Waiting for godot / Waiting for Godot [?]
What about "Waiting for Godot [ ]"?
Does the absence of a "?" necessarily 'imply' it in the statement? After all, if one were to further stretch the grammatical word-play, you could argue that "Watiting for Godot?" serves as a question, a literary function which, I'm sure Calderwood might admit, is a transcient statment, a means to an end. Like his exposition on "waiting" and "travelling" as the "in-betweens" of pillars of certainty, the grammatic function of "Waiting for Godot?" would therefore necessarily inscribe two implied pillars in its semiotic topography: Action (the act of waiting) versus the self-contemplation of the action (questioning the act of waiting). Although it would make for an interesting analysis (thereby opening up completely new forums of meaning and word-play possibilities), the "?" would also be a damning frame of reference in which the play will be judged. One slight alteration of the play's title, and the very angle at which the audience tackles the play from is washed under an observational lens of a different hue.
A "?" would apply a damning frame upon the work in a number of ways: firstly, by stating what-it-is, or by drawing attention to itself (as the "?" does to the statement), it paradoxically 'leaps ahead' of itself. In other words, the contemplative act of thinking about "waiting for Godot [?]" leaps ahead of the seemingly impartial statement "Waiting for Godot". The audience is therefore robbed of the first-encounter with the statement, and immediately presented with the question. This is akin to the audience being served dessert, then served the appetizer as an afterthought. In this, the audience is denied the option of enjoying the resonant meanings of the appetizer before indulging in the full sweetness of dessert. The order is therefore important. One normally does not run before one walks. Calderwood stresses the importance of its grammatical ambiguity of which "coalesces with its semantic ambiguity ... and reflects the larger tendency of the play toward the spatial arrest of form and the temporal flow of performance."(32) In the larger order of things, he suggests that the play either "waits for its own summarising title ... [which then functions as] a concluding continuation of the play" or that "the title waits for the play".(30) I believe in both respects, Calderwood is right in observing so. Preserving Calderwood's "grammatical ambiguity" opens up the possibilities for the title to enact its role as such; whilst putting a "?" is akin to completing the statement, incarcerating the title by a full-stop; the title is then less free to intermingle with the substance of the play on more equal terms if it was elevated to a "summarising title" status rather than if it were left open to the possibility of being written into the play itself.
Secondly, the "?" transforms the title into a directional statement. Since it is a question, it therefore implies an origin (a thesis, itself being a hypothesis) and the idea of an answer, even if the existence of the answer may be no more than illusory. Illusory or not, the idea of the answer is a necessary Structuralist binary to its mirror-image, the question. It effectively erases Calderwood's proposed notions of grammatical/semantic ambiguity because the "?" points-to something. It is that pointing-at which confers it semiotic "meaning", and sets the structures of grammatical/semantic-meaning in order. If we apply Calderwood's formula of "erasure" (see pg 32 - 36), then the question also becomes victim to its own erasure. The ambiguity is shifted from a grammatical/semantic one to one that is addressor-addressee oriented, and exists in a Pozzo-like "inbetweenness"(36) that deconstructs orgin and destination, i.e. the answer to the question is the question itself much like Pozzo's destination is the process of his travel. In this sense, the title shuts off one path of interpretation in favour of another path, path that leads to "why are they waiting?" or "who is Godot?" or "Do they know why they are waiting?" As one can see, the play itself fills in the "?" for the spectator. Locating the "?" in the title suggests a literary excess, and an excess that is unecessary because the audience will ask all the right questions by virtue of the play itself. By revealing the cards too early in the game, the title loses its synechdotic functions because it fails to be 'part-of-th-whole'. Rather, it takes on an authorial stance sperate from the whole that serves to comment externally upon the work. It offers the spectator a more defined way of looking at the play as if to say: "This is what the play is asking, this is what you should think about." In a broad sense, by forced interpretation by numbers, it is a denial of the audience's exercise of self-determination in experiencing (or 'arriving at') the question.
Thirdly, it is one of aesthetic difficulty. Here, Brecht sheds light on the "Alienation effect" of performance in "A Short Organum for the Theatre", stating that the effect allows for us (spectators) to "recognize its subject, but at the same time makes it seem unfamiliar" or of "altering the familiar" (Brecht, 192). In order to present a condition under these terms, it has to be as far removed from the familiar as possible, resulting in theatre that is recognizable though under a different guise. Consequently, the pathos of the playwright as a voice of authenticity and authority must likewise be removed from the structures of the play. By posing a question, the addressor/addressee binary becomes apparent, and is manifested in the form of playwright (or the institution behind the play) versus audience. The voice of Beckett peirces through the act of 'alienation' which the play formulates (after all, it presents a condition far removed from recognizable reality), and the play now unfolds as a dialogue between the audience and the playwright. Beckett says: "Waiting for Godot?" and the audience is therefore pressured to find the answers to satisfy the presence of the author in the work. However, it is exactly the alienation of the author from the work that is crucially important to the play, that the audience is open to experience and not the continued act of formulating a response to a question. With the one "?", the title and therfore author becomes a recurring motif everytime the audience meets with a conflict of logic onstage: the title therefore is in jeapordy of becoming a recurrent repository of 'answers' by which the play should be defined. In order for the play to stand by itself in its own "created world", it has to refuse the impulse to merge action with author; one should not look for a conversation with Beckett. If this were so, there would be no need for Godot, no need for Didi or Gogo, no need for the stage. "Waiting For Godot?" would be a highly interesting philosophical discourse upon the authenticity of its own statements, but more off face value. Let the audience ask the questions, let the playwright shape the world.
Bibliography:
Calderwood, James L, Ways of Waiting in 'Waiting for Godot', Waiting for Godot and Endgame, Ed. Steven Connar, (New York: St Martin; 1992)
Brecht, Brecht on theatre, Ed. John Willet, Hill and Wang, (New York, 1992)
Does the absence of a "?" necessarily 'imply' it in the statement? After all, if one were to further stretch the grammatical word-play, you could argue that "Watiting for Godot?" serves as a question, a literary function which, I'm sure Calderwood might admit, is a transcient statment, a means to an end. Like his exposition on "waiting" and "travelling" as the "in-betweens" of pillars of certainty, the grammatic function of "Waiting for Godot?" would therefore necessarily inscribe two implied pillars in its semiotic topography: Action (the act of waiting) versus the self-contemplation of the action (questioning the act of waiting). Although it would make for an interesting analysis (thereby opening up completely new forums of meaning and word-play possibilities), the "?" would also be a damning frame of reference in which the play will be judged. One slight alteration of the play's title, and the very angle at which the audience tackles the play from is washed under an observational lens of a different hue.
A "?" would apply a damning frame upon the work in a number of ways: firstly, by stating what-it-is, or by drawing attention to itself (as the "?" does to the statement), it paradoxically 'leaps ahead' of itself. In other words, the contemplative act of thinking about "waiting for Godot [?]" leaps ahead of the seemingly impartial statement "Waiting for Godot". The audience is therefore robbed of the first-encounter with the statement, and immediately presented with the question. This is akin to the audience being served dessert, then served the appetizer as an afterthought. In this, the audience is denied the option of enjoying the resonant meanings of the appetizer before indulging in the full sweetness of dessert. The order is therefore important. One normally does not run before one walks. Calderwood stresses the importance of its grammatical ambiguity of which "coalesces with its semantic ambiguity ... and reflects the larger tendency of the play toward the spatial arrest of form and the temporal flow of performance."(32) In the larger order of things, he suggests that the play either "waits for its own summarising title ... [which then functions as] a concluding continuation of the play" or that "the title waits for the play".(30) I believe in both respects, Calderwood is right in observing so. Preserving Calderwood's "grammatical ambiguity" opens up the possibilities for the title to enact its role as such; whilst putting a "?" is akin to completing the statement, incarcerating the title by a full-stop; the title is then less free to intermingle with the substance of the play on more equal terms if it was elevated to a "summarising title" status rather than if it were left open to the possibility of being written into the play itself.
Secondly, the "?" transforms the title into a directional statement. Since it is a question, it therefore implies an origin (a thesis, itself being a hypothesis) and the idea of an answer, even if the existence of the answer may be no more than illusory. Illusory or not, the idea of the answer is a necessary Structuralist binary to its mirror-image, the question. It effectively erases Calderwood's proposed notions of grammatical/semantic ambiguity because the "?" points-to something. It is that pointing-at which confers it semiotic "meaning", and sets the structures of grammatical/semantic-meaning in order. If we apply Calderwood's formula of "erasure" (see pg 32 - 36), then the question also becomes victim to its own erasure. The ambiguity is shifted from a grammatical/semantic one to one that is addressor-addressee oriented, and exists in a Pozzo-like "inbetweenness"(36) that deconstructs orgin and destination, i.e. the answer to the question is the question itself much like Pozzo's destination is the process of his travel. In this sense, the title shuts off one path of interpretation in favour of another path, path that leads to "why are they waiting?" or "who is Godot?" or "Do they know why they are waiting?" As one can see, the play itself fills in the "?" for the spectator. Locating the "?" in the title suggests a literary excess, and an excess that is unecessary because the audience will ask all the right questions by virtue of the play itself. By revealing the cards too early in the game, the title loses its synechdotic functions because it fails to be 'part-of-th-whole'. Rather, it takes on an authorial stance sperate from the whole that serves to comment externally upon the work. It offers the spectator a more defined way of looking at the play as if to say: "This is what the play is asking, this is what you should think about." In a broad sense, by forced interpretation by numbers, it is a denial of the audience's exercise of self-determination in experiencing (or 'arriving at') the question.
Thirdly, it is one of aesthetic difficulty. Here, Brecht sheds light on the "Alienation effect" of performance in "A Short Organum for the Theatre", stating that the effect allows for us (spectators) to "recognize its subject, but at the same time makes it seem unfamiliar" or of "altering the familiar" (Brecht, 192). In order to present a condition under these terms, it has to be as far removed from the familiar as possible, resulting in theatre that is recognizable though under a different guise. Consequently, the pathos of the playwright as a voice of authenticity and authority must likewise be removed from the structures of the play. By posing a question, the addressor/addressee binary becomes apparent, and is manifested in the form of playwright (or the institution behind the play) versus audience. The voice of Beckett peirces through the act of 'alienation' which the play formulates (after all, it presents a condition far removed from recognizable reality), and the play now unfolds as a dialogue between the audience and the playwright. Beckett says: "Waiting for Godot?" and the audience is therefore pressured to find the answers to satisfy the presence of the author in the work. However, it is exactly the alienation of the author from the work that is crucially important to the play, that the audience is open to experience and not the continued act of formulating a response to a question. With the one "?", the title and therfore author becomes a recurring motif everytime the audience meets with a conflict of logic onstage: the title therefore is in jeapordy of becoming a recurrent repository of 'answers' by which the play should be defined. In order for the play to stand by itself in its own "created world", it has to refuse the impulse to merge action with author; one should not look for a conversation with Beckett. If this were so, there would be no need for Godot, no need for Didi or Gogo, no need for the stage. "Waiting For Godot?" would be a highly interesting philosophical discourse upon the authenticity of its own statements, but more off face value. Let the audience ask the questions, let the playwright shape the world.
Bibliography:
Calderwood, James L, Ways of Waiting in 'Waiting for Godot', Waiting for Godot and Endgame, Ed. Steven Connar, (New York: St Martin; 1992)
Brecht, Brecht on theatre, Ed. John Willet, Hill and Wang, (New York, 1992)
posted by HT, with T for Teh at 10:39 AM
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