Beckett’s Purgatory through Dante, Joyce and the Absurd

Rodrigo Inacio Freitas

doi:10.3895/rde.v11n19.12801

Abstract

This article aims to develop a brief explanation on Beckett’s theatre, how this famous Irish author had read Dante’s Divina Commedia and how deeply this literature had influenced in some aspects (especially aesthetical and narrative) the compositions written by Beckett, as well as to identify some correlations between the literary trajectory of Beckett and the purgatorial experience developed by Dante. In both authors there is a way through which their characters face the universal forces and the possibility to overcome their sins, purify their souls and achieve another state of narrative/personal living. It is not possible to track this path without facing Joyce as a middle term between the Florentine author and the Dubliner one, not as a kind of ascending level, but as a bridge that connects them particularly through the Joyce-Beckett partnership in Ulysses and how Beckett was introduced to the Commedia , probably in 1923-24.

Highlights

The crucial part of Divina Commedia that is linked with Beckett’s narrative is the Purgatorio, a place where the fragility of the human being is clearly present as a constant sorrow, as a continuous condition that makes a strong contrast between human sins/weakness and purity/divinity exposing the fact that humanity is fighting its problems and trying to purge its debts
Belacqua can be related to the Theatre of the Absurd following the description made by Esslin – even though Beckett was not part of any movement or literary school – where the dramatic landscape is “melancholic, colored by a feeling of futility born from the disillusionment of old age and chronic hopelessness” (ESSLIN, 1960, p. 4) making possible an estrangement of the spectators in front of a piece that they cannot understand clearly, in front of an aesthetical and dramatic peak that cannot be totally absorbed by the viewers historically adapted to have a simple and naturalistic sight/comprehension over the reality
Cinema or even performance, especially in the crossroads where all of them find each other. This kind of theatre – or visual and sensorial experience as a whole – promotes estrangement, political thought and self-questioning due to disconnection from the emotional fields in the piece already fed by a stronger meaning after Second World War and the genocide promoted by dictatorships in the second half of the 20th Century

Summary

Introduction

The crucial part of Divina Commedia that is linked with Beckett’s narrative is the Purgatorio, a place where the fragility of the human being is clearly present as a constant sorrow, as a continuous condition that makes a strong contrast between human sins/weakness and purity/divinity exposing the fact that humanity is fighting (as an individual or not) its problems and trying to purge its debts.

Objectives

Results

Conclusion