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The Theatre of the Absurd
It has been established that the
authors of the Theatre of the Absurd depict the absurdity of life and the human
condition—that Samuel Beckett, and his play Waiting for
Godot, is a leading advocate of the absurd, and that he
presents a view on modernity that is unquestionably absurd [1, 3; 2, 113].
As already mentioned, the
authors involved do not constitute a literary movement per se; they are loosely
collected under a common title as their plays seem to reflect the same
attitude, an attitude that was central, fundamental even, to the twentieth
century [3, 23]. The similarities that constitute the movement are mainly
accidental, and mostly due to the Zeitgeist they capture acutely, since each of
the writers of the Theatre is “an individual who regards himself as a lone
outsider, cut off and isolated in his private world” [3, 22]. Alongside
Beckett, according to Esslin, such authors as Arthur Adamov, Eugene Ionesco,
Jean Genet, and Harold Pinter belong to the Theatre.
Esslin defines the absurd of the
Theatre of the Absurd as something which is devoid of purpose, senseless and
useless. The absurd is the world become devoid of meaning, and the reaction to
this, which the Theatre aspires to depict, is, to borrow Esslin’s words, a
“sense of metaphysical anguish at the absurdity of the human condition”. [3;
23-24, 409]. This, as Grossman argues, is a specialised version of the absurd
Camus proposed in his essay [4, 473-474]; it is still important and useful to
compare this with Camus’s concept, especially as it is wider in scope,
foundational for all thought on the absurd in general, and, as already noted,
explicitly connected to Waiting for Godot.
The Theatre presents its
audience with an absurd universe, one which has lost its centre of unity, its
purpose, and most importantly, its meaning [3, 411]. Senselessness and
uselessness, the devaluation of ideals and purpose, and, foremost of all, the
meaninglessness of the human condition that result from the experience of the
absurd are somewhat removed from Camus’s own conception of the consequences of
the absurd, as we have seen: for him, the absurd man is a rational creature in
an irrational world, and the consequences of accepting the absurd as one’s own
reality are the personally engaging revolt, freedom, and passion [5; 64, 85].
The helplessness and dejection Esslin sees following the acceptance of the
absurd stand in conspicuous contrast to Camus’s attitude, who calls the absurd
sweet wine [5, 52]. Though all things are equally indifferent in the absurd
world, the absurd man feels privileged in knowing his own limitations [5, 91].
Perhaps owing in part to the
absurd nature of the Theatre of the Absurd, the absurd is, after all,
impossible and contradictory,
it features characteristics which oppose those of traditional theatre [5, 29; 3,
28]. These characteristics are easy to see as neither harmonious nor acceptable
for a proper theatrical piece to have: it features no linear or sensible plot
instead relying on disconnected farcical situations, no relatable or rational
characterisation, radical undermining of language usually in the form of
nonsense dialogue and unusual or incoherent symbolism [3, 398]. However, there
is no argument that these features are unique; indeed, it is only the
combination of pre-existing attitudes and literary modes which is unique to the
Theatre, and that it is their subject, the philosophy of the absurd, and not
the works of art themselves which distinguishes them [3, 398].
The rejection of a sensible
plot, narrativity even, is compared to Cubism and abstract painting [6, 131].
It is connected to what Esslin calls “the open abandonment of rational devices
and coherent discourse” [3, 24]. The comparison of the Theatre of the Absurd
and abstract painting seems appropriate: both search for means to show
concretely the sense that the epistemology of the subject breaks down, that is,
how the deforming of temporal and logical structures are experienced. The
message and the form approach a unified whole in the Theatre as the experience
of the destruction of logic is represented in a way that destroys textual
logic. Instead of presenting a linear sequence of events, the Theatre is
interested more in presenting basic life situations which are static—and
especially situations that arise from the author’s personal subjective
consciousness. [3, 403]. Therefore the Theatre does not discuss the absurdity
of the world and the human condition, but simply presents them, and asking how
the problem of absurdity should be solved seems naive and superfluous to the
absurdist creator [3, 25]. For Esslin this is a truer, more accurate,
formulation of the absurd than Camus’s, as Camus states the irrationality of
the absurd in a neatly structured manner [3, 24]. However, it could be argued
that Camus uses concrete Beckettian language to illustrate his theory, and that
even the absurdists’ abandonment of rationality is not as pervasive or open as
Esslin wants to see it [1, 7-8].
Keeping this in mind, and that
the relationship between irrationality and the absurd is rather more complex
for Camus than Esslin makes it out to be, we may well question the acuity of
Esslin’s arguments. Camus himself argues that existentialist philosophers, such
as Sartre, prefer escaping to accepting the absurd, in this way distancing
himself from the tradition of well-structured argumentation [5, 32]. The absurd
is something that appears amenable to reason but is ultimately beyond its
reach, and so we may question the importance of the open
abandonment of rationality, as even for Camus, the absurd is at the limit of
rational thought [3, 49]. The tendency of the Theatre to make use of grotesque
imagery and dream-like images and thought patterns in rejecting coherent
discourse may seem a vehicle for rather escaping the absurd than confronting
it, as we have noted Camus calling being unaware of the absurd sleeping [1,
15].
The inconsistency, if not
irrationality, of characters and characterisation reflects the sense that the
modern human condition is senseless and irrational, and that human nature is
not coherent. The characters of the Theatre thus resemble mechanical puppets,
and even the actors may be turned into puppets by the playwright’s rigorous stage
directions. [3, 21-22, 24, 377]. This is analogous to the series of static
events arising from the author’s experience, as Esslin argues that the Theatre
is not interested in characters who are independently motivated and
“objectively valid” outside of the author’s inner world. The characters of the
Theatre are designed to not resemble actual human beings. Furthermore, the
puppetry of the Theatre of the Absurd, the apparent incomprehensibility of the
character’s actions and motivations, serve to alienate the observer. The
consequence of this negation of identification with the characters is twofold.
On one hand, humour arises from
comical predicaments we cannot empathise with, as William Oliver talks of the
“comedy-coated pill of absurdity” [7, 229], meaning that the pessimistic
message of the absurd is easier for the audience to accept when it is presented
in a humorous guise [3; 411-412, 415]. This leads to the aforementioned
grotesque, as the Theatre combines horror with laughter, that is, the laughter of
humour with the horror of the lack of meaning. Furthermore, Cornwell argues
that there is something comic about the experience of the absurd itself. It is,
indeed, laughter which links the grotesque to the absurd, since the comic is
experienced as incongruity, exactly like the absurd and the grotesque. [1,
15-18]. Therefore the grotesque dream realities and the absurd are not mutually
exclusive but may even be co-articulated.
On the other hand, the
senselessness of the characters presents a concrete image, an instantiation
rather than a theory, of the senseless and disintegrating absurd world, which
is a form of social criticism, albeit mostly unintended, as William Haney
argues that the Theatre of the Absurd is part of a tradition that focuses on
basic individual circumstances, the inner world of the mind in contact with the
material world, rather than social realities [3, 410-411]. We may compare this
to what Camus says of the birthplace of the absurd—the human mind. However,
Paul Hurley argues that the American side of the Theatre does have an overt
political agenda, whereas the French (Beckett’s side) is more focused on the
inner experience of the characters.
The Theatre is, according to
Esslin, anti-literary, as words are eschewed as banal. This is especially seen
in the dialogue of the characters, which often consists of “incoherent
babblings” [3, 22], which fit the meaninglessness of the world. The Theatre
aspires to relegate the function of communication from speech to gesture. The
Theatre is concerned with expressing supraindividual psychological states by
objectifying them into concrete and complex stage or poetic images, whose
gradual completion or unfolding is the main source of suspense and drama in the
play. The images are complex so as not to scare the audience away from the
heavy themes of the play, and the only reason they appear sequential: it makes
it impossible to represent them instantaneously, they must be broken down into
separate elements which then build up the unified images as temporal
progression. [3, 361, 405, 416].
The concrete poetic images
Esslin discusses are instantiations of experience, of the experience of simply
being, existing, which are essentially non-linguistic entities presented in
language: conceptual thought robs them of their “pristine complexity and poetic
truth” [3, 406-407].
To put such entities into words,
to try to speak the silence of experience, is a horribly comic act of violence.
This does not, of course, imply that experience in and of itself is
meaningless; in the Theatre of the Absurd, the meaningless is found in the
world and in the human condition that serve as the foundation of the concrete
poetic image qua the
experience. There is silence in the experience, and not only because it is by
nature extra- or pre-linguistic, but also, and more importantly, because it is
the reflection of a silent, meaningless, absurd world.
Bibliography
1.
Cornwell, Neil. 2006. Absurd
in Literature. Manchester: Manchester University
Press.
2.
Dubois, Diane. 2011.“The Absurd Imagination:
Northrop Frye and Waiting for Godot” in English Studies
in Canada 37:2. 111-130.
3.
Esslin, Martin. 1985. The
Theatre of the Absurd. 3rd Ed.
Harmondsworth: Penguin.
4.
Grossman, Manuel L. 1967. “Alfred Jarry
and the Theatre of the Absurd” in Educational Theatre
Journal 19:4. 473-477.
5.
Camus, Albert. 1991. The
Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Trans. Justin
O’Brien. New York: Vintage Books.
6.
Cavell, Stanley. 2002. Must
We Mean What We Say? (Updated Ed.) Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
7.
Oliver, William I. 1963. “Between
Absurdity and the Playwright” in Educational
Theatre Journal 15:3. 224-235.