Shut her Mouth, but loudly Bray. <br /></div></span></blockquote><span style="font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:-1;"><div style="text-align: justify;">The pamphlet literally conflates the traditions of prophecy and ventriloquism. Twenty years later Diderot would elaborate them again in his <i>Les Bijoux indiscrets</i>, an obscene fable about a magic ring that could endow the genitals of society ladies with the power of speech. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;">Haitch<br /></div></b><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I finish with a text in which the alternatives of the open air and the closed atmosphere are particularly apparent.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The reported discourse of <i>Company</i>, like that of <i>How It Is</i>, appears breathless. Where the words in <i>How It Is</i> are only audible ‘when the panting stops’, in <i>Company</i>, the fact that the sound of breath is audible at the same time as the voice seems to be an indication that the voice is not the hearer’s own: ‘Apart from the voice and the faint sound of his breath there is no sound. None at least that he can hear. This he can tell by the faint sound of his breath’ (<i>Company</i>, 8). Breath here functions as a kind of audible silence. Yet there is one moment at which the faint gust of breath in the reported voice becomes audible and even tangible: ‘Let the hearer be named H. Aspirate. Haitch. You Haitch are on your back in the dark. And let him know his name. No longer any question of his overhearing. Of his not being meant’ (<i>Company</i>, 31). The possibility has no sooner been floated than it is rejected as offering no gain in companionability, perhaps because it dispenses with the ‘faint hope’ (<i>Company</i>, 32) that the hearer might not be the intended addressee of the voice. But once signalled in this way, this aspiration proves to be a feature of the text more generally. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The huff and puff of this ‘haitch’ lends the English version of the text a dimension which the French, with its absence of aspirate sounds, must lack. It allows us to hear a kind of panting, or insufflation through the text, as the noise of the breath allows itself to be heard as a primary substance, for example through the words ‘hope’, ‘hearer’, ‘home’. The memories on which the hearer attempts to subsist are themselves airy (‘Bloom of adulthood. Try a whiff of that’, <i>Company</i>, 38). But, just as the seventy-mile prospect of the sea shrinks to the narrow compass of the indeterminate space in which the feeble, fabled hearer lies, so the open perspective of memory curdles horrifyingly in the abortive outcome of the remembered good deed, the narration of which is so full of haitches: ‘hedgehog’, ‘hatbox’, ‘hutch’ and of course, the lingering memory of what it becomes: ‘The mush. The stench’ (<i>Company</i>, 31). <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Michel Serres has suggested that in every epoch, there is a physics which underlies its prevailing metaphysics: the solidity of the classical, Newtonian world; the turbulence of the fluid mechanics which modern physics remembers from the work of Lucretius, and, most recently, and in our era, the birth of a thought governed by a physics of the gaseous or the volatile. Beckett’s climate, his atmospherics, fold together ancient and modern. His work strives to live on itself, even as it, to borrow Freud’s phrase from <i>Beyond the Pleasure Principle</i>, lives itself off. The atmosphere of his work, sustained through a kind of artificial respiration forms an autistic sort of aura, which I cannot always like, or altogether abide. And yet in its imagination of air, Beckett’s work must inevitably find itself evacuated to some degree from itself, disturbed by other atmospherics. If one asks, what kind of of imagination is this, so matter-riddled, the answer cannot be ‘a kind of its own’, not quite. For the work of breath is never complete, until it is suspended entirely, and the tenure of air is never entire. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">One reading of <i>How It Is</i> is that everything we read is to be imagined as overheard in the intervals of the panting, in the baiting or abatement of breath.<br /></div></span><blockquote style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:-1;">All that once without scraps in me when the panting stops ten seconds fifteen seconds all that fainter weaker less clear but the purport in me when it abates the breath we're talking of a breath token of life when it abates like a last in the light then resumes a hundred and ten fifteen to the minute when it abates ten seconds fifteen seconds (<i>How It Is</i>, 145)<br /></span></blockquote><span style="font-family:Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:-1;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Breathing is endless intermission. Beckett’s work lives hereafter in the kind of renewed interval which that work itself intimates through its enterings into air. In its continuing hereafter, in which it may increasingly be exposed to different kinds of weather, disturbed by different kinds of atmospherics – the second nature of a logosphere that enlarges its biosphere – it must live not in immanence, but imminence. Like the Emily Dickinson poem, it is a work that must ‘dwell in possibility’ and, like the old Irish joke, ‘expecting every breath to be its next’. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;">References<br /></div></b><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Beckett, Samuel. <i>How It Is</i>. London: Calder.<br /></div><i><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i>--------------------. Collected Shorter Prose</i>. London: Calder.</span><br /></div></i><i><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i>--------------------.</i><i> Dream of Fair to Middling Women</i> (1993). Ed. Eoin O'Brien and Edith Fournier. London and Paris: Calder.</span><br /></div></i><i><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i>--------------------.</i><i>More Pricks Than Kicks</i>. London: Calder and Boyars.</span><br /></div></i><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Knowlson, James (1996). <i>Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett</i>. London: Bloomsbury.<br /></div><br /></span></span>sozitahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12894263865471947191noreply@blogger.com0