Feb

19

The folowing excerpt from Samuel Beckett, is a backward-looking old man reviewing tapes of his youth with scorn and disgust not only at his former romantic primitivism, but again now at his own lonely state obsessed with bodily functions, perfunctorily organized painful memories, and drinking.

Tonight we saw this one-act play in an unusual way: a company which performs using sign language (and voice) for the deaf. And Krapp's signing and gesticulating made his frustration and pain remarkably more palpable, even for those of us unable to read signs.

The themes of love lost and the delicious impossibility of savoring the present until it is too late, are familiar memorials to all the many squandered opportunities of then and now.

Pause.

"Ah well . . ."

Pause. (Krapp rolls the tape of himself at age 39…notice how the answers to key questions are always edited out)

"Spiritually a year of profound gloom and indulgence until that memorable night in March at the end of the jetty, in the howling wind, never to be forgotten, when suddenly I saw the whole thing. The vision, at last. This fancy is what I have chiefly to record this evening, against the day when my work will be done and perhaps no place left in my memory, warm or cold, for the miracle that . . . (hesitates) . . . for the fire that set it alight. What I suddenly saw then was this, that the belief I had been going on all my life, namely–(Krapp switches off impatiently, winds tape foreword, switches on again)–great granite rocks the foam flying up in the light of the lighthouse and the wind-gauge spinning like a propeller, clear to me at last that the dark I have always struggled to keep under is in reality–(Krapp curses, switches off, winds tape foreword, switches on again)–unshatterable association until my dissolution of storm and night with the light of the understanding and the fire–(Krapp curses loader, switches off, winds tape foreword, switches on again)–my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to side."

Pause.

"Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The earth might be uninhabited."

Pause.

"Here I end–" Krapp switches off, winds tabe back, switches on again.

"–upper lake, with the punt, bathed off the bank, then pushed out into the stream and drifted. She lay stretched out on the floorboards with her hands under her head and her eyes closed. Sun blazing down, bit of a breeze, water nice and lively. I noticed a scratch on her thigh and asked her how she came by it. 'Picking gooseberries, she said.' I said again I thought it was hopeless and no good going on, and she agreed, without opening her eyes. (Pause.) I asked her to look at me and after a few moments–(pause)–after a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the glare. I bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened. (Pause. Low.) Let me in. (Pause.) We drifted in among the flags and stuck. The way they went down, sighing, before the stem! (Pause.) I lay down across her with my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to side."

Pause.


Comments

Name

Email

Website

Speak your mind

Archives

Resources & Links

Search