instruction for the speech of the final lines in Eh Joe (1965): 'Voice drops to whisper ..... petit lit pour son visage dans les pierres' illuminates Joe's act as one ...
KUMIKO KIUCHI
Oxymoronic Perception and the Experience of Genre: Samuel Beckett’s Ghost Trio, . . . but the clouds . . . and Beyond
The real presence was a pest because it did not give the imagination a break. Without going as far as Stendhal, who said – or repeated after somebody – that the best music (What did he know about music anyway?) was the music that became inaudible after a few bars, we do declare and maintain stiffly (at least for the purposes of this paragraph) that the object that becomes invisible before your eyes is, so to speak, the brightest and best. . . (Beckett, 2001, 44) Forcer l’invisibilité foncière des choses extérieures jusqu’à ce que cette invisibilité elle-même devienne chose, non pas simple conscience de limite, mais une chose qu’on peut voir et faire voir, et le faire, non pas dans la tête . . . mais sur la toile . . . (Beckett, 2001, 130) Beckett’s writing is haunted by the imperceptible object, the imperceptibility of the object and the process by which the object becomes imperceptible. His essays on literature and art repeatedly DOI: 10.3366/E0309520709000284
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discuss the status of the relationship between subject and object. For instance, ‘Recent Irish Poetry’ illuminates the breakdown of object and subject, which ultimately leads to a ‘rupture of the lines of communication’ (Beckett, 2001, 70), whilst his appreciation of the work of the brothers van Velde in ‘Peintres de l ’empêchement’ derives from these artists’ creation of ‘le nouvel objet’, marked by their awareness of ‘l’absence de rapport et dans l’absence d’objet’ (Beckett, 2001, 137). It is similarly marked by their obligation to materialise the absence or invisibility of this relationship: ‘cette invisibilité elle-même devienne chose.’ The absence of a relationship between subject and object, according to Beckett, creates confusion, a ‘mess’ or ‘buzzing’ in our understanding of the world. Later in the same interview Beckett acknowledges that the task of the artist in his time is ‘to find a form that accommodates the mess’ (Driver, 1979, 218–19). Indeed, Beckett’s work can be seen as an exploration of ways of acknowledging a rupture between subject and object, as well as an attempt to find a form of expression for this relationship. The question is not what subject and object are, but how Beckett treated the breakdown of both in his work. This paper argues that the oxymoronic expression is an essential key to understanding Beckett’s approach to this question. When Belacqua criticises ‘the real presence’ and embraces ‘the best music’ that ‘becomes inaudible’ and the object ‘that becomes invisible’, he is more interested in ‘a break’ in imagination than in imagination itself, whose form is constructed by intellect or apperception. In other words, ‘a break’ should take our perception beyond the border of a conventional understanding of the world. Indeed, the oxymoronic expression, such as inaudible music and an invisible object, appears to lead us to a linguistic break. Its characteristic of combining or identifying ‘seemingly contradictory or incongruous things’ suspends our understanding of meaning. Furthermore, it can also evoke, as Herson suggests, the ‘extra-sensory and extrarational because its incongruous combination of images and ideas forces us to feel and think beyond habitual experience and outside the consistent structures of language and thought’ (Herson, 371). In brief, a linguistic oxymoronic expression can suspend the form of the object perceived by our perception and might allow our perception to encounter a new form of object.
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Beckett explores the oxymoronic expression most extensively in his television plays. The door ‘imperceptibly ajar’ (Beckett, 1986a, 408) in Ghost Trio (1975) can be regarded as a sign of spectrality whose increasing influence, according to Wulf, overwhelms the world of the protagonist toward the end of the play (Wulf, 144).1 In . . . but the clouds . . . (1976) a male figure is ‘sitting on invisible stool bowed over invisible table’ and a stage direction instructs that the female face in the play utters her words ‘inaudibly’ (Beckett, 1986a, 417, 421). This oxymoronic expression resonates with an instruction for the speech of the final lines in Eh Joe (1965): ‘Voice drops to whisper, almost inaudible except words in italics’ (Beckett, 1986a, 366). Paradoxically, these instructions reveal that the scripts of the plays, which I will call texts, are incompatible with the medium of television. As Clément accurately observes, the table and stool cannot be perceived by the audience; they can only be perceived by the reader of the text (Clément, 97–8). In other words, the oxymoronic expression can be considered a site where language, image and sound are grafted onto each other or as a border marking the transmutation of the reader into the audience and vice versa. This paper will argue that in Beckett’s television plays, the oxymoronic expression emerges as the relationship between language and perception or text, image and sound.2 A close study of Ghost Trio and . . . but the clouds . . . elicits the oxymoronic expression of imperceptible objects as the site where the incongruity between language and audiovisual representation materialises in the form of a ghost or spectre. In Beckett’s stage play Ohio Impromptu (1980), in turn, the oxymoronic expression discloses its genealogy in the constellation of voice, face and stone. I demonstrate this point by also touching on Eh Joe and What Where. Finally, the paper reevaluates Beckett’s experiments with different media, and discusses the role of oxymoronic expressions in shaping our perception of Beckett’s work.
1. Ghost Trio: ‘imperceptibly ajar’3 In the television play Ghost Trio, a stage direction in the text instructs the reader that the door and window are ‘imperceptibly ajar’ (door: I.13; window I.15). On the visual level, the window and
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the door are not open except for a moment when the male figure (F) opens them (II.8–12, II.33–4, III.7–11 [door]; II.14–18, III.14–18 [window]). More precisely, neither window nor door appears to exist in the chamber from the general view A, for their colour is so identical to that of the wall that their shape is not perceptible on screen. The close-up rectangles are not easily distinguishable from the images of the floor or the wall (I.3–9) without the female voice (V) naming these individual items for the spectator: ‘Door’ (I.12) or ‘Window’ (I.14). The substance of these rectangles enforces the sense of their inexistence or illusional character – they look like a projection of light onto the wall rather than material entities. The comparison between this visual representation and the oxymoronic expression, ‘imperceptibly ajar’, clarifies the incompatibility between the text and the televisual medium; namely that the oxymoronic expression inscribed in the text cannot accurately be given visual expression, for the oxymoronic expression is a super-sensory linguistic expression. Thus we can understand that Beckett’s deliberate use of the oxymoronic expression in this stage direction raises questions about the possibility and impossibility of grafting language onto vision. The association between visual and sound representation illuminates the difference between the window and the door. The difference becomes evident in Act III when F’s gesture of opening them is captured from the close-up viewpoint, C. When F opens the window in Act III, it is accompanied by the sound of the rain; when F closes it, the sound dies out. At this moment, the shape of the window appears as a clear rectangle darker than the colour of the wall. In other words, the openness of the window is literally ‘perceived’ by the combination of image and sound. The representation of the window does not allow for the possibility of its being ‘imperceptibly ajar.’ Concerning the door, however, the combination of image and sound is more complex. The door remains invisible from the perspective of C. F opens the door because F ‘thinks he hears her’, only to find a dark empty corridor. The repetition of this movement (II.2–4, II.33–4) underlines the incongruity between the inaudible sounds heard in F’s consciousness and the visible absence of ‘her.’ The expression ‘imperceptibly ajar’ can be understood to refer to the imperceptible premonition of her appearance. Moreover, the door, unlike the window, transmits the sounds without being open. The sounds of
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the footsteps and the two knocks by the boy come through the door: we can see this as coming through a door ‘imperceptibly ajar’, which retrospectively articulates the door’s imperceptible openness. In this respect, the music is crucial to our understanding of the function of imperceptibility in Ghost Trio. In Acts I and II, the source of the music is coherently identified as the tape recorder held by F, because the music grows louder as the camera approaches it. Besides, the music can also be associated with the door, for it exclusively accompanies the close-up of the door, as if coming through it (I.2, I.23). Subsequently, the music we hear can be thought of as a materialisation of the music heard by F as a premonition of ‘her’ appearance. Indeed, the sounds of the faint music trigger F’s opening of the door (III.1–6). This gesture is a recapitulation of the lines in Act II where, instead of the music, V announces the possibility of the woman’s appearance, and F opens the door. If the music is a substitute for V, it may be that V is the voice of the woman F is waiting for; and the replacement of the voice by the music suggests that she is moving away from F rather than approaching him. Finally, toward the end of Act III the volume of the music increases and decreases irrespective of the distance between the camera and the tape recorder, and thus denies any determinacy in the music’s reference to any concrete object. Music here gains its pure objectivity, and at the same time expresses its polysemy. The only certainty is that the music, more radically than the footsteps and the knocks which are associated with the image of the boy, makes the ultimate gesture of suggesting and alluding to the imperceptible openness of the door. The door is the site where different worlds are grafted together; the world of language and perception and the world of the perceptible and the imperceptible. The imperceptible openness is revealed only by following the etymology of the word ‘ajar’, the hinge or border between the two worlds ‘a’ (at) ‘char’ (turn). By contrast, the music itself has no substance; only the grafting of different worlds endows the music with a connection to the world of vision. In other words, the music paradoxically can give expression to an oxymoronic expression marking the border between language and audiovisual media. If the door ‘imperceptibly ajar’ elicits the camera’s blind spot, the mirror illuminates the blind spot of V, whose naming endows
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the items in the chamber with their perceptibility. From viewpoint A, there is no mirror-like square on the left corner of the chamber; and V does not mention it, until its imperceptible presence is suggested by scene II.21. When F stops in front of the wall and looks into it, V raises the tone of her voice and utters an expression of surprise (II.22). Here F’s movement exceeds V’s expectation and even compels the voice to violate its own rule announced at the beginning – ‘It [the voice] will not be raised nor lowered whatever happens’ (I.2). This moment reveals that V and E, seemingly so complementary as to constitute one coherent perception in Acts I and II, are in fact two separate elements in the play. Nevertheless, a closer analysis of images increases the ambiguous status of the mirror as a mirror. Initially, when we first encounter it, it is uncertain that the mirror, which looks like a piece of cloth covering a small part of the left wall from viewpoint C, is a mirror. The sequence of F’s looking into it and the close-up of his face appearing on screen leads us to realise it as a mirror. Yet, the ambiguity remains. The image of the rectangle does not reflect light; its surface has a muddy texture. More importantly, F’s looking into it is followed by a close-up of his face. It may be that this image is reflected in the mirror, yet we cannot deny the possibility that this image is a mere close-up of F’s actual face. Here the distinction between the real and the imaginary cannot easily be established. Neither does the camera simultaneously capture F and F’s reflection in the mirror; nor does F’s gesture give a sense of orientation (right and left). The image of the face, deprived of any relation and orientation in space, suggests that the mirror, like the door imperceptibly ajar, is invisible, yet can be open to the vision that blurs the border between the real world and the imaginary world. This image of F’s face appears in contrast with the other image of F’s face at the very end of the play. Whilst the former blinks and lowers his head to avoid the camera eye, the latter gazes to the front, without blinking, with a grin.4 This contrast introduces a fundamental change at the end of the play. The close-up of the boy’s face is accompanied by the following stage direction: ‘White face raised to invisible F. Boy shakes head faintly’ (III.32). This instruction on the invisibility of F’s face does not simply mean F is out of the camera eye; the absence of F is not described as ‘invisibility’ either in the close-up of the corridor (III.9) or that of
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the window (III.14) or pallet (III.20). In receding down the corridor, the boy’s face, without blinking, fixes on the front until his body and his face dissolve in darkness. It may be that the door is not only a boundary between the perceptible and the imperceptible, but also a border between the living and the dead. The mirror, perhaps, has removed the border between the perceptible and the imperceptible and merged the world of the living with the timeless world of the dead. A face without blinking embodies the cessation of time. It is visually perceived and is open to interpretation but, at the same time, it suggests the materialisation of the perceptible imperceptibility of the ghost.
2. . . . but the clouds . . . : ‘On invisible stool bowed over invisible table’ In the television play . . . but the clouds . . . there are two stage directions containing oxymoronic expressions. One is about the man (M): ‘Near shot from behind of man sitting on invisible stool bowed over invisible table’ (Beckett, 1986a, 417); the other about the close-up of the woman’s face (W): ‘woman’s lips move, uttering inaudibly’ (l. 38, 49). The stool and table function in a similar way to the door in Ghost Trio, in that they exist as words in the text but, once transferred to the screen, they become nonexistent. The difference is that whilst the door is named ‘door’ by the voice and articulated as a ‘door’, the stool and table are not even named – they simply do not exist because they are not perceived. This oxymoronic expression again illuminates the untranslatable quality of language into the audiovisual medium. The second oxymoronic expression ‘uttering inaudibly’ is more engaged with the translatable aspect and the spectral effect of the oxymoronic expression. On the linguistic level, the combination of the word ‘utter’ – whose meaning is to make a sound and whose etymology is to ‘make known’ (‘uteren’ in Latin) – and the word ‘inaudibly’ is incongruent. On the visual level this note corresponds to the image of W who moves her lips without uttering any sound. In itself this image does not show any incongruence inherent in the oxymoronic expression as a linguistic expression. The incongruence between vision and audition is articulated only when the male voice, V, utters words in unison with the movement
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of W’s lips. V can either hear W’s inaudibly uttered words and read them out from the movement of her lips or dub them with his own words. This necessarily leads us to question the relationship between V and W. In order to understand this relationship, it is crucial to identify V’s status. According to the text, V is ‘M’s voice’ (Beckett, 1986a, 417). V reflects repeatedly on the emergence of W as if he were trying to describe it as accurately as possible. M1, the image of ‘M in set’ walking from west to east in a greatcoat, walking from west to east in a nightcap, appears as a visual dictation in V’s mind. V’s clear signposting of the emergence of M1, such as ‘Let us now make sure we have got it right’ (1.17), and ‘Let us run through it again’ (l.41), suggests his full control over the representation on screen. By contrast, the image of M is obscure. Contrary to the text, which establishes the integrity between M, M1 and V, the audiovisual representation fragments their identity by contrasting V’s strong vocal presence and M’s barely identifiable lump of presence in the darkness. The screen is presented as a site where the three fragments, M, M1 and V, come together in attempting to achieve their impossible identification. Equally the relationship between W and V is ambivalent. At times, V seems to have control over the apparition of W, while at others W appears like an ephemeral daydream independent of V’s speech. W appears four times in the play:
1. After M1 appears in a nightgown from the east shadow and moves to the north shadow called ‘my sanctum’, and during the time he stays in ‘my sanctum’ (l.22); 2. In V’s meditation on three (out of four) possible versions of the apparition of W after M1 finishes his first round of movements from west to east, from east to north, from north to east, from east to west (l.38); 3. After M1’s second round of movements – a situation which is identical to 1, and the reaction of W, which is identical to 2 (l.44–51); 4. At the very end of the text after the completion of the second round of movements interrupted by 3, and after V announces the fourth most likely possibility, which is that W never appears (l.56–57).
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It is in 2 and 3 that W’s lips utter inaudibly. In these two cases V recites the same phrase from W. B. Yeats’ poem Tower: ‘ . . . clouds . . . but the clouds . . . of the sky . . . ’ (l.38, l.49). The repetition of this pattern adds to V’s clear signposting such as ‘Right’ (I.26) or ‘Let us now distinguish three cases’ (I.28) to suggest that W’s image and words are in fact part of V’s speech. Nevertheless, a difference between images 2 and 3 illuminates V’s ignorance of W’s apparition. Compared to image 2, image 3 lingers longer on screen as if responding to the pleading of the voice: ‘Look at me’ (l.47). This gaze evokes V’s recitation of the poem. However, W suddenly disappears when V begs W to ‘Speak to me’ (l.50), as if W were suggesting to V that she can only be seen, not heard (l.50). This exchange between V with W illustrates that her face is visually perceived, as is her inaudibly uttered words. As the words are inaudible, the only way for the audience to know her uttering is by V’s voicing – we understand that his voicing corresponds to his hearing. If W communicates with V, it is only through vision, not through audition. In others words, the inaudibly uttered words are seen rather than heard. Ironically, V, identified as M in the text, has no eye of its own – it is deprived of such corporeality. Images 1 and 4 introduce more complexity to the above analysis. With the emergence of image 1, the voice utters the following: ‘For had she never once appeared, all that time, would I have, could I have, gone on begging, all that time?’ (l.24). What this announcement attests to is that the voice actually does not quite perceive the first apparition of the face. Its elusiveness haunts V and leads him to continue begging for this apparition to appear again. On the other hand, in image 4 V over-perceives or misreads W. V not only reads the words on the lips when they do not move but also utters the words that are never read. V does not stop at ‘. . . but the clouds of the sky . . . ’ but continues uttering the words which have never been read on W’s face: ‘. . . when the horizon fades . . . or a bird’s sleepy cry . . . ’ (l.57). This analysis provides enough hints to suggest that the interactions between V and W describe a process in which W becomes a text for V. In image 2, V perceives the movement of W’s lips, and dictates the ‘inaudibly uttered’ or visually perceived words into audible speech. However, this dictation deprives W of her ambiguity, and allows V to appropriate W as a text which is
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already read. This leads to image 3 where the combination of V’s utterance of the verse and W’s apparition is repeated to confirm that V’s reading and W’s apparition are now unified. Thus V disregards the absence of movements on W’s lips and continues the verse on his own. What is forgotten here is image 1 – the face fleeing from V’s perception. Despite images 2, 3 and 4, image 1 witnesses this oblivion and leads the face to the double-sided gesture of its oxymoronic expression – being exposed to reading as well as showing its impossibility, namely the readability of the letters on the face and its the evasiveness-forgetfulness-unreadability. By contrast, the invisibility of the table and stool appears paradoxical only to the reader of the text. This leads us to draw a parallel between V and the audience. In the same way that V reads the ‘inaudibly uttered’ invisible words on W’s face, it may be that the audience is also able to perceive M not as the owner of V but as a shadow, and that the invisible table and stool attests to the almostimperceptible presence of M himself. It may be that M is an elusive apparition like W, and that V’s speech, heard by the audience, is only inaudibly uttered.
3. Ohio Impromptu: ’Saw the dear face and heard the unspoken words’ The theatre piece Ohio Impromptu further elaborates on the problem of grafting together language and perception by contrasting the world of the book, in which the narrator recounts a memory of ‘the dear face’, and that of the performance, in which Reader (hereafter R) reads from the book to Listener (hereafter L). The oxymoronic expression is in the world of the book and repeated four times with some variations: ‘Seen (446)/ I saw (447)/ saw (447) the dear face and heard the unspoken words.’ The adjective ‘unspoken’ qualifies the noun ‘words.’ The French translation of ‘unspoken’, ‘muet’ (Beckett, 1986b, 62), clarifies that the ‘unspoken’ is silent. The combination of hearing and the silent words is oxymoronic. Furthermore, the significance of this expression can be applied to the grafting of language onto performance. When R reads out these lines from the book, the unspoken words of the dear face
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are ‘spoken’ and they deliver a very concrete set of words: ‘Stay where we were so long alone together [ . . . ]’ (446) or ‘No need to go to him ever again [ . . . ]’ (447). These words may exist in the book before being read out. To the audience, however, these words do not exist till they are mediated by R’s reading. The unspoken words are articulated as words when R’s speaking intervenes. This is completed by L’s listening signaled by knocking on the table. Thus ‘heard the unspoken words’ in the text, mediated by R’s speech, becomes ‘hearing the spoken words’ through L’s listening. This is exactly the same structure as the relationship between V (the voice of M), W’s face and her inaudibly uttered words in . . . but the clouds . . . . The content conveyed by the phrase ‘heard the unspoken words’ is different from the phrase ‘inaudibly uttering.’ The former is ‘not uttered’ but ‘heard’, whilst the latter is ‘uttered’ but not ‘heard.’ Yet, in both cases the act of ‘reading out’ makes these words heard. The text is the site of the unspoken; the performance is the site of perception; the acts of speaking and listening mediate the two. The oxymoronic expression is the embodiment of this border or boundary. The figure of the face, ‘the dear face’, on the one hand concerns the act of reading and misreading, and, on the other, elucidates the relationship between the text and the performance in Ohio Impromptu. In the world of the book ‘the dear face’ emerges twice. The first appearance is in the narrator’s dream. The appearance of the face feels immediate, like the experience of the dream. It is so immediate and so autonomous as to be indivisible and indescribable. The second appearance occurs at night. This appearance, mediated by the messenger, differs from the first. Whilst the first one is simply an unmediated apparition, the second is invoked by the messenger’s utterance of the ‘dear name.’ The dreamlike quality of the dear face is now replaced by the dear name and deprived of any ambiguity. The difference between dream and reality is also marked by the words delivered by the dear face. In the dream the dear face shows her will to accompany the narrator, ‘Stay where we were so long alone together, my shade will comfort you’, whereas in reality her gesture is negative: ‘No need to go to him ever again, even were it in your power’ (Beckett, 1986a, 446, 447). Moreover, the narrator receives the message directly from the face in his dream,
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but in reality he does it indirectly through the messenger. In this respect the border between dream and reality is clear. However, this border is obscured by the function of the messenger. The messenger mediates between the dear face and the narrator, and addresses him directly and ‘comforts’ him night after night by reading from a book. This suggests that the messenger replaces the dear face’s role: ‘my shade will comfort you.’ The delivery of the message announces the negative gesture of the dear face and reveals its eternal loss experienced in the dream. By delivering the message, the messenger completes his mission and ceases to be a messenger. This moment of loss is expressed by the merging of the narrator and the messenger into one. So both the messenger and the narrator ‘sat on as though turned to stone’ (448)/ ‘Ainsi restère assis comme devenus de pierre’ (Beckett, 1986b, 66). In the indirect manner the imperative of the dear face in the dream becomes a reality in the present; the narrator and the messenger ‘stay’ where they are and will be ‘so long alone together.’ This image of the messenger refers us back to the final phase of Ohio Impromptu. When R repeats the phrase, ‘Nothing is left to tell’, he no longer reads from the book. The boundary between the world of the book and that of the stage starts to collapse. This is followed by L’s knock, the sole sign of communication between the two, to which R no longer responds. Thereafter, R and L, at first, sitting still with their heads down, gradually and synchronically move their heads up and ‘look at each other. Unblinking. Expressionless’ (Beckett, 1986a, 448). It is tempting to call this final tableau a ‘mirror image’ but, if the mirror image represents the face of the living whose eyes blink, as seen in Ghost Trio, the expression of these faces resembles the close-up of the grin in Ghost Trio or that of W’s unblinking face in . . . but the clouds . . . . We see in the expression of the face the disappearing border between the living and the dead. The final lines of Eh Joe suggest that the petrifaction of the narrator and the messenger who ‘sat on as though turned to stone’ in Ohio Impromptu is not merely a metaphor but a real landscape. After the allusion to the suicide in the sea of the woman who was Joe’s love, we hear she lies ‘down in the end with her face a few feet from the tide’ on the shingle and ‘scoops a little cup for her face in the stones’ (Beckett, 1986, 366). The French translation ‘Creuse un petit lit pour son visage dans les pierres’ illuminates Joe’s act as one
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of burying her body (Beckett, 1972, 90). Here the death of animate flesh meets the image of inanimate stone. I quote the French text because it illuminates the image of the grave more explicitly. Maintenant imagine. . . Imagine. . . Le visage dans les pierres . . . les lèvres sur une pierre. . . Une pierre. . . Joe à bord. . . La grève dans l’ombre. . . Joe Joe. . . Aucun son. . . Pour les pierres. . . Les pierres. . . Dis-le, Joe, personne ne t’écoute. . . Dis « Joe », ça desserre les lèvres. . . Les lèvres. . . Imagine les mains. . . Imagine. . . Le solitaire. . . Contre une pierre. . . Une pierre. . . Imagine les yeux. . . les yeux. . . (. . . ) les seins. . . Dans les pierres. . . Les mains. . . Jusqu’au départ. . . Imagine les mains. . . Imagine. . . A quoi est-ce qu’elles jouent. . . Dans les pierres. . . Les pierres. . . (Beckett, 1972, 91).5 The location of the face ‘in the stones’ suggests her body is now literally covered with the stones. The only sign of the woman is the ‘lips on a stone’ beside which Joe sits. The stone is renamed ‘the grave’ which calls Joe’s name: ‘ “Joe Joe” . . . No sound [. . . ]’ (Beckett, 1986a, 366). The final image is a close-up of Joe’s unblinking eyes and the enigmatic grin on his face, which recalls F in Ghost Trio. The female voice continues to speak beyond the grave. Face, stone and death find their final resolution in What Where (1983).6 In the 1985 version of the text, produced by SDR in Germany, the faces of the characters are ghostly. ‘The mirror reflection of BAM’s face’ (Beckett, 1999, 409) absorbed in his memories with his eyes closed, occupies half of the top-left corner of the screen. All the other faces appear at the bottom right of the screen. On a textual level Bam is the subject of remembering and the others are the content of his memory (Ackerley and Gontarski, 640–2). On the visual level, however, all these faces are lined up in the dark, as if there were no border between the two, like the erased border between the text and the performance in Ohio Impromptu. Their front-facing gazes suggest that there is no need for them to perceive each other; their open mouths merge into the black background. Their final task, which is to ‘confess’ ‘what’ and ‘where’, is never completed. In a place where ‘there is nothing left to tell’ these faces can ‘acknowledge’ – the original meaning of ‘confiteri (confess)’ – neither what nor where. Their expressionless
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and unblinking faces suggest that they have nothing to perceive and that there is nothing to perceive them. Their faces disappear into the dark with their task undone as if their faces could no longer be read. Nevertheless, their repeated appearance on screen leaves an invisible trace. After Bam says ‘I switch off’ and his image disappears, the audience is left with the imperative, ‘Make sense who may’ (476). By becoming invisible, these faces take on something of the quality of gravestones.7 The gravestone neither represents nor symbolises the dead. It materialises the invisibility of those who are gone; the gone-ness of the dead. In Beckett’s television plays, the paradox of the oxymoronic relation between language and the audiovisual medium is dissolved through the spectralisation of the oxymoronic object. A spectral image appears at the limit of any possibility of a relationship between language and perception, the perceptible and the imperceptible, the living and the dead. Although no such relationship can finally be achieved, Beckett’s television plays beautifully materialise the struggle to bring it about on the screen.8
NOTES 1. This oxymoronic expression is also known in an episode in which Beckett tried literally to capture the door imperceptibly ajar on screen, realised its impossibility and shut the door. 2. For the technological approach to this problem in Beckett’s work, see Anna McMullan (170). 3. For reference purposes, line numbers are cited for Ghost Trio and . . . but the clouds . . . My comments on the audiovisual aspects of the work are based on Geistertrio and . . . Nur Noch Gewölk. . . . directed by Samuel Beckett, broadcast on Süddeutscher Rundfunk, Stuttgart, in May 1977. Before the German version the English version directed by Donald McWhinnie and supervised by Beckett were broadcast in The Lively Arts on BBC2 on 17 April 1977. My analysis focuses on the German version for the perceptual ambiguity is more striking and coherent to my analysis. 4. The grin is a recurrent image in Beckett’s late work. A study of the genealogy of “grin” in Beckett’s work and television plays should be separately developed. Gilles Deleuze also briefly touches upon the motif of grin in L’Epuisé (93).
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5. The English text is as follows. “Now imagine . . . . Before she goes . . . . Face in the cup . . . . Lips on a stone . . . . Taking Joe with her . . . . Light gone . . . . ‘Joe Joe’ . . . . No sound . . . . To the stones . . . . Say it you now, no one’ll hear you . . . . Say ‘Joe’ it parts the lips . . . Imagine the hands. . . . The solitaire. . . . Against a stone . . . . Imagine the eyes. . . . Spiritlight . . . .Month of June . . . .What year of your Lord? . . . . Breasts in the stone. . . . And the hands . . . . Before they go . . . . Imagine the hands. . . . What are they at? . . . In the stones . . . . “ (Beckett, 1986a, 366–367). Beckett heavily rewrote this part of the text whilst directing different productions. For an explanation of the development of Beckett’s manuscript (see C. Ackerley, and S. E. Gontarski, 163–4). 6. Beckett originally wrote this piece for theatre and heavily rewrote it whilst later directing the television version. For more details on Beckett’s revised texts, see Gontarski’s extensive notes on What Where (Beckett, 1999, 405–58). My analysis is based on the German version Was Wo directed by Beckett and broadcast by SDR on his eightieth birthday. I also consulted the English production What Where by Magic Theatre, San Francisco, directed by S. E. Gontarski in April 1994 (See the University of Reading Archive: UoR MS 4139). 7. This choreography resonates with one of the five prints entitled “Stones” made by Avigdor Arikha for the illustrated version of Beckett’s ‘Au loin un oiseau’ in Duncan Thomson and Stephen Coppel (62). The rough texture of the surface of the stones, especially the two placed at the centre of the print, not only expresses its materiality but at the same time evokes an impression of the human face. 8. I gratefully acknowledge Peter Boxall, Rina Kim, Ulrika Maude and David Pattie, for helpful comments and suggestions on the early versions of the article, as well as Julian Garforth for his advice at the Samuel Beckett Archive at University of Reading, UK, Anthony Barnett and Heba Youssef for proofing, and Kazuhiro Shimizu for their discussions.
WORKS CITED Ackerley, C., and S. E. Gontarski (eds) (2004), The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett, Grove Press: New York. Beckett, Samuel (1972), Comédie et actes divers, Paris: Les Editions de minuit. Beckett, Samuel (1986a), Complete Dramatic Works. London: Faber and Faber. Beckett, Samuel (1986b), Catastrophe et autres dramaticules, Paris: Les Editions de minuit.
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Beckett, Samuel (1992), ‘Quad’ et autres pièces pour la télévision suivi de ‘L’Epuisé’ par Gilles Deleuze, Paris: Les Editions de minuit. Beckett, Samuel (2001), Disjecta, ed. Ruby Cohn, London: John Calder Ltd. Beckett, Samuel (1999), Theatrical Notebooks vol. 4 Shorter Plays, ed. S. E. Gontarski, New York: Faber and Faber. Clément, Bruno (1994), ‘Nébuleux Object (à propos de . . . but the clouds . . . )’, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui 4, pp. 93–102. Deleuze, Gilles (1992), ‘L’Epuisé.’ ‘Quad’ et autres pièces pour la télévision suivi de ‘L’Epuisé’ par Gilles Deleuze, Paris: Les Editions de minuit, pp. 55–106. Driver, Tom (1979), ‘Tom Driver in Columbia University Forum’, in R. Federman and L. Graver (eds), Samuel Beckett: The Critical Heritage, Routledge: New York, pp. 217–23. Herson, Ellen Brown (1990), ‘Oxymoron and Dante’s Gates of Hell in Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound’, Studies in Romanticism 29:3, pp. 371–93. McMullan, Anna (2002), ‘Virtual Subjects: Performance, Technology and the Body in Beckett’s Late Theatre’, Journal of Beckett Studies 10:1/2, pp. 165–172. Thompson, Duncan and Stephen Coppel (2006), Avigdor Arikha From Life; Drawing and Prints 1965–2005, London: The British Museum Press. Wulf, Catharina (1994), ‘La voie de la Über-Marionnette’, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourdhui 4, pp. 139–48.
