En Attendant Godot: Reflections on some Parallels Between Beckett and Pirandello

Jean Anouilh , "Du Chapitre des Chaises", in Pol Vandromme, Jean Anouilh, un auteur et ses personnages: Essai suivi d'un recueil de textes critiques de Jean Anouilh (Paris, I965), 231-3, p. 232.

Cf. Alba della Fazia , "Pirandello and his French Echo Anouilh" , Modern Drama, vi (I963/64), 346-67.

Pirandello's influence on the French theatre has extensively been discussed in two major studies: Thomas Bishop, Pirandello and the French Theater (New York, 1960) and

Halina Sawecka, Structures pirandelliennes dans le théâtre français I920-I950 (Lublin, 1980). These critics, however, pay little attention to Beckett's theatre: the problem of Pirandello's impact on the plays of the Irish dramatist thus remains unsolved.

Giovanni Calendoli , "La trilogia e le esperienze europee d'avanguardia", Il teatro nel teatro di Pirandello: La trilogia di Pirandello. Atti del convegno internazionale sul teatro nel teatro pirandelliano, Agrigento 6-I0 dicembre I976, ed. by Enzo Lauretta (Agrigento, 1977), 207-22, p. 211.

Anne Paolucci , "Pirandello and the Waiting Stage of the Absurd (with Some Observations on a New 'Critical' Language)", Modern Drama, xxiii( 1980), 102-II, p. 102.

Ibid., 109.

. Charles J. Gattnig, Pirandello, "Umorismo", and Beckett (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Southern Illinois University, 1967)

, Dissertation Abstracts, xxviii(1967/68 ), 3807 A.

See also Józef Heistein , "L'Humorisme de Pirandello et le 'nouveau théâtre'", Beitrage zur Romanischen Philologie, xvii(1978), 227-36.

The latter of these phenomena which determine human existence are confirmed in Godwin Okebaram Uwah's Ph.D. dissertation though here as well the underlying factors responsible for Pirandellism's outer appearance remain unexamined: Godwin Okebaram Uwah,

Aspects of Pirandellism in Samuel Beckett's En attendant Godot and Fin de partie (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Florida State University, I982), Dissertation Abstracts, xliii (1982/83), 2693A.

Samuel Beckett, En attendant Godot (Les Editions de Minuit, Paris, I952), 62. All page numbers in parentheses refer to this edition.

II. See for example Robert Champigny , "Interprétation de En attendant Godot", PMLA, lxxv(1960), 329-31, p. 329:

"Pozzo est le maitre, le guide." Also Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd (London, I962), 35: "Pozzo is the sadistic master, Lucky the submissive slave."

Champigny, op. cit., 329.

Edith Kern , "Structure in Beckett's Theatre", in Yale French Studies , xlvi(1971), 17-27, p. 26.

Samuel Beckett , Film Complete scenario/Illustrations/Production shots, with an essay On Directing Film by Alan Schneider (London, 1972), II.

Ibid.

Samuel Beckett , Murphy (London, 1963), I68. Beckett first dramatized the theme of escape from the conceptual world in the unpublished and unperformed play Eleuthéria (I947). The protagonist's search for freedom from the others and his own way of thinking, speaking and perceiving concludes either in committing suicide or returning to the prison of social life. Cf. among the few critics who discuss the play:

John Fletcher and John Spurling , Beckett the Playwright (3rd edn, London, 1985), 47-54

and Ruby Cohn , Just Play: Beckett's Theater (Princeton, 1980), 163-72

. Samuel Beckett , Proust Three Dialogues: Samuel Beckett and Georges Duthuit (London, I965), 31.

Ibid., 19.

Ibid., 15.

Ibid., 17-18.

Ibid., 15.

Cf. Michèle Foucré , Le Geste et la parole dans le théâtre de Samuel Beckett (Paris, I970), especially the chapter "Le clown" , 20-27.

Cf. also Lawrence E. Harvey , "Art and Existential in En attendant Godot", PMLA, lxxv (1960), 137-46, p. 137: "And art ... is here thought of as both destruction and re-creation, as a recordering of reality or breaking of surfaces that leads to an imitation of what is discovered at deeper levels of existence."

Beckett , Proust (ref. I7), 65-66.