Time has stopped.
– Samuel Becket, Waiting for Godot
Was I sleeping while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? To-morrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of to-day? That with Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night, I waited for Godot? That Pozzo passed, with his carrier, and that he spoke to us? Probably. But in all that what truth will there be? He’ll know nothing. He’ll tell me about the blows he received and I’ll give him a carrot. Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. But habit is a great deadener. At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on.
– Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Last night I read Waiting for Godot all in one sitting, which is how I would recommend that everyone read it. The effect, of time stopping, of time passing, of some moments lasting an eternity, and others flying by (like relativity, like life) would be lost otherwise.
Waiting for Godot seems to be funny, sad, and heartbreaking all at once. Beckett was a brilliant satirist, but I wonder if perhaps the character of Vladimir got away from him. There were times when he was not a caricature (or a cartoon, as Harold Bloom would say), but a real man behind Beckett’s careful and complext artifice. Perhaps it would be different on the stage.
