Drama and/as the Pursuit of Narrative: Cascando and Inferno XXIV

Abstract

In a letter to Herbert Myron written on 21 September 1962, Beckett offered the follow ing assessment of his play for radio, Cascando: is an unimportant work, but the best I have to offer. It does I suppose show in a way what passes for my mind and what passes for my work.1 While such understatement is characteristic of his com mentary regarding his work in general, Beckett's laconic comments are nonetheless noteworthy when examined in the context of the play's primary subject matter. For in perhaps no other of his dramatic works does the search for narrative occupy so promi nent a place, constituting as it does the entire action of the play. It is my contention that Cascando, pace Beckett, is an important work that affords invaluable insight into Beckett's own notions of artistic creativity. Finally, I would like to explore these no tions in the context of the 24th canto of .Dante's Inferno. Cascando has been described as both abstract and full of ambiguities (Law ley, 3; Pountney, 124). Nonetheless, a number of commentators appear to agree that the play can be construed as a somewhat allusive enactment of the process of artistic creation. Martin Esslin, for example, considers the radio plays, of which Cascando is perhaps the most refined, to be among Beckett's most personal and revealing works.