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

Revision as of 15:16, 20 July 2023

Revision as of 00:06, 26 April 2024

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The play opens in darkness and gradually reveals M, a “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 realizes 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 to Fame” (p. 364) and “Frescoes of the Skull” (p. 261), James Knowlson draws a parallel with Beckett’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.

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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.