Beckett's Catastrophe - A Play about Power and Impotency

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Table of Contents

1.  Introduction 3  4

2.  Beckett’s Catastrophe - a play about power and impotency  

2.1  A close reading of Catastrophe 4  8

2.2  Catastrophe as a “parable of Man and Satan 8  11

2.3  The political dimension of Catastrophe 11  13

2.4  Beckett’s “Theatre of Power and the Foucauldian  

  “Gaze of Surveillance 13  16

3.  Conclusion 16  18

  Bibliography  18

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[...] die Hölle, das sind die andern. 1

1 Introduction

Early in 1982, Samuel Beckett was one of the first writers to respond to an invitation from the Association Internationale de Défense des Artistes (AIDA) for contributions of works to show support for Václav Havel, the Czech playwright who was serving a prison sentence for his dissident activities. In 1979 Havel had been sentenced by the Czechoslovak communist regime to four and a half years imprisonment for subversion. He was co-founder and spokesman of the Charter 77 initiative as well as a member of the Czech Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Persecuted (VONS). Shocked to hear that Havel had been forbidden to write, which must have “seemed the ultimate oppression” ² , Beckett wrote Catastrophe 3 and dedicated the play to Havel. It was first performed as part of ‘Une nuit pour Václav Havel’ at the Avignon Theatre Festival in July 1982. 4

Knowlson, referring to Beckett’s refusal to employ didactic impulses in his writing, mentions that Beckett sometimes regretted his incapability “to write anything that dealt overtly with politics” ⁵ , but the biographer also asserts that Beckett u tterly rejected political implications in his writing. ⁶ However, with the invitation of AIDA, he could show his solidarity with a “victimized, imprisoned fellow writer” ⁷ who took a courageous stand against abuses of human rights.

Nonetheless, a political reading of Catastrophe is grounded on the victimization of the Protagonist by the dictatorial Director. The play has also been identified as a “parable of Man and Satan” (see 2.2). In his biography Damned to Fame. The Life of Samuel Beckett, Knowlson argues that the play has also been related to Beckett’s “own horror of self-exposure, and linked to the essentially exhibitionistic nature of theatre.” ⁸ However, on the whole, Catastrophe exemplifies the workings of power upon the

¹ Sartre, Jean-Paul: Geschlossene Gesellschaft. (Orig. Huis clos). Trans. Traugott König. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1991, p. 59.

² Knowlson, James: Damned to Fame. The Life of Samuel Beckett. London: Bloomsbury, 1996, p. 678.

³ Beckett, Samuel: Catastrophe. In: Collected shorter plays, London: Faber and Faber, 1984, pp. . 295-

301. Hereafter cited as Catastrophe.

⁴ See Knowlson, James: Damned to Fame. The Life of Samuel Beckett. ^{London: Bloomsbury, 1996, p. 677. 5 Ibid., p. 678. 6 Cf. ibid., p. 678. 7 Ibid., p. 678. 8} Ibid., p. 679.

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individual. The concept of power and disempowerment adds a perspective to the play that is inherent in all the interpretations of Catastrophe. Thus there is a crucial affinity between Foucault’s philosophy and Beckett’s work. Similarly to Foucault’s notion that the self is not given to us, and that therefore “we have to create ourselves as a work of art” ⁹ , Beckett’s act of writing is also an act of self-creation and implies “a site of resistance against whatever it is that imposes the failure and impotence to which he habitually refers.” 10

2 Beckett’s Catastrophe - a play about power and impotency

2.1 A close reading of Catastrophe

Catastrophe is a play about the staging of a play and therefore its compositional principle is, like in the novel-within-the-novel, the ‘Chinese-box-structure’. ¹¹ It is a play about a dress rehearsal for the final scene of a drama. Therefore Libera, amongst other critics, ¹² has indicated that ‘catastrophe’ is used in its more technical, theatrical sense as the word retains its original ancient Greek meaning ( kata=down; strophien=turn), namely “the final event of a dramatic action, especially of a tragedy.” ¹³ The catastrophe completes the unraveling of the plot in a play and as such offers a solution to or conclusion of the conflictus. ¹⁴ Thus, because ‘catastrophe’ i s the title of Beckett’s short play, it alludes to the symbolic implications of a catastrophe as well as it is itself a catastrophe in the Greek sense as a synonym for dénouement and, thus, the downward shift of the protagonist’s fortunes.

There are only four characters involved in Beckett’s short play: A Director of a theatre (D), his female Assistant (A), the Protagonist (P) of the play that is being rehearsed, and Luke (L), an electrician who is in charge of the lighting but who does not appear on stage. The Director and his Assistant put the final touches on the Protagonist, until the Director is satisfied that the representation of (P) as a catastrophe is “in the

⁹ Quoted in: Guest, Michael: “Beckett and Foucault: Some Affinities.” In: Central Japan English Studies Vol. 15 (1996), p. 66.

¹⁰ Guest, Michael: “Beckett and Foucault: Some Affinities.” In: Central Japan English Studies Vol. 15 (1996), p. 66.

¹¹ See e.g. Imhof, Rüdiger: Contemporary Metafiction. A Poetological Study of Metafiction in English since 1939. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1986. Pp. 225f.

¹² See e.g. Knowlson, James: Damned to Fame. The Life of Samuel Beckett. London: Bloomsbury, 1996, p. 826, footnote no. 106.

¹³ Libera, Antoni: “Beckett’s Catastrophe.” In: Modern Drama, September 1985, p. 341.

¹⁴ Cf. Britannica online. Vers. 1999-2001. Encyclopaedia Britannica. 14 ^{th May 2001} http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=137133&tocid=0

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bag”. ¹⁵ The Director sits in an armchair to the left of the stage and wears a fur coat and matching head-covering. The Assistant wears a white overall, has no hat on but a pencil on her ear so as to make notes of what Director suggests for the appearance of Protagonist. In the middle of the stage stands Protagonist on a square black block; he i s clothed with a black hat and a black dressing-gown that reaches down to his ankles. Moreover, he is bare-footed, his head is bowed and he has his hands in his pockets. “D and A contemplate P.” ¹⁶ Director acts like a dictator as he barks orders to his assistant and reacts impatiently to her suggestions. He is filled with self-importance, does not accept other opinions, having a preconceived idea of the image that Protagonist should represent. Furthermore, he is obviously in a hurry as he frequently checks his chronometer during the rehearsal. While he transforms Protagonist into the image of a catastrophe respectively for the catastrophe (in the Greek sense), he focuses on the clawlike hands and the amount of flesh he wants to be displayed. The Director and his assistant speak in a distanced, unemotional, matter-of-fact-like language about the different parts of Protagonist’s body: skull, cranium, crippled hands (fibrous degeneration). ¹⁷ So Protagonist’s individuality is reduced to his outer appearance. He does not utter a word and remains immobile throughout the play; after all, it is Director’s orders and Assistant’s actions that transform his body, whereas he does nothing of his own free will - at least not until the end of the play. Protagonist is a human column, as it were, he looks like a sculpture and is designed by Director to produce the predetermined effect. As Assistant timidly suggests a “little gag” for Protagonist, Director tears her to pieces: “For God’s sake! This craze for explicitation! Every i dotted to death! Little gag! For God’s sake!” ¹⁸ Gontarski indicates that the play exhibits a conflict between revelation and concealment, as on the one hand the Director wants more and more exposure, yet on the other hand objects to “this craze for explicitation”. ¹⁹ The Assistant’s suggestion to let Protagonist raise his head produces a similar answer. Not “a trace of face” must show. So P is an inert, faceless and motionless object, a victim to feed the sadistic appetite of the audience. 20

¹⁵ Catastrophe, p. 300.

¹⁶ Catastrophe, p. 297.

¹⁷ Catastrophe, pp. 297-301.

¹⁸ Catastrophe, p. 299.

¹⁹ Gontarski, S. E.: The Intent of Undoing in Samuel Beckett’s Dramatic Texts. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985, p. 181.

²⁰ States finds that Beckett’s play is neither a political nor a protest play, but a play about human rights and inhuman wrongs. He insists that Catastrophe is “about the making of a Havel”, and that Beckett has