All posts tagged Denys Hawthorne

Lessness by Samuel Beckett (1970)

Never but dream the days and nights made of dreams of other nights better days. He will live again the space of a step it will be day and night again over him the endlessness.

Beckett’s writings as antidote to the modern world

Sometime around 1802, that’s to say 220 years ago, William Wordsworth wrote:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

And nowadays, via smartphones and social media, probably the majority of the population has invited the world right inside their brains, addicting many people to the mini-dopamine hits created by an unending stream of updates on every aspect of an over-wired world, from their friends’ latest makeup secrets to attempted coups in America. Surveys show that people check their smartphones every 12 minutes and spend two and a half hours a day staring at their tiny screens.

Beckett is an antidote to all this. In a world where everything is reduced to easily assimilable, shorter and shorter bite-sized snippets designed to provoke the crudest emotions of mirth or outrage, Beckett’s texts are messages from another planet, one right on the edge of known experience or comprehension. The mere fact that each reader struggles to make sense of many of Beckett’s works, or to make their own sense of it, is a blessèd relief.

Beckett’s nihilism has a place but isn’t the whole story

I can see that the ostensible ‘content’ of much of Beckett often circles around ideas of physical decrepitude, mental collapse, describes human relations which have decayed into the grave and beyond, allegorical figures crawling through mud for years or trapped inside tiny white spaces.

  • Blank planes sheer white calm eye light of reason all gone from mind.
  • Head through calm eye all light white calm all gone from mind.
  • Face to calm eye touch close all calm all white all gone from mind.

And many people respond to his insistent imagery of collapse, decay and futility very strongly – in a positive way if it helps express their own sense of futility, or very negatively if they find his unceasing emphasis on collapse, decay and futility too negative and depressing to handle.

But for me literature is first and foremost about words and how they are deployed. As a middle-aged man whose family has been through various stresses and traumas, I understand where his content is coming from, I can appreciate its grimness, I witnessed at first hand the physical and mental decline and gruelling deaths of my parents, I sometimes feel in myself the symptoms of decay he writes about – all of that is very vividly captured in text after text.

But I also know the world is huge and contains an enormous range of happy and joyful human experiences as well, which are never covered in his writings and that a healthy mental attitude has space for both. My father’s dementia was real and upsetting but it didn’t negate the joy and happiness of playing with my baby son.

Beckett’s subject matter has its place in what you could call a total overview of the human condition, but it is not the be-all and end-all of the human condition. It is one take (a very powerful, haunting take) on one aspect of human existence.

Beckett’s language as a liberation from sense

I’m struggling to express the idea that you can fully and deeply read his works, especially the prose works, without being depressed by them. The opposite. Although the ostensible subject matter may be about mental collapse and decay, the language it is written in and the elaborate structures he creates with his stylised language, can be fantastically liberating.

One way of thinking about it is that Beckett writes at an angle away from ordinary life as most of us live it, in a style of language which is just over the horizon of how any of us think or create sentences, read or write or talk, ourselves – and so it consistently shows us other ways, other possibilities of mental life.

If we take these two elements, style and content – the title of this piece, Lessness, clearly indicates its continuity with Beckett’s interest in collapse, inanition, sparsity and the minimal. In fact it is an attempt to translate the French word Sans which is the title of the original French version of the piece. Possibly Lessness is less good than Sans. At first sight it seems a bit obvious, like a bit of a cliché, another predictable iteration of Beckett’s core theme.

But the actual text is anything but a cliché. The text is something as weird and different now as it was 50 years ago. Here’s the first sentence:

Ruins true refuge long last towards which so many false time out of mind.

It feels like the words are themselves the ruins of longer sentences which once made sense. Maybe it can be parsed as: the ruins are the true refuge towards which, at long last, the speaker or voice or sentence is heading towards after so many false starts, which have been going on time our of mind.

This trope, the endless attempts to start again and try to end an account, to complete a narrative, can’t go on, must go on, features in numerous Beckett texts and is (for me) best expressed in the brilliant radio play Cascando. The central idea is familiar – but if you open your mind to the flow of the words they, for me, open up new mental vistas:

Ruins true refuge long last towards which so many false time out of mind. All sides endlessness earth sky as one no sound no stir. Grey face two pale blue little body heart beating only upright. Blacked out fallen open four walls over backwards true refuge issueless.

Carl Andre’s Equivalents

It’s another example of the central Beckett technique of repetition: ‘Develop a set of key words or phrases. Repeat with variations.’ The technique is cognate with musical composition but words are not music. The technique is closer to minimalist art.

When I was a boy, in 1976, there was a firestorm of criticism in the philistine press at the fact that the Tate Gallery had paid £2,300 for an artwork by minimalist artist Carl Andre titled Equivalent VIII. The eight equivalents consist of 120 firebricks arranged in different simple geometric shapes. Personally I think they’re, well I won’t say ‘genius’, but I like the simplicity of the idea, I like what it says about how you can ring the changes with very simple elements, using the same elements over and over to create an eerie, abstract kind of beauty. I like its crispness and asperity.

The Equivalents series by Carl Andre

Their whiteness is important. The rejection of any colour. Their shape and arrangement set up dynamics in your mind. Repetition of the same basic components, but with teasing and beguiling variations.

Repetition with variation

The visual effect of the Carl Andre is comparable to the verbal effect of Lessness, which is dense with repeated words and phrases, positioned and repositioned so you can admire the angles, enjoy the patterning. Thus the word ‘ruin’ appears 26 times, ‘grey’ 52, ‘earth’ 22, ‘sky’ 30. The phrase ‘gone from mind’ occurs 17 times, the phrase ‘little body’ 22 times.

Scattered ruins same grey as the sand ash grey true refuge. Four square all light sheer white blank planes all gone from mind. Never was but grey air timeless no sound figment the passing light. No sound no stir ash grey sky mirrored earth mirrored sky. Never but this changelessness dream the passing hour.

There does appear to be a human in the text: We are told he will curse God, he has a little body, cracked face, two holes for eyes, looking up at the sky, it will rain, it will rain again.

On him will rain again as in the blessed days of blue the passing cloud

So, if we’re searching for literal meaning, maybe it’s a typical Beckett tramp in a typical Beckett ditch exposed to the typically harsh elements. Although he’s also said to be in sand. Is he on a beach?

  • He will stir in the sand there will be stir in the sky the air the sand.
  • In the sand no hold one step more in the endlessness he will make it.
  • One step in the ruins in the sand on his back in the endlessness he will make it.

While we’re trying to get our head round the variations, Beckett –as is his habit – throws in a few swearwords to épater le bourgeoisie (although nothing as rude as the words we came across in How It Is):

Little body little block genitals overrun arse a single block grey crack overrun.

For those who seek symbolism in literature it appears as if the human figure is the only upright object among the ruins but is also on his back in the sand (22 instances) and ash (18). Contradiction. Paradox. Mirror images.

And insofar as the text describes, or at least references, the notion of a ‘refuge’, it can be manipulated into being ‘about’ man the refugee – a very fashionable concern of our times – endlessly seeking a refuge which is in fact in ruins, haven denied, no home, the endless rain, sand and ash. It has just enough semantic content to snare our minds, but is abstract enough to take almost any concern or idea we wish to project onto it.

Patterns and structures

As it happens, in a neat coincidence (if it is a coincidence) just as Andre’s sculpture Equivalent VIII consists of 120 bricks, so Becket’s prose work Lessness consists of 120 sentences. In fact, digging a little deeper, you discover the entire piece is the creation of a fantastically structuring imagination.

For some printed editions include a dotted line half way through to emphasise that the second 60 repeat the first 60 but in a different order. Because Beckett wrote each sentence on a separate piece of paper and drew them from a hat at random. He then wrote the numbers 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 on other sheets of paper and drew these at random to determine how many sentences would appear in each paragraph.

The sentences are structured around 6 families of images. In some print editions Beckett gives a guide to them with his usual mathematical precision:

  • Group A: collapse of refuge, key word ‘refuge’
  • Group B: outer world, key words ‘earth sky’
  • Group C: body exposed, key words ‘little body’
  • Group D: refuge forgotten, key phrase ‘all gone from mind’
  • Group E: past and future denied, key word ‘never’
  • Group F: past and future affirmed, key phrase ‘he will’

As Beckett put it, the text weaves through the family of images in, first, one random (dis)order (60 sentences) and then in another. It is a tale of two disorders, each containing, paradoxically, precisely the same 769 words although, to paraphrase Eric Morecambe, not necessarily in the same order.

Aleatory art

In the 1950s John Cage pioneered an aleatory process of composition whereby some elements of the composition are defined but their order, their length, the notes themselves and their pitch, were determined by ‘random’ inputs created by throwing dice or other randomising procedures. In fact Marcel Duchamps and Dadaists had experimented with this approach during the Great War. So Beckett was coming late to a well-established avant-garde practice.

The Beckett Companion (from which the section above is copied) states that this is the only time Beckett experimented with such a strictly aleatory approach, and I think you can see why: that a random approach is never entirely random. After all the author defined the themes, chose the words which express them, invented the number 120 and that it would consist of the same 60 sentences repeated – all this is chosen, is created, before the aleatory element which is, in the overall context, a relatively minor part of the process. The cherry on the cake.

BBC radio production

Interestingly, Lessness was given a full-blown radio production and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 7 May 1971. The six ‘image families’ were distributed among six different actors, namely Donal Donnelly, Leonard Fenton, Denys Hawthorne, Patrick Magee, Harold Pinter and Nicol Williamson, directed by Martin Esslin.

The fact this could be done shows there’s more to Lessness than meets the eye. That it exists (as one of the commentaries says) at a place where prose and drama meet. It’s another tangent, or angle from ‘normal’ prose, at which the text operates and which, to repeat my opening point, makes it a kind of antidote to the obvious and the immediate which is what we mostly meet with in contemporary culture.

I’ve searched high and low on the internet for a version of that 1971 BBC production but can’t find it. If anyone has the link I’d love to hear from you.

Related link

Samuel Beckett’s works

An asterisk indicates that a work was included in the Beckett on Film project, which set out to make films of all 19 of Beckett’s stage plays using leading actors and directors. The set of 19 films was released in 2002 and most of them can be watched on YouTube.

The Second World War 1939 to 1945

*Waiting For Godot 1953 Play

Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 1969

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by Simon on January 8, 2021  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on January 8, 2021

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2021/01/08/lessness-samuel-beckett/

Cascando by Samuel Beckett (1961)

… we’re there… nearly… finish…

‘Cascando’ is an Italian word implying the decrease of volume and the deceleration of tempo. Related, maybe, to ‘diminuendo’, meaning ‘diminishing’, getting quieter.

Cascando is a radio play first broadcast on the BBC Third Programme, 6 October 1964. A speaker, an old man (inevitably) named OPENER (‘I open and I close’) inaugurates activities which consist of words spoken by VOICE, who he listens to for a bit before ‘closing’ and the ‘opening’ a sequence of MUSIC.

The music for the original production was composed by French composer Marcel Mihalovici. I like this, and Words and Music, because I like this kind of ‘experimental’ modern music. Here’s the 1964 BBC production featuring Denys Hawthorne as Opener and Patrick Magee (who we’ve seen in Krapp’s Last Tape and as a voice in Embers) as the quavering, tremulous Voice.

Voice’s words are the same kind of fragmented, demented monologue we first encountered in The Beckett Trilogy, the central theme being Voice’s struggle to tell a story the right way, in the right order, if only he can manage all the elements into the right order, and tell the story right, then he can rest, he can sleep, he can finish, has told so many, thousands, but this time, this time, he’ll manage it, tell it the right way and, finally, at last, sleep and rest:

if you could finish it… you could rest… sleep… not before… oh I know… the ones I’ve finished… thousands and one… all I ever did… in my life… with my life… saying to myself… finish this one… it’s the right one… then rest… sleep… no more stories… no more words… and finished it… and not the right one… couldn’t rest… straight away another… to begin… to finish… saying to myself… finish this one… then rest… this time… it’s the right one… this time… you have it… and finished it… and not the right one… couldn’t rest… straight away another… but this one… it’s different… I’ll finish it…

You’ve got to be awed at the way Beckett span out a career by repeating the same handful of themes or ideas, describing mentally defective people or the forgetful elderly or derelicts, themselves repeating the same handful of themes and ideas, and so on in a vanishing perspective.

For a man who cultivated the imagery of poverty and sparseness and minimalism it’s impressive, almost alarming, how many works he managed to write. All on more or less the same idea (‘I can’t go on… I must go on’) repeated ad nauseam by a succession of defunct old men.

The element of repetition is strikingly obvious at a meta level, because the notion of a kind of Master or impresario calling forth the power of Voice and Music to compete against each other is identical to the previous radio play, Words and Music, this one in fact written immediately after the former.

Even the imagery is from a very narrow range. Once again the sea is a central image, as it was in Embers where a cracked old man sat looking out over the waves, or in the long sequence in Molloy when the hero sucks stones by the sea. Now the story Words struggles to complete does, in fact, surprisingly, appear to progress a little, with the obsessively repeated figure of Woburn, apparently going across the beach, wading into the sea, into a boat and then:

… we’re there… nearly… Woburn… hang on… don’t let go… lights gone… of the land… all gone… nearly all… too far… too late… of the sky… those… if you like… he need only… turn over… he’d see them… shine on him… but no… he clings on… Woburn… he’s changed… nearly enough-

I think it’s an inspirational performance by Magee, quite a bluff, muscular man who, for this production, makes his voice small and fine and trembling, and the worn-out, despairing feel he lends to the repeated phrase ‘Come on‘ is wonderfully… well, what emotion does it evoke, what mood, what strangeness, pitiful hope, self-delusion?

this time… it’s the right one… finish … no more stories… sleep… we’re there… nearly… just a few more… don ‘t let go… Woburn … he clings on… come on… come on —

Listen to it twice. You get an increasing feel for the dynamic between the words and music – apparently in each section, words and music are given exactly the dame duration. And a growing sense of the progression of Voice’s story about Woburn. From what originally sounded like a cascade of words, the outlines of the narrative of Woburn waking in his bed, getting up, leaving his house, going down to the beach, wading out into the sea, mounting the boat or dinghy and heading off for the island emerge more clearly – and the frustrated excitement of Voice as he nearly gets it right, almost nails it, has It, the Final Version, in his sights – become more powerful and poignant.

And, on repeated listening, you begin to feel the dynamic between Opener and Voice. On one level it’s as if Opener is a sadist, in ‘opening’ up Voice he condemns him to the endless iteration of a story he is doomed never to fulfil, like Sisyphus and his rock. But at other moments, Voice seems to be carrying forward Opener’s own quest, and so is like an aspect of his mind or psyche, an aspect he dominates and sits above, but which is always there. Voice doesn’t ‘answer’, doesn’t address high questions or questions from outside – he is intimately involved in Voice’s struggling, muttering, quavering request, to get there to finish, to complete, and please please be allowed to rest…

Repeated listening reveals its depths. Cascando is marvellous. Wonderful.

Credit

Cascando by Samuel Beckett was written in French in 1962, first broadcast in French by the ORTF in October 1963, first broadcast in English on the BBC Third Programme on 6 October 1964.

Related link

Samuel Beckett’s works

An asterisk indicates that a work was included in the Beckett on Film project, which set out to make films of all 19 of Beckett’s stage plays using leading actors and directors. The set of 19 films was released in 2002 and most of them can be watched on YouTube.

The Second World War 1939 to 1945

*Waiting For Godot 1953 Play

Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 1969

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by Simon on December 11, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in Play, Radio
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Simon on December 11, 2020

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2020/12/11/cascando-samuel-beckett/

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