théâtre

Gérard Piacentini Gérard Piacentini : Né en 1942, de père italien et de mère française.
Formation initiale en sciences physiques
Etudes de théâtre et thèse à l'Université de Paris VIII.
Auteur de nombreuses études sur le théâtre moderne et contemporain.
Gérard Piacentini a renouvelé l'interprétation des auteurs des années cinquante : Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Arthur Adamov.
Il a travaillé à l'Institut d'Esthétique des Arts Contemporains, Université mixte CNRS-Université de Paris I.
Waiting for Godot : a play created from the novel
The Temptation of Saint Antony by Gustave Flaubert


In spite of the abundant literature devoted to Samuel Beckett's play, its origin has not been identified. Some critics related the play to Balzac's Mercadet (1) 1. In French : Le Faiseur. , but none of them understood there was a far more important reference. As we are going to see, Samuel Beckett drew his inspiration from The Temptation of Saint Antony, a novel by the French writer Gustave Flaubert.
The influence of Flaubert on the Irish dramatist was very soon detected. First critics of Beckett's work have compared Mercier et Camier to Bouvard et Pécuchet and have stressed the similarities between the couples of characters (2) 2. According to Alfred Simon, Samuel Beckett, Belfond, Paris, 1983, p. 229. . Later on, Waiting for Godot was related to Bouvard et Pécuchet (3) 3. For instance : George Martin, 'Friendship : basic theme of Bouvard et Pécuchet and En attendant Godot', Language Quarterly, Vol. XIV, n°3-4, Spring-Summer 1976, p. 43-46. . However, The Temptation of Saint Antony is far more important in the creation of Waiting for Godot.
Flaubert's novel takes place in one night. Antony has retreated to the summit of a mountain to pray. The Devil tempts him through a series of visions.
The hermit is submitted to the temptation of the seven sins. Hallucinated, he sees sumptuous meals, magnificent women. Power and revenge are offered to him… Antony controls himself.
Then, he meets other temptations. Having taken the appearance of one of Antony's former followers, the Devil flatters his intelligence. He tries to make Antony doubt the Gospel, underlining its contradictions. He displays the obscurities of the Dogma. Antony's faith does not fail.
With the Devil heeling him, Antony discovers the religions the world has known since its origin. He meets the most famous Sages who try to make him abjure his faith in Jesus Christ. The uselessness of any faith is showed to him : he can see the Collapse of Olympus and the death of Gods of all beliefs and religions. Their cohorts press together and fall in the precipice which borders the cliff where lives the hermit.
Then, the Devil takes him on his back and shows him infinite space. He proves to Antony that God cannot be a person and his prayers and mortifications are useless, God being unconcerned by Good and Evil. But Antony still hopes.
Then, the Devil shows Antony Death and Lechery, with no more success.
The dawn marks the end of The Temptation :

Day at last dawns; and like the raised curtains of a tabernacle, golden clouds furling into large scrolls uncover the sky.
There in the middle, inside the very disc of the sun, radiates the face of Jesus Christ.
Antony makes the sign of the cross and returns to his prayers (4) 4. Gustave Flaubert, The Temptation of Saint Antony, translated by Kitty Mrosovski, Penguin Books, London, 1983, p. 232. .

Saint Antony is the opposite of Saint Thomas. The latter believes only what he can see while the former sees only what he believes in. Nothing can annihilate his hope, even though his intelligence can't ignore what he knows now: the transient character of any faith and the uselessness of any hope.
This is the lesson of The Temptation: the primacy of hope over reason.
Samuel Beckett makes this question central in Waiting for Godot through Vladimir. Like Flaubert's character, the beckettian character embodies the utopian hope through the wait for Godot whose arrival, he thinks, will bring him a feeling of fulfilment.
Utopia reveals itself when Vladimir meets Godot's go-between. The young shepherd has almost everything Vladimir dreams of: he sleeps 'all snug and dry', 'in the hay', Godot does not beat him, he has more or less enough to eat, but he does not know if he is happy or not. So far, the waiting for Godot becomes pure utopia because, if his desire was fulfilled, Vladimir would not know, like the young boy, if he is happy or not.
The episode of the Savior and the two thieves underlines utopia. Four Evangelists describe the Passion, only one says one of the thieves was saved. However, he is the one anybody relies on.


God and Godot


Flaubert and Beckett display irrational hope is an essential part of man: the first uses God, the second uses Godot for that purpose. Antony waits for God while Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for Godot.
Antony, flying into infinite space, hanging on the Devil's horns, weeps:

Oh, no Above it all, there must be someone, a great soul, a Lord, a father, whom I worship in my heart and who must love me! (p.210)

but the Devil answers him: 'You want God not to be God…' (5) 5. In French, Flaubert's text is : 'Tu désires que Dieu ne soit pas Dieu...' A Frenchman wouldn't have easily brought together 'Dieu' et 'Godeau', but an Englishman could have associated more easily 'God' with 'Godeau'. (p. 210)
In Beckett's play, Godot appears to be a businessman Vladimir relies on as if it were God: 'Perhaps, we'll sleep tonight in his loft. All snug and dry, our bellies full in the hay. It's worth waiting for. No?'

The decor


The place where the novel takes place looks like a stage set. The action takes place:

High on a mountain, where a platform curves to a half-moon, shut in by large boulders… On that platform, there is a cabin, ten steps away from the cabin a long cross, while at the platform's other end a twisted old palm tree leens over the abyss for the mountain falls sheer… (p. 61)

In Waiting for Godot, a stage direction describes the stage set: 'A country road. A tree'. Except for the tree, the place looks very different from the one in the novel. But in the second act, a very similar place appears through the dialogue. Willing to leave Vladimir, Estragon goes away but, hearing Pozzo and Lucky, he comes back in a hurry:

VLADIMIR.- Where were you?
ESTRAGON.- To the foot of the rise.
VLADIMIR.- No doubt. We're on a plateau, served up on a plateau (6) 6. Beckett uses the double sense of the word 'plateau' which, moreover his geographical sense, means the stage of a theatre. .

So, the landscape, 'A Country road. A tree' becomes a plateau at the top of a mount. The places in the play and the novel are alike.
Pozzo and Lucky, Apollonius and Damis

The scenes where Pozzo and Lucky appear draw their inspiration from the episode with Apollonius and Damis.
Apollonius, tall, looking like Christ, is the master of Damis, 'short, fat, snub-nosed, thick-set, with frizzy hair and a naïve expression' (7) 7. Naivety is a part of Estragon's feature. . (p. 140).
Like Pozzo, Apollonius has an imperious attitude:

APOLLONIUS (in a booming voice).- Approach! You would like to learn who I am… (p. 142)

Apollonius' booming voice becomes Pozzo's terrifying voice when he introduces himself:

POZZO (Terrifying voice).- I am Pozzo.

Those characters have travelled the world, as it appears from their account. Their appearances underlines they are travellers: 'Both of them are barefoot, bare headed and dusty, like people returning from a journey.' (p. 140)

In Godot, Pozzo et Lucky are travellers too. Straight off, Pozzo says that they have walked for six hours: 'Yes, the road seems long when one journeys all alone for… yes, six hours, that's right, six hours on end and never a soul in sight.'

In Act two, they are still travellers, even more so, because they have no destination: they wander.
In Flaubert's novel, the departure of Apollonius and Damis is fantastic:

He backs away towards the edge of the cliff, overshoots it, and stay suspended.
Come! Give me your hand! Move on!
The pair of them, side by side, lift into the air, quite gently. […]
They disappear. (p. 160-161)

In Godot, the leave of Pozzo and Lucky is strange: Pozzo drives Lucky like a horse pulling a cart.
Like Lucky in Godot, in The temptation, Damis is not self-willed: he does not know what he wants, neither where they go. He relies blindly upon his Master:

DAMIS.- There, there!… My good hermit! What do I want? I haven't a clue! Here's the Master.
He sits down ; the other remains standing. Silence.
ANTHONY, begins again.- So you've come…
DAMIS.- Oh, a long way -a very long way!
ANTHONY.- And you're going?…
DAMIS, pointing the other.- Wherever he wants! (p. 141)

In Godot, Lucky lacks of will and submits to Pozzo'orders like a horse.

The repetition


Relationship between Godot and The Temptation is not limited to plots elements but includes style. Samuel Beckett makes use of repetition, a stylistic device already used by Gustave Flaubert.
In The Temptation, Antony repeats a certain type of sentence:

APOLLONIUS.- The plague was ravaging Ephesus; I had an old beggar stoned.
DAMIS.- And the plague went!
ANTONY.- Indeed ! he drives away deseases?
APOLLONIUS.- At Cnidos, I cured the man in the love with the Venus.
DAMIS.- (…)The Master laid a hand on the man's heart; his love was snuffed out at once.
ANTONY.- What! he drives out demons?
APOLLONIUS.- At Tarentum, a young girl who had died was being carried to the funeral pyre.
DAMIS.- The Master touched her lips, and she sat up calling for her mother.
ANTONY.- Indeed! he brings the dead to life?
APOLLONIUS.- I predicted Vespasian would come to power.
ANTONY.- What! he sees into the future? (p. 150-151)

In Godot, when Vladimir asks why Lucky does not put the luggage down, Vladimir repeats the same request five times:

'You want to get rid of him?'
Becoming someone else


In both play and novel, there is the same will to become somebody else. The character at first wants to become a degraded man, and ends being like an animal.
In the Temptation, Antony becomes first Nabuchadnezzar and then, a bull:

On his brow, from a distance, Antony reads all his thoughts. They penetrate him -and he becomes Nabuchadnezzar. He is instantly sick of excesses and exterminations, and seized with a craving to wallow in filth. Indeed, the degradation of whatever is horrifying to men consists of an outrage on their minds, a further means of stupefying them ; and since nothing is more vile than a brute beast, Antony drops down on all fours on the table and bellows like a bull. (p. 82)

In Godot, Vladimir wants to become Lucky, a man held to be hardly better than a pig or a hog:

VLADIMIR.- I'll do Lucky, you do Pozzo. (He imitates Lucky sagging under the weight of his baggages(…))

Say, Think, pig!
ESTRAGON.- Think, pig!
Silence.

The will to die


Like Antony, Vladimir and Estragon are desperate and want to die. The novel emphisizes immediatly Antony's weariness:

One more day! One more day gone!
Surely I used to be less miserable! (p. 61)

Ah, misery! Will it never end? Better be dead! I can't bear any more! Enough! Enough! (p. 66)

At the very beginning of Godot, Vladimir is bored with life and struggles against the will to die. Later, Vladimir and Estragon would hang themselves if they had a strong rope. After the second meeting with Pozzo and Lucky, Vladimir confesses that he can't go on. At the end of the play, Vladimir and Estragon test a rope that breaks. Next day, they will be back with a new rope, and if Godot does not come, they will hang themselves.

Leaves, wings and uselessness of hope


Antony flies on the Devil's back, amidst the planets. The Devil proves to Antony that, according to Spinoza, God is not a person. Antony rebels against the ideas that reduces hope to utopia. He uses metaphors like bird cry and an eddy of dead leaves:

What? My prayers, my tears, my physical suffering, my flight of passions, can all this have rushed away towards a lie… into space… uselessly - like the cry of a bird, like an eddy of dead leaves! (p. 210)

In Act two of Godot, Samuel Beckett uses the same metaphor of dead leaves, changes the bird cry into a noise of wings, and adds noises of 'sand' and 'ashes':

ESTRAGON.- All the dead voices.
VLADIMIR.- They make a noise like wings.
ESTRAGON.- Like leaves.
VLADIMIR.- Like sand.
ESTRAGON.- Like leaves.
Silence. (…)
VLADIMIR.- They make a noise like feathers.
ESTRAGON.- Like leaves (…)

Flaubert's theme of the uselessness of hope is expressed again by Samuel Beckett who reinforces it by the frailty of human life.

Those points are the most fundamental. Others, less important, strengthens the hypothesis of the adaptation of Flaubert's novel by Samuel Beckett.

Debates about Jesus Christ and Godot personnalities


In The Temptation, a very long debate considers Jesus Christ's personnality. (p.117-125) In Godot, Vladimir and Estragon think over Godot's personality, his bank accounts, his correspondents, and so on.

Night and day


In both novel and play, opposition between night and day is essential. The Temptation takes place in one night. At dawn, the hermit is saved. In Godot, Vladimir and Estragon must wait for Godot till the night falls. When the day is over, they can leave.

Body and mind


Antony puts forth the superiority of mind and rejects everything earthly:

Man being spirit, must withdraw from mortal things. All actions degrade him. I could wish not to be attached to the earth -not even by the soles of my feet. (p. 94)

Vladimir is only mind and rejects everything coming from the senses, from the body. He manages the carrots, but never eats them, does not like spicy stories, like the one of the English who goes to the brothel that Estragon wants to tell (8) 8. According to his Cartesian character, when not lowered by moral decay, Vladimir is only mind. The body interferes when Vladimir weakens, through the difficulty to urinate. For the philosophical pattern of the character, see Gérard Piacentini, 'Le référent philosophique comme caractère du personnage dans le théâtre de Samuel Beckett' Revue d'histoire du théâtre, n°4, 1990. .

Fancies


In both novel and play, fancy is essential. The Temptation is a long set of visions. In Godot, Vladimir is afraid of becoming the prey to fancies.

Being seated.


Both novel and play begin by presenting characters in the same attitude: Antony and Estragon are sitting.

The style of dialogues does not proceed from The Temptation, but from Bouvard et Pécuchet as already noticed by some critics. Reference to that novel allows us to understand the source of the couple of Vladimir and Estragon. Samuel Beckett has shifted the mind of Antony to Bouvard to constitute Vladimir while Damis, mixed with Pecuchet, helped to create Estragon (9) 9. In fact, Characters are more complicated since each one embodies a philosophy. Beckett builds his characters by mixing together components of various origins : cinema with characters like Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers, novel and Theater through Flaubert and Balzac, and philosophy. . In one of his few statements, Samuel Beckett said 'Waiting for Godot is designed to give artistic expression to the irrationnal state of unknowingness where in we exist, this mental weightlessness which is beyond reason' (10) 10. Quoted by Lawrence Graver in : Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, Cambridge University Press, 1989, New York, p. 23. . This applies at first to Flaubert's novel where Christianity appears to be a religion among others, whose fate is to vanish like the ones that preceded it, a religion that occupies an instant in man's history and therefore not entitled to bring Antony eternity.
In Godot, characters are doomed to useless waiting too. But, unlike God in The Temptation, Godot belongs to the world of humans.
Suzanne Aron first, and then Eric Bentley (11) 11. 'Balzac a-t-il inspiré En attendant Godot?' Le Figaro littéraire, 17 septembre 1955; Eric Bentley, What is theatre?, Boston, Beacon Press, 1956, p. 158. I have taken these informations from John Fletcher's, 'Balzac and Beckett revisited' French Review, vol. XXXVII, n°1, october 1963, p. 78-80. , noticed that in Balzac's play, Mercadet, a speculator tricks others, making them think that the return of an ex-associate of his whose name is Godeau, will make the Stock Exchange soar. So, those naive speculators are 'waiting for Godeau'.
Besides, there is another Godeau, in Musset's story, Croisilles (12) 12. Alfred de Musset, 'Croisilles', Oeuvres complètes, Seuil, Paris, 1963, p. 719-729. In this tale Musset ended in junuary 1839, there is a character who is waiting, the magnificent Julie Godeau : 'Yet one word was enough to describe her nature : she was waiting' ('Un seul mot suffisait cependant pour expliquer son caractère : elle attendait', p.726). . This Godeau, a banker, an obese, enormous man whose thighs are like barrels, is lying on a sofa, in an entirely golden lounge. This is characteristic of Godot as it appears in the description of the young messenger : inactivity (13) 13. See the ridiculous profile of Godeau lying on his sofa, p. 721. .
Alfred de Musset thinks the name Godeau is common. Its modification, the final 'ot' introduced by Samuel Beckett instead of " eau ", renders the name more vulgar. 'Godot' is situated in the same world as Julot, nickname vulgar for Jules, a world of bistrot and boulot, coarse words for Pub and Job… So, Godot appears to be a businessman (he is worried by his bank accounts, his advisers…) closely tied to triviality.
Vladimir and Estragon, Pozzo and Lucky do not belong to same world. Vladimir is a philosopher, Estragon is a poet, Lucky has been a poet and a philosopher, and Pozzo has been his disciple. All four of them are associated with Art or Knowledge.
Vladimir and Estragon, Pozzo and Lucky are physically, morally and mentally decayed. Vladimir the rationalist is invaded by irrationality. Vladimir and Estragon, former a philosopher and a poet, are searching for a coarse businessman from whom they have nothing to gain. Through the revival of the Flaubertian theme of waiting, Samuel Beckett express the idea that Humanism and Art are coming to an end, and a new world, based on money, arises. The world foreseen by Samuel Beckett when he writes his play is the French society of today, mainly concerned with money and investments, and much less by Art and Culture.

(article mis en ligne le 8 juillet 2008)


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