Stay-at-home extended and ‘Waiting for Godot’

“But that is not the question. Why are we here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come.”

—SAMUEL BECKETT

By Alex P. Vidal 

WITH our stay-at-home guidelines in New York (not necessarily in other states) extended anew until June 13, we will have more time to monitor the news overseas, read interesting books, and plan ahead our next productive activities when “life resumes” finally after June 13.  

One of the books, a popular play actually, that caught our interest was

Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, a play that demonstrates the value of listening to the silences in conversations and is somewhat relevant to what is happening in the world today when people have been “stranded” at home to escape the wrath of the COVID-19 pandemic.   

The play depicts the meaninglessness of life—with its repetitive plot, where nothing much happens. 

Voted “the most significant English language play of the 20th century”, Waiting for Godot is Beckett’s translation of his own original French version, En attendant Godot, and is subtitled (in English only), “a tragicomedy in two acts”.

Silence is a special place we must go to regularly. It is a grace that nurtures, heals, reveals, and renews. “No spiritual exercise is as good as that of silence,” counsels St. Seraphim of Sarov.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta, a servant of the poor, states that “God is the friend of silence. See how nature–trees, flowers, grass–grow in silence? The more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in our active life.” 

Silence animates compassion and sets in motion the service of others.

-o0o-

“Silence stands outside the worlds of profit and utility. It cannot be exploited for profit; you cannot get anything out of it. It is ‘unproductive,’ therefore it is regarded as useless. Yet there is more help and healing in silence than in all useful things,” Max Picard puts it.

Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilk once counseled: “Our task is to listen to the news that is always arriving out of silence.”

According to the plot of Waiting for Godot, a pair of vagrant men, Vladimir and Estragon, diverted themselves while waiting for the arrival of a man named Godot (Beckett had denied that Godot was God saying “it is just implied in the text, but it’s not true.), whom they only know by reputation, on a vague pretense. 

They philosophize, sleep, argue, sing, exercise, swap hats, and consider suicide –anything “to hold the terrible silence at bay” to occupy the time.

Godot is not Beckett’s best play, but it is his most famous and probably his most entertaining, according to the Globe and Mail. “The degree to which the vaudevillian schtick—from falling pants to fart jokes—Vladimir and Estragon engage in to pass the time continues to amuse, in a time when vaudeville is long dead, is always a pleasant surprise. 

It is not what you’d call succinct, however. And Beckett’s poetry is best treated with a light touch; Dennehy’s performance as Pozzo—fierce, howling, beast-like—demonstrates how the words collapse if you hit them too hard,” writes The Globe and Mail’s J. Kelly Nestruck.

Frost’s Meditations reports that many ingenious theories have been advanced to provide satisfactory interpretations for the characters of Beckett’s play. Religious or mythical interpretations prevail. 

The two tramps Estragon (Gogo) and Vladimir (Didi) may be Everyman and his conscience. Gogo is less confident and at one moment is ready to hang himself. Vladimir is more hopeful, more even in temperament.

-o0o-

“One thinks of the medieval debate between the body and the soul, between the intellectual and the nonrational in man. Certain of their speeches about Christ might substantiate the theory that they are the two crucified thieves. Pozzo would seem to be the evil master, the exploiter,” says Frost’s Meditations. “But perhaps he is Godot, or an evil incarnation of Godot. The most obvious interpretation of Godot is that he is God. As the name Pierrot comes from Pierre, so Godot may come from God. (One thinks also of the combination of God and Charlot, the name used by the French for Charlie Chaplin.)”

The play was often considered by philosophical and literary scholars to be part of the movement of the Theatre of the Absurd, a form of theatre which stemmed from the Absurdist philosophy of Albert Camus. 

Absurdism itself is a branch of the traditional assertions of existentialism, pioneered by Soren Kierkegaard, and posits that, while inherent meaning might very well exist in the universe, human beings are incapable of finding it due to some form of mental or philosophical limitation. 

Thus humanity is doomed to be faced with the Absurd, or the absolute absurdity of existence in lack of intrinsic purpose.

Kierkegaard had accused contemporary philosophy of wasting too much time on “essences,” the supposed underlying realities and universal laws of the world. 

Not only are such things dubious, focusing on them diverts attention from real problems, such as how we as individuals can make decisions.

Beckett summed up the absurdity of life in one of his most quotably bleak metaphors: “They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, and then it’s night once more.” 

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)