Lect. dr.

Andreea Paris-Popa
aparispopa@gmail.com

UNIT 10
EXISTENTIALISM, THE ABSURD AND BEYOND

I. EXISTENTIALISM
- Søren Kierkegaard, Jean Paul Sartre - existence, despair, distrust
- existence precedes essence: “Man first is – only afterwards is he this or that. Man must create for himself his
own essence.” (Sartre)
- existence is anguished and absurd: “personal existence is launched between nothingness and nothingness and
it is nothingness that is real, everything is absurd.” (Heidegger); “Man is condemned to be free.” (Sartre)
- man carries all the responsibility; down to earth philosophy
- it rejects traditional content, yet it achieves it through traditional instruments (like intelligible language)
- Sartre mentions three characteristics of human beings: being-in-itself, being-for-itself and being-for-others
- “Existentialism is a humanism.” (Sartre) [humanism = the belief that human beings are more important than
supernatural deities and it is their rights, needs and decisions that shape their life rather than divine
intervention]

II. THE ABSURD

“Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose . . . Cut off from his
religious metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is
lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless.”
(Eugen Ionesco)

- Albert Camus - “The Myth of Sisyphus” (1942)

=> “The workman of today works every day in his life at the
same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd.” (Camus)
= > attempt to humanize the univ., reasonably explain an
irrational world = absurd: “At this point of his effort man
stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his
longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of
this confrontation between he human need and the
unreasonable silence of the world.” (Camus)
=> Sisyphus’s story = both tragic powerlessness and rebellious
victory: “This universe henceforth without a master seems to
him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each
mineral flake of that nigh filled mountain, in itself forms a
world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill
a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” (Camus) Sisyphus (1548) by Titian

III. SAMUEL BECKETT AND THE THEATRE OF THE ABSURD

- Martin Esslin - a form of anti-theatre that goes against theatrical tradition
- 1940s and 1950s: Samuel Beckett, Eugen Ionesco and Jean Genet - reaction to WWII on the basis of existential
philosophy and secularization
- the plot = not narrative, but poetic => theatre of situation not of theatre of events: “things happen in Waiting
for Godot, but these happenings do not constitute a plot or story; they are an image of Beckett’s intuition that
nothing really ever happens in man’s existence.” (Esslin)

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“ESTRAGON: All the dead voices.
VLADIMIR: They make a noise like
wings.
ESTRAGON: Like leaves.
VLADIMIR: Like sand.
ESTRAGON: Like leaves.
[Silence.]
VLADIMIR: They all speak at once.
ESTRAGON: Each one to itself.
[Silence.]
[intertextual reference: Dante’s Purgatory “Here let death’s poetry arise to life” (Dante)]
VLADIMIR: Rather they whisper.
ESTRAGON: They rustle.
VLADIMIR: They murmur.
ESTRAGON: They rustle.
[Silence.]
VLADIMIR: What do they say?
ESTRAGON: They talk about their
lives.
VLADIMIR: To have lived is not
enough for them.
ESTRAGON: They have to talk about it.
Lect. dr. Andreea Paris-Popa
aparispopa@gmail.com
VLADIMIR: To be dead is not
enough for them.
ESTRAGON: It is not sufficient.
[Silence.]
VLADIMIR: They make a noise
like feathers.
ESTRAGON: Like leaves.
VLADIMIR: Likes ashes.
ESTRAGON: Like leaves.
[Long silence.]” (Beckett)

- the setting and the time-frame are indefinite, the traditional characters are gone
- no communication (silence is more powerful than words) => a devaluation of language
- the Theatre of the Absurd does not just talk about the absurdity of the human condition, but presents it: language
cannot be trusted: “ESTRAGON: Well, shall we go? / VLADIMIR: Yes, let's go. / They do not move”
- no traditional coherence and meaning => anti-rationalism
- a twofold absurdity: 1). criticism of mechanical existence; 2). absurdity of the human condition
- theatre that cannot be logically explained, as life is absurd: “for the dignity of man lies in his ability to face
reality in all its senselessness; to accept it freely, without fear, without illusions and to laugh at it” (Esslin)
- the issue of the audience’s identification with the characters is twofold as well
=> the comic-tragic nature of the Theatre of the Absurd: “such theatre is a cominc theatre in spite of the fact that
its subject-matter is somber, violent, and bitter. That is why the Theatre of the Absurd transcends the category
of comedy and tragedy and combines laughter with horror.” (Esslin)

Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1952)

- San Quentin penitentiary (California, 1957): “A reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle who was present
noted that the convicts did not find it difficult to understand the play. One prisoner told him, ‘Godot is society.’
Said another: ‘He’s the outside.’ A teacher at the prison was quoted as saying, ‘They know what is meant by
waiting . . . and they knew if Godot finally came, he would only be a disappointment.” (Esslin)
- “Nothing to be done.”;“ESTRAGON: Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful!” (Beckett)

“VLADIMIR: Nothing you can do about it.
ESTRAGON: No use struggling.
VLADIMIR: One is what one is.
ESTRAGON: No use wriggling.
VLADIMIR: The essential doesn't change.
ESTRAGON: Nothing to be done.” (Beckett)
“VLADIMIR: We wait. We are bored. (He throws up his hand.)
No, don't protest, we are bored to death, there's no denying it.
Good. A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go
to waste . . . In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone once
more, in the midst of nothingness!” (Beckett)

- circularity as futility
- pairs of characters: clowns, cross-talk comedians as seen in music-halls
- constant forgetfulness: “POZZO: I don't remember having met anyone yesterday. But tomorrow I won't
remember having met anyone today. So don't count on me to enlighten you.” (Beckett)
- Godot has multiple possible interpretations and meanings, but only one function: “[Godot] has a function rather
than a meaning. He stands for what keeps us chained to and in existence, he is the unknowable that represents
hope in an age when there is no hope” (Michael Worton)
- meaning is constantly deferred

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 Lect. dr. Andreea Paris-Popa
aparispopa@gmail.com

- the silence of language: anti-reason, confusion and alienation => literature of silence
- Michael Worton: silences of inadequacy, silences of repression, silences of anticipation
-“I produce an object. What people make of it is not my concern” (Beckett) – they key word he said was ‘perhaps’.
- the silence of Divinity: apophatic theology (negative theology) = getting closer to God through negation;“a
personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the
heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons
unknown” (Beckett) => lack of feelings, lack of agitation (disinterest) and lack of language

IV. TOM STOPPARD AND POST-ABSURDIST THEATRE

- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966): the British canon is placed under debate
- a parodic story => ambivalence; Hamlet + Waiting for Godot
=> minor characters = main ones, subtext = text, offstage = onstage
=> switches from Shakespearean language to absurdist style, low-key register (postmodernist mixture)

“HAMLET: …for you yourself, sir, should be as old as I am
if like a crab you could go backward.
POLONIUS (aside): Though this be madness, yet there is
method in it. . . .
HAMLET: I am but mad north north-west; when the wind
is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw . . .
(Exeunt HAMLET and POLONIUS. ROS and GUIL
ponder. Each reluctant to speak first.)
GUIL: Hm?
ROS: Yes?
GUIL: What?
ROS: I thought you . . .
GUIL: No.
ROS: Ah. (Pause.)” (Stoppard)
“LORD POLONIUS: What do you read, my lord?
HAMLET: Words, words, words.” (Shakespeare)
“ROS: What are you playing at?
GUIL: Words, words. They're all we have to go on.
(Pause.)
ROS: Shouldn't we be doing something – constructive?”
(Stoppard)
“ROS: (an anguished cry): Consistency is all I ask!
GUIL: (low, wry rhetoric): Give us this day our daily
mask. . . .
ROS (quietly): Immortality is all I seek.
GUIL (dying fall): Give us this day our daily week. . .
ROS: There it is again. (In anguish.) All I ask is a change
ground!
GUIL: (coda): Give us this day our daily round. . . .
ROS: For those in peril on the sea...
GUIL: Give us this day our daily cue.” (Stoppard)

- “They exist at the same time in both SHapespeare’s and Stoppard’s plays, coming on and off the two stages of
the two playwrights.” (Liang Fei)
- Ros and Guil play with their words => insignificance of the religious dimension; the world is a text

- borrowed from the Theatre of the Absurd: hopelessness, life = tragic + comic, meaninglessness, absence of logic
and of reason, boredom, powerlessness, confused and fused identities:“ROS: He's not himself, you know./ GUIL:
I'm him, you see. (Beat.)/ ROS: Who am I then?/ GUIL: You're yourself./ ROS: And he's you?/ GUIL: Not a bit
of it.” (Stoppard) + perpetual forgetfulness (the characters do not remember who called them, where and for what
purpose and they even forget their names):“ROS: (flaring): I haven't forgotten – how I used to remember my
own name – and yours, oh yes! There were answers everywhere you looked. There was no question about it –
people knew who I was and if they didn't they asked and I told them.” (Stoppard)
=> certainties appear to be only illusions

- beyond the absurd: Victor Cahn (1979); the dialogue is more discursive, the plot is less static and relies more
on causality

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 Lect. dr. Andreea Paris-Popa
aparispopa@gmail.com

=> the audience understands the story and knows it from Hamlet; something does happen and everyone except
the two main characters knows what is going on; explanation though intertextuality, so their environment is not
inexplicable and their deaths are only absurd if viewed from their limited perspective.

“PLAYER: Events must play themselves out to aesthetic,
moral and logical conclusion. . . . It never varies – we aim
at the point where everyone who is marked for death dies.
GUIL: Marked? . . . Who decides?
PLAYER (switching off his smile): Decides? It is written.
(Stoppard)
“PLAYER: You are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. That's
enough.
GUIL: No- it is not enough. To be told so little- to such an
end - and still, finally, to be denied an explanation . . .”
(Stoppard)
“ROS: . . . What was it all about? When did it begin?
GUIL: I can't remember. . . . Our names shouted in a
certain dawn... a message . summons... There must have
been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have
said no. But somehow we missed it.” (Stoppard)

=> post-absurdist theatre adds a philosophic questioning of the relation between reality and the theatre => the use
of methatheatre: “The meta-theatrical play that uses the stage-as-stage to present life as theatricality has as one
of its goals an examination of the distinctions between art and life . . . This is the type of play about playing,
about theatricality, about the human impulse to create fictions and revise reality.” (Mille Barranger)

ROS and GUIL as ACTORS

- PLAYER: . . . I recognized you at once- / ROS: And who are we? / PLAYER: -as fellow artists” (Stoppard) =>
actors, they must follow the script
- despite them telling the player that they cannot act: “GUIL: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do
with ourselves. We don't know how to act.” (Stoppard), Ros and Guil do act out their part because they say their
lines from Hamlet in Shakespearean dialogue; the problem is that “they do not know what they are playing”
(Anthony Jenkins)
- Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage” (As You Like It)=> self-reflexivity
- Ros and Guil inevitably move towards their own death (exit off-stage): “GUIL: No, no, no ... you've got it all
wrong ... you can't act death. The fact of it is nothing to do with seeing it happen- it's not gasps and blood and
falling about- that isn't what makes it death. It's just a man failing to reappear, that's all- now you see him, now
you don't, that's the only thing that's real: here one minute and gone the next and never coming back - an exit . .
.” (Stoppard)
=>“GUIL: . . . (He looks round and sees he is alone.) Rosen-? Guil-? (He gathers himself) Well, we'll know better
next time. Now you see me, now you- / And disappears.” (Stoppard)

ROS and GUIL as SPECTATORS

=> “ROS: (at footlights ) How very intriguing! (Turns.) I feel like a spectator - an appalling prospect. The only thing that makes
it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute ...” (Stoppard)
=> “The Mousetrap” from Hamlet: Ros and Guil watch the drama of their own lives without realizing => the real
spectators watch the actors that play Ros and Guil be spectators to other actors who play the same part: the
distinction between spectator and actor is erased
=> “This provides a metadramatic perspective from which the main characters in the outer play [Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern Are Dead] view the interwoven spectacles of Hamlet (the inner play) and parody of Hamlet
[The Mousetrap]” (Erinc Ozdemir); an invitation to the audience/readers to question their own reality.

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