Last night, the skies were clear and the temperatures went below zero. It was that kind of cold evening when your cheeks start to go numb. We went out because we were joining a crowd of fellow lovers of the work of
Samuel Beckett for
Beckett 101, an event in honor of the 101st anniversary of his birth. When I taught French many years ago, we used
En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot) as the first literary text the students read at the end of their second year. I think I taught it three times. Later I read one of his novels, Molloy, for a class, and became enamored of it as well. This was during a time when I was immersed in the works of high modernism, and
Beckett appealed to me, although I never became a fanatic.
The Beckett fans, or "
Beckett Heads" as Maria called us, were out in force last night. There was Guinness, Jameson's, beer and wine, dried fruit and nuts, cheese and bread (challah because it was Friday night), clementines and apples, dates and figs, and a giant sheet cake from the local grocery store with chocolate frosting and "I can't go on, I must go on" written on it. Our meeting place was one of those odd corners on campus that I had never seen before: a very old fashioned reading room of the type one sometimes discovers in odd nooks on campus, a wood-paneled room with round tables, study nooks, and a grand staircase leading up to a book gallery that ran around the upper level Large portraits of the doners looked down on the crowd. I think there must have been 60-70 people there, many of them students, others professors, and a few teenage kids who'd been kind enough to accompany their parents and participate in the readings (the Russian kids were the most Beckettian in their dress and demeanor!)
We began with a mass reading of the first scene of
Waiting from Godot, with one half of the room taking the part of Vladimir and the other half Estragon. This got us warmed up for the main attraction, readings in 17 or 18 different languages. My dear friend Maria had sent out a call, and there were people who had volunteered to read the first or last scenes from Godot, passages from
Watt,
Krapp's Last Tape, and the last passage of
The Unnamable in various languages. We proceeded in more-or-less alphabetical order: Bulgarian, Chinese and Japanese (alternating lines), Danish, English, Finnish, French, French and Latin, German, Greek (ancient) Hungarian, Irish and Korean, Mongolian, Papua New Guinea Talkpidgen, Russian, Spanish (us!), Swedish and Norwegian, Turkish and Urdu. I think I remembered all of them! Some people had done their own translations, as none existed in their language; a few people had memorized their parts, some acted out scenes while others just read. I had never heard several of these languages spoken before, and it was thrilling. Because many of us knew the texts intimately, and because we had all read one of them together, we could recognized and follow along with the shape of the text.
We ended with a mass reading of the end of the Unnameable, which was hilarious--some read along with the loudest voice, others read to themselves in their own rhythms, a few formed little groups that ended earlier or later than the group. Someone recorded the whole thing, and took picture--I hope to get to see them!
We had a few props--a branch for "the tree" that is part of the opening of Godot, a bowler hat that evoked the Chaplin/French clochard characters, even a tape deck for the two performers who did bits from Krapp's Last Tape. One reader had directed Godot in China, another was an actor who had performed in a version of Godot.
I was happy that my daughter was willing to come, and willing to stand up with me and read a scene in Spanish. We bought the souvenir T-shirt that has "I can't go on, I will go on" because she enjoyed the energy, the glorious sounds of all these languages, the enthusiasm and charm of each of the readers, and the chocolate cake.
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