Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2004. Vol. 4. Eger Journal of English Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 30)
TIBOR TÓTH Beckett and the Poetics of the Absurd
36 Tibor Tóth life, to death, is tested in the poems, and the ambivalent projections of the mask in the plays become the ambivalent projections of the masque. The poetically tested juxtapositions help him adjust to self and society through words which belong to the community but gain dramatic strength through the individual mark attached to them. The multiplicity of interactive obligations creates pressures on a vision which must enact that knot of contradictions. Beckett's poetic vision states that the challenge and the joy of coming to terms with this world have no limits. He repeatedly and forcibly refers to The Bible , especially to The New Testament, because it is a text that he knows he cannot trust. Thus, in spite of his life-long obsession with The Bible , he manages to prevent its becoming the symbol of universal truth. The characters of his fictional and dramatic works seem to live nearly exclusively through the text they produce, but the proto-texts they employ excel through their denial of their initial meaning, or any meaning at all. The knot of contradictions central to Waiting for Godot unfolds through the juxtaposition of a clearly biblical theme and the denied to artistically and ethically interpret it. When to the question "Do you remember the Bible?" Estragon answers, "I remember the maps of the Holy Land. Colored they were. Very pretty", Beckett launches one of the many excellent deviations from universally accepted symbols: Estragon becomes a solitary figure in the 'Christian' world, unable, and perhaps unwilling to understand himself. He is not going to reconcile himself to God or himself, for he is suspended in an ambivalent projection of his (and our) memory. The Bible is then just one of the characters' texts and it loses authority over its own interpretation. It becomes just one of the expressions of the 'nothing' that happens twice in the play. The juxtapositions tested in his poems help him deprive the symbols belonging to the community of their meaning, and gain dramatic strength through the individual mark attached to them. The use of the 'knot' representative of Beckett's poetic strategy in drama is brilliantly revealed through the tree in Waiting for Godot. The leafless tree is a concrete object on the stage, but in Act H four or five leaves appear on it. The context of first reference to the possible symbolic meanings of the tree strikes by means of contrast. The argument is centred round the importance and difficulties of taking off one's shoes: Estragon: It hurts? Vladimir: Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts! Estragon: (pointing). You might button it all the same. Vladimir: (stooping). Thie. (He buttons his fly). Never neglect the little things of life.
