... but the clouds ...: Difference between revisions

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==Synopsis==

The play opens in darkness and gradually reveals M, a “man"man sitting bowed over an invisible table".”<ref name="multiref4">{{cite book |first=Samuel |last=Beckett |date=1984 |title=Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett |___location=London |publisher=Faber & Faber |page=257 |isbn=978-0-5711-3040-5}}</ref> He is dressed in a [[nightshirt|gown]] and [[Nightcap (garment)|nightcap]], and this is the only way he appears in the present throughout the play. The camera revisits this image fifteen times.

As the play unfolds, we hear a voice that we assume belongs to M, as it reflects his thoughts. He recalls past encounters with a woman and simultaneously visualizes his remembered or imagined self, referred to as M1, acting out the described motions within the circle of light. M contemplates what triggers the woman's appearance. At first he says, "When I thought of her..."<ref>{{cite book |first=Samuel |last=Beckett |date=1984 |title=Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett |___location=London |publisher=Faber & Faber |page=259 |isbn=978-0-5711-3040-5}}</ref> but later realizingrealizes that she simply manifests to him, always at night. He reflects on his routine, starting with his return home after walking the roads since daybreak.<ref> In “Damned"Damned to Fame”Fame" (p. 364) and “Frescoes"Frescoes of the Skull”Skull" (p. 261), James Knowlson draws a parallel with Beckett’sBeckett's protagonist and the type of characters written by [[John Millington Synge|Synge]].</ref> He changes into night attire, enters his sanctum, attempts to summon the woman without success, and at dawn, he dresses once again and sets out on the road.

In summary, the play begins with M in darkness, seen in a recurring pose at his invisible table. We hear M's thoughts as he reminisces about encountering the woman, while M1 acts out these recollections in the circle of light. M reflects on the cause of her appearance, his routine, and his continuous cycle of summoning her at night and leaving at dawn.

The voice lists the three instances listed above where the woman has appeared to him in the past. When he reaches the third one the camera cuts to the woman's face, "reduced as far as possible to eyes and a mouth",<ref name="multiref4"/> which mouths silently along with the voice, "...clouds...but the clouds...of the sky..."<ref name="ShorterPlays261">{{cite book |first=Samuel |last=Beckett |date=1984 |title=Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett |___location=London |publisher=Faber & Faber |page=261 |isbn=978-0-5711-3040-5}}</ref> The man then realises there is a fourth case, but not really a fourth ''{{linktext|per se}}'' because so much of the time, byand farin fact, the greatest amountmajority of the time, when nothing happens, the woman never evenmakes an appearance at appearsall.

Despite the impression created by the opening scene, it is not the case that he spends every night solely focused on summoning the woman to appear. There are instances when he becomes weary and engages in other activities that he finds "more ... rewarding, such as ... [[cube root]]s"<ref name="ShorterPlays261" /> or sits absorbed with nothing – which he describes as a mine – like the man in ''[[Film (film)|Film]]''.

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* The woman can appear and then vanish immediately.

* The woman can appear and linger.

* The woman can appear and 'speak' to him, i.e. inspire him. He uses the example where she mouths the words, "but the clouds,", and then vanishes.

* The woman can fail to appear at all, the most common scenario.

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Not all of Krapp's actions take place at his table, we hear him pouring drinks and attempting to sing in the darkness surrounding his stage as a means of distracting himself from the task in hand; in ''Quad'', the players' only reality is within the lighted square as is the case with the women of ''[[Come and Go]]'' but in ''... but the clouds ...'' all the real action takes place in the darkness, the central circle of light is a place of transition only.

The fact that the woman may well have been real, rather than some [[Stereotype|stereotypical]] projection of M's ideal woman, is suggested by the line, "With those unseeing eyes I so begged ''when alive'' to look at me."<ref>{{cite book |first=Samuel |last=Beckett |date=1984 |title=Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett |___location=London |publisher=Faber & Faber |page=260 |isbn=978-0-5711-3040-5}}</ref> The camera focuses on the woman's face while these lines are spoken. Enoch Brater argues that "what he longs for is not the beloved but the image of his beloved, the evocative [[metaphor]] he has made of her. His is an exquisite despair. In his secret ceremony Beckett's male figure all but revels in it."<ref>{{cite journal |first=Enoch |last=Brater |title=Billie Whitelaw's TV Beckett |date=2003 |journal=Assaph: Studies in the Theatre (Samuel Beckett Issue) |number=17 |editor1-last=Ben-Zvi |editor1-first=Linda |publisher=Tel Aviv University |page=193 |issn=0334-5963}}</ref> Because the old man realises he cannot physically recall his beloved, he makes do with [[simulation]]; he torments himself with memories of what it was like when she came before. M is not only trying to remember, he is trying "to remember the way in which he used to remember.".<ref name="multiref1"/>

"For Beckett and for Yeats, there is a difference between remembering and not remembering, but both writers remind us that not remembering does not necessarily equal forgetting. That which is not consciously 'remembered' by an individual can still return to impose itself is a variety of ways, one of which both Yeats and Beckett qualify as a kind of haunting."<ref name="multiref1"/> This makes one viewer's comment as to the nature of W all the more interesting when they call her "the character who appears but isn't really there – she only gives the appearance of an appearance."<ref name="multiref2"/>

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[[John Calder]] in his review of the three plays shown on BBC2 had this to say about ''... but the clouds ...'':

: "The man would appear ... to be immersed in guilt towards a missed opportunity, a dead love, a regretted course of action, as in ''[[Eh Joe]]'', but with a flatter style. [[Irony]] is subdued, [[stoicism]] more matter of fact, [[self-pity]] almost entirely absent, illusion excluded. The man is concerned with concentration, a [[Merlin]] conjuring up a ghost in his memory."<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://www.english.fsu.edu/jobs/num02/Num2Calder.htm |first=John |last=Calder |date=Summer 1977 |title=Review: "The lively arts": three plays by Samuel Beckett on BBC 2, 17 April 1977 |journal=[[Journal of Beckett Studies]] |number=2 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070416100908/http://www.english.fsu.edu/jobs/num02/Num2Calder.htm |archive-date=2007-04-16}}</ref>

Clearly the process in this play is open to interpretation. Is the process wholly internal, the man remembering someone real from his past or is he trying to conjure up some external manifestation of her, her ghost? And what is his motive for trying to evoke her? Is it simply to satisfy memory, to wallow in the moment awhile as Krapp does, or is she in some way his muse, an enabling force that makes the words come? Either way it is clear that he cannot control events directly, by the power of his [[Will (philosophy)|will]], things take place at best, as a byproduct almost of his actions, but more likely they are entirely out of his control and all he can do is wait on them.