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

Revision as of 00:20, 6 July 2010

Revision as of 14:44, 22 July 2010

Line 88:

In a number of other works Beckett has felt the need to split an individual into separate aspects of that character, e.g. ''[[Words and Music (play)|Words and Music]]'', where the writer, his words and his emotions are all represented by separate characters. “In ''... but the clouds ...'', however, Beckett is concerned not with fragments of the self, but the whole person. The [[protagonist]], M, sees himself whole, (as at the end of ''Film'') held in the light circle of the imagination … The action of ''... but the clouds ...'' consists of M reliving past experience with such intensity that he can see himself performing his daily routine.”<ref>Pountney, R., ''Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett’s Drama 1956-1976'', p 204</ref>

The man is a poet, “caught in the writer’s trap, the expectation of [[Artistic inspiration|inspiration]].”<ref>Pountney, R., ''Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett’s Drama'' 1956-1976 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988), p 205</ref> The woman seems to be his muse. It may be Beckett is personifying her as a woman only in the abstract sense but it is just as likely, considering Beckett’s most famous writer-character, ''[[Krapp's Last Tape|Krapp]]'', that she is also a lost love, a once-literal muse. Krapp’s imagination is impotent though. M has not reached that stage. He is still having occasional flashes onof inspiration. And this must have been very much how the seventy-year-old Beckett felt himself; writing was becoming increasing difficult for him. Either way, “although not quite a character, she is … both an object of desire and a force beyond desire.”<ref>Worth, K., ‘Women in Beckett’s Radio and Television Plays’ in Ben-Zvi, L., (Ed.) ''Women in Beckett: Performance and Critical Perspectives'' (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), p 242</ref>

Krapp sat at a real table and heard a real voice, albeit himself as a younger man. The man in ''... but the clouds ...'' sits at an invisible table unable to write. Everything he encounters is outside a circle of dim, suffused light. This gives the play a dreamlike quality, the circle of light becomes a kind of ‘no place’ where this daily ritual takes place. The only voice is the one inside his head. Even the roads take on an abstract quality; they are neither to nor from anywhere unlike the travel options in ''[[Cascando]]'', for example.