ABSTRACT

Samuel Beckett’s dramatic works employ an irregular use of linguistic forms. Such instances

as word and phrase repetition, removed from both context and content, constitute a large part

of communication that takes place between the characters. In turn, the communicative aspect

of language, as well as its expressive utilization is most often than not, impossible. This thesis

aims to thematize the attitude towards language that Beckett espouses in his drama. Through

examining Beckett’s own thoughts about language and contrasting them to some of the

prevailing thoughts in language philosophy, a close reading of some of the dramatic works is

offered here.

Attitudes towards language in Samuel Beckett’s Dramatic Works

That Samuel Beckett was an author acutely concerned with and aware of language

and the limits of its expressive power, emanates not only in the way speech is composed in

his Dramatic Works, but through other records of his literary career. In a publication where

Beckett assumes a role of a literary critic, ‘Dante…Bruno. Vico…Joyce’ Beckett already puts

forward an idea that language of the day needs to be alive, rather than remain to be ‘polite

contortions of 20th century literature’ (14). In his review of Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake Beckett

is dully inspired with the way content and form achieve unity in Joyce’s language.

Recounting the evolution of poetic language into a language of abstractions, Beckett

understands that to bring language to a new, which implies old, evolutionary step, a certain

process of un-doing or “un-language-ing” must take place. He pinpoints this metamorphosis

of language in Joyce and calls it “desophistication of language” (“Disjecta” 27). From such

an analysis of language, Beckett shows a tendency similar to Mauthner’s and Wittgenstein’s

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– which was to start re-examining the very basis upon which their arts are built (Ben-Zvi

184). In Dante…Bruno. Vico…Joyce, Beckett ascribes the effective ‘de-sophistication’ of

language, through which Joyce had achieved ‘direct expression’, to returning to the earliest

forms of language, before parts of speech became so greatly abstracted from their primal

meaning that all sense-making ceased to have meaning (25). Estragon utters this kind of

‘direct expression’ when discussing the logistics of suicide with Vladimir: ‘don’t let’s do

anything’.

Poetry, Beckett muses, is a ‘daughter of ignorance’ and ‘a sense of humanity’ at the

same time (“Disjecta” 22). Estragon claims to have been a poet - ‘[gestures towards his rugs]

isn’t that [that he used to be a poet] obvious’ (Beckett 13). Clov in Endgame attempts to

create poetry on stage. Beckett’s interest in poetry must have been aligned with his interests

about what language can do. He elaborates on this, recalling Vico’s ideas, that the primary

use of poetry shall not be understood as a transcendental feature in human cognition, rather a

deficiency to transcend language – an inability to perceive the figurative language as

anything other than its literal sense (“Dante…Bruno.” 23). Here, it might be helpful to recall

T.S Elliot’s explanation to what a creative process of writing might be to a writer, which is

‘not an expression of personality, but an escape from personality’ (470). Beckett might have

agreed to this proposition, seeing how he uses language to demonstrate the futility of self-

expression. For his own works, however, whose fidelity lies with failure, it is pivotal to

express the thought process, or rather ‘thought experiments’ as many of Beckett’s plays read

as, rather than demonstrate an accomplishment of such an expression (Ben-Zvi 187). What

Beckett admires in Joyce’s work, which is working towards ‘omniscience and omnipotence’

of the word, is polarly opposed to his own aesthetics of failure – ‘I work with impotence,

ignorance’ (Furlani 19). Beckett’s characters are aware of how the content and form are in

disbalance in their speech – they mock it even through repetition. In Rough for Radio I, for
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example, when SHE asks ‘he’s alone? All alone?’ the form of the answer she receives is quite

interesting: ‘One is alone when one is all alone’ (Beckett 265). Here, not only the weight of

solitude is expressed by HIM, but an insight that hides in the form, that: when one is

everything and all to oneself, is one truly alone. In Beckett, the questioning of language is

more important than achieving ‘direct expression’ – however, moments of these are also

present in his plays. Lucky’s “think” for example – is also a direct expression of his thoughts

and thus language, as Beckett would read in Mauthner.

At this time, Beckett had started to familiarize himself with Fritz Mauthner’s radical

critique of language, as he read Beitrage zu einer Kritik der Sprache for Joyce. (Ben-Zvi 183)

Mauthner posits ten theories according to which language isn’t a perfect expressive and

communicative tool, upon which a greater part of intellectual activity rests. The very

premises of the act of thinking, then, become uncertain. Wittgenstein, had continued this

tradition towards the mistrust of language throughout his life, and Beckett was familiar with

Tractatus and Investigations, as much as with Mauthner. Furlani draws parallels between

Beckett and Wittgenstein, Ben-Zvi – Between Beckett and Mauthner. It is paramount to keep

into consideration, that even though Beckett’s writings reflect his philosophical inclinations,

the artistic product of his creativity must reverberate these attitudes towards language in

many a different ways. Even though in 1929 Beckett admires how Joyce brings words ‘to

dance’, the key point of difference between what these two artists want to accomplish with

modifying and experimenting with language is that ‘The kind of work I do is one in which

I’m not master of my material. The more Joyce knew the more he could’, Beckett says he is

working with ‘impotence and ignorance’ as opposed to ‘omniscience and omnipotence’ that

Joyce does (Shenker 1979: 148 qtd. in Furlani 19). The current thesis will attempt to outline

how awareness of language’s insufficiency has drawn Beckett to experiment with speech in

his theatre. These experiments are manifested in linguistic oddities of dismembered words,
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words repeated and alienated from their meanings drawing on circular/spiral motion through

repetition. To establish a connection between Beckett’s writing and the philosophy of

language influencing the process, key aspects of Beckett’s aesthetics of failure will be

discussed. The aspiration to express nothing through nothing will also be commented upon

and some close readings of the texts will draw parallels between compositions and underlying

thought process that, perhaps, prompted their creation.

In his Critique of Language, Mauthner seeks to destroy the very means of his

expression, language, in search of a more tangible way to get to philosophical/metaphysical

truths (qtd. in Ben-Zvi 188). Similarly, Beckett had been in search of a language, which could

constitute and represent ‘the literature of the unword’. Nothing, un-certainty and in-ability

plague Beckett’s characters as they fail over and over to distinguish between memory and

present. Future is already a hallmark of failure for them. In Dante…Bruno. Vico…Joyce,

Beckett displays his disinterest towards transcending language and persists to work with the

imminent impossibility of expression, which prompts ‘an exit from language and [the speech]

crosses navigable territory into an uncharted and disorienting space’ (Tubridy 7). What is

meant by the uncharted territory here, is similar to the speech patterns that employed through

Vladimir and Estragon. They finish each other’s utterances by assuming that they have a

collective memory of certain events. When Estragon questions what was asked of Godot, the

two descend to a back-and-forth iterations of possible answers.

ESTRAGON. I can’t have been listening.

VLADIMIR. Oh…nothing very definite.

ESTRAGON. A kind of prayer.

VLADIMIR. Precisely.

ESTRAGON. A vague supplication.

VLADIMIR. Exactly. (Beckett, “Dramatic Works” 19)

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The spiral descends further, as the two come up with different responses that Godot gave to

their question. What Mauthner does, by claiming that all knowledge, all thought was

syntactical – is shown here. There is an urge in characters, to verbalize every single

fragmented segment of their thoughts. However, as Beckett acknowledges that ‘being isn’t

syntactical’ and ‘if anything is, and can be known, it cannot be expressed in words’ the

audience sees the immediate failure of the characters’ speech going beyond their language

(Furlani 42). Thus, the quest of the characters is unsuccessful, leaving them only with

speculations. But, the system by which their thoughts and language are governed is skilfully

shown here. Ideas bounce off each other, forgetting that a goal or an antecedent was ever

present to begin with. Thus, the sense-making aspect of the play is abolished, and instead,

language contributes to the overarching atmosphere of confusion.

Beckett’s awareness of language and its expressive power, emanates in the way

speech is treated in his Dramatic Works. Speech has representative, rather than expressive

qualities in Beckett’s Drama (Iser 252). What it usually represents is alienation from sense

and meaning, and is achieved through repetition, lack of punctuation, ellipsis and

counterpoint of solipsism to the verbal expressions of the characters. Early critique of

Beckett’s dramatic language ponders that speech, in most of his plays, have neither

expressive nor communicative qualities (Iser 251). What is expressed in dialogues is

‘accelerating change of subjects, which follow swiftly upon each other’ (Iser 253). This

pattern of acceleration and non-sense takes its full form in Not I, where the verbose must

resemble a vomit of words, as Beckett intended it to be spoken ‘like water from the mouth of

a stone lion in a fountain’ (Furlani 94). This tactic of expression inspires a sense of

automation and an absence of a hearer. Thus, resembling an Inner/Private version of language

that individuals reserve for self-inspection and revelation. No introspection, however, is

available in Not I. Here, the words represent distilled memories and repetitions of those
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memories. The repetition signifies that it is impossible to go beyond the language-inspired

interpretation of life. The subject of the play attempts to vehemently recall and passively

forget the traumatic past. The repetition of her negation and of the events of her past, imply

that certain linguistic form of explaining what happened to her have stuck and haven’t

changed form or content. Despite Beckett’s phrase: ‘being is not syntactical’, he has

employed syntax to inspire impressions that have been left on an individual throughout life

(Furlani 17). The way in which Beckett attempts, over and over throughout his plays, to

express Being and its amplification in language, is far removed from traditional syntax or

grammar. In traditional syntax and grammar, language is a tool with which communication

and expression is possible. Neither the Mouth in Not I, nor the woman in Rockaby are

concerned with utilizing these aspects of language. Rather, through them Beckett illustrates

how deeply language is embedded in experience, and how futile it is to hold on to this

embeddedness – only because it is so (Furlani 57). Here, there is a nod towards Mauthner’s

idea as well, that man is ‘chained to the language of this very moment’ (Ben-Zvi 187).

Beckett ventures further and shows that, in solitude especially, language is the only means to

access memories and denote thinking. Thinking, however, is often equated to language and to

all knowledge in Mauthner (qtd. in Ben-Zvi 188). This makes it even more impossible for

knowledge to be transferred, communication achieved and self-expression illuminated

through word. Rather, speech in Beckett often resembles a man who is ‘living language and

believes he has something to say because he speaks’ (Mauthner qtd. in Ben-Zvi 187).

Throughout Dramatic Works, Beckett’s characters are seen to be unable to resist verbalizing

their thoughts and intentions, unable to give in to the silence so admired by Beckett,

Mauthner and Wittgenstein – as a nothingness in which the goal of their expression must

lurk. Silences serve, at the very least, as structural aspects that make speech sound like

musical phrases. Composition of words in this way, where phrases sit between silences,
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might serve as a means to go beyond language by the means of language. As these musical

phrases inspire a perception of heard utterances through a sensory sphere, rather than only

depending on what their meaning is. The aspect of language that makes it endlessly recursive

needs to be broken down into “meaningful” segments, for an attempt to convey more than the

meaning of individual words.

Here, it is important to comment on this unstoppable force of language, that makes it

seem that there is something profound to express. Beckett struggled with an obligation to

express himself, as do his characters – however only fragmented parts of their thought-

processes come through their speech. At the same time, he acknowledged from time to time

that ‘said is missaid’ (qtd. in Furlani 37). Beckett, aware of the shortcomings of language,

must have struggled with a realization that a considerable part of speaking activity must rest

on an unfortunate premise of not having anything to say. To fill up the awkwardness of

silence, to overcome the unknowable, the only means left to the characters is to speak; even if

what they say makes no straightforward sense, either to them or to the audience. If language,

at least occasionally, can be conceived of as a distraction from silence – where all the

uncertainty, and certainty, rest, then it is apparent how sense-making would be a problem.

And what comes out of this sort of mental-state/thought-process, is fragmented nonsense,

retained as memories of language, that sound like recycled understandings of concepts –

perhaps in the same way that Mrs. Riley in All that Fall feels her language is dead.

Language offers close to no explanation for being, it doesn’t answer the questions like

‘why is this happening in a way that it is happening in’. And when the urge, or an obligation

to express them makes itself apparent – all the viewer is left with is bunch of words that don’t

make sense neither together nor separately. Often incomprehensible, language in Beckett’s

drama serves as a passage of time, rather than a collection of meanings and articulated

thought (Iser 251). Language accommodates the characters in a company when they can stay
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passive and do nothing. However, this company that language offers is indefinite, it is

uncertain and characters themselves often doubt their speech, not knowing what the meaning

of their utterances are. Apart from inspiring confusion, language games become filled with

sardonic humour, as characters loop through their own speech, their own knowledge of the

world uncertain. This formula of speech underlines that shared belief of Beckett and

Wittgenstein that ‘doubt rests on certainty’ (Furlani 54). Therefore, ‘for Beckett as for

Wittgenstein, paradigms are all we have and all we need to have’ argues Furlani (56).

Patterns are the only constant aspect in Beckett’s plays, apart from inability to stay silent.

Both Didi and Gogo, Hamm and Clov seem to be in an interdependent relationship with each

other. Their interdependency is best explained by the need of an interlocutor. In later plays,

Beckett abandons the need for a hearer who answers, and lets the language flow as individual

experiences are told and re-told in many different ways. In earlier plays however, the issue is

that they can not seem to communicate their desires for the future. Perhaps, this is because of

the uncertainty that clouds their desires – that prompts speech in these plays to be so aimless.

Speech in Godot is often a memory, even if the memory is situated some minutes ago – the

need to refer back to it, instead of expressing something new and something real is what ends

up being the most confusing aspect of Waiting for Godot. The characters are unable to give in

to the silence, which is admired by Beckett.

In a search of language which ‘expresses nothing’ with nothing, language in Beckett’s

theatre is imposed on the characters as a device to remind them that they are existing. Speech

is their only company, even when they are not alone. Words, with worn meanings take the

characters nowhere, but make an interesting point about what language can do and what it

can’t. Speech becomes an abstraction through which inactions of characters is depicted to the

spectator. Both acts of Waiting for Godot finish with ‘yes, let’s go [they do not move]

(Beckett 53, 94). Same features of language, that is repetition and ellipsis, make it apparent
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for the spectator that a connection between speech and meaning is somewhat disrupted.

Early critique of Waiting for Godot ascribes this quality to a theory that there is neither

motivation, nor intention behind the characters’ speech (Iser 253). The dialogues are

apathetic and purposeless, they express nothing that could signify as identity of the characters

(Iser 254). If we follow a more Wittgenstein-inspired interpretation, with a hint of Mauthner,

we could say that it is uncertainty and confusion that stand behind the characters’ words; this,

in turn makes a mere conception of a goal impossible to get to. And a failure in quest to

overcome it, like the failure of W and M to overcome language, when the only means to do

so is language itself. Beckett, however, achieves such use of language that may not go

beyond itself, but surely represents its meaning through form. Language in his plays, rather

than speaking of confusion, is confused. Uncertainty is conveyed through the way language is

used, not in a descriptive manner. The best example of this would be Lucky’s think – where a

chaotic and a non-sensical iterations of ideas inspire a dire confusion that the character must

be going through in his head. In a similar way, the anxiety that underlines the use of language

can be found in Not I. This is well translated for the audiences, as they are left wondering

what exactly is the relationship between thinking and speaking. In Mauthner’s conception of

language, similar to Wittgenstein’s, there is no thinking, only language; the illusion of

thinking, is created by language’s ‘imaginary ability to promote insight’ (qtd in Ben-Zvi

189). However, even this insight is insufficient for Beckett to express the ‘ineffable’.

Beckett’s characters, loop through their own verbose and shy away from action, in hopes of

transcending their situations through language. There is no transcendence, however, only a

‘fidelity to failure’ and a nauseating obligation to keep expressing. An obligation is

something Beckett feels, his characters on the other hand, remain in dark as to why they can

not stop thinking/speaking. Beckett inflicts on them ‘a tyranny of language’, that plagues the

misunderstandings and constant iterations of concepts, touching the metaphysical grounds,

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existential problems – although Beckett himself was quite against the common interpretations

of his works as philosophical (Ben-Zvi 187). When asked what Godot denotes exactly, his

reply was ‘If I knew, I would have said so in the play’ (Worton). This suggests that Beckett

only wrote what he knew, at least consciously, and illustrates the fragmentation of that

knowledge through the fragmented speech-patterns of his characters. Worton interprets this

comment of Beckett’s as Godot being present in the play as a function, rather than a meaning

(Worton). Similar comment could be made regarding language in Beckett’s plays. The words

execute a function of time-passing, or illustrating the frustration with its insufficiency, rather

than trying to denote meanings and advance ideas.

Fleeting memories and impulses are what dominates speech in Beckett’s plays.

Dialogues never achieve a goal, as there was no goal to begin with (Iser 251). Beckett’s

multi-character plays depict the imbalance between the speaker and the spoken, where

communicative aspect of language is barely present. Whilst in his monologue-like plays like

Not I and Rockaby the viewer is bamboozled with purely chaotic form of language, that can

only be called an Inner-form of language, meaning leftover word-signs from social

interactions manifested as ‘unrealised influences and half incorporated ideas’ (Riley 70). The

speech acts serve as illustrations of failure to meaningfully recollect. This, is perhaps a legacy

to a tradition that mistrusts language as an expressive or a communicative tool. Characters’

constant failure to maintain silence, even though language brings no clarity to their reality,

coincides with Beckett’s “obligation to express”. Beckett described speech in Waiting for

Godot as ‘a struggle, poor I hope, against silence, and leading back to it’ (qtd. in Furlani 36).

Thus, language for Beckett is a struggle, an inevitable one, put up against silence – which

contains the ineffable. That has been his quest, to express ‘nothing’ and express it ‘with

nothing’. Thus, his characters also speak with the knowledge that their language holds no

knowledge in itself, only chaos of inner musings, that manifest themselves as half-finished
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sentences and half-thoughts (Riley 71). Here, through employing irregular syntactic forms,

antecedents of which often escape the viewers and the characters alike, Beckett espoused

attitude towards language that it is doomed to fail in performing its communicative role.

However, as Beckett is an artist interested in failure and is loyal to failure, the speech acts

express the inexpressible only insomuch as they don’t start referring to it directly. This

feature hints at the author’s changing attitudes towards what language can achieve and

betrays his own admiration of silence, much like Wittgenstein’s. What language certainly

can’t achieve, is an expression of some truth, by its own means. It can only be used to

generate recursive nonsense, that at some point will illuminate the space of nothingness,

where it all comes from.

In his Critique of Language Firtz Mauthner,, expresses an almost nihilistic mistrust

towards language as a vehicle of expression. Rather, he ascribes to it a social and sense-

embedded quality in which a private grip on meaning is ‘the most worthless in the stock

market of human intercourse’. Even if the private grip on one’s situation is expressed, it will

often be the case in Beckett’s drama that this makes the characters feel and remain isolated.

‘A few simple words…from my heart…and I am all alone… once more…’ Mrs Rooney

muses in All that Fall (Beckett 183). There is no understanding of her language, outside of

herself. Her musings so private, the relation of her sensations so uninteresting to anyone else,

Mrs Rooney often gets ignored or left once she starts going off in her monologues. The heart-

breaking factor in this is that she has a hint of this ‘condition’: ‘I use none but the simplest

words, I hope, and yet sometimes find my way of speaking very…bizarre’ (Beckett 175). Her

social language is hindered by the uncertainty of her own private meaning. Disorganized

speech which is spoken to no one, and thus, to herself, consist of leftover structures and

vacuous meanings that have been lost to memory. the leftover structures and forms of

language Thus, she is always halting, stopping to look around and describe things – to try to
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exorcise the private language in her monologues, and get upset when nobody understands

her. Precisely because private meaning is ‘untransferable, incomprehensible, unshareable’

(Mauthner qtd. in Ben-Zvi 193). In Mauthner’s conception of language, it is the general,

rather than particular expectations that prevail in the act of exchanging language (qtd. in Ben-

Zvi. 194).

Same thought bellies a key passage from Beckett’s Three Dialogues: ‘the expression

that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to

express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express.’

(qtd. in Tubridy 3). Here, Beckett admits to an axiomatic nature of artistic expression and

obeys an artist’s obligation to express, even though there is nothing to express and no reliable

tool to express it with. The admission to the fact that language, his primary mode of

expression, is a futile and incompetent tool is a constant presence felt as speech disintegrates

into seemingly nonsensical cycles of repetition. In Cascando, one of the plays that allude to

the compositional aspect of creation, The Voice cannot rest until the story is finished: ‘you

could rest…sleep…not before’ (Beckett 295). Speech is largely restless in Beckett’s drama. It

seeks to annul itself, but fails to do so. Beckett writes to exhaust the verbal premises of the

self, who seeks to express itself with a tool which is impractical for such an endeavour. And

perhaps achieve an expression of nothing once, and if, the exhaustion of self is successful.

However, as language is a recursive tool, it never quite exhausts itself. Beckett’s obedience to

his own ‘axiomatic self-consuming logic’ is brought forth by the characters’ inability to stay

silent, even though their speech brings them further away from sense-making (Furlani 37).

Confusion prevails, and coherent thought is tramped upon as a social aspect of language that

Beckett wants to transfix in order to get himself to express ‘nothing’.

What exactly is this ‘nothing’ and what does it mean to heave ‘nothing with which to

express it?’. Beckett borrows this formulation from Maurice Blanchot who describes a 20 th
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century writer, who wants to seize ‘nothing’ not with allusions, but in its ‘own actual truth’

(3). To realize this the writer confronts that the vehicle of his expression is subject to scrutiny

by his own self first and foremost. ‘A distress that writes itself well is not as complete as one

that keeps something of its ruin’, a quotation from Balnchot’s essay that can be heard as

subtext through Beckett’s German Letter, where he deems the most efficient language

wherever it is ‘most efficiently misused.’ (Blanchot 1; “Disjecta” 184). Some of Beckett’s

characters try to find the words to define and explain their situations, ‘they struggle over the

obscurity of their feelings.’ (Blanchot 2). They resist silence in hopes that finally attaining a

verbal form of what they are feeling will liberate them from the confusion they’re lost in.

However, the confusion is a condition through which nothingness manifests. Disorganized

syntactic patterns make it impossible for the characters to attain this cathartic state, and thus

they are perpetually bound to their words, instead of their words ‘exorcising’ some meaning

out of which they are unable to make sense. But it is not always in this sense that language

becomes disfigured in Beckett, and not solely for the purpose of expressing nothing.

Sometimes, as in Not I, the speech becomes embodiment of experience, sense experiences are

uttered through fractioned sentences. Apart from elaborating on the narrative, these

fractioned sentences inspire a chaotic state of mind, a restless vomit of words. And this is

what it was supposed to be. Beckett’s instructions for performing Not I is that the words

should fall out like the fountain water from a lion (Furlani 71). Thus, these words are largely

automatic.

A significant feature in Beckett’s later plays is abundance of verbose. This excess is

seen to suffocate the characters, and make them incapable of moving on like in Cascando,

where The Voice pleads for ‘no more stories…no more words…’ and to propel them for the

search of a better alternative (Beckett 295). The Voice admits to overindulgence in

explanations: ‘All I ever did…saying to myself…/ finish this one… it’s the right one…’
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(Beckett 295). The voice understands the futility of the search for the right expressions, as

the abundancy of words render their meanings obtuse and redundant (Tubridy 5) The result is

that characters, like the Voice, seem to be suffocated by words retained in their memories;

this excess in an inner sphere of language makes it impossible to quit the attempt of finding a

‘truer’ expression. An earlier example of this would be Lucky’s “Think”, where memories of

half-sentences and half-ideas, pour out of Lucky’s mouth in a manner which seems

unstoppable; the action of expressing seems to be an arbitrary condition, and the speech

might as well go on silently in Lucky’s head. At other times lucky is silent, his speech is

nothing and thus indeterminably grasps both said and unsaid expressions. The abundancy of

words in Lucky’s speech accumulates excess and ‘limits any attempt to collapse the good into

positive knowledge’ (Tubridy 7). Excessive use of language in hopes of exhausting the tool

and as a result expressing, perhaps by accident, the ‘one…thing’ contributes to the overall

cyclical structure, which is more of a ‘diminishing spiral’ (Worton). In Endgame, with

‘suddenly there’s a heap, a little heap, an impossible heap.’, Clov demonstrates a cyclical

structure, through referring to the heap in three different ways. No sense is derived at the end,

because ideas bounce of each other and refer back to each other; in this way, the original

value of an expression is lost in order to accommodate the overly-descriptive language that

serves as a function rather than a meaning, the function being displaying the inadequacy of

description and reference in language to get to a unified sense. In another example from

Endgame, Hamm sets out to make an expression poetic – thus attempting to give it value

through appealing to the aesthetic side of language:

HAMM. A little poetry. [Pause.]

you prayed [corrects himself]

You CRIED for night; it comes – [pause. He corrects himself]

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It FALLS: now cry in darkness.

Nicely put that. (Beckett 138)

Beckett’s own attitude towards Poetry, however, is ambivalent. In Dante…Bruno.

Vico..Joyce. he calls poets ‘the sense of humanity’ and ‘daughter of ignorance’ at the same

time (“Disjecta” 20). In Hamm’s attempt to poeticize, we see a futile attempt to say

something non-sensical in a beautiful way. Hoping to get to the original intention, or essence,

of expression is even found as a means of expressing ‘that something’ in Rough for Radio II.

Here, the Animator, who seems like a cruel enabler of Fox’s suffering admits that neither him

or the Stenographer are aware of what it is they want to hear from Fox; this does not stop

them from asserting a theory that exhausting the linguistic signs will bring them closer to it:

A. Be reasonable…. you might prattle away to your latest breath and still the one…

thing remain unsaid that can give you back your darling solitudes, we know. But

this much is sure: the more you say the greater your chances. Is that not so, miss?

S. It stands to reason, sir.

A. [as to a backward pupil] Don’t ramble! Treat the subject, whatever it is. [snivel]

More variety! [snivel] Those everlasting wilds may have their charm, but there is

nothing there for us, that would astonish me. (Beckett 278)

Here, the text betrays Beckett’s own approach and attitude towards language. It is what

Furlani calls the literature of ‘exhausted justifications’, where the exhaustion of language

aims at revealing that hidden ‘thing’, or an inexpressible nothingness (46). Like Mauthner –

who acknowledges that language is something that should be overcome and Wittgenstein –

who is convinced of the failure to go beyond language by the means of language, Beckett
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acknowledges that a quest to expressing ‘nothingness’ might well be doomed to fail, as he

hardly believes in effectiveness of transcending it. However, as an artist whose loyalties lay

to failure, impotence and expresses a determination ‘to bore one hole after another in

[language], until what lurks behind it – be it something or nothing – starts to seep through’,

Beckett is still determined to illustrate, at least as ‘a compositional aspect’ of his work

through such plays as Rough for Radio II or Words and Music (“Disjecta” 164). Here,

however, the moment language is treated or mentioned directly, the characters are depicted to

be in anguish. The anxiety that a conscious thought of words and language bring, is no

stranger to Beckett, as it is no stranger to Mauthner. This anxiety, debilitates the ability to

express oneself in a meaningful manner and persists to be a ‘poor struggle against silence’ as

Beckett put it. This can be best observed in Words and Music, where the referential aspect of

language, that makes it impossible to interpret it in one-certain way is directly brought into

the play.

WORDS. What? [pause. Very rhetorical] is love the word? [Pause. Do.] Is soul the

word? [Pause. Do.] Do we mean love, when we say love? [Pause. Pause. Do.] Soul

when we say soul?

CROAK. [Anguished] Oh! [Pause.]. (Beckett 286)

A similar instance of doubting the meaning of the word can be found in Endgame

HAMM: Yesterday! What does that mean? Yesterday!

CLOV: [violently] That means that bloody awful day, long ago, before this bloody

awful day. I use the words you taught me. If they don’t mean anything anymore, teach

me others. Or let me be silent. (Beckett 118)

The key aspect of this interaction is: first, the anguish it inspires in Croak – who keeps Music

and Words as his ‘friends and comforts’, and second, the fact that the doubt of meaning
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comes after the Words contemplate the very same subjects of soul and love. According to

Mauthner, there are no absolutes when it comes to language, Wittgenstein also acknowledges

that it is impossible to pinpoint a certain meaning of a word that is not bindingly subjective

(Furlani). The anxiety, that must come after debating a subject, only later to realize that what

has been spoken of has manifold meanings that manifest throughout the company, is apparent

in this passage. Although WORDS and MUSIC are a key aspect of Croak’s, and Beckett’s

own oeuvre, there is no safe passage or a passage at all towards a determined meaning. Thus,

language stays to be a confirmation of an overt-confusion when discussing metaphysical

aspects of being. Were they not so crucial, in understanding the experience of being, it

certainly would have been better not to speak of such subjects at all, but as is shown in

Words and Music – these topics seem to be the constant questions that humanity keeps

asking, in hopes of getting a concrete answer (Mauthner qtd. in Ben-Zvi 184). These

questions, although important and slightly worn-out, are ‘without a content’ according to

Mauthner, as their content would be dependent on what they refer to in real world (qtd. in

Ben-Zvi 184). Of this, characters are never fully sure. The slightest aspects of description are

put through a magnifying glass through passages like these:

HAMM. He’s white, isn’t he?

CLOV. Nearly.

HAMM. What do you mean, nearly? Is he white or isn’t he?

CLOV. He isn’t.

Throughout Words and Music, WORDS attempt to define sloth, love and age among other

thematic aspects of life. What these definitions result in, is fragmented expression of what

seems to be a pre-learned structure in which words can be substituted for each other. The

content of words seems to make no difference, as the structure of speech remains to be the

same regarding both subjects:

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WORDS. Sloth is of all the passions the most powerful passion and indeed no passion

is more powerful than the passion of sloth, this is the mode in which the mind is most

affected and indeed -. (Beckett 284)

This passage, is structurally the same as when WORDS talks about love. What is hinted here,

perhaps, is that structural memory of language, with its signposting abilities that gives

colloquialism a more ‘academic’ or ‘profound-sounding’ quality, is as much of a relic of the

mind as the concepts which it debates. The excess of words here only fills out the blank

spaces left for silence, where indeterminable variables of language are left to their confusion.

At the end of the play, a repetition of the same cycle is demanded by Croak, implying that

this process will go on well after the audience claps, if somewhat confused

The aimless waiting game of Godot is the emblematic feature of the play. It doesn’t

really matter, at least for the composer, which names literary critics ascribe to Godot. “If I

knew [what or who Godot is] I would have said so in the play’ (Worton). At the point of the

play, where the repetitive and fragmented language has been established as a reoccurring

pattern, the important realization comes to Estragon ‘We’re not tied?’. This realization is

formulated as a question, followed by a silence to which both Vladimir and Estragon listen in

a ‘grotesquely rigid’ disposition. Mauthner speaks of philosophy as a ‘questioning glance of

the mankind’ (qtd. in Ben-Zvi 189). In terms of language, philosophy is quite disorienting,

One has to get to every little aspect of every little ‘thing’, and on a grand scheme of things

too. It’s a riddle. These concepts also have an ability to inspire sensations, rather than make

continuous sense as a coherent language. It is necessary for a philosophical narrative to

continue itself, elaborate and give examples; repeat and reinvent itself. All of these aspects of

are utilized as speech in Godot. There might be no solution to waiting, and speaking seems

like a condition of living. The sensations make it obligatory to require an understanding, put

into words, that encapsulate them. Here the obligation to express plants its seed. The inability
 19

to rest, before explaining in exact, correct words a thing of no known origins or ends. Like

the voice in Cascando who cannot rest before the right words are applied to his story. When

an impulse of a coherent narrative, announces itself, the dialogue once again becomes a back

and forth shooting of phrases between the characters .It’s almost like V and E develop a sense

of their own, but the playwright brings them back to the small space of the theatre, by

demanding that Estragon elaborate on exactly ‘how…/to whom…By whom?’ are they tied.

This is followed by elaborations that conclude that there is ‘nothing to be done’. A similar

case of the playwright’s involvement in the play can be found in Beckett’s first ever play

Human Wishes:

Mrs. W. Words fail us.

Mrs. D. Now this is where the writer for the stage would have us speak no doubt.

Mrs. W. He would have us explain Levett.

Mrs. D. To the public. (qtd in “Disjecta” 173)

The need for elaboration here, that anticipates the circular vacillations abundantly present in

Godot, is inspired in the characters through their conscious awareness that there is nothing to

be done but to speak. To advance in the play, the characters need to speak through their

awareness that the words fail them. Here, Beckett anticipates his later tradition of rendering

characters helpless to his pen. In formulating circular motion of explanations, we see the

aspect of language Beckett might have found fascinating - the need for accuracy and neatness

of identifications (“Disjecta” 17). Here language passes time and also deters it in a way of

‘chaining the characters to the language of the moment’ as Mauthner put it (qtd. In Ben-Zvi

187). In following the rules of language, it is impossible to escape a commitment to a

defined truth value of a word. This requires further elaborations and invites ambiguity into

the language. What results, is the inactivity of characters that is contrasted with their

ceaseless linguistic activity; as well as an affirmation that no absolutes exist, let alone an
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absolute that can be reached through the rigid language required to explain either external or

internal phenomena (Mauthner qtd. in Ben-Zvi 187).

To conclude, the world of Beckett’s language is a confusing one. One can never be

sure of the meaning his syntax carries. Apart from being an embellishment in a playwright’s

world - language is impossible to interpret and more impossible to compose. However, the

obligation Beckett feels as a part of his creative process, inspires a new language which

demands no explanations. It only demands and illustrates continuity, even when the

characters are not expressing anything meaningful. To express nothing, with nothing was an

ambition of Beckett, and a desire. Through his plays we encounter this difficulty of an

axiomatic nature. To go beyond language, one needs to destroy language. But how can a

writer do that, if not by undermining every single rule that has made language what it is?

Beckett answered this question by continuing to compose works that never treat his subject

directly. But the words and syntax used in his plays certainly create the same sense of

confusion and circularity, that such a quest of a writer would inspire in him. Solitude, as well,

is a big aspect in Beckett’s plays – and it mustn’t be disregarded as a contributor for the

scrutinizing eye of the playwright. The drive for achieving an expression of the ‘unknowable’

is characterized by solitary anxiety and is manifested as restlessness in speech. Beckett’s

early plays work to show how incompetent language is as a means of communication, where

characters constantly doubt the meaning behind each other’s’ words and fall into endless

circles of elaborations. His later plays like Rough for Radio I & II, Not I and Words and

Music start to illustrate that introspection through language is also an impossibility. Even

when the meaning of words is contained in private sphere of understanding, the expressions

of experiences never yield the essence of what they are trying to convey. Thus, the

logorrhoea in Beckett’s later plays increase, making utterances even more chaotic and
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fragmented. This, however, contributes to making a point that “nothing” is effable, but only

through the continuous verbose that abandons any intention to be coherent or meaningful.

Works Cited

Beckett, Samuel. “Dante...Bruno. Vico...Joyce.”, “Human Wishes”, “The German Letter”. Disjecta:

Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment, by Samuel Beckett, edited by Ruby Cohn,

New York, Grove Press, 1984, pp. 17–35, 163–187. Cited as “Disjecta”

---. Samuel Beckett: The Complete Dramatic Works. London, Faber And Faber, 1986. Cited as

“Beckett”

Ben-Zvi, Linda. “Samuel Beckett, Fritz Mauthner, and the Limits of Language.” PMLA/Publications

of the Modern Language Association of America, vol. 95, no. 2, Mar. 1980, pp. 183–200,

10.2307/462014. Accessed 10 Mar. 2021.

Blanchot, Maurice. Faux Pas. Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 2001, pp. 1–17.

Derval Tubridy. Samuel Beckett and the Language of Subjectivity. Cambridge, United Kingdom;

New York, Ny, USA, Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 1–13.

Furlani, Andre. Beckett after Wittgenstein. Evanston, Illinois, Northwestern University Press, 2015.

Iser, Wolfgang. “Samuel Beckett’s Dramatic Language.” Modern Drama, vol. 9, no. 3, 1996, pp.

251–259, 10.1353/mdr.1966.0061.

Worton, Michael. “Waiting for Godot and Endgame: Theatre as Text.” The Cambridge Companion

to Beckett, edited by John Pilling, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 67–87.