When one reads Beckett's works for the first time, one cannot but be stricken by the overabundant repetitions the text is replete with. There seems to be a real compulsion of repetition in various forms- in Beckett' plays. This is most evident in his shorter works. During this seminar, we have tried to shape a definition of textuality, never confining the term to one single meaning. In Beckett's works, textuality transpires from every word, every pause, and every silence, and struggles not to be frozen by the text. The Beckettian text along with its reproduction as a theatrical performance or a television film, introduces the reader to the plot with the quintessence of textuality which invites multiple readings, and thus different interpretations of textuality, aimed at reaching the "it", the secret subject of each play, as well as for the sake of representation, which refuses to be caught. The two Shorter Plays under study here, entitled ?What Where' and ?Play', partake of all those features. They are perfect illustrations of Beckett's art, for they present us with a hardly ever frozen textuality, which emerges from all parts of the texts, through endless repetitions, and the so-called "différance", and through this everlasting quest for the "it".
[...] According to several critics, pointing to the text's repetitions and the Voice's attention to the seasons at the onset of each new cycle, What Where, like Beckett's other works, is another example of an endless cycle. While the repetition and mention of the seasons suggest a continuity, nevertheless, unlike cycles in his previous work, this cycle does end, but in ending becomes enveloped in a shroud of darkness, emitting no light, no matter, no information: “It is winter / Without journey”. [...]
[...] He even struggled over the meaning of What Where: “I don't know what it means. Don't ask me what it means. It's an object”. On the other hand, the reader cannot but wonder whose words he is reading exactly, for Beckett, as we shall see later on in our analysis, was his own producer and translator. An endless repetition of the same words? Certainly not. As a matter of fact, the Beckett canon grows on repetition, micro-systemically and macro-systemically, and even on thematic reduplication, as we shall see. [...]
[...] Repetition is central to the Beckett canon and to our study of textuality. Indeed, the Beckettian text is not an empty space, filled with meaning from outside itself, any more than it is the transcription of an authorial intention, filled with meaning from outside language. Blanchot's view of texts and textuality is one which Beckett in many respects shared. The infinite, impossible, perpetual, incomplete or open text has been characteristic of Beckett's works. Moreover, the problems of textual validity and stability are complicated in Beckett's case by his own fundamental authorial and so textual ambivalence. [...]
[...] Originally, What Where was conceived as a stage play, but two years after its première in 1983, Beckett completely reworked the visual image and drastically reduced the spoken text of this obscure work for German television under the title Was Wo –indeed, it is worth mentioning here that translation is another important kind of repetition, as we shall see in our last part. An important aspect needs to be explored here: the role played by the audience. Indeed, the reader shares a specific textuality with the written text, but as far as the “it” is concerned –our secret subject-, the one who watches the “it” has a much more importance. Another dimension of textuality is opened with the re(-)presentation of What Where. [...]
[...] The da capo instruction would appear to undermine our suggestion that the contrast between the Narration and Meditation sections of Play implies a kind of freedom for the heads from the light. In the repetition, we are made fully aware that their speech, prompted by the light as it is, involves no creative faculty or deployment of words as anything other than abstract blocks; the humour and “the inconsequential details of gossip that were savoured the moment before become stale and turn sour” -Beckett. [...]
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