Dialogues on Beckett by LIBERA ANTONI.;

Author:LIBERA, ANTONI.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Book Network Int'l Limited trading as NBN International (NBNi)

And this further passage from John:

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds be reproved.

But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds made be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

(John 3: 19–21)

Of course I realize the association might seem remote. But would it not be true to say that what this play evokes is not so much a parody of Dante’s realms of the afterlife as a vision of the last judgement but one that is taking place here and now, on Earth? More specifically, when the light suddenly appears and illuminates their past, they are forced to look at it anew and analyse it. We cannot of course say what the verdict of this court will be nor how long the hearing will go on.

Play seems to me more a kind of introduction to the Divine Comedy than a parody of it. It shows a judgement scene – a trial by light; Dante shows us the possible consequences of the verdict: hell, purgatory and heaven. Don’t you think Beckett was looking at things from an eschatological perspective here? Isn’t his judgement scene a kind of prefiguration of the Last Judgement?

A. L.: No, I don’t think so. As Woman 1 said, ‘That does not seem to be the point either.’ Divine judgement entails clear criteria of right and wrong according to which our lives will be assessed and the verdict pronounced. There is no moral code of this kind in Play. We know nothing about the circumstances which led to this interrogation; we don’t know why – in connection with what crime – the characters are being interrogated. The light is silent and seems to act according to some mysterious whim of its own; we don’t know what its purpose is.

We can, however, discern traces of a moral code in the minds of the characters. For instance, the fact that they begin with the story of their love triangle is significant in itself. One might ask why they picked this story rather than another. The answer that suggests itself is that they think of it as breaking the sixth commandment: thou shalt not commit adultery.

When they find themselves in this mysterious predicament and conclude that it must be a form of trial in which their lives are being judged, some sort of moral code, based on the Commandments, is still alive within them; perhaps they also remember being taught that absolution depends on confession and repentance. So their initial impulse is to start their confession there. When the light dims slightly after they confess their sins, they assume they must be on the right track: ‘I thought, It is done, now all is going out,’ the Man says. But when the whole process is repeated and nothing changes, they conclude that either

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.