It is the 60th anniversary of the first performance of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot – the first performance in French (En Attendant Pour Godot) was on January 5th 1953 in Paris. The first English version of the “tragicomedy” was performed on 3rd August 1955
It has been with us nearly all our lives – A country road. A tree. Evening –
Vladimir: We’re waiting for Godot
Estragon: (despairingly) Ah! (Pause) You’re sure it was here?
Vladimir: What?
Estragon: That we we’re to wait
Waiting for what? Waiting for death. That and what else has been endlessly explored, but it is hard to tell.
Or we can pose it another way –
“What are we here for?”
“The dialogue.” – as we have done here over the last few years asking the question between the two of us, using these two lines from Becket’s play Endgame.
Beckett preferred to avoid answering questions as to what were their truth value. He continued to work on the texts of his published plays throughout his later life, and in translating and retranslating (from French into English in particular: En Attendant pour Godot / Waiting for Godot), he sometimes described the endless process as “vaguenings”.
A form of waiting to find the right rhythmic balance and musicality of his work, or gleanings – recalling Adorno’s ‘Briefer Expositions’ (#62 Minima Moralia) “tempo, compactness, density… and tentativeness” – such as are also poetice enactments and performative reenactments: All our lives.