By Ana Maria Côrtes and Gabriela Vescovi*
In a production by director and playwright José Celso Martinez Corrêa (Zé Celso), Waiting for Godot (1952) returned to the stages of São Paulo at the emblematic Teatro Oficina, where it runs until June 26th. The play was written by the Irishman Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), known por his experimentation in the most diverse literary genres. Beckett wrote novels, soap operas, poetry, plays for radio and television and other texts that escape conventional categorization, gaining notoriety from the 1950s onwards, a prolific period in his career.
To understand Waiting for Godot, it is important to know its place in Beckett's work and also in the post-war period.
Beckett published his first works in the 1930s, in a style still heavily influenced by James Joyce, whose assistant and friend he became. Because he found it difficult to work with the English language (supposedly very steeped in his literary tradition) and because he wanted to differentiate himself from his master, in 1937 Beckett adopted French, seeking to expand his creative abilities in that language. In addition to his work as a writer, he was an excellent translator from French, Italian, Spanish and German, having graduated in arts and literature from Trinity College, Dublin.
Living in Paris during this period, World War II had direct implications on his work, resulting in a hiatus in his publications. Beckett aHe joined the French Resistance in 1941 and, the following year, fleeing the Gestapo, he went to live in the South of France. In 1945 he worked with the Irish Red Cross in Normandy.
It was shortly after this period of terror and persecution that Beckett wrote his most famous texts, already within the aesthetics for which he became known, which is conventionally called the literature of lack of words, of exhaustion. An exponent of European Modernism, he sought to destabilize the limits of literary categories, through the construction of a bilingual work, which explored the hybridism of genres and aimed at exhausting the languages and media used, via emptying or via redundancy, if not both. He wrote in French and translated it into English and vice versa, creating originals in two different languages. In the 1950s, he published two well-known trilogies: one of novels – molloy, malone dies e The unnameable – and one for theater – Waiting for Godot, end of game e Happy Days.
Waiting for Godot was translated around the world. There were several productions at the time of publication, sometimes with the participation of the author - the first of them in Paris, at the Théâtre de Babylone, in 1953. Other emblematic productions took place: "inside a prison, with a cast of inmates; in a divided Sarajevo and besieged, with actors from various ethnicities; during the apartheid, with only black people acting; with a cast of only women; productions directed by the author himself", as recalled by Beckett's translator into Brazilian Portuguese, Fábio de Souza Andrade (1).
In a short time, the text arrived in Brazil, having premiered in 1955, in a production directed by Alfredo Mesquita, with students from the School of Dramatic Art at USP (2). It was starred and directed by big names in national theater, such as Cacilda Becker, Walmor Chagas, Antunes Filho and Zé Celso. Its success can be attributed to several factors: the experience of loneliness, the lack of meaning, the crisis of the subject, language and the foundations of society. Beckett's dramatic work was responsible for changing the paradigms of theater, due to its formal proposals, combined with the universality of the themes covered. (3).
In this sense, Waiting for Godot It escapes what is traditionally understood as a drama. Unlike the classics, in which action is presupposed – according to D'Onofrio (1995), etymologically, drama means action -, here little happens: the vagabond duo Vladimir and Estragon waiting (4). On “a country road”, next to a tree, on an afternoon that is almost the same over and over again, the characters await the arrival of the mysterious Godot, who – spoiler – never appears. Every afternoon, a boy tells the pair that they must return the next day, because “Mr. Godot said he won't come this afternoon, but he will definitely come tomorrow.” (5).
The line that opens the play, “Nothing to do”, repeated several times by the characters, sets the tone of the text. To fill this time when there is nothing to do, the two talk, sometimes unwillingly. Even suicide is considered, given the abandonment and sameness in which they live. But your situation is so bleak – on a fine line between the comic and the tragic – which they can't even achieve, leaving them condemned to an endless wait.
In the hope, more of Vladimir than of Estragon – who sometimes forgets what they are doing there –, that Godot will appear, they meet another pair, Pozzo and Lucky, whose relationship is equally dysfunctional. The first takes the other by a rope around his neck, curses him and often whips him. Lucky, however, submits, because he doesn't want Pozzo to get rid of him; perhaps because, as Eugene Webb (1973) understands, he fears freedom, in a world dominated by chaos (6).
Here we have another point of division in relation to classical theater: at the end of the play, the crisis experienced by the characters is not resolved. In the world created by Beckett, there is no reestablishment of order, because, from the beginning, there was no order that could be restored. For Webb, the dominant image in the play is precisely that of chaos, of a certain bewilderment and confusion of the characters. Contrary to what we can identify in other contexts, there is no foundation that allows the restoration of the cosmos in this universe.
Here we come to an important issue in the play, that of the mental state of the characters. Confusion predominates in the interactions between Vladimir, Estragon, Pozzo, Lucky and even the boy who announces, at the end of each day, that Godot will not be able to attend the scheduled meeting. Vladimir, at various times, quickly goes from certainty to uncomfortable doubt. In the second act, he is sure that the previous day he had been in that place, but he wavers in this belief after realizing that the tree now has leaves, an inexplicable change in a period of one day. He is also convinced that he already knew Pozzo and Lucky, until Estragon claims that he had not met them before.
Vladimir
(without getting angry) I can't be sure.Tarragon
No, nothing is certain. (7)
Estragon and Vladimir's hesitation is closely linked to the notion of time – a theme dear to the author. The characters have difficulty perceiving the passage of time; sometimes, they don’t know how to differentiate whether what they experience is reality or a dream; nor are they capable of temporally locating events.
Beckett organizes the characters' world in a cyclical, repetitive movement, present in the almost symmetrical structure of the play. After all, there are two pairs of characters, two acts, two days in which the events take place; some situations are repeated, as are certain lines, guaranteeing “the structural unity of the piece, in which the prophetic opening line – 'Nothing to do' – returns regularly, a paradoxical reminder of both the need to fill the void and the innocuousness of this effort. ” (8). Despite this, day after day, Vladimir and Estragon return to that road:
Vladimir
We'll be back tomorrow.Tarragon
And the day after tomorrow.Vladimir
Maybe.Tarragon
And so on.Vladimir
I.e…Tarragon
Until he comes. (9)
This cycle, also present in the song that opens the second act, is marked, as we said, by the waiting. It transforms the characters' existence into a kind of purgatory. (10), in which, to repeat what they say, there is nothing to do, other than waiting for the arrival of your destination. This reiterates the inescapability of human failure, failure and powerlessness – another theme dear to Beckett.
Godot's identity was the subject of countless debates between the public and critics. More than trying to determine who or what he is, we must understand the defining role he plays in the lives of the protagonists. It is in Godot that hope for change, for transformation, is placed. The problem is that, in Waiting for Godot, very little changes – the appearance of some leaves on the tree, Pozzo's blindness, Lucky's muteness. For the rest, everything remains in the eternal cycle of repetition and waiting.
If, from a formal point of view, Beckett moves away from dramatic conventions, in terms of content, his play aligns with a tradition of works that propose to think about the human condition. In this universe where nothing changes and nothing improves over time, the characters and the lack of an outcome make us question the meaning of our existence – if it actually exists.
This search, which marks everyone, is perhaps one of the factors behind the success of this piece with several layers, including metalinguistic ones, and the continued interest in it, seventy years after its publication. The inaction of the characters, trapped in a suffocating and repetitive existence, is the result of the lack of meaning that underpins their existence. Godot, who is not enough, could replace these beliefs. Until then, “nothing to do”.
*Ana Maria Ferreira Côrtes and Gabriela Vescovi They have degrees in Literature and are currently studying for a PhD in the Literary Theory and History Program at the Institute of Language Studies at Unicamp.
Read the article published on the Unicamp Portal about Profis students going to Teatro Oficina to watch the production of Samuel Beckett's play: There's no point waiting for Godot, he's dead
References
(1) ANDRADE, Fábio de Souza. Preface. In: BECKETT, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. Translated by Fábio de Souza Andrade. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2006.
(2) Godot in two moments. In: BECKETT, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. Translated by Fábio de Souza Andrade. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2017, p. 133.
(3) MCDONALD, Rónán. Waiting for Godot and Beckett's cultural impact. In: BECKETT, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. Translated by Fábio de Souza Andrade. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2017, p. 133; 140.
(4) D'ONOFRIO, Salvatore. Text theory. São Paulo, São Paulo: Ática, 1995, p. 129.
(5) BECKETT, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. Translated by Fábio de Souza Andrade. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2006, p. 17; 100.
(6) WEBB, Eugene. Samuel Beckett's plays. Translated by Pedro Sette-Câmara. São Paulo: É Realizações, 2012, p. 34.
(7) BECKETT, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. Translated by Fábio de Souza Andrade. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2006, p. 107.
(8) ANDRADE, Fábio de Souza. Preface. In: BECKETT, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. Translated by Fábio de Souza Andrade. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2006, p. 9; 11.
(9) BECKETT, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. Translated by Fábio de Souza Andrade. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2006, p. 29.
(10) BRYCE, Eleanor. Dystopia in the plays of Samuel Beckett: Purgatory in play. La Clé des Langues [en ligne], Lyon, ENS de LYON/DGESCO, Sept. 2012. Available at: . Accessed on: 10/6/2019.
