Pirandellism and Samuel Beckett's Plays

Scripta Humanistica
Directed by
BRUNO M. DAMIANI
The Catholic University of America

ADVISORY BOARD

Samuel G. Armistead Hans Flasche

University of California
(Davis)
Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce
University of California
(Santa Barbara)
Theodore Beardsley
The Hispanic Society of
America
Universität Hamburg
Robert J. DiPietro
University of Delaware
Giovanni Fallani
Musei Vaticani
John E. Keller
University of Kentucky

Giuseppe Bellini Richard Kinkade

Università di Milano University of Arizona

Giovanni Maria Bertini Myron I. Lichtblau

Università di Torino Syracuse University

Heinrich Bihler Juan M. Lope Blanch

Universität Göttingen Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México
Harold Cannon
National Endowment Leland R. Phelps
for the Humanities Duke University

Michael G. Cooke Martín de Riquer

Ya/e University Real Academia Española

Dante Della Terza Joseph Silverman

Harvard University University of California
(Santa Cruz)
Frédéric Deloffre
Université de Paris- John K. Walsh
Sorbonne (Berkeley)
 Pirandellism and
Samuel Beckett's Plays

Godwin Okebaram Uwah

Scriptahumanistica
48
Okebaram Uwah, Godwin.
Pirandellism and Samuel Beckett's plays / Godwin Okebaram Uwah.
p. cm. — (Scripta humanistica)
Includes Índex.
ISBN 0-916379-55-8 : $28.00
1. Beckett, Samuel, 1906- — Dramatic works. 2. Beckett, Samuel,
1906- En attendant Godot. 3. Beckett, Samuel, 1906- Fin de
partie. 4. Pirandello, Luigi, 1867-1936—Influence—Beckett.
5. French drama—Italian influences. I. Title. II. Series.
PQ2603.E378Z93 1989
842'.914-dcl9 88-39268
CIP

Publisher and Distributor:

SCRIPTA HUMANISTICA
1383 Kersey Lane
Potomac, Maryland 20854 U.S.A.

© SCRIPTA HUMANÍSTICA
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 88-39268
International Standard Book Number 0-916379-55-8

Printed in the United States of America

TO
MY WIFE, NKECHl
AND MY CHILDREN
CHINWEE
UCHEE
OLUCHI I
CHIMAA
AND MY MOTHER, CATHERINE
This page intentionally left blank
 Contents

Preface 1
Introduction 3
Chapter One: PIRANDELLO AND PIRANDELLISM 8
Pirandellism as Critical Term 12
Drama, Reality, and Stage Innovation 13
Pirandello and Beckett Parallel 16

Chapter Two: PIRANDELLO AND BECKETT: ESTHETIC

RELEVANCE 27
On Humor and Proust 27
The Mirror Image 30
Feeling of the Opposite 37
Chapter Three: DRAMATURGICAL FRAMEWORK 44
Characterizationn 44
Play-within-a Play 50
Form-Content and Artistic Enterprise 53
Dramaturgical differentiation 59
Chapter Four: THE UNREALITY OF THE REAL 66
Philosophical Formulations 67
Absence of Logic 71
Epistemological Incertitude 74
Fragmenting Wholeness/Elusive Meaning 78
Múltiple and Disintegrating Personality 85
Real or Unreal? 94
 Chapter Five: COMEDY OF SURFACE APPEARANCE 96
Incongruity 98
Tedium of Existence 107
Vita-Forma Conflict 111
Conclusión 123
 Preface

This book is a revised version of my doctoral dissertation ("Aspects of

Pirandellism in Samuel Beckett's Godot and Fin de partie," Florida State,
1982). The study is essentially a reflection of my readings of the primary texts
and of critical materials written by Pirandello and Beckett scholars too
numerous to ennumerate. I will, however, mention a few of them whose
works enriched my insight and helped me to organize my own ideas. These
authors include, but not limited to, Ruby Cohn, Martin Esslin, Thomas
Bishop, Enoch Brater, Eric Bentley, Anne Paolucci, Eugene Webb,
Domenico Vittorini, Richard Gilman, Alian Lewis, S.C. Gontarski, Linda
Ben-Zvi, Gaspare Giudice, John Gassner, David Hesla, Steven Rosen,
Robert Brustein, Walter Starkie, Tom Driver, Roger Oliver, Wylie Sypher,
Leonard Pronko, Leonel Abel, Frederick Lumley, Matthew Renate, Nathan
A. Scott, and Richard Sogliuzzo. To these and other authors not mentioned
here, I am most grateful.
Citations from the primary sources—the Plays of Pirandello and
Beckett—are in Italian and French respectively. The secondary texts—
Pirandello's On Humor and Beckett's Proust—are cited in English. This
"compromise" arrangement, coupled with textual explanations preceding or
immediately following cited texts, should minimize possible difficulties arising
from texts not cited in English.
I must now express my gratitude to Pirandello (of blessed memory) and
Beckett in particular, and to the Publishers of their works in general, for the
books which have provided the basis for this study. Other individuals deserve
my gratitude because they have, in different ways, helped to make this work
possible. My warm appreciation goes to Dr. Víctor Carrabino who first intro-
duced me to Pirandello and later directed by doctoral dissertation. I also re-

1
member with fondness the late Dr. Lawrence Joiner of Winthrop College
who first introduced me to Beckett and later supervised my Master's thesis.
I want to thank, as well, certain colleagues and friends who were
especially supportive of my work. My special gratitude goes to Dr. Lois More
Overbeck, the current editor of The Beckett Circle, who read the first and
final drafts of the manuscript and offered me extensive valuable advice. I am
equally thankful to Dr. Dennis Goldsberry of the English Department, Col-
lege of Charleston, for reading my manuscript and giving me stylistic sugges-
tions. My gratitude goes to Dr. Frank Morris, my colleague in the Languages
department, who read portions of the manuscript.
I am, as well, indebted to the College of Charleston for a Faculty Re-
search grant and the Languages department, for a Department Research
grant, which helped to subsidize the publication of this manuscript. I want to
thank, in a special way, the Chairman of the Languages department, Dr.
Mike Pincus, for his encouragement and support. I also thank Sharron Ford-
ham, the Administrative Assistant of the department, who patiently typed the
manuscript. I thank too the College of Charleston Library personnel for their
services.
Finally, my deepest indebtedness goes to my wife, Nkechi, for shoulder-
ing single-handedly the family burdens while I was working on this project
and more importantly, for allowing me to work late hours, away from the
house, over a long period of time, to produce this modest work.

2
 Introduction

The overwhelming amount and degree of sophistication of Beckett

criticism in recent years make it necessary to justify another book on Beckett.
My main reason for this study is to examine a dimensión that has not been
fully explored, namely, the Pirandellian categories in Beckett's plays. Some
authors have of course specifically mentioned Beckett as one of the heirs to
the Pirandellian heritage. Robert Brustein, for example, says that Pirandello's
insights into the human personality and suffering anticípate Beckett. 1
Thomas Bishop identifies a bond between the absurdity in Pirandello's works
and Beckett's visión of life, and sees both authors sharing a deep pity and
compassion for suffering humanity. 2 In his doctoral dissertation ("Pirandello,
Umurismo, and Beckett"), Charles Gattnig tries to establish a relationship be-
tween the two playwrights.3 Although his account is well researched, Gatt-
nig's primary focus is Pirandello's concept of humor. Valerie Topsfield has
also mentioned Beckett as a beneficiary of Pirandello's sense of the oppo-
sites.4
The purpose of this study is to pursue and explore in some detall and
with new insight a relationship known to exist between Pirandello's esthetics
and Beckett's dramatic works. Pertinent questions to ask, in this respect, in-

1
Robert Brustein, The Theatre of Reuolt: An Approach to the Modern Drama
(Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1964) 316.
2
Thomas Bishop, Pirandello and the French Theater (New York: New York
University Press, 1960) 120-130.
Charles Gattnig Jr., "Pirandello, Umorismo, and Beckett," Diss., Southern
Illinois University, 1967.
4
Valerie Topsfield, The Humor of Samuel Beckett (New York: St. Martins'
Press, 1988) 26.

3
 elude the following: Who is Pirandello?5 What kind of impact has his writing
made on modern drama? To what extent have his personal experience, his
cultural formation, and the literary climate of his time shaped and sustained
his esthetic thinking or Pirandellism? What is Pirandellism? What are the
Pirandello and Beckett parallels? Are there some biographical coincidences
or similarities? Are there influences or just an "accord of ideas"? Is any of
them heir to any given philosopical tradition? What relationship exists be-
tween their work and the idea of irreality? How do specific Pirandellian
categories (Pirandellism) relate to the specific Beckett plays? What is the
nature of the relationship that exists? In what ways and for what reasons are
there disimilarities?
In attempting to answer these questions, I shall attempt to explore and
establish a Pirandello-Beckett dramaturgical framework. I shall then relate
Pirandello's major and representative works (the principal source of
Pirandellism as a critical term) to the specific major and representative works
of Beckett in order to establish their validity and relevance. The purpose of so
relating Priandellism to Beckett's works is not to stake a claim for the "influ-
ence" of Pirandello on Beckett but to seek a relationship where one exists.
The analysis will focus primarily on the following works: Sei personaggi in
cerca d'autore and Enrice IV, by Pirandello; and En Attendant Godot and
Fin de partie, by Beckett. Other works by both authors will be used as sec-
ondary materials to expand and clarify the discussion.
The decisión to confine myself to well known and most representative
works of the two dramatists is rather arbitrary. However, this confine would
be a safe and manageable territory given the volume of work each of the
playwrights has produced. It is possible that Beckett's later works (some of
which are discussed here) have more elements of Pirandellism in them than
the earlier works, and it is also possible that some of the less known
Pirandellian plays can fit easily into the Beckettian orbit or vice versa. These
matters could be the subject of further research.
This study is also limited in scope in another respect. Although there are
mentions of instances of theatrical innovation, and although one of the major
contributions of the two dramatists is in the área of stage innovation and audi-
ence participation, the central thrust of this analysis is in the area of thematic
affinities. It is difficult though to sepárate stage innovation from thematic af-
finities since in the works of Beckett, for example, form is content and con-

5
The question of "Who is Pirandello" may be redundant but it is possible that
there are readers of Beckett who may be less familiar with the Italian.

4
tent is form. My hope is that more work will be done on the relationship be-
tween the stage and audience as this relates to Pirandello and Beckett.
Although this work does not explore influences, the question of whether
or not Beckett was aware of Pirandello is, in my view, relevant. Sei per-
sonaggi in cerca d'autore appeared in France in 1923 while Beckett was
studying French and Italian at Trinity College. Beckett made his first trip to
France in 1926. From 1930 to 1936, Pirandello's plays were produced year-
ly in París. When Pirandello's theater company (Teatro d'arte)^ toured
England in 1925, Beckett was still a student at Trinity College. In 1927,
Beckett spent his summer vacation in Florence, Italy. In October of the fol-
lowing year, he went to Ecole Nórmale Supérieure in París as an exchange
lecturer.
While in París, Beckett worked on a project, namely, a study of the
Unanimist group of poets led by Jules Romains. Beckett admired Romains'
concrete imagery. It is significant that Romains' plays contain some obvious
Pirandellian elements. Knocfc, for instance, is an example of the interplay of
¡Ilusión and reality. Romains may have been an original writer, but his admi-
ration for Pirandello and his works was not disguised.? It may not have been
a coincidence that Knocfc was published shortly after Sei personaggi in cerca
d'autore. It would have been inconceivable that Beckett, who majored in
French and Italian and who knew and read Romains, could have been un-
familiar with Pirandello, a well known figure, and in a way, a literary mentor
of Romains. °
Beckett retumed to Ireland in 1930, but he left again for París in 1932,
at a time when Pirandello had already conquered the French stage. Beckett's
Prousí was published in 1931. Although most of the ideas in his works find
their génesis in Prousí, the possibility that Pirandello's influence was reflected
even in the writing of Prousí cannot be completely ruled out.
Beckett resists any neatly wrapped idea, or any preconceived pattern for

6
Teatro d'arte was a state subsidized theater under Pirandello's directorship.
7
Bishop 56-57. According to Bishop, In a letter dated March 15, 1956, Ro-
mains, while expressing his admiration for Pirandello and his work revealed that about
1930, he and Pirandello had planned to collaborate in writing a play and had in fact
started the preparatory work before the plan was abandoned. Mean while, by 1934
(the year Pirandello was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature), Beckett was still
speaking highly of Romains.For more on this, see John Pilling, Samuel Beckett (Lon-
don: Routledge and Kagan Paul, 1976) 4.
8
In fact, Walter Starkie introduced Beckett to Pirandello's works when he
taught Beckett Italian at Trinity College between 1926-27. For more information see
Topsfield, The Humor of Beckett, 26.

5
 his oeuvres. For example, he admires Dante greatly but denies any direct
Dantesque influence. Beckett claims that he never reads the philosophers,
that he does not understand what they write.^ Yet, traces of philosophers
abound in his works: from Democritus and Heraclitus to St. Augustine to
Descartes, and then to Hegel. Besides, there is no denying the fact that
Beckett read and admired Schopenhauer and Geulincx.
Because this study does not seek to establish influences, it will resist the
temptation of a single issue or one dimensional approach, or a sweeping as-
sumption based on "perhaps" or "maybe." I do not believe for example that
it is solely through the concept of humor that a relationship between Beckett
and Pirandello can be established,10 ñor do I accept that Beckett necessarily
used specific elements of Pirandello's concept of humor, namely, the design
of incongruity.il The incongruity of the human person has been an absorb-
ing preoccupation of philosophers all through history. Through the process
of cultural and intellectual osmosis perhaps, Pirandello and then Beckett,
carne to intégrate this element (incongruity) in their theatrical arts. Human in-
congruity thus became an overriding obsession for Pirandello whereas
Beckett regarded it as simply another aspect or manifestation of a difficult and
incomprehensible existence.
The study will be organized under five broad áreas. Chapter One will
pursue the initial inquiries raised in order to establish a common ground be-
tween Pirandello and Beckett. Chapter Two will discuss the esthetic
relevance of Pirandello's On Humor and Beckett's Proust. In Chapter Three,
I will expand the Pirandello-Beckett parallel to include dramaturgical frame-
work. Chapter Four will pursue the broad question of reality and irreality and
how the two tend to merge. Related questions of epistemological incertitude
will also be examined together with the problem of the disintegrating per-
sonality and the elusiveness of meaning.
In Chapter Five I will examine the broad question of comedy and comic
incongruity. Then I will analyse the "tedium of existence" which lies beneath
the apparently comic appearance. In addition, the chapter will examine ways

9 In John Fletcher, Samuel Beckett's Art (New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc.,
1967) 121-22.
10
Gattnig 22.
11
Gattnig 160. As a matter of fact, the design of incongruity and the concept of
humor are the two basic ideas on which Gattnig's Pirandello-Beckett parallel is based.
Gattnig says for example, that "Both portray serious situations in which unhappy peo-
ple are presented in such a manner as to provoke laughter and tears at the same
time."

6
in which Pirandellian and Beckettian characters attempt to escape or mask
the pains of existence.
As in most studies of great contemporary works, the study of Beckett's
plays will continué to be as engaging as it is inconclusive. New facts and infor-
mation will emerge as committed scholars strive to unearth more evidence to
support or contradict previously held views about Beckett. Although new
lights have been shed on the literary visions of Beckett through his later plays,
his utterances, and discoveries of original drafts of his works, the basic motif
of his writing— "the mess" — has remained the same.
The notion that his plays deal with the tedium of living and the suffering
of being has not changed and will probably never change. The metaphysical
anguish that ensures as a result of being stuck in the tedium of living remains
the common preoccupation of both Pirandello and Beckett, and this con-
sideration (or its examination) will continué to engage scholars for a long time
to come. My hope is that this work will genérate new interest and curiosity if
not because of what it discusses then because of the question it raises.

7
 Chapter One
Pirandello and Pirandellism

In 1947, Marcel Doisy noted in a study that "Pirandello might easily re-
main one of the guiding lights of the period which is opening". 1 Two decades
after this remark and half a century after his death, Pirandello's literary
reputation has remained strong. In fact, numerous critical comments have
continued to speak of his influence on modern drama. Martin Esslin sees him
standing "in the very first rank, next to Ibsen, Strindberg, and Shaw [but
whose] influence on the work of dramatists of our own age is far stronger, far
more active, than that of those two giants."2 Francis Fergusson goes further
to note that "Pirandello is symbolically, if not chronologically, the point at
which a new form of drama emerged. "3 Robert Brustein calis him the most
seminal dramatist of our time.4
Other critics such as Richard Gilman (The Making of Modern Drama),
Frederick Lumley (New Trenas in Twentieth Century Drama), and Anne
Paolucci (Pirandello's Theatre: The Recovery of the Modern Stage for
Dramatic Arts), among others, rank Pirandello highly among creators of con-
temporary theater. According to Wilma Newberry for example, Pirandello's
great impact on the twentieth-century theater is predicated on the fact that

1
Marcel Doisy, Le Théâtre Français Contemporaine (Brussels: La Boétié,
1947) 272. Quotcd by Bishop, Pirandello and the French Theatre, 9.
2
Martin Esslin, "Author in Search of Pirandello," New York Times 25 June
1967: Sec. 2, 1.
3
Francis Fergusson, The Idea of a Theater: The Art of Drama in Changing
Perspective (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, n.d.) 206.
4
Brustein 316.

8
 Pirandellian themes transcend genre and epoch, his thematic breath linking
him to literature of all time.5 In the words of Fergusson, "After Pirandello,
the way was open for Yeats and Lorca, Cocteau and Eliot!"6
The critics and students of Pirandello agree that Pirandello has trans-
formed our attitude toward human perception by reevaluating the nature of
man and reassessing man's conception of reality. He showed in his theater
that the human personality is fluid and blurred, and displayed the struggle
between the objective truth and subjective logic, between the mask and the
face. His thematic impact is also connected to his innovative theatrical tech-
nique. For example, he attacked the fourth wall concept, thereby removing
the barrier between the stage and the audience. Through a device of
physically transplanting an actor from the stage into the auditorium, he
obliterated the distinction between fiction and life and abolished the tradi-
tional distance that existed between the stage and the spectators. As the text
of the Nobel Prize citation indicates, Pirandello's contribution lies in his bold
and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage. Although the theme of
relativity of truth as a philosophical concept is as old as the Western literary
tradition itself, Pirandello's thematic insights displayed the impossibility of
separating ¡Ilusión and reality, fiction and life, face and mask, actor and char-
acter, madness and sanity.
Luigi Pirandello was born in Grigenti, Sicily in 1867 of an upper-class
family. He studied at the University of Rome and in Bonn where he was in-
fluenced by the writings of Nietzsche and Bergson. Upon return from Bonn,
his father arranged a marriage for him with a young woman he scarcely knew
but who was the daughter of his business associate. A few years later she
became psychotic. Despite suggestions to have her committed to a mental in-
stitution, Pirandello dutifully stayed by her until 1918 when her worsening
situation forced him to place her in a sanatorium.
Although Pirandello stayed by his wife during the long period of her ill-
ness, she continued accusing him of duplicity and unfaithfulness. As Vittorini
has remarked, Pirandello must have often wondered which of the two was
the real one — the imaginary Pirandello accused of infidelity or the very faith-
ful and devoted Pirandello who refrained from going out at night for many
years and who gave all the money he earned during the day to his sick wife.7

5
Wilma Newberry, The Pirandellian Mode in Spanish Literature From Cer-
vantes to Sastre (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1973) xiii.
6
Fergusson, in Olga Ragusa, Pirandello: An Approach to his Theatre (Edin-
burgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1980) xv.
7
Domenico Vittorini, The Drama of Pirandello (New York: Russell and

9
 Indeed, his sensitive mind gradually forced him to acknowledge that in the
eyes of his wife, the imaginary Pirandello who was cheating on his wife had
more reality for her than the true Pirandello. It is possible that Pirandello's
obsession with the theme of "illusion and reality" originated from his own
personal (and tragic) experience. In fact, a character in one of his plays asks:
"Why is he always harping on this illusion and reality business."8 Part of the
reason, perhaps, can be found in his own admission that a madwoman con-
trolled his movements for fifteen long years.
Pirandello's oppressive marriage parallels the Sicilian social life of his
time. As an honorable and principled man, he tried to reassure his wife by
being hostage to her wild accusations. The Sicilians of his time were victims
of social constraints and protocols. Unlike Pirandello, many of them sought
outlets in hypocritical behavior while others just bottled up their emotions and
feelings for fear of social sanctions. The formality of the Scilians which im-
poses pressures on the people has a very powerful effect on Pirandello and
on his work. Pirandello is aware that one cannot always rebel against the
custom imposed by others.9 But repressed freedom and independence lead
to occasional violent reactions on the people. Because the imposed life of
formality and convention is different from the life the people would nave
liked to lead, conflicts do erupt when the two lives clash. So, "this illusion
and reality business" is present in Pirandello's personal life, in his Sicilian
social life, and in his fiction and dramatic characters.
Another important factor in the development of Pirandello's dramatic art
is the Italian literary climate of the time. This climate provided Pirandello with
a springboard from which he could launch his dramatic art, a climate that af-
forded him "something" to work on, "something" to change. Indeed, the
Italian literary climate needed a change. Towards the end of the nineteenth
century, for example, Italian writers were trying to copy realism from France
and Germán. They called it verismo or truthfulness to life.^^ Representative
of the plays of the time was Giuseppe Giacosa's Come le foglie which was a
family drama modeled after Ibsen. In this drama, the hopes of a middle-class
businessman collapsed when his wife cheated on him, and his children took
to a bohemian life. But the more objective study of reality failed in Italy ap-
parently because "the psychological problems arising from industrial growth

Russell, 1969), 21.

8
Gilman 159.
9
See Vittorini 31.
10
Alian Levvis, The Contemporary Theatre (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc.
New York, 1971) 129.

10
 were alien to a basically peasant economy."^ Moreover, the socio-political
and religious structure of Italy did not allow for the greater role of the in-
dividual in national and economic affairs. Disillusionment and discontent
with political and social institutions made "reality" rather unappealing if not
meaningless to the people. According to Alian Lewis, realism in art had no
chance in Italy because it was perceived as "limiting the visión of man to the
earthly and confining it to the middle-class living room."1^
Dissatisfaction with the Italian "verismo" led to the birth of Futurism
which vigorously attacked tradition and encouraged novelty at all cost. An
aftergrowth of Futurism was "teratro del grottesco" (grotesque theater) which
in depicting the anguish of the people living through a destructive war, en-
gaged also in social satire. Luigi Chiarelli's La Maschera e il volto (1916)
typifies the "teatro del grotesco." This play which exposes the hypocrisy of
Italian society presents a man who boasts that he would kill his wife if she is
caught cheating on him. When he finds himself actually cuckolded, he lacks
the courage to make good his boast so that he sends his wife abroad and an-
nounces that he has drowned her. His acquittal leads to a celebrity status be-
cause he has upheld the Italian honor by punishing infidelity. Upon the re-
turn of his wife, he risks going to prison for perjury. Thanks to his rebellion
against the society, he reunites with his wife and both live happily thereafter.
Thus, the inner life of the man contrasts with the mask he wears to con-
form with the social code. As Vittorini has remarked, the importance of
Chiarelli's play rests on the forcé of contrasts therein created: "The contrast
between the reality of the man's feelings and the falseness of the mask he
wears, between . . . a man who, when believed guilty of killing his wife, is
freed. . . and lionized . . . and the same who, innocent, risk[s] going to
prison. 10
,,-IQ

The demise of realism in the Italian stage paved the way for change, for
experimentation, and for innovation. Pirandello appears very well-suited to
take advantage of this atmosphere. Moreover, in denouncing a corrupt
society, the "teatre grotesco" emphasized the fine line between illusion and
reality. In some respect, Pirandello was not a typical Italian of his generation.
He was honest and devoted to his wife. But in life and in art, neither his wife
ñor the rigid Italian society could initially allow him to achieve his full artistic

11
Lewis 129.
12
Lewis 128.
13
Domenico Vittorini, in Berrett H. Clark and George Freedley, ed., A History
of Modern Drama (New York and London: D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc.,
1947) 344-45.

11
potential.14 His wife's exit from the house, although painful, somewhat
liberated him from domestic prison. In a similar manner, death of realism
liberated arts from the constraints of the past. The way is therefore cleared for
Pirandello to return to theater, not to celébrate the status quo in art, but to
help "to fashion for himself a radically new approach to the dramatic art,"16
an approach that would enable him to express his burning obessions and
toments.

Pirandellism As Critical Term

As a concept, Pirandellism represents Pirandello's burning obsessions

and torments expressed boldly on a liberated stage. It therefore involves
thematic as well as theatrical innovations. More than any other playwright be-
fore him, Pirandello was haunted by images, images of the concrete pres-
ence of his characters. He talks of characters struggling within him. "Each
wants to come to life before the others. They all have a misfortune which they
want to bring to light. I feel sorry for them."17 Pirandello feels sorry for his
characters because he is at one with them. By his own admission, he was
"empty inside"; he was "a traveller with no luggage."18 As the stage pro-
vided a home for his tormented characters, so did the theater libérate him
from himself, from his own feeling of emptiness. Thanks to the theater, he
was able to "realize himself beyond the written page, in the external, objec-
tive field of a theater [a form] which is a fluid, collapsible, insubstantial
reality."19
Pirandello has been variously described as a dramatist of "¡Ilusión and
reality" as well as a writer of "relativism." But his real achievement lies in in-
jecting in an otherwise "absolutist medium"20 (theater) a fluidity which carne
to be synonymous with reality, and by extension, our collapsible existence.
By stressing the principie of uncertainty and doubt in drama, Pirandello

14
In a rather strange way however, the presence of his wife had forced him to
endose himself more within himself; thus he understood a great deal more about the
world and about himself by observing her. For more on this, see Gaspare Giudice,
Pirandello: A Biography (London: Oxford University Press, 1975) 101
15
Giudice 103.
16
Gilman 162.
17
Giudice 118.
18
Giudice 117.
19
Giudice 117.
20
Gilman 158.

12
monumentally underlined the misunderstanding of the nature of human ex-
istence. In fact, Pirandellism embodies the notion that "Things are not either
illusion or reality, but both."21
Pirandello believes that "nothing in life is certain except its uncertain-
ty."22 Life possesses only the reality that the mind creates for itself; and the
mind creates this reality in order to defend itself against personal ddefeat23
Pirandello paid little attention in his works to the socio-political problems of
his time probably because the conflict between the individual's inner feelings
and sensations, and the social roles (acting to conform) he must perform, are
of more enduring importance to him. He had read of the rise and fall of king-
doms, he had seen governments come and go, he had seen individualist and
freedom loving people reduced to mere marionettes bowing to the whims of
a fascist machine, he had seen people's collective aspirations for social and
political change fizzle, he had seen family earned fortune disappear. The
physical environment which then widely constituted reality had become less
important to him than the constant question that goes on in the mind of in-
dividual persons who must inevitably live through the unstable outer reality.
Enrico IV, one of his characters, struck at the core of that question when he
says that without knowing it, we mask ourselves with that which we appear to
be. The agitating questions in the mind of his characters are: "Who am I?"
"How real are my emotions."24 His plays in general become a struggle be-
tween an assumed persona and the more subtle, more complex, and more
shifting self that lies beneath.Pirandellism (which is his central message) im-
plies "that our personality is multiple and unstable, and that we never really
understand each other, that to live is act in a society as actors."25

Drama, Reality, and Stage Innovation

According to Chiarelli, by 1914, the Italian stage was still encountering

languishing talkative descendants of Marguerite Gautier. "The public shed
sentimental tears and left the theater depressed. By the next evening it met

21
Gilman 159.
22
John Gassner, Master of the Drama, (New York: Random House Inc.,
1940) 437.
23
Gassner 437.
24
Ronald Gaskell, Drama and Reality: The European Theatre Since Ibsen
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972) 119.
25
Gaskell 117.

13
again to applaud a spicy sketch...in order to restore its moral and social
balance."26 6 The grotesque theater prepared the way for the display of
Pirandello's style and ideas which generate this "double" awareness of laugh-
ter and tears. Employing the Hegelian philosophy, Pirandello explained the
modern theater in terms of "I, the only true reality, can smile at the empty
show of the universe. For what the universe builds up it can as easily puli
down; it cannot take its own creations serio usly."27 Accordingly, Pirandello
decried the past with its conventions, its stability, and its certainties, feeling
free instead to break down what still remained of the formalities of dramatic
structure. Neither form ñor characterization became important in his dramatic
art. He destroyed the illusion in theater-goers that the stage would suggest or
evoke a specific place and that the actors can represent other people in
whom we can believe.28 The stage became the stage, and not a drawing
room in Rome, for example.
The highpoint of Pirandello's theatical innovation is Sei personaggi en
cerca d'autore. This play too became an artful attempt to blend form and
contení. In the "Preface" to this play, Pirandello discusses, among other
things, the tragic conflict in life, always in motion and dynamic, and form, al-
ways static and immutable.

l'inganno della comprensione reciproca fontato irrimediabilmente sulla

vuota astrazione delle parole; la molteplice personalita d'ognuno se-
condo tutte le possibilità d'essere che si trovano in ciascuno di noi;
possibilita e infine il tragico conflitto immanente tra la vita che di conti-
nuo si muove e cambia e la forma che la fissa, immutabile29

Sei personaggi dramatizes what Pirandello identifies as the pangs of his spirit,
which includes the relationship between life and art, between the flow of life
and the stasis of form. His constant question: "What is reality" is presented by
juxtaposing actors and characters on the same stage, each claiming to be
more real than the other. The Father, for example, challenges the Producer
to tell him who he is, impressing upon him the notion that he is not whatever

26
Renate Matthaie, Luigi Pirandello (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing
Co, 1973) 21-22.
27
In Matthaie 23.
28
Gaskell l19.
29
Luigi Pirandello, Maschere nude (Milano: Mandadori, 1960) I, 9. Subse-
quent citations of Pirandello's major plays will refer to this edition and will be identified
in the text in parentheses.

14
he thinks he is because his reality as he feels it today, may prove to be an illu-
sion for him tomorrow.
For the Father and for the Daughter, their own world, defined through
their tormenting experience, is real, and constitutes for them, their own reali-
ties. But for the professional actors who must enact these roles on the stage,
those experiences are unreal; they are there to be "acted" out. In this particu-
lar play, Pirandello's thematic preoccupation—the unknowability of our-
selves and the irreality of the real—has merged with his dramatic form which
is based on what is there, and not what is conjunctured, or what is imagined.
As Ronald Gaskell has remarked, the originality "of his form comes from
opening one's eyes and looking at the familiar."30 The familiar is not static, it
is changing. The bare stage has served him to dramatize characters (who are
the metaphor of all humanity) who change, characters who (like us all), cling
to the notion of self. But Pirandello lets it be understood that the self itself, "a
center of experience that persists through change, is a delusion: perhaps we
are no more than a succession of psychic states...playing different roles with
different people, the performance that we give may well be the only reality
we know."31 Since Pirandello perceives reality as evanescent, the stage role
of his characters reflects and celebrates that evanescence.
Unlike most dramatists before him, Pirandello's thematic impact con-
verged with his innovative dramatic techniques. For example, through the in-
termingling and interaction of the actors and the audience, through the
movement of actors and audience from the auditorium to the stage and back
and forth, through the tension-ladden interaction and conflict between the
characters and the professional actors, through these and other devices,
Pirandello achieved many innovations: he blurred the distinction between fic-
tion and life, abolished the imaginary wail separating the stage and the
auditorium, and destroyed the illusion that the stage and characters are other
things rather than what they really are. The synthesis of these devices is a re-
enactment on the stage of the impossibility of separating the real and the un-
real, reality and illusion, life and fiction, madness and fiction, actors and
characters, the comic and the tragic and the real self and the social self. Ac-
cording to Ruby Cohn, the term Pirandellian implies "a synonym of theatrical
relativity, or drama which searched beneath the illuminist stage behind actor
roles, role plays, and consequent relativity of truth." 32 Pirandellism, there-
30
Gaskell 119.
31
Gaskell 121.
32
Ruby Cohn, Currents in Contemporary Drama (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-
versity Press, 1969) 202-03.

15
fore, "identifies a concept which synthesizes physical ideational variations on
the theme of the interplay of illusion and reality."33
Pirandello's ready reception in Paris in the thirtics was indicative of the
disillusionment of the period. After World War II however, the ideas con-
tained in his works became all the more popular among Europeans whose
deeply-held assumptions had been shaken or destroyed by the shocks of the
war. Pirandello's message of pessimism and uncertainty of values and mean-
ings found ready audience among these European, but more particularly,
among the French who saw in Pirandellism "the marrow of contemporary
ideas, of modern anxieties, and pessimism."34 A people who had lost faith in
their system and institutions were also very ready for theatrical and stage in-
novations, particularly, the ones that emphasized artistic liberation and ex-
perimentation.
When Pirandello's Sei personaggi en cerca d'autore was produced in
Paris in 1923, it received an overwhelming acclaim. As Bishop explains in his
book (Pirandello and the French Theater). The French were particularly intri-
gued by its play of antithesis, subtle interplay of illusion and reality,
pessimistic overtones, and above all, a new consciousness of the human real-
ity. The year 1923 therefore crowned Pirandello's artistic and dramatic suc-
cess and helped to define a new direction of modern drama. The next two
decades saw Pirandello's influence grow in Europe. In France alone, a num-
ber of playwrights — Anouilh, Salacrou, Cocteau, and Archard, among
others—were in some respects directly influenced by Pirandello's innova-
tions.355 Another playwright who appears to have taken off where Pirandello
stopped and who appears to be one of the indirect heirs to the Pirandellian
heritage, is Samuel Beckett. Like Pirandello, Beckett created a theatrical
landmark with the production of En Attendant Godot in 1953.

Pirandello and Beckett Parallel

On the surface, it may seem inappropriate to evoke the name of Beckett

in reference to Pirandello and to suggest that a parallel reading of their major
plays might provide a new insight about the plays. A priori, there are factors
which seem to separate these two dramatists: the place and time of their

33
Newberry xiii.
34
Bishop 148.
35
Bishop 80-81.

16
birth, the time they wrote, their family background, the style and content of
their dramatic works. Let us take the last two elements: Beckett, it is under-
stood, is known to have enjoyed a reasonably happy childhood, and besides
the deaths of members of his family, had known no dramatic and prolonged
family trauma and tragedy, the type we associate with Pirandello. Before he
wrote Sei personaggi, Pirandello's plays were almost formless. The plays re-
volved around a general thesis he was out to prove, such as, the unknowabil-
ity of the truth in Cosi è se vi pare. His characters are real human beings
drawn from the real agitated world. They are loquacious, and use reasoned
logic.
Beckett's writing, on the other hand, is a symbiosis of the form and con-
tent. In some cases, there is form but no "content." But the truth is that
Beckett makes no attempt to dissociate form from content. "The one is a
concretion of the other, the revelation of a world."36 Some of his characters
loath to speak, but when talkers like Lucky, Winnie, and other figures talk,
they do not have auditors that listen or take them seriously, nor do they
mean to communicate anything. In Godot, for example, Didi and Gogo talk
because there is nothing else to do not that words help them to communi-
cate. As Beckett grows in his writing and acting career, he realizes the use-
lessness of words, henee silence, and still, more silence.
Such factors may well argue against a joint consideration of the two
playwrights. Yet a closer reading of their principal works supports drawing
valid if not illuminating parallels. But before these parallels are pursued, there
are a few biographical similarities or coincidences that are worth-mentioning.
Both Pirandello and Beckett started off with poetry and later published
novéis or short stories. Pirandello's U fu Mattia Pascal contains all the basic in-
gredients (in themes and character) that are developed in his plays.37
Beckett's Belacqua (in More Pricks than Kicks) became the prototype of most
of the characters in his later works.38 Pirandello's prose work L'Umorismo
(On Humor) presented his concept of humor and outlines the fundamental

36
Samuel Beckett, Proust (London: Calder & Boyars Ltd, 1970) 88. Subse-
quent citation of this book will be indentified by title and page number immediately fol-
iowing the text.
37
This novel embodies the main ingredients of Pirandellism—an atmosphere of
metaphysical concerns, a consciousness of the ambiguities of the self. See Gilman
164.
38
Beckett discovered Belacqua in the fourth Canto of Dante's Purgatorie.
Belacqua is an embodiment of opposities, a patchment of fictional types. See Porter
Abbott, The Fiction of Samuel Beckett: Form and Effect (Beckeley: University of
California Press, 1973) 31-32.

17
 tenents of Pirandellism. Beckett's esthetic theory can be found in one of his
earliest prose publications, Proust.
Pirandello's psychotic wife taught him the psychology of madness.
Beckett had a direct experience of the mentally sick when he worked as an
orderly in a mental hospital where one of his friends was a doctor.39 Accord-
ing to Pilling, Beckett had an emotional involvement with Joyce's
schizopherenic daughter Lucia,40 an experience that must have given him
an insight into the psychotic world. Besides, he also underwent analysis.
Vittorini writes that Pirandello suffered everything in silence. Confronted
with human suffering and man's helplessness to alleviate suffering, Pirandello
is given to "a thoughtful and grieving silence."41 Similarly, confronted with
human suffering which he has experienced first hand in the hospital, Beckett
"became consumed with sadness.. .[and] his feelings of helplessness were re-
flected in his addition to silence."42
Both authors experienced German influence. Pirandello studied in
Bonn and became fluent in German. In 1935, Beckett spent some time in
Germany reading much German literature.43 Both are aware of the German
philosophers from Kant to Einstein. Both got involved in the teaching profes-
sion and both left the profession later (although, out of necessity, Pirandello
spent longer time in the profession). Pirandello turned to playwriting as a
means of expression because of his experiences during the "Great War."44
Likewise Beckett's famous play, En Attendant Godot, was written almost im-
mediately after World War II (between 1947 and 1949).
Although there was a big divergence in their political philosophies, each
in his own way was involved in the wars. Pirandello served with the Facists,
and Beckett served with the Resistance Movement. As playwrights, both
achieved international fame in their forties and both were awarded the Nobel
Prize in Literature: Pirandello in 1934, and Beckett in 1969. But as individ-
uais, they were apparently unmoved by public recognition. Beckett remained
characteristically humble about his fame but Pirandello pointedly stated that
"Greatness, fame, glory no longer stimulate my soul." He called himself "a
traveler without a house,"45 an expression indicative of his restless soul. A

39
Pilling, Samuel Beckett, 8.
40
Pilling?.
41
Vittorini, The Drama of Pirandello, 33.
42
Pilling 8.
43
Pilling 8.
44
Gattnig 147.
45
Gattnig 81.

18
few years before his death, he literally became a wanderer, traveling from
one country to the other. Similarly, early in his career, Beckett entered "a
period of 'lostness', apathy and lethargy."46 In 1935, he left England for
Germany, moving from town to town. . . The large number of places he
visited suggests how restless he was."47
Pirandello admitted that he did not find any of the things he wanted. His
"strong desire to find some fixed value in life failed."40 Like their author, his
characters are restless. Beckett, on the other hand, appears to be searching
for nothing in particular because he has long realized that there is nothing to
look for in life. But he is still in life and may still discover "something to look
for." His characters are on a quest, a quest for something that is not quite
clear. The two works that have distinguished and immortalized the two play-
wrights and which have epitomized their dramatic parallels are: Sei per-
sonaggi in cerca d'autore by Pirandello, and En Attendant Godot by Beckett.
When Beckett's En Attendant Godot was first produced in 1953, Jean
Anouilh declared: "I think that the evening at the Babylone is as important as
the first Pirandello produced. . . in 1923."49 We may recall that following the
anarchy that succeeded the demise of the Italian naturalism and realism dur-
ing and after World War I, there was a "harrowing desire"50 for novelty not
only in Italy, but in Europe, a desire heightened by the effects of the War.
Similarly, after the destructions of World War II, there was yet another desire
for novelty. According to the Times' editorial of April 15, 1956, the interest
aroused by En Attendant Godot, "suggests that a healthy hunger for novelty
is not so dead. . . as we may have feared."51 As Pirandello used Sei per-
sonaggi to dramatize in concrete form the epistemological incertitude and in-
terplay of the real and unreal, reality and illusion, Beckett used En Attendant
Godot to dramatize the existential auguish and aloneness of man waiting for
a solace that continues to elude him. Priandello's play was presented on a
bare stage. Beckett's play was presented on a bare stage and on a country
road that leads nowhere. In Sei personaggi Pirandello demonstrated that to
make a point (whatever point it is), form is as important as the content. In

46
PillingS.
47
Giudice 182.
48
InBishoplSO.
49
Vittorini, in Clark and Freedley, ed., 343.
50
Times Literary Supplment, as quoted in Melvin J. Friedman, "CRITIC,"
Modern Drama 9 (December 1966): 300.
51
Robert Wilcher, "What's it meant to mean? An Approach to Beckett's
Theatre" in Critical Quarterly 18, (1976): 18.

19
fact, the form of the play is more eloquent than the characters' logical dis-
course in conveying an atmosphere of real-unreal, auditorium-stage, actor -
character, chaotic world. True to his idea that "form is content and content is
form," Beckett set out to tell us nothing in Godot. The play is not about
something, "it is that something itself ."52 The audience sees and understands
the human anguish.
Thus, despite what may have separated the two playwrights, both have
contributed to the theatrical revolution which has taken place in this century
from the 1920's to the present. Four years after the end of World War I,
while the naturalist stage was making its exit, theater was at the cross-roads.
Pirandello's Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore helped to define theater's new
direction. Besides stage innovations, the new direction included represent-
ing, not just middle-class and bourgeois values and events on the stage, but
consciousness. Theater can no longer pretend to represent an absolute
whole when the life outside it is in flux and fragmented. Theater can no
longer pretend to present any meaningful truth when outside it, meaning is
fuzzy and truth elusive.
In an almost similar way, seven years after the end of World War II, not
only was theater in a near-chaos, human consciousness was also in disarray,
mainly as a result of the anguish and mistrust in man's ability to give a mean-
ingful answer to his existence. With his En Attendant Godoi, Beckett rede-
fined this new direction of theater. As Beryl Fletcher and others have re-
marked, "Beckett has done as much as any dramatists in this century to ex-
tend and modify the resources of the stage, to adapt its milennial arts to the
expressions of the concerns and anxities of the present age."53
In their comments on the statures of both Pirandello and Beckett in the
contemporary drama, Fletcher and others contend that "Pirandello has
achieved a major theatrical revolution but it is arguable that the changes he
brought about have been far-reaching, nor are they likely to be as long-lasting
as those Beckett provoked."54 Yet.if Beckett has enlarged the stage to in-
clude the audience, if he has destroyed theatrical illusion, if he has insisted on
theater as theater, if he has expressed (in symbols without symbolism) the
concerns and anxieties of the modern man, he is possibly continuing (albeit
in his own way) the theatrical practice, device, and obsessions (at least some

52
Beryl S. Fletcher and others, A Student's Cuide to the Plays of Samuel
Beckett (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1978) 21-22. The first initial will be
retained in subsequent citations to distinguish him from John Fletcher.
53
B. Fletcher 22.

20
of them) of Pirandello. Anne Paolucci, for example, has observed that the
open-ended structure of Pirandello develops into the circular structure of
Beckett. Ruby Cohn discusses the fictionalizers in Beckett, and shows how
the Father in Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore prepares the way for the
Beckettian authors. She draws attention to Beckett's fictionalizers, who,
threatened by extinction, try in Pirandellian tradition, to ground themselves
through fiction. I would add, in this regard, that Pirandello's talkative charac-
ters have become Beckett's silent or almost silent characters. When words are
uttered, they too create a sense of the vacuum.
Ñor does Beckett leave the liberated stage as he found it. Where
Pirandello would focus on the tensions arising from the social conventions
within a given society, Beckett has gone outside the organized society of
human beings in search of the authentic consciousness. The result is a stage
picture, stage symbols. The structure of his plays are simpler and less com-
plex. Because there are no plots in the conventional sense, Beckett utilizes
very few characters who are anything but flamboyant. Where most of
Pirandello's plays are set in the middle class social milieu and require a more
or less realistic stage setting, most of Beckett's plays are designed for the bare
stage and non-realistic setting. In their usually reasoned discourse,
Pirandello's characters imply or suggest that human personality degenerates
and disintegrates, but in some of his plays, for example, Play, Beckett ap-
pears to embark on a systematic elimination of physical and psychological
identities of his characters. His later plays are a reflection of his conviction
that art should be a contraction, and not expansive.
Yet, the basic relationship between Beckett and Pirandello remains, a
relationship based essentially on the loneliness of man and the significant
liberation of dramatic experience. Both dramatists recognize the stage as
something to be shaped with each new play, a medium for the representation
of life (for Pirandello) and the metaphor of life (for Beckett).

21
 Chapter Two
Pirandello and Beckett:
Esthetic Relevance

On Humor And Proust

About two decades after Pirandello wrote On Humor (1908), Beckett

published Proust (1931). Incidentally, the two essays represent the main
source of the literary esthetics of the two playwrights. This chapter will at-
tempt to isolate the basic elements of these essays and relate them to the ac-
tual dramaturgical practice of Pirandello and Beckett.
On Humor was a series of lectures delivered at the Instituto di Magistero
di Roma, the girls' school where Pirandello taught Italian and classical litera-
ture. The essay details the main ingredients of Pirandello's literary esthetics
and philosophical conceptions which form the bases of most of his writing.
This study will highlight Part Two of the essay which treats the two elements
that are central to Pirandello's theater — the incongruity of human behavior
and shifting processes of human identity.
In On Humor, Pirandello distinguishes himself from other comic writers
before him because he is not a detached observer of human incongruity. Like
other satirists and comic writers, he is amused at individuáis who try to be
what they are not. But unlike them, when he laughs, he does not respond
only to the surface manifestation of the incongruous behavior. Instead, he
tries to penetrate that which the incongruity hides. What he sees beneath the
surface arouses, not laughter any more, but pity. This is why he regards him-
self as a humorist, a person who, through perception, is able to find the other

22
side of the comic. The other side of the comic, which Pirandello also calis the
feeling of the opposite, is an important element in his drama because he
believes that human thoughts turn around and around like a fly in a bottle.1
He beleves that we know very little about ourselves and our world and that".
. . the objective value of reality is a continuous illusory fabrication" (On
Humor, 132). Because Pirandello is fascinated by the underlying structure of
antithesis in life in general, but more particularly in human personality, he
sees human behaviors in multiple forms and sees no fixed truth or reality in
life. He is aware that we are either unaware of ourselves or prefer to assume a
personality that is not our own. He wonders whether we do not genuinely
deceive ourselves into being what we are not and "think, act, and live ac-
cording to this fictitious, and yet sincere interpretaron of ourselves" (On
Humor, 132).
Thus, an important aspect of Pirandello's dramaturgy is an exploration
of the ambiguity of the individual self and a tearing away of the mask (the illu-
sions) to remind the individual of his true reality.
An analoguous idea is pursued in Beckett's Proust. This critical essay on
Marcel Proust was written for the Dolphin series of the English Publishers
Chatto and Windus.2 Although Beckett reread the sixteen volumes of
Proust's work in order to write the essay, the outcome is as much about him-
self—about his esthetic experience—as about Proust. The essay deals with
the effect of time on human experience. In the opening paragraph, he calis
Time "that double headed monster of damnation and salvation" (Proust,
11). Time, tied to memory and habit, is a trap. One may try, but there is no
escape from Time because, according to him, "yesterday has deformed us,
or been deformed by us. . .[and consequently, we are] no longer what we
are before the calamity of yesterday" (Proust, 13). In this essay, Beckett re-
echoes what appears to be his firm belief—that we are "victims and
prisoners" (Proust, 12-13) of an insensitive phenonomon—Time—which
continuously deforms us. In Pirandello's postúlate, man has the tendency to
be in multiple forms because he wants to change or cheat his reality. But
Beckett seems to be postulating here that a trapped individual has no choice
but to allow himself to be "deformed." Yet he also believes that the entrap-
ped person does not remain passive: "Yesterday has been deformed by us."

1
See Pirandello, On Humor, trans. Antonio Illiano, and Daniel Testa (Chapel
Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1960) 131-32. Subsequent citations of
this book will be identified by title and page number immediately following the text.
2
Linda Ben-Zvi, Samuel Beckett (Boston: Twayne Publishers, A División of
G. K. Hall and Co, 1986) 24.

23
 Beckett implies that people have the capacity of changing the images of past
actions in their minds. The interplay of time and man produces, it appears, a
Pirandellian individual who wallows in the void and is "deformed" by time
because the self, "the ongoing ego, is not in reality continuous but is con-
stantly in flux, changing with the alternation of time."3
Because of the flux that characterizes the individual self, Beckett
recognizes only "the world of our latent consciousness" as the world that has
"reality and significance" (Proust, 13). He continues: "The aspirations of yes-
terday were valid for yesterday's ego not today's (Proust, 13). Beckett is vir-
tually echoing the Pirandellian idea that nothing is fixed, that reality as we
perceive it is not only unstable but illusory. The effect of time upon a subject,
then, is "an unceasing modification of his personality, whose only permanent
reality, if any, can be apprehended only as a restrospective hypothesis"
(Proust, 15). But apparently oblivious of this "deformation" and the modify-
ing act of time, the individual still believes that he has a fixed ego, and acts
and reacts accordingly. As Pirandello has said, "when a man lives, he lives
and does not see himself ."4 Pirandello asks: "Do we see ourselves in our true
and genuine reality, as we are, or rather as we would like to be?" (On
Humor, 132). His answer to this question is that we continually deceive
ourselves into believing what we sincerely know we are not.
In his treatment of Habit, Beckett provides his own explanation why the
individual indulges in self-delusion. Beckett regards Habit as any other day-
to-day activity of life. Habit, he says, is "a compromise effected between the
individual and his environment, or between the individual and his own
organic eccentricities, the guarantee of a dull inviolability, the lightning-
conductor of his existence" (Proust, 18-19). In other words, what Pirandello
describes as "the constructions that each person makes for himself through
the work of illusion" (On Humor, 132) Beckett calis Habit, "the ballast that
chains the dog to his vomit" (Proust, 19). Just as the construction of illusion
enables Pirandello's individuáis to live, Habit provides Beckett's individuáis
"protection" from the "cruelties of enchantments" (Proust, 22). But the two
have the same effect: self-delusion. Beckett maintains that "we allow our-
selves to be tantalized" (Proust, 13) because we have no other choice, just as
Pirandello's old lady has no choice but to deceive herself consciously into
believing that her makeup will alter her reality.

3
Ben-Zvi24.
4
See Roger W. Oliver, Dreams of Passion: The Theatre of Luigi Pirandello
(New York: University of New York Press, 1979) 8.

24
 But Beckett believes that the combined function of Time, Habit, and
Memory is merely to generate myths for man's need for security. He despises
this brand of security, preferring, instead, a perception of things as they are
even if it means undergoing an agony of insecurity. This "true" and "new"
experience can only be attained through a perceptive experience, an experi-
ence exempt from the deforming effects of Memory and Habit: "If Habit is a
second nature, it keeps us in ignorance of the first, and is free of its cruelties
and its enchantments" (Proust, 22). For the "enchantments of reality" to be
fully realized, Beckett feels that an object has to be perceived as "indepen-
dent of any general notion and detached from the sanity of a cause . . . "
Proust, 22-23).
This idea of "cruelties and enchantments" and "enchantments of reality"
is central to the understanding of Beckett's theater. The absence of causality,
the absence of referentiality, the absence of plot, the absence of even coher-
ent dialogue, the absence of characterization, all can be explained by the
need to create an authentic stage setting outside the veto power of Habit. His
representation of sometimes shocking stage images is an attempt to create
the "cruelties and enchantments" of the "essence" which Habit unfortunately
hides (Proust, 23). His attempt to undo and "uncreate" the first drafts of his
works is part of this enterprise. This posture also marks a basic difference be-
tween Beckett's representation and Pirandello's. As a humorist, Pirandello
tries to expose the fiction characters créate for themselves in order to reach
the "real" person. But he never gets that far partly because he wants his
characters to retain some protection (sometimes for social reasons), and part-
ly because he is still closer to a realistic theater which depends on some form
of "plot" for its fruition. Even when Pirandello assails the realistic tradition,
the actions on stage still hang on some form of "story." The six characters in
Sei personaggi have each their own stories colored by the actions of Habit,
Time, and Memory. But when Beckett's characters tell "stories" (as Hamm
does) it is usually a disjointed story told by a character struggling to achieve
an "enchantment of reality." Beckett intends this "failure" in his art, perhaps
to expose its vulnerability as a "reality."
Although Pirandello seeks to expose the illusions with which characters
shield themselves from their predicament, he is aware that he needs also to
"entertain" his audience. The spectators can identify with the illogical actions
of the characters without being shocked. But Beckett goes many steps fur-
ther. As Gontarski says, "Beckett is asking from his readers not a suspensión

25
of disbelief, but a suspension of the suspension of disbelief."5 He refuses to
explain anything (explanation would be creating more layers of Habit); he re-
fuses to posit causes; he simply wants to restore that "first" nature consisting
of "a deeper instinct than mere animal instinct of self-preservation" (Prousí,
22). This descent into the "first nature" can be painful both to the characters
and to the audience. But suffering, according to Beckett, "opens a window
on the real and is the main condition of the artistic experience" (Proust, 28).
Another perhaps more important reason why Beckett insists on the re-
turn to the "first nature" is his belief that "We cannot know and we cannot be
known" (Proust, 66) and his convinction that we are alone and incapable of
communicating because "there are no vehicles of communication. . .
.[Words] lose their significance on their passage through the cataract of the
personality that is opposed to them" (Proust, 64). He warns that any "at-
tempt to communicate where no communication is possible...is like the mad-
ness that holds a conversation with the furniture" (Prousí, 63). It is not there-
fore surprising that Beckett's dramatic works are populated by pairs who are
alone, pairs in an eternal love-hate relationship, characters who do not want
to be alone, characaters who "desire to be loved because one loves" (Prousí,
63) but little realizing that "we are indifferent to the understanding of others"
(Prousí, 63).
Estragon, for example, has to ask Vladmir why he would not listen to his
troubles. Hamm and Clov are virtually at each other's throat. The trio in Va
et vient desire to be together yet relish "gossiping" about each other. In
Catastrophe A is supposed to work well together with M, yet an uneasy rela-
tionship based on subtle rivalry seems to be the case. In Impromptu d'Ohio,
the Lecteur and the Entendeur seem to be as one as the hand, but yet as
separate as the fingers. As Enoch Brater has said, we seem to witness
another scene of the Lamberts (père et fils) in Malone Dies: "There they sat,
the table between them, in the gloom, one speaking, the other listening, and
far removed, the one from what he said, the other from what he heard, and
far from each other."6
Pirandello calis man's inability to communicate one of the pangs of his
spirit and bemoans the failure or inadequacy of words to communicate. In his
theater, "jarring tendencies" (On Humor, 133) within the individual help to
créate a state of "unknowability of the self" which in turn creates conflicts

5 S. E. Gontarski, The ¡ntent of Undoing in Samuel Beckett's Dramatic Texts

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985) 20.
6
Quoted by Enoch Brater, Beyond Minimalism: Becketts Late Style in the
Theater, (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987) 127.

26
within the individual. But the conflict spills into social relationships and
creates friction. Instead of each character accepting an uncomfortable love-
hate situation as Beckett characters do, they attempt to patch up their con-
flicts and live in mutual deceit. Even when the deception becomes known to
all the parties involved, they maintain a façade of harmony for personal rea-
sons. In On Humor Pirandello refers to the importance of lying in conciliating
conflicting tendencies and feelings among individuáis: "It seems that lying is
to be considered more advantageous than telling the truth, insofar as the
former unite where the latter divides. . ." (On Humor, 133).
So, in Liolà, it does not matter much that Zio Simone is not the
biologica! ffather of the son Mita is carrying; neither does it matter that Tuzza
has already tricked Lióla into making her pregnant. The important thing is
that Tuzza will offer the illegitimate child she now carries to Zio Simone as his
own child. In Cosi è (se vi pare), the mystery behind the Ponzas and Signora
Frola remains unresolved. Signore Ponza's story and his mother-in-law's
stories are contradictory. Much against the wish of the curious townspeople
of Valdana, nothing is known and everything remains cloudy. But it serves
the Ponzas and Signora Frola better. That seems to be what matters. Similar-
ly, in La regione degli altri, the childless woman married to a journalist ac-
cepts in silence her husband's infidelity. But when the social needs of her
husband's child become an issue, she takes steps to assert both her own inter-
est and that of the child.
So, while social conflicts are not central in Beckett's theater, they are at
the very center of Pirandello's eschatology. In fact, social pressures are re-
sponsible for the creation and destruction of illusions. Understandably,
Pirandello creates a conflict-ridden theater of social animáis, while Beckett
creates a drama of introspection, of stage images, of metaphors of individuáis
who are drawn to themselves because there is nowhere else to go.
Despite their affiliation to groups, Pirandello's characters have still no-
where to go, henee their recourse to the fabrication of illusions. Like Beckett,
the aloneness of man has preoccupied Pirandello most of his life. When he
was still eighteen years old, Pirandello told his sister in a letter that "life ap-
pears to be nothing more than a puppet show disjointed, meaningless."7
Seven years later, he bemoaned modern man's rejection of God which left
him empty and impotent.8 Although he encountered tragedies as an adult,

7
Richard Sogliuzzo, Luigi Pirandello, Director: The Playwright in the Theatre
(Mctuchen, N.J., and London: 1982) 3.
8
Sogliuzzo 3-4.

27
Pirandello's bleak view of human condition had been an integral part of of
existence which remained with him almost throughout his dramatic writing
career.
Neither Pirandello nor Beckett believes that man is the author of his own
problems. But they believe that man exacerbates his existential anguish by
expecting from life what life is incapable of giving. Lamenting man's delu-
sion, Pirandello says that we are given at birth "the sad privilege of feeling
ourselves alive, with the fine illusion. . . of taking this inner feeling ... as
something that really exists outside of [ourselves] " (On Humor, 140).
As Antonio Illiano and Daniel P. Testa have remarked, this "existentially
difficult truth...is seen to be the basis of [man's] self delusions"(On Humor,
xiii). Beckett seems to reecho this view in several of his writings. His favorite
expression, and one of the few things he considers a reliable truth, 9 is
Geulincx's dictum that "where you are worth nothing, you should wish for
nothing."10 According to Nathan Scott, in Beckett's world, "there is Nothing
either in or beyond existence that sanctions or gives any kind of warrant of
dignity to the human enterprise."11
In Proust, Beckett speaks of the "sin of having been born" (Proust, 67)
and derides man's anticipation of a paradise, not realizing that "our life is a
succession of Paradises successively denied, that the only true Paradise, is
the Paradise that has been lost" (Proust, 26). In Footfalls, for example, the
mother apologizes for having done her daughter the "ultimate wrong, which
is to have brought her into the world at all."12 Pirandello and Beckett seem
to maintain that the mistake of birth is at the root of man's threnody. But they
also seem to fault man for allowing himself to be tantalized. In fact, one of the
functions of their art is to make man full aware of his situation.
In assailing human illusion, Pirandello attempts to strip man of his com-
placencies, to eliminate hopes, and "supprimer ainsi des possibilitès de tour-
ment, de déchirement." According to Fernand Reboul, Pirandello once said
that "Aucune sagesse ne m'a semblé plus sage que celle qu'envisage à se
guérir de tout désir. . ."13 The extirpation of "tout désir" is obviously at the

9
Pilling 124.
10
Pilling 115.
11
Quoted by David Hesla, The Shape of Chaos: An Interpretation of the Art of
Samuel Beckett (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1971) 226.
12
New York Times 26 Feb 1984: H5.
13
Fernand Reboul, "De Pirandello au pirandellisme," Etudes Italiannes 1
(1931): 80-97. According, to Reboul, Pirandello tries to rupture the "Solidanté ou
adhérence" that individuáis establish with their worlds which make them desire more
than their elemental nature needs.

28
base of Beckett's increasingly minimalistic art. The two playwrights, it ap-
pears, unmask their characters for the same reason (though not in the same
degree): to get at the most elemental aspect of man hitherto shielded by illu-
sions so that characters (and maybe the audience too) can truly be them-
selves and not just "actors." The characters thus unmasked, can then expect
less and less from life.
A life devoid of God and of any useful purpose leaves man alone and
the artist with "nothing" to write. Pirandello once asked: "What have men
been given to enable them to live? A god of pessimism who told them to have
patience and rely upon his mercy. But then God was removed, and mankind
was told that...beyond the grave there was nothing."14 Beckett told Tom
Driver that religion offered no consolation to his mother and his brother at the
time of their death. 15 If God and religion provide no consolation, and
human love, is "a function of human sadness" (Proust, 63), therefore, what
remains is chaos. Any wonder, therefore, that distress and chaos seem to be
the common denominator of the dramas of Pirandello and Beckett? The all-
inclusive term Beckett uses to describe this situation is "the mess." Even
Pirandello once called himself "a son of chaos."16
In 1926, Pirandello was asked why his work was so sad and why he did
not write about good and beautiful things in life. He replied that it was not his
fault; he did not invent his characters, and he took them as life sent them to
him, ready made.17 His characters carry images of suffering and despair on
their heads. Similarly, Beckett was once asked why he always wrote about
distress. He replied by referring to the three signs in a London taxi:

[One] asked for help for the blind, another help for the orphans, and
the third for relief for the war refugees. One does not have to look for
distress. It is screaming at you even in the taxis of London.18

Pirandello and Beckett seem to be telling their questioners: "Open your

eyes and contemplate the reality of this world."19 At various times, in life as

14
Walter Starkie, Luigi Pirandello (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1965) 288. See note 8 of the Introduction, and 18 of Chapter Two.
15
Tom Driver, "Beckett by the Madeleine," Columbia Forum 4, No. 3 (1961):
24.
16
See Giudice, Pirandello (Torino: Unione Tipográfico Editrice Torinesse,
1963) 15. See also Gattnig, 57, and Oliver 153-56.
17
Giudice Pirandello: A Biography, 179.
18
Driver 24.
19
Starkie 268.

29
well as in fiction, both authors have said: "Nothing can be done about it."
This expression of helplessness is, in fact, an abiding motif in Beckett's art. In-
deed, the entire Beckett literary corpus can be summarized by the term "the
mess, this buzzing confusion." Speaking like Pirandello, Beckett tells Driver:
"The confusion is not my invention... It is all around us and our chance of
renovation is to open our eyes and see the mess. It is not a mess You can
make sense of."20 Thus.it does seem that part of the artistic enterprise of
both playwrights is the creation of an image — the image of a mirror —
through which their characters (and maybe their audience as well) can see
themselves— and their universe— more clearly.

The Mirror Image

Making characters more aware of their incongruities by enabling them to

view themselves in the "mirror" is clearly an echo of the Jonsonian theory of
humor. 21 As the Jonsonian humor constitutes "a mirror wherein the times'
deformities are anatomized,"22 so do the arts of Pirandello, and to some ex-
tent, Beckett create a "mirror" which helps to anatomize the theatrical
behaviors of their characters.
In particular, Pirandello tries to ponder more deeply into the possible
motives behind a theatrical act. That reflection can constitute a multiple mir-
ror: first, a mirror for the humorist to see the theatrical figure more closely;
second, a mirror for the self-introspection of the observer himself, third, a
mirror for the audience to see itself better as it invariably identifies with the
theatrical figure; and finally, a mirror for the individual who is trying to cheat
reality and change the way others perceive him.
"When a man lives," Pirandello once stated, "he does not see himself.
Well, put a mirror before him and make him see himself in the act of
living."23 Pirandello's stage forces his characters to see themselves, to con-

20
Driver 21.
21
Jonson's object of attack is deception, especially deception of oneself. But
whereas esthetics is central to the arts of Pirandello and Beckett, the Jonsonian humor
appears to focus more on moral goodness. Pirandello and Beckett distruct human rea-
son but Johnson believes that people can be morally good if they use their reason and
if they are cured of their stupidity. For more Information see J. B. Bamborough, ed;
Ben Jonson (London: Longman's Green and Co, n.d.) 15-16.
22
James D. Redwin, ed; Ben Jonson's Literary Criticism (London: University
of Nebraska Press, 1970) xxvii.
23
According to Oliver, Starkie translated this passage from Tighler, who cites it

30
front that aspect of themselves they have attempted to conceal from them-
selves and from others. In trying to confront this new reality (which has been
all along a part of them) the characters move from one level of perception to
the other.
While we may agree with the Father in Sei personaggi that it is unfair to
judge his whole life on the basis of one careless encounter with his daughter,
we must admit that the stage forced him to see that aspect of him which he
would prefer to conceal. Now that the flash is on him, he is perceived first, as
a husband who abandoned his family, then as a pitiful wretch caught in a
shameful act, and finally, as a character fighting to reassert himself as some
other person other than the one fixed in an act of immorality.
When the mirror's reflection leads to too much knowledge of the self,
the result can be unpredictable. Enrico, in En rico IV, says that when we wear
masks to deceive others we deceive our image before the mirror. He claims
he wears his own "masks" as a joke, but we know that when the mirror turns
the "joke" into seriousness, he commits murder precisely because he can no
longer stand what he sees in a serious mirror. As Oliver has indicated, the
theater of the mirror can be "mutually reflective, with each mirror pointed at
each other, so that at times, there is great confusión over which is originating
and which is reflecting."24 The audience is obviously confused about the true
identity of Enrico. Similarly, despite his apparent lucidity, Enrico may be un-
sure within himself which identity is real and which is pretense.
The mirror image is at the very center of Pirandello's concept of illusion
and reality. The aspect of the mirror theater that concerns us in this discus-
sion is not necessarily the one that creates and confuses illusion and reality,
but the one that focuses on the individual character; that is, how the play-
wright focuses the "mirror" on the character to reveal in him an element or a
reality the subject has failed to address or face. Since the corpus of
Pirandello's plays is based on the mask and the mirror, our discussion of the
mirror image will focus more on Beckett where its use does not immediately
appear very obvious.
The mirror image in Beckett is rather subtle but nevertheless effective.
As in Pirandello's theater, it shows a reflection of the beholder. But rather
than focusing on the character's doubleness as is the case in Pirandello,
Beckett's "mirror" parallels the window which features in some of his plays.
The window provides a reflection to the viewer of his consciousness. What is

in Voci del Tempo. See Oliver 8.

24
Oliver 14.

31
seen in the mirror or through the window forces the characters to see them-
selves in a completely new light. As Bishop has said, the "reflections that
emanate from this mirror are the shadows of a tortured humanity."25 To the
extent that the window tells the character more about himself and his world,
the window and the mirror will be used interchangeably in this discussion.
For instance, what Clov sees through the window has a sobering effect both
on him, and probably, on Hamm. Thus, dramaturgically, especially in
Beckett's theater, the acting is mirroring. And also thematically, there is mir-
roring especially with regard to the audience as it tries to understand itself and
its world through performance.
In some respect, the mirror image in Beckett appears to reflect
Pirandello's description of what happens when a character is presented with
a mirror: ". . . either he remains astonished and dumbfounded at his own ap-
pearance, or else he turns away his eyes so as not to see himself, or else in
disgust... he spits at his image."26 Beckett's characters try to shun the mir-
ror. In La Dernière bande, Krapp (through the tapes), sees himself as he was
and as he is more or less clearly, but somewhat, he does not quite like what
he sees. He pauses to move the tape forward in order not to hear what is
coming up, or he just unplugs the tape and slips into the dark either to eat his
bananas or to have a drink (apparently to lighten his mood). When he is
forced to see himself and listen to himself, he metaphorically spits at this im-
age as he rails at and denounces the earlier (and of course present) Krapp
that he cannot stand.
When Krapp chooses to return to a younger Krapp of thirty nine years
oíd and replay "farewell to love," instead of continuing to record, he is doing
what Enrico IV does with his time when he finds it hard to look at himself in
the mirror. Enrico does not like the changes that have occurred in his
physical and psychological life. He metaphorically turns away his eyes so as
not to see himself, preferring instead, the precarnival years with more youth-
ful Enrico. In the case of Krapp, he "drools" and prefers to indulge himself.
The reality he dreads the most is time because he knows that it is slipping by
him and that he cannot arrest and imprison it even with his tapes. So, he
does not seem to admire the "real" Krapp, the Krapp that the mirror (the
tape) has magnified, the Krapp that is aging and still unable to give up the
weakness of the earlier Krapp.
Although Krapp has a past to reconstruct, many other characters of

25
Bishop 45.
26
See Oliver 8.

32
 Beckett are rather oblivious of, or indifferent to, their past. In such cases, the
mirror image functions in another way. In Godot for example, the mere fact
that Godot does not show up is itself enlightening. Gogo's cry for help and
his disappointment, Vladimir's eye-opener speech that all mankind is them:
"Mais à cet endroit, en ce moment, l'humanité c'est nous"27 — all these give
the character (and perhaps the audience) a true image of their lives.
Vladimir's confrontation with the errand boy who no longer recognizes him,
Pozzo's sudden loss of his faculties, Lucky's revealing speech—all these
events or non-events forcé characters to look inwardly more for a fuller ap-
preciation of their situation.
In Fin de Partie, Hamm knows he is playing a game he is doomed to
lose but the reality does not dawn on him until time starts running out and the
entropy sets in. In fact, Clov's insistence on leaving stops when he is con-
fronted with the reality that awaits him outside the box. As we have already
noted, the window on stage constitutes a kind of mirror;28 through this win-
dow, Clov can at least see for himself what it is like out there — "a world de-
void of anything, any human being."29 But if Clov is still unsure of what he
sees (since nothing can be trusted to be what it is) Hamm's antics instill doubt
in his mind that there is any life outside.
In Impromptu d'Ohio, the most dramatic stage mirror is provided by the
intermittent "toe." The knock forces le Lecteur to pause, perhaps reflect on
his destiny, in case the narration is now becoming too mechanical. To ensure
that nothing important is ignored, the Lecteur repeats a few lines and contin-
úes the narrative. The knock therefore represents both a break, a repetition,
and a continuity, which is what the lives of the Lecteur and Entendeur seem
to be. It is also possible that the knock underscores (for the actors as well as
for the audience) the seriousness behind the comic framework of the play.30
The play also presents us with what Brater calis "an uneasy reality in the
shape of a haunting dramatic metaphor."31 The book tells us of "l'unique
fenêtre" — another window, a mirror through which we can view the outside

27
Samuel Beckett, En Attendant Godot (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1952) 112.
(Hereinafter referred to as Godot). Subsequent citations of this work will be identified
by title and page number immediately following the text.
28 28
For the characters on stage, the window constitutes one of their mirrors, and
for the audience in the auditorium, the stage itself is a mirror where life can be repli-
cated.
29
Richard Toscan, "MacGowran on Beckett", in On Beckett: Essays and
Criticism, ed. S. E. Gontarski (New York: Grove Press, Inc; 1986) 217.
30
See Brater 127.
31
Brater 137.

33
world. Through this "fenêtre," we can see "l'lle des Cygnes" (the Isles of
Swans) en aval (downstream). The book also reveáis the night visitor sent by
"le cher nom" coming to consolé and to arouse consciousness. But there is
nothing to console about, because "ce qu'il avait fait. . . ne pouvait être
défait."32 Nothing is going to change: "Ainsi restèrent assis comme devenus
de pierre. La triste histoire une dernière fois redite. II ne reste rien à dire"
(Ohio, 64-67).
In Cette fois, Beckett creates various images which constitute a múltiple
"obscurité" and "éclairage," a mirror showing the ruins of the past but at the
same time showing a child "avec le livre d'images."33 The problem is that the
images (pictures) in the child's book trigger sunlight that will soon fade. If one
opens one's eyes, one is greeted with dust: "le lieu tout entière plein de
poussière...rien que poussière" (Cette fois, 24). The mirror image also shows
that life is not only threatened (rien à voir à perte de vue que blés blon-
dissants" (Cette fois, 13), but coexistence can be violent if not bloody. For
example, through the window, through the mirror, in the dark, can be seen a
bloody struggle between the owl and the shrew: "la chouette envolée huer
après quelqu'un d'autre ou regagner son arbre ceux avec un musaraigne et
plus un bruit. . ." (Cette fois, 23).
In Catastrophe, The Pirandello-like mirror performs múltiple functions.
The audience sees P's black outfit: "Robe de chambre noire jusqu'aux
chevilles"34 and his "Pieds nus" and gets a reflection of brutality, injustice,
and humiliation. M's pompous outfit and ostentatious manner give the audi-
ence the reflection of an oppressor. He smokes cigar, wears a watch and
struts about in his "Manteau de forrure. Toque assortie" (Catastrophe, 71).
The mirror also serves to deflate the pomposity of M and in a way cut him to
size. First, he realizes his impotence in manipulating his Assistant as he
wishes. In fact, the authority has slipped from his hand and he is unable to re-
gain it. Second, he loses to P, the presumed oppressed. Anticipating that he
has triumphed, A trumpeted: "Bon. On la tient notre Catastrophe...for-
midable! II va faire un malheur. J'entends ça d'ici" (Catastrophe, 80). But he

32
Beckett, Impromptu d'Ohio in Catastrophe et autres dramaticules (Paris: Les
Editions de Minuit, 1982) 63. (Hereinafter referred to as Ohio.) Subsequent citations
will be identified in the text by title and page number.
33
Beckett, Cette fois in Catastrophe et autres dramaticules, 121. (Subsequent
citations will be identified in the text by title and page number.
34
Beckett, Catastrophe in Catastrophe et autres dramaticules, 72. Subsequent
citations will refer to this edition and will be identified in the text by title and page num-
ber.

34
 is wrong. He does not anticipate the dramatic reaction of P: "Un temps.
Lointain tonnerre d'applaudissements. P relève la tête, fixe la salle. Les ap-
plaudissements faiblissent, s'arrêtent" (Catastrophe, 81). P "talks" back by
making eye contact with the audience and assuming control after all the
manipulation. We can now see M more clearly—a helpless, powerless,
vulnerable man. Thus, through the theater mirror, several images have
emerged: manipulation, subtle rivalry, humiliation, defiance, vulnerability,
and helpless resignation.
What is the effect of the mirror image on the audience? The precise re-
sponse is difficult to determine but it can engender audience participation
with the fate of the characters. Where such a participation occurs, the audi-
ence is not only able to identify with the character viewing himself in a mirror
but is able, through the process of reflection and perception, to see itself in
the same stage mirror. As Oliver has remarked, "the mirror reflecting on the
character's life is short-lived compared to the mirror that reflects back to the
audience images of themselves, as they confront their relationships with what
they have just seen, as well as the reality of their own lives."35 Unlike the
realistic theater where the spectators seek to achieve catharsis, Pirandello's
theater is supposed to leave images in the minds of theater-goers, images
depicted on the stage (maybe in practical and realistic terms). As we have
seen, in Beckett's theater, such an image takes a rather metaphysical dimen-
sión.
It must be remembered, however, that in Pirandello's drama, the audi-
ence is artfully steered towards a definite outcome. As a humorist (he does
not cali himself a moralist), he expects his audience to feel one way or the
other. Often, his plays embody moral or valué questions. Beckett, however,
generally avoids situarions that call for moral involvement in his characters,or
moral judgement on the part of the spectators. Sometimes, the mirror image
produces little dramatic effect in Beckett's characters. (Play suggests
"recognition" in characters of themselves but probably without moral effect).
Some other times, the characters are indifferent to whatever effect the mirror
image produces in them. But invariably, the effect on the audience is unmis-
takable.
Beckett's dramaturgy can shake us out of our complacency. He main-
tains that the only world that has any reality and significance is the world of
our latent consciousness (Proust, 13), but that unfortunately, this world has
suffered a dislocation. He blames Habit, the second nature, for this disloca-

35
Oliver 9.

35
tion. Through carefully selected light effects, sound and, stage images,
Beckett seeks to shock or reawaken us to that aspect of our reality (the reality
of being in the world and therefore suffering for it) which we try to ignore.
The rhythm in Lucky's speech forces us to look at ourselves in the mirror. Ac-
cording to MacGowran, Beckett intended for the speech to be delivered in
iambic pentamenter. MacGowran admits that after hearing the speech on the
tape several times, he understands that the speech is just one "long sentence
that ends with the conclusion that 'man wastes and pines wastes and
pines.' "36
The mirror image about Nell and Nagg is supposed to tell nothing to
either Hamm or his parents. But it tells something to the audience. To begin
with, the audience is understandably shocked and perhaps frightened by the
thought of old parents dumped in a trash can. But according to MacGowran,
Beckett is making a statement about the contemporary man's treatment of his
aging parents: "We keep them in homes and. . . give them the minimum
kind of treatment to keep them alive for as long as we can."37 Beckett seems
to enjoin every one to learn from the character in the Mime. "He's flung
violently backwards and lands on his back, and has to roll over and onto his
feet, and then takes all the frustration that life has to offer him. "38 When this
Sisyphean image mirrors the audience, the audience sees itself. The charac-
ter is as much shocked as the audience at the treatment he receives. But the
crude treatment convinces him of the futility of expecting something better.
Flashes of happy moments come and disappear until he "conditions himself
to failure." When the good things that once eluded him come back to him, he
is totally indifferent to them because he has shedded the oppressive habits
and regained the authentic self of the first nature, "the enchantment of
reality" (Proust, 22).
The sight of Winnie sinking in sand is shocking to the audience. Winnie
seems indifferent to that image, probably because if she has glimmers, she
would prefer not to see them. Yet her "shudder" communicates a terror we
all know in ourselves. Beckett uses the sand— in this case her own reality,
the condition of her existence— as a stage image. Again, we are presented
with a literally legless image confined in a place. First, it was Hamm's parents,
now, it is Winnie. "Nagg and Nell are elderly, cold, hungry, sleepy. deaf, not
so good at seeing, without legs. . ."39 Despite her infirmities, Winnie seems
36
Toscan, in Gontarski, ed; 215.
37
Toscan, in Gontarski, ed; 219.
38
Toscan, in Gontarski, ed; 220.
39
Alan Schneider, "Working with Beckett," in Gontarski, ed; 248.

36
to be in control of herself in the mound. The two images are compelling: "old
generation is discarded" in the latter, and in the former, a message of an "in-
evitably vanishing existence."40 The mirror image is carefully displacing the
century-old "juxtaposition of circumstances masquerading as reality" 41 in
favor of simple, direct, if shocking, metaphors of our human condition, a
condition which the poet—with eyes for contraries—perceives more clearly.

Feeling of the opposite

Pirandello sees "a man in which a thought cannot originate without the
opposite or contrary thought originating at the same time, and who finds that
for each reason he has to say yes, there arises one or more that compel him
to say no" (On Humor, 124). The above quotation reminds us of Hume's re-
mark:

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I al-
ways stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold,
light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can observe
myself without a perception, and never can observe anything but the
perception. 42

Pirandello sees the world in contrary images: the serious that leads to the less
serious or the comic. According to Pirandello, the fundamental contradiction
derives from the discord between real life and human ideals, or between
human aspirations and frailty (On Humor, 109).
Outside appearance fascinates Pirandello because he knows that be-
neath it, is concealed another reality. According to F. L. Lucas, Priandello "is
peeling layer after layer from the wild onion, in symbiotic search for the ulti-
mate kernel of reality."43 Invariably, Pirandello presents his characters in
such a way that their surface appearance or how they want to be perceived is
in sharp conflict with the hidden reality that is not apparent. Actions in his
plays involve sorting out the contraries either by making the characters fully
aware of what they try to ignore or making the audience and the opposing

40
Schneidcr, in Gontarski, ed; 248.
41
Schneider, in Gontarski, ed; 248.
42
Quoted by F. L. Lucas, ed; The Drama of Chekhov, Synge, Yeats, and
Pirandello (London: Cassel and Company Ltd, 1963) 367.
43
Lucas 367.

37
characters aware of what the character does not want them to notice. When
Marguis Fabio Colli (il placere dell'onesta) got his mistress pregnant, subse-
quent activities focused on hiding his reality even if it meant getting involved
in many more anti-social and unethical behaviors. When Fluvia (Come
prima, meglio di prima) decided to return home after deserting her family for
many years, the motivation was to rejoin her abandoned daughter. But the
joy of the return is tempered by devious steps taken to hide the true story
from the daughter. Incidentally, the attempts at camouflaging the reality
eventually wrecked the reunion. The cheating and deceptions in Liolà, the
feigned, but creative madness in Enrico IV, the drama of the Ponzas, these
constitute a study in schemes to falsify reality and project the contraries. The
different layers of the onion which the humorist peéis out may form part of
this study, but the humorist knows that no kernel will be found in the wild
onion. So, he will contení himself with the play of opposites.
Beckett may not be as much a humorist as Pirandello, but he certainly
engages in the study of the sentiment of the opposites. But by training and
temperament, Beckett is no ideologue; he really does not believe in anything
very strongly. According to Pilling, there are only two truths Beckett can rely
on, namely: Democritus' proposition that "nothing is more real than
nothing," and Geulincx's dictum that "where you are worth nothing, there
you should wish for nothing."44 Nothing is an important term in Beckett's
esthetics. He referred to the theme of "nothing" in the "Three Dialogues"
with George Duthuit when he complained about "nothing to express, no-
thing with which to express. . . [and] the desire and obligation to express"45
(Proust, 103). Where Pirandello sees "every yes [which] also becomes a no
that in the end comes to assume the same valué as yes" (On Humor, 125),
Beckett sees a dual significance of "negation and affirmation [in] every condi-
tion and circumstance of life. . . [where] asserting unity denies unity" (Proust,
69-70). The view of "dual significance" is reinforced by a belief that Habit
which deforms our form of perception hides "the essence —the Idea— of the
object in the haze of conception—preconception" (Proust, 23). According to
Hesla, the principie of "Nothing" convinces Beckett that "whatever is thereby
caused to be will be negated by the Nothing which is not."46 As Hesla further
explains, nothing could be immune to negation as "Author cancels charac-
ters. . . ending caneéis beginning, question caneéis answer, no caneéis yes,
44
Pilling 124.
45
George Duthuit, "Three Dialogues: Samuel Beckett and George Duthuit," in
Proust and Three Dialogues (London: Calder & Boyars, 1965) 103.
46
Hesla 226.

38
tragedy caneéis comedy, pessimism caneéis optimism . . . , despair caneéis
hope, the dark caneéis the light."47
In his dramaturgy, Beckett uses the sentiment of the opposite in various
ways. Godot, for example, is called Tragicomedy, .and the very first line ut-
tered in the play is "Rein à faire." (Nothing to do.) Fin de Partie, considered
one of the most tragic plays of Beckett, does not appear (in tone at least) as
lugubrious as one might expect. Hamm's star acting and tendency to fic-
tionalize help to lighten the mood. Besides, although Hamm knows that the
end is in the beginning, although he is aware that he is playing a losing game,
he persists, rather as a performer intent in prolonging the "play," which, ob-
viously he seems to relish.
The love-hate relationship between Hamm and Clov represents another
aspect of the contraríes, so is Clov's ambivalence about leaving. He wants to
leave and he does not want to leave. Hamm has all but written off his par-
ents, yet he gives them enough food just to keep them alive. The lucid
Hamm is excited about a madman in his story who believes that the whole
world has collapsed and he is the only one saved. At one point, Lucky is de-
pendent on Pozzo, at another breath, Pozzo is almost entirely dependent on
his slave. Even then, the true Pozzo-Lucky relationship remains murky and
ambiguous at best.
Didi and Gogo, we understand, are inseparable, having been together
"il y a une éternité vers 1900" (Godot, 10). Yet, they want to get rid of each
other. But in fact, they cannot. The idea of Godot helps to keep hope alive.
Yet Godot remains the symbol of hope deceived and deferred. He will come,
but he does not. The dialogues in Godot are characterized by utterances and
denials, words that contradict actions. Responding to Vladimir's question
about his where-abouts during the night, Estragón says that he spent the
night in a ditch:

Vladimir Un fossé! Où ça?

Estragón Par là (Godot, 10).
(Sans geste)
Vladimir Je vais chercher une carotte (ll ne bouge pas) (Godot, 96)

In a conversation between Vladimir and Pozzo, the latter explains that

"Les aveugles n'ont pas la notion de temps " (Godot, 122). "J'aurais juré le
contraire," Valdimir retorts. When Pozzo wants to know where they are,

47
Hesla 226-27.

39
Vladimir cannot even tell him. He merely says: "Je ne sais pas . . . . Ça ne
ressemble à rien. . ."(Godot, 122). What is clear in the above dialogue is the
absence of precisión. Vladimir is not even sure he believes Pozzo when, com-
menting on his blindness, he says that the things of time are hidden from
him. It is possible that Vladimir sees things in double, or in triple forms, and
believes that he is not better-off than the blindman, henee the expression:
"J'aurais juré le contraire" (Godot, 122); henee he is unable to say where
they are.
When Pozzo wants to know if the place is known as the Board, Vladimir
claims he has never heard of it. He does not even know what it is like. It is
perhaps pertinent to observe here that Beckett's characters do not consistent-
ly seem to have consciousness of doubleness. Indeed that possibility scares
them into Habit and other subterfuge. These characters, however take care
not to be precise perhaps because "a Yes caneéis a No" just as "a Nothing
caneéis a something." As Normand Berlín pointed out, there are instances of
balances and uncertainties. One thief is saved another is damned; one mes-
senger is beaten, another is spared; tears of one character is transferred to
another. A character laughs, and it hurts his bladder. These contradictions,
according to Berlin, make the audience alert to the dramatic world based on
"Perhaps."48
The device of the contraries is reflected also is how characters manipú-
late their present existence. Just as there is a gap between present ideáis and
actual reality, just as there is a gap between what we want now and what we
actually receive, there is, I think, a greater gap between present existence and
memories of the past. Winnie, Hamm, and Krapp, are frequently falling back
on their memories of the past to sustain them ir. the present. But the
characters relish that disparity even if it means self-deceit. I must add though
that they cannot evade the disparity even with self-deceit.
Winnie surrounds herself with objects to remind her of her past middle-
class valúes: revolver, toothpaste, alarm clock. Half-buried as she is in sand,
she files her fingernail. Indeed, she does not like present state of existence,
yet, she wants to preserve it and make the best out of it. She uses "beau jour"
as a refrain to celébrate what she considers a triumph, yet extricating herself
from the mound which is her ultímate desire, is beyond her and she knows it.
The identity of a conventional middle-class woman which Winnie is

48
Normand Berlin, "The Tragic Pleasure of Waiting for Godot," in Brater, ed;
Beckett at 80/Beckett in Context (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1986) 51.

40
maintaining in the face of sand that is fast swallowing her is ludicrous, in-
congruous, and laughable. It recalls Pirandello's image of the old woman
who wears a lot of makeup to look younger (On Humor, 113). The humorist
is aware that the situation is more tragjc than comic. Though not a self-styled
humorist like Pirandello, Beckett seems to feel the same way. The audience
does not laugh at Winnie because it may be laughing at itself .49
Two aspects of the feeling of the contraries are significant in La Dernière
bande. First, is resort to memory. Unlike Winnie who relies on verbalized
nostalgia, Krapp relies on a mechanical device "that could cali forth images of
the past,. . . that could resurrect the self of the past and superimpose it on the
present."50 He recognizes not only the discrepancy but also the artificiality of
the exercise. While Hamm and Winnie are each trying to recapture and
revive some sense of the past, Krapp is trying to "fix" the past.
Listening to the tape recordings undoubtedly provides Krapp with some-
thing to do, an activity. But there are aspects of the recordings he does not
want to replay, there are others he does not even understand. As if to under-
score Beckett's contention that "the individual is a succession of individuáis,"
or his belief that the "aspirations of yesterday were valid for yesterday's ego,
not for today's" (Proust, 13), Krapp does not even fully understand what the
younger Krapp was saying many years back. He has to refer to his dictionary
to find out what yesterday's succession of Krapps was trying to say, or to un-
derstand the word he was using. Although he denounces his earlier self for
drinking and eating bananas, he still eats bananas and drinks at regular inter-
vals.
The second aspect of this discussion is the use Beckett makes of light to
reinforce the notion of the opposites. According to a summary of this play in
Beckett's Director's Notebook, "Krapp decrees physical (ethical) incom-
patibility of light (Spiritual) and dark (Sensual) only when he intuits possibility
of their reconciliation as rational-irrational."51 In the setting, only the área
around his writing desk is visible; the rest is "dans l'obscurité." Even Krapp's
total aspect reinforces the opposition of colors—black and white, and the op-
position of darkness and light. "Pantalón. . . d'un noir pisseux. Gilet. . . d'un
noir pisseux. Chemise blanche. . .paire de bottines, d'un blanc. . . Visage
blanc."52

49
See Chapter Five of this book for more on laughter.
50
Ben-Zvi 152.
51
Cohn, "Beckett Directs Endgame and Krapp's Last Tape," in Gontarski, ed.,
302.
52
Beckett, La Dernière bande suivi de Cendres (Faris: Les Editions de Minuit,

41
 Krapp, we understand, does not see well but does not wear eye-glasses,
thus reinforcing somewhat the same image of light and darkness or semi-light
and semi-obscurity. Krapp routinely moves back and forth from his visible cir-
cle into darkness. When he is not playing his tape, he is going to the darkness
to drink, or to eat bananas, then he would return again from darkness to him-
self. Himself, in this context, implies both "in the light" and in the "clarity" of
his mind. He is also fearful that he does not fall into the darkness at his left
when he crosses in front to the right. Thus, he tries to "live" the plays of anti-
thesis that characterize his attempt to recreate, relive, and criticize his past,
which by extensión, is also his present, since there may not be any future.
In Va et vient, we have another good example of motions divorced from
speech. When speech is uttered, no motion accompanies it. Feeling of sad-
ness and elations also altérnate. The play of light corresponds to the charac-
ter's feelings. When the three women (Flo, Vi, and Ru) remain in the light,
they try to recall their bright school days. They are of in determinate age.
They are in concert (they hold hands and talk about rings) yet they are not all
in unity, for they say in the absence of one, what they do not want the other
to hear, and then gossip about that person—how she has not changed, how
she remains the same.
To underscore the transistory nature of trio's togetherness, they wonder
and ask when they will see each other again. So, the apparent quiet and
calm is shielding disquiet and uncertainty about what happens next. They do
not even want to talk about the old days or what comes after. They sit on an
invisible log, looking alike, yet very different. As Ben-Zvi has remarked,
"Beckett creates a visual device that marks the passage from the light into the
dark and back. . . it is life that leads inevitably to death and decay."53
Cette fois presents a variety of complex images as A, B, and C recount
their memories. A common image is "la pierre" which serves different pur-
poses. A child sits on the stone "où jamais nul ne venait" (Cette fois, 19). B's
"vous" sits with a lover "sur la pierre ensemble au soleil." The lovers are
"together" and yet they are "far apart." Sitting on a hard stone facing down-
stream "au soleil couchant," they do not even have any physical or eye con-
tact: "sans jamáis vous regarder simplement là ensemble" (Cette Fois, 10).
As Brater has said, the stone which is like "meulière" is an ominous sign be-

1959) 7-8. Subsequent citations will be identified by the title and page number in the
text.
53
Ben-Zvi 164.

42
cause millstone is an agent of death (Cette Fois, 46). Thus, love, an agent of
life, is menaced by an agent of destruction.
The child sitting on the stone conveys an image of tenderness, youth,
frailty, and hope. But this image is counterbalanced by the stone on which he
sits. The stone— this lasting, durable, object, an image of immortality — is
juxtaposed with the child — an image of frailty and mortality. In A's story, the
child — this symbol of promise and future— is again juxtapozed with time,
with aging, and with ruin. A woman, a symbol of procreation and civilization,
is juxtaposed with rock, a hard, barren, immovable object. In B's story, lovers
and their relationships (symbol of tenderness) are juxtaposed with aloofness,
distance, and the hardness of rock that makes love-making rough. In addi-
tion, the atmosphere is crepuscular; the sun is pale, and the wheats are
"blondissants" all reinforcing the feeling of antithesis which dominates the
scene, and for that matter, Beckett's works.

43
 Chapter Three
Dramaturgical Framework

The previous chapter discussed elements central to the theaters of

Priandello and Beckett. This chapter will examine other categories that help
to define their dramaturgies: characterization, play-within-a play, and form-
content. It will conclude with a discussion of the dramaturgical differentiation
characterizing the works of the two playwrights.

Characterization

Since Pirandello (through his writings) has variously denied this category
and Beckett continually expresses failure of identity of a self, is it really rele-
vant to discuss characterization as a sound category? I think such a discussion
is in order because among other things, it helps to explain the type of roles
these playwrights assign to their characters.
Pirandello and Beckett are both aware that their creations cannot find
any satisfaction in their pursuits because life is lacking in any clear and
definite purpose. Pirandello, in particular, states the need for each human
being to have some purpose in life, explaining that "it matters little that one
seeks it and no one finds it, perhaps, because it does not exists; what matters
is that we give importance to something, however fictitious. (On Humor,
124). He also believes that our knowledge of the world or of ourselves is faul-
ty because we do not know enough to make informed judgements about
anything. Nevertheless, we see ourselves, Pirandello believes, not as we real-
ly are—either we don't know or we really don't care to know— but as we

44
 should like to be. We build ourselves up, and become a product of what he
calis "secret tendencies and unconscious imitation [and we believe] ourselves
to be different from what we essentially are" (On Humor, 132).
With this strong view about human personality, Pirandello's depiction of
his characters differs from those of realistic dramatists. In his model, there is
actually no characterization because he sees no reason to attempt to con-
struct a coherent entity whose behaviors on stage unfold as the play pro-
gresses. He believes such a complete portrait of character does not exist.
Rather he "disassembles those constructions" which the characters build for
themselves because he knows the truth about them lies beneath those con-
structions. If his creations are mere types or superficial images of that charac-
ter, these are also "first impressions that are almost always contradicted
later," as Oliver has indicated.1
Although Pirandello tries to break down his characters, he is
careful not to draw blood. He knows when to stop to allow his
characters some semblance of "construction" for self-preservation.
Despite the insistence of the townspeople of Valdana, the privacy of
Pozza's family is protected because, although each individual "is en-
titled to believe in what he can see and touch, he must also respect
what others see and touch even if it is the opposite of his own
perception."2
Pirandello does not quite use the principie of "cause and effect" in de-
picting his characters although a character's actions or inactions are often ex-
plained by what occured before the character carne on stage. For instance,
we understand that an earthquake destroyed all that the Ponzas owned, thus
forcing them to relocate to the unfamiliar Valdana. We also learn that the
same earthquake which caused the death of all their relatives— "that disaster
from which you can never recover"3— is responsible for Ponza's strange
ways. We further understand that because Ponza is an intensely jealous per-
son, he cannot allow his wife to be interviewed by the curious townspeople to
determine the "truth." But whereas the principie of "cause and effect" may
have shaped the nature of the plot (the relocation to Valdana), it is not clear if
the principie plays a part in the actual Ponza-Frola response and reactions on
stage. It is possible that Ponza is not dazed. It is possible that he is not jealous.

1
Oliver, Dreams of Passion, 11.
2
Olga Ragusa, Luigi Pirandello: An Approach to his theatre (Edinburgh: Edin-
burgh University Press, 1980) 100.
3
Ragusa 99.

45
 So, we cannot accurately explain or predict a character's behavior through
the principie of "cause and effect."
A significant technique which Pirandello uses in the portrayal of his
character is character transformation. Since he sees no need for a "gradual
development of a character through progressive changes in the dramatic ac-
tion, a process of evolution,"4 Pirandello prefers to make his actors play
various roles in one play, shifting roles quickly back and forth: "The audience
experienced the conflict between the shifting levéis of the theatrical event: ac-
tions, playwright, direction, scenery, audience, the theater itself in the pro-
cess of creation."5
Therefore, Pirandello's characterization is a function of masquerade, a
function of the mask (ie, identity). In Questa sera si recita a soggeto, the ac-
tors using their real ñames and position in the cast (Leading Lady and Lead-
ing man for instance) créate a complex situation which requires a constant
shift of perspectives from the audience (from the person to the actor, from
the actor to the character, from the actors to the Director, from the stage to
the audience). This practice does not allow the audience to analyse a charac-
ter to determine how he or she comes alive on stage. On their own, the ac-
tors quickly shift masks (character roles) transforming themselves from one
character to another. This theatrical arrangement can and does créate confu-
sión for the audience and then the playwright suggests that there is no easy
way of interpreting or identifying a fleeting, illusory personality.
An important consideration in Pirandello's depiction of character is the
fact that unlike Beckett whose characters are citizens of the universe embody-
ing the metaphysical concerns of all humanity, Pirandello's characters can be
us, but more importantly, they are, oddly enough, also products and subjects
of a defined geographical and social milieu. This age-old practice is particu-
larly appropriate in Pirandello's art since his characters are mere stage meta-
phors of a given Sicilian or Italian society. To understand the drama of the
Ponzas, their dilemma has to be seen in the context of the Valdana society.
Similiarly, neither Lióla nor Zio Simone in Liola would be very credible out-
side the Sicilian campagna agrigentina (the Agrigento countryside).
Pirandello understands that layers of masks that go to make up the personali-
ty of his characters are sometimes assumed by the characters themselves but
at other times are imposed from outside by the society, and the individual
character is forced to assume that reality. To that extent, his creatures are still

4
Sogliuzzo, Luigi Pirandello, The Director, 40.
5
Sogliuzzo 41.

46
essentially realistic characters (in a psychological sense). What Pirandello re-
fuses to do, however, is to conceive a character based on some preconceived
perculiarities of a given individual, or to allow his actors to dictate personality
traits for his characters.6 This refusal to "particularize" his characters gives
them universality if not timelessness. He achieved his total artistic liberation in
timeless (if not spatial) representation of character in Sei personggi.
If Pirandello's characters can sometimes reflect a realistc setting, Beckett
pays little regard to the social environment of characters, precisely because
unlike Pirandello's creatures, these characters do not seem to have any affini-
ty to any given social or geographic milieu.7 In general, there is an absence of
a referentiality that could ground and define the characters in a specific place
and time.8 In fact, the "local situation" of his characters is on stage. Outside
the stage these characters belong nowhere. The "local situation" of a typical
character of Beckett is neither Valdana nor Agrigento.
There is another marked difference in the way the two9playwrights de-
pict their characters. Beckett's creatures do not inhabit a realistic environ-
ment. They really cannot because they literally belong nowhere. As
Schneider has said, for Winnie, "the sand, that mound into which she eter-
nally sinks.. .is simply the condition of her existence."9 For Krapp, it is simply
his den, his table, and his tape recorder; for Hamm, it is the box; for Didi and
Gogo, it is the country road that leads nowhere. If Pirandello's characters are
types, reflections of a given society, Beckett's characters are metaphors of
human existence in general.
Although Beckett's creatures are skinned to the bone, they manage to
impose social paraphernalia on themselves. Besides, they do have habits.
Even the waiting is a habit. Still, there is little sense of history of their past
lives, and when and if such a history exists, reconstituting the fragments of
such a past constitutes the entire activity of the character. Winnie's little recol-
lection of her past provides her some strength and somewhat prevents her
from sliding into the void. Yet some memory is frightening—the childhood
experience makes her scream. Hamm's own recollections enable him to fic-

6
Ragussa 73.
7 There are however exceptions: Tous ceux qui tombent's place is referen-
tial—Boyhill—and according to Cohn, word and sound images evoke a Dublin
Suburb. Krapp's setting, too, is a quasi-realistic Irish background. For more see Cohn,
Just Play: Beckett's Theater (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980) 23-24.
8
See Charles R. Lyrons, "Happay Days and Dramatic Convention," in
Brater, ed., 87.
9
Shneider, in Gontarski, ed; 241.

47
tionalize. Krapp's existence on stage is an attempt to relive the past that has
faded as soon as it is no longer present. D's attitude toward memory is that it
is all fiction.
Because Pirandello's characters have a direct link with their immediate
society, they are in a position to grapple with moral questions which rarely
trouble Beckett's characters. Hamm's chronicle, for example, includes the
story of a starving boy whom the father wanted Hamm to help. Hamm seems
to suffer no prick of conscience for turning father and son away empty-
handed. The characters in Va et vient know that something terrible hap-
pened to one of them (or happens to each of them in turns), but their reac-
tion rarely exceeds a short exclamatory remark like "Oh" "Maleur," or
"Misére." Nobody shows any interest in probing further or in volunteering
disinterested help. Indeed, the society outside the consciousness of the
characters is irrelevant because it may be perceived as having once existed,
but exists no more.
In a Pirandellian theater for example, Hamm's treatment of his parents
could have been censured by other characters, and probably would have
generated a heated philosophical debate on how old parents should or
should not be treated. Hamm most likely would have justified or explained
his action. The truth is that like a madman in his story whom he tries to con-
tradict, Hamm believes that outside his box, there is no life. Thus, like other
characters of Beckett, he would have nothing (outside of him) to worry
about.
When Godot's errand boy denied he had seen Vladimir previously, the
former started to doubt his existence. In some instances, the characters make
conscious efforts to diminish their existence. Others, more modestly, try to
think of themselves as strangers, putting a distance between themselves and
their situation.10 In Impromptu d'Ohio, Lecteur is existing just to read from
an old book, reacting only to the occasional knock from the passive
Entendeur. In FootFalls, the protagonist tells a tale of another "strange girl"
and another "troubled mother." The mother apologizes for having done her
daughter the "ultimate" wrong of having brought her into the world at all. 11
The reaction of Beckett's characters derives in part from their creator's
convinction that it is a mistake to have been born in the first place. In Proust,
Beckett talks about "the sin of having been born" (Proust, 67). Such an in-
dividual who has been born without his permission is in a way thrown into the

10
New York Times 26 Feb. H5.
11
New York Times 26 Feb. H5.

48
world against his will. Unfortunately, there is little such an individual can do
but to wait. Since it is difficult for Beckett's characters to engage in genuine
relationships—largely we see failed relationships—they have rejected love
and friendship as evanescent or non-existent (Proust, 63-64). Beckett
describes friendship as a "piteous acceptance of face valúes," a social expe-
dient with no spiritual significance.12 It is therefore not difficult to see why
these characaters, unlike Pirandello's characters, are outside of life, with-
drawn into their own consciousness. When the instinct of living compels ac-
tion, some of them act mechanically and impersonally, their central goal be-
ing just to wait. The Entendeur in Impromptu d'Ohio seems to be quite con-
tent with just listening and interrupting with a "toc" when he sees the need to.
Quite different from Pirandello's plays, there are little traditional props, little
social conventions13 to observe or to violate, and no intrigues.
Although these characters are at times involved in mask-wearing (as
when Winnie assumes that her past middle-class valúes are still here with her,
or when Krapp thought he could recapture his fading youthful years, or
when Pozzo acts ostentatiously as if now is the "autrefois" or when Hamm
pretends that he will play the game indefinitely, or when the old man in Cette
/oís pretends that he does no longer exists) they do not need a Pirandello to
tear their masks to pieces. Beckett merely leaves them on stage, active or in-
active, talkative or silent, reading or listening. But he leaves them with the
capacity to avoid drifting into the void.
As Pirandello avoids unmasking his characaters completely in order not
to cause total personal or social disequilibrium — a measure of his compas-
sion for his characters—Beckett inflicts no more pains on his characters than
is necessary to shake off the deluding effects of Habit so as to enable them to
embrace the "enchantments of reality" (Proust, 22). According to
MacGowran, the character in the Mime is the "only one who has just been
beaten and subjected and brainwashed to such a degree that he has nothing
left."14 A host of other characters are treated less harshly.
Like Beckett, Pirandello is equally interested in the consciousness of his
characters. But unlike Beckett, he is also interested in what is happening in
12
It must be said that Beckett's views in Proust are not unassailable. Afterall,
Proust and his later plays represent two sepárate periods in his works and ideas. We
know that Beckett shows friendship and is clearly a loyal and devoted friend but we
also know that he rejects friendship as a valué pattern.
13
Hamm and Clov do however have routines and Oh les beaux jours is a rou-
tine.
14
Toscanin Gontarski, ed; 221.

49
the society. Besides exposing his characters' illusions, Pirandello is also inter-
ested in the prcservation of the social order itself. He uses his character types
to preach social sermons and moráis. Most of his characíers are cheats,
adulterers, unfaithful husbands and wives, run-aways. Plagued by the
familiar passions of love, hate, and jealosy, they can be victims of earth-
quakes, flood, and other calamities. In short, his characters are motivated by
realistic settings.
One can say that Becketts' figures are also grounded in social realities
but are seen at an extremity — at a metaphysical reality. Like Pirandello how-
ever, Beckett has compassion for his characters, elemental or not. But the
two playwrights are more interested, it appears, in instilling in the audience
the idea that these characters are either us, or are metaphors of our exist-
ence.

Play-within-a Play

It is perhaps in the technique of play-within-a play that a more significant

connection can be made between Pirandello and Beckett. This technique is
as old as drama itself, the most famous being in Hamlet where Hamlet used a
play to establish the guilt of Claudius in the murder of his father. The use of
this technique by Pirandello and Beckett is a measure of their freedom to ex-
pand the stage further to allow for any kind of experimentation. It is also a
demonstration on stage of the difficulty of separating actors from characters,
and "real" actors from fictitious "actors" who are also characters. But more
importantly, this device is a clear departure from the realistic theater because,
besides just inserting a play within a play, the playwrights go further to insist
that the action is taking place on a stage and that theater is theater and not a
drawing room.
In the worlds of Pirandello and Beckett, therefore, theater has ceased to
be just an entertainment; it is something else. It has become a médium for the
creation of stage imagery and metaphors; a springboard for imaginative inno-
vations and experimentation.15 It has become a study in theater space and
theater time. But more importantly, theater has become a médium for the
dramatization of modern person's concerns, obsessions, and anquish. The
technique of play-within-a play combines with self-conscious theaticality to
destroy what still remains of the illusions playgoers still have of theater and of

15
Soliuzzo xxv.

50
life. According to Pirandello's own theory of acting, the actor must be "aware
of his own distinct identity from the character."16 This awareness or self-
consciousness enables the actor to interact with the spectators in Pirandello's
trilogy, for example. The Pirandellian actor is supposed to be aware not only
of himself, but of the effect or impact of his acting upon the audience.17
Pirandello's plays-in-plays are his trilogy: Sei personaggie, Ciascuno a
suo modo, and Questa sera si recita a soggetto. In these plays, action spills
from the stage to the auditorium and vice versa, involving in the process, the
spectators, some of whom even jump on stage as the play is going on. Ac-
cordingly, the actions proceed on various levéis of reality: first, reality based
on the actual real-life event which the author changed into fiction; second,
the artistic fiction on stage which is being transformed into a reality for the
spectators; third, the reality of the characters being enacted by real-life actors
(who regard this as a fiction); fourth, the reality of the spectators going on
stage to participate in fiction; fifth, the reality of "Moreno (in Questa sera si
recita a soggetto), who, "following from her seat in the audience the events in
the life of Morello on stage, feels her own reality transformed into that
fiction...and rebels against that fiction which becomes her reality."18 As
Pirandello says in explaining his intention in Ciascuno a suo modo,

Everything is changing, and since this "everything" gives form to life,

the result is that life. . . is unstable. What I have attempted to do is to
capture the instability of life and fix it in dramatic form.19

Beckett may have attempted, as does Pirandello, to capture the instabili-

ty of life, but it is not clear that he consciously attempts to fix it as Pirandello
tries to do.20 He uses the technique of play-within-a play in various ways,
but not, in my mind, to try to fix life, but to dramatize the fugitive nature of
life. Krapp can be said to be enacting a play with his tapes; a play in which he
is the sole spectator. Hamm's play constitutes a play within a play, so does, it
appears, his fiction. In Impromptu d'Ohio, we witness a play where at inter-

16
Quoted by Soliuzzo 36.
17
Soliuzzo 40.
18
Soliuzzo 43.
19
Quoted by Sogliuzzo 43.
For more on Pirandello's concept of form and life, see Chapter Five of this study.
20
Beckett is not as obsessed with vita-forma conflict as Pirandello is. His treat-
ment of his characters does however lend itself to this formula. See Chapter Five of
this book for more information.

51
 vals, the apparently passive listener performs an additional act—knocks
(toc),—maybe, to break the boring motonony of the reading to introduce a
change.
Catastrophe is a clear example of a Pirandellian play-within- a play. The
Pozzo-like self-preoccupied M is engaged in a rehearsal of an unnamed play.
As in Sei personaggi, the stage is transformed into a rehearsal space. A char-
acter in an obviously political play, M plays the role of the tyrant, lording it
over every one else. Like a typical Pirandellian play, each character— M, A,
P, and Luke—represent a different level of reality. But unlike Pirandello's
Questa sera si recita a soggetto, for example, the actors do not answer their
real ñames nor do they consciously shift roles. With the exception of Luke,
the rest of the characters remain nameless, identified at the start only by their
roles in the play.
In Catastrophe, it is hard to say where ¡Ilusión ends and reality begins.21
For instance, as the dress rehearsal becomes the performance, how do we
distinguish between the two? Which is more real, the imaginary but intrusive
audience or the real-life spectators? Which image is more important, the
stage image in stage space, or the light that illuminates, magnifies, highlights,
and at the same time, diminishes the image?22 Does the realism of the
tableau reflect a naturalistic point of view on the part of Beckett? Is this the
realism of a typical Pirandellian play-in-the making, or is it just another "stage
illusion"?23 Who controls whom in the ambiguous power-play between the
Director (M) and his Assistant (A)? Is there a symbiotic relationship between
M and A as in the case of Hamm and Clov? Why is M trumpeting at the end?
Such questions may not have definite answers because, apparently, the play
is not supposed to supply answers to any artistic, esthetic, or political ques-
tions. However, the play is replete with ambiguities, ambiguities that might
explain why the Director laughs last but does not really laugh best: Quelle
idée! (Un temps.) Bon. On la tient notre Catastrophe . . . formidable
(Catastrophe, 80). The stage direction indicates "Lointain d'applaudisse-
ments. P releve la téte, fixe la salle. Les applaudissements faiblissent, s'arré-
tent. Silence" (Catastrophe, 81). We may not be able to know who takes
control of the rehearsal (M or A); we can only guess who upstages the other,
but there is no doubt P laughs best at the end. Defiance atid desperatíon have
emboldened P and have given him a stature. M's trumpeting may have been

21
Brater 150.
22
See Brater 147-48.
23
Brater 150.

52
premature. The stage light, which according to Brater, assumes a sepárate
character to it,24 brightens, illuminates, and finally darkens the stage, then,
"la tête rentre lentement dans le noir" (Catastrophe, 81). In defiance, P has
discarded M's drama, and has come up with his own. Thanks to the other
character, (light), P is able to domínate the final scene of the play.
The important Pirandellian resonance in Catastrophe is a subtle
demonstration that Art is not after all static but as fluid as life itself which we
cannot easily capture and fix. Despite the tight control which M and A keep
on the rehearsal, the show still slipped from their hands. This is an echo of
Sei personaggi where the show slipped from the hands of the Manager and
his professional actors. The Father and his Step Daughter separately (and for
different selfish reasons) challenge the Manager's approach and attitude to
their drama. In Catastrophe, P somewhat decides to rebel after cooperating
all along. He has taken control of his own drama, apparently because, like
the six characters, the drama is his, and he alone can best interpret it.
Perhaps it is in order to mention the affinity between Catastrophe and
Questa sera si recita a soggetto. Both are plays-in-the making within a play,
with M apparently directing Catastrophe, while Hinkfuss directs the play re-
hearsal in Questa. As M tries to impose himself on A, P, and Luke, so does
Hinkfuss try to exercise his authority by explaining the play he is directing to
the actors and audience alike. Like M, Hinkfuss is constantly interrupting the
actors attempting to follow his instructions. As M poses as the artist in control,
so does Hinkfuss pose as a creative artist as he exercises his authority over his
troupe. As the rather persecuted P had the last word and upstaged M to-
wards the end, so do the actors in Questa eject Hinkfuss and proceed to im-
provise the final scenes of the play. But while there is an event, a story, to im-
provise in Questa sera si recita a soggetto, there is no "event" or story to im-
provise in Catastrophe. The improvisation that goes on is part of the attempt
to control, upstage, rival, humiliate, or triumph.

Form-Content and Artistic Enterprise

Both Pirandello and Beckett prefer to be known as artists rather than

philosophers. Pirandello once told his critics: "I am not a philosopher. . . . I
am an artist, working in the concrete. My creatures are so concrete, so

24
Brater 147.

53
 human. ,.."25 Similarly, Beckett tells Tom Driver: "I am not a philosopher.
One can only speak of what is in front of him (the contení), and that now is
simply the mess. "26 Both authors are here referring to life, the life that sup-
plies artistic raw materials. Beckett sees "the mess" which encompasses vir-
tually everything in life. Pirandello sees concrete humans, which in Beckett's
esthetics, are also part of "the mess." Pirandello insists that he has no choice
but to "let into art...those wretched creatures [that] obsessed me. Where
could I let them if not on slage...?"27 Likewise, Beckett maintains that "the
mess" invades our experience at every moment. It is there and must be al-
lowed in."28
Neither playwrights sees a demarcation or conflict between form and
content; they see instead a unión of the íwo. Pirandello sees íhe work of arí
as "an organizaíion of ideas and images inío a harmonious form" (On
Humor, 112). But we know, (and I think íhe playwrighís know too), thaí al-
lowing "íhe mess" inío arí creaíes a conflicí. Afíer all, Beckett himself says
íhaí "['the mess'] appears to be the opposite of form and therefore destructive
of the very thing art holds itself to be."29 Pirandello, who acknowledged íhe
presence of íhis conflicí in íhe Preface ío Seí personaggi, describes ií as one
of íhe pangs of his spirií: íhe inherení conflicí beíween life (the mess) which is
always in motion and form, which fixes ií immutably. Since art deals with life,
coníení, íherefore, emanaíes from life. A work of arí mirrors life but this life
musí be given a shape, a form. Both Pirandello and Beckett in their own
ways, spent a substantial portion of their career attempting ío resolve these
conflicts.
In his later essay, Theatre or Literature, Pirandello describes artistic lech-
nique as "íhe will realized as íhe free, spontaneous and immediate move-
mení of form, when it is no longer we who determine form itself, absolutely
free, having no other end bul itself."30 He shares the view that "form is con-
íení and coníení is form" but he also realizes that no artistic formulation
assumes real life until it has been performed by real actors. "Form" for its own
end would imply a pefect marriage of form and coníení, but it also indicates
where Pirandello's preoccupation lies. Traditionally, form provides a struc-
íure for the content. But since part of his artistic role is a destruction of the old

25
Giudice 179.
26
Driver 23.
27
Giudice 179.
28
Driver 23.
29
Driver 23.
30
Quoted by Sogliuzzo 23.

54
 system of supremacy of content o ver form, he attempts, on the surface, to
harmonize both, to forge an "organization of ideas and images into a har-
monious form in which all elements correspond to one another and with the
generating idea that coordinates them" (On Humor, 112). But as a matter of
fact, what his trilogy does, is to launch a theory of supremacy of form over
content.
Pirandello's Sei personaggi is described as "Play in the Making." In other
words, the stage is a place to experiment with "writing" or making a play. As
the producer and actors rehearse an earlier play of Pirandello, six strange
people suddenly emerge from nowhere demanding that their story be en-
acted on the stage. In this play, together with the other two in the trilogy
(Ciascuno cr suo modo and Questa sera si recit a soggetto), the stage is
acknowledged as a stage. Nothing now separates the actors and the specta-
tors as the actors can leave the stage and enter the auditorium and vice versa.
Instead of focusing on how theater can mirror life, he tries to show how
theater is life, and how life is theater.
In Questa sera si recita a soggetto Pirandello deliberately chooses the
theatrical technique of improvisation as a subject of drama. Theater is not on-
ly mirroring life but is life itself that improvises as it goes along. The difficulty
this play causes for the actors (who are unfamiliar with the characters they are
trying to interpret and who do not have the script to help them) and the diffi-
culty it causes the audience show that a perfect harmony of art and form is
still difficult to realize. However, Pirandello manages to use form to illustrate
his ideas and obsessions, namely, the unstable nature of reality and the fleet-
ing nature of human personality. For instance, because Pirandello insists that
his actors retain their real name and still assume the ñames of the characters
they interpret, when the Leading Actress in Questo sera si recitta a soggitto
faints, it is unclear who really fainted and how serious it is: Was it the actress
herself or the character she assumes that faints? Is the fainting real or feigned?
Also, the constant shift of the actors from their ñames to their characters
complicates the actual world of the play itself. As Oliver has indicated, this
play has enabled Pirandello to explore "the lack of coherence in the human
personality and in the individual's perception of himself and outside
phenomena. 31
Like Pirandello, Beckett believes in harmonizing content and form in art.
In Proust he praises Proust for not attempting to dissociate form from content
as he [Beckett] restates what he believes to be the function of art: "The artistic

31
Oliver 98. Paragraph reflects Oliver's reading.

55
pursuit is "excavatory, immersive, a contraction of the spirit, a descent"
(Proitst, 65). Beckett really believes that the artist is pursuing a negative
enterprise perhaps because he does "the same old thing, of going a little fur-
ther along a dreary road" (Proust, 103), trying to do the impossible, of trying
to express when "there is nothing to express nothing with which to express,
nothing from which to express" ("Beckett and Duthuit" in Proust and Three
Dialogues, 103). Yet, helpless as he may be, the artist feels "the obligation to
express."
Having accepted this "obligation" to write, an obligation he does not
take lightly, Beckett decides to use writing to express the "Nothing" which he
feels. He uses art to let in "the mess," but he is also committed to producing a
symmetry if not a harmony or an order. Whereas Pirandello's preocupation
was how to create a form that will capture and hold his restless concrete im-
ages, Beckett's proeoccupation is how to create awareness of nothing, how
to créate a form that itself will express nothing. If Pirandello postulated a
priori that there is something to créate, Beckett starts from the premise that
there is nothing to create. Both agree though on the need for a new form to
accommodate the "something" or the "Nothing." But while one could say
that Pirandello attaches equal importance to both form and content,
Beckett's primary focus is on form, which to him, is more perceivable than
"nothing." So, his art is progressively a supremacy of form over content
(which is really non-existent).
According to Gontarski, Beckett feels one way, and acts differently.
Gontarski maintains that creating a rather "contentless" (and sometimes
formless) art does not necessarily come naturally to Beckett.32 This view may
be important because unlike Pirandello, Beckett continúes progressively to
skin his works to the bone. If there are certain events in Godot, there is hardly
any "event" in either Cette fois or Va et vient. According to Gontarski,
Beckett's initial drafts show "how rooted and dependent that work is on its
more traditional and realistic sources...[and the works] emerge and rest on a
realistic and traditional substructure."33 Gontarski insists that Beckett's
"creative struggle" is to undo the realistic sources of the text, to undo the
coherence of character and to undo the author's presence. Realizing that
"the fundamental principie of reality are chaos and flux, whereas the essence
of art is form and order,"34 he attempts to resolve this paradox by searching

32
See Gontarski, The Intent of Undoing, 1-5
33
Gontarski 2.
34
Gontarski 12.

56
for a "new form of representation, a form to contain and maintain the chaos
of realily."35
Gontarski makes a revealing observation when he contends that al-
though Beckett's stated axiom has been a unión of form and content, his
practice and preoccupation suggests instead, its separability. He refers to the
ease with which Beckett works out the fundamental content in the early drafts
of some of his later works. Then he struggles "to shape, to reform, indeed to
undo that initial material."36
It may noí therefore be quite accurate to argue that Beckett gives equal
importance to both form and content. He deliberately devalues coníení in
favor of form to allow the signified (content) to slip beneath the signified
(form).37 His reason for this kind of preference is understandable. He (as
does Pirandello) rejects preconceived ideas about virtually any subject but
paradoxically, has fixed ideas on how art should or should not be, or whaí
the artistic enterprise should be (as does Pirrandello).
Pirandello, for example, has íwo broad ideas (or preoccupations) a
priori, namely, how to fix life, and íhe difficulty of separating the real from
íhe unreal. Beckett, too, has íwo broad ideas in mind a priori, namely, that
nolhing is worth expressing (except perhaps sounds, music, patterns,
rhythms, repetitions, cadenee, symmetry, and images of decay and nothing-
ness), and that there is nothing worth expecting in life. Whereas Pirandello
created plays with plots to illustrate his ideas, Beckett sees íhe artistic enter-
prise as creating just a form which projects his visión of nothingness. Whether
or not he achieves this objective completely is a matter of opinion.
In light of Gontarski's assertion that Beckett deliberately dilutes the con-
íení to emphasize the form, one is tempted to ask why Beckett embarks upon
this laborious task. Is Beckett on a mission of systematic deslruction of con-
tent in dramatic arí or is he sincerely and spontaneously representing what
and how he feels? Thanks to Gontarski's research, we now know íhaí íhe first
drafts that Beckett wrote had content in them before he systematically elimi-
nated them. So, he does not seem to be representing art as spontaneously as
one would expect. Gonlarski also menlions that in undoing his work when
he reaches an impasse, he relypes the work and slarts the process of undoing
afresh.38
Of course, íhe questions that agilale Beckett are legitímale, namely,
35
Gontarski 12.
36
Gontarski 15.
37
Gontarski 19.
38
Gontarski 15.

57
how to write about "chance, caprice, chaos, disconnection..."39 Pirandello's
solution is to create a dialectic in his characters where such categories can be
"represented." Obviously, Beckett rejects that approach for good reasons but
his reason for eliminating details that spontaneously germinate in his mind is
a different thing.
When, for example, Pirandello wanted to merge form and content on
stage, it took him five days to write Sei personaqgi. But it took Beckett ten
months to write Impromptu d'Ohio (9 pages) whereas it took him only four
months to write Godot40 (134 pages). Although Beckett charted a new and
provocative course in modern drama, he also succeeded in "contracting,"
rather drastically, the number of those who could really "understand" and
enjoy his art. Prisoners understood the essence of Godot right away. It is
doubtful they will as easily understand the essence of Cette fois or Impromptu
d'Ohio. If they have ears for rhythm and eyes for images, maybe they will.
This brings us to an importan! element in the arts of Beckett and
Pirandello. Maybe Pirandello retains a "meaning" in his plays because he has
a message for the society. Beckett has no message for the society. Although
he undeniably has deep compassion for suffering humanity, his art does not
seem to be for everybody. While Pirandello's art could be said to be "expan-
sive," carrying with it, a social, moral, and at times, spiritual message,
Beckett's art, by its own definition, is a "contraction of the spirit, a descent"
(Proust, 65). There is, it seems, little evidence to show that his implied con-
tempt for the mobs (who cannot comprehend artistic work) has changed with
years. In Proust, he impugns Proust's artistic integrity because he "[raised] his
voice with plebs, mob, rabble, canaille" (Proust, 66-67).
It may be pertinent to ask if Beckett's rather unspontaneous plays with
rigid and "enforced" stage directions are as liberating as arts should really be.
The totality of Pirandello's plays are a lesson in self-reflection, social well-
being, and morality. Pirandello regards the artist as a selfless creator who is
able to "elévate the human spirit"41 and "give his age a universal
significance."42
Although Pirandello specifies certain guidelines for the interpretation of
his characters, he allows the actors sufficient freedom of movement on stage
realizing that "execution is conception itself in action." By contrast, some ac-
39
Gontarski 15.
40
According to Beckett's own notes, Godot was written between October 9,
1948 and January 29, 1949. See New York Times 19 August, 1984: H3.
41
Quoted by Soliuzzo 34.
42
Soliuzzo 34.

58
tors refuse to do Beckett's plays because he "limits them too severely as ar-
tists, removes their creativity and individuality, constricts them too rigidly in
their physical and real resources."43 The same group of actors complained to
Schneider that Beckett "must hate actors because he denies them the use of
their own impulses, as well as more and more of their physical selves."44
Beckett must have good reasons for wanting to represent images and stage
metaphors the way he does and, moreover, any playwright who directs his
own work has the right of insisting on what he considers the essential. But de-
spite his visions, the world of "the mess" is still the world of content. Besides,
Beckett knows that neither the author,nor the director, can truly capture and
fix life. Pirandello's themes and variations of the same themes may be ir-
ritatingly monotonous, but at least, the content-minded audience has
"something" to hold its attention. Beckett's plays on the other hand will con-
tinué to be exclusively for those few individuáis who have the sensory
faculties to focus on and appreciate what Beckett regards as the essential—
the poetry of his plays. For these individuais— Beckett scholars, students, ac-
tors, and others— the discipline required to understand or/and interpret
Beckett, will continue to be very liberating indeed.

Dramaturgical Differentiation

As we have noted elsewhere in this chapter, there is affinity in the basic

thrust of the dramas of Pirandello and Beckett as there are also differences in
their dramaturgy. Essentially, these differences reside on two different
dramatical approaches: Pirandello's reliance on words, logic, and reasoned
discourse, and Beckett's reluctance to assign communicative function to
words, and refusal to create coherent characters. The two different ap-
proaches, it appears, derive from two different landscapes: Pirandello's
middle-class drawing rooms of the early twentieth century Italy, with the ten-
sions arising from the incongruities of the social conventions, and Beckett's
nondefinable landscape of infirmities, impairment, isolation, and ruin.
Pirandello's reliance on logical well-argued discourse contradicts his dis-
trust for words, which he maintains, create misunderstanding. Paradoxically,
he uses traditional mode of discourse to attack traditional substantives —
logic, coherence, reason — that are inextricably embedded in his mode of

43
Schneider, in Gontarski, ed., 249.
44
Schneider, in Gontarski, ed., 249.

59
logic, coherence, reason — that are inextricably embedded in his mode of
communication. In his plays, dialogues convey a coherent meaning even if
they describe the incoherence of human behavior. In Cosi è (se vis pare),
Dina explains the unusual and incomprehensible ways of M. Ponza to Laudi-
si, describing the semi-obscurity and filth of the apartment where he lives. For
his part, Laudisi variously explains in lengthy speeches the illogicality and
futility of trying to unearth "documents" people conceal in their souls. While
these exchanges naturally accelerate the movement of the play, they help the
audience to contrast facts and fictions, and to see the impossibility of
distinguishing the one from the other, and the futility of searching for "facts"
about human behavior.
In Enrice IV, what is apparently not a manifestation of madness on stage
is instead a clear explanation of how the lucid Enrico IV feigns madness to
beguile time or to fool his guests and perhaps, the audience. The playwright's
virtuosity in the portrayal of Enrico IV is engaging, but the dramatic effect de-
rives mainly from the skillful use of logical discourse. It is also through rea-
soned discourse that Enrico IV attempts to convince his guests that they
themselves may be mad for coming to see him, a supposedly mad person.
To explain the fine line between fiction and reality further, Enrico IV tells
the anecdote of an Irish priest choking under his official persona that forces
him to act like a Catholic priest whereas authentic life lies in being truly him-
self, as he is in his sleep when he could smile freely to a young child.
In Sei personaggi, in an obvious reference to the treachery of words,
The Father polemizes about "words" that créate misunderstanding between
people. Pirandello dramatizes this problem through the acrimonious but still
logical dialogue going on between the Father and the Step Daughter, and be-
tween the Father and the Mother. Paradoxically, words that créate misunder-
standing are the vehicles for communicating the author's obsession to the au-
dience. In this particular play, besides words, actions also do créate misun-
derstanding. Following his own account, the Father sent his wife and
children away for their own good because he was no longer in a position to
support them. But this action, according to him, is misunderstood. Instead',
he is accused of an irresponsible action. Also, when the Manager wanted to
enact the six characters' drama on stage, he is challenged by these characters
who believe that his action or intended plan of action is a misrepresentation
of their drama. But whether the agent of misunderstanding is "words" or "ac-
tion," it is through words couched in reasoned logical arguments that the au-
dience follows the happenings on stage.
Logical approach to human problems is not the norm in Beckett's art. If

60
he believes (as he does) that "the mess" (confusión) dominates our life, he
creates that "mess" on the stage as his own way of letting in "the mess" into
art. If he believes (as he does) that "man pines and wastes," he demonstrates
that on stage. His plays are populated by men and women in their twilight
years who suffer from one form of infirmity or the other: people who are
blind or half-blind; people who stagger as they walk or who wobble; people
who cannot sit or who cannot stand if they sit; characters who have trouble
urinating, whose feet reject their shoes; characters stuck in a mound, in trash
cans, or in a wheelchair. At other times, we do not even see human beings,
but images of oíd human faces illuminated by stage light while darkness or
semi-obscurity dominates the scene. At still other times, we have strange be-
ings ruminating over their past lives and experiences, or trios routinely re-
hearsing the pains of their isolation in ritual patterns repeated in permuta-
tions.45
Pirandello may feel that he represents suffering on stage, but his charac-
ters do not always suffer pains. In any case, their sufferings are as
psychological (though no less painful) as the ones we suffer in real life siuta-
tions — isolation, betrayal, cheating, deceipt, emotional torture, harrass-
ment. Although there are instances of brutality, violence, and murder in his
theater, there are no consistent brutal and shocking representation of human
suffering in its crudeness as is the case in Beckett's theater. Somewhat,
Beckett believes that suffering defines human destiny and the metaphor of
suffering and pain is one of the motifs of his drama.46
When Pirandello would have eloquently discussed the loneliness of his
characters, Beckett just creates that loneliness on stage through silence,
silences,47 repetition, rhythm, unanswered questions, platters, and dis-
jointed and fragmented dialogues. Whether it is Clov threatening to leave
Hamm or Clov unsure what awaits him outside Hamm's shelter; whether it is
Lucky pulled by Pozzo or Pozzo depending on Lucky to move around;
whether it is the half-buried Winnie anticipating some communication from

45
See Lois Overbeck, '"Getting On,' Ritual as Facón in Beckett's Plays," in
Katherine H. Burkman, ed; Myth and Ritual in the Plays of Samuel Beckett (London
and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1987) 24.
46
Beckett is also quoted as saying that the only consistent thought he sees in his
work is that of the ceaseless screaming of a man he heard in hospital dying of throat
cáncer. See New York Times 26 Feb. 1984: H5
47
Leslie Kane makes a distinction between "silences" and "silence." She de-
fines "silences" as the intervals between verbalized responses that indícate separation
and "silence" as the void, the Nothing. For more see Kane, The Language of Silence
(London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1984) 105-106.

61
Willie; whether it is Didi scared to be alone or the "abused" Gogo wanting to
share his nightmare with an unwilling Didi, Beckett's characters experience
loneliness, loneliness that is felt by the audience either because the prevailing
love-hate relationships accentuate that loneliness, or because the silences, in-
terrupted or disjointed dialogues, create an uncomfortable suspense, or still
because the unanswered questions and pauses/silences remind us of our
moments of isplation when we cannot understand or be understood.
As we know, Beckett has stated in Proust that communication love and
friendship are not possible. Rather than proving this thesis in a discourse, he
creates characters who talk to each other (or talk about each other) but who
hardly communicate.48 When characters like Lucky or Pozzo attempt to
speak with eloquence the purpose of speech can go away or be mistaken or
even stop speech altogether.49 Pirandello has repeatedly told us that
"words" create misunderstanding. Beckett shows us words that contradict ac-
tions, words (like Lucky's) that stop speech, words (as in Impromptu d'Ohio)
read from an ancient book by a rather passive mechanical old man, words
that tell us very little except about their sound, their rhythm, and their poetry.
Elsewhere in this study, we have referred to Beckett's conscious at-
tempts to undo his work. While Pirandello provides his audience with a co-
herent story (even of incoherent characters) that informs his theater, Beckett
systematically robs his writing of words, phrases, referentiality, space and
time,50 that could give audience clues as to message. Obviously, Beckett
shares Pirandello's distrust of "words," insisting that words "falsify whatever
they approach."51 The logical result of such an art that labors to dispense
with words is a theater of silence. According to Brown, Beckett has forced
silence into the theater.52
As Brown has stated, having made silence a part of theater, "the shape
of a whole play begins to become apparent: rhythms are established and
recognized, echoes are heard, structures are defined, and the musical form
of the words are perceived."53 Pirandello agonizes over "words" but he ap-
parently does little to adapt or transcend words. Rather, he uses the words he

48
The theme of communication is discussed in more detail in Chapter Four of
this study.
49
See John Russel Brown, "Beckett and the Art of the Nonplus," in Brater, ed;
31-33.
50
See note 7 of this Chapter for exceptions.
51
Quoted by Berlín, "The Tragic Pleasure," in Brater, ed; 56.
52
Brown, in Brater, ed; 32.
53
Brown, in Brater, ed; 32.

62
distrusts rather lavishly. In fact, his characters are generally very talkative.
Beckctt, on the other hand, creates a new language with words, a language
where he can adapt or transcend words, a language where he can manipú-
late words to create music. As Schneider has said, for Beckett, "one has to
think of text as something like a music score wherein the note, the sights and
sounds, the pauses, have their interrelated rhythms, and out of their compo-
sition comes the dramatic impact."54
One of the major contributions of Beckett to modern drama is his use of
silence as a dramatic technique. Paradoxically, he uses words to create a lan-
guage of silence. Much has already been written about Beckett's use of
silence. 55 According to Leslie Kane, Beckett uses indirect disjunctive speech
to "convey emotional distress, exhaustion, disorientation, and doubt."56 He
uses halt and silence to reflect detachment both within the character and be-
tween characters.57 Both Hamm and Winnie variously exhibit disjunctive
speech when they engage in stressful recitation, when loneliness threatens
them.588 In Cette fots, the silence is very tightly controlled. There is a seven
second silence before A begins his repetitive description of a ruin in which a
child sat on a stone to look at his "livre d'image":

Silence 7 secondes. Yeux ouverts.

Respirarion audible, lente et régulier (Cette fois, 13).
Cette fois où tu es retourné cette dernière fois voir si elle était là tou-
jours la ruine où enfant tu te cacháis . . . (Cette fois, 11).

The next silence occurs after B narrates his story of an unnamed "tu" "aies ja-
mais pu jurer amour à quelqu'un. . . ces histoires que tu aliais inventant pour
contenir le vide...

Silence 3 secondes. Les yeux

s'ouvrent. ... 7 secondes" (Cette fois, 14).

54
Schneider, in Gontarski, ed; 249.
55
For more Information see Brater, ed; Beckett at 80, for a piece by John
Russell Brown pp. 25-45. For an extensive study of Beckett's use of Silence as a
dramatic technique See Kane, The Language of Silence, 105-130.
56
Kane 113.
57
Kane 106-07.
58
Kane gives many textual examples to ilustrate and support her point. See
106-129.

63
 The third silence occurs between the narrations of A and B. A has referred to
"le palé" soleil. . . sur la pierre l'enfant sur la pierre où jamais nul ne venait."
B's story begins (or resumes) with "ou seul dans les mêmes scenes. . ." (Cette
fois, 19). In the end, after the initial three seconds silence, the note indicates
another ten seconds silence before the play is repeated.
The silences in Cette fois intersperse stories of "ruin," of impossible lo ve,
of palé and fading sun, of rock, of stone, of desolation, of emptiness and
void ("le vide"). The continuous repetition of the narration constitutes silence
in itself as it tends to cancel out what has already been said earlier. As Kane
has said, "the repetitive use of gaps in the dialogue reinforces an impression
of incompleteness, emptiness, and isolation and intimates that more is left
unsaid than is confessed."59 But in Cette fois, because the silences are con-
trolled, they are not too repetitive. But the repetition of the "events" preced-
ing the silence and the total repetitive nature of the narration créate the im-
pression that either too much is said, or nothing is said at all. But the general
atmosphere of isolation and uncertainty is very apparent.
Beckett's use of silence as a dramatic technique derives in part from his
long-standing conviction that communication is not possible. But I think the
use of silence is more of an attempt to reflect the "artist's efforts to convey the
quintessence of human experience: uncertainty, incompleteness, inade-
quacy, impermanece."60 According to George Steiner, the barbarie
atrocities of the last two wars "can be neither adequately grasped ñor de-
scribed in the words: these unspeakable events quite literally exceed the
boundaries of language because they defy verbal expression."61 I have
argued elsewhere in this study that the two World Wars could not have been
solely responsible for the new form of the twentieth century drama. I dare
add here that a case can be made that those who witnessed first had man's in-
humanity to man as mainfested in the wars saw too much for words to ex-
press.
Beckett obviously witnessed the horrors of the last war, but his own ob-
session with "words" and comnunication predates the Second World War.
On the other hand, Pirandello witnessed first hand the human destructions
caused by the First World War, but more importantly, experienced personal
and family tragedies. He preferred logical discourse to express dehumaniza-
tion and existential feeling of human emptiness. Beckett chose "disjunction in

59
Kane 115.
60
Kane, Introduction, n.p.
61
Kane, Introduction, n.p.

64
language" to indicate "disjunction from self...from the unknown."62 By us-
ing pauses, unanswered questions, and silences, he "has portrayed the con-
fusión and uncertainty of experience while implying that less is more. "63
Beckett's use of silence remains one of his important contributions to modern
drama.
Harold Pinter (an admirer of Beckett) believes that we communicate in
our silence, in what is unsaid. He maintains that what the characters are say-
ing to each other is less important than what is happening between them. To
understand Beckett's plays, he suggests, one needs to look at the characters
very intensely rather than merely listening to them.64 But to understand
Pirandello's plays, one has to listen to the dialogues between characters, be-
cause, what goes on between them may be as important as what the charac-
ters are saying to each other as both may be mere fiction that must be sepa-
rated from reality. However, in Beckett's plays, the guide is essentially what
we hear rather than what we see, although both can be equally important—
in shocking us, and perhaps, liberating and elevating our spirits.

62
Kane 106.
63
Kane 129.
64
See Toscan in Gontarski, ed; 218. For more on Pinter and use of silence see
Kane 130-156.

65
 Chapter Four
The Unreality of the Real

Tumig and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Things fall apart, the center cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the earth.1

The preceding chapter has identified "chaos" and "mess" as the central
motifs of the wrltings of Pirandello and Beckett. Yeat's poem quoted above
presupposes a preexisting orderly world before the chaos set in.2 But we
know that the idea of "order" or "chaos" is a matter of perception. During a
war, for example, the apparent victor sees "order" being restored whereas
the vanquished sees nothing but ruin and anarchy descending upon its land.
Analogizing with war in this context may appear rather extreme but I find it
quite apt because many modern critics have sought to explain the form and
content of the modern drama through the massive destructions of the last
two World Wars. Besides the physical ruins and ravages the two wars
caused, they tended to destroy also man's faith in human progress, human

1
William Butler Yeats, The Collected Poems (New York: McMillan Company.
1970) 184.
2
Aristotle's theory of matter and form adapted by Thomas Aquinas produced
a unified vision of man, body and soul, living in a divinely ordered universe. See
Eugene Webb, The Plays of Samuel Beckett (Seattle: The University of Washington
Press, 1974) 13-25. For further information See Philip Wheelwright, ed; Five
Philosophers (New York: The Odyssey Press, 1963) 183-90.

66
intelligence, and logic. Commenting on the first World War, John Palmer
said:

The war destroyed or shook not merely the political and social frame-
work of nations, but all the fair assumptions on which modern civiliza-
tion seemed so securely to rest. Neither men nor ideas nor institutions
could any longer be taken at their face value.3

Bishop is among other critics who saw during the twenties, "a Europe in
chaos and a globe whose valúes and realities changed abruptly, leaving its in-
habitants bewildered and frighted."4 Commenting on the situation in the for-
ties (after the last World War), Bishop refers to the "distrust coupled with
threats of total annihilation that it [the war] represented [which] gave rise to
cynicism and pessimism in most of weary, abused...Europe."5 In the views
of both Palmer and Bishop (and a host of other critics), the two disastrous
wars made the twentieth century a period of "profound sense of the unreality
of the social surface,"6 a period where preoccupation with a concrete objec-
tive world represented self-delusion.
The views expressed by critics such as Palmer and Bishop lead one to
deduce that "things" started falling apart after the hitherto complacent world
was jolted by two wars. Following this dialectic, the wars therefore produced
or helped to produce the Pirandellian "chaos" and the Beckettian "mess."
While it cannot be be denied that the frightening realities of the two wars
transformed the uncertainties of the human destiny and the unknowability of
the self and the objective world from philosophy into subjects for drama, it
must not be forgotten that even before the wars, different philosophers, at
different times, have postulated on the uncertain nature of reality and the in-
ability of man to understand either his self or the objective reality.

Philosophical Formulations

A catalog of philosophers who have commented on the uncertain na-

ture of the human reality is outside the compass of this discussion. However,

3 John Palmer, Stud/es in the Contemporary Theatre (Boston: Littlc Brown,

and Company, 1927) 32.
4
Bishop 47.
5
Bishop 120.
6
Palmer 34.

67
 we know that philosphers of existence , notably, Heidegger, Jaspers, Kierke-
gaard, have written about the need for man to take control of this own
destiny (not by being but by becoming) since, apparently, he is alone, and
the outside reality is in flux. Writing about the pessimistic tradition, for exam-
ple, Schopenhauer has said that our world, "which is so real, with all its suns
and milky-ways is nothing."7 Hegel has written about the absolute absence of
the Absolute as well as the divided and contradictory nature of the self: "Be-
ing is nothing fixed or ultimate: it yields to dialectic and sinks into its opposite,
which, also taken immediately, is Nothing."8 Bergson has written about con-
sciousness and perception. In the sixteenth century, Montaigne wrote about
the unknowability of the self and of the objective world, so has Pascal, in the
seventeenth century, grieved about the uncertainty of human destiny.
It is, in my view, difficult to support the proposición that the events of the
first part of this century necessarily authored the Pirandellian and Beckettian
drama of unknowability and fragility of the objective world. All through the
history of intellectual thoughts, there have been discussions about what is real
and what is unreal, what man knows and what he does not know, and more
particularly, about the nature of the universe itself. But it is not easy to deter-
mine at what point the falcon could no longer see the falconer. Perhaps, it is
the nature of the universe that the "falcon cannot see the falconer."
The question that needs be addressed here is why the real seems unreal
and vice versa. This is an enduring philosophical question which dates back
to the pre-socratic years. A school of thought led by Parmenides, Zeno, and
Heraclitus, believed in the principie of monism— that the world is a part of an
ordered whole where everything is guided along a determined path so as to
produce a unified result.9 Even then, Pythagoras who espouses the theory of
monism, still did not believe that reality can be known by our senses, insist-
ing, rather, that it must be comprehended rationally through our intellect.
The implication of Pythagoras' theory is that the senses are too unreliable to
perceive reality accurately. So, the theory of monism in practice admits of
plurality.
But not all Greek thinkers subscribe to the theory of homogeneity and
monism. The theory of Protagoras, for example, stresses the relativity of
sense perceptions. This theory which emphasizes homo mensura (man is the

7
Quoted by Hesla 52.
8
Quoted by Hesla 209.
9
G. S. Kirk, ed; Heraclitus: The Cosmic Fragmenta (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1970) 385. For additional Information, see World Phihsophy I,
Frank N. MaGill, ed; (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: 1982) 270-79.

68
measure) insists that "what is perceived, is as it is perceived by the
perceiver,"10 and is therefore true or false according to the perception of the
perceived.
Although Heraclitus believed in the theory of monism, his own universe
embodies a unity of opposites. In a view that more or less parallels those of
Firandello and Beckett (with regard to the sentiment of the opposites),
Heraclitus maintains that all apparent opposites are really the same; "the
whole is divisible and indivisible."11 The concept of change is an important
part of his philosophy. To him, "Unending FLUX is the most fundamental
characteristic of the universe." Some of his famous sayings include: "All
things change (flow, separate, dissolve)"; "Nothing remains the same"; "You
cannot step into the same river twice." Cratylus, a younger philosopher,
went a step further by stating that not only is the river changing, we ourselves
are changing also during the time it takes to step into the river the first time. 12
In his myth of creation and origin of irrationality, Plato argües rhar what
we perceive is an imperfect world. Insisting that there is a permanent residue
of disorder in the universe, Plato argües that God's weakness (limitation)
must have accounted for the irrationality of this imperfect universe. He even
went a step further than Heraclitus in suggesting that because the universe
possesses a structure, there is bound to be a crack. "The function of the
bone," he writes, "is to protect from injury the seat of life, the brain and mar-
row. To that end, bone must be hard. But its very hardness makes it two brit-
tle and inflexible and also Hable to decay under excessive heat."13
The universe created by God, according to Plato, is imperfect because it
contains underlying irrational forces which appear to be beyond God's
capabilities. Beckett appears to make a subtle reference to the imperfect crea-
tion when, in Fin de partie, Nagg tells the joke of an Englishman who needs a
pair of trousers in a hurry for the New Year's festivities. The disappointed
client agrily wonders why in three months the tailor could not make him a
pair of trousers whereas in six days, God made the world. In reaction, the
tailor remarks: "Le monde. . . et mais Milord! Regardez—regardez mon

10
Peter A. Angeles, Dictionary of Philosophy (New York: Barnes & Noble
Books, 1981) 244.
11
Kirk, ed; 65.
12
See Angeles 37.
13
See Herbert M. Garelick, Modes of Irrationality: Preface to a Theory of
Knowledge (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1971) 15. See also Francis Confort, Píato's
Cosmohgy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1937) 175.

69
PANTATON!"14 Plato's conccpt of the real world (the Unchanging Eternal
Ideas) is nonspatial and nontcmporal.
According to Platos' theory of plurality of passions, senses cheat us by
shapes and colors. They mislead us because they focus on the partial,
neglecting the essence. The senses lie and distort true nature of things; be-
cause they deceive, they are irrational. 15 The sheer number of passions,
Plato insists, explains their irrationality, for the sum total of competing feel-
ings, produces a state of chaos in the individual. Plato concludes that be-
cause of the inability of passions to subject themselves to the authority of rea-
son, passions will always be a source of irrationality.
One can therefore postulate that Pirandello's view— relativity of truth
and fleeting individual identity— derives in part from Plato's philosophic for-
mulation. Both Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard believe in the irrationality of
passions. For both, reality is passion and passion is irrational. Kant seems to
agree with Protagoras that we can know objects only as they appear to us (to
our senses) not as they may be in themselves. 16
In an apparent disagreement with the theory of the irrationality of pas-
sion, Francis Herbert Bradley, a modern philosopher, conceives the world as
composed of self-contradictory elements. He identifies three categories of re-
ality: 1) logical (which does not contradict itself and is opposed to appear-
anee), 2) metaphysical (presents reality as one monism—contrasting with ap-
pearance), and 3) epistemological (sees reality as experience). But Bradley
seems to suggest that experience is rational, probably because he regards it as
coming from the mind, and in his formulation, to be in some mind is to be ra-
tional. He seems to forget that not every mind acts rationally, and therefore
every experience cannot be rational. He also appears to ignore the fact that
every experience is a function of the senses (which are not necessarily always
rational).
As a student of Parmenides and Zeno, Bradley believes in the monism
of the universe and to him, reality taken as the totality of all that exists, is Ab-
solute. He maintains that there has to be an absolute reality because an ap-
pearance has to be an appearance of something that exists. He does not see
appearances as illusions but as appearances (which exist) of reality, parts of a
whole.17 Bradley denies that ordinary things—things, processes, and

14
Samuel Beckett, Fin de partie (París: Les Editions de minuits, 1957) 37-38.
Subsequent citations of this play will be identified in the text by title and page number.
15
See Garelick 15.
16
Garelick 137.
17
See World PMosophy III, 1493-1503. Francis Herbert Bradley's work on

70
events—are realities.18 Instead, he distinguishes existence from reality:
"While things, processes, events. . . are not real, since they are proven to be
self-contradictory, nevertheless, they exist, henee they are not illusions but
appearanees. They are unreal although exísíení."19
Although it is not necessary to share Bradley's idea of Parmenidian
monism, I find his distinction between the unreal and the existent a useful for-
mula to plot the Pirandello-Beckett affinities. In this essay, the real would be
that which existe, which in another dialectic, is also appearance, and henee,
self-contradictory. In fact, Bradley puts it rather succintly when he contends
that things and the self are "unreal as such" because they contradict them-
selves; henee, they are mere "appearances or contradictory appearances."20
If this discussion deliberately highlights characters' actions and inactions
bordering on illogicalities, it is not because Pirandello and Beckett necessarily
believe that the objective world is unreal, but precisely because they create
characters who perceive around them, a universe of "chaos" and "the mess,"
a universe of ambiguities where illogicalities are as real as the characters' per-
ceptions can be.

Absence of Logic

Perhaps Illogicality is possible because we live in an imperfect world or

because we act as if we live in a perfect world. If beings in an objective world
perceive, and live with, illogicality, we cannot expect the fictitious characters
of Pirandello and Beckett to act differently. Pirandello's world of "chaos" and
Beckett's universe of "buzzing confusión" seem to be the offshoots of
Democritus' dictum that "Nothing is more real than nothing." Gorgias of
Lentini, the Sicilian rhetorician and Sophist (484 - 375 BC),21 postulates
that

1. There is nothing which has any real existence.

Metaphysics and its critiques are summarized in this volume.

18
See World PMosophy III, 1502.
19
World PMosophy III, 1502.
20
Quoted by W. E. Kennick, "Appearance and Reality," in Enciclopedia of
PMosophy I, Paul Edwards, ed; (New York: The Macmillan & Free Press, 1967) 138.
21
See Martin Esslin, ed; Samuel Beckett: A Collection of Critical Essays
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965) 46. For more information on Gorgias'
teaching see Richard S. Runder, "Gorgias of Le[o]ntini," in Encyclopedia of
PMosophy II, 1972. See also The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 1949 ed.

71
 2. Even if anything did exist, it could not be known.
3. Supposing real existence to be knowable, the knowledge would be
incommunicable.

Gorgias' proposition and Democritus' dictum seem to be at the very

heart of the espitemological incertitude which has preoccupied writers and
philosophers through the course of human history. Writers who share
Parmenides' principie of monism have painted a logical picture of the uni-
verse, but authors like Pirandello and Beckett seem to have allied themselves
with Heraclitus' principie of unending flux.
In Ciascuno suo modo, Pirandello's Diego cinci refers to the "filth and
muck" that is in us.22 In Godoí, Vladimir speaks of the "muck" which he
must get used to as he goes along: 23

Estragon C'est st curieux, plus on va, moins c'est bon.

Vladimir Pour moi c'est le contraire.
Estragon C'est à dire?
Vladimir Je me fait au goût au fur et à mesure (Godot, 27).

This "muck" may be the incongruity or rather, the "madness" lurking behind
most of our actions and inactions.
Directly referring to his experience with his psychotic wife, Pirandello
once told a journalist that "life is formless and illogical. I think the mad are
closer to life. There is nothing fixed or determined in us."24 After Enrice IV
has forsaken his madness to face reality, he returns to madness to preserve
his sanity. To ward off the intrusions of the townspeople of Valdana, Signore
Ponza claims that his mother-in-law, Signora Frola, is mad. Signora Frola,
for her part, implies that Ponza is mad. Because Pirandello believes madness
to be closer to life, non-madness seems to be far removed from life. Thus,
those "mad" characters go about their business and retain the flexibility to
"flow" with life, a flexibility which the lucid ones do not seem to possess.
In Cosi è (se vi pare), the inquisitive neighbors are anxious to know the
real truth about happenings in Signore Ponza's household. Who is telling the

22
Eric Bentley, ed; The Naked Masks: Five Plays of Luigi Pirandello (New
York: E. P. Dutton and Co; Inc; 1922) 338.
23
Beckett, Waitingfor Godot (New York: Grove Press, 1954) 14. The English
text is preferred here because it seems to parallel the text in The Naked Mask already
cited.
24
Giudice iii.

72
truth, Signore Ponza or Signora Frola? Who is crazy and who is not? Can
Signora Ponza help unravel the mystery surrounding her and her family? But
Laudisi explains to them that the "truth" they are looking for may not exist. In
the words of Gorgias of Lentini, Laudisi seems to be telling them that even if
the "truth" does exist, it could not be known. Pirandello has once com-
plained that man has the tendency "of taking his inner feelings, changeable
and varying, as something that really exists outside of himself' (On Humor,
140). In other words, truth, according to Pirandello, is a representation of
what each of us makes of it. He believes that we cannot know anything and
that we deceive ourselves if we think that we even know ourselves. Like
Diego cinci and Vladimir, we must live with the "filth and muck" that are in
us.
Beckett's Vladimir claims that he gets used to the "muck" as he goes
along. That may be so, but he may be deceiving himself if that claim implies
that he "knows" himself. The "muck" has the function of forever contradict-
ing the notion of coherence with which we would like to be identified. As
Beckett himself has said, "we cannot know and we cannot be known....Man
is the creature that cannot come forth from himself, who knows other only in
himself, and who, if he asserts the contrary, lies" (Prousí, 63).
If Vladimir asserts that he knows himself, that assertion is even contra-
dicted by his next admission: "Question de tempérament...On n'y peut rien.
. . .Le fond ne change pas. . . . Rien à faire" (Godot, 27-28). The essential in
this context seems to include the "muck" which dogs his every step and over
which he can do little. If the carrot is getting worse as it is eaten, claiming that
it gets better because one is getting used to the bad taste is hard to compre-
hend, henee Estragon's question: "C'est ça, le contraire?" Estragón, it ap-
pears, does not understand, ñor does Vladimir understand. But if he claims
otherwise, he "lies."
Pirandello believes that "madness" is closer to life apparently because
"madness" triggers spontaneity which, acting without logic, taps the "muck"
in us all. There seems to be no indication that Beckett shares the view that
"madness" is closer to life, but there are reasons to believe that to the extent
that madness is a part of the confusión that overwhelms life and art, Beckett
regards it as a viable component. He caricatures "the attempt to communi-
cate where no communication is possible [as] the madness that holds a con-
versation with the furniture" (Prousí, 63). But actually, when his characters
engage in those disjointed speeches, patters, and fragmented dialogues that
are mutually ignored, they are in effect, holding conversations with an empty
air.

73
 Hamm, Beckett's authorial character, is fascinated by a madman who
believes that the world has collapsed and that he is the only one saved.
Hamm is lucid but despite his lucidity, he also acts like the madman in his
story. He threatens Clov with death outside the shelter because he sincerely
believes that life is non-existen t outside his box. Hamm's insistence on play-
ing and prolonging a game lost of old is hardly a logical behavior of a "sane"
person. This analysis does not suggest that Hamm is mad, but nor does it
suggest that he is "sane." Both Hamm and his fictional hero are plagued by
the same "muck."
It has been mentioned earlier in this discussion that Beckett once worked
in a Mental Hospital. His experience in the institution helped him to get ac-
quainted with the psychology of the mentally sick. A more personal experi-
ence occured when he was stabbed by a man on the street of London. When
the assailant—whose name is Prudent—visited him in the hospital, Beckett
asked him why he stabbed him, Prudent replied: "Je ne sais pas
monsieur."25 Understandably, this assailant, who may have been crazy, un-
derstands neither himself nor his motives. Nor is that understanding
necessary; afterall, "understanding" does not seem to go hand in hand with
Beckett's idea that knowing is impossible.
Beckett subtly confronts this notion of illogicality in his account of "Le
larron de Sauveur," the thieves crucified with christ: "Deux voleurs. On dit
que l'un fut sauvé et l'autre damné" (Godot, 14). It is perplexing to Vladimir,
to Beckett, and to the audience that the judgement standard of "Le Sauveur"
should be so flimsy and capricious. But the surprise is our surprise. We
should not be surprised that only one of the four evangelists mentioned this
incident nor should we be surprised that one thicf was saved the other
damned. Vladimir himself has told us that "Le fond ne change pas. . . .Il n'y
à rien à faire" (Godot, 14). Beckett has called it "the muck"; Camus would
call it absurd, senseless. It will provoke nausea in Sartre. But it is part of being
in the world; it is part of the "essential" which will not change, at least, ac-
cording to the perception of Vladimir. Like Vladimir, maybe we shall learn to
get used to "this muck" instead of evading it.

Epistemológica! Incertitude

Gorgias' proposition that nothing is knowable subtly manifests itself in

25
Pilling 10.

74
Lucky's speech in Godoí. Lucky goes further to posit the uselessness of
whatever knowledgc we may have. In his famous "thinking," Lucky derides
that knowledge and suggests the impossibility of certainty. He wonders,

[pourquoi] malgré les progrès de l'alimentation et de l'élimination des

déchets est en train de maigrir et en même temps parallèlement on ne
sais pas pourquoi malgré l'essor de la culture physique de la pratique
des sports tels. . . le tennis. . . (Godot, 60).

Why, he asks, despite all the progress man has made in the field of knowl-
edge, does the problem of Me still remain insoluble? In fact, Beckett main-
tains that Lucky is lucky because he has no more expectations; he is aware of
the emptiness and meaninglessness of the universe.26
If nothing is certain and any absolute is error, then everything seems to
depend on chance. When Pozzo first appeared on the stage, he had his sight,
his pipe, and his watch. Now he has lost all. Lucky, too, who could then
think "prettily" aloud, is now dumb. Vladimir wants to know when he be-
came dumb, but Pozzo reacts angrily: "Vous n'avez pas fini de m'empoison-
ner avec vos histoires de temps? ... un jour pareil aux autres. . . le même
jour, le méme instant, ça ne vous suffit pas?" (Godot, 126). When Estragón
complains that he is hungry, Vladimir offers him a radish. Upon examining it
Estragón says: "Il est noir!" But Vladimir maintains that it is a radish. Thus the
radish changes color and becomes something else, just as black boots change
color and become brown boots, and a boot that did not fit now fits.
Estragón claims that he threw his boots away, but actually, he does not
remember where he put them. When Vladimir shows him his boots, he says,
"Ce ne sont pas les miennes. . . les miennes étaient noires. Celles-ci sont
jaunes." Estragón insists that the boots are not his. Vladimir then suggests
that somebody who took his boots must have left him his own: "Un type est
venu qui a pris les tiennes et t'a laissé les siennes" (Godoí, 94-95). Who that
"somebody" is we are not told. But a critic is left to wonder why Vladimir tries
to suggest an explanation about the apparently unexplainable.
In the first act of Godot, a tree was scorched and skeletal, but in the sec-
ond act, some leaves have sprouted. Vladimir and Estragón wait for Godot,
yet he will not come today but tomorrow. The boy who carne yesterday
probably comes today. Yet Vladimir is not fully sure he is the same emissary
ñor is the reader. But the boy insists that he is not the one who carne yester-

26
In B. Fletcher 57.

75
day. In response to Vladimir's questions about Pozzo and Lucky who had
just left the stage, the boy stated that he saw no one: "Je n'ai vu personne
monsieur" (Godoí, 129).
In this atmosphere of uncertainty, existence itself is a line dangling be-
tween being and non-being. Why do we insist on trying to be? In the "cogito"
world of Beckett, that which cannot be perceived cannot be held to exist, but
existence itself is assured if one is seen and talked to by another.27 In Oh les
beauxjours, Winnie's happiest moment is when Willie moves towards her to
look at her and talk to her. Hamm insists on staying at the center of the room
where he can be seen by all. Pozzo clears his throat and makes sure every at-
tention is directed to him (to assure himself that he still exists) before he
speaks.
If the boy did not see Pozzo and Lucky, they are then perceived to have
ceased to exist. It appears Vladimir has every reason to be worried about his
own existence. He would naturally want to be perceived to exist, and he ap-
pears desperate about it, as he tells the boy what to tell Godot:

Tu lui diras (il s'interrompt) tu lui diras que tu m'as vu. . . . (Un temps.
Vladimir s'avance, le garc.cn recule, Vladimir's arrête, le gargon
s'arrête.) Dis, tu es bien sûr de m'avoir vu, tu ne vas pas me dire de-
main que tu ne m'as jamais vu? (Godot, 130-31).

Already Vladimir has begun to be troubled, and he continúes to doubt his

own identity.
The Pirandellian-like atmosphere of fleeting reality is further intensified
by the stage direction given by Beckett before the boy disappears:

Silence. Vladimir fait un soudain bond en avant, le Gargon se sauve

comme un fleche. Silence. Le soleil se couche, la lune se leve.
Vladimir reste immobile. Estragón se réveille, se déchausse, se leve,
les chaussures á la main,. . .va vers Vladimir, le regarde (Godot, 131).

With few words and much silence Beckett is able to créate an atmosphere of
doubt, fear, uncertainty, and mystery. Whether watched on the stage or read
in the book, the scene of Vladimir seized by trepidation o ver the uncertainties
and nothingness of this world catches the imagination and sticks; the scene of
a Vladimir trying to come cióse to an elusive and almost evasive and

27
In B. Fletcher 70.

76
mysterious messenger boy (maybe to take the boy into confidence), and the
sight of the boy apparently distrustful of Vladimir, and at the same time seem-
ingly unwilling to divulge some kind of mysterious secret, creates even in the
mind of the audience a feeling of awe and helplessness in a real-and-unreal
world. Pirandello might have perhaps achieved a similar effect, but his
dramaturgy would use reasoning or a philosophical tirade.
Besides the doubt now cast in the mind of Vladimir regarding his exist-
ence and identity, the question of the existence and identity of Pozzo is also
raised in the Vladimir-Gargon dialogue. Is Pozzo Godot? This question ob-
viously torments the tramps.

Estragón Tu es sur que ce n'était pas lui?

Vladimir Qui?
Estragón Godot?
Vladimir Mais qui?
Estragón Pozzo
Vladimir Mais non! Mais non! (Un temps.)
Mais non (Godoí, 127-28).

Between Didi and Gogo there is some doubt about the true identity of Pozzo.
Critics share the same doubt. Lionel Abel, Vivian Mercier, and C. Chadwicks
strongly argüe that Pozzo may have been Godot.%& On the other hand,
Walter Strauss, Federick Lumley, and Robbe-Grillet, among others, speak of
Pozzo as precisely noí Godot. The controversy over Pozzo's real identity is
not in itself important, but it lends weight to a Pirandellian element so dear to
Beckett—namely, the uncertainty, henee impossibility of knowledge and
truth. As Gorgias has postulated, the unreality of what we cali real implies
that even if anything really exists, it cannot be known. If Godot does exist, his
identity is in determínate. Estragon is Gogo, and he is also Catulle. Vladimir is
either Didi, or Albert. As radish can and does replace turnip, so can Albert re-
place Catulle!
Estragon keeps reminding us that nothing is certain. If, as a matter of
fact, the real is unreal, then in the popular language, anything goes. One can
even say he is happy if he is not contented, as the next dialogue illustrates:

Vladimir Toi aussi, tu dois étre

content. . . . avoue-le.

28
Friedman 307-08.

77
 Estragon Content de quoi?
Vladimir Dis-le, même si ce n'est
pas vrai.
Estragón Je suis content.
Vladimir Nous sommes contents (Godot, 83-84).

Estragón says he is happy, fully aware that it is untrue. But does it matter,
since in this universe truth is error? What Vladimir calis scenery and land-
scape, Estragón calis mud and Cackon country (land of shit). In a situation
where scenery is worms, in a situation where nothing is real, there is really
nothing to recognize. In response ro Vladimir's question, Estragon retorts:
"Reconnais! Qu'est-ce qu'il y a à reconnaître? J'ai tiré ma roulure de vie au
milieu des sables!. . . fous-moi la paix avec tes paysages! Parles-moi du sous-
sol!" (Godot, 85-86).
What is being discussed here is not a scene of antithesis which itself is
characteristic of Beckett's as well as Pirandello's works. What we see here is
rather a matter of the worm and the landscape merging, a matter of scenery
and mud existing together but perhaps not allowing either to be superior or
"more real." In the works of Beckett, it is the question of "the mess."29 In this
world of chance, there is nothing to recognize; nothing is distinct, everything
blurs, and if everything is in a flux, "Qu'est-ce qu'il y a à reconnaitre?"
Hamm, like Pozzo, used to be a man of substance. He owned property
at a time when such things existed. He even had a servant (not a slave),
Clov, who used to visit his paupers. Like Pozzo, he smoked pipe. In
Catastrophe, M (the Director), a rather prototype of Pozzo, struts about the
stage, consumed by his own self-importance. Like Pozzo, he smokes. Like
Pozzo and Krapp, he consults his watch: "M fume....U consulte son chrono-
métre" (Catastrophe, 75). But towards the end, he fades into virtual in-
signifance. Nothing is steady because the reality of the past has lapsed into
fiction and we watch this fiction performed before us on stage.

Fragmenting Wholeness/Elusive Meaning

Neither Pirandello nor Beckett believes that life has any meaningful pur-
pose30 but they are also aware that humankind postulales the idea of mean-

29
Driver21.
30
Other writers of the twentieth century share a similar view, such as Camus,

78
ing to give itself hope, and pcrhaps more importantly, to give ftself distrac-
tíons. When the people wanted to know the full circumstances surrounding
Signore Ponza's life in Cosi è (se vi pare), when Pirandello's characters per-
sistently seek explanations, they are positing the idea that there are still
reasons and explanations for peoples' actions. The absence of explanations
in his plays underlines the fact that for Pirandello at least, the world of ex-
planations and meanings no longer exist. Enrice IV, for example, is able to
manipulate his own world of altérnate madness and sanity. The six charac-
ters have been somewhat "ejected"31 and rejected by their author and left in
a world with neither purpose nor coherence, a world of chaos.
Unlike Pirandello's characters, Beckett's characters seek no explana-
tions, at least, not seriously. But like Pirandello, Beckett offers no explana-
tion either directly or through his characters. If meaning is absent or elusive,
there is certainly nothing to explain.
In the preceding chapter, we referred to Heraclitus and Cratylus who
postulated a fragmenting universe where nothing stays fixed. Even Aristole's
unified vision of man and universe was assailed by Descartes who split man
into a mind and body. David Hume went father than Descartes to posit a uni-
verse where substances fall apart into a multiplicity of impressions. Even the
self (res cogitas), which Descrates held to be a certainty, "dissolved into an
assortment of fragmentary impulses and ideas."32 The mind, according to
Hume, is a kind of theater where several perceptions successively make their
appearanccs— then pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in a variety of
postures and situations.33 This is how a modern writer like Nathalie Sarraute
describes the same phenomenon—the fleeting personality of man which, in-
cidentally, forms the bedrock of Pirandellism: "Ce sont des movements
indéfinissables, qui glissent tres rapidement aux limites de notre conscience. .
. . lis me paraissaient et me paraissent encoré constituer la source secrete de
notre existence."34 The secret source of our existence to which Sarraute
alludes here is "des mouvements indéfinissables"—that indefinable move-
ments in us which accounts for our inability at times to grasp and compre-
hend our actions, and to formúlate a reliable meaning to events happening
inside or outside of ourselves.
As late as the nineteenth century, Mathew Arnold felt himself living in an

Genet, Sartre, and lonesco.

31
See Toscan in Gontarski, ed; 220.
32
Webb 21. Portions of this Paragraph rcflect Webb's views.
33
See Wheelwright, ed; 197.
34
Nathalie Sarraute, L'Ere du Soupgon (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1956) 8.

79
 age where the traditional assumptions35 that gave life its meaning were being
threatened. William Barrett in Irrational Man laments the absence of a struc-
ture that provides man "with a system of images and symbols with which he
could express his wholeness."36 Barrett believes that with the loss of this con-
taining framework man became not only dispossessed, but a fragmented be-
ing.377 It is obvious that the breakdown of meaning occurs at three different
levéis — cosmological, conventional, and personal. The sum total—a
paradoxical situation—is a universe, a society, and a personality that seem to
be deprived of wholeness, except that we prefer it to be whole.
In Pirandello's Cosi è (se vi pare), the direct fictional casulties are the
busybodies of Valdana who want something real on which to rely, so me
documentary proof clearing the mystery of Signora Ponza' identity. In
Beckett, Vladimir insists on waiting for a metaphysical Godot, whom he ex-
pects to give meaning to his existence. Winnie and Hamm, delighting in the
"old questions and oíd answers," realize painfully how things are changing. A
middle class woman who once owned all middle class paraphernalia must
now rely on mere nostalgia for sustenance. Hamm who used to own proper-
ty and wealth, must now be content with tit bits for elemental twighlight-zone
existence.
Krapp attemps to reconstruct old memories and merge them to the pres-
ent existence apparently to create an image of wholeness. In Cette fois,
aware of the disintegration of their lives and world, the characters— A, B,
and C— créate a more or less continuous dialogue that attempts to present a
unified if fragmented image of their former lives. As Brater has indicated,
"The three voices trigger memories that have therefore stimulated one anoth-
er. A's rock evokes C's rock evokes B's rock. Memories are inextricably
linked to each other by a plurality of images."38 Recalling these past
memories helps to provide them with a semblance of wholeness even though
their present world is fading fast into twilight.
Pozzo, who during his first appearance, appeared to have everything
—land, property, chicken, pipe, and even a slave— now seems to be losing
his power, authority, and possessions. With the loss of his watch, he loses his
sense of time and sense of wholeness. Pozzo, who could look at his watch to
calcúlate the exact time he had been walking, now grows furious if asked

35
See Webb 14. Also See Marjorie Nicholson's Breaking of the Circle (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1960).
36
Quoted by Lewis, Contemperar^ Theatre, 261.
37
In Lewis 261.
38
Brater 45.

80
 when Lucky became dumb, or even when he lost his sight. But old habits die
hard. Although with the loss of his watch and his sight, the world around him
seems to be disintegrating, Pozzo still clings to the old notion of wholeness,
seeing a relationship between his blindness and the ways of the world. He
tells Vladimir that the tears and laughs of the world are in constant quantity:
"Les larmes du monde sont immuables. Pour chacun qui se met à pleurer,
quelque part un autre s'arrête. Il en va de même du rire" (Godot, 44). He
even cautions against speaking ill of his generation, probably because
"generation" reflects his idea of wholeness.
Lucky's speech retains a symbolic siginficance because it announces the
collapse of certainties to which characters like Pozzo still cling. Lucky warns
against the expectation that the human wisdom can ever be increased.
Lucky's dumbness, too, seems symbolic. After singing the nunc Dimittis of
objective reality, there seems to be nothing else to talk or think about, al-
though he continues "thinking aloud" until his hat was removed.
Hamm has tried and failed to exercise absolute control over his world.
Despite his gambits and insistence to be in the center, Hamm is not even in
charge of his shelter as Clov's threatened rebellion shows. Neither Krapp nor
Winnie can recréate the oíd times by invoking old memories because yester-
day's memories have become today's illusion. Despite his attempts, M (The
Director) in Catastrophe is unable to have the last say in a play he is directing.
These characters, like Pirandello's creatures, are what Eric and Mary Joseph-
son describe as "everyman and no man, drifting in a world that has little
meaning for him and over which he exercises no power; a stranger to himself
and to others."39
Meaning, as the Father in Sei personaggi indicates, is everyman's over-
riding goal. Referring to the independence which a character acquires from
his author, the Father maintains that a character acquires for himself a mean-
ing which the author does not give him. In the theatrical universe of
Pirandello and Beckett, meaning is a word with an ambiguous, and even a
disquieting, overtone. Without a universal frame of reference, meaning not
only assumes the irreality of reality, but can and does provoke a somewhat
less desirable feeling or result.
Zio Simone in Liolà wants to give a meaning to his life by accepting an ir-
reality as real. The meaning the townsfolk of Cosi è (se vi pare) gain for all
their pains is a fragmented truth which depends for its "validity" on the per-

39
Eric and Mary Josephson, ed; Man Alone: Alienation in Modern Society
(New York: Dell Publishing Co; Inc., 1962) 11.

81
son uttering it. The only acceptable meaning Enrice can find in life is
existence-in-madness. Even the Father in Sei personaggi who is fond of talk-
ing of meaning, regards meaning as the torments of his soul. He calis it his
raison d'être, and he wants to dramatize it on the stage. One really wonders
what satisfaction this brand of meaning (torments) gives to a shattered exist-
ence. In other words, meaning in Pirandello's world is negative.
And meaning is no less negative in Beckett's universe. As has been
noted, Godot represents a "meaning" which neither inspires nor satisfies.
During Pozzo's appearance on the stage, Estragón asks him if he is not
Godot. Pozzo denies that he is Godot and asks rather emphatically if the
name, Pozzo, means nothing to them: "Je vous demande si ce nom ne vous
dit rien.?" (Godot, 29). Admitting that they are not from these parts,
Estragón proceeds to tell him the meaning they attach to Godot, what Godot
means, or could mean to them: Tobscurité. . . la fatique. . . la faiblesse. . .
l'attente. . ."(Godot, 30-31). Pozzo insists that even if they are strangers
here, that name (Pozzo) should still mean something to them, since they are
human beings. In short, the word or experience of Pozzo is real to him,
henee equally real to the tramps. The stage direction carefully spells out what
Pozzo means:

Entrent Pozzo and Lucky. Celui-là dirige celui-ci au moyen d'une cor-
de passée autour du cou. . . . Lucky porte une lourde valise,. . . et
Pozzo un fouet. . . . Pozzo tire violemment dessus. . . . Bruit de chute.
C'est Lucky qui tombe avec tout son chargement (Godoí, 28-29).

Thus, by means of a visual image, the "meaning" of Pozzo is portrayed

more vividly than words could otherwise have done. Pozzo means cruelty,
sadism, terror, the whip, threat, pomposity, man's inhumanity to man. Put
differently, Pozzo represents something less inviting, although rather pathetic
by the end. Estragón quickly associates Pozzo or Bozzo with Godot, and as
far as he is concerned, both mean darkness, strain, and the agonies of wait-
ing. Therefore to the question, "Does that name mean anything to you?" the
answer should be, "Of course, it means disappointment and unfulfilled pro-
mises and dreams"!
In Fin de porfie, an argument arises between Hamm and Clov over the
meaning of yesterday. Hamm asks Clov what exactly does yesterday mean:
"Hier!," Hamm wonders, "Qu'est-ce que ga veut dire. Hier!" (Fin de parí/e,
62). Of course, the angry Clov throws it back to him since it was
him—Hamm—who taught him all the words he is using. In short, it does

82
seem that even if yesterday has any meaning at all, that meaning is not very
clear. Pirandello describes this kind of exchange in his "Preface" to Sei per-
sonaggi as the 'Tingarme della comprensione reciproca fondato irremediabil-
mente sulla vuota astrazione delle parole" (p. 9). Although words could
mean something—only what valué is ascribed to it by perceivers—that
something, that value may be negative. In fact, in the Hamm-Clov dialogue,
meaning seems to disappear altogether. If meaning can be questioned, if it
does not endure, then its function is superfluous. The furious Clov remains
silent after talking to Hamm, as if to emphasize that "silence is the appropriate
response when meaning fails."40 Hamm once asked with anguish:

Hamm On n'est pas en train...de signifier quelque chose?

Clov Signifier? Nous, signifier! (Rire bref.)
Ah elle est bonne! (Fin de partie, 49).

When Hamm asks rather in desperation if they are not beginning to mean
something, the unexpected answer (in French) should have been: "si, si, si."
But to the utter dismay of the already genuinely troubled Hamm, the re-
sponse is excruciating. "Mean something! You and I, mean something." It
even amuses Clov.
At best meaning in Pirandello and Beckett is fleeting, illusory and
evasive; when perceived to exist in a fixed form, it is hardly salutary. Clov, al-
most at the threshold of the cell (ready to leave) is now perceiving the exter-
nal reality a little more clearly, and is therefore retreating a little from the com-
forting ¡Ilusión of the "shelter" still surrounding Hamm. It is thus not surpris-
ing that Clov laughs wryly when Hamm decides to take comfort in the idea
that after all they are beginning to mean something. It is paradoxical that at a
time when his life is fading fast, Hamm wants to think he is beginning to mean
something. As Enrice is searching for meaning in madness, so is Hamm
searching for meaning in holding out, in repetitive routines, in gambits, in
stroytelling.41
Both Clov and the audience may be amused at Hamm's insistence on
meaning something. Hamm is aware that he is in a game (une partie), " a
temporary ordering of reality,"42 and that the longer the game lasts, the bet-
ter for him. As Overbeck has further remarked, "Although the nullity of exist-
40
Karen Stein, "Metaphysical Silence in Absurd Drama," Modern Drama 13
(Feb. 1971): 430.
41
See Overbeck, in Burkman, ed; 24.
42
Overbeck, in Burkman, ed; 22.

83
ence intrudes despite his façon....If something is taking its course, this holds
out the hope of some meaning, which is better than nothing."43 Still, Clov as
a realist who feels that this has gone on long enough, understands that e ven
if "they" do mean something now, even if "a rational being" carne back to
earth, that nothing will hide "the heap that does not add up to life."44 Be-
sides, Clov knows that the idea of meaning is hardly a source of relief.
In Toas ceux qui tombent, Maddy contémplales on the hinnies that are
barren. But she is particularly thinking of the one Christ rode on in his trium-
phant entry into Jerusalem. Maddy pauses, and adds that that must mean
something. But here as elsewhere, the meaning is disheartening. Dan, unlike
Clov, does not laugh. The meaning is too disheartening to provoke any
laughter. As Webb has said, if Christ, a traditional symbol of the wholeness of
humanity and of the possibility of renewal, rode on a sterile beast, this mode
of transport would seem a wry joke on man's hope for renewed vitality.45
This somber signaling often is the meaning that characterizes Beckett's uni-
verse.
Meaning has something in common with the mirror image. As we have
already seen, the mirror can tell us something about ourselves. For example,
with all his lucidity and skepticism, Laudisi in Cosi è (se vi pare) metaphori-
cally shrinks from the meaning of existence as he views himself in a mirror.
The Son in Sei personaggi explains how impossible it is to live in front of a
mirror which "freezes us with the image of ourselves and throws our likeness
back at us with a horrible grimace." In Pirandello's world, looking at oneself
in the mirror is tantamount to confronting meaning, an act which makes man
too aware of his metaphysical uprootedness in a collapsing universe.
In Beckett's world, introspection and perception represent the mirror.
Beckett urges an introspection, " . . . a contraction of the spirit, a descent. . .
into the core of the eddy" (Proust, 65-66) as the only fertile way of piercing
the outer illusion to which habit, the great deadener, has imprisoned us. He
is not however unaware of what Pirandello discovers when his characters are
confronted face to face with a mirror. The same squeezing and horrible
grimace which a mirror produces in Pirandello's characters, is exactly what
introspection and perception produce in Beckett's characters, and that is why
he concedes that "self-perception is the most frightening of all human obser-
vations,. . . that when man faces himself he is looking into the abyss."46
43
Overbeck, in Burkman, ed; 23.
44
Overbeck, in Burkman, ed; 23.
45
Webb 51-52. The preceding paragraph closely reflects Webb's views.
46
As Beckett told John Gruen in an Interview, quoted by Vivian Mercier,

84
 Beckett's characters appear rather prudent in exercising the prerogative
of introspection, perhaps aware that it is a very frightening experience. Con-
scious of the emptiness of meaning, Vladimir refrains (when he can) from
probing too much into the meaning of things, lest he sees himself in a mirror
and confront a disturbing reality. When Estragon suggests that they think all
the same, Vladimir reacts rather swiftly: "Mais non, c'est impossible. . . .
Nous ne risquons plus de penser. . . . Ce qui est terrible, c'est d'avoir pensé"
(Godor, 89-90).
When Lucky's thinking becomes too revealing, the stage direction
shows the tramps truly alarmed and disturbed. When Lucky's thinking is be-
coming out of hand, when it begins to tear off all the cloaks man places on life
and exposes the terrible reality, when in the Pirandellian tradition the
"mirror" starts exposing the naked mask, in other words, when the thinking
becomes too meaningful, they are unable to stand it any longer; henee
Vladimir and Estragón seize Lucky and remove his hat. This physical con-
frontation amounts to what Pirandello terms the smashing of the mirror
which tells us too much truth, or which gives us too much meaning of our
forlorn existence. Lucky's dance, the "Net" and his speech, nevertheless
transíate the anguish of meaning. The ominous sign, observes Webb, is that
humanity is trapped in a Net. There is, it seems, neither a Lord that upholds
all that fall and raises up all those that bowed down, nor is there even a life to
raise them into.47

Múltiple and Disintegrating Personality

In the theaters of Pirandello and Beckett, the condition of chaos and

sterility seems to créate an atmosphere where the real appears unreal and
where meaning becomes elusive. Consequently, all assumptions crumble,
and disintegration can show itself in the múltiple personality of the individual,
in the degeneration of the person, in depersonalization and dehumanization,
or in a shifting identity. The characters of Pirandello and Beckett manifest
these symptoms.
In 1935 (a year before his death) Pirandello told Vittorini that ". . . we
look upon ourselves as well as upon fellow men as solid and clear-cut per-
sonalities, while in reality we are the juxtaposition of infinite, blurred

Beckett/Beckett (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977) 4.

47
Webb 52.

85
selves."48 Similarly, Beckett sees "the individual in the seat of constant pro-
cess of decantation [whose personality is] in an unceasing modification"
(Proust, 15). Thus, the human person is not an individual but "a succession
of individuáis" (Proust, 19).
Beckett offers different reasons why the individual is in constant decan-
tation. The chief reason, of course, is metaphysical, or rather cosmic. Not
only is the world created in a hurry and henee imperfectly,49 "the creation of
the world did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day
[thus producing] the countless subjects that constitute the individual "(Proust,
19).
Although both Pirandello and Beckett have posited different theories of
the human personality, and more importantly, have dramatized shifting per-
sonality on stage, awareness of the problem did not originate from them.
Pascal, for example, said that "mere is no man who differs more from anoth-
er than he does from himself at another time."50 As early as the sixteenth
century, Michel de Montaigne started probing the self, and Hamlet asked the
question, "Who am I?" This question nagged Stendahl too, who after self-
examination, admitted that he was a strangcr to himself. Julien Sorel's quest
is a search for the "genuine" self until the search becomes synonymous with
role-playing, until he, like Hamlet, finds "that we have no self but selves with
changing profiles as we act out our existence."51 Pirandello's orginality in the
portrayal of human personality lies in making it an obsession, in Pirandellis-
ing it on the modern stage.
Pirandello dramatizes the unknowability of the self, both to himself and
to others. To him we are "the juxtaposition of infinite, blurred selves," in spite
of our delusion that we are one, despite the fixed concept we have about
ourselves. He is known to have told Vittorini that because our personality is
composed of forces that are fluid and blurred, we cannot distinguish reality
from ¡Ilusión.52 In one of his characteristic tirades, the Father in Sei per-
sonaggi talks about our diverse consciences and how we decieve ourselves
into believing that we are one person to all who know us not realizing that we
are different persons to different people.

48
Quoted by Esslin, Brief Chrortides: Essay on Modern Theatre (Bristol: West-
ern Printing Services, 1970) 63.
49
See note 14 of this Chapter.
50
Bentley, ed; ix.
51
Wylie Sypher, Loss of Self in Modern Literature and Arts (New York: Ran-
dom House, 1962) 32-33. Portions of this paragraph reflect Sypher's thoughts.
52
See Esslin, ed; 53.

86
 Thus, the different selves of the individual can be in conflict. None of
them can really pass as the self, but all of them put together, constitute the in-
dividual self. This view that what we know about ourselves is but a small part
of what we are is further taken up by the talkative Enrico IV when he asks "A
voi non e mai avvenuto. . . Vi ricordate proprío di essere stata sempre la
stessa, voi? Oh Dio, ma un giorno. . . Com'e? com'e che poteste commettere
quella tale azione. . ." (II, pp. 52-53). We do find different selves in ourselves
and that accounts for why we sometimes wonder why we committed one act
or another.
Enrico's remark about the many different selves in us is an example of
how Pirandello's characters lecture us on stage. Amnesia, which is a domi-
nant trait in Enrico, for example, is characteristic of Estragón, Pozzo, the
Boy, and on occasion, Hamm. As we have already noted, Beckett's charac-
ters do not indulge in philosophical discussions to show us how the self
multiplies or splits into parts. We just see these characters in action or inaction
which reveáis split self, absent-mindedness, inattention, or acts that contra-
dict expression or intention. In fact, Beckett's delight in fragmented rather
than coherent characters exemplifies disintegration.
In Va et vient, as the three women join their hands, Flo suggests that she
can feel the rings, but actually, according to Beckett's stage direction, there is
no ring anywhere. Ru, for exemple, would reminisce about holding hands
before they even touch each other. The repeated movements in permuta-
tion, the whisper of inaudible secret, the enture ritual gesture "dramatizes the
feelings that three women attempt to evade. . . [as] the soft circle of light re-
veáis the edges of darkness."53 Fear of sliding into the void is creating an im-
perceptible but sure disintegration which they try to mask by ritual gestures
and attempts at recreating shared childhood.
In Cette /oís, the image is that of "la ruine oü enfant tu te cacháis cette
derniére fois plus un tram á perte de vue rien que les vieux rails quand
c'était" (Cette fois, 10). (The landscape betrays little sign of life). The sun is
pale and "les blés blondissants" (Cette fois, 10). There is an image of a child
but there is no life in the landscape to nurture a human being. The atmo-
sphere is filled with "les vieux rails, "pas un bruit," "poussiére," "immobile,"
"gardien somnambulant," "longue pierre basse genre meuliére" (Cette fois,
11-10), "le soleil sur le halage face á l'aval au soleil couchant," [and] "la tête
vide et peu á peu difficile á croire" (Cette fois, 14).
Besides the atmosphere which offers nothing to sustain life, the narra-

53
Overbeck, in Burkman, ed; 25.

87
tion of A, B, and C is in fragments and repetition symptomatic of disintegra-
tion. It is of course hard to talk of personality in this play as it is in Va et vient,
but it is not difficult to see multiplying selves as rituals are repeated and identi-
fying individual characters become rather difficult. The environment in both
plays appears threatening. There seems to be an impending disaster and the
only choice left for the characters is to downplay their individual selves while
accentuating the collective selves in the hope of at least postponing the void
that way.
In Impromptu d'Ohio, ritual, repetition, inattention, absent-
mindedness, dominate the scene. Between Lecteur and Entendeur, very lit-
tle activity is taking place (except of course the story that goes on and the
listening that is regarded as action). There is no conversation between them.
When Entendeur knocks "toc", it forces a stop, and triggers a repetition. If
anything is really happening in this play, it is a replay of desolation,
disintegration, and nothingness. The book is old and tells us very little, ex-
cept that "De l'unique fenêtre il avait vue sur l'extrémité en aval de l'Ile des
Cygnes" (Oh/o, 61). We do not need to be reminded that the "Isles of
Swans" downstream offers no consolation nor does the night visit of "le cher
nom" who disappears "sans mot" (Ohio, 64). "La triste histoire une derniére
fois redite" (Ohio, 66) seems to serve the same function as Hamm's end-
game lost of old. Each, by its sheer repetition, prolongs, and yet caneéis, the
activities.
Thus, out of stasis Beckett can create an image of disintegration, an im-
age of impotence, an image of múltiple but unidentifiable selves. In project-
ing this image, words are uttered, but not the type that make much sense, but
rather words that accentuate the visceral image of desolation presented on
stage.
In La Dernière Bande, the approach seems to conform with Beckett's
notion of countless selves that constitute the individual. As his own disinte-
gration occurs, Krapp tries to find refuge in a tape-recorder which enables
him to shuttle freely in time while manifesting his different selves. Despite the
mask this médium provides him, his appearance indicates deformation:
"Visage blanc. Nez vio lace. Cheveux gris en désordre. Mal rasé. Très
Myope" (La derniére bande, 8). He even has difficulty recognizing his voice,
which sounds to him like that of a stranger. He is no longer able to recognize
some of the terms he used in earlier years:

Ses lèvres remuent sans bruit en formant les syllabes de viduité. II se

leve, s'en va au fond de la scéne dans l'obscurité, revient avec un

88
 enorme dictionnaire, s'asseoit, le pose sur la table et cherche le mot
(La derniére bande, 19).

The term "Viduité" appears on the tape: "dans l'automne fínissant, aprés
une longue viduité, . . . " But he no longer recognizes what the word means.
At 69, Krapp now listens to a tape recording of himself at 39 (discussing
a recording made at 27 or 29). As Enrico can shuttle from madness to sanity,
so is Krapp able to shuttle from one level of existence to another. As it is diffi-
cult to know the true identity of Enrico, so it is impossible to identify the real
Krapp.54 In both instances, time has deformed the characters, but by dissolv-
ing sequential time, both Pirandello and Beckett are able to offer to their
characters the means to be at several points simultaneously. But both the
character and the audience realize that much as the dissolution of sequential
time may conceal identity, it cannot arrest the disintegration that can and
must take place.
Time has enabled Krapp to recapture the youthful selves and activities
and memories of his former days. It may be true that yesterday's memories
are today's illusions, but in Krapp's case, the memories of earlier years, have
become today's reality. Like Pirandello's Enrico, Krapp can float in timeless-
ness. When he is unable to tape his last records, he goes back to the one
done thirty-nine years back. As he plays his tape, he decides what to listen to
and what to cut off. Obviously, time has condemned him to loneliness, to
grey hair, to aging, to solitude, and to all the "fatal" things he would rather
avoid, but time has also enabled him to transcend those handicaps. When he
chooses, instead, to replay the tape made thirty-nine years earlier, he is in ef-
fect repeating what Enrico IV did when he realized that time has played him
tricks. He switched back to madness which helped to bring back what the ob-
jective time has denied him.
Disintegration and multiplying personality assume different forms in
other plays of Beckett. Didi and Gogo would express an intention of leaving
but the stage direction would show that they do not move. Estragón hardly
remembers what happened previously. He attended l'école sans Dieu yet he
is aware of the Bible, and he even compares himself with Christ. The two
tramps passionately cling to each other, but at the same time they are forever
eager to sepárate. When Estragón reappears from a brief absence, Vladimir
receives him enthusiastically: "Je suis content de te revoir....Léve-toi que je

54
For an account on Krapp's attempt to shuttle from illusion to reality and his
attempt to dissolve sequential time, See Gattnig 173.

89
t'embrasse" (Godot, 9-10). Yet, they can hardly stand each other as the fol-
lowing exchange bears out:

Estragón Pourquoi tu ne me laisses jamáis dormir?

Vladimir Je me sentáis seul.
Estragón U y a des moments oü je me demande si on ne ferait pas
mieux de se quitter (Godoí, 19-20).

Estragón could hardly remember that Pozzo had arrived previously, and
about the only thing he seems to remember from the Pozzo episode is the
kick he received from Lucky. The multifaceted Hamm vows to get rid of
Clov, yet wants him to stay. He would wish his parents dead, yet he would
rouse Nagg and bribe him (with the promise of a sugar-plum) to listen to his
stories. He appears repentant of his past cruel actions, yet he perpetuates
new acts of wickedness. These contradictory human behaviors tend to rein-
force Vladimir's claim that they as Beckettian characters represent humanity.
They also show that human actions spring from conflicting impulses of a fugi-
tive self.
These contradictions or splitting of intentions indicating doubleness have
been examined by writers from Sophocles to Freud. It is different in Beckett,
because it is dramatized skillfully on stage in a manner that implicates us. Poz-
zo, for example, enacts a disintegrating personality. His first appearance be-
trays austere, complacent, arrogant, ostentatious wealthy landlord and slave-
keeper who is well known in town. But this Pozzo is not the Pozzo who will
leave the stage. We are seeing just another Pozzo, a Pozzo different from
Pozzo d'autrefois, and also different from the Pozzo of tomorrow.
Pozzo gives a hint that he took a knouk,55 and became aware of the
professional worries: "ces belles choses-lá . . . , la grace, la vérité de premiére
classe, je m'en savais incapable." "Sans lui [Lucky] je n'aurais jamáis pensé,
jamáis senti, que des choses basses. . ." (Godot, 45). Thus, before he fell in-
to the hands of Lucky, he was ruled by his base nature, was perhaps his
authentic self deprived of all the illusions of finesse, beauty, moráis, and
valúes. Maybe he was then the "real" Pozzo. Thanks to Lucky, the cloak on
the personality became the reality; the mask became the face.
Pozzo thus underwent a personality transformation. The present Pozzo
is the one that has grown too over-bearing, domineering, self-important,

55
Knook (Knouk) is a word invented by Beckett and was first suggested to him
by the word for a Russian whip, Knout. See B. Fletcher 58.

90
callous, and austere. It is a paradox that his inner self, the pre-knouk Pozzo
which he has been trying to suppress, surfaces perhaps "á son insu," and
translates itself into acts of wickedness against Lucky and arrogance towards
his fellows. Pozzo does not even accept Didi and Gogo as truly as his same
species: "Voyez-vous, mes amis, je ne peux pas me passer longtemps de la
société de mes semblables, (il regarde les deux semblables) méme quand ils
ne me ressemblent qu'imparfaitement" (Godot, 32).
When Enrice leaves his assumed madness, he falls into a catastrophic
reality. It is unbearable. Pozzo, apparently outside Lucky's umbrella, faces a
reality that is disquieting, if not catastrophic. He shivers. He sobs: "Autrefois.
. . il était gentil. . . il m'aidait. . . me distrayait. . . il me rendait meilleur. . .
maintenant. . . il m'assassine. . ." (Godot, 47). This statement is revealing.
The fagade, the ¡Ilusion that is cloaking or suppressing the inner self, is thus
punctured and the degradation and degeneration of his personality becomes
evident.
Thus a self-confident man becomes unsure of himself. The aggressive
and pompous austere aspect of the master that complacently pulís the rope
and carries the whip becomes an image of a sobbing helpless fellow harking
back to the time when his slave gave his life some meaning.
As we have mentioned earlier, the disappearance of Pozzo's watch fore-
shadows his oncoming disintegration. The timekeeper now bows to the cruel
hands of time. As Beckett has indicated in Prousí: "There is no escape from
yesterday because yesterday has deformed us.. . we are not merely more
weary because of yesterday, we are other, no longer what we were" (Prousí,
13). When the once-austere Pozzo suddenly loses his posture, he trembles,
sobs, and tries to retain equilibrium. He lies, telling his interlocutors to
disregard everything he had previously said or done:

. . . . Je ne sais pas ce quim'est arrivé . . . Oubliez tout ça. . . Je ne sais

plus tres bien ce que j'ai dit, mais vous pouvez étre súrs qu'il n'y avait
pas un mot de vrai lá-dedans (Godot, 47).

Fully aware of his vulnerability, he prays his imperfect "semblables" to stay

longer with him, and wants even to meet Godot, confessing that he has
much need for encouragement.
In Beckett's world, time causes quick and total deformation. Every
passage of an iota of time sees Winnie sinking deeper under the mound. In
the good oíd days Hamm was the custodian of the good things of life, now he
is paralyzed and blind; he bleeds from mouth, nose, eyes, and head. Nagg

91
and Nell, like Winnie, are buried (in the trash can), unable even to kiss.
Estragón's boots, according to Beckett, did not change: "The second day
boots are no doubt same as first, [but] Estragon's feet wasted, pined, shrunk
and dwindled in interval"56 and therefore do not fit into his boot. Vladimir
appears insensitive to Estragon's sufferíng, but that is because he too suffers,
though in silence. An enlargement of the prostrate gland accounts for his gait
(with legs wide apart) and his sudden urges to pass water.57 Besides,
Vladimir is obsessed with the problem of degeneration and elusive identity
which could lead to an eventual void. Vladimir wonders if he has changed so
much that the Boy does not recognize him as the person he talked to yester-
day, as such changes are common in Beckett's universe. All it requires is a
yesterday for a deformation to take place.
Vladimir must wonder, too, if his members, notably his eyes, have
weakened to a point where he cannot be sure of his visual perception again.
Pozzo—having lost his watch, his posture, his memory, his pipe, his sight
and most pathetic of all, his balance—falls like a sack. Lucky is now dumb.
As Pozzo says, "J'ai tout besoin d'encouragement (ü réfléchit). J'ai un peu
faibli sur la fin. . . ma mémoire est défecteuse" (Gocfoí, 53). But Pozzo does
not need to say it for us to know that time is eating away the ¡Ilusión of him-
self. Beckett's visual images of physical degeneration as opposed to
Pirandello's polemics and arguments are made evident in this scene. All Poz-
zo needed to say to draw attention to his perception of his present condition
is a two line terse statement as quoted above. Because he does not really
need to tell us that (it appears self-evident looking at him) he wonders: "Vous
n'avez pas remarqué?" (Godot, 53). I am sure they do notice; if they do not,
the audience does.
There is a close affinity between the portrait of Enrice IV and the image
of Pozzo, and in fact, Pozzo could have made a perfect Priandellian charac-
ter. As Enrice IV engages Belcredi in an exchange, we can notice unmistaka-
ble traces of the harsh hands of time on a human person. But as is his style,
Pirandello would insist we hear the transformation through a discourse al-
though Enrico makes efforts to show Belcredi the hair on the nape of his
neck:

Belcredi Ma li ho grigi anch'io!

Enrico IV Me n'accorsi in un giorno solo, tutt'a un tratto, riaprendo

56
Quoted by B. Fletcher 67.
57
Sce B. Fletcher 50.

92
 gli occhi, e fu uno spavento, perché capii súbito che non
sono i capelli, ma doveva esser diventato grigio tutto cosí,
e tutto crollato, tutto finito. . . (II, pp. 109-10).

Differentiation of effect in the two approaches seems obvious. Pozzo's visible

lack of balance and confidence in himself tells the audience that he has "such
need of encouragement."The fervent tone of his speech, the pauses, rein-
force the effect. When Enrico IV shows his grey hair to Belcredi to make his
point, that visual act uniortunately does not seem to créate the desired effect;
Belcredi indicates that his hair, too, is grey. (Ma li ho grigi anch'io!) (p. 109).
Enrico has to indulge in a characteristic tirade in order to créate the full effect
of his physical and mental condition.
Typically, Enrico tells us in the speech how truly grey he has been in-
side, and how everything had fallen to pieces. The difference of dramaturgy
between the two playwrights is quite compelling in this instance. For exam-
ple, in Pozzo's scene, the final affirmation of total (and literal) disintegration
does not come when Pozzo explains his situation to us, but when the audi-
ence hears the fall with a clatter off stage, moments after Pozzo has left the
stage. According to the stage direction, Pozzo and Lucky leave the stage: "II
sortent. . . Un bruit de chute. . . annonce qu'ils sonttombés" (Godot, 127).
As if the evidence of our ears were not enough (and they usually are not in
Beckett's plays), the boy arrives and denies that he saw anyone (Neither Poz-
zo nor Lucky):

Vladimir Est-ce que tu as rencontré quelqu'un?

Gargon Non, monsieur.
Vladimir Deux autres (il hésite). . . hommes
Garçon Je n'ai vu personne, monsieur (Godoí, 129).

Whether or not the boy's account can be relied upon is not as important as
the fact that the Vladimir-Garçon dialogue helps to accentuate the uncertain-
ty over Pozzo-Lucky fate after they left the stage. Enrico explains how every-
thing has fallen to pieces in his life. But the audience hears (and sees) that
Pozzo's life is falling to pieces.
The Pozzo-Enrico affinity shows in another form. Referring to his rather
bizarre reliance or dependence on Lucky's patronage, Pozzo declares: "II y
aura bientôt soixante ans que ça dure. . . . On ne me les donnerait pas. . . . A
côté de lui, j'ai l'air d'un jeune homme, non? (Pozzo ôte son chapeau. II est
complétement chauve. II remet son chapeau)" Godoí, 45-46).

93
 The Pirandellian echo is unmistakable. When he regained his sanity,
Enrice, like Lucky, fabricated a new and secure reality in an assumed mad-
ness. The solitude of this self-exile is not an unmitigated misery, just as
Pozzo's attachment to Lucky had its good side.
Enrico puts it this way:

. . . . La solitudine — questa — cosi squallida e vuota come m'apparve

riaprendo gli occhi — revestirmela subito, meglio, di tutti i colon e gli
splendori di quel lontano giorno di camevale. . . (II, p. 111).

Enrico looks back and wants to recapture the "colors and splendors" of those
days, that is, the youth and all it stands for. He resorts to a process Pirandello
terms construirsi, which enables him to construct himself in a new madness, a
new reality. Pozzo looks back (about sixty years past), and is aware that this
period is gone forever. ("On ne me les donnerait pas, n'est-ce pas?" Godoí,
45). Much as Enrico does, Pozzo, in trying to recréate sixty years, attaches
himself to a slave whose company provides him an illusion of youth: "A cote
de lui, j'ai l'air d'un jeune homme" (Godot, 45).
Thus madness and illusion are posited by Pirandello and Beckett respec-
tively as techniques for recovering lost time and youth. As Enrico creates a
new reality in madness, so does Pozzo attempt to find a new reality of youth
(for himself) in the company of Lucky. Lucky and all he stands for—the
hat,the knouk—constitute, in a way, a mask, a masquerade, an eleventh-
century castle where a madman is an emperor. In some way, Lucky provides
for Pozzo the same psychological shelter which the castle provides Enrico.

Real or Unreal?

Uncertainty is evidently one of the common denominators of the arts of

Pirandello and Beckett. The actions and inactions of their characters are
emblematic of their uncertainty about everything. But if uncertainty en-
genders doubt about the existence or presence of something, it does not
necessarily preclude the possible existence of that "something." What the two
playwrights reject is an absolute affirmation that something is or that it is noí.
In the face of multiplying selves and fragmenting realities, their characaters
doubt even their own existence. What is conventionally considered "real" be-
comes both real and unreal. Truth becomes either non-existent or elusive.
But what cannot be said is that the real is categorically unreal, precisely be-

94
cause in the dramatic worlds of both Pirandello and Beckett, nothing is pres-
ented or said categorically, except, (in the case of Beckett), that everything is
possible because we live in the world of "perhaps." But if everything is possi-
ble, by the same token, everything is doubtful. Not surprisingly, none of the
two playwrights is per se a product of any specific philosophical tradition.
Beckett's fascination for Democritus and Geulincx merely derive from their
proposition of doubt or nothingness.
In their dramatic arts, Pirandello and Beckett créate characters who are
incongruent with what is an unintelligible world in which they are con-
demned to live. Neither of them asserts categorically (as does Jean Genet)
that the unreal is.58 However, the experience of the subjective mind is the
only experience that both Pirandello and Beckett recognize; for them the ob-
jective world is illusory, easily multiplying itself into "insaisissable protées."

58
See Lionel Abel, Metatheatre (New York: Hill and Wang) 111.

95
 Chapter Five
Comedy of Surface Appearance

Traditionally, comedy has provoked laughter because it focuses on the

comic view of life. According to Hazlitt, the essence of the laughable is the in-
congruous, a distinction between what things are and what they aught to
be.l 1 But for Pirandello, a self-styled humorist, the incongruity in the human
person may, on the surface, appear funny, but it may not provoke laughter.
As Bentley has said, "the comic sense tries to cope with the daily, hourly, in-
escapable difficulty of being. For everyday life has an undercurrent or cross-
current of the tragic, the main current is material for comedy. "2 The main
current to which Bentley refers defines the business of life— an attempt to
play at living. Yet, beneath the play, beneath the current (or fiction) masque-
rading as life, lies the inner drama of life which can and does border on the
tragic.
Pirandello and Beckett créate characters actively involved in a game of
life, characters determined to pull themselves up and keep moving, no mat-
ter how many times they are knocked down.33 But to keep moving, these
characters wear masks which will shield them from the "current or cross-
current of the tragic." In his On Humor, Pirandello states that "everybody
straightens up his mask the best he can — that is the external mask, for we
also have inner mask which is often at variance with the outer one" (On
Humour, 139). The inner mask is the consciousness which is usually con-

1
Robert W. Corrigan, ed; Comedy: Meaning and Form (San Francisco:
Chandler Publishing Co; 1965) 231.
2
Corrigan ed; 3.
3
Corrigan ed; 3.

96
cealed by the surface appearance. The characters of Pirandello and Beckett
must struggle with their universe which "knocks them down," and with their
inner self which they are trying to mask. The sight of characters at odds with
themselves and with their universe can be comic, but can, on reflection, be
also tragic.
Comedy, according to Bergson, is a game that looks at man from the
outside, "a slight revolt on the surface of social life," but it goes no further. 4
But for Kierkegaard, comedy is present in every stage of life, for whenever
there is contradiction, the comic is present. As he remarked in his Journa/s:
"I am a Janus bifrons; I laugh with one face, I weep with the other."5 He fur-
ther said: "I too, have united the tragic and the comic: I utter witticisms, peo-
ple laugh — I weep."6
By Pirandello's definition, Kierkegaard would pass for a humorist — a
man who perceives the spirit of the contrary. The people who laugh when
Kierkegaard utters witticisms, could also laugh at Pirandello's elderly lady
who overdressed, dyed her hair and painted her face like a girl's,7 and might
laugh at Beckett's tramps as they engage in the Com media dell 'arte antics.
Those who laugh in each of these situations, are tickled by the comedy of the
surface appearance. They do not realize, for example, that Beckett's laugh-
ter, "the laughter he expressed and the one he evokes — is a mask for, not a
reléase from, despair."8 Because of the contradiction that permeates every
aspect of man's life, the comic and the tragic no longer exclude each other.
Therefore, contrary to Bergson's contention, comedy does go beyond
the surface of life. lonesco, like Kierkegaard, Pirandello, and Beckett, sees
comedy as another aspect of the tragic, and he insists that it is difficult to dis-
sociate them:

Je n'ai jamáis compris, pour ma part, la différence que l'on fait entre
comique et tragique. Le comique étant intuition de l'absurde, il me
semble plus désespérant que le tragique. Le comique n'offre pas

4 See Wylie Sypher, Comedy: An Essay on Comedy (New York: Doubleday

and Company, Inc; 1956) 193.
5
See Gattnig 46.
6
Gattnig 55.
7
See Chapter Two of this study under "Feeling of the opposite."
8
Cohn, "A Comic Complex and a Compiex Comedy," in Corrigan, ed; Com-
edy: Meaning and Form, 430.

97
 d'issue. . . mais en réalité, il est au-delá ou en dec.á, du désespoir ou
de l'espoir.9

Even in his most tragic plays, Euripides employed the "comic" to establish a
link between the tragic and comic. It is significant that Beckett labels Godot
"
"Tragie-Comédie."
Comedy can actually tell us more things about the human situation than
tragedy can. As Wylie Sypher has stated, "tragedy needs the 'noble' and
nowadays, we can seldom assign any usuable meaning to nobility, whereas
what is comic is accessible to every person."10
What comedy tells us in the plays of Pirandello and Beckett is that the
laugh that flows is rather bitter, a wry chuckle, a laugh of awareness. In Watt,
Beckett himself states his own comic theory based on the hierarchy of laughs:

The bitter laugh laughs at that which is not good, it is the ethical laugh.
The hollow laugh laughs at that which is not true, it is the intellectual
laugh. . . . But the mirthless laugh is . . . the riruspurus, . . . in a word
the laugh that laughs—silence please, at that which is unhappy.11

In Fin de partie, Nell finds what is unhappy very funny: "Rien n'est plus dróle
que le malheur. . . c'est la chose la plus comique au monde" (Fin de partie,
33-34.)

Incongruity

It is funny, but bitterly so, that man is not only alien to himself but also
out of place in the world. At odds with his universe, man dangles helplessly
(and comically) in the overcoat that does not fit, though he wants it to fit;
fumbles desperately with the torturing boot that does not fit, though he wants
it to fit; arrives hungry at a banquet only after the crumbs have been cleared
away from the table.
Pirandello uses the term "comedy," for all his plays, which, interpreted
in the present framework, means life, or contradiction. He calis himself a
humorist, and defines humor as the sentiment of the opposite or antithesis.
9
Eugene lonesco, Notes et Contre-notes (Paris: Edition Gallimard, 1962)
13-14.
10
Sypher, "The Meanings of Comedy," in Corrigan, ed; 22-23.
11
Beckett, Watt (Grove Press, 1959) 48.

98
Pirandello sees nothing but inconsistencies on all sides, whether in life or in
his characters. He sets the stage for the deeper tragedy beneath the surface
appearance in a famous anecdote about an old woman to which we have
earlier referred. Pirandello says that he is amused at the sight of an old lady
who dyed her hair and applied excessive make-up to look like a young girl.
But on reflection, he realizes that perhaps this old lady finds no pleasure in
dressing up like "an exotic parrot," and that

she pitifully deceives herself into believing that, by making herself up

like that and by concealing her wrinkles and grey hair, she may be able
to hold the love of her much younger husband (On Humor, 113).

Here the reaction to the incongruity that yields to laughter is replaced by an

awareness of the suffering and pain beneath the masquerade, hidden by the
laughter. Compassion, and maybe tears, tend to replace the laughter.
At times, the make-up that looks funny can be self-imposed, as in the
case of the woman in the anecdote; at other times, it can be imposed upon
the subject from his environment, as in the case of the Ponza household
wearing masks to ward off social sanction. Sometimes, too, it is possible that
the make-up is applied just to pass time, or as a defiant reaction to time and
its treacheries — the time that deforms man. Hamm, Krapp, and Enrice IV fit
into this last category. The important fact in all these is that the subject, for ex-
ample, in this case the old lady, is a self-conscious role-player, and by this
role, creates a character different from her se//for the sole reason of shielding
herself from a reality that she cannot stand, a reality that borders on the
tragic.
Thus by this anecdote, Pirandello invites the audience to go beyond the
apparently comic surface to the pain that may be concealed below. It has al-
ready been remarked that Pirandello, and Beckett for that matter, are inter-
ested not necessarily in the outside, in the fagade, but in the other side of
us—that side that we always contrive (by means of make-up, costumes,
talks, habits) to conceal from ourselves and from others. All the apparently
comic activities of the characters, in fact, nearly all the actions and inactions
of Beckett's characters, must be viewed against this background; that is, in
the context of trying, so to speak, to stay afloat.
It must be stressed that not all the surface actions and appearances elicit
laughter, that not all of them are comic, but that they are, nonetheless part of
the comedy of existence. After all, man, in his universe, is the most comic
thing in the world. Pirandello maintains that the condition of humankind is

99
constantiy out of key. Persons cannot give in to a feeling without suddenly
perceiving something inside them which mocks, disturbs, disconcerts and
taunts a condition which, in its every abnormality, can only be bitterly comic
(On Humor, 124).
Critics suggest approaching Pirandello through Liolà, the one play that
can be called a comedy in the conventional sense. Yet, the comedy is only a
fiction, a façade concealing a deeper drama. Zio Simone is able to wear his
mask to escape the unbearable social glare, yet beneath the mask lies the
drama of the naked mask. The townspeople are not deceived. They know
that Mita is not carrying Zio Simone's child. If Liolà is perceived as comic,
that is because that perception underlines an undercurrent of pathos for in
Pirandello's world, every thought or every impulse that arises immediately
splits into its contrary.
As far as the Manager and his team are concerned, the story of the six
characters is just play, a comedy in the hands of professional actors. In fact
the comedy the Manager contrives out of the blood and flesh drama of the six
characters elicits an outburst of laughter from the Step-daughter. She is
amused at the actors' imitation of reality, their attempt at acting. She explains
to the Manager that the actors' imitation of reality falsifies her own image of
herself:

"dicevo per me, che non mi vedo affatto in lei, ecco. Non so, non. . .
non m'assomiglia per nulla" (I, p. 71)

By this protest, the Step-daughter is theatrically inviting both the Manager

and the actors on the one hand, and the audience on the other, to disregard
the fagade, which is no more than a feeble representation of a character; to
let the characters act out the horrid realities that are hounding their existence.
Enrico appears to be a comic character when he feigns his madness. The
carnival in itself allows him the opportunity to live his illusion, even when
dressed in regal attire, since he is " . . . grigio sul dietro del capo; invece, sulle
tempie e sulla fronte, appare biondo, per via di una tintura quasi puerile,
evidentissima" (II, p. 47). As he discusses his quarrels with Pope Gregory VII
and his projected plans of soliciting the support of Lombard Bishops to arrest
the Pope, the audience laughs at the emperor who now lives in his hallucina-
tion and fantasy. But beneath the comedy lies the serious drama of a man
whose time has stopped, of a young man who arrives "hungry as a wolf at a
banquet which has been cleared away." Surely, the outwardly grotesque

100
character of Enrico is deceptive. It conceals deep pain, suffering and disillu-
sionment.
In the Pirandellian tradition, Beckett questions the meaning of the uni-
verse and the indifference of God. As we have already noted, in Fin de par-
fíe, Nagg presents in her fiction the image of an imperfect and incongruous
universe apparently created in a hurry. Beckett in his own fashion, uses the
fictionalizing Nagg to express his disillusionment over the "imperfect" uni-
verse. By implication, the whole trouble of existence lies with the creator who
may have been in a hurry; who may not have taken his time. On the other
hand, trying to avoid a comic scene where his client wears oversized or un-
dersized trousers, the tailor takes his time and produces an "enviable" hand-
work: "geste amoureaux, avec orgueil—mon PANTALÓN!" (Fin de partie,
38). Thus Beckett contrasts the world with a pair of trousers and finds the
world lacking in the finishing touch. Nagg, the fictionalizer, tells this story to
fill the void. But beneath the fiction lies something fundamental to our exist-
ence. The anecdote tells us the truth (as perceived by Beckett) about human
existence. According to Richard Coe, the Beckettian characters

regardent l'étre humain et concluent que Dieu est impardonnable. S'il

existe il est impardonnable d'avoir fait le monde tel qu'il est. Un reta-
meur ou un tailleur auraient fait mieux. . . S'il n'existe pas, qui est res-
ponsable? Pas nous bien sur.12

The sight of Estragón fumbling with a boot that does not fit is comical, al-
though the comic here is not like the Pirandellian humor where the character
assumes a role to change his face. Here it is a question of a character trying
unsuccessfully to make his expectation of the world fit him. The boot too tight
to fit is as comical as the overcoat that is oversized. Thus lack of fit appears to
be the inevitable consequence of being in the world. As Hamm once re-
marked: "Mais réfléchissez. . . vous étes sur terre, c'est sans remede!" (Fin
de partie, 91).
But Beckett somewhat explains that if the fault is that of being human,
man himself is not faultless: "No, I regret nothing," Beckett affirms. "All I re-
gret is having been born."133 But by the mere fact of being born, man, a vic-
tim of Habit, his second nature, assumes an existence which apparently ig-

12
Richard Coe, quoted in Paul Surcr, Le Thédtre Français Contemporain
(Paris: Société d'Edition et d'Enseignement Supérieur, 1964) 441.
13
Beckett, From An Abandoned Work (London: Faber and Faber, 1958) 14.

101
ñores the limits of his search. For the ever-complaining Estragon, therefore,
Beckett chastises: "Voilá l'homme tout entier s'en prenant á sa chaussure
alors que c'est son pied le coupable" (Godot, 12). The fault is not always that
of the universe, Beckett seems to say; the fault is in the human being who in
theatrical behavior sometimes is rendered out of accord with the universe, or
who ignores the fact that the gulf dividing person from universe is forever un-
bridgeable.
The world has already been made (in six days) and there is no cure for
that; we are in the world. This is why Nell, as already noted, insists that no-
thing is funnier than unhappiness:

Rien n'est plus dróle que le malheur, je te l'accorde . . . . Et nous en

rions, nous en rions, de bon coeur, les premiers temps. Mais c'est tou-
jours la méme chose. Oui, c'est comme la bonne histoire qu'on nous
raconte trop souvent, nous la trouvons toujours bonne, mais nous
n'en rions plus (Fin de partíe, 33-34).

Nell had earlier reproached Nagg for laughing at those things—those funny
things. She now realizes that much as the idea of a heart in the head may be
amusing (Hamm complains that he bleeds, and has a heart, in the head), it is
at the same time pathetic or even tragic. On the surface, every unhappiness is
just like Pirandello's definition of humor. Since the dividing line between
tragedy and comedy has almost disappeared, or blurred, it is understandable
that unhappiness will appear comical.
"The greatest unhappiness and consequently the greatest laughter,"
Mueller and Jacobsen observe, "arises when man's highest hopes are disap-
pointed." In the theater of Beckett, "the created world has no beauty to be
perceived"; when we doggedly and perhaps blindly search for hope or light,
our search provokes laughter (and of course tears). Because we are slaves to
the habit, we seem unaware of the full significance of being in the world, and
of the futility of anticipating any paradise except the one already lost. (Proust,
26). In Tous Ceux qui tombent, Maddy recites Psalm 145: 14, and the
Rooneys burst into a wild laughter. As William R. Mueller has remarked, the
affirmation that the Lord raises up the fallen is funny because, "The
Rooneys, like the other Beckett characters, see no evidence of this."14
14 William R. Mueller and Josephine Jacobsen, "Samuel Beckett's Long Satur-
day: To Wait or Not to Wait?," in Nathan A. Scott, Jr., ed., Man in the Modern
Theatre (Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press, 1965) 96. Preceding citations refer to
Scott, ed; 96.

102
 We may recall that the old woman in Pirandello's anecdote pitifully de-
ceives herself that she might hide her wrinkles by her maquillage. In
Pirandello's theater, when the character wears the mask, the mask assumes
the face. It is left for the audience to see through the naked mask. However,
as the audience contemplates the mask, it laughs, and suddenly becomes
aware of the feeling of the opposite—the pathos or tragedy behind the come-
dy.
But in the Beckettian world, the characters consciously put on their
masks and, instead of the audience laughing, the characters start the laughter
themselves. If the audience is tempted to laugh with the characters, it might
recall Leonard Pronko's description of the plight of Beckett's creature: "At
first we may find Gogo . . . amusing . . . and Didi comical. . . . But when
Gogo returns time and time again to his shoe, and when Didi repeatedly ex-
amines his hat, ... our laughter begins to be tinged with uncertainty."155 As
Pronko sees it, Beckett's humor is based upon mechanical repetitions of
human misery which can be amusing and horrifying at the same time.
Camus in his Essais declares "... dans un universe soudain privé d'illu-
sion. . . l'homme se sent un étranger."166 The condition of man, he says, is
the condition of a stranger; a stranger to himself and to the world, aban-
doned "dans ce monde tel qu'il est fait, qui n'est pas supportable." After the
death of Drusilla, Camus's Caligula comes face to face with the world "tel
qu'il est fait," and finds how unbearable it can be. He decides to render it
more "bearable," and vows: "J'ai besoin de la lune, ou du bonheur, ou de
l'immortalité, de quelque chose qui soit dement, peut-étre mais qui ne soit
pas de ce monde."17
Pirandello's Enrico arrives late to a banquet. Like Caligula, he suddenly
realizes that he is no longer a part of this world as it is made, that this world
has betrayed him. Beckett's Estragón discovers, too, that he is incongruous
with his boot, and therefore with his universe.
The awareness by the characters that they are incongruent with them-
selves and with the universe accounts for the sense of estrangement and iso-
lation which these characters feel. These alienated characters, in the words of
Camus, are in an irremediable exile, deprived of memories of a lost home-
land as much as of a promised land to come.

15
Leonard C. Pronko, Avant Carde: The Experimental Theatre in France
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1962) 54-55.
16
Albert Camus, Essais (Paris: Bibliothéque de la Pléiade, 1965) 5.
17
Camus, Caligula, in Germaine Brée and Alexander Kroff, ed., Twentieth
Century French Drama (Toronto, Canadá: The MacMillan Company, 1969) 290.

103
 Pirandello's view about the condition and quest of man is of course well-
known. As we have indicated earlier, Starkie reports that Pirandello believes
that all is a dream, and that every man is himself alone, and knows no more
than all the rest.188 Beckett's plays also make it clear that humanity is alone.
In his hours of desperation, Hamm urges his tribe to pray. But, halfway
through, he gives up, saying that God does not exist, thus once again em-
phasizing human alienation. Yet, the characters refuse to give up masks,
probably because they want to prolong existence, which, in this context, is
just play. As Overbeck has stated, "Hamm prefers the 'train-train' to the end-
ing [because] .. .this holds out hope of some meaning, which is better than
nothing."19
During the waiting (an activity that provides entertainment) , the tramps
desperately yearn for Godot in vain hopes of "some meaning." But they for-
get that they are in the world (in the words of Hamm) . Abandoned by their
authors, fictitious characters in Sei personaggi strive in vain for full realization
and definition in this theater of the world. Sleep, meanwhile, which could
have at least afforded Hamm a relief or an escape forever eludes him. No
wonder Beckett deplores any dream of paradise as absurd, "since our life is a
succession of paradises successively denied" (Proust, 26) . Frederick Lumley
has remarked that "Pirandello would second Schopenhauer's belief that if
you knocked at the graves of the dead and offered them a return to life, they
would shake their heads."20
In such a world, the human condition is not even attenuated by kind-
ness. When God apparently abandoned the world, persons naturally clung
to their fellows for comfort but fellows, it seems in these plays, are incapable
of giving each other this comfort apparently because they do not have it
themselves. Vladimir angrily reacts to Estragon's persistent complaints: "II n'y
a jamáis que toi qui souffres! Moi je ne compte pas. Je voudrais pourtant te
voir á ma place. Tu n'en dirais des nouvelles" (Godot, 11). The love-hate re-
lationships characterizing Beckett's pairs derive in part from the mutual hurt
which these characters feel.
Where characters are unable to empathize with each other's suffering, it
is unlikely that communication in general would be easy. As we have com-
mented earlier in this discussion, both Pirandello and Beckett share a similar
view on human inability to communicate. The inalienable human gift is that
18
Starkie 288.
19
Overbeck, in Burkman, ed; 23.
20
Frederick Lumley, New Trends in Twentieth Century Drama (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1972) 19.

104
of words, but as declares the Father in Sei personaggi, instead of helping
man to communicate, words créate misunderstanding and increase man's
isolation:

Ma se é turto qui il male! Nelle parole! Abbiamo tutti dentro un mondo

di cose! ciascuno un suo mondo di cose ! E come possiamo intenderci,
signore, se nelle parole ch'io dico metto il senso e il valore delle cose
come sono dentro di me. . .(I, p. 46).

The Father wonders how communication can really take place when both the
speaker and the listener color the uttered words with their own individual and
social biases.
Pirandello describes this absence of communication as the deceit of
mutual understanding irremediably founded on the empty abstractions of
words. His characters are always at cross-purposes. The ever-complaining
Father in Sei personaggi complains additionally that his wife takes all his pity
for her as a form of cruelty. The chaos that is inherent in the drama of the six
characters is the chaos caused by lack of communication, an experience con-
veyed also in Enrico's lengthy, but alienated, conversations with his
visitors.21 As if echoing Pirandello, Beckett, as has been already noted,
maintains that there "is no communication because there are no vehicles of
communication" (Proust, 64).
In Beckett's work we have moved a step away from Pirandello, where a
normal dialogue could be engaged in, albeit bereft of communication. In-
stead, we have an anti-dialogue where the rules of logical sequencing of dis-
course are either reversed, disrupted, or altogether discarded:

Vladimir Pas de laisser-aller dans les petites choses

Estragón . . . tu attends toujours le dernier moment. . . . Tu ne
veux pas m'aider?
Vladimir Alors je me sens tout dróle (Godoí, 11-12)

Neither Vladimir nor Estragón is interested in the dialogue nor are their ut-
terances connected in any way. There are also, other instances of discon-
nected dialogues in Godot. In one example, Estragón persistently asks Pozzo

21
In his conversation with his visitors, Enrico tries to prove to them how little
they understand him although they claim to be sane. For more information, see Chap-
ter Three of this study.

105
about Lucky's bag. Instead of responding to the question, Pozzo gives an un-
related answer: "Moi aussi, je suis heureux de le rencontrer (Godof, 39). Fin
de partie, too, has instances of disrupted dialogues as examplified in the fol-
lowing exchange:

Hamm Regarde la terre. . . . Puisqu'elle t'appelle.

Clov Encoré? . . . Tu as mal á la gorge?
Hamm Ne chante pas!
Clov Alors comment veux-tu que ça finisse? (Fin de partie,
95).

In this Hamm-Clov exchange, each character is absent-minded. When there

appears to be a communication, what follows next creates more confusión.
Hamm informs Clov that the earth is calling him, but Clov retorts by asking
Hamm if he has sore throat. It is also not clear whether Clov just wants to sing
or wants "it" to finish. In all the cases, what is clear is that the characters'
trends of thoughts appear more important than the uttered words.
When the angry Clov realizes that he can no longer communicate with
Hamm with the words he has learned, he bursts out furiously: "Ça, veut dire
il a un foutu de misére. J'emploie les mots que tu m'as appris. S'ils ne veulent
plus rien dire apprends-m'en d'autres. Ou laisse-moi me taire" Fin de partie,
62). But Hamm will not let Clov remain silent, as Didi and Gogo will always
find something to talk about, as Whinnie will always be talking. Although the
characters may be deprived of everything, including the power to communi-
cate, they must talk; they must express, even if it means expressing nothing
in particular, and even if it means saying things the other would not under-
stand. This tendency reminds us of what the French poet, Alain Bosquet
wrote in his Premier Testament: "J'ai dit 'pomme' á la pomme; elle m'a
répondu 'mensonge.'"22
The dismal condition of man is exacerbated by non-communication. As
Robbe-Grillet has remarked, "La parole—la belle parole—rassure aussi.
Combien le discours noble et harmonieux n'aura-t-il pas créé de malenten-
dus, servant de masque tour á tour aux idees ou á leur absence."23 The ina-
bility of persons to communicate underlines the fundamental ambiguity pres-
ent in the works of both Pirandello and Beckett: one expresses; therefore one

22
Alain Bosquet, Premier Testament (Paris: Gallimard, 1957) 15.
23
Alain Robbe-Grillet, Pour un Nouveau Román (Paris: Les Editions de
Minuit, 1963)3) 1101.

106
exists. (Expression here implies communication.) Words no longer commu-
nicate; do we by the same token no longer exist? We do, in any case, still feel
an obligation to express, although when we express, it does not necessarily
mean that we communicate.

Tedium of Existence

If words are incapable of rendering human experience adequately, the

result is loneliness and isolation. Even given Pozzo's affirmation in the spirit of
togetherness ("Plus je rencontre de gens, plus je suis heureux" Godot, 39)
the fact still remains as has been noted, that the very humanity of man in-
creases his isolation. As Enrico fínds himself alone in his decorated castle, so
are Didi and Gogo lonely in their togetherness. As man approaches closer to
his fellows, the more alienated he becomes. The intrusión of the townspeo-
ple in the lives of the Ponzas does no good either to the couple or to Signora
Frola. The presence of the visitors intensifies Enrico's loneliness and isola-
tion. Didi and Gogo have been together for about fifty years. The presence of
Pozzo and Lucky offered a distraction but changed nothing. Despite or be-
cause of their companionship, Didi and Gogo are, sadly enough, growing
impatient with each other's presence, as we have seen in Vladimir's rather
blunt refusal to listen to Estragon's private nightmares, and the latter's ex-
pressed wish that they sepárate: "II y a des moments oü je me demande si on
ne ferait pas mieux de se quitter" Godot, 20).
Vladimir lets it be known that parting, though a vague possibility, is not
likely. Thus he is condemned to keep on preserving a moribund association
to créate the illusion that he is still together with his fellows, but in effect he is
alone. In his physical pain, Estragón can hardly count on the understanding
of Vladimir, much less his sympathy. When he is in pain and requests the
help of his comrade, this is what he gets from Vladimir: "II n'y a que toi qui
souffres!" (Godot, 11).
Thus estrangement and isolation seem to explain humankind better than
togetherness. In Fin de partie, the same atmosphere of loneliness and isola-
tion recurs. Together but alone, with little if any communication, the charac-
ters manage to stay together by mere dialogue. Beryl Fletcher and others put
it this way:

The atmosphere between these four is electric and can erupt into angry
rage at the slightest provocation. . . . So they all react peevishly to

107
 each other. . Hamm and Clov detest each other, and yet they need
each other. Usually they address each other harshly and without senti-
ment. . . . There is little tenderness in this decaying universe.24

Clov vows to kill Hamm in order to die happy, and in fact, does strike
Hamm furiously with the toy dog in a temper tantrum. Hamm questions the
reasons for his birth. Between Hamm and Clov, there is no more caring.
Hamm is freezing and would like some rugs. There are no more rugs. Clov is
indifferent:

Hamm Donne-moi un plaid, je géle.

Clov II n'y a plus de plaids.
Hamm Tu ne veux pas m'embrasser?
Clov Non. . . . Je ne veux t'embrasser nulle part
Hamm Donne-moi la main au moins.
(Un temps.) Tu ne veux pas me
donner la main?
Clov Je ne veux pas te donner
la main (Fin de partie, 89-90).

These humans are alone and lonely. Suffering, which seems to be one of the
by-products of solitude, tends to intensify human isolation, as one suffers
alone. No sympathy is even possible. As has been noted, whatever Estragón
suffers, he suffers alone. In the same manner, Vladimir's deep but concealed
suffering is hardly perceptible to Estragon. The suffering of one could be at
best a spectacle to the other. The suffering of the starving son, or his father's
suffering, is to Hamm mere fiction. Hamm is prepared to inflict physical suf-
fering on Clov (by giving him just enough food to keep him alive), while Clov
suffers in starvation. When it is Hamm's turn to suffer, as the means of sus-
taining life diminish, Clov is hardly touched. In fact, Hamm's suffering is
mere spectacle to him, just as the agonies of Nagg and Nell hardly touch
Hamm's sensibility.
These harsh experiences remind one of the deep human suffering that
characterizes the lives and adventures of Signore and Signora Ponza, on the
one hand, and of Signora Frola on the other. Each of these characters suf-
fers, but, to the busy-bodies of the town, the suffering of these folks is no
more than a comic mystery to be unveiled—an entertainment full of surprises

24
B. Fletcher 86.

108
and suspense! The six characters appear on the stage, each with his and her
deep human drama. None can understand the degree of pain the others suf-
fer, nor can the manager and his professional actors understand what the
characters regard as their raison d'étre: the torment that keeps them from
sleep; the torture that hounded them out of the author's imagination and
would give them no peace. To the professional actors and the audience, the
drama of these characters is but spectacle, a comedy for entertainment.
When Enrico fell from his horse and stood up during the ill-fated car-
nival, everyone present thought that he was still acting. When he was even-
tually confined, he later regained his sanity, but people around still thought
him mad. Before the fall, he was alone (he had a faithless lover and a dis-
trustful friend); after the fall, as Enrico, he was alone. When he is forced to
commit an act of violence his loneliness and isolation become complete.
Pozzo and his adventure seem to epitomize loneliness and isolation. He
has wandered alone in a six-hour journey and with no soul in sight. (This
situation reminds us of the universe of Hamm, where a natural forcé, proba-
bly an earthquake or a holocaust, has blasted everything). This lonely wan-
dering Pozzo admits, is how it is on this earth: "C'est comme ça que ça se
passe sur cette putain de terre" (Godot, 52). As is common in a Beckettian or
Pirandellian world, Pozzo's meeting with his fellows does not bring the ex-
pected solace. When he falls and groans for help, there is evident hesitation
on the side of the tramps to help him. Vladimir's philosophical deliberations
are over-extended. In fací, Pozzo has to offer 100 francs, and even 200
francs, before help is rendered. And even Vladimir who shows some interest
in helping, does it not from altruistic motives, as his reflection shows: "Nous
nous ennuyons. . . . Une diversión se présente. . . . Allons, au travail. Dans
un instant, tout se dissipera, nous serons á nouveau seuls, au milieu des
solitudes" (Godoí, 113). Pozzo is alone even among his fellows. The help he
receives is considered a diversión, not a duty.
Vladimir tries to help a fallen comrade and falls. Estragón, too, in an at-
tempt to help, stumbles and falls. There is a long silence. According to B.
Fletcher and others, "This múltiple fall Beckett sees as the 'visual expression
of their common situation' and as being related to the threat in the play that
everything is falling."25
Suffering breeds despair. But, for Pirandello and Beckett despair does
not spell death or self-destruction; it rather becomes an ironic way of life.

25
B. Fletcher 86.

109
From the trash-can, Hamm's father is known to be alive because he is suffer-
ing.
Hamm once asked Clov if he had an instance oí happiness. Clov replied
that he had never had such an experience. Hamm then reminded him that
"Vous étes sur terre, c'est sans remede" (Fin de parí/e, 91). In other words,
there is no cure for it. Bentley summarizes the plight of humankind thus:

Life is absurd, and it filis one with nausea and dread and anguish, it
gives one the metaphysical shudder, yet, without knowing why, per-
haps just because one is there in Ufe, one faces it. . . and since all liv-
ing, all life, is improvisation, one improvises some value.26

Thus, characters wear masks to shield themselves from their deprivation and
to assume a new and "pleasing" identity that conrrasts with the original self.
Pirandello's costruirsi creates a persona, an image, a mask that conceals
the incongruities of the human action and the meaning behind the surface
appearance. The person who has undergone a process of costruirsi plays dif-
ferent roles. But whatever form the mask takes, and no matter how well or
how badly these roles are played, none of them actually reveáis the face of
the character. They are disguises, improvisations, designed to give purpose
and form to existence.27 These devices help the individual character to
believe that he is living, precisely because he is there. As Robbe-Grillet has
pointed out, "Nous saisissons tout á coup en les regardant, cette fonction
majeure de la représentation théatrale montrer en quoi consiste le fait d'étre
lá."28 The Beckettian characters are just there. Like Pirandellian characters,
they have no choice but to improvise.
In fact, Beckett's characters have more need for improvisation than
Pirandellian characters because they are just there. They have nothing. They
try to confront life by talking, playing, acting, and waiting. Unlike Pirandello's
characters, they do what they do just to pass the time. If Pirandello's charac-
ters wear masks to escape the other and to appear more pleasing, they also
anticipate some measure of satisfaction and even happiness. Enrico for ex-
ample, is pleased to assume the mask of madness after he had regained sani-
ty. Zio Simone is pleased that his impotence has been concealed, or so it ap-

26
Bentley, ed., Naked Masks, xxvi-xxvii.
27
Brustein 289.
28
Robbe-Grillet 103. Emphasis Robbe-Grillet's.

110
pears to him. In other words, Pirandello allows his characters to protect
themselves in order to be happy slightly.
Beckett, for his part, inveighs against the ¡Ilusión that our speech and
movement can make a difference. The antics of Didi and Gogo do not bring
Mr. Godot any nearer, nor do Pozzo's illusions of power bring back the good-
old days. Hamm's fictionalizing may have prolonged the end, but it does not
replace the pain-killer or the sugarplums. The characters appear quite aware
that all the gestures, all the play-acting, all the chess games, are without
meaning or significance or effect. Words and gestures, and all other move-
ments, are made for their own sake, that is, for the sole purpose of making
the human presence felt. All actions and non-actions in Beckett's theater are
essentially a pastime, to fill the void.
Fin de partie for example, is a play about playing, "a performance about
performing." Clov asks Hamm what is keeping him here, and Hamm tells
him it is the play. The game assumes the role of the character's mask which
he must wear to play the game. Near the end of the play, Clov pleads that
they stop playing—in essence, that they put off the mask. Yet, the question
one asks is simple: can either Pirandello's or Beckett's characters really put
off the masks? Maybe they can but it is doubtful they can bear too much reali-
ty-
Vita-Forma Conflict:

Ernest G. Schachtel, writing on "Alienated Concepts of Identity,"

observes that, faced with non-being, humanity tries to give itself an identity.
The human being makes a more or less conscious effort at disguise, at play-
ing roles, at presenting an artificial façade to the world. Paradoxically, instead
of a fixed identity, a hollowness is created because man has ignored the fact
that the act of living is an on-going process of feeling, and acting, in which
man can find himself. Searching for a definite stable identity to cling to is self-
defeating because what is being searched for is an alienated concept of a
thing which, when found, seems even to perpetúate the ill from which man
seeks to escape.29
Pirandello describes this kind of predicament as the inherent conflict be-
tween life (which is always moving and changing) and form (which fixes it as
immutable). This concept needs some explanation. When Pirandello em-
braced the theater, he was a man haunted by images and was merely giving

29
Schachtel, in Josephson, ed., 75-76.

111
expression to those images. "They are images," Pirandello states, "often very
vivid images of life, which, fostered by the labors of my mind, assume univer-
sal significance quite on their own. . .".30
It was Adriano Tilgher who simplified and organized Pirandello's con-
cepts into a system according to thoughts gleaned from Schopenhauer and
Bergson. Tilgher summarizes the idea thus:

Si determina cosí un dualismo fondamentale: da una parte, il flusso

della Vita cieca muta oscura eternamente instabile e irrequieta, eterna-
mente rinnovantesi di momento in momento; dall'altra, un mondo di
Forme cristallizzate, un sistema di costruzioni, che tentano di arginare e
di comprimere in sé quel flusso in eterno gorgogliante.31

In this passage, Tilgher describes life as so perpetually mobile and fluid that
despite itself, it easily develops into form. Form, he describes as rigid and
precise and capable of determining life. Pirandello himself explains this con-
cept more clearly when he remarks that life is "a continual flux which we try
to fix in stable and determined forms, . . . But within ourselves, in what we
call the soul and what is the life in us, the flux continúes. . ." (On Humor,
137).
For the purpose of this discussion, form, defined broadly, includes ar-
tistic creations and structure, art in general, roles—family, society, social con-
vention — expectatíons, fixed patterns, habits. Besides active fictional char-
acters, life will include different facets of life experiences — the mess, the
chaos, the absurd, the incongruous, and any other type of fictional or true life
experience. It includes reality or time.
Pirandello maintains that concrete Uve images are the source of his art.
Beckett, too, is hounded by concrete images. Like Pirandello, he did not be-
gin writing with any known theoretical scheme. In Tom Driver's interview, he
says that he observes "the mess" all around us and becomes aware that "the
mess" has to be brought into art so that he seeks a form to accommodate the
mess without transforming it.32 Whether form is seen as an artistíc creation or
as a human construction is of secondary importance. What is important is
that Beckett's characters do precisely what Beckett recommends: they let in

30
Pirandello, as quoted in Giudice 136.
31
Adriano Tilgher, Studi sul teatro comtemporaneo (Roma: Liberia Di Scienze
e Lettre, 1923) 160.
32
Driver 23.

112
 "the mess" into form, apparently cxpecting harmony, but Beckett has said
that there cannot be harmony no matter if it is desired.
Pirandello regards the inherent conflict between ufe and form as one of
the pangs of his spirit. He laments the incommensurability involved in the
transference of life—chaos, mess, confusión—to art, to the theater. Writing
over twenty years before Beckett, Pirandello noted that while life must have a
contained form, it must at the same time continually fiow. He insists that the
two contradictions must be harmonized in spite of their painful diffículties. Sei
personaggi is his boldest attempt to harmonize the two contradictions, but it
turns out to be the clearest example of the irremediable disharmony and
chaos that ensues when life is brought into theater, or when life is let into
form. Writing after Pirandello and apparently aware of the catastrophe of at-
tempting a harmony, Beckett tries no such thing. He merely juxtaposes "the
mess" (which is what life is), with form. But judging from his characters' be-
haviors on stage, Beckett seems to have been attracted by Pirandello's vita-
forma conflict.
Commenting on the paradox of Pirandello's vita-forma concept, Robert
Brustein explains that man uses reason to define and fix life. But "since life is
indefinable," Brustein writes, "such concepts are illusions. . . . Life and
form—reality and illusion—are opposed, but they are the twin poles of
human experience."33 Thus, in Pirandello's or Beckett's theater, one is trap-
ped, caught in the web. Critics have reminded us of Pirandello's Mattia
Pascal who denouced all assumed roles (forms)— family, society, conven-
tion—to start a new life. But in his new life, he found himself wearing a new
mask—pseudonym, lying, pretense—as if life must continué within the
framework of roles. He staged a comeback into his former life, but existence
was still impossible. He thus leamed that by liberating himself from society
and its forms, he was only able to watch society and its members as a specta-
tor and stranger. In other words, deliverance from form is hardly a complete
benefit.
So that they can be truly human, Beckett's characters are in intercises —
places where they are vulnerable; they are deprived of all forms that can fix
them, yet they seem to seek redefinition in form. Sometimes it is in waiting;
at other times it is in fictionalizing, or even in other activities such as reading
from an old book, staging or supervising a play, altérnate non-stop narration
of old memories. For Krapp, other activities include non-verbal and comic
noises—walking, turning pages, looking up words in the dictionary, eating,

33
Brustein 286-91.

113
drinking, slamming objects on the table,consulting his watch, occasional
laughing, stopping the tape, winding it forward and back, interjecting his
"own" words.34 For Winnie, such activities are brushing her teeth, painting
her lips, filing her nails, and adjusting her hat.
Krapp seems to have made determined efforts to stop time (which is in a
continuous flux) by trying to fix it in a tape. With his "life" in tapes, he hopes
to "preserve in a coherent manner" all the fictions he has created for himself.
As he listens to the earlier tapes, he sees successive selves emerging. He
selectively chooses what to hear, what to admire, what to revile, what to
listen to again, and what to push aside. In effect, Krapp has/ixed life and
time and is able to manipúlate both, at least, so it seems to him.
If Krapp is aware that he is perceived by the audience, he must be con-
cerned about how he is perceived. Similarly, he wants to control how he
wants to see himself and the world, or what remains of his world. As Beckett
says in Prousí, Habit as our second nature, "keeps us in ignorance" of our
first nature—the deeper instict. The life Krapp is leading on stage is a life of
self-preservation. The actual authentic life, the life with its "enchantments of
reality "(Prousí, 22), is not allowed to surface because "Habit has laid its veto
on this form of perception, its action being precisely to hide the essence—the
Idea—of the object [person]" (Prousí, 23).
In theater, Pirandello sees this life-form dichotomy at different levéis.
First, he sees it as the problem of artistic creation (form) that opposes life. In
his "Preface" to Sei personaggi he portrays art (form) as more real than life
because it is not subject to the flux of life and exists for ever. For example,
Francesca is more real when she speaks to Dante in the Divine Comedy than
she had been when she was alive:

Cosí, sempre, ad apertura di libro, troveremo Francesca viva confessa-

re a Dante il suo dolce peccato. . . centomila volte di seguito Francesca
ridirá le sue parole . . . ma dicendole ogni volta per la prima volta con
si viva e improvvisa passione. . . (I, p. 15).

In Sei personaggi, he creates fictional characters (life) who consider them-

selves truer and more real than professional actors and what they do on the
stage. Paradoxically, these fictional characters still seek solidification in art
(form) as the only raison d'étre in which they can find a definition.

34
Cohn, "Beckett Directs: Endgame and Krapp's Last Tape," in Gontarski, ed;
303-04.

114
 Second, Pirandello sees the "outrageous unalterable flxity" that form
imposes on characters. The Father in Sei personaggi is in torment and torture
because an act of a fleeting shameful moment in which he is unexpectedly
caught has defined and fixed his reality. Then there is Enrico IV, who, in a
single accidental fall from the horse, finds himself fixed forever by that one
single act. The paradox of this highly complex Pirandellian doctrine is that
characters who are fixed in form, strive to achieve flux, but when the
character is in flux, he seeks definition and solidification in art (form).
It is against this background and context that we can further examine
other Beckett's characters. Didi and Gogo are caught suspended in the act of
waiting. Now robbed of their individuality, these characters have been caught
and suspended.
Here Estragón is forever beaten by the mysterious "they"; here he is for-
ever tormented by his boots; here Didi has troubles with his bladder. So fixed
are they in the act of existence that separation (even temporarily), in order to
assert their respective individuality and essence, proves impossible. While
Krapp attempts to fix the time, Didi and Gogo are fixed by time.
Didi and Gogo are caught in a cyclical existence. They attempt to
sepárate, attempt to leave, attempt to do something different each time. In
each attempt, they end by doing the same thing mechanically over again, as
mere marionettes:

Estragón Et s'il [Godot] ne vient pas?

Vladimir Nous reviendrons demain.
Estragón Et puis aprés-demain.
Vladimir Peut-étre.
Estragón Et ainsi de suite. . . (Godof, 17).

It is not surprising that in some of his later plays—¡mpromputu d'Ohio, Cette

/oís, Va et vient, — the characters do not even seem to bother to do any thing
differently. Instead, they effortlessly and rather mechanically perform the
same activities, aware, it appears, of the futility of anticipating any change in
their condition. Maybe the failure of Godot to come ended all expectations.
Even attempts to terminate the fixed life prove futile—probably because
life, once fixed, becomes immutable, unchanging:

Estragón Pendons-nous tout de suite.

Vladimir A une branche? Je n'aurais pas confiance.
Estragón On peut toujours essayer.

115
 Vladimir Essaie.
Estragón Aprés toi.
Vladimir Mais non, toi d'abord. . . . Tu peses moins lourd que moi
. . . (Godoí, 21-22).

What is happening here is not necessarily a rejection of suicide but the

inability or unwillingness of life to solidify, in spite of itself. Thus we notice a
rather curious interplay of form and life as life tries to overcome form (fixity)
and as form resists the flow of life. We have in this context a waiting which is
an art, a form, satisfying and disturbing at the same time; it imprisons the
tramps and leaves them ambivalent by offering a rather vague sense of
security and hope.
Obviously, the idea of waiting or being fixed to waiting is excruciating;
henee, there are repeated intentions to give it up, intentions to leave, but in-
tentions that are invariably aborted. There is absolutely no doubt that the idea
of waiting is painful, or as Estragón puts it, is "un grave incovenient" (Godoí,
20). Yet these tramps seem to cherish it as it tends to give their life some
coherence and a sense of meaning—in short, some form. Besides, waiting
entails, or could entail, some material reward. Who knows? It is possible
Godot might satisfy their basic needs, as Vladimir's remarks try to show: "Ce
soir on couchera peut-être chez lui [Godot], au chaud, au sec, le ventre
plein, sur la paule. Ca veut la peine qu'on attende. Non?" (Godot, 25).
Yet, at the same time, these tramps want to assert their individuality;
they want to sepárate. They deny they are tied to Mr. Godot. When Estragón
wonders if they are tied down, Vladimir appears surprised: "Lis? Comment
liés? ... A Godot? Liés á Godot? Quelle idée? Jamáis de la vie!" (Godoí,
27). One way, therefore, of trying to sheild themselves from the reality of the
void is to oscillate between form (expectation, pattern, habit) which fixes
them to waiting, and life, which asserts its right in flux.
Beckett does not insist as much as Pirandello on the vita-forma
dichotomy. Beckett must have realized that the more he tries to fix his char-
acters (consciously or unconsciously), the more they give themselves life. It is
certain that if Didi and Gogo allow life to overeóme form (and that would
mean giving up waiting) they will be faced with a very terrifying reality that
can even destroy life itself. Form in this regard appears to be a safeguard
against what Mattia Pascal discovered when he liberated himself from socie-
ty. This is perhaps why when Estragón suggests they leave, Vladimir suggests
they wait, and when Estragón suggests they separate, Vladimir retorts: "Tu
n'irais pas loin" (Godot, 20).

116
 While the tramps are caught in the act of waiting, Pozzo is imprisoned in
his role-playing. Notwithstanding his bloated and haughty aspects, Pozzo ap-
pears to have tried and failed to achieve a complete líberation, however tem-
porary. Besides a pathetic recourse to the nostalgic "autrefois," there is, in
Pozzo, a helpless dependence on Lucky—not Lucky the person, but Lucky
the symbol of slave labor. Slavery is a norm, at least in Pozzo's domain. At-
tainment of complete consciousness will necessitate shedding this conven-
tion, but there is no telling what will then happen to Pozzo. Pozzo is sus-
pended in a slave dealer-role; so fixed is he in this role that conscious or un-
conscious attempts to escape from it prove not only pathetic, but even near-
tragic. So fixed is Pozzo in the master-role trap that he becomes a slave even
to his role, and consequently the role is reversed, as Carrabino tells us:

The master becomes then a Thing for Others, reduced to an Itself,

henee deprived of freedom. The slave becomes the source of absolute
freedom and superior truth.35

If Didi can deny that he is "tied" to Godot, or to waiting, Pozzo can

hardly deny that he is "tied" to Lucky or to slavery. The same ambivalence
that characterizes the tramps' relationship with Godot is also true in the
Pozzo-Lucky relationship. Pozzo wants to libérate himself by doing away with
Lucky either by selling him or by killing him. Yet, he weeps, he sobs, he
groans, for Lucky is not as kind to him now as before: "Autrefois," Pozzo
complains, ". . . il était gentil. . . il m'aidait. . . .me distrayait. . . il me rendait
meilleur. . . maintenant. . . il m'assassine" (Godof, 47).
Like Didi and Gogo, Pozzo is caught in the web of life-form dichotomy.
Though he is fixed in form, he seems to struggle to be in flux even though he
does not believe that he has lost his watch and his pipe, and even though he
appears unwilling to accept changes. He is not one with the tramps. He is a
landlord, a slave-keeper, and a pompous actor. Yet he gives the impression
that the tramps are his "semblable." He likes the fact that they do reflect his
form. Still, he appears to show, rather unsuccessfully, how "not fixed" he is,
how he can be "up" and "down" simultaneously. Pozzo is known to be as
fixed to his time as he is to his slave. But now he staunchly resists any attempt
to fix his blindness or Lucky's muteness to a particular time. He tells Vladimir:

35
Victor Carrabino, "Beckett and Hegel: The Dialectic of Lordship and Bond-
age," Overdruk Nit: Neophihloqus s (Wolters-Noordhoff, 1981): 36.

117
 ". . . un jour, pareil aux autres il est devenu muet, un jour je suis devenu
aveugle, un jour. . . le méme jour, le méme instant. . ." (Godot, 126).
In the Pirandellian tradition, art or form is permanent but man remains
mutable. In an attempt to escape mutability, man flees into form. But by its
very nature, form is lifeless. Henee the characters never stay in form for too
long, lest they sink into void. Pozzo, who is an actor and even a play director,
overcomes his own predicament by just acting, since, fortunately, he has a
ready and willing audience—Didi and Gogo. Pozzo seems to bow to life by
eventually quietly accepting all the changes that the erratic time can and does
bring about: loss of pipe, loss of watch, loss of sight, and loss of equilibrium.
Hamm, for his part, is caught and fixed, not in the art of waiting as such
but in the art of playing. Because he is a player caught suspended in the art of
playing, he seems to have no other choice but to enact the role of the king
and life-giver. We know about the catastrophe that fixed Enrico for life, but
we are unaware of what happened in the case of Hamm. All we are told is
that he and his household are the victims (or survivors?) of a holocaust or an
earthquake of a sort. Hamm has refused to accept the reality of his total infir-
mity and impotence. The only reality he accepts (and which provides him
with respite) is that of playing the game as the king trapped on a chessboard,
or the actor trapped on the stage. The rigidity of form has imprisoned him on
his wheelchair where the reality consists in nothing more than role-playing;
and he is seen in his multifaceted roles paradoxically trying to adhere to life,
and trying to solidify with form. Perceiving life as a forlorn hope, Hamm as-
sumes the role of father, son, foster-father, custodian of dwindling supplies.
He also plays the role of actor, director, creator, God, narrator, and protago-
nist.
Enrico assumes the mask of emperor for one evening's enjoyment dur-
ing a pageant, but by an accidental fall, he is fixed to that mask by madness.
When he recovers, he finds that the only way to be accepted is in that mask
as he is inexorably attached to it. In the case of Hamm, there is really little
choice. By a cruel act of fate, he is fixed in his ham-actor role. Thanks to his
skill, he can, unlike Enrico, consciously shuttle back and forth from life to
form.
Hamm indeed is ham-actor, but (apparently unsure that he will not act
himself out of existence) he resorts to fictionalizing as a means of achieving
solid form. As Ruby Cohn has remarked: "The Father in Pirandello's play
lays the groundwork for the Beckettian author. Beckett's authorial nobodies
feel their evanescence, and they therefore try to ground themselves through

118
fiction; they tell stories. . ."36 6 Hamm obviously notices "the mess" other
Beckett characters had noticed. Life is ending, evanescent, fleeting; but
form, though paradoxically opaque, static, and lifeless, is still eternal, fixed
and immutable. Like Pirandello's six characters who want to achieve per-
manence in theater, Hamm is seeking to solidify himself in fiction. This will
achieve for him immortality. As Pirandello regards Francesca as alive and
fresh each time she confesses her sweet sins, so each time we read Fin de
partie we see Hamm telling his story—with the same verve, vigor, and fresh-
ness, and with the same yawning, and the same reluctance.
The story is about the father of a starving son who on a Christmas Eve
approached Hamm for relief to save his dying son. But there was no direct
answer to the supplicant's plea. At the least opportunity, Hamm spares no
time to tell this story, hoping that the fiction will reléase him from his guilt.
Yet, although Hamm is an author and an artist, Beckett has said that the mis-
sion of the artist is to fail.
Hamm fails. His story fails to reléase him from his guilt. He even fails to
finish telling the story, apparently due to his hesitation or reluctance, and
perhaps due to a false hope of holding out forever. The vita-forma struggle
intensifies. An element of life is introduced when the wretched alarm bell just
like the bell that torments and regulates Winnie's life, rings. The bell repre-
sents the external insensitive and indifferent factor that reminds him that
things must take their course, fiction or no fiction. It reminds him that much
as life can be grounded in fiction, life must, paradoxically, still continué, un-
interrupted in its eternal and ever-changing flux. However, Hamm's failure is
not an unmitigated disaster. He still lives, albeit "incompletely," in his un-
finished fiction.
Hamm seems to share many features with Enrico IV. Hamm is fixed as a
king as Enrico is fixed as an emperor. The stage for Hamm represents a
throne, as the stage for Enrico represents a castle. Both of them are thus fixed
in their respective mental constructions. Enrico has courtiers who minister to
him just as Hamm has a knight, Clov, who serves him. Both are, as it were,
reigning over a dying, decaying empty kingdom. Both have authorities that
are "absolute" but meaningless.
As in the case of Enrico, the life of Hamm's play is the life of dream, the
life of madness where the foundation of logic is shaken. It is only in madness
that Hamm can run with the hare and still hunt with the hound; only in
madness can impotence and infirmity spell power and authority. Hamm

36
Cohn, Beckett's Theater, 76-77.

119
 knew and liked a madman who believed the end of the world had come.
When Hamm visited him in the asylum, he tried to reassure him that all was
not gone: " Je le prenais par la main et le tramáis devant la fenétre U
n'avait vu que des cendres. Lui seul avait été épargné . . . Je l'aimais bien"
(Fin de partie, 62-63).
For Hamm, the episode of the madman is significant because he now
sees the world as the painter saw it, the difference being that what for the
madman painter is the reality is for Hamm both reality and illusion. Every-
thing outside his shelter is ruin. He and his household are the only souls
saved. He recognizes the illusion, but, much as Enrico returns to madness to
preserve his sanity, Hamm seems ready to embrace "madness" to legitimize
or assure his reality. But Hamm is not in a position to go as far as Enrico
goes, nor is the dynamic of their masks the same.
Solace and serenity in illusion end when the game is up. The shock
treatment applied to Enrico forced him to return to reality and avenge his ad-
versaries. Man can and does ground himself in fiction to achieve form: but
life, being larger than form, does intrude into fiction and sometimes washes
away the real foundation of form.
The tragic result of the vita-forma interplay is the murder of Belcredi,
Enrico's rival in love. Though life is larger than form, the latter does seem to
have a magnetic force to pull life back from its flux, and arrest it, if temporari-
ly. Enrico therefore will shuttle back into the familiar and more comforting
world of illusion to take refuge. The shock treatment for Hamm is repre-
sented, on the one hand, by Clov's determined announcement that he is go-
ing to leave, and on the other, by the reported sight of a boy. These two inci-
dents, almost running concurrently, appear as shocking to Hamm as the in-
trusión of the outsiders is to Enrico IV. But it is unlikely anything will really
shock Hamm.
As if Clov's threat to leave is not enough to menace Hamm's sense of
security, the sight of the boy represents an unwelcome reality. It not only un-
dercuts the irresistible forcé of life but shows Hamm that in spite of himself, in
spite of his designs, life can and does still exist outside of this box. To shield
himself from this reality, Hamm interrogates Clov, maybe to pro ve him
wrong or to forcé him to admit that he was inventing. Clov, who despite bad
sight has a greater grasp on the outside reality, asks him: "Tu ne me crois
pas? Tu crois que j'invente" (Fin de partie, 105). In a further but rather
desperate effort to fight reality, Hamm claims (or rationalizes) that if the boy
really exists, he will surely come to him (since he is the king and life-giver).
But surely the crucial question is: does he exist? In other words, Hamm is im-

120
 plying that Clov saw an illusion or has trouble separating ¡Ilusión from reality.
Clov may have consciously or otherwise created the illusion to convince
Hamm that his prediction is faulty—"Hors d'ici c'est la morí." But when Clov
appears determined to leave, Hamm comes face to face with an inevitable re-
ality which he has been avoiding.
The departure of Clov would mean the end of the game; even fic-
tionalizing would end. So would end the comforting old questions and old
answers that offer some immunity from time's ravaging flux. Clov's departure
would mean a direct confrontation with the external world, reality outside the
box which Hamm has already characterized as "corpses." If Clov makes
good his threat to leave, and if the boy exists, and is alive, that means a fright-
ening intrusión of reality (life) into an otherwise serene shelter (form).
Hamm's first reaction to this threatening intrusión is not however as
violent as Enrico's reaction when he faced his own threat. Perhaps because
he is a ham actor, his reaction is measured. He asks for a rug to insulate him-
self (since everything seems to be deserting him and since the foundation of
dream-life seems to be crumbling). The rug would at least prevent the
warmth that still remains from escaping. But there is no rug.
He then asks for human compassion (another source of warmth). But
Clov in his new-found freedom (he is now on the threshold of life, a step
away from form) would not kiss Hamm. Hamm now appears to be bowing to
death by freezing, but in the cyclical world of the plays of Beckett, it is rather
hard to consúmate a finality. Still, as we look from emperor Enrico's castle to
king Hamm's throne, we can see that "L'infini du vide sera autour de [nous]
tous les morts de tous les temps ressuscités ne le combleraient pas, [et on] y
sera comme un petit gravier au milieu de la steppe" (Fin de partie, 54).
Pirandello and Beckett created characters who must improvise in order
to stay a float. In their activities, actions and inactions, these characters ap-
pear comic. Sometimes we laugh with the authors. But as Ruby Cohn has
stated, "Instead of laughing. . . at comic figures whom we do not resemble. .
. we come to doubt ourselves through our laughter, . . . We laugh in fear as
we realize that there is no fact, only fiction."37 Commenting on the same
subject, John Gassner remarks:

Behind Pirandello's defensive . . . mask it is easy to detect a face con-

torted with pain and a sense of futility. Did he not himself write in his
thirty-fifth year: "Ask the poet what is the saddest sight and he will rep-

37
Cohn, "A Comic Complex and a Complex Comic," in Corrigan, ed; 437.

121
 ly 'It is laughter on the face of man.'" Did he not add, "who laughs
does not know?"38

However, Pirandello laughs. Beckett too, laughs. But they laugh because
they know that pretense does not hide. They know that life is senseless. They
know that the comedy of surface appearance is only a fiction constructed to
protect the face from its reflection in the mirror.

38
Gassner, Masters of the Drama, 437.

122
 Conclusión

If Pirandello is regarded as the most seminal dramatist of our time,

Beckett, who has been cited as one of the beneficiarles of Pirandello's inno-
vations, is clearly one of the guiding lights of the theatre today. It is now fas-
hionable to see him as a reference point, a standard of evaluation. In fací,
Beckett has significantly altered the way we can perceive other dramatists
past and present. But the question which remains to be resolved is whether
Beckett was actually influenced by Pirandello.
When I asked Beckett this question, he said that he was not aware of
any Pirandellian influence. This study has not sought to establish influence,
but it has determined that Beckett knew and probably read Pirandello before
he began his serious writing career. We know, for example, that Beckett
studied French and Italian at Trinity College, Dublin, and that he admired
Jules Romains, who regarded Pirandello as his literary mentor. We also
know that Walter Starkie introduced Beckett to Pirandello's works when he
taught Beckett at Trinity. It is of course possible that the voracious Beckett
read Pirandello as he would have read any other major author like Dante or
Shakespeare. But as this study has tried to show, despite differences in their
dramaturgy. Pirandellian echoes abound in Beckett's works.
It is important to bear in mind, however, that affinity of theme and
perspective can and does exist where no direct influence occurs. Besides, it is
sometimes hard to ascertain influence unless an author specifically expresses
his indebtedness to another. For example, Anouilh acknowledges Pirande-
llo, and Pinter does acknowledge Beckett. But we should remember Jacque-
line Van Praag-Chantraine's remark that "Il arrive qu'en des points differents

123
du globe savants et artistes engendrent, á la méme époque, et souvent sans
se connatre, les mêmes idees fécondes."1
Therefore, instead of talking about influences, we should concern our-
selves with the common central focus of the theatres of both Pirandello and
Beckett—the human condition. The two playwrights are particularly sensitive
to the plight and suffering of their characters. In an article in 1894, Pirandello
lamented the deception of existence and denounced the cruel irony of
destiny.2 His characters represent victims of life's deception. Before he gave
them "life" on stage, these characters haunted him as concrete images, shar-
ing their suffering with him. Of course, having experienced various degrees
of suffering in his life, Pirandello did not really need these haunting images to
comprehend human suffering. Beckett, too, has seen and experienced
human suffering. In fact, the only consistency of thought he says he sees in
his work is "that of a ceaseless screaming of a man he heard in hospital, dying
of throat cáncer."3
But if theatre is a reflection of life, then there should be a cióse link be-
tween what happens on the stage and what happens in real life. There is
however, a question of how truly the image of man as painted by Pirandello
and Beckett reflects the human condition. Some critics, for example, have
wondered if instances of grief, torment, murder, and accident in Pirandello's
work accurately represent the human condition. And writing about Beckett,
Gassner wonders if all humanity has failed to see Godot.44 Another critic,
George Wellworth, calis Beckett a "prophet of negation and sterility [who]
holds out no hope to humanity, only a picture of unrelieved blackness."5
All the people of the world may not be damaged people; all may not be
torn by strife, rage, and jealousy. But in the view of Pirandello and Beckett,
people are born without their permission into a world that imprisons and
handicaps them. As Vittorini has said, man is limited by two paramount
facts—birth and death—that are both independent of his will.6 A pattern that
can be deduced from the plays of these dramatists is the suggestion that "Man

1
Jacqueline von Praag-Chantraine, Gabriel Miro, oule visage du levant, teñe
d'Espagne (París: Nizet, 1959) 149.
2
Cited in Le Leonardo, 20 Jan. 1929. See Reboul, Etudes italiennes, 92.
3
New York Times 26 Feb. 1984: H5. See note 46 of Chapter Three.
4
Gassner, Theatre at the Crossroads (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1960) 256.
5
George Wellworth, The Theater of Protest and Paradox (New York: New
York University Press, 1971) 56.
6
Vittorini, The Drama of Pirandelh, 30.

124
has been dumped for reasons unknown in a world dcsigned, intentionally or
not, to frústrate and hurt him."7
Although he had a happy childhood, Beckett. it is understood, was
more aware of the unhappiness around him than of the happiness. We can
say that despite the divergence of background and temperament, both
Pirandello and Beckett had "sensitive chords" in the their nature "which were
more attuned to the unhappiness in humankind rather than the happiness. "8
Commenting further on Beckett's works, Gassner condemns what he calis
Beckett's "negativism and existential nausea" and predicts that the world
would eventually invalídate his (Beckett's) prophetic vision. 9 Similarly, Steve
Rosen complains that in Beckett's work, "the beauties of nature are made to
appear irrelevant . . . physical life [made to appear] a succession of
agonies."10
But despite reactions against the apparently gloomy works of the two
playwrights, the events in the world seem to support their views. Regardless
of what or how we as critics would like to feel about any particular work,
Nathan Scott's view about Beckett's work seems to be accurate: "Man is no-
thing because there is nothing . . . that sanctions or gives any kind of warrant
or dignity to human enterprise."11 The bright aspects of life may be there, but
they are under constant seige. When the catastrophe is not homelessness, it
is mass starvation; when it is not war, it is plague; when it is not disease, it is
accident; when it is not flood, it is hurricane; when it is not fire, it is earth-
quake. An apparently happy and well-dressed individual may step into a car,
a plañe, or a boat; the next moment, his body may be mangled or charred,
beyond recognition. These horrors in life, to which Camus alluded and
which obsessed him almost throughout his life, may not be a daily occurence.
But they are, nevertheless, an inescapable part of our world. The arts of
Pirandello and Beckett do not camouflage these horrors, nor do they exag-
gerate them. Their arts awaken us to the reality that despite our complacen-
cy, despite the many illusions we create to mask the unpleasant aspects of
life, despite our natural inclination to ignore such horrors— maybe because

7
New York Times 26 Feb. 1984 H5.
8
Toscan, in Gontarski, ed. 223.
9
Gassner, Theatre at the Crossroads, 261.
10
Steve Rosen, Samuel Beckett and the Pessimistic Tradition (New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 1976) 138.
11
Nathan Scott, "The Recent Journey into the Zone of Zero: The example of
Beckett and his Despair in Literature," Centennial Review VI (Spring 1962): 178. See
note 11 of Chapter Two.

125
they have not struck us directly—, these horrors are a part of the human ex-
perience, and must be confronted accordingly.
Although neither Pirandello nor Beckett is a social reformer, the works
and utterances of both nevertheless serve social functions. Of course
Pirandello cautions against tearing off the masks that help to protect the in-
dividual and society (at least in the short run), and he goes beyond that to
warn against expecting too much from life. As we have remarked earlier in
this study, Beckett's favorite expressions are Geulincx's "Ubi nihil vales, ibi
nihil velis." "Where you are worth nothing, you should want nothing," and
the dictim of Democritus: "Nothing is more real than nothing."12 The
positive aspects of the works of Pirandello and Beckett are obviously the ca-
pacity of these works to make humankind more aware of his true reality by
enabling him to get rid of what Valery calis 'Taddition fraduleuse á ce qui
est"13 and to concéntrate on the elemental essential which will be unlikely to
bring disappointment precisely because it is expecting no paradise.
Therefore, all may be gloomy and dark in the universe of Pirandello and
Beckett. Yet, or rather in spite of this darkness and gloom, or even because
of them, light can and does emerge. Imprisoned in the dark, humankind has
the tendency to search for light. Reacting to charges of painting pessimistic
pictures in his plays, Pirandello remarks, "My art is free of pessimism which
engenders lack of faith in life. . . . In the spiritual activity which animates my
works, there is an incessant desire to create life. ... I feel a sort of joy in
creating life in my characters."14 Despite the overwhelming pains and tor-
ments of their lives, Pirandello's six characters persist in their search for "life."
Although Beckett clearly questions why we should have been born in the first
place, he shares the Camusian perspective on life. His characters usually do
not take their lives. Instead, they find something to do to keep on living.
Beckett, for example, rebukes Hamm for not saying "no" to nothingness,
and he applauds the unnamed protagonist of Rockaby because she says
"yes" to nothingness. 15 Those who know Beckett seem to agree with
Driver's assessment that his "warm humor and affection are not the attributes
of defeatism but the consequences of . . . the courage to be."16
Suffering is an abiding theme in Pirandello and Beckett probably be-
cause, in the words of Dostoevsky, "suffering is the sole origin of conscious-

12
See Pilling 124. See also notes 10 and 44 of Chapter Two.
13
See Reboul, Eludes haliennes, 89.
14
Cited in Giudice 182.
15
See New York Times 26 Feb. 1984: H5.
16
See Driver 25.

126
ness ... man prizes it and would not give it up..." 17 But in the theaters of
Pirandello and Beckett, the line between the bright and the dark is rather
blurred. Quoting Hegel, Anne Paolucci refers to the Germán and Dutch
painting where the subject matter is often taken from the crudest and most
vulgar levéis of society. Such painting, Hegel notes, offers us scenes com-
pletely penetrated by the cheerfulness, which in turn, neutralizes the vulgar
and the vicious.18 Pirandello echoes this Helegian dialectic in his On Humor.
Quoting Theodor Lipps, he states that "by negating that which is positive in
man, this positive human element is brought closer to us and its valué per-
ceived more clearly" (On Humor, 116-117).
When Bentley suggests approaching Pirandello through Lióla, he is im-
plying that in the play the "Sunday of life" is more perceptible than in other
plays. The deception of Lióla leads to an outrage. Yet, "human kindness and
joy seem to lie beneath the deception." Thus, instead of reinforcing outrage
because of the deception, Liolà negates that outrage. Some critics of Beckett
cannot see in his plays that "Sunday of life." Yet one of them, Vivian Mer-
cier, admits that "A truth in art is that whose contradictory is also true."19
A case in point is the tramps' resolve to wait for Godot. Godot is an il-
lusory hope, a symbol of the gap between man and his desires. Yet it is per-
ceived by the tramps to represent meaning, hope, a chance of sleeping in a
shelter, in warmth, in satisfaction. Thus, instead of being a symbol of despair
(which is what common sense should dictate). Godot is, in fací, the antithesis
of despair an alienation.
Of course, the tramps in Godoí contémplate suicide. But that idea is im-
mediately discarded in favor of waiting for Godot. The tree on stage in the
Second Act seems to be a metaphor of hope. This tree is contrasted with the
tree of despair visible on the stage in the First Act. The metaphor of the tree is
extended to the suicide episode: The weeping willow declines to cooperate in
the suicide bid of Didi and Gogo. The branch is seen to be too weak to hold
the cord, or the cord is not strong enough to be tied to the tree. Thus, the tree
which at one moment represented desolation—a possible agent of death—is

17
Dostoevsky, Notes from underground, in Josephson, ed. Man Alone, 371.
In Dostoevsky's view, the term conscience implies the opposite of mathmatical certain-
ty, a progressive uncertainty which causes pain and suffering, but at the same time,
keeps man active and alert.
18
Hegel, as cited by Anne Paolucci, "Comedy and Paradox in Pirandello's
Plays, (An Hegelian Perspective)," Modern Drama 20 (1977): 321-40.
19
Osear Wilde, "The Truth of the Masks," cited in Vivían Mercier,
Beckett/Beckett (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977) 1.

127
 at another moment presented as a symbol of life itself, the very antithesis of
death. Everything is dead but the tree!—"(II [Vladimir] regarde l'arbre). Seúl
l'arbre vit" (Godot, 132). Vladimir has earlier remarked, "Mais hier soir il
était tout noir et skélétique! Aujourd'hui il est couvert de feuilles" (Godot,
92). Obviously, skeleton and darkness convey the image of death. But as
yesterday is different from today, so is yesterday's image of death today's
symbol (sign) of life. It is paradoxical that the tramps toyed with the idea of
hanging themselves on the only living thing around—the tree—but the living
tree would not accept them. This is a clear victory for life.
Thus, the atmosphere may be gloomy, but the gloom itself does en-
gender light. Far-fetched as this idea might sound, it is, paradoxically
enough, an element of realism. To cite an instance, Jan Kott, a Polish critic,
was asked what place Bertolt Brecht has in the Polish theater. He answered
back "We do him [Brecht] when we want fantasy. When we want Realism
we do Waitingfor Godot."20 Neither Pirandello nor Beckett is regarded as a
realistic playwright par excellence. Yet their stage generales an ambience of
realism. Somehow, there is something in us that seems to remind us of the
truth in Pozzo's remarks when he says that for each person who begins to
weep, somewhere else another stops weeping; for each person who begins
to laugh, somewhere else another stops: "Les larmes du monde sont immua-
bles. Pour chacun qui se met a pleurer, quelque part un autre s'arrête. II en
va de meme du rire" (Godot, 44). We realize that even if we are not hurting
now, probably, somewhere else, some other person is hurting. After all, as
Vladimir has indicated, all mankind is us. The consolation, however, is that
regardless of who is hurting and the degree of suffering, there will be some-
thing to do to kill time; there will be something to do or say to give the im-
pression that one is, after all, living. Even if such an activity is mere deceptive
¡Ilusión designed to camouflage the character's true reality, it will be pursued
with vigor because there does not seem to be any other choice. For its part,
the audience is not even permitted to laugh at these characters, because it
may be laughing at itself.
Surely, a perceptive audience hardly leaves Pirandello's or Beckett's
stage wrinkled with smiles or even relieved. Theater-goers instead leave the
auditorium deeply aware of human suffering. One certain fact—which is the
element of realism of these dramatists—is that these playwrights have wak-

20
Jan Kott, cited in Lawrence Grover and Raymond Federman, ed. Samuel
Beckett: The Critical Herítage (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, 1979) 110.

128
ened us from slumber and have sharpened our understanding of life and liv-
ing.

129
 Index

Abel, Lionel, 1, 77
Anouilh, Jean, 16, 19, 123
Archard, Marcel, 16
Arnold, Matthew, 79-80

Barrett, William, 80
Beckett, Samuel, works by
Catastrophe, 26, 34-35, 52-53, 78, 81
Cettefois, 22, 26, 34, 42-43, 56, 63-64, 80, 87-88, 115
En Attendant Godot, 4, 16, 18-20, 33, 39-40, 56, 74-78, 80-81, 82,
89-94, 104-107, 115-118, 127-128
Fin de partie, 4, 33, 69-70, 74, 82-84, 98, 101-102, 106-110, 112,
118-121
Footfalls, 28, 48
Impromtu d'Ohio, 26, 33-34, 48-49, 51-52, 58, 62, 88, 115
La derniére bande, 32, 41-42, 80, 88-89, 113-114
Malone Dies, 26
More Pricks than Kicks, 17
Oh ¡es beaux jours, 35, 36, 37
Play, 35
Prousí, 1, 5, 6, 22-26, 28, 36, 38, 41, 49-50, 55-56, 58, 73, 84, 91,
105, 114
Rockaby, 126
Tous ceux qui tombent, 84, 102
Va et vient, 26, 42, 48, 56, 87, 115
Watt, 98

130
Bentley, Eric, 1, 96, 110, 127
Ben-Zvi, Linda, 1, 42
Bergson, Henri, 9, 68, 97
Berlín, Normand, 40
Bishop, Thomas, 1, 3, 16, 32, 67
Bradley, Francis Herbert, 70-71
Brater, Enoch, 1, 26, 33, 42-43, 80
Brecht, Bertolt, 128
Brown, John Russel, 62
Brustein, Robert, 1, 3, 8, 113

Camus, Albert, 74, 103, 125, 126

Carrabino, Víctor, 1, 117
Chantraine, Van Praag, 123-124
Chiarelli, Luigi, 11, 13
Cocteau, Jean, 9, 16
Cohn, Ruby, 1, 15, 21, 118-119, 121
Commedia de ¡'arte, 97
Communication, 26, 73, 104-107
Consíruirsí, 94, 110
Cratylus, 69, 79

Dante, 6, 114, 123

Democritus, 6, 38, 71, 72, 73, 95, 126
Descartes, Rene, 6, 79
Doisy, Marcel, 8
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 126-127
Driver, Tom, 1, 30, 54, 112, 126
Duthuit, George, 38, 56

Einstein, Albert, 18
Eliot, T.S., 9
Esslin, Martin, 1, 8
Euripedes, 98

Fergusson, Francis, 8, 9
Fletcher, Beryl, 20, 107, 109
Form, definition of, 112-113
Futurism, 11

131
Gaskell, Ronald, 15
Gassner, John, 1, 121-122, 124, 125
Gattnig, Charles, 3
Genet, Jean, 95
Geulincx, Arnold, 6, 28, 38, 95, 126
Giacosa, Giuseppe, 10
Gilman, Richard, 8
Giudice, Gaspare, 1
Goldsberry, Dennis, 2
Gontarski, S.E., 1, 25-26, 56-57
Gorgias, of Lentini, 71-72, 73, 77

Hamlet, 50, 86
Hegel, George, 6, 68, 127
Heidegger, Martin, 68
Heraclitus, 6, 68, 69, 79
homo mensura, 68-69
Hesla, David, 1
Hume, David, 79

Ibsen, Henrik, 8
Illiano, Antonio, 28
lonesco, Eugéne, 97

Jaspers, Karl, 68
Joiner, Lawrence, 1
Jonson, Ben, 33
Jonsonian theroy of humor, 33
Josephson, Eric and Mar y, 81
Joyce, James, 18

Kane, Leslie, 61, 63

Kant, Immanuel, 18, 70
Kierkegaard, Soren, 68, 70, 97
Knock, 5
Kott, Jan, 128

Lewis, Alian, 1, 11
Life, definition of, 112, 113
Lipps, Theodore, 127

132
Lorca, Frederick García, 9
Lucas, F.L., 37
Lumley, Frederick, 1, 8, 77, 104

MacGowran, Jack, 36, 49

Maschera e il volto, see Luigi Chiarelli, 11
Mercier, Vivian, 77, 127
Monism, 68, 71
Montaigne, Michel, 68, 86
Morris, Frank, 2
Mueller, William R., 102

Newberry, Wilma, 8
Nietzsche, Frederich, 9
Nkechi, Ita Uwah, 9

Oliver, Roger, 1, 31, 35, 55

Overbeck, Lois More, 2, 83, 104

Palmer, John, 67
Paolucci, Anne, 8, 21, 127
Paradise, 28, 102, 104, 126
Parmenides, 68, 70, 71
Pascal, Blaise, 68, 86
Pilling, John, 18, 38
Pincus, Mike, 2
Pinter, Harold, 65, 123
Pirandellism, 4, 12-13, 16
Pirandello, works by
Ciascuno a suo modo, 51, 55, 72
Cosí é se vi pare, 17, 27, 60, 72-74, 79, 80, 81-82, 83, 84
Enrico IV, 4, 13, 31, 32, 38, 60, 72, 79, 91, 92-94, 99, 100-101, 105,
107, 109, 115, 118-121
U fu Mattia Pascal, 17, 116
// piacere dell'onesta, 38
La regione degli altri, 27
Lióla, 27, 38, 46, 81, 100, 121, 127
On Humor (Umorismo), 3, 6, 17-18, 22-24, 26, 27, 28, 37, 38, 44,
55, 73, 96, 99, 100, 127

133
 Quesía sera si recita a soggeto, 46, 51, 53, 55
Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore, 5, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 25, 47,
51, 53, 54, 55, 58, 60, 81, 84, 104, 105, 113, 114-115
Plato, 70
Pronko, Leonard, 1, 103
Prudent, 74
Pythagoras, 68

Reboul, Fernand, 28
Renate, Matthew, 1
rírus purus, 98
Robbe-Grillet, Main, 77, 106, 110
Romain, Jules, 5
Rosen, Steve, 1, 125

Salacrou, Armand, 16
Sarraute, Nathalie, 79
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 74
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 6, 68, 70, 104
Schneider, Alan, 59, 63
Scott, Nathan, 1, 28, 102, 125
Shakespeare, 123
Shaw, George Bernand, 8
Sogliuzzo, Richard, 1
Starkie, Walter, 1, 104, 123
Steiner, George, 64
Stendahi, 86
Strindberg, August, 8
Suffering, 7, 26, 101, 104, 108-110, 124, 126-127, 128
Sypher, Wylie, 1, 98

Teratro del grottesco, 11

Testa, Daniel, 28
Tilgher, Adriano, 112
Topsfield, Valerie, 3

Valdana, 45, 46, 47, 72, 80

Valery, Paul, 126
Verismo, 10

134
Vittorini, Domenico, 9, 11, 18, 85-86, 124

Webb, Eugene, 1, 84, 85

Wellworth, George, 124

Yeats, William Butler, 9

Zeno, 68, 70

135
 ^cripta íjumaniBttta
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23. Jorge Checa, Gradan y la imaginación arquitectónica. $28.00
24. Gloria Calvez Lira, María Luisa Bomba/: Realidad y Fantasía. $28.50
25. Susana Hernández Araico, Ironía y tragedia en Calderón. $25.00
26. Philip J. Spartano, Gfacomo Zanella: Poet, Essayist, and out of
Critic of the "Risorgimento." Preface by Roberto Severino. print
27. E. Kate Stewart, Arthur Sherburne Hardy: Man of American
Letters. Preface by Louis Budd. $28.50
28. Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron. English Adaptation by
Carmelo Gariano. $30.00
29. Giacomo A. Striuli, "Alienation in Giuseppe Berto". $26.50
30. Barbara Mujica, Iberian Pastoral Characters. Preface by Fre-
derick A. de Armas. $33.00
31. Susan Niehoff McCrary, '"£/ último godo' and the Dynamics
of the Urdrama." Preface by John E. Keller. $27.50
32. En torno al hombre y a sus monstruos: Ensayos críticos sobre
la novelística de Carlos Rojas, editados por Cecilia Castro Lee
y C. Christopher Soufas, Jr. $31.50
33. J. Thomas O'Connell, Mount Zion Field. $24.50
34. Francisco Delicado, Portrait of Lozana: The Lusíy Andalusian
Woman. Translation, introduction and notes by Bruno M.
Damiani. $45.50
35. Elizabeth Sullam, Ouí of Bounds. Foreword by Michael G.
Cooke. $23.50
36. Sergio Corsi, // "modus digressivus" nella "Divina Commedia" $28.75
37. Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce, Lecturas (Del temprano Renaci-
miento a Valle Inclán). $28.50
38. Rosendo Díaz-Peterson, Las novelas de Unamuno. Prólogo
de Antonio Carreña. $30.00
39. Jeanne Ambrose, Syníaxe Comparative Francais-Anglais. $29.50
40. Nancy Marino, La serranilla española: notas para su historia e
interpretación. $28.75.
41. Carolyn Kreiter-Kurylo, Contrary Visions. Preface by Peter
Klappert. $24.50
42. Giorgio Perissinotto, fíeconquísía y literatura medieval:
Cuatro Ensayos. $29.50
43. Rick Wilson, Between a Rock and a Heart Place. $25.00
44. Feminine Concerns in Contemporary Spanish Fictíon by
Women. Edited by Roberto C. Manteiga, Carolyn Galerstein
and Kathleen McNerney. $35.00
45. Pierre L. Ullman, A Contrapuntal Method For Analyzing
Spanish Literature. $41.50
46. Richard D. Woods, Spanish Grammar and Culture Through
Proverbs. $35.00
47. David G. Burton, The Legend of Bernardo del Carpio. From
Chronicle to Drama. Preface by John Lihani. $30.00
48. Godwin Okebaram Uwah, Pirandellism and Samuel Beckett's
Plays. $28.00
49. Italo-Híspanle Literary Relatíons, ed. J. Helí Hernández. $33.00
50. Studies in Honor of Elias Rivers, eds. Bruno M. Damiani and
Ruth El Saffar. $30.00

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