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

Revision as of 02:54, 13 February 2018

Revision as of 17:01, 19 July 2018

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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>Beckett, S., ''Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett'' (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 260</ref> The camera focuses on the woman’s face while these lines are spoken. Interestingly, EricIEric 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>Brater, E. in Ben-Zvi, (Ed.) ‘Studies in the Theatre: Samuel Beckett Issue’ ''ASSAPH'' 17-18, 2003, p 193</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"/>