Beckett's "Dead Voices" in "Waiting for Godot": New Inhabitants of Dante's "Inferno" Author(s): Lois A.

Cuddy Source: Modern Language Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2, (Spring, 1982), pp. 48-60 Published by: Modern Language Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3194475 Accessed: 06/04/2008 10:25
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Beckett's "DeadVoices"in Waiting Godot: for New Inhabitants Dante'sInferno of

Lois A. Cuddy

of "Itoccurredto me"shesaid"apropos I don'tknowwhat,thatyou might do worsethanmake up Dante'sraremovementsof compassionin Hell." SamuelBeckett,"Danteand the Lobster"' Samuel Beckett's interest in Dante's Commedia and his use of the Purgatorio in his early work are well known to scholars.2 However, his appropriation of the Inferno, as both literal place and metaphoric condition of his plays, has yet to be examined. Though a convincing case can be made for his other dramas being placed in Hell,3it is in Waiting for Godot that Beckett establishes the Dantean setting, characters, and condition to be the context for his dramatic Otherworld. I do not mean simply that his characters live "in Hell," the euphemism for any life of pain. Rather, Beckett has specifically used Canto III, the "waiting room" of the Inferno, for the meaning of his "tragi-comedy"; and the questions that have disturbed audiences for decades-questions about the characters and their location, about hope, uncertainty, waiting, salvation, religion, nihilism, and so on-are answered by understanding the function of that canto in the play. To address these issues this study focuses on the correlations between Dante's Canto III and Godot, Beckett's ethical and philosophical purpose for using the Dantean source, and, finally, on an assessment of Beckett's putative nihilism. A brief overview of Dante's Canto III may help clarify its thematic relationship to Beckett's drama. In the third canto of the Inferno, for instance, Dante encounters the "Neutrals,"4"the unhappy people, who never were alive-never awakened to take any part either in good or evil, to care for anything but themselves."5Instead of making their own choices in life, they followed, as they do now in Hell, any banner which might offer security and salvation. Since they never thought for themselves in life, they were rarely stung by a conscience that should have forced them to make choices; consequently, one category of Neutrals is now pursued and stung by wasps and hornets. They took no stand either in a good or bad cause, so they can go neither to Purgatory nor into Hell Proper. Having done nothing in life and remaining unrepentant about this passivity, they are forced to remain in this empty place of Canto III where other sinners wait for Acheron to ferry them across the river into the Hell of active punishment. Beckett uses all this, and more, to provide the ethical and Existential context for Godot. Certainly Beckett's rendering of Dante's third canto is as unique as his image of Belacqua in his early Purgatorial work. Then, he depicted a state of indolence leading to immobility with hope for salvation simply "deferred."6The exercise of free will was still a possibility. But by the time
48

of Godot's composition, Beckett has a different statement to make: modern man's inability, or refusal, to make choices defines his Hell. Thus, while Dante sees the Neutrals mindlessly pursuing anything that will give meaning to existence, Beckett sees modem man waiting interminably for the answer to come to him. And while some of Dante's figures are tortured by stinging insects into feeling their sin of emptiness, Beckett has translated contemporary punishments into bladder problems, sore feet, itching head, nocturnal beatings, and neck sores. Always reflecting Dante's Neutrality but with an ironic symbolist twist, Beckett creates figures who cannot face the truth of themselves, who project to their shoes and hats the problems of their bodies and minds and to their genitals and their dreams the repressions of a lifetime. The key to the Dantean parallel in Godot is that Beckett has avoided theological issues in order to confront psychological and ethical applications (and implications) of Neutrality. Apparently so different from Godot, Dante's state of Neutralty, with its Futility and Solipcism, is a perfect metaphor for Beckett's Drama of Existential Hell. While Dante views the Neutrals from a distance and thus offers no distinguishing features to humanize them (as he does with Paolo and Francesca, Ulysses, or Ugolino), Beckett focuses on particular figures.7 This allows the playwright to deal not only with the modern Existential state of mankind but also with the nature of Neutrality, the kinds of people who make up this category in Hell (and on earth), the characteristics that put them there, and the futility of waiting for something better in the Hell created by one's own emptiness. Their inability to make choices, to commit themselves to any cause beyond their own self-interest, or to exert themselves to action inevitably results in the uncertainty, inaction, waiting, equivocation, and fear that make up the world of Godot. Although the activities of Gogo and Didi seem casual and irrelevant, the diction and dialogue are precise in establishing their location in Dante's world. For example, the "worms" mentioned by Estragon (39B) not only reinforce his mortality and phallic interests but function allusionally to correlate Godot with Canto III, where worms on the ground are associated with blood and tears (11. 67-69). Like Dante's Neutrals who have witnessed the "red blaze" of Hell Proper across the River Acheron (Inf., III, 1. 134), Didi and Gogo also discuss Hell's color: Vladimir:But down thereeverythingis red! I I Estragon:(exasperated). didn'tnoticeanything, tellyou! Silence.Vladimirsighsdeeply. (40) Though their residence in the Inferno is made definite for the audience by such allusions and furtherreferences to hell and damnation throughout the text, Bectett's characters are punished by reliving constantly the uncertainty and denial inherent in their Neutrality. Consequently, at one point in the play Estragon wails, "I'min hell" (47B); yet later Vladimir says, "Go to hell" (52B). As inhabitants of Hell's waiting room-between the Gate of Hell and the River Acheron-Gogo and Didi are and are not in Hell even
49

as they alternate between admitting and denying their present situation. Their physical place and mental attitude must now reflect the equivocation defining their lives on earth. Didi asks, for example, "And where were we yesterday evening according to you?" and Gogo answers, "How would I know? In another compartment. There's no lack of void" (42B). As inhabitants of the Inferno, they can never move from this "compartment" in the "void";as Neutrals who did nothing in life, their unique punishment is to persist in this "nothingness" without the salvation offered by Purgatory or the torment of Hell Proper (Inf., III, 1. 41). They reside in this place that has no definition of any kind: "It'slike nothing. There's nothing." Tho-ughthis description seems to be abrogated by the presence of the tree on stage, the emptiness is not vitiated. The tree, leafless and otherwise, is only placed in this setting as one of the illusions intended to keep the characters questioning time and life in this "indescribable"landscape (55B). The crucial conflict between action and passivity also expresses Neutrality while reinforcing their indecision and ambivalence. Since Didi and Gogo could never commit themselves to anything in life, they alternate between statements on what they should do and be and the recognition of what they are. Vladimir's wonderful soliloquy in Act II articulates this dilemma: "Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! (Pause. Vehemently.) Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed.... But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late!" (51). This speech on the individual's responsibility to act offers the audience hope that now, with such insight and intellectual activity, there will be change. Yet, the futility of optimism becomes evident as words again substitute for action. Didi ends with the one answer which shows that nothing can come of such glimpses of insight since they spent their lives with "folded arms":"Yes,in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come-" (51B). Waiting is intrinsic to the condition and topography of Godot. In fact, the original title of Beckett's drama was En Attendant.8 Like Dante's Neutrals, who waited for direction because they could not decide or act for themselves, Didi and Gogo are also relegated to the antechamber, or waiting room, of Hell. This is an interesting departure from Dante's depiction of Neutrality, for in their uncertainty about everything Didi and Gogo are even confused about their identities and destiny. Beckett has inflicted a terrible psychological punishment on his characters, for they cannot distinguish between themselves as Neutrals, who never actively sinned, and the sinners around them. Therefore, each day they expect to be called, like the damned souls surrounding them, the crowds with the "dead voices" (40B) who are taken by Charon across the River Acheron into the Hell of active torment. But instead, after the sinners move on, Didi and Gogo find themselves abandoned: "In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness" (52). And so they wait for that something which will determine the nature of their tomorrows, even as they procrastinated in life:
50

Estragon:Thatshouldbe easy. Vladimir:It'sthe startthat'sdifficult. Estragon:Youcan startfrom anything. Vladimir:Yes,but you have to decide. Estragon:True. Silence.

Vladimir: . .. We could start all over again perhaps.

(41)

Like Dante's Neutrals, Gogo and Didi "follow still, as they have always done, a meaningless, shifting banner that never stands for anything..., a cause which is no cause but the changing magnet of the day" (Inf., p. 55). For this reason, Gogo and Didi will wait forever for Godot (or any substitute) whom they do not know and have never seen because they believe they should. They might be waiting for anything, but here and now their focus is Godot, their present "meaningless banner,"that thing to which they passively attach themselves because they can't make up their minds to do anything else. Godot, then, functions not as a man or a figure of authority-or even as God-but as an illusion of certitude, a construct created by these souls as a crutch which reflects the passive pretenses and waiting of their lives on earth. It is provocative that Beckett's earlier poetry and fiction examine antepurgatory and the "late repentants" who retain the possibility of moving up to a better world; while later in Godot-after Beckett's own experiences with the French Underground in World WarII when choices were essential in determining the worth of one's life, or death-he explores the antechamber of Hell and the nature of existence for those human beings who never had the courage to make commitments or choose sides in any situation. Though taking any action is, as Vladimir admits, a "simple question of will-power" (54), Gogo and Didi relinquished that will on earth when they avoided making decisions and therefore "got rid" of all "rights"(13B) to determine anything for themselves. They have now lost the power to alter their condition, yet through insignificant body movements, like standing up or sitting down, they retain the illusion of movement which would seem to promise change. This sense of illusion and uncertainty naturallyextends to questions of life and death. According to Dante, "[The Neutrals] have no hope of death" (Inf., III, 1.46) because they "never were alive" (1.64). To reenact their neutrality in life, they remain literally, as they were figuratively on earth, neither alive nor dead. For this reason, Didi and Gogo are in a world, like themselves, where "Everything'sdead but the tree" (59B), and that may appear to be dead or alive at any moment. Being neither alive nor dead has serious implications in this drama, for the characters'punishment is to desire certainty of any kind even while avoiding it. Despite their fear of being called to that other place "down there" (40), occasionally they even long for "death" instead of the nothingness that is their eternal lot: The best thingwould be to kill me, like the other. Estragon: Vladimir: Whatother?(Pause.)Whatother? Likebillionsof others. Estragon: (40)
51

This is one of Estragon'srare moments of insight about his condition in the next world, and Vladimir's response about his own "immortality"is also painfully correct: "To every man his little cross. (He sighs.) Till he dies. (Afterthought.) And is forgotten" (40). The world, Dante tells us, "suffers no report of [the Neutrals]" and, therefore, as Vladimir recognizes sadly, they have been "forgotten." Since they did nothing to distinguish themselves in life, they will go on in this land of "sighs, lamentations, and loud wailings" (Inf., III, 1. 22)9without even the comfort of someone's remembrance on earth. It now makes sense that the play opens with Estragon sitting on the "low mound" representing his grave and that he refers to his life in the past tense: Vladimir:Youshouldhave been a poet. Estragon:I was (Gesturetowardshis rags.)Isn'tthatobvious?(9) They have been in this place an indefinite and irrelevant length of timeat one point "fifty years," at another a "million"years-so all the experiences of life, even Estragon's attempted suicide, are "dead and buried" (35). Yet their actuality on stage and their characteristicpretenses hypnotize themselves (and us) into believing that they are alive even when they tell us the contrary: "We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?" And Didi responds, "(impatiently). Yes yes, we're magicians" (44B). All their conversation seems unconnected and fragmented until we frame the ideas in terms of the Nether World. Then a pattern emerges which makes sense out of apparent absurdity: Vladimir: We'venothingmoreto do here. Nor Estragon: anywhereelse. Ah Vladimir: Gogo, don'tgo on like that.To-morroweverythingwill be better. (34B) Though they pretend that their condition is temporary, the repetitive ending of each act captures their immobility: Vladimir: Well?Shallwe go? Yes, Estragon: let'sgo. They do not move.

([35B],60B)

Their life of apathetic habit on earth has placed them in an eternal circle which keeps them literally "bored to death" (52). Only occasionally can they recognize the futility of hope when they admit that there is "nothing to be done." In this place where all joy, even laughter, is "prohibited"(8B, 14B), they are beyond the choices that might alter existence, life and death being extensions of the same state for Dante and Beckett. Yet Didi and Gogo talk and play games to pass time and to avoid thinking or hearing those "dead voices" surrounding them:
52

In Estragon: the meantimelet us try and conversecalmly, since we are incapableof keepingsilent. Vladimir: You're right,we'reinexhaustible. It's Estragon: so we won'tthink. We Vladimir: have thatexcuse. It's Estragon: so we won'thear. Vladimir: have ourreasons. We All Estragon: the dead voices. Vladimir: Whatdo they say? Estragon: They talkabouttheirlives. Vladimir: have lived is not enoughfor them. To Estragon: They have to talkaboutit. Vladimir: be dead is not enoughfor them. To It Estragon: is not sufficient.

(40-40B)

Nor is being "dead," among other souls, enough for Gogo and Didi: they must pretend to "exist" while blocking out the other dead who "make noise like feathers,... leaves,... [and] ashes" (40B). Like the constant activity which suggests freedom to people who can never move from their assigned prisons, speech offers illusions of existence and communication, and a distinction between themselves and the "corpses" and "skeletons"around them (41B). And though time for making choices is past, they further delude themselves into believing that they can sit back, like the Opportunists of Ciardi's translation, and consider the Divine "offer":"I'm curious to hear what he has to offer. Then we'll take it or leave it" (12B). Juxtaposed with these pretensions are interesting, if intermittent, moments of illumination: Astrideof a graveand a difficultbirth.Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger putson the forceps.Wehave timeto grow old. The airis full of ourcries. (He listens.)Buthabitis a greatdeadener.(He looksagainat At Estragon.) me too someoneis looking,of me too someoneis saying,He is sleeping, he knows nothing,let him sleep on. (Pause.)I can't go on! (58-58B) (Pause.)Whathave I said? Suddenly, like Pozzo (57B), Vladimir realizes that human life is evanescence but death ("sleeping")is eternity, "time to grow old" and to hear the "cries" of all the other anguished souls in Hell. Such knowledge is too painful to bear, so he immediately forgets as his body duplicates the "feverishly to and fro" movements of his mind (58B). Despite such moments of awareness and memories of a time that is "dead and buried," they are required to assign purpose to their existence. Thus, Didi enjoys the presumption that he has infused spirit into Gogo's otherwise empty skeleton: "WhenI think of it... all these years... but for me... where would you be... (Decisively.) You'd be nothing more than a little heap of bones at the present minute, no doubt about it" (7B). Though he is hardly responsible for Gogo's condition, part of Didi's illusion in Hell
53

comes from having "saved"Gogo from suicide (35), so he continues to see himself as Gogo's master and saviour. Such pretenses are as disquieting as their intellectual limitations. And that they are Dante's "woeful people who have lost the good of the intellect" (Inf., III, 11. 17-18) is evident: can'tyou? Use Estragon: yourintelligence, uses his intelligence. Vladimir Vladimir: (finally).I remainin the dark.

(12B)

In this scene they are trying to decide how to hang themselves. Finally, despite the difficulty of determining a sensible course of action, Estragon finds a logical solution. We could applaud his intelligence if it were sustained, but it is not: If Estragon: it hangsyou it'llhanganything. But Vladimir: am I heavierthanyou? an So Estragon: you tell me. I don'tknow.There's even chance.Ornearly. (12B) Each character has moments of intelligence, but they are fleeting and equivocal. The glimpses of logic and insight are designed to give just that much incentive to keep them going but not enough to answer their questions with certainty. Consequently, not being able to make up their minds, they are rendered essentially mindless: We'rein no dangerof ever thinking more. Vladimir: any about? Thenwhat are we complaining Estragon: is Vladimir: Thinking not the worst. not. Butat leastthere'sthat.... Perhaps Estragon: Thatmuchless misery. Whatis terribleis to have thought. Vladimir: Butdid thatever happento us? Estragon: Whereare all thesecorpsesfrom? Vladimir: These skeletons. Estragon: Tell Vladimir: me that. True. Estragon: Vladimir: musthave thoughta little. We At Estragon: the very beginning.

(41B)

Like the other corpses of Neutrals, they had the capacity to think in a former time, but it was wasted: they took "no risk either of suffering in a good cause or of scandal in a bad one" (Inf., pp. 54-55). They instinctively and thoughtlessly bound themselves to whatever seemed to offer protection, even as they are inexorably chained now to each other, to their games, and to the idea of Godot: "To Godot? Tied to Godot! What an idea! No question of it. (Pause.) For the moment" (14B). Also part of the absence of intellect and certitude is their longing to "know" about the future. This is where Dante answers the question of
54

"hope" for us. As Neutrals, Gogo and Didi have passed through the Gate of Hell on which is written clearly and unequivocally: ". .. Abandon Every Hope, Ye That Enter."Yet, they persist in believing that they have an even chance to be saved or damned. Since they are not in Hell Proper, they keep hoping for the possibility of Purgatory. As long as they can hopeand that illusion alternated with moments of terrifying truthis part of their punishment-they can insist that "We'llbe saved" (60B). Thus, each time they think Godot is coming to render the verdict for eternity, one always hides in terror for they want to know yet dread knowing their Fate. If the final judgment is made, even the illusion of chance will end. Having been granted vision through the dramatic irony offered by Dante's function in the play, only the audience can realize that waiting for salvation is hopeless for Didi and Gogo. Forever longing for certainty, then, Didi looks for a source that can be trusted, an eyewitness account that will assure him of the possibility of salvation. In this context, the story of the two thieves crucified with Christ reinforces both fear and hope: ... Vladimir: Two thieves,crucifiedat thesametimeas ourSaviour. OneOur Estragon: what? Vladimir: Saviour.Two thieves.One is supposedto have been saved Our damned. Saved from what? Estragon: Vladimir: Hell. I'm Estragon: going. He does not move.
and the other . .. (he searches for the contrary of saved) . . .

(9)

The irony of calling Christ "Our Saviour" as they converse in the Inferno does not escape the poet, Estragon, who is also disturbed by the word "Hell." Vladimir's repression of the word "damned" is also telling. Again they waver between knowledge and denial of their condition even as Estragon equivocates between disgust with mankind's ignorance and his own desire to run from the truth. It is precisely for such refusal to face "reality"in life that they had put off repentence, which is a requirement for salvation in Dante's system. Not only does Didi "always wait till the last moment" to relieve his bladder (8), but they characteristically delayed the most important decision of life: Vladimir: Supposewe repented? Estragon: Repentedwhat? Oh Vladimir: ... (He reflects.)We wouldn'thave to go into the details. Our Estragon: being bor? (8B) They still refuse to recognize the errorswhich require their contrition and continue to blame their stars instead of themselves. Didi's allusion (8) to Solomon's words ("Hope deferred maketh the heart sick but when the desire cometh it is a tree of life") is indeed chilling when uttered by the Neutrals standing near a dead tree.
55

In the twilight shadows of their memory fragments, the only certain truth for them is that they are two bums who represent, as they did for Dante, "the waste and rubbish of the universe" (Inf., p. 54). They are assuredly "wretched souls"in a "miserablestate" (Inf., III, 11.34-35). Even the moon, Estragon observes, is "[p]ale for weariness ... [o]f climbing heaven and gazing on the likes of us" (34B). They exude a terrible stench, wear shabby clothes, and play foolish, if deadly serious, games to reflect the waste of their time on earth. It is a tribute to Beckett that we feel sorry for them even while disliking what they are and see ourselves in their images even while insisting on our differences. Beckett has indeed achieved what he proposed as possibility in "Dante and the Lobster":he has made up "Dante's rare movements of compassion in Hell." But only by focusing in on theJeutrals as individuals could Beckett have elicited such compassion for them and their condition. If the ambiguities associated with Gogo and Didi have been disquieting, Pozzo and Lucky have left audiences even more troubled. However, consistent with the dramatic and thematic integrity of this play, Canto III again offers some clarification. Dante's Neutrals are composed of both humans, like Didi and and a "caitiff choir of the angels" (Inf., III, 11. 37-38), the category Gogo, in which Lucky and Pozzo belong. Though they are hardly our conventional image of angels, we must remember that they have been sent down to the Neutrals' zone of Hell precisely for their deficiencies. According to the OED, the word "caitiff"describes both Lucky and Pozzo: "Acaptive, a prisoner";"A wretched miserable person"; "A base, mean, despicable 'wretch', a villain." Their identification with Dante's angels is even more explicit when Pozzo sobs, "He used to be so kind ... so helpful ... and entertaining ... my good angel ... and now ... he's killing me" (23). A "little cloud," traditional symbol of heavenly choirs, is later associated with Pozzo and Lucky (54). It is Lucky who has the running sore comparable to the bleeding eruptions that the Angel-Neutrals suffer from the wasps and hornets in Dante's third canto. And it is Lucky who sheds tears as do Dante's angels. Pozzo and Lucky, too, lose their intellect. When Dante describes the "abject... blind life" of the fallen angels (11. 46-47), he could well be speaking of Pozzo. And when Dante goes on to say that "Pity and justice despise them" (1.50), we are reminded of Pozzo's repeated cries for pity in Act II (50, 52B) as well as Estragon'sunanswered pleas for pity (49B) and Vladimir's for mercy (59). Pozzo's own ambiguity about his generic affiliation further strengthens his identification as a Neutral. Pozzo first comments: "(halting). You are human beings none the less.... Of the same species as myself. (He bursts into an enormous laugh.) Of the same species as Pozzo! Made in God's image!" (15B). Then, in referring to Lucky, Pozzo says: "He can no longer endure my presence. 1 am perhaps not particularly human, but who cares?" (19B). Later, Vladimir hesitates before calling Pozzo and Lucky "men" (59). The uncertainty of the Neutrals remains consistent. Despite this required confusion in the minds of the characters,their own speeches suggest something more definite to the audience. Originally, Lucky and Pozzo would have been human beings on earth and then,
5b

through repentance and purgation, eventually become Angels in the next world. After their "fall"from grace because they remained Neutral (like the Neutral Angels that originally watched the battle for Heaven between God and Lucifer), they resumed their human images in Hell and assumed the consequences for the errors of their earthly and heavenly lives. With Dante in mind, we can understand Didi's comment to be both literal and metaphoric when he says to Pozzo, "The two of you slipped. (Pause.) And fell" (56). Pozzo and Lucky, then, are angels, mortals, and neither in their new capacity as Neutrals. Their sin as Angels, like those of the humans in Canto III, was the inability to dedicate themselves to any external Ideal. Neither for nor against God but "for themselves" (Inf., III, 11. 37-39), Dante's angels concentrated on the "personal God" that Lucky mentions in his first-act speech. Didi reprimands Pozzo for that very failing: "He can think of nothing but himself" (53). Unlike Lucifer, the angel who actively opposed God and now resides in the lowest depths of Dante's Inferno, Lucky and Pozzo were incapable of action or decision-even on their own behalfand so are assigned to the realm of the Neutrals. Though Didi admonishes Pozzo for being self-centered, Didi and Gogo, as Neutrals, are each more involved in himself than in anyone else. Each is still more concerned for his own pain, as we see in Vladimir's reaction to Gogo's complaints: "No one ever suffers but you. I don't count. I'd like to hear what you'd say if you had what I have" (7B). Their self-interest is particularly evident in their competition for the salvation presumably accorded to only one of the thieves: Estragon:... God have pity on me! Vladimir: (vexed). And me? On Estragon: me! On me! Pity!On me!

(49B)

Significantly, while Gogo and Didi do not change from one act to another ("Estragon: They all change. Only we can't' [32]), there is a marked alteration in Pozzo and Lucky, and for good reason. Pozzo and Lucky in Act I are on their way to the fair, or, according to the French version, "the Market of the Holy Saviour"'0-ironic titles for the place of Judgement where the worth of each soul is determined and then tagged for the punishment that reflects the errors of mortality. (The term "fair"is a play on Justice, which is denied the Neutrals [Inf., III, 1. 50], while "the market of the Holy Saviour" toys with Salvation, which is also beyond reach.) They have likely just fallen into Hell; they have reverted to the characteristics of their identities on earth; and Pozzo naturally expects to "suffer" (26). Their sado-masochistic relationship becomes eternal dependence, and their human errors of warped vision and empty talk are later translated into Pozzo's blindness and Lucky's muteness. By taking away their strongest assets on earth, Beckett "neutralizes"their powers and fulfills all expectations for suffering. Thus, their style of physical punishment reflects their mortal sins, while their place in the third canto represents their heavenly errors." Hereafter, they too will be unable to change. Though their physical punishment is readily identifiable, Pozzo 57

and Lucky are not alone in their agony. The Boy, like Godot, serves as one more instrument of torture for Gogo and Didi. Traditional messenger of immortality and thus potential salvation, the Boy plays the same role as on earth: he defers hope (and hopelessness) and doesn't remember (or know) the meaning of anything. He is not even sure about Godot's beard: "I think it's white, Sir" (59) (Charon has "white hair"in Canto III, 1. 83). Tomorrow he may say something else, even as the Boy himself will be different, or says he is, and the tree may or may not have leaves. He becomes tied to Didi's and Gogo's equivocation in supporting the illusion of hope by promising eternally that Godot will come tomorrow. The horror is that Godot, simply one more aspect of their illusion and vacuity, is itself nothingness, the primary condition of the Neutral realm. The Boy then is the catalyst for and presides over a daily rite in which dread, disappointment, anticipation, and hope become both terrifying and cathartic. It is all enough to transform sanity into madness-and that is the point. Ironically, since everything must be equivocal and uncertain to the characters (for this is their punishment as Neutrals), all sense of an Absolute is withheld from them. However, not to be engulfed by their void of ambiguity is perhaps one of Beckett's implicit challenges to his audience. We are required to distinguish between the comic characters with shifting perceptions and their tragic state in the Inferno, the ultimate Absolute. The crucial paradox in Beckett's "tragicomedy,"then, is that the characters are in an immutable situation of anguish, despair, and punishment (tragedy) yet they retain the illusion of hope and eventual joy (comedy). Clearly the characters are absurd, funny, and uncertain, but the play's vision and meaning are not. In this regard, questions of religious significance in Godot can be answered. Expectably the play-with its ritualistic behavior, its allusions to God, Christ, angels, saints, prayer, supplication, and repentance-is sometimes read as a religious drama. After all, if we are in Dante's Hell, we must use the terms and images of that orthodox world. Yet, the religion for Beckett (and other authors who have seen Hell as a metaphor for human life'2) is as irrelevant as it was earlier when he appropriated the figure of Belacqua for his fiction. The Inferno simply permits Beckett to frame and present a condition of existence and the ethical issues and emotions arising out of that condition so that we may consider our own choices before it is too late. In damning these characters for what they are, Beckett indirectly posits alternatives for a life in which the values of mind, will, and action can be separate from theological structures. Obviously Beckett's use of the Inferno is more than just a provocative exercise in literary sources. By beginning in the Purgatory with Belacqua in his early work, then moving backwards to the Inferno as the setting for his dramas, Beckett presents concretely13 a philosophy in which the course of human life is perceived phylogenetically and ontogenetically in terms of a regressive evolution. For contrary to Dante's conception of man's capacity for growth and purification from the Inferno to Paradise, Beckett ignores spirituality and thereby reverses the process in his work. The direction backwards is determined by man's physical, psychological, social, and moral limitations. The disintegration of intellect
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is the the inevitable and final stage, though the mind hangs on to torture us with memories of what was and what might have been. This process is apparent in his individual works (i.e., MoUoy, Happy Days), in generic segments (i.e., the novels ending with the silence of L'lnnomable), and now in an entire canon ordered by Dante's structure and vision. Though Beckett's characters are empty and absurd (for they are the failures of human life), his drama is neither Nihilistic nor Absurdist. By using the structure and themes of the Comedy as the underlying system of his work-and the textual evidence that he does so in Godot is overwhelming-Beckett anchors his vision to an established conceptual and ethical convention. Consequently, if he sees life within a traditional system, though he reverses the system and even uses it ironically, he can hardly be accused of believing in nothing. Furthermore, using the Inferno to direct the order and meaning of his work implies the same rhetorical and didactic purpose imposed on drama throughout history. In fact, embedded in this Dantean paradigm of deserved retribution is the attitude which says that to overcome the obstacles of mortality-people who form us and perpetuate our weaknesses, our own innate isolation, selfishness, physicality, and ennui-might yet be the measure of one's life. Through Dante we realize that Beckett offers a semblance of possibility for the creative and courageous mind that dares to take its stand both aesthetically and ethically. And if we are stronger than a Didi or Gogo, we respond by making a choice and acting on that decision (like Beckett's "resistance"to the Nazis in WWII and later to the demands of a mass literary market). By imprisoning his characters in the Inferno, Beckett implies that each man's Hell is his own design in life and he has a choice if he would make it "in time." The suffering in life may not be diminished or mitigated and the physical disintegration will follow the same pattern for all men (or women), but the purpose of one's existence can be more than nothingness. In Waiting for Godot, then, Beckett has whispered a Dantean message through the screen of a modem Existential
world.14

University of Rhode Island NOTES I 1. SamuelBeckett,"Danteandthe Lobster," Can'tGo On,I'llGo On,Selected GrovePress,Inc., 1976),p. 17. and Intro.by RichardW. Seaver(New York: Thisstoryfirstappearedin 1932thenbecamethe firstselectionin MorePricks ThanKicks. 2. ForBeckett's interestin Dante'sDivineComedyandthe functionof enduring in the Purgatory's Belacqua hiswork,see DeirdreBair,SamuelBeckett(New Debt York: BraceJovanovich, Harcourt Inc., 1978); JohnFletcher,"Beckett's to Dante,"NottinghamFrenchStudies,IV (October1965),41-52;A. J. Leventhal,"TheBeckettHero,"Text of a lecturedeliveredat TrinityCollege, Dublin,June 1963(rpt.SamuelBeckett:A Collectionof CriticalEssays,Ed. MartinEsslin [Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,Inc., 1965], 37-51); WalterA. Strauss,"Dante'sBelacquaand Beckett'sTramps," Comparative P. "Beckett's XI Literature, (Summer1959),250-61; N. Furbank, Purgatory." 59

3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13.

14.

Encounter (June 1964), 69-72; Raymond Federman, "Beckett'sBelacqua and the Inferno of Society," The Arizona Quarterly, 20 (Autumn 1964), 231-41. See, for example, Samuel Beckett, Not I, rpt. Ends and Odds (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1976), p. 19, in which Mouth must talk endlessly with a "mouth on fire"; and, speaking of herself in the third person, she says, "first thought was ... oh long after ... sudden flash... she was being punished ... for her sins..." (16). Also, the shrouded May in Beckett's Footfalls, rpt. Ends and Odds, p. 48, will "never have done ... revolving it all," pacing forever within a small rectangular space the size of a grave. And that Endgame is yet another depiction of the Inferno can be supported by the text itself and by an anecdote in Bair'sbiography, Samuel Beckett, p. 484: Beckett insisted that the original Britishproduction of the play be "stark,grim, deadening, hopeless." To keep the play without humor or laughter was the "only 'level' necessary for understanding or acting" this drama, according to its author. Dante's Inferno, Trans. and comment. John D. Sinclair (1939;rpt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), Canto III, p. 47. Hereafter cited by canto and lines in the paper; Sinclair's commentaries cited by page numbers. To avoid imposing my own interpretation of Dante, I have used Sinclair'sconception to support my reading of Godot. Examination of other translations of the Inferno, from 1804 to the present, reveals differences only in emphasis as the inhabitants of Canto III are referred to as "the unhappy people" (Israel Gollancz); those "who had passed their time (for living it could not be called) in a state of apathy and indifference both to good and evil" (Henry Francis Cary); "the neither good nor bad" (Charles Eliot Norton); "pusillanimous ghosts" and "mediocrity" with "shifting and unstable minds" (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow); the "Futile"(Dorothy Sayers); and "Opportunists"(John Ciardi). Israel Gollancz, ed., Inferno (London: J. M. Dent, MDCCCCIV), p. 26. Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (New York:Grove Press, Inc., 1954), p. 8. Hereafter cited in the text by page numbers. For another modern version of Canto III, see T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, 11. 60-63. Seaver, I Can't Go On, p. xxxviii. The Dantean words, "sighs,lamentations, and wailings," are used throughout Godot: i.e., when Vladimir reprimands Gogo: "Will you stop whining! I've had about my bellyful of your lamentations" (46). Also see pp. 13B, 14B, 22B, 28, 41, and so on. Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd, rev. ed. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1969), p. 34. I am indebted to David Curtis for this distinction. i.e., Lucretius, Of the Nature of Things, trans. William Ellery Leonard (New York: E. P. Dutton, & Co., Inc., 1957), III, p. 127, wrote in the first century, B.C.: "And verily, these tortures said to be / In Acheron, the deep, they are all ours / Here in this life." Also, T. S. Eliot, Dante (London: Faber & Faber, 1929). What Beckett said about Joyce's Work in Progress explains his moving from fiction into drama to reenact Hell in Godot: "Here form is content, content is form . . . His writing is not about something; it is that something itself" [Beckett's italics] ("Dante ... Bruno. Vico ... Joyce," Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress [rpt. New York: New Directions Paperbook, 1972], p. 14). I wish to thank Professors Grace Farrell Lee and David Curtis for their perceptive criticisms and suggestions.

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