What do you think?
Rate this book
نهاية اللعبة
فى مسرحية نهاية اللعبة 1957 لا شيء يحدث الى الأبد، وأن الانتظار أبدى ويتبدى ذلك فى: التكرارية التى تتردد مرارا على مستوى العبارات، وان شخوصه لا تخرج من هذه الحياة عن طريق الانتحار، لأنها غير واثقة من أن الموت سيقدم لها الراحة والطمأنينة أو وضعا أفضل
133 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1957
192 people are currently reading
19236 people want to read
About the author
Samuel Beckett
914 books6,544 followersNovels of Samuel Barclay Beckett, Irish writer, include
Murphy
in 1938 and
Malone Dies
in 1951; a wider audience know his absurdist plays, such as
Waiting for Godot
in 1952 and
Krapp's Last Tape
in 1959, and he won the Nobel Prize of 1969 for literature.
Samuel Barclay Beckett, an avant-garde theater director and poet, lived in France for most of his adult life. He used English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black gallows humor.
People regard most influence of Samuel Barclay Beckett of the 20th century. James Augustine Aloysius Joyce strongly influenced him, whom people consider as one modernist. People sometimes consider him as an inspiration to many later first postmodernists. He is one of the key in what Martin Esslin called the "theater of the absurd". His later career worked with increasing minimalism.
People awarded Samuel Barclay Beckett "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".
In 1984, people elected Samuel Barclay Bennett as Saoi of Aosdána.
Samuel Barclay Beckett, an avant-garde theater director and poet, lived in France for most of his adult life. He used English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black gallows humor.
People regard most influence of Samuel Barclay Beckett of the 20th century. James Augustine Aloysius Joyce strongly influenced him, whom people consider as one modernist. People sometimes consider him as an inspiration to many later first postmodernists. He is one of the key in what Martin Esslin called the "theater of the absurd". His later career worked with increasing minimalism.
People awarded Samuel Barclay Beckett "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".
In 1984, people elected Samuel Barclay Bennett as Saoi of Aosdána.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,495 reviews
February 14, 2025
This insightful play shows the surprisingly Christian face of an author so many label a nihilist.
Hamm, as his name suggests, is a solipsistic, ham-fisted petty tyrant.
How many tyrants do you know who are ONLY that way with their families, but "rage, rage against the dying of the light" once they have once again to take up their crosses of meekness in the Real World?
Probably quite a few.
I know I do.
So Hamm, as Dante would possibly say, is among the proximate damned. But WHY proximate?
Proximate, as being totally unaware of the evil within him; damned, as damningly evinced thus by his cowardice in the face of his failing powers. Old Age ain't no place for sissies, Mae West said, and he is a selfish and solipsistic sissy. Being old for him is Pure Hell.
The real thing, one bets, can't be too far.
Dante, I think, puts anger in a mediate circle of that place. But Beckett's Pozzo (from Godot) is probably freezing right now in the deucedly Satanic lowest chambers thereof.
For he KNEW what he was doing, alright!
And Beckett knew Dante inside out.
Yet, look at Clov...
He's completely aware of his own just acts (getting the right medication for his ingrate master Hamm at precisely the right time) and would like to complain, but he knows nobody's listening, so doesn't - Cloves go with Ham, get it?
Clov's pains are Purgatorial. He's a conscious (but sharp as cloves, and griping - and who doesn't complain, when you come right down to it?) Altruist.
Think all this ISN'T Dante-esque? Think again. Dante, along with Descartes (featured in his first young prose piece) were his Vade Mecum's. His role models. They showed him the Real face of the Real world of Reason.
I think, therefore I'm saved - through my hyper-awareness.
Now, we all know Beckett had few life rafts.
He played his life mostly by ear (though carefully planned the volubility of his early prose to become utterly taciturn by his late works)!
In other words, he took chances.
But he was confident we are ultimately saved through our totalizing self-knowledge -
And that guys like Hamm suffer even now for their ignorance, and deserve it -
And that those facts, for him, were sufficient reason for whittling his own necessities, and his writing, down to their naked bare bones.
When each one of us comes to his or her endgame in our advanced age, we wrongly accuse Fate of playing an evil joke on us.
But it's no joke.
We have to rid ourselves of ALL our excess ballast in preparation for our Final Journey Home.
Hamm, as his name suggests, is a solipsistic, ham-fisted petty tyrant.
How many tyrants do you know who are ONLY that way with their families, but "rage, rage against the dying of the light" once they have once again to take up their crosses of meekness in the Real World?
Probably quite a few.
I know I do.
So Hamm, as Dante would possibly say, is among the proximate damned. But WHY proximate?
Proximate, as being totally unaware of the evil within him; damned, as damningly evinced thus by his cowardice in the face of his failing powers. Old Age ain't no place for sissies, Mae West said, and he is a selfish and solipsistic sissy. Being old for him is Pure Hell.
The real thing, one bets, can't be too far.
Dante, I think, puts anger in a mediate circle of that place. But Beckett's Pozzo (from Godot) is probably freezing right now in the deucedly Satanic lowest chambers thereof.
For he KNEW what he was doing, alright!
And Beckett knew Dante inside out.
Yet, look at Clov...
He's completely aware of his own just acts (getting the right medication for his ingrate master Hamm at precisely the right time) and would like to complain, but he knows nobody's listening, so doesn't - Cloves go with Ham, get it?
Clov's pains are Purgatorial. He's a conscious (but sharp as cloves, and griping - and who doesn't complain, when you come right down to it?) Altruist.
Think all this ISN'T Dante-esque? Think again. Dante, along with Descartes (featured in his first young prose piece) were his Vade Mecum's. His role models. They showed him the Real face of the Real world of Reason.
I think, therefore I'm saved - through my hyper-awareness.
Now, we all know Beckett had few life rafts.
He played his life mostly by ear (though carefully planned the volubility of his early prose to become utterly taciturn by his late works)!
In other words, he took chances.
But he was confident we are ultimately saved through our totalizing self-knowledge -
And that guys like Hamm suffer even now for their ignorance, and deserve it -
And that those facts, for him, were sufficient reason for whittling his own necessities, and his writing, down to their naked bare bones.
When each one of us comes to his or her endgame in our advanced age, we wrongly accuse Fate of playing an evil joke on us.
But it's no joke.
We have to rid ourselves of ALL our excess ballast in preparation for our Final Journey Home.
July 24, 2018
Beckett wrote many strange plays, though sometimes the strange is needed to capture an aspect of reality that is, by its very nature, strange, mystical and untouchable.
Good literature, the very best of literature, makes you think and makes you imagine. When you read you put your own design on the book. You interpret it. The answers are not given to you, you must find them if they are, indeed, wanting to be found. Beckett gives you very little. I have some ideas about what the play may represent, but the point is it could resemble a great many things. It is not clear. It is like looking through a murky glass at an indifferent world that could be our own and not our own. With the Endgame it is for you to decide.
“All life long, the same questions, the same answers.”
And I’ve decided three things based upon that rather important quote:
1. The world is evil
“Use your head, can't you, use your head, you're on earth, there's no cure for that!”
Hamm dreams of sleep, of being free to run and make love in nature and in the woods. The ideas in his mind are better than the reality he faces. As such a sense of depression permeates the play, a certain dissatisfaction with everything that is existence. The world is not kind. It is not always good to use and at our end it leaves us dissatisfied and unfulfilled.
Very much in the modernist mode, Beckett’s words capture the disillusionment that permeates his artistic era and, as ever, he captures it using the brilliance of absurdist theatre.
2. The Old world is dead
“I use the words you taught me. If they don't mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent.”
Naggs and Nell, the older generation, are kept in trash bins in the corner of the room. It’s an apt symbol for the death of the old ways, for the old generation, as man moves into the modern world. They are incapable of moving forward so they are left to die in misery along with the values of the nineteenth century. The two have no pulse and blither about bygone days nobody wants to hear about. Their fond memories are mere garbage to their son Hamm. He does not care about their lives or their past experiences because they are dead.
3. The new world isn’t any better because life is absurd
Nothing really changes but remains perpetually the same. The sea, the sky, the stars and the horizon do not differ. Civilisation remains forever grey. There is no meaning to be found in any of it. Hamm and Clov will never represent something or be anything. And to think differently is only a delusion. A cold detached death is what waits for them, again, a meaningless death against a multitude of souls that have littered the endless dark over the ages.
“HAMM: We're not beginning to... to... mean something?
CLOV: Mean something! You and I, mean something!
(Brief laugh.) Ah that's a good one!”
“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that… Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more.”
Pessimism, hopelessness and desperation are what drip maniacally and slowly from the sad words in this play. As it progresses, it gets greyer with each line. The old world may be dead, though the new one is depressed and unhappy: it has no purpose.
Final Thoughts
Beckett would, however, read my decisions and probably tell me to throw myself into the sea. But Beckett’s dead and his words were written to elicit a response. He knew exactly what he was doing, the comical genius bastard that he was. Words do not get cleverer than his.
Good literature, the very best of literature, makes you think and makes you imagine. When you read you put your own design on the book. You interpret it. The answers are not given to you, you must find them if they are, indeed, wanting to be found. Beckett gives you very little. I have some ideas about what the play may represent, but the point is it could resemble a great many things. It is not clear. It is like looking through a murky glass at an indifferent world that could be our own and not our own. With the Endgame it is for you to decide.
“All life long, the same questions, the same answers.”
And I’ve decided three things based upon that rather important quote:
1. The world is evil
“Use your head, can't you, use your head, you're on earth, there's no cure for that!”
Hamm dreams of sleep, of being free to run and make love in nature and in the woods. The ideas in his mind are better than the reality he faces. As such a sense of depression permeates the play, a certain dissatisfaction with everything that is existence. The world is not kind. It is not always good to use and at our end it leaves us dissatisfied and unfulfilled.
Very much in the modernist mode, Beckett’s words capture the disillusionment that permeates his artistic era and, as ever, he captures it using the brilliance of absurdist theatre.
2. The Old world is dead
“I use the words you taught me. If they don't mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent.”
Naggs and Nell, the older generation, are kept in trash bins in the corner of the room. It’s an apt symbol for the death of the old ways, for the old generation, as man moves into the modern world. They are incapable of moving forward so they are left to die in misery along with the values of the nineteenth century. The two have no pulse and blither about bygone days nobody wants to hear about. Their fond memories are mere garbage to their son Hamm. He does not care about their lives or their past experiences because they are dead.
3. The new world isn’t any better because life is absurd
Nothing really changes but remains perpetually the same. The sea, the sky, the stars and the horizon do not differ. Civilisation remains forever grey. There is no meaning to be found in any of it. Hamm and Clov will never represent something or be anything. And to think differently is only a delusion. A cold detached death is what waits for them, again, a meaningless death against a multitude of souls that have littered the endless dark over the ages.
“HAMM: We're not beginning to... to... mean something?
CLOV: Mean something! You and I, mean something!
(Brief laugh.) Ah that's a good one!”
“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that… Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more.”
Pessimism, hopelessness and desperation are what drip maniacally and slowly from the sad words in this play. As it progresses, it gets greyer with each line. The old world may be dead, though the new one is depressed and unhappy: it has no purpose.
Final Thoughts
Beckett would, however, read my decisions and probably tell me to throw myself into the sea. But Beckett’s dead and his words were written to elicit a response. He knew exactly what he was doing, the comical genius bastard that he was. Words do not get cleverer than his.
April 7, 2017
Read for class*
Beckett is most definitely not for me. Oh well!
Beckett is most definitely not for me. Oh well!
October 21, 2021
5 suffocating stars! ⭐
📢 A health warning (to start off the review on a note that would have met Beckett's approval in its genetic negation of happiness):
Beckett's writing has a deliberate asphyxiating quality to it - you will feel the full meaning of breathlessness - that is triggered by the idea of an eternally cyclical (and by extension, endless) existence. It is not generated by repetition itself, but by the repetition of repetition - the plethoric reiteration of it, as it were, that will leave no doubt as to its inexorability.
Enough, it’s time it ended, in the shelter too.
[Pause.]
And yet I hesitate, I hesitate to . . . to end. Yes, there it is, it’s time it ended and yet I hesitate to—
[he yawns]
—to end.
Beckett's theatre of the absurd is of singular value within High Modernism as we know it: its epiphanic qualities are keyed down to the point of dizzying annihilation, via the persistent theme of Waiting for something significant to happen that never does. Whether we identify Beckett's literature as positing itself within an emergent philosophy of nihilism (there is an abundant use of the word "zero") and existentialism, or choose to analyse his select words within the circumference of their creation, the one element of his writing that is indubitably palpable and ubiquitous is the exposition of meaningless as all-engulfing and traceable in every human phenomenon. In this we are reminded of Shakespearian futility:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
- From Macbeth
Of course, the important difference here is that in Beckett the protagonists are caught in the between: that tension between life and death, the latter being out of reach, an event that cannot happen. Like with the vaguely platonic metaphor of "the impossible heap" (it does not exist, but is merely constituted of single grains, therefore an idea that is not materially conceivable), life can only be grasped in its collection of moments. Linearity and rationality are here under assault, though seemingly as a matter of course, beyond human control.
Moment upon moment, pattering down, like the millet grains of . . .
[he hesitates]
. . . that old Greek, and all life long you wait for that to mount up to a life.
A pervading sense of senseless emanates from every word and concept, and their tireless yet tiring repetition; from the at times illogical word structures and use of ellipsis to denote hesitance, an attempt to retrieve meaning, and the ultimate observed emptiness within and without; the all-encompassing greyness, stillness, and the bare minimalistic set up. But also, finally, the punctuated laughter itself, as a dialectic reference to the humour that lies within the pathetic (the element of 'low comedy', the ridiculous in human nature).
HAMM We’re not beginning to . . . to . . . mean something?
CLOV Mean something! You and I, mean something!
[Brief laugh.]
Ah that’s a good one!
Intimately connected with the void and voidness of existence is a lingering weariness that registers the impossibility of things. Stillness and motionlessness prevail, as does a sense of fatal aloneness, also developed through the exasperated co-dependency between protagonist Hamm and Clov.
One other aspect that makes Beckett's text magnetic is the extent to which it invites close reading and analysis. Elements of intertextuality, to Dante's Inferno especially, are implicit yet powerfully integrated within the logic of his text.
🥀🥀🥀
Highly recommended for readers of Classics that eternally resonate with our varying concept of humanness. Beckett's is certainly a bleak yet lucid vision of existence that questions incessantly though uselessly(?) This was one intellectually engaging and intense read!
📢 A health warning (to start off the review on a note that would have met Beckett's approval in its genetic negation of happiness):
Beckett's writing has a deliberate asphyxiating quality to it - you will feel the full meaning of breathlessness - that is triggered by the idea of an eternally cyclical (and by extension, endless) existence. It is not generated by repetition itself, but by the repetition of repetition - the plethoric reiteration of it, as it were, that will leave no doubt as to its inexorability.
Enough, it’s time it ended, in the shelter too.
[Pause.]
And yet I hesitate, I hesitate to . . . to end. Yes, there it is, it’s time it ended and yet I hesitate to—
[he yawns]
—to end.
Beckett's theatre of the absurd is of singular value within High Modernism as we know it: its epiphanic qualities are keyed down to the point of dizzying annihilation, via the persistent theme of Waiting for something significant to happen that never does. Whether we identify Beckett's literature as positing itself within an emergent philosophy of nihilism (there is an abundant use of the word "zero") and existentialism, or choose to analyse his select words within the circumference of their creation, the one element of his writing that is indubitably palpable and ubiquitous is the exposition of meaningless as all-engulfing and traceable in every human phenomenon. In this we are reminded of Shakespearian futility:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
- From Macbeth
Of course, the important difference here is that in Beckett the protagonists are caught in the between: that tension between life and death, the latter being out of reach, an event that cannot happen. Like with the vaguely platonic metaphor of "the impossible heap" (it does not exist, but is merely constituted of single grains, therefore an idea that is not materially conceivable), life can only be grasped in its collection of moments. Linearity and rationality are here under assault, though seemingly as a matter of course, beyond human control.
Moment upon moment, pattering down, like the millet grains of . . .
[he hesitates]
. . . that old Greek, and all life long you wait for that to mount up to a life.
A pervading sense of senseless emanates from every word and concept, and their tireless yet tiring repetition; from the at times illogical word structures and use of ellipsis to denote hesitance, an attempt to retrieve meaning, and the ultimate observed emptiness within and without; the all-encompassing greyness, stillness, and the bare minimalistic set up. But also, finally, the punctuated laughter itself, as a dialectic reference to the humour that lies within the pathetic (the element of 'low comedy', the ridiculous in human nature).
HAMM We’re not beginning to . . . to . . . mean something?
CLOV Mean something! You and I, mean something!
[Brief laugh.]
Ah that’s a good one!
Intimately connected with the void and voidness of existence is a lingering weariness that registers the impossibility of things. Stillness and motionlessness prevail, as does a sense of fatal aloneness, also developed through the exasperated co-dependency between protagonist Hamm and Clov.
One other aspect that makes Beckett's text magnetic is the extent to which it invites close reading and analysis. Elements of intertextuality, to Dante's Inferno especially, are implicit yet powerfully integrated within the logic of his text.
🥀🥀🥀
Highly recommended for readers of Classics that eternally resonate with our varying concept of humanness. Beckett's is certainly a bleak yet lucid vision of existence that questions incessantly though uselessly(?) This was one intellectually engaging and intense read!
July 12, 2015
دنبا نه با انفجاری مهیب، بلکه با ناله و هق هق گریه به آخر خواهد رسید
تی اس الیوت
دست آخر( آخر بازی ) نمایشنامه ای است که به شدت در برابر هر تعبیر فلسفی، تمثیلی و نمادین مقاومت می کند. مانند دیگر آثار بکت، در اینجا نیز هرگز با تصویر کاملی روبرو نمی شویم و موقعیتی کاملا گسیخته در قالب نمایش عرضه می شود. دست آخر به جای بیان فقدان معنا، به نشان دادن بصری این فقدان روی آورده است
نمایش با وارد شدن کلاو به صحنه، کناز زدن پرده دو پنجره، نگاه های دزدکی به بیرون و سپس برداشتن ملحفه ها آغاز می شود. هیو کنر در باب چنین شروعی می گوید: این حرکت چنان آشکارا استعاره ای برای بیدار شدن است که می توان تصور نمود کل صحنه و متعلقاتش معرف فضای درونی کاسه سر یک انسان است. اگر این برداشت درست باشد، می توان کل نمایش را معرف دقایقی در جهان درونی انسانی افسرده و به استیصال رسیده دانست. به همین علت است که این اثر بکت نسبت به آثار دیگرش طرح داستانی کمتری دارد. انسانی که چشم به راه چیزی نیست، مگر قرص های مسکنش. سخنان آغازین کلاو اشاره به همین موضوع دارد : تمام شد. تقریبا تمام شده، باید که تقریبا تمام شده باشد. ذره به ذره، یک به یک و ناگهان روزی کپه ای از آن ها، کپه ای کوچک، کپه ای تحمل ناپذیر. پس دست آخر روزی معمولی ست، چون باقی روزها. با این تفاوت که سرانجام تراکم روزها به کلیتی به نام زندگی بدل گشته است. در پایان نیز دیالوگی به همین مضمون را "هم" تکرار می کند : لحظه به لحظه، شرشر فرو می ریزد، همچون دانه های ارزن ِ (تردید می کند)... آن یونانی پیر و تمام عمر منتظر می مانی تا شاید این کپه وانگهی دریا شود
عبارت تمام شد آغازین نمایش را می توان تلمیحی به آخرین سخنان مسیح بر صلیب دانست، آنجا که مسیح مصلوب فریاد زد "تما�� شد" و سپس جان سپرد. همین کلمات درون مایه کلی نمایش را مشخص می کند.
در بخش های مختلف نمایش، معنا به طور واضح به سخره گرفته می شود :
هم: نکنه یک وقت حرف های ما معنی پیدا کند؟
کلاو: معنا پیدا کند؟ حر�� های من و تو معنا پیدا کند؟(خنده کوتاه) این هم از آن حرف های خوشمزه بود
در دستورهای اجرای صحنه نیز امده که باید درون اتاق، تصویری رو بر دیوار آویخته شود و پشت آن به تماشاچیان باشد که استعاره ای از غیاب معنا در نمایش است
نگ و نل، دو کاراکتر درون سطل های زباله، پدر و مادر "هم" هستند. هم دردی میان این دو را می توان برجسته ترین ارتباط احساسی درون داستان در نظر گرفت. نگ می تواند سالخوردگی استراگون باشد و نل سالخوردگی ولادیمیر. رابطه ی مابین کلاو و هم نیز یادآورد رابطه لاکی و پوتزو است. میان هم و کلاو رابطه خدا و بندگی وجود دارد. به نظر می رسد بین نام این دو و نقش شان ارتباطی باشد. کلاو در فرانسه به واژه میخ و هم در انگلیسی به واژه چکش شبیه است
بر خلاف نمایش های سنتی خانوادگی که در آن ها ارزش های خانوادگی پاس داشته می شود، در "دست آخر" اصالت این ارزش ها در کنار باقی چیزها از بین می رود و نمایش به ورای تراژدی منتقل می شود. آگاهی شخصیت ها از پوچی و آنچه از دست رفته است بیشتر از شخصیت های موازی در انتظار گودو ست و از همین جهت اینان متحمل درد و عذاب بیشتری می شوند
اتفاقات نمایش در جهانی می گذرد بسیار ناآشنا و غریب. بیرون، تماما خاکستری و متروک و مرده است. خاطرات شخصیت ها متعلق به جهان ماست، اما جهان فعلی آن ها خالی و مملو از روح مرگ است. کاراکتر های "دست آخر" بارها به خاطرات خوش گذشته پناه می برند،با این حال این خاطرات سرابی بیش نیستند. بکت بر این باور است که یادآوری خاطرات ذاتا مخدوش و نامعتبر است و بیشتر از نیازهای درونی ناشی می شود تا از تجربه ای واقعی.
داستان نمایش در عین حال که رو به سوی پایانی آخر الزمانی دارد، همزمان مبتنی بر وقایع دلگیر زندگی روزمره است. عنصر انتظار بر خلاف در انتظار گودو متوجه نجات و امید به تعویق افتاده نیست، بلکه تسلی پایان و فرجام است: کلاو با ماتم می گوید که چیزهای هولناک زیادی وجود دارد و هم پاسخ می دهد نه! حالا دیگه خیلی زیاد نیستند
برای هم و کلاو که در انتظار پایان اند، چشم انداز شروع تکاملی دیگر بسیار آزاردهنده است. دلیل به وحشت افتادن "هم" با دیدن کک در شلوار کلاو و موش در آشپزخانه نیز همین موضوع است: هم: نژاد بشر ممکن است دوباره از همینجا آغاز بشه! محض رضای خدا بگیرتش! و بعد نوبت پیدا شدن یک موش است. در پایان نمایش، یک پسربچه، عامل بالقوه تولید مثل دیده می شود. آیا این روند تکاملی کک به موش و موش به پسربچه در دست آخر، روزنه ای از امید است؟
در داستان "هم" نیز با یک پسربچه روبرو هستیم.این پسر کیست؟ آیا ارتباطی با پسرک بیرون پنجره دارد؟ و یا با کودکی کلاو؟ بکت در پاسخ این پرسش مطابق انتظار چنین گفته است : نمی دانم این داستان کودکی کلاو است یا نه، نمی دانم، همین.
مانند در انتظار گودو،در دست آخر نیز با دوگانگی زمان روبرو هستیم.از یک سو زمان به مثابه عامل تکرار و اسارت و تسلسل (نمایش همان گونه که شروع می شود، پایان می یابد) و از سویی دیگر به مثابه عامل فساد و نابود (واقعیات از دست رفته، قرص ها و خاک اره تمام شده و ...). بنابراین شخصیت های این نمایش علاوه بر مکان،از حیث زمان نیز در بند هستند.
کاربرد عناصر فرانمایشی نیز در دست آخر برجسته است.این عناصر تنها جنبه نمایشی نداردند، بلکه در عین حال وجه اجرایی، تکراری و نمایشی زندگی را نیز مشخص می کنند. به عنوان مثال عبارت "تمام شدن" و "چیزی دارد می گذرد" اشاره ی آگاهانه به گذشتن و پایان یافتن نمایش دارد، زمانی که کلاو دوربینش را به سوی نماشاگران می گیرد و یا هنگامی که کلاو تهدید به رفتن می کند و هم می گوید او نمی تواند صحنه را ترک کند، به خاطر دیالوگ! نمونه ی برجسته ی دیگر، ادغام دلهره وجودی کلاو در نقش و تکرار نقش به عنوان جز لاینفک بازیست. چنانکه کلاو و هم می گویند " این مسخره بازی هر روز خدا چه فایده ای دارد؟"
خواندن آثار بکت برای آن دسته از مخاطبینی که در انتظار روبرو شدن با اتفاقات تراژیک و هیجان انگیز در نمایش را هستند اشتباهی بزرگ است. با این حال برای عده ای دیگر،این آثار آینه ی تمام نمای زندگی آن هاست،روبرو شدن با حقیقتی تلخ.زندگی ای خالی از معنا و ارزش،غرق در روزمرگی
به این اثر بکت 5 ستاره امتیاز می دم و به این نسخه ترجمه شده کمتر از 1!
April 5, 2017
-Nature has forgotten us.
-There's no more nature.
-No more nature! You exaggerate.
-In the vicinity.
-But we breathe, we change! We lose our hair, our teeth! Our bloom! Our ideals!
A play that reads like a poem written in a twisted dream. No words. Only silence is suitable after this one.
April 5, 2015
Celebrity Death Match Special: Endgame versus Secrets of Pawnless Endings
[An almost bare stage containing only an armchair, a table and two garbage cans. The armchair is covered in a heavy drape. CLOV enters right, carrying a bag, and limps slowly towards the table. When he reaches it, he pulls out a chessboard and set. He places the board on the table and painstakingly arranges a few pieces on it, examining the position from different angles and adjusting the pieces accordingly. Finally, he moves to the armchair and removes the drape, revealing HAMM, an elderly man wearing dark glasses.]
HAMM: Well?
CLOV: I've set them up. We can continue. Rook and bishop against rook.
HAMM: What do you mean?
CLOV: It's an endgame, right?
HAMM: You idiot! You don't understand anything, do you?
CLOV: [Defensively] I understand as much as you do. Samuel Beckett was a keen chessplayer. I can well believe he had this one in mind.
HAMM: Moron! This is a universal metaphor for the human condition, not some piece of games trivia!
CLOV: Look. The position is theoretically drawn in almost all practical cases, but White can torture Black for 50 moves...
NAGG: [Poking head out of garbage can] 75 moves!
NELL: [Muffled voice from other garbage can] No, FIDE changed it back to 50 moves in 1992!
CLOV: [Ignoring them] ... though as long as Black knows one of the standard defensive setups, he has nothing to fear. Personally, I favor Cochrane's method. Though the second rank defense also has many supporters.
NAGG: If Black dies before reaching the fiftieth move, he forfeits.
NELL: Yes, death ends the game. It's important in correspondence matches.
HAMM: But what has this got to do with Beckett?
CLOV: [Shrugging his shoulders] I admit it: nothing.
NAGG: Nothing!
NELL: [With a hysterical little laugh] Nothing! Nothing!!
CLOV: So shall we play? It'll pass the time.
HAMM: Why not?
[Curtain]
No winner announced due to absurdity of existence
May 3, 2019
كل حياتنا الأسئلة إياها، الأجوبة إياها
!!!
نهاية اللعبة ... او استكمال بلا نهاية للعبة الحياة
إذا كنت قد قرأت لصمويل بيكت من قبل، فلن تشعر باختلاف كبير نفسي، أو فلسفي، عن سائر أعمال بيكت
وخاصة لو كنت قد قرأت له روايته الأشهر في انتظار جودو .. ثم تقرأ هذه المسرحية .. وتتبعهما بـ شريط كراب الأخير
وتكون بهذه الثلاثية قد احكمت قبضتك علي بيكت بصورة ممتعة .. مأساوية نعم، لكنها ممتعة
كلوف: لماذا تبقي معي؟
هام: لماذا تبقي علي؟-
كلوف: ليس هناك شخص آخر-
هام : ليس هناك مكان آخر -
!!"
حسنا .. لقد قدمت من قبل مراجعة عن انتظار جودو
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
وشريط كراب الأخير
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
تتبقي هذه المسرحية .. ولكن هل حقا احتاج لمراجعة جديدة .. أو مختلفة عما كتبته من قبل ؟
لا اعتقد
فلو أخذت ما كتبته من قبل وكتبته هنا، لكانت المراجعة سليمة مائة بالمائة
فبيكت هو بيكيت .. العبثية نفسها .. الوحدة، الفراغ .. الألم الذي لا يتوقف، ولن يتوقف
فالأمر لا علاقة له بالزمن إطلاقا
فأنت في مسرحية الزمن الواحد .. والمشهد الواحد .. والديكور الواحد
فالزمن صفر في ساعة لا تعمل، واللحظات تتساقط كحبات القمح، وأنت تأمل طوال حياتك أن تستحيل هذه اللحظات إلي حياة كاملة في النهاية، إلا أن ذلك لا يحدث أبدا، فالنهاية لا تختلف كثيرا عن البداية، وخارج النافذة لا يوجد شئ، ولن يوجد شئ، سوي تكرار المأساة، وتكرار التساؤلات، والإجابات
فأنت علي الأرض، ولا حل لذلك
!!
شاهد هذا المقطع من المسرحية
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-Rw-...
ثم اقرأ مراجعات الأصدقاء، فقد أوفت حقا كل ما يمكنني قوله
...
May 15, 2022
مسرحية من فصل واحد فقط يتقنها بيكيت بمهارة عالية.
المكان: مسرح عارٍ والضوء رمادي. لا يحتوي إلا على كرسي، صندوقيَ قمامة، نافذتان مرتفعتان ولوحة وجهها للحائط. وكل شي خارج هذه الغرفة يملؤه الموت والعدم. كأنه يرمي الى ان الحياة فارغة أشبه بسجن نتن.
الشخصيات: هام، مُقعَد وضرير.
كلوف، خادم، ابن (لم يحدد بالضبط من شخصيته) الشخص الوحيد القادر على الحركة بالمسرحية، وغير قادر على الجلوس.
ناج ونيل: والدا هام، يعيشان في صندوقي قمامة ومقطوعي الأرجل.
الزمان: زمان لا يتحرك، ثابت في نقطة الصفر.
هام: كم الساعة؟
كلوف: إياها كالعادة.
هام: هل نظرت؟
كلوف: نعم.
هام: وماذا وجدت؟
كلوف: صفرًا.
البناء الدرامي او الأحداث تأخذ شكلًا خطيًا، غير متنامية ترمز للرتابة والملل وعدم وجود هدف من الحياة.
قَدَّم الحوارات بطريقة مبتورة وتملؤها السخرية والتهكم، اذا أنها ردة الفعل المناسبة تجاه المعاناة وعدم الجدوى والرتابة التي يعيشون فيها، اذا لا شي يدعو للضحك أكثر من التعاسة.
وأيضا سخر من ا��دين والإله أينما ذُكِروا، من خلال عرضه لنكتة على لسان ناج عن شخص احتاج لبنطلون مُقَلَّم لإحتفالات رأس السنة. فقصد الخياط لخياطته، لكن الخياط يتأخر لثلاثة أشهر لصنع البنطلون، فيأتيه الزبون غاضبًا: لعنة الله عليك. هذه قلّة أدب. في ستة أيام، هل تسمعني، في ستة أيام صنع الله العالم. نعم يا سيدي. وأنت لم تقدر على أن تصنع لي بنطلونًا في ثلاثة أشهر...
فيجيبه الخياط: لكن يا سيدي العزيز، انظر، انظر (يشير باحتقار واشمئزاز) انظر إلى العالم (صمت) وانظر (يشير باعتزاز وحب) الى البنطلون الذي صنعته.
لم يحدد بيكيت زمان ومكان المسرحية، اذا لن يكون هناك فرق، فمتى وُجدت واينما كنت، لن تنجو من المعاناة، فكأنها مسرحية عن كل زمان ومكان. وبحالة هام ومعاناته من انتهاء الحبوب المسكنة فلم يعد يجد ما يخفف من ألمه وشعوره بالفراغ وعدم الرضا عن الواقع؛ هو بسبب أنه لم يُعطي أو يصنع معنى لحياته، اذ لم يكن لديه إيمان بإله ولم يحظَ بالحب الذي ظل يتخيله، وظل ناقمًا على والده لأنه أنجبه.
برأيي أنه لا يمكن لمراجعة واحدة أن تناقش جميع الأفكار التي وردت بالمسرحية، اذا ان كل جملة تحتاج لمراجعة خاصة بها.. وهذا ما يجعلها مسرحية عظيمة وخالدة لأنها صعبة على التأويل والتفسير المباشر وتشغل الفكر والخيال.
هام: لن أعطيك طعامًا بعد الآن.
كلوف: فنموت إذن.
هام: أعطيك ما يكفي فقط كي امنعك من الموت. ستبقى جائعًا طيلة الوقت.
المكان: مسرح عارٍ والضوء رمادي. لا يحتوي إلا على كرسي، صندوقيَ قمامة، نافذتان مرتفعتان ولوحة وجهها للحائط. وكل شي خارج هذه الغرفة يملؤه الموت والعدم. كأنه يرمي الى ان الحياة فارغة أشبه بسجن نتن.
الشخصيات: هام، مُقعَد وضرير.
كلوف، خادم، ابن (لم يحدد بالضبط من شخصيته) الشخص الوحيد القادر على الحركة بالمسرحية، وغير قادر على الجلوس.
ناج ونيل: والدا هام، يعيشان في صندوقي قمامة ومقطوعي الأرجل.
الزمان: زمان لا يتحرك، ثابت في نقطة الصفر.
هام: كم الساعة؟
كلوف: إياها كالعادة.
هام: هل نظرت؟
كلوف: نعم.
هام: وماذا وجدت؟
كلوف: صفرًا.
البناء الدرامي او الأحداث تأخذ شكلًا خطيًا، غير متنامية ترمز للرتابة والملل وعدم وجود هدف من الحياة.
قَدَّم الحوارات بطريقة مبتورة وتملؤها السخرية والتهكم، اذا أنها ردة الفعل المناسبة تجاه المعاناة وعدم الجدوى والرتابة التي يعيشون فيها، اذا لا شي يدعو للضحك أكثر من التعاسة.
وأيضا سخر من ا��دين والإله أينما ذُكِروا، من خلال عرضه لنكتة على لسان ناج عن شخص احتاج لبنطلون مُقَلَّم لإحتفالات رأس السنة. فقصد الخياط لخياطته، لكن الخياط يتأخر لثلاثة أشهر لصنع البنطلون، فيأتيه الزبون غاضبًا: لعنة الله عليك. هذه قلّة أدب. في ستة أيام، هل تسمعني، في ستة أيام صنع الله العالم. نعم يا سيدي. وأنت لم تقدر على أن تصنع لي بنطلونًا في ثلاثة أشهر...
فيجيبه الخياط: لكن يا سيدي العزيز، انظر، انظر (يشير باحتقار واشمئزاز) انظر إلى العالم (صمت) وانظر (يشير باعتزاز وحب) الى البنطلون الذي صنعته.
لم يحدد بيكيت زمان ومكان المسرحية، اذا لن يكون هناك فرق، فمتى وُجدت واينما كنت، لن تنجو من المعاناة، فكأنها مسرحية عن كل زمان ومكان. وبحالة هام ومعاناته من انتهاء الحبوب المسكنة فلم يعد يجد ما يخفف من ألمه وشعوره بالفراغ وعدم الرضا عن الواقع؛ هو بسبب أنه لم يُعطي أو يصنع معنى لحياته، اذ لم يكن لديه إيمان بإله ولم يحظَ بالحب الذي ظل يتخيله، وظل ناقمًا على والده لأنه أنجبه.
برأيي أنه لا يمكن لمراجعة واحدة أن تناقش جميع الأفكار التي وردت بالمسرحية، اذا ان كل جملة تحتاج لمراجعة خاصة بها.. وهذا ما يجعلها مسرحية عظيمة وخالدة لأنها صعبة على التأويل والتفسير المباشر وتشغل الفكر والخيال.
هام: لن أعطيك طعامًا بعد الآن.
كلوف: فنموت إذن.
هام: أعطيك ما يكفي فقط كي امنعك من الموت. ستبقى جائعًا طيلة الوقت.
March 30, 2012
My youngest daughter took me to see this during the week. We had our first beer together prior to the performance in a pub – a highly significant moment for a father, obviously, especially here in the land of Oz, the land of the amber fluid.
Then a minute ago I read the Wiki article on this play. I wanted to be sure it was written post-WW2. You see, it is so obviously a post-nuclear war play that I would have been very disappointed if it had been written in 1922 or something. You know, the way TSE’s line, “I’ll show you fear in a handful of dust”, really ought to be a reference to nuclear war, and yet it just can’t be. It is very amusing that Beckett would say this isn’t about post-nuclear war. Exactly the sort of thing you would expect him to say.
Anyway, this is a comedy about things it should be impossible to find funny. If the Irish can claim to have done anything for Western Civilisation, perhaps that is it, to have tried to find ways to get us to laugh about things we really shouldn’t laugh at. It is, I believe, what helps to form the strange connection I have in my mind between Jews and the Irish. Although, perhaps the Irish were lucky enough not to be chosen, not only not chosen, but hardly even picked. The mother in this says, “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness” – which is easily the funniest line in the play – and also the play’s most important line. If you are writing a play and can achieve that, you’ve done well. Like I said, the question here is how do you make a comedy out of this material? When all you have are the last people on earth perishing away for want of everything, two of them even actually living in rubbish bins. It is probably only possible to think to do this, or even think it necessary to be done, if you are Irish or Jewish.
And yet, this is a remarkable play. Even the constant farce seems to only heighten the pathos of the thing – and bathos too, obviously.
Then a minute ago I read the Wiki article on this play. I wanted to be sure it was written post-WW2. You see, it is so obviously a post-nuclear war play that I would have been very disappointed if it had been written in 1922 or something. You know, the way TSE’s line, “I’ll show you fear in a handful of dust”, really ought to be a reference to nuclear war, and yet it just can’t be. It is very amusing that Beckett would say this isn’t about post-nuclear war. Exactly the sort of thing you would expect him to say.
Anyway, this is a comedy about things it should be impossible to find funny. If the Irish can claim to have done anything for Western Civilisation, perhaps that is it, to have tried to find ways to get us to laugh about things we really shouldn’t laugh at. It is, I believe, what helps to form the strange connection I have in my mind between Jews and the Irish. Although, perhaps the Irish were lucky enough not to be chosen, not only not chosen, but hardly even picked. The mother in this says, “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness” – which is easily the funniest line in the play – and also the play’s most important line. If you are writing a play and can achieve that, you’ve done well. Like I said, the question here is how do you make a comedy out of this material? When all you have are the last people on earth perishing away for want of everything, two of them even actually living in rubbish bins. It is probably only possible to think to do this, or even think it necessary to be done, if you are Irish or Jewish.
And yet, this is a remarkable play. Even the constant farce seems to only heighten the pathos of the thing – and bathos too, obviously.
February 3, 2024
اصلا نمیتونم توضیح بدم که چرا این نمایشنامه رو دوست داشتم چون کاملاً متضاد با چیزهایی بود که من معمولاً میپسندم. گنگی بینهایت، شروع نامشخص، پایان نامشخص، دیالوگهای عجیب و غریب و آشفته همه چیزهایی هستند که من رو دیوانه میکنند. اما اینجا نه
با علاقه تا کلمهی آخر این آشفتگی رو خوندم و جلسهای که در بوککلاب راجع بهش صحبت کردیم همه چیز رو بهترم کرد. من قبل از خوندن نمایشنامه راجع بهش مطالعه نکرده بودم که ذهنم باز باشه و بتونم آزادانه تصور کنم. اما اینکه بعدش در صحبتها متوجه شدم که درونمایهی اصلی معلولیت هست برام خیلی جالب بود
در رابطه با موضوع نمایشنامه هر چقدر کمتر گفته بشه به نظرم بهتره. باید کورِ کور به سراغش رفت و در آشفتگیش دست و پا زد
کانال تلگرام ریویوها و دانلود کتابها و صوتیشون
Maede's Books
ریویو با تاخیر
۱۴۰۲/۱۱/۱۳
با علاقه تا کلمهی آخر این آشفتگی رو خوندم و جلسهای که در بوککلاب راجع بهش صحبت کردیم همه چیز رو بهترم کرد. من قبل از خوندن نمایشنامه راجع بهش مطالعه نکرده بودم که ذهنم باز باشه و بتونم آزادانه تصور کنم. اما اینکه بعدش در صحبتها متوجه شدم که درونمایهی اصلی معلولیت هست برام خیلی جالب بود
در رابطه با موضوع نمایشنامه هر چقدر کمتر گفته بشه به نظرم بهتره. باید کورِ کور به سراغش رفت و در آشفتگیش دست و پا زد
کانال تلگرام ریویوها و دانلود کتابها و صوتیشون
Maede's Books
ریویو با تاخیر
۱۴۰۲/۱۱/۱۳
November 24, 2017
يقول النقاد بأن نهاية اللعبة هي بمثابة جزء ثاني لمسرحية في انتظار جودو التي تمركزت هو عدمية الحياة، لكن في هذه المسرحية تناول بيكيت النهاية، الموت.
كالعادة في مسرح العبث لا وجود للوقت، تدور المسرحية في مكان واحد في غرفة بها أربع شخصيات كلهم ذوى عاهات، لا أحد فيهم كامل ومتعافي جسديًا، هام الذي لا يستطيع الوقوف وهو الذي يتحكم في الجميع، وكلوف الذي لا يستطيع الجلوس ولا يفعل شيئًا سوى إطاعة أوامر هام ويظل يسأله لماذا يطيعه لكنه لا يعرف، هو يشبه استراجون في تكراره بأنه سيرحل لكنه لا يستطيع الرحيل.. وأبوان هام وهما نيل وناج اللذان يعيشان في صندوقي القمامة.. لا معنى لأي شيء هنا سوى في الحوار، والذي سنجده مكررًا ومبتورًا.
مسرحية رائعة، في نظري أن الحوار والإطار المسرحي هنا أقوى من في انتظار جودو، لكن الثانية أعجبتني أكثر من الأولى بالرغم من هذا.
كالعادة في مسرح العبث لا وجود للوقت، تدور المسرحية في مكان واحد في غرفة بها أربع شخصيات كلهم ذوى عاهات، لا أحد فيهم كامل ومتعافي جسديًا، هام الذي لا يستطيع الوقوف وهو الذي يتحكم في الجميع، وكلوف الذي لا يستطيع الجلوس ولا يفعل شيئًا سوى إطاعة أوامر هام ويظل يسأله لماذا يطيعه لكنه لا يعرف، هو يشبه استراجون في تكراره بأنه سيرحل لكنه لا يستطيع الرحيل.. وأبوان هام وهما نيل وناج اللذان يعيشان في صندوقي القمامة.. لا معنى لأي شيء هنا سوى في الحوار، والذي سنجده مكررًا ومبتورًا.
مسرحية رائعة، في نظري أن الحوار والإطار المسرحي هنا أقوى من في انتظار جودو، لكن الثانية أعجبتني أكثر من الأولى بالرغم من هذا.
December 25, 2021
قد يبدو بيكيت شخصاً يود التخلص من العالم، لكنه في الحقيقة يود التخلص من نفسه.
وقد يبدو الأمران سواء من حيث النتيجة، لكنهما ليسا كذلك إطلاقاً من حيث الجوهر :')
" أنت على الأرض، ولا علاج لذلك.! "
مع تجديد الحب دوماً لهذا الرمادي الجميل ❤️
وقد يبدو الأمران سواء من حيث النتيجة، لكنهما ليسا كذلك إطلاقاً من حيث الجوهر :')
" أنت على الأرض، ولا علاج لذلك.! "
مع تجديد الحب دوماً لهذا الرمادي الجميل ❤️
April 24, 2014
It is too late in the day and no hope is left.
“Is it not time for my pain-killer? Yes. Ah! At last! Give it to me! Quick! There's no more pain-killer”.
Life is at its finish and there's nothing left except sad memories and despondent loneliness. So the entire world seems to be dying as well. Samuel Beckett is inimitable and when it comes to absurdity no one can get any higher.
“Is it not time for my pain-killer? Yes. Ah! At last! Give it to me! Quick! There's no more pain-killer”.
Life is at its finish and there's nothing left except sad memories and despondent loneliness. So the entire world seems to be dying as well. Samuel Beckett is inimitable and when it comes to absurdity no one can get any higher.
January 14, 2020
Écrite peu après la deuxième Guerre Mondiale (à peu près à la même époque ou un peu plus tard que En attendant Godot), Fin de partie se déroule dans une sorte de bunker, entouré d'un paysage dévasté de science-fiction. Les quatre personnages qui restent sont des survivants moribonds ou mal en point : Hamm est dans une chaise roulante, Clov est à peine plus vaillant, Nagg et Nell vivent dans une poubelle-cercueil (préfigurant l'ensablement de Oh les beaux jours). Leur histoire et les raisons de leur présence ici, bien que suggérées, restent mystérieuses.
Malgré la mesquinerie des personnages et la violence des relations qui se joue entre eux, les répliques sont savoureuses et, bien souvent, drôles ; parfois même émouvantes. Comme souvent dans l'écriture de Beckett, les didascalies et la pantomime sont omniprésentes.
Malgré la mesquinerie des personnages et la violence des relations qui se joue entre eux, les répliques sont savoureuses et, bien souvent, drôles ; parfois même émouvantes. Comme souvent dans l'écriture de Beckett, les didascalies et la pantomime sont omniprésentes.
October 10, 2019
"به خودم میگم که زمین خاموش شده هر چند هیچوقت روشن شدنش رو ندیدم"
از سایت نقد روز: (واقعا همچین نمایشنامه ایی نیاز به تحلیل و جزئیاتِ «بکت شناس» داره،من فقط بخشی از نقد رو میذارم)
شخصیت های نمایشنامه های بکت خواهان به دست آوردن آزادی کامل خود هستند، اما قدرت برآورده کردن این خواسته را ندارند؛ به شکلی فرضی آزادند، اما در واقع تابع تاریخ آسیب زای خود اند. اگرچه آنها شرایطی که در آن زیست می کنند را راضی کننده نمی بینند، اما چاره ی دیگری نیز ندارند.
برای بکت انسان به قید مشروط آزاد است. شخصیت های او همواره در مکانی نا معلوم در جست و جوی معنا در بی معنایی هستند، با گذشته ای که تنها قسمتی از آن را به یاد می آورند.
سبک: ابزورد/گروتسک (اثری آمیخته با طنز تلخ و ریشخند موقعیت متزلزل انسان مدرن).
تم: اسارت، بهره کشی و استثمار، پوچی، مرگ و انتهای بازی زندگی، تنهائی و عدم برقراری ارتباط با همنوع و یا حتا پیدا نکردن ابزار ارتباط، تکرار و روزمرگی..
نوع کشمکش: انسان بر ضد انسان/ انسان بر ضد جامعه (هام که نماد قشر بهره کش جامعه است و کلاو که نماد قشر برده ی جامعه اس
آخر بازی بکت،شبیه نمایشنامه در انتظار گودو بوده!
در انتظار نیستی و مرگ
از سایت نقد روز: (واقعا همچین نمایشنامه ایی نیاز به تحلیل و جزئیاتِ «بکت شناس» داره،من فقط بخشی از نقد رو میذارم)
شخصیت های نمایشنامه های بکت خواهان به دست آوردن آزادی کامل خود هستند، اما قدرت برآورده کردن این خواسته را ندارند؛ به شکلی فرضی آزادند، اما در واقع تابع تاریخ آسیب زای خود اند. اگرچه آنها شرایطی که در آن زیست می کنند را راضی کننده نمی بینند، اما چاره ی دیگری نیز ندارند.
برای بکت انسان به قید مشروط آزاد است. شخصیت های او همواره در مکانی نا معلوم در جست و جوی معنا در بی معنایی هستند، با گذشته ای که تنها قسمتی از آن را به یاد می آورند.
سبک: ابزورد/گروتسک (اثری آمیخته با طنز تلخ و ریشخند موقعیت متزلزل انسان مدرن).
تم: اسارت، بهره کشی و استثمار، پوچی، مرگ و انتهای بازی زندگی، تنهائی و عدم برقراری ارتباط با همنوع و یا حتا پیدا نکردن ابزار ارتباط، تکرار و روزمرگی..
نوع کشمکش: انسان بر ضد انسان/ انسان بر ضد جامعه (هام که نماد قشر بهره کش جامعه است و کلاو که نماد قشر برده ی جامعه اس
آخر بازی بکت،شبیه نمایشنامه در انتظار گودو بوده!
در انتظار نیستی و مرگ
October 12, 2020
While I enjoyed reading some of Beckett's other plays, this one didn't work so well for me because I have seen a pretty good production of it, thus without the visuals is just wasn't as good at conveying everything. It does contain all his trademarks though - sarcasm, absurdism, irony, gallows humour, but something like Waiting for Godot or Happy days I just found worked better. It didn't help either that my copy was of a very poor print, which put my tired eyes through the ringer. Beckett is arguably the master when it comes to the 'Theatre of the Absurd', but this one didn't leave its mark like some others. However it does reflect Beckett's previous marriage to some extent and demonstrates his great use of dark humour, that no doubt illustrates his genius mind when it comes writing plays of a certain type.
April 2, 2017
Lê-se em pouco mais de uma hora, mas fica colado à pele; um dia, uma semana, uma vida. Beckett não se esquece. Assim como não se esquece a inquietação que as suas peças provocam: a confusão de sentimentos, o vazio, a angústia…porque leva-nos ao limite, faz-nos rir e sabemos que não era para rir, era para chorar, caramba! Era para gritar!
Foi a peça mais sombria que li de Samuel Beckett, agora, é apanhar os cacos e tentar restaurar a ruína emocional.
Foi a peça mais sombria que li de Samuel Beckett, agora, é apanhar os cacos e tentar restaurar a ruína emocional.
August 11, 2019
Looks bad in print. Perhaps up on the stage it functions as it should, as bizarro entertainment. The stuff is emblematic, yet I cannot help but place him in the company of Lewis Carol in his overenthusiastic use of randomness, meaninglessness, senseless un-seriousness. Makes me think that the play is an experiment that's just altogether useless.
October 30, 2014
یه نمایش آخرالزمانی تاثیرگذار. یه ارباب و نوکر که آخرین بازماندههای نسل بشری هستن. دو نفری که روزهای آخرشون رو محکوم هستند به هم. دو نفری که با اینکه سالها پیش هم بودن توانایی برقراری کوچکترین ارتباط انسانی رو هم ندارند. آشنا نیست؟ یه جورهایی قصهی همین روزهای ماست
.
کلا نمایشنامهخون خوبی نیستم. چون تا میام توضیحات نمایشنامهنویس رو در مورد واکنش بازیگرا و طراحی صحنه بخونم رشتهی کلام دیالوگها از دستم میاد بیرون و هی باید برگردم و اونجا رو از اول بخونم، مخصوصا توی دیالوگای پینگپونگی. اما این روزا یه راه خوب پیدا کردم برای خوندن نمایشنامههای بزرگ. اکثر این نمایشها یه نسخهی سینمایی یا تئاتر تلویزیونی دارن که رو یوتوب هست. همین ساموئل بکت همهی کارهاش تحت عنوان پروژهی «بکت آن فیلم» بازی شده و اکثرشون رو میشه رو یوتوب پیدا کرد. آخر بازی رو با کمک این نسخه خوندم. گذاشتم همینجور پخش بشه و یه چشمم به مونیتور بود و یه چشمم به متن نمایشنامه. این روش جواب داد. لینک یوتوب این نمایش رو این پایین میذارم. پروفسور دامبلدور هری پاتر رو تو نقش هام از دست ندید
:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok7Vc...
.
کلا نمایشنامهخون خوبی نیستم. چون تا میام توضیحات نمایشنامهنویس رو در مورد واکنش بازیگرا و طراحی صحنه بخونم رشتهی کلام دیالوگها از دستم میاد بیرون و هی باید برگردم و اونجا رو از اول بخونم، مخصوصا توی دیالوگای پینگپونگی. اما این روزا یه راه خوب پیدا کردم برای خوندن نمایشنامههای بزرگ. اکثر این نمایشها یه نسخهی سینمایی یا تئاتر تلویزیونی دارن که رو یوتوب هست. همین ساموئل بکت همهی کارهاش تحت عنوان پروژهی «بکت آن فیلم» بازی شده و اکثرشون رو میشه رو یوتوب پیدا کرد. آخر بازی رو با کمک این نسخه خوندم. گذاشتم همینجور پخش بشه و یه چشمم به مونیتور بود و یه چشمم به متن نمایشنامه. این روش جواب داد. لینک یوتوب این نمایش رو این پایین میذارم. پروفسور دامبلدور هری پاتر رو تو نقش هام از دست ندید
:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok7Vc...
August 20, 2025
I read this Samuel Beckett play from the 50s with a vague sense of recollection. I recalled, however indistinctly, the bow-fronted glass tube of a TV set, its corners rounded, the black and white image more a grey wash of poor resolution, occasional crackles and interference playing across its surface. It was maybe a decade after the play's publication and a performance shown on my grandparents' TV, the tube housed in a beautiful faux-walnut plastic veneer cabinet. If one touched the glass, static would agreeably raise the fine down on my forearm.
On this set, my memory of ‘Endgame’ conjures no more than two elderly persons, each living in a dustbin. They’d pop up now and again (the lid balanced squarely on their crowns) and say some nonsense or another. I remember thinking of Bill & Ben (you may have to Google that) who lived and were made from flowerpots with Little Weed between them: It was my favorite children’s TV program, and its opening ditty went:
Bill & Ben, the Flowerpot Men
It's the sunshine that makes you wanna play
The happy sunshine, the happy sunshine, the happy sunshine, the happy sunshine
Or something like that.
I’m not sure why my grandparents allowed me to watch Beckett’s absurdist nihilistic play. The two in the dustbins were Negg and Nell, the legless parents of wheelchair bound and blind Hamm, who continually squabbles with his subservient and dominated servant Clov. It's far from the childlike innocence of Bill & Ben. A shadow of darkness and bleakness hangs over the play, the lines tinged with disgruntlement and disagreement, the stage littered with disease and death. Even as the play opens, there's an end, as Clov, referring to the catastrophe of the world outside two clerestory windows, carefully positions a stepladder to look out of them, and says, ‘Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished.’
I suspect that if one takes the play at face value, out of the corner of one’s eye, it could appear as an amusing slapstick with a dash of farce and preposterousness, much like a children’s TV program. But, overall, the message is one of entropy: dependency, old age, and the inevitability of death, set against a world that is close to its self-destruction. Beckett wrote this after the Second World War and under the threat of nuclear oblivion, so the determiners of the work are not sanguine or favorable.
Rónán McDonald says in the preface, ‘Even Kenneth Tynan, a prominent advocate for Godot, found its relentless bleakness, forced and unconvincing’, while many, ‘… apart from the perceptive Harold Hobson in The Sunday Times, were peevish about the seeming absence of hope’, yet, one might venture that the most distasteful themes handled surreally, with a sense of the absurd, can be received amenably. Beckett does this well, largely using stage direction, mime, and visuality. There are also touches of wryness and irony, and as in 'Waiting for Godot', a verbal jousting or repartee between the protagonists. For example, when Hamm says, ‘We're not beginning to...to...mean something?’ And Clov replies, ‘Mean something! You and I mean something!
In 'Waiting for Godot', the journey, not the ending, is important, which may hold a golden chalice or even the meaning of life. In 'Endgame', though the end comes (to Negg and Nell), it's only imminent for Hamm and Clov, who are held in a purgatory. Interesting that in both these Beckett plays, the two protagonists are caught in a vicious cycle of repartee and recriminations, waiting either for Godot or death.
McDonald says that Beckett was not a writer of philosophy, much less a philosophical writer. ‘Endgame’ is Beckett’s eschewing the philosophical supposition of synchronicity and asserting the right of absurdity and nihilism in life.
I believe that on stage, this would be not just a chilling display but a fascinating spectacle, which I would one day like to see.
On this set, my memory of ‘Endgame’ conjures no more than two elderly persons, each living in a dustbin. They’d pop up now and again (the lid balanced squarely on their crowns) and say some nonsense or another. I remember thinking of Bill & Ben (you may have to Google that) who lived and were made from flowerpots with Little Weed between them: It was my favorite children’s TV program, and its opening ditty went:
Bill & Ben, the Flowerpot Men
It's the sunshine that makes you wanna play
The happy sunshine, the happy sunshine, the happy sunshine, the happy sunshine
Or something like that.
I’m not sure why my grandparents allowed me to watch Beckett’s absurdist nihilistic play. The two in the dustbins were Negg and Nell, the legless parents of wheelchair bound and blind Hamm, who continually squabbles with his subservient and dominated servant Clov. It's far from the childlike innocence of Bill & Ben. A shadow of darkness and bleakness hangs over the play, the lines tinged with disgruntlement and disagreement, the stage littered with disease and death. Even as the play opens, there's an end, as Clov, referring to the catastrophe of the world outside two clerestory windows, carefully positions a stepladder to look out of them, and says, ‘Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished.’
I suspect that if one takes the play at face value, out of the corner of one’s eye, it could appear as an amusing slapstick with a dash of farce and preposterousness, much like a children’s TV program. But, overall, the message is one of entropy: dependency, old age, and the inevitability of death, set against a world that is close to its self-destruction. Beckett wrote this after the Second World War and under the threat of nuclear oblivion, so the determiners of the work are not sanguine or favorable.
Rónán McDonald says in the preface, ‘Even Kenneth Tynan, a prominent advocate for Godot, found its relentless bleakness, forced and unconvincing’, while many, ‘… apart from the perceptive Harold Hobson in The Sunday Times, were peevish about the seeming absence of hope’, yet, one might venture that the most distasteful themes handled surreally, with a sense of the absurd, can be received amenably. Beckett does this well, largely using stage direction, mime, and visuality. There are also touches of wryness and irony, and as in 'Waiting for Godot', a verbal jousting or repartee between the protagonists. For example, when Hamm says, ‘We're not beginning to...to...mean something?’ And Clov replies, ‘Mean something! You and I mean something!
In 'Waiting for Godot', the journey, not the ending, is important, which may hold a golden chalice or even the meaning of life. In 'Endgame', though the end comes (to Negg and Nell), it's only imminent for Hamm and Clov, who are held in a purgatory. Interesting that in both these Beckett plays, the two protagonists are caught in a vicious cycle of repartee and recriminations, waiting either for Godot or death.
McDonald says that Beckett was not a writer of philosophy, much less a philosophical writer. ‘Endgame’ is Beckett’s eschewing the philosophical supposition of synchronicity and asserting the right of absurdity and nihilism in life.
I believe that on stage, this would be not just a chilling display but a fascinating spectacle, which I would one day like to see.
April 20, 2012
I read this in English, for my British Lit class this semester. I thought I should actually start reading the assignments, and I read this after reading The Power and the Glory and Regeneration.
My professor said this piece would be slow moving, and he said something about it not really have a plot, but I could see one if I squinted. I actually really enjoyed this piece. And because I took notes on it for my class, I have a lot to say.
One of the biggest things, is obviously that it represents a chess game, even by the title. I'm not a chess player, nor do I know chess language, but my professor explained most of it (the title, how Clov moves around the step ladder at some points is like moving chess pieces, and how Nell & Nagg's faces are very white, while Clov's and Hamms' are very red), and I know that sometimes chess can be a little slow moving, like life seems to be for these characters (and like the play itself). It ties in nice with the chess theme.
There were a few parts that I found very humorous for no apparent reason. It's more ironic because these characters contemplate laughing a few times throughout the play, but never actually do. There are three things I found funny:
Hamm: Sit on him!
Clov: I can't sit.
Hamm: True. And I can't stand.
I found myself smirking to myself when I read that part. Perhaps because it's such an odd thing, but the oddity does fit with this play. Another somewhat humorous part was when Hamm said "lick your neighbor as yourself," and it's basically just a parody of the saying "love your neighbor." The other funny part was when Nagg was giving his speech to Hamm about his boyhood and he says, "...we let you cry. Then we moved you out of earshot, so that we might sleep in peace." That part is just...so odd. It's like, what parent does that? But it struck me as humorous nonetheless.
The plot I saw if I squinted was just them basically waiting around to die. My professor said the setting in this reminded him "of a nursing home where the patients are just waiting to die." And then he said that he can just picture Samuel Beckett standing behind him whispering, "so are we." Life is always dying, and most of us are just waiting for it. On the first page, Clov says something is "finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished." I feel like he's talking about his life. A few pages later, Hamm cries out that it must nearly finished too, and then asks Clov if "this thing" has gone on long enough - it really feels like they're waiting for death.
Another thing that was pointed out by my professor is the fact that Clov and Hamm discuss the fact that this is a play. On one page Clove asks what there is to keep him around, and Hamm replies with "the dialogue." On another page, Hamm says that there'll "be no more speech" and "it's time for his story" as if he had thumbed ahead in the script. On the last page of the play, when Hamm is talking, he pauses a lot and I got the feeling that he was almost reading from a script. Hamm always seems to be the one who brings up the script, and coincidentally the word "ham" means bad actor, according to my professor. So I found that interesting.
The whole thing represents the deterioration of humanity, I think. We have four characters in this piece -
1) Hamm, who can't stand up and who is blind.
2) Clov, who can't sit down and limps.
3) Nagg, who is going deaf
4) and Nell, who only has stumps for legs
That just further points out the theme of just waiting around to die. A quote that really stuck out to me was "the end is in the beginning and yet you go on." Overall, I found the concept/theme really interesting, and I'm glad I decided to read it.
My professor said this piece would be slow moving, and he said something about it not really have a plot, but I could see one if I squinted. I actually really enjoyed this piece. And because I took notes on it for my class, I have a lot to say.
One of the biggest things, is obviously that it represents a chess game, even by the title. I'm not a chess player, nor do I know chess language, but my professor explained most of it (the title, how Clov moves around the step ladder at some points is like moving chess pieces, and how Nell & Nagg's faces are very white, while Clov's and Hamms' are very red), and I know that sometimes chess can be a little slow moving, like life seems to be for these characters (and like the play itself). It ties in nice with the chess theme.
There were a few parts that I found very humorous for no apparent reason. It's more ironic because these characters contemplate laughing a few times throughout the play, but never actually do. There are three things I found funny:
Hamm: Sit on him!
Clov: I can't sit.
Hamm: True. And I can't stand.
I found myself smirking to myself when I read that part. Perhaps because it's such an odd thing, but the oddity does fit with this play. Another somewhat humorous part was when Hamm said "lick your neighbor as yourself," and it's basically just a parody of the saying "love your neighbor." The other funny part was when Nagg was giving his speech to Hamm about his boyhood and he says, "...we let you cry. Then we moved you out of earshot, so that we might sleep in peace." That part is just...so odd. It's like, what parent does that? But it struck me as humorous nonetheless.
The plot I saw if I squinted was just them basically waiting around to die. My professor said the setting in this reminded him "of a nursing home where the patients are just waiting to die." And then he said that he can just picture Samuel Beckett standing behind him whispering, "so are we." Life is always dying, and most of us are just waiting for it. On the first page, Clov says something is "finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished." I feel like he's talking about his life. A few pages later, Hamm cries out that it must nearly finished too, and then asks Clov if "this thing" has gone on long enough - it really feels like they're waiting for death.
Another thing that was pointed out by my professor is the fact that Clov and Hamm discuss the fact that this is a play. On one page Clove asks what there is to keep him around, and Hamm replies with "the dialogue." On another page, Hamm says that there'll "be no more speech" and "it's time for his story" as if he had thumbed ahead in the script. On the last page of the play, when Hamm is talking, he pauses a lot and I got the feeling that he was almost reading from a script. Hamm always seems to be the one who brings up the script, and coincidentally the word "ham" means bad actor, according to my professor. So I found that interesting.
The whole thing represents the deterioration of humanity, I think. We have four characters in this piece -
1) Hamm, who can't stand up and who is blind.
2) Clov, who can't sit down and limps.
3) Nagg, who is going deaf
4) and Nell, who only has stumps for legs
That just further points out the theme of just waiting around to die. A quote that really stuck out to me was "the end is in the beginning and yet you go on." Overall, I found the concept/theme really interesting, and I'm glad I decided to read it.
March 13, 2022
this felt like my internal monologue : totally absurd and painful.
November 12, 2022
As with all revisited Beckett, much funnier than remembered. And still otherwise peerlessly brilliant.
'Better than nothing! Is it possible?'
'Better than nothing! Is it possible?'
May 31, 2014
The title is taken from that stage in chess wherein there are only few pieces so you cannot mate your opponent. This is the second play written by Samuel Beckett that I've read. It still felt very much like Waiting for Godot (3 stars) with it absurdity, strangeness and at some point senselessness. I have been reading the works of Samuel Beckett so I am used to his style and because of it, I still liked this play of his.
Unlike Godot however, I had to read the existing reviews of my friends here on Goodreads because I wanted to get other people's interpretation of the play. There is one, and Beckett denied this, that says he thinks that the setting is post-nuclear war and I think I'd agree with this. Maybe Hamm cannot stand up because he and his legless parents Nell and Nagg are crippled because of radiation? But can't Clov stand? My romantic side at some point during my reading would like me to believe that this is about friendship like Vladimir and Estragon in Godot but here Hamm is consistently critical of Clov as if the later is the former's slave or inferior. However, they compliment each other because Hamm cannot stand and Clov cannot sit. I have not seen this play on stage so I cannot imagine but if I try to imagine about this, the post-nuclear war does enter my mind.
Fueling to this is the references that there is nothing outside the house and the legless parents are living in a dustbin.
I hope to see this play someday.
Unlike Godot however, I had to read the existing reviews of my friends here on Goodreads because I wanted to get other people's interpretation of the play. There is one, and Beckett denied this, that says he thinks that the setting is post-nuclear war and I think I'd agree with this. Maybe Hamm cannot stand up because he and his legless parents Nell and Nagg are crippled because of radiation? But can't Clov stand? My romantic side at some point during my reading would like me to believe that this is about friendship like Vladimir and Estragon in Godot but here Hamm is consistently critical of Clov as if the later is the former's slave or inferior. However, they compliment each other because Hamm cannot stand and Clov cannot sit. I have not seen this play on stage so I cannot imagine but if I try to imagine about this, the post-nuclear war does enter my mind.
Fueling to this is the references that there is nothing outside the house and the legless parents are living in a dustbin.
I hope to see this play someday.
December 26, 2016
You're on earth, there's no cure for that!
August 16, 2022
Feels good to be reading Beckett again. This one is definitely harder to get into than Waiting for Godot. Pro tip: When I became frustrated I turned to the movie adaption from 2000 with David Thewlis in the role of Clov. It's brilliant and conveys the bleakness as well as the humor of the piece perfectly!
Much of the play’s content consists of terse, back and forth dialogue between the characters reminiscent of bantering, along with trivial stage actions; the plot is held together by the development of a grotesque story-within-a-story the character Hamm is writing. The play’s title refers to chess and frames the characters as acting out a losing battle with each other or their fate.
Beckett said that in his choice of character's names, he had in mind the word "hammer" and the word "nail" in English, French and German respectively, "clou" and "nagel", which is why the play's characters are called Hamm, Clove, Nagg and Nell.
Clov enters a dreary, dim and nondescript room, draws the curtains from the windows and prepares his master Hamm for his day. He says “It’s nearly finished,” though it is not clear what he is referring to. He awakes Hamm by pulling a bloodstained rag off from his head. They banter briefly, and Hamm says “It’s time it ended.”
Eventually, Hamm’s parents, Nell and Nagg, appear from two trash cans at the back of the stage. Hamm is as equally threatening, condescending and acrimonious with his parents as with his servant, though they still share a degree of mutual humor. Hamm tells his father he is writing a story, and recites it partially to him, a fragment which treats on a derelict man who comes crawling on his belly to the narrator, who is putting up Christmas decorations, begging him for food for his starving boy sheltering in the wilderness.
Clov, his servant, returns, and they continue to banter in a way that is both quick-witted and comical yet with dark, overt existential undertones. Clov often threatens to leave Hamm, but it is made clear that he has nowhere to go as the world outside seems to be destroyed. Much of the stage action is intentionally banal and monotonous, including sequences where Clov moves Hamm’s chair in various directions so that he feels to be in the right position, as well as moving him nearer to the window.
// Random things the attached biography in my edition of this book made me realise: Beckett was stabbed by a street pimp in Montparnasse and he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Who can say that for themselves? Queen shit.
HAMM: Have you not had enough?Endgame is an absurdist, tragicomic one-act play about a blind, paralyzed, domineering elderly man, his geriatric parents and his doddering, dithering, harried, servile companion in an abandoned shack in a post-apocalyptic wasteland who mention their awaiting some unspecified “end” which seems to be the end of their relationship, death, and the end of the actual play itself.
CLOV: Yes. [Pause.] Of what?
HAMM: Of this ... this ... thing.
CLOV: I always had.
Much of the play’s content consists of terse, back and forth dialogue between the characters reminiscent of bantering, along with trivial stage actions; the plot is held together by the development of a grotesque story-within-a-story the character Hamm is writing. The play’s title refers to chess and frames the characters as acting out a losing battle with each other or their fate.
CLOV: I say to myself that the earth is extinguished, though I never saw it lit.Endgame was originally written in French (entitled Fin de partie) and was translated into English by Beckett himself. Written before but premiered after Waiting for Godot, it is arguably among Beckett's best works. Samuel Beckett considered it his masterpiece as the most aesthetically perfect, compact representation of his artistic views on human existence, and refers to it when speaking autobiographically through Krapp in Krapp's Last Tape when he mentions he had “already written the masterpiece”.
Beckett said that in his choice of character's names, he had in mind the word "hammer" and the word "nail" in English, French and German respectively, "clou" and "nagel", which is why the play's characters are called Hamm, Clove, Nagg and Nell.
Clov enters a dreary, dim and nondescript room, draws the curtains from the windows and prepares his master Hamm for his day. He says “It’s nearly finished,” though it is not clear what he is referring to. He awakes Hamm by pulling a bloodstained rag off from his head. They banter briefly, and Hamm says “It’s time it ended.”
Eventually, Hamm’s parents, Nell and Nagg, appear from two trash cans at the back of the stage. Hamm is as equally threatening, condescending and acrimonious with his parents as with his servant, though they still share a degree of mutual humor. Hamm tells his father he is writing a story, and recites it partially to him, a fragment which treats on a derelict man who comes crawling on his belly to the narrator, who is putting up Christmas decorations, begging him for food for his starving boy sheltering in the wilderness.
Clov, his servant, returns, and they continue to banter in a way that is both quick-witted and comical yet with dark, overt existential undertones. Clov often threatens to leave Hamm, but it is made clear that he has nowhere to go as the world outside seems to be destroyed. Much of the stage action is intentionally banal and monotonous, including sequences where Clov moves Hamm’s chair in various directions so that he feels to be in the right position, as well as moving him nearer to the window.
HAMM: You weep, and weep, for nothing, so as not to laugh, and little by litte ... you begin to grieve.By the end of the play, Clov finally seems intent on pursuing his commitment of leaving his cruel master Hamm. Clov tells him there is no more of the painkiller left which Hamm has been insisting on getting his dose of throughout the play. Hamm finishes his dark, chilling story by having the narrator berate the collapsed man for the futility of trying to feed his son for a few more days when evidently their luck has run out. Hamm believes Clov has left, being blind, but Clov stands in the room silently with his coat on, going nowhere. Hamm discards some of his belongings, and says that, though he has made his exit, the bloodstained rag “will remain”.
HAMM: Nature has forgotten us.Endgame is an expression of existential angst and despair and depicts Beckett’s philosophical worldview, namely the extreme futility of human life and the inescapable dissatisfaction and decay intrinsic to it. It is also a quintessential work of what Beckett called “tragicomedy”, or the idea that, as Nell herself in the play puts it, “Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.” Another way to think about this is that things which are absurd can be encountered both as funny in some contexts and horrifyingly incomprehensible in others. To Beckett – due to his existential worldview – life itself is absurd, and this incurs reactions of both black mirth and profound despair.
CLOV: There's no more nature.
HAMM: No more nature! You exaggerate.
CLOV: In the vicinity.
HAMM: But we breathe, we change! We lose our hair, our teeth! Our bloom! Our ideals!
CLOV: Then she hasn't forgotten us.
HAMM: We're not beginning to... to... mean something?As Adorno famously put it: "To understand Endgame can only mean understanding why it cannot be understood." Rather than simply asserting an absence of meaning, the play strives to demonstrate this absence. It also embodies the human condition. Beckett knew how to capture what it meant to be human, he captured the tragicomedy that is all our lives. And for that, we remember him.
CLOV: Mean something! You and I, mean something! [Brief laugh.] Ah that's a good one!
// Random things the attached biography in my edition of this book made me realise: Beckett was stabbed by a street pimp in Montparnasse and he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Who can say that for themselves? Queen shit.
November 21, 2018
لا شيء يشبه عالم بيكيت، عالم قلق، مضجر، عالم يتكرر، يتناسخ بلا توقف، ميت، عالم قديم كالأزل، يتوكأ على عنصر اللاجدوى، العبث النهائي، التكرار البشع ، مشاهد ميتة تسبح في أرض المسرح، (هام) (كلوف) الهائمين ، وشخصيات أخرى أدركت أنها ميتة بالفعل ، لا تنتظر شيئاً، تسخر، تعبت منذ القدم من هذا العبث الذي يجري بلا نهاية ، (ناج) (نيل) ، كانا بلا أمل، يأس مستمر يبعث على الضحك والسخرية، في عالم ميت اليأس هو طريق النجاة الوحيدة والمتوفرة أيضاً، (هام) ينتظر، مثل جودو، ينتظر في صراع متواصل مع النفس، الزمن، الموت، الإنتظار، القلق، المعاناة اللانهائية مع العمى، كابوس يتكرر كل يوم في زمن لا ينتهي ، (كلوف) يريد أن يرحل، لا مكان خارج الغرفة المضجرة، كآبة تحصد كل ما يحصل، (كلوف) يريد الهروب إلى اللامكان، (هام) توقف عن الأمل، يروي حكاية قديمة ليسد بها جوع الأمل المتحضر، المنتاثر في فضاء العدم، يقضي الوقت وهو في إنتظار الخلاص، هذا الوحش الذي يتفرس الجميع ، الموت والقدر يحركان كل شيء في الغرفة المنهكة، الزمن الصفر ، التكرار، لا زمن ولا مكان محدد، عالم ذو أبعاد ضيقة، بيكيت يتسلى في تعذيب ضحاياه على المسرح، يسلخ منهم الأمل، وحتى اليأس أيضاً..
مسرحية مجنونة تبعث على السأم والهذيان، عبقري بيكيت في تحريك شخصياته، في الحوارات ، وفي زرع عالم كهذا يختلط فيه الزمن باللاشيء ، الأمل باليأس، الكابوس بالحقيقة، غريب هو ومتطرف بيكيت، وغير قابل للفهم كذلك ..
مسرحية مجنونة تبعث على السأم والهذيان، عبقري بيكيت في تحريك شخصياته، في الحوارات ، وفي زرع عالم كهذا يختلط فيه الزمن باللاشيء ، الأمل باليأس، الكابوس بالحقيقة، غريب هو ومتطرف بيكيت، وغير قابل للفهم كذلك ..
December 10, 2024
Not only one of Beckett’s but all of theatre’s highest points. Theatre of Absurdity rendered, like so much cooking fat (?)(hey, I don’t fucking know; I’ve not eaten meat since 1991), down to its essentialist core. Hamm and Clov, hammer and nail, have never failed to delight and repulse me; handy trick for two ciphers of we humans en masse.
There aren’t words to ever express my soul’s (for absence of better word) love and adoration for Sam. He and Pynchon will always be my north and south poles, the axes that have kept me revolving, however flailing, for 47 turns around the sun. The older I get, the more I’m drawn to Sam’s arctic windlands
There aren’t words to ever express my soul’s (for absence of better word) love and adoration for Sam. He and Pynchon will always be my north and south poles, the axes that have kept me revolving, however flailing, for 47 turns around the sun. The older I get, the more I’m drawn to Sam’s arctic windlands
April 14, 2015
An absurd masterpiece
13 April 2014
One of the interesting things that I find about Beckett's plays is that he resists the temptation to offer any interpretation to what is going on within the play, or what the play is about. In fact he seems to do completely the opposite in actually denying certain interpretations (while not offering any reason as to what it is about). For instance, when asked if Godot is supposed to be God, his response is no, and asking whether Endgame is set in a post-apocalyptic world, once again his answer is no. However, the title of the play 'Endgame' suggests that this is a play about endings, but not any old endings, but rather an ending in which the protagonist does not want to accept has arrived.
The term Endgame applies to a part of a game of chess coming, surprisingly, at the end. It is suggested by some that at this part of the game the winner has already been defined, however the loser still struggles against all odds in a vain attempt at victory. In a way it plays well into this classic example of the theatre of the absurd with the idea of continuing one's existence, and fighting, despite the fact that one has lost and that there is no way out of that existence.
The main character within the endgame in the play is Hamm, a blind man who cannot stand and is entirely dependant upon his servant Clov (who cannot sit). While most of Hamm's interactions are with his servant Clov, there is an occasional interaction with Nagg and Nell, Hamm's parents, who are confined to a couple of barrels (and it is suggested sometime during the play Nell dies). In a way Hamm seems to vainly clasp on to an idea of hope despite the fact that, for him, the end has arrived; while Clov, the one who actually holds all of the power, is torn between leaving and staying – he desires to leave because Hamm is a demanding and cruel master, but he desires to stay because of his obligation to Hamm.
I feel that the question of whether the world is post-apocalyptic is a moot point because that, I believe, is beyond the scope of the play. However, there is the suggestion that there is nothing left – everything has gone, which brings us back to the question of whether the world is post-apocalyptic. This, in a way, plays into the theme of the title in that for those living in a post-apocalyptic world the end has arrived, however they are not quite there yet and are fighting a vain battle to not just survive, but to win. In another sense, it is a situation that we have brought ourselves into, and in a way we are blind to the fact that we are in that position.
Then there is the motif of blindness, which is something that Sparknotes doesn't seem to touch upon (this is actually a pretty decent website to consider the ideas that come out of various pieces of famous literature). In a way, just as the players in the Endgame may be blind to their predicament, Hamm is himself blind to his own predicament. He is the king of the piece but he is completely reliant upon Clov, who is the queen. Without Clov Hamm is defenceless. However he refuses to realise this and continues to push Clov around. However Clov is also in the same predicament in that there is nothing outside of the four walls of the room (just as there is nothing beyond the chessboard) and as such, while Clov may leave, there is nothing for Clov outside of the place. Thus for Clov to have any meaning, Clov must be here because, well, Clov is Hamm's servant, and that is the definition that he is given himself – without that definition Clov is effectively nothing.
I recently saw a permformance of this play, and have written up some further (and similar) thoughts on my blog.
13 April 2014
One of the interesting things that I find about Beckett's plays is that he resists the temptation to offer any interpretation to what is going on within the play, or what the play is about. In fact he seems to do completely the opposite in actually denying certain interpretations (while not offering any reason as to what it is about). For instance, when asked if Godot is supposed to be God, his response is no, and asking whether Endgame is set in a post-apocalyptic world, once again his answer is no. However, the title of the play 'Endgame' suggests that this is a play about endings, but not any old endings, but rather an ending in which the protagonist does not want to accept has arrived.
The term Endgame applies to a part of a game of chess coming, surprisingly, at the end. It is suggested by some that at this part of the game the winner has already been defined, however the loser still struggles against all odds in a vain attempt at victory. In a way it plays well into this classic example of the theatre of the absurd with the idea of continuing one's existence, and fighting, despite the fact that one has lost and that there is no way out of that existence.
The main character within the endgame in the play is Hamm, a blind man who cannot stand and is entirely dependant upon his servant Clov (who cannot sit). While most of Hamm's interactions are with his servant Clov, there is an occasional interaction with Nagg and Nell, Hamm's parents, who are confined to a couple of barrels (and it is suggested sometime during the play Nell dies). In a way Hamm seems to vainly clasp on to an idea of hope despite the fact that, for him, the end has arrived; while Clov, the one who actually holds all of the power, is torn between leaving and staying – he desires to leave because Hamm is a demanding and cruel master, but he desires to stay because of his obligation to Hamm.
I feel that the question of whether the world is post-apocalyptic is a moot point because that, I believe, is beyond the scope of the play. However, there is the suggestion that there is nothing left – everything has gone, which brings us back to the question of whether the world is post-apocalyptic. This, in a way, plays into the theme of the title in that for those living in a post-apocalyptic world the end has arrived, however they are not quite there yet and are fighting a vain battle to not just survive, but to win. In another sense, it is a situation that we have brought ourselves into, and in a way we are blind to the fact that we are in that position.
Then there is the motif of blindness, which is something that Sparknotes doesn't seem to touch upon (this is actually a pretty decent website to consider the ideas that come out of various pieces of famous literature). In a way, just as the players in the Endgame may be blind to their predicament, Hamm is himself blind to his own predicament. He is the king of the piece but he is completely reliant upon Clov, who is the queen. Without Clov Hamm is defenceless. However he refuses to realise this and continues to push Clov around. However Clov is also in the same predicament in that there is nothing outside of the four walls of the room (just as there is nothing beyond the chessboard) and as such, while Clov may leave, there is nothing for Clov outside of the place. Thus for Clov to have any meaning, Clov must be here because, well, Clov is Hamm's servant, and that is the definition that he is given himself – without that definition Clov is effectively nothing.
I recently saw a permformance of this play, and have written up some further (and similar) thoughts on my blog.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,495 reviews