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

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<!-- Deleted image removed: [[Image:But the clouds.JPG|thumb|right|Still of [[Klaus Herm]] from the 1977 German broadcast]] -->

[[Samuel Beckett]] wrote his television play '''''... but the clouds ...''''' between October-NovemberOctober–November 1976 “to replace a film of ''[[Play (play)|Play]]'' which the [[BBC]] had sent [him] for approval (and which he had rejected)”<ref>Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) ''The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett'', (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p 77</ref> due to “the poor quality of the film”. Donald McWhinnie directed [[Billie Whitelaw]] and [[Ronald Pickup]]. It was first broadcast on 17 April 1977 as part of a programme of three Beckett plays entitled ‘Shades’ on [[BBC2]]. It was first published in ''Ends and Odds'' (Faber) 1977. An early title for the piece was '''''Poetry only love'''''.

==Title==

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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>Calder, J., [http://www.english.fsu.edu/jobs/num02/Num2Calder.htm ‘Review: “The lively arts”: three plays by Samuel Beckett on BBC 2, 17 April 1977]’ in ''Journal of Beckett Studies'', No 2, Summer 1977 </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.