What does ‘Absurd’ mean ?When
I searched the glossaries ,I found the
word to be ‘out of harmony’(1).But
yet the definitions trying hard to explain
the term , just to end in total ‘Absurdity’
(assuming for a while that we know the
meaning of the word),as they talk in total
sense, the nonsense about it and of course
that means they fail(in their attempt
).But considering the term to be linked
with literature (and other forms of art
too!),when I searched for more I came
across the lines that states that no ‘literary
criticism’ [in which I include the
attempts to explain the literary terms]
can take the literary work itself ,or
to be more specific ‘…it [literary
criticism]is not substitute for reading
the work itself’(2),as it [the piece
of work]is the most exactly and precisely
,the thought conveyed or explained.So,I
reached the idea that to understand ‘absurd’
.I must view an absurd work by an artist,
rather than poring over the talks about
it. Hence as a literary student what first
came to my mind at this instant is none,
but WAITING FOR GODOT by Samuel Beckett,the
so called absurd play structured around
‘Godot’,the axis all absurdity[as
till the date none could declare with
confidence ‘who’ or ‘what’
Godot is !]
What I found in the dustbin of my memories
about this godot is:
"On 19 Nov 1957, a group of worried actors
were preparing to face their audience
. The actors were members of the company
of the San Francisco Actors’ Workshop
. The audience consisted of fourteen hundred
convicts at the San Quentin penitentiary
. No live play had been preformed at San
Quentin since Sarah Bernhardt appeared
there in 1913 .Now ,fourty four years
later ,the play that had been chosen ,largely
because no woman appeared in it , was
Samuel Beckett’s WAITING FOR GODOT’(3).
…"Beckett real triumph ,…came
when WAITING FOR GODOT which appeared
in book form in 1952,was first produced
on 5 January 1953 , at the little Theatre
de Babylone (now defunct ),…’(4)
And I found also some lines of this play:
"…
ESTRGON:Didi.
VLADIMIR:Yes.
ESTRGON:I can’t go on like this.
VLADIMIR: That’s what you think.
ESTRAGON:If we parted?That might be better
of us .
VLADIMIR:We’ll hang ourselves tomorrow.(Pause)Unless
Godot comes.
ESTRAGON:And if comes?
VLADIMIR:We’ll be saved
…"(5)
It is said about Beckett that when he
was asked that what he meant by Godot
he answered "If I knew ,I would have said
so in the play"(6).’WAITING FOR
GODOT does not tell a story ;it explores
a static situation ‘(7).So it is
clear from the very beginning that Beckett
tried to create a ‘character’
with out a character’ as he himself
doesn’t know him [Godot], and again
the movement of plot tends to zero ,i.e.
there is absolutely no plot . Previously
it was taken for granted that if there
exits a literary piece then there must
be either a story( or plot) to tellor
any character to be represented .But did
exactly opposite to revolutionize his
concept .He presents a ‘character’
whom he himself does not know and tell
a plot which is nothing but variations
in arrangements and sequences of few events
with negligible movement or action :’nothing
happens , nobody comes nobody goes …’
(8).
But can be the term ‘Absurd’
assigned to merely these qualities of
the play? No, there are still more as
mentioned by critics .In an essay on Kalfka
,Ionesco defined his understanding of
the term as ‘ Absurd is that which
is devoid of purpose…’(9).And
the purposeless becomes evident when ‘
the more things change , the more they
are the same ‘(10).And this is done
by creating uncommon situations in the
play by Breckett . For instance the boy
who carries message of Godot to Estragon
and Vladimir fails to recognize them on
each day of his reappearance ."The French
version explicitly states that the boy
who appears in the second act is the same
boy as the one in the first act , yet
the boy denies that he has even seen the
two tramps before , and insists that this
is the first time he has acted as Godot’s
messenger’(11).And this is done
while ‘waiting’ which is interpreted
by Martin Esslin as ‘Waiting is
to experience the action of time , which
is constant change . And yet , as nothing
real ever happens , the change is itself
an illusion .The ceaseless activity of
time is a self defeating purposeless…’(12).
And thus by this purposelessness Beckett
tries to prove the absurdity of his play
.But is this really absurd ? If we view
it from some different point of views
we can suddenly find something contradicting
. It is because we know the fact that
‘ truth is never real’ ,and
what we define for a situation becomes
a truth for us , for that moment . So
is the case of abnormality or normality
of a situation . When any action is most
common that becomes ‘ normal ‘
for us and this is the very base of our
understanding .We understand what is most
common and general .We understand something
uncommon by referring it to some common
things or actions we understand .So our
very base of understanding is based upon
some general truth or common events ,the
state which we call normal .Now when we
something out of order in a play (e.g.
WAITIG FOR GODOT) ,we interpret it in
terms of those ‘ commons’
of our memory .But on this view we analyze
, can uncommon or absurdity be perceived
by us directly without any aid or reference
to our definition of ‘normality’
? It is similar to what Rene’ Wellek
tried to explain in his essay ‘ATTACK
ON LITERATURE’ by citing an example
of Samuel Beckett’s ENDGAME .Becket
has portrayed a character in END GAME
who was ‘ looking for the voice
of his silence ‘(13).’The
artist’s dissatisfaction with language
can only be expressed by language .Pause
may be a device to express the inexpressible
,but pause can’t be prolonged indefinitely
,can not be simply silence as such . It
needs contrast , it needs a beginning
and an end…’(14).
This statement suggests the importance
of contrast and this is as true in case
of absurdity and non-absurdity as it is
true in the case of silence and music
.
In this light we can reach decision that
there is no sense of absurdity with out
the normality . But how this is true in
case of Godot can be analysed as follows
:
Beckett tries hard to achieve absurdity
by doing through his characters , the
abnormal things (or at least normal things
in abnormal sequence ), still there remains
the elements of non-absurdity in every
corner of the play . The boy who doesn’t
recognize the two tramps bring message
from the same Godot (It never happens
ever that Godot brings a message from
the boy ;or the tramps bring message from
the boy to godot ;or tramps speak out
the message that the boy brings from the
Godot for them ;or Godot never receives
message from tramps and so many can be
the absurd case ).It was only one angle
of interpretation of the situation .Other
interpretations can be many in numbers
:Godot waits for tramps ;or tramps don’t
wait for Godot while they say they waited.
etc. etc.
When I mean to say is that whatever action
is done in the play has there fore the
elements of non-absurdity .We could have
recognized them if what we call absurdity
would be the most normal and what we now
feel normal would have been absurd .In
fact we can’t express absurdity
itself and this is the deceiving nature
of ‘Absurdity’ , because the
moment we speak out something it becomes
a little different from what we originally
meant to express . ‘Words , the
medium of fiction ,are a fabrication of
man’s intellect .They are a part
of human lie ‘(14).And for this
reason any literature needs that medium
to be expressed , that becomes deceptive
.So Roland Barthes of France says therefore
that ‘Literature is a system of
deceptive signification…emphatically
signifying ,but never finally signified
‘(16).
There fore what ever actions Beckett
tried to fabricated in to the play , stands
till today between in the limits of absurd
and non-absurd and how this action is
nearer to any of these two limits depends
on what words are used and how they are
used to define the limits .
That’s why the play ‘..of
the supposedly esoteric avant-grade make
so imidiate and so deep an impact on an
audience of convicts…’(17),where
as the critics could not easily accepted
the play as an art in the beginning .
Martin Esslin writes : ‘ because
it confronted them [the prisoners] with
a situation in some ways analogous to
their own ? Perhaps . Or perhaps because
they were un sophisticated enough to come
to the theater without any preconceived
notions and readymade expectations ,so
that they avoided the mistake that trapped
so many established critics who condemned
the play for its lack of plot ,development
, characterizations , suspense or plain
common sense ‘(18).And of course
this is what we see as the attempt to
define absurd with non-absurd .Similarly
many other attempts have been made in
the past and present to create uncommon
out of common .For example the Dadaist
Movement . ‘Attempts have been made
not only to widen the realm of art ,but
to abolish the boundery between the art
and the non-art . In music , noises of
machines or the streets are used ; in
painting, collage uses stuck-on news papers
, buttons , medals and so on , or ‘found
objects’ –soup cans , bicycle
wheels , electric bulbs , any piece of
junks—are exhibited . the newest
fad is ‘earth works’ , holes
or trenches in the ground , tracks through
a corn field , square sheets of leads
in snow . A ‘sculptor’ , Christo
wrapped a million square feet of Australian
coastline in plastic . At 1972 Bicnnale
in Venice , a painter ,Gino de Dominicis
, exhibited a mongoloid picked up from
the streets as a work of art .In poetry
poems have been concocted by the Dadaists
by drawing news paper clippings from a
bag at random ; more recently poems have
been produced by computer and a shuffle
novel (by Marc Saporta ) has appeared
, in which every page can be replaced
by another in any order …’(18).
Similarly we can cite the example of
Pop-Culture now so popular by the young
generations ,which was once considered
as absurd .So what conclusion we reached
can be seen in the light of that contrast
theory of silence and music told in this
essay in the beginning , that what ever
we want to express (may it be ‘Silence’
or ‘Absurdity’ ) we need words
to express . But ‘a word can never
be a thing ‘(20).So we can either
achieve a situation or express it , but
we can not do both because , if we try
to do , the situation won’t be the
same .This is what we can imply when we
speak of absurdity ; i.e. we can’t
be totally absured in expression as there
is no proper medium exists .
By concluding this I think I have reached
at the ‘ right place at the right
time’ , because if I am right then
I will reach the right thing , but if
I reach the wrong (as I will get non-sense)that
will be rather a right thing due to our
context . My attempt of criticism , ‘
is an attempt to make us more reasonable’
This article was posted on January
04, 2005
