Art and the Existential in En Attendant Godot

Abstract

In a recent article, Claude Mauriac remarks pertinently, “On a voulu expliquer En Attendant Godot par un improbable jeu de mots: God ne signifie-t-il pas Dieu en anglais? Façon de rendre moins inquiétante cette pièce aussi peu rassurante que les autres oeuvres de Beckett.” Although M. Mauriac may be brushing aside rather too quickly a play on words that is perhaps not so improbable after all, he points perceptively in these lines to an inadequacy that mars a number of otherwise illuminating discussions of Beckett's controversial play. Critics, professional and amateur, have, in fact, often been overly concerned with the “message” of the drama, treating it, unconsciously perhaps, as a kind of thesis play and thereby, one might argue, casting implicit aspersions on its excellence as art. The reviewer for the London Times writes, for example, “… the message of Mr. Beckett as a novelist is perhaps a message of blank despair. The message of Waiting for Godot is perhaps something nearer a message of religious consolation … Waiting for Godot—one might sum up these remarks—is thus a modern morality play on permanent Christian themes.”