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Embers
Embers is a radio play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in English in 1957. First broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 24 June 1959, the play won the RAI prize at the Prix Italia awards later that year.
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About the author
Samuel Beckett
916 books6,558 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.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
October 28, 2022
«آتش خاموش ، سرمای سخت ، دنیای سفید ، مصیبت بزرگ ، صدایی نیست...»
- نمایشنامه « خُلواره ها» نوشته ساموئل بکت ، ترجمه دریابندری .
- نمایشنامه « خُلواره ها» نوشته ساموئل بکت ، ترجمه دریابندری .
January 14, 2018
'Embers' is undoubtedly one of the most difficult plays I have ever read.
Spoiler alert!
Embers is largely a monologue that emphasizes the absurdity of man-in-the-world.
the very names of Beckett's characters - Bolt.On and Hollow.Way, suggest the bleak atmosphere of Embers. As in Endgame, Beckett depicts a dying world, reduced to embers; only his own babbling stands between Henry and the omnivorous sea.
At the end of the play, after calling vainly on "Ada! Father! Christ!" Henry moves to the edge of the sea, and the drama ends as it began- in the seemingly disconnected monologue. but there are subtle suggestions of Christ's crucifixion: Christ died at nine on Good Friday, and Henry has noted that a plumber will come at nine on Friday. instead of the resurrection, however, Saturday and Sunday will bring nothing at all. Henry's father [maybe God here!] and Henry's Christ both forsake him, and his life is thus a crucifixion without hope or relief. with his last words, Henry fights on against the sound of the sea: "not a sound." Sea has always symbolized an ominous mystery for man.
Samuel Beckett is, undoubtly, one of the most prominent playwrights of the twentieth century. He is most remembered for his use of language and his diverse techniques and themes. All of Beckett's characters suffer from the lack of communication with other human fellows. They are located in an utter state of hopelessness and despair. As a result, they suffer loneliness and loss. This state of loss is reflected in their inability to use language properly.
Beckett's experiment with loss and the meaningless of being is best reflected in his radio plays. Since the listener's only tie with the character is through sound effect, so the listener is forced to inter the character's mind and perception of the objects around him.
Thus, the present study is an exploration into the mind of the main character in Beckett's play, Embers, which takes the listeners and readers in a journey to collective unconscious of Henry, revealing its present state as determined by his conflicting past memories, where each memory tries to preside over the other, and each one forces the character to thrust backward and forward in time. -834-
In the mid fifties and the early sixties of the twentieth century, a number of experimental playwrights sought to write plays for the radio, as a medium through which they could be free of visual commitments. One of those playwrights is Samuel Beckett. Beckett, in his radio plays, was looking for a new form through which he could express his view of life. Life for him consisted of endless amount of absurd elements and facts. He perceived the modern man as an absurd creature who is unable to take his role in the universe. Most important of all is his perception of language as a medium for communication. Language in Beckett’s plays transforms its role as a means of communication to a rather fragmented and confusing medium that expresses nothing but nonsense. Through the radio, Beckett was at ease to represent characters as embodiments of certain images and themes, and he used voices as reflections of void and loss.
Beckett’s radio play Embers (1959) is commonly regarded as one of his most complex plays. Hugh Kenner describes it as “Beckett’s most difficult work.”(1) Surprisingly enough, the play is neglected by critics because they could not locate the core of it; that is to say, its dramatic genius. Embers displays typical Beckettian themes as the absurdity of being and the void of living, nonetheless, it navigates into the delirious mind of the main character, Henry, to reflect the degree of despair that a human brain can reach.
Beckett decides to make Embers a radio play for specifically one reason: to establish a deep connection between the listener and the main character. Since the play is heard not seen, one will be obliged to concentrate on Henry’s voice rather than physical objects. Hence, the listener is allowed an entrance into Henry’s mind and memories. Marjorie Perloff describes the play as a " one man's world. The interplay between Henry and other characters takes place in Henry's mind."(2)
Consequently, the structure of the play is designed in such a way to define the diversity of Henry’s voice, which controls the whole play. The structure’s outline is made of a -835-
it's a long monologue that is interrupted by several imaginary dialogues that function as flashbacks. Those dialogues occur in the middle of the monologue to serve as a peak to the central action.(3) Henry's speech shifts in time, the past and present intermingle till all emerge as one.
The opening monologue shows Henry’s fixation with both the sound of the sea since Henry sits on the shore during the whole play, and the voice of his dead father. In the later monologue, Henry is narrating the story of a man named Bolton and his doctor, Holloway. Throughout these monologues, Henry carries out fanciful dialogues with his deceased wife, Ada.
In his first sentences, Henry repetitively confirms that the sound he hears is of the sea: “ That sound you hear is the sea. (Pause. Louder) I say that sound you hear is the sea, we are sitting on the strand.”(4) Henry, apparently, suffers from the immense loneliness that drives him to the edge of madness. Thus, he often tries to link himself with the physical world by describing the elements of nature around him: “ Listen to the light now, you always loved the light, not long past noon and all the shore in the shadow and the sea out as far as the island.” (Ibid.) Significantly, it is the sense of hearing that is emphasized throughout the play, so as to assure the fact that all the events take place inside Henry’s head and thought. This fact is intensified by the image of the bare strand that Henry is sitting on. Henry's thoughts, like the naked strand, are void of anything but the memories of his loved ones. No matter how seriously he clings to reality, he keeps on sliding back into his dazed vision of his former life. Henceforth, one can suggest that the stage of the play is the mind of the character, and the more we proceed the more we probe deep into his memories and his collective unconscious.
Henry's real dilemma springs from the episode concerning his father’s drowning. Henry, reluctantly, accepts this theory, he rather thinks that it is just a lie: “We never found your body, you know, … they said there is nothing to prove you hadn’t run away from us all and alive and well under a -836-
false name…” (p. 683) His agony over his father’s loss is shown through his imitation of the father’s voice: (Pause. Imitating father’s voice) “ Are you coming for a dip?” “No.” “ Come on, come on.” “No” (p. 684) It is worth noticing that the only voice Henry imitates is his father’s, while other voices are echoes of his memory. This act demonstrates Henry’s unrealized wish to be a replica of the father and to follow his suicidal steps. In fact, Henry's actual problem is that he is unable to follow his father. His father " whose posture on a rock above the sea provides the death motif. And the son who cannot respond properly to the loved father's request to 'be a brave boy', and to 'jump', is forever a 'washout'."(5)
The whole plot of the-father-son crisis is reflected in a story Henry heard once about a man called Bolton. Bolton is an aged man that suffers from unbearable pain, thus he calls for his doctor Holloway. Bolton implores Holloway to end his pain, he asks for a peaceful ending from the intolerable life. This story symbolizes Henry’s wish to find a remedy for his miserable situation, this might be the reason for his sitting on the same strand where his father was supposedly drowned. It seems that the sea becomes the only means of contact for Henry since he lacks any social ones. Therefore, delving into the sea for Henry is to have a link with a real entity other than the phantoms of his mind. As for Beckett, the sea takes more than a physical dimension. It, in a way, becomes: “a setting which constantly reminds us of the unchanging succession of moments in the external universe, and in part, because this monotony is given an audible dimension,”)6) as Stefan Grant states. One can also sense the affinity between the sea and Henry’s disturbed mind. As the sea is raged with its ebb and flow, so is Henry’s mind, which is disturbed by the haunting past that determines his life. Furthermore, one critic refers to the sea as the mother's womb that tries to engulf Henry's existence(7). Here, we are drawn back to one of Beckett's favourite themes which is man's desire to go back to his infantile state of being -837-
Curiously, Henry’s fanciful recollection of his wife, Ada, and his daughter, Addie, is the one thing that offers an escape from his loneliness and grotesque isolation. It is through the voice of his beloved wife that Henry tries to surmount the horrid and tempting sound of the sea:
Henry: Are you going to sit down beside me?
Ada: Yes. (No sound as she sits) Like that? (pause) Or do you prefer like that? (pause) You don’t care. (pause) Chilly enough I imagine, I hope you put on your jaegers. (pause) Did you put on your jaegers, Henry?............
Henry: You wish me to laugh?
Ada: You laughed so charmingly once, I think that’s what first attracted me to you.
( Pause. He tries to laugh, fails)
(Pp.685-86)
Ada’s voice creates a barricade between Henry and the sea. Through engaging himself with phantoms from his past, Henry becomes once more the normal lover and father. Yet, sadly enough, the moment Ada’s voice vanishes she ceases to exist. So the listener realizes that Ada is just another desperate creation of Henry’s feeble mind.
The episode involving Henry’s daughter, Addie, is less joyful. Henry remembers the day Addie was having a piano lesson, in which she is not doing really well:
Music master: (Italian accent) Santa Cecilia! (Pause)
Addie: Will I play my piece now, please?
Music master: (Violently) Fa!
Addie: (Tearfully) What?
Music master: (Violently) Eff! Eff!
Addie: (Tearfully) Where?
Music master: (Violently) Qua! ( He thumps note) Fa!
(687)
The question that one may ask at this point is: why does Henry choose this specific episode to recall from his -838-
memories of his daughter? The answer may come quite naturally: as Addie lacks the creative touch in playing the notes, so is Henry who totally lacks any creativity to colour his life. Instead, he sinks into his hallucinations and fancies. Consequently, Addie can be seen as a duplication of Henry, both experience the same disappointment and confusion. Paul Lawley, thus, remarks:
The Addie ‘hallucinations’ are images created by Henry of his own situation. like Addie he cannot ‘eff the ineffable’ (a favourite Beckett joke here ‘amplified to paroxysm’); he can only recruit memories or scenes which are available to him and press them into service by modifying and shaping them into images of the self in creation.(8)
Besides, Henry is still in dire need of having others around him, that is why he needs to fill the beach of people of his own creation. Thus, occurs the scene of Addie and the music master whose noisy notes breaks the monotony of the sea sound.
Ada feels furious at Henry’s reaction to Addie’s failing attempts with her music lessons, so she leaves the strand. Being lonely once more, Henry turns back to his unfinished story of Bolton: “I never finished it, I never finished any of them, I never finished anything, everything always went on forever.” Holloway is about to give Bolton an injection that would ease his pain, yet, surprisingly; Bolton hesitates for a moment:" If you want a shot say so and let me get to hell out of here. (pause) we've had this before, Bolton, don't ask me to go through it again" (691).
Bolton's hesitation connotes Henry's own confusion about putting an end to his life. One critic calls the Bolton scene as "a paradigm of human suffering. "(9) Holloway is compared to Christ, who hoped to end mankind's suffering. In the light of this interpretation, Henry's painful hallucinations can be seen as pleas to find out an escape from the hell he lives in. Moreover, his inability to put an end to the Bolton- Holloway episode indicates the faltering aptitude of his mind. He halts at the climax of the story and turns away again to the meaningless utterances he used to repeat: " Words (pause) Saturday… nothing. Sunday… Sunday… nothing all day. (pause) All day all night nothing. (pause) Not a sound. (sea) " (692). -839-
It seems that Henry is losing his power of imagination.This fact draws our attention to the play's symbolic title. Since the fire is a classical symbol of artistic creativity, hence the embers here stands for the waning creativity of Henry's mind. The creativity crisis pushes Henry to be one with Bolton. The emergence between him and the fictional character prevents him from finishing his story because he does not know how to put an end to his misery. We realize that from the beginning Bolton was just a surrogate for the tortured Henry.
The reasons behind Henry's descending into a world of confusion are many. It may be his loss of the wife and daughter. It may be the loss of his father and the fear of following the father's suicidal steps. Above all, it may be the loss of his mind's creativity which drives him mad. Consequently, one may ask an essential question: which of the previous factors has Beckett meant to be the motive behind Henry's hallucination?
Obviously, Beckett wanted to construct a character that is full of contradictions. Henry, the loving husband and father, is at the same time a cruel son who refuses to forgive his father's act of departure. On the other hand, Henry is a skilful narrator, nevertheless, he is quite unable to put a decisive end to his story. That is what is meant by "embers", the weakening inspiration of one's mind when one faces so many blows and disappointments in his life. As if Henry's mind has built a sheltering cocoon around his memories. This what Henry was doing during the entire play, locking his mind inside the one place he feels safe at, the strand. It is where his father supposedly committed suicide and, ironically; he and his wife made love for the first time. It is the sound of the sea, which seems to suck his identity, that prevails. This is symbolically indicated by the fact that the last thing we hear in the play is the sound of the sea.
The listener is left with the dim vision of Henry looking at the bottomless sea, reaching nowhere but sinking into desolation. The only reality is that: for Henry, tomorrow will be the same as today. Tomorrow he will converse again with Ada and Addie who can be merely acoustic reflections for dad or daddy. As Perloff asserts " The silence of the sea below the surface, cannot comfort Henry who knows that sea is a grave – his father's.")10) -840-
It can be said that Embers is a drama of consciousness. The whole play focuses on Henry's recollections and construction of what was once his world. Henry's swinging from the memory of his father to his wife and daughter, then back to the father visualizes an obsessed mind that is locked within a specific chain of thoughts. As for his unfinished story, it is a mere reflection of Henry's inability to move on with his life.
Looking deeply into Embers will reveal that the play does not actually develop a well- constructed story, it rather dramatizes the protagonist's failing attempts to incarnate the shadows of his mind. His failure to do that leads him to weave a story that echoes his own confusion.
Beckett, once more, skillfully represents a character that is imprisoned within the limits and hopelessness of living. Henry can stand for the modern man who is unable to find a meaning or explanation of what goes around him. He may stand for the artist who loses his creative touch and who cannot finish a masterpiece. Nonetheless, he stands for all humanity that needs redemption and salvation, but instead, it keeps spinning into an empty circle.
Spoiler alert!
Embers is largely a monologue that emphasizes the absurdity of man-in-the-world.
the very names of Beckett's characters - Bolt.On and Hollow.Way, suggest the bleak atmosphere of Embers. As in Endgame, Beckett depicts a dying world, reduced to embers; only his own babbling stands between Henry and the omnivorous sea.
At the end of the play, after calling vainly on "Ada! Father! Christ!" Henry moves to the edge of the sea, and the drama ends as it began- in the seemingly disconnected monologue. but there are subtle suggestions of Christ's crucifixion: Christ died at nine on Good Friday, and Henry has noted that a plumber will come at nine on Friday. instead of the resurrection, however, Saturday and Sunday will bring nothing at all. Henry's father [maybe God here!] and Henry's Christ both forsake him, and his life is thus a crucifixion without hope or relief. with his last words, Henry fights on against the sound of the sea: "not a sound." Sea has always symbolized an ominous mystery for man.
Samuel Beckett is, undoubtly, one of the most prominent playwrights of the twentieth century. He is most remembered for his use of language and his diverse techniques and themes. All of Beckett's characters suffer from the lack of communication with other human fellows. They are located in an utter state of hopelessness and despair. As a result, they suffer loneliness and loss. This state of loss is reflected in their inability to use language properly.
Beckett's experiment with loss and the meaningless of being is best reflected in his radio plays. Since the listener's only tie with the character is through sound effect, so the listener is forced to inter the character's mind and perception of the objects around him.
Thus, the present study is an exploration into the mind of the main character in Beckett's play, Embers, which takes the listeners and readers in a journey to collective unconscious of Henry, revealing its present state as determined by his conflicting past memories, where each memory tries to preside over the other, and each one forces the character to thrust backward and forward in time. -834-
In the mid fifties and the early sixties of the twentieth century, a number of experimental playwrights sought to write plays for the radio, as a medium through which they could be free of visual commitments. One of those playwrights is Samuel Beckett. Beckett, in his radio plays, was looking for a new form through which he could express his view of life. Life for him consisted of endless amount of absurd elements and facts. He perceived the modern man as an absurd creature who is unable to take his role in the universe. Most important of all is his perception of language as a medium for communication. Language in Beckett’s plays transforms its role as a means of communication to a rather fragmented and confusing medium that expresses nothing but nonsense. Through the radio, Beckett was at ease to represent characters as embodiments of certain images and themes, and he used voices as reflections of void and loss.
Beckett’s radio play Embers (1959) is commonly regarded as one of his most complex plays. Hugh Kenner describes it as “Beckett’s most difficult work.”(1) Surprisingly enough, the play is neglected by critics because they could not locate the core of it; that is to say, its dramatic genius. Embers displays typical Beckettian themes as the absurdity of being and the void of living, nonetheless, it navigates into the delirious mind of the main character, Henry, to reflect the degree of despair that a human brain can reach.
Beckett decides to make Embers a radio play for specifically one reason: to establish a deep connection between the listener and the main character. Since the play is heard not seen, one will be obliged to concentrate on Henry’s voice rather than physical objects. Hence, the listener is allowed an entrance into Henry’s mind and memories. Marjorie Perloff describes the play as a " one man's world. The interplay between Henry and other characters takes place in Henry's mind."(2)
Consequently, the structure of the play is designed in such a way to define the diversity of Henry’s voice, which controls the whole play. The structure’s outline is made of a -835-
it's a long monologue that is interrupted by several imaginary dialogues that function as flashbacks. Those dialogues occur in the middle of the monologue to serve as a peak to the central action.(3) Henry's speech shifts in time, the past and present intermingle till all emerge as one.
The opening monologue shows Henry’s fixation with both the sound of the sea since Henry sits on the shore during the whole play, and the voice of his dead father. In the later monologue, Henry is narrating the story of a man named Bolton and his doctor, Holloway. Throughout these monologues, Henry carries out fanciful dialogues with his deceased wife, Ada.
In his first sentences, Henry repetitively confirms that the sound he hears is of the sea: “ That sound you hear is the sea. (Pause. Louder) I say that sound you hear is the sea, we are sitting on the strand.”(4) Henry, apparently, suffers from the immense loneliness that drives him to the edge of madness. Thus, he often tries to link himself with the physical world by describing the elements of nature around him: “ Listen to the light now, you always loved the light, not long past noon and all the shore in the shadow and the sea out as far as the island.” (Ibid.) Significantly, it is the sense of hearing that is emphasized throughout the play, so as to assure the fact that all the events take place inside Henry’s head and thought. This fact is intensified by the image of the bare strand that Henry is sitting on. Henry's thoughts, like the naked strand, are void of anything but the memories of his loved ones. No matter how seriously he clings to reality, he keeps on sliding back into his dazed vision of his former life. Henceforth, one can suggest that the stage of the play is the mind of the character, and the more we proceed the more we probe deep into his memories and his collective unconscious.
Henry's real dilemma springs from the episode concerning his father’s drowning. Henry, reluctantly, accepts this theory, he rather thinks that it is just a lie: “We never found your body, you know, … they said there is nothing to prove you hadn’t run away from us all and alive and well under a -836-
false name…” (p. 683) His agony over his father’s loss is shown through his imitation of the father’s voice: (Pause. Imitating father’s voice) “ Are you coming for a dip?” “No.” “ Come on, come on.” “No” (p. 684) It is worth noticing that the only voice Henry imitates is his father’s, while other voices are echoes of his memory. This act demonstrates Henry’s unrealized wish to be a replica of the father and to follow his suicidal steps. In fact, Henry's actual problem is that he is unable to follow his father. His father " whose posture on a rock above the sea provides the death motif. And the son who cannot respond properly to the loved father's request to 'be a brave boy', and to 'jump', is forever a 'washout'."(5)
The whole plot of the-father-son crisis is reflected in a story Henry heard once about a man called Bolton. Bolton is an aged man that suffers from unbearable pain, thus he calls for his doctor Holloway. Bolton implores Holloway to end his pain, he asks for a peaceful ending from the intolerable life. This story symbolizes Henry’s wish to find a remedy for his miserable situation, this might be the reason for his sitting on the same strand where his father was supposedly drowned. It seems that the sea becomes the only means of contact for Henry since he lacks any social ones. Therefore, delving into the sea for Henry is to have a link with a real entity other than the phantoms of his mind. As for Beckett, the sea takes more than a physical dimension. It, in a way, becomes: “a setting which constantly reminds us of the unchanging succession of moments in the external universe, and in part, because this monotony is given an audible dimension,”)6) as Stefan Grant states. One can also sense the affinity between the sea and Henry’s disturbed mind. As the sea is raged with its ebb and flow, so is Henry’s mind, which is disturbed by the haunting past that determines his life. Furthermore, one critic refers to the sea as the mother's womb that tries to engulf Henry's existence(7). Here, we are drawn back to one of Beckett's favourite themes which is man's desire to go back to his infantile state of being -837-
Curiously, Henry’s fanciful recollection of his wife, Ada, and his daughter, Addie, is the one thing that offers an escape from his loneliness and grotesque isolation. It is through the voice of his beloved wife that Henry tries to surmount the horrid and tempting sound of the sea:
Henry: Are you going to sit down beside me?
Ada: Yes. (No sound as she sits) Like that? (pause) Or do you prefer like that? (pause) You don’t care. (pause) Chilly enough I imagine, I hope you put on your jaegers. (pause) Did you put on your jaegers, Henry?............
Henry: You wish me to laugh?
Ada: You laughed so charmingly once, I think that’s what first attracted me to you.
( Pause. He tries to laugh, fails)
(Pp.685-86)
Ada’s voice creates a barricade between Henry and the sea. Through engaging himself with phantoms from his past, Henry becomes once more the normal lover and father. Yet, sadly enough, the moment Ada’s voice vanishes she ceases to exist. So the listener realizes that Ada is just another desperate creation of Henry’s feeble mind.
The episode involving Henry’s daughter, Addie, is less joyful. Henry remembers the day Addie was having a piano lesson, in which she is not doing really well:
Music master: (Italian accent) Santa Cecilia! (Pause)
Addie: Will I play my piece now, please?
Music master: (Violently) Fa!
Addie: (Tearfully) What?
Music master: (Violently) Eff! Eff!
Addie: (Tearfully) Where?
Music master: (Violently) Qua! ( He thumps note) Fa!
(687)
The question that one may ask at this point is: why does Henry choose this specific episode to recall from his -838-
memories of his daughter? The answer may come quite naturally: as Addie lacks the creative touch in playing the notes, so is Henry who totally lacks any creativity to colour his life. Instead, he sinks into his hallucinations and fancies. Consequently, Addie can be seen as a duplication of Henry, both experience the same disappointment and confusion. Paul Lawley, thus, remarks:
The Addie ‘hallucinations’ are images created by Henry of his own situation. like Addie he cannot ‘eff the ineffable’ (a favourite Beckett joke here ‘amplified to paroxysm’); he can only recruit memories or scenes which are available to him and press them into service by modifying and shaping them into images of the self in creation.(8)
Besides, Henry is still in dire need of having others around him, that is why he needs to fill the beach of people of his own creation. Thus, occurs the scene of Addie and the music master whose noisy notes breaks the monotony of the sea sound.
Ada feels furious at Henry’s reaction to Addie’s failing attempts with her music lessons, so she leaves the strand. Being lonely once more, Henry turns back to his unfinished story of Bolton: “I never finished it, I never finished any of them, I never finished anything, everything always went on forever.” Holloway is about to give Bolton an injection that would ease his pain, yet, surprisingly; Bolton hesitates for a moment:" If you want a shot say so and let me get to hell out of here. (pause) we've had this before, Bolton, don't ask me to go through it again" (691).
Bolton's hesitation connotes Henry's own confusion about putting an end to his life. One critic calls the Bolton scene as "a paradigm of human suffering. "(9) Holloway is compared to Christ, who hoped to end mankind's suffering. In the light of this interpretation, Henry's painful hallucinations can be seen as pleas to find out an escape from the hell he lives in. Moreover, his inability to put an end to the Bolton- Holloway episode indicates the faltering aptitude of his mind. He halts at the climax of the story and turns away again to the meaningless utterances he used to repeat: " Words (pause) Saturday… nothing. Sunday… Sunday… nothing all day. (pause) All day all night nothing. (pause) Not a sound. (sea) " (692). -839-
It seems that Henry is losing his power of imagination.This fact draws our attention to the play's symbolic title. Since the fire is a classical symbol of artistic creativity, hence the embers here stands for the waning creativity of Henry's mind. The creativity crisis pushes Henry to be one with Bolton. The emergence between him and the fictional character prevents him from finishing his story because he does not know how to put an end to his misery. We realize that from the beginning Bolton was just a surrogate for the tortured Henry.
The reasons behind Henry's descending into a world of confusion are many. It may be his loss of the wife and daughter. It may be the loss of his father and the fear of following the father's suicidal steps. Above all, it may be the loss of his mind's creativity which drives him mad. Consequently, one may ask an essential question: which of the previous factors has Beckett meant to be the motive behind Henry's hallucination?
Obviously, Beckett wanted to construct a character that is full of contradictions. Henry, the loving husband and father, is at the same time a cruel son who refuses to forgive his father's act of departure. On the other hand, Henry is a skilful narrator, nevertheless, he is quite unable to put a decisive end to his story. That is what is meant by "embers", the weakening inspiration of one's mind when one faces so many blows and disappointments in his life. As if Henry's mind has built a sheltering cocoon around his memories. This what Henry was doing during the entire play, locking his mind inside the one place he feels safe at, the strand. It is where his father supposedly committed suicide and, ironically; he and his wife made love for the first time. It is the sound of the sea, which seems to suck his identity, that prevails. This is symbolically indicated by the fact that the last thing we hear in the play is the sound of the sea.
The listener is left with the dim vision of Henry looking at the bottomless sea, reaching nowhere but sinking into desolation. The only reality is that: for Henry, tomorrow will be the same as today. Tomorrow he will converse again with Ada and Addie who can be merely acoustic reflections for dad or daddy. As Perloff asserts " The silence of the sea below the surface, cannot comfort Henry who knows that sea is a grave – his father's.")10) -840-
It can be said that Embers is a drama of consciousness. The whole play focuses on Henry's recollections and construction of what was once his world. Henry's swinging from the memory of his father to his wife and daughter, then back to the father visualizes an obsessed mind that is locked within a specific chain of thoughts. As for his unfinished story, it is a mere reflection of Henry's inability to move on with his life.
Looking deeply into Embers will reveal that the play does not actually develop a well- constructed story, it rather dramatizes the protagonist's failing attempts to incarnate the shadows of his mind. His failure to do that leads him to weave a story that echoes his own confusion.
Beckett, once more, skillfully represents a character that is imprisoned within the limits and hopelessness of living. Henry can stand for the modern man who is unable to find a meaning or explanation of what goes around him. He may stand for the artist who loses his creative touch and who cannot finish a masterpiece. Nonetheless, he stands for all humanity that needs redemption and salvation, but instead, it keeps spinning into an empty circle.
April 30, 2022
Having listened to this one in the past, I have now too read the script. Another excellent radio play by Beckett, it’s not just the surrounding sea that is deep here. Essentially a monologue, Henry appears to be alone with his ailing imagination, creativity and memories. He creates a proximation of his father, wife and daughter and interacts with them as best he can.
The father can be reduced to haunting, scathing remarks he made and a tragic end while the wife Ada who he has derided as stupid seems to talk quite eloquently, given that she too constitutes the embers of Henry’s fading fire. As for his daughter Addie: “It was not enough to drag her into the world, now she must play the piano.”
The father can be reduced to haunting, scathing remarks he made and a tragic end while the wife Ada who he has derided as stupid seems to talk quite eloquently, given that she too constitutes the embers of Henry’s fading fire. As for his daughter Addie: “It was not enough to drag her into the world, now she must play the piano.”
June 21, 2024
خوانش اول از ترجمهی علی باش (پارههای آتش).
خوانش دوم از ترجمهی نجف دریابندری (خلواره).
خوانش دوم از ترجمهی نجف دریابندری (خلواره).
May 20, 2020
This play reminds me of everything I love about Samuel Beckett and his writing.
For starters, his use of silence is always fascinating. This is especially the case in a play like Embers, where there is no real lack of noise except in the numerous pauses between dialogue. The characters talk about silence; Henry's repeated "no sound" as he struggles to recall the memories of his father and what surrounded him at a certain moment. Beckett always uses silence, and also light to put emphasis on a moment; the title takes its name from Henry's talk of "embers" as he reminisces his father standing near a fire.
The existence, or non-existence, of sound and light, when brought up, are almost immediately contradicted: "no light, only the light of the fire..." In this way Beckett skillfully captures the momentariness of time and existence.
In addition, all of this metaphor of silence is beautifully done side by side the presence of the sea:
ADA: "It is only the surface, you know. Underneath is all quiet as a grave."
In ending the play, Beckett ties everything once more around silence with his final line: "Not a sound."
While I do not always appreciate the bleakness of Beckett's view, I do appreciate the intuitiveness and sympathy with which he approaches it. When Ada reproaches Henry's incessant rambling, she says:
"You will be quite alone with your voice, there will be no other voice in the world but yours."
Which, I have to say is probably my favorite line in the entire play because it's absolutely beautiful. Beckett understands the isolation of a person's "voice" and self, and sympathizes with this isolation. He acknowledges our need for companionship even when we're alone; Henry desperately begs Ada to stay, "You needn't speak. Just listen. Not even. Be."
For starters, his use of silence is always fascinating. This is especially the case in a play like Embers, where there is no real lack of noise except in the numerous pauses between dialogue. The characters talk about silence; Henry's repeated "no sound" as he struggles to recall the memories of his father and what surrounded him at a certain moment. Beckett always uses silence, and also light to put emphasis on a moment; the title takes its name from Henry's talk of "embers" as he reminisces his father standing near a fire.
The existence, or non-existence, of sound and light, when brought up, are almost immediately contradicted: "no light, only the light of the fire..." In this way Beckett skillfully captures the momentariness of time and existence.
In addition, all of this metaphor of silence is beautifully done side by side the presence of the sea:
ADA: "It is only the surface, you know. Underneath is all quiet as a grave."
In ending the play, Beckett ties everything once more around silence with his final line: "Not a sound."
While I do not always appreciate the bleakness of Beckett's view, I do appreciate the intuitiveness and sympathy with which he approaches it. When Ada reproaches Henry's incessant rambling, she says:
"You will be quite alone with your voice, there will be no other voice in the world but yours."
Which, I have to say is probably my favorite line in the entire play because it's absolutely beautiful. Beckett understands the isolation of a person's "voice" and self, and sympathizes with this isolation. He acknowledges our need for companionship even when we're alone; Henry desperately begs Ada to stay, "You needn't speak. Just listen. Not even. Be."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 20, 2023
I listened to the original BBC 1959 broadcast. It's a nice idea, but just didn't work for me. It goes in the "don't bother" pile. Beckett wrote much on a similar theme, and a lot of his work was much better than this.
January 15, 2020
Reading through this dramaticule in preparation for an audition. More soon, hopefully.
February 11, 2022
The writing is so good; I wish it were longer.
November 20, 2023
i listened as i read and i think that has made the experience better. the voice actor is brilliant and i really love the concept of a radio drama. i think this will stay with me
April 30, 2025
putting a word in parentheses every time is wonderful. in fact, it is difficult to read texts now without it...they seem to have a lot of other things...but how little maybe we, mr. writers and people use the language in full tongue, mouth, full movement, fuel, all lips, clockwise, fast, so that there is a place to stretch out all spirals, limbs and museum of our beings. there is almost no such thing.
plays are pure hydrogen in my brain. for my brain (if such an object exists), it's a funny mistake that plays are a - roughly - carcass, requisite, sketch. why it feels like summoning chant, aloud - just inside, reading for psyche, and from inside the head. like some eye in the brain speaking, maybe I would even describe it like this. just this eye just knows. I don't know, but it knows not only "an empty room. grayish light" in the first lines of play. that's for sure, it's very human. but especially beautiful how the technical-looks moments like "the lighting is brighter at the feet, then weaker, and completely dim at the head" and technical numbers, instructions for steps are read as poetic straight images or psychic elements, as what the psyche considers to be true and not false for her, like many fancy and invasive books constantly. and plays like happen to become what is closest to the standard of fiction book. strong as music or cinema can be, no weaker, no weaker than poems. I almost do not believe that the authors wrote plays really for the theater, productions, as a textual basis...it seems to me that the play matters for one room, so that also more likely about half-lights or no any lights, so definitely not immediately for something like stages, it's just a mental addictive rhythm. so radioplays are phenomenal, their existence is almost miracle, but especially when you're just imagining them, when they're so already ghostly. books are not as close to books as plays, no thousands and thousands of pages, it's more a sand, sand even closer. but I understand the desire to infiltrate. and this «room» for which is «matter»...ideally, of course, it should be open and shared with every and everybody, really spread out like a stage that spread like heart that spread like a stage and bed. and it's others, many many, who should be in the shade and silence. so yes, the stage is like a next product of psyche, which creates a reflection of play inside itself, an image of stage as a reaction, impression, psychic coded allusion. now I have a feeling like straight tube in the middle of myself that books were conceived as plays, and people fell asleep or somehow confused everything, but they were clearly told that plays are novels. but people...they forgot, they got mixed up...like in these plays. don't know. I would probably now want copies of all classic books in form of play. or that since childhood I have been surrounded by bodies of non-linear works. I want it to be enough to really get a foothold there, and not just occasionally remember the real soul in flashes, pop up, dive in, and kicked out to live again linearly, not according to the laws of subconscious, which already knows what to do, unlike the daytime poor consciousness, which constantly busy with fear how to do something (almost always «don't», like «don't write», of course, and all of this). when I'm in this rhythm, which is just synchronized with rhythm of plays, I just know blood of my life, what to do with my life, I feel like ego is being replaced by the total being and more total self - and stage as symbol may be an self. I just want to make my brain more drowned and fixed in this rhythm, I wonder what it would be like...more creative? still thinking that plays are a more natural, humanistic thing for a person's psyche when people want to write and even read (even their size!!). and it doesn't work out because a book is considered as novel, not as play or poem. also at the beginning of time people had another profound perfect form of texts - on mysticism, where spiritual things considered as real, where the word and idea was in union. and even Hermes as god is always was about two things - writing and playing. if only it were one thing, one word that is chosen accurately and correctly as it should be in literature, according to human rumors at least. do people write with such desperation, are they such half-shadows as in these raw dark carcass-plays, because they have to waltzing back on bloodline - to form of dictionary, a book with just columns of words, enter the one word that describes what they're doing all the time, at the end of a their thick sick book...remember that "writing" in the dictionary of meaning should be like "playing"? but then, what about "laying"? and I really still don't understand why "write" is consonant with the word "right". indecisive daytime part of me still doesn't believe this is the right, not self-cheating trap. I don't fully understand what "writing" is. I need to see the word "write" written many times in all sorts of places to feel its authenticity, that in an explanatory dictionary this word can mean itself too, that it is a desire and need in the end, as it was before any pain
plays are pure hydrogen in my brain. for my brain (if such an object exists), it's a funny mistake that plays are a - roughly - carcass, requisite, sketch. why it feels like summoning chant, aloud - just inside, reading for psyche, and from inside the head. like some eye in the brain speaking, maybe I would even describe it like this. just this eye just knows. I don't know, but it knows not only "an empty room. grayish light" in the first lines of play. that's for sure, it's very human. but especially beautiful how the technical-looks moments like "the lighting is brighter at the feet, then weaker, and completely dim at the head" and technical numbers, instructions for steps are read as poetic straight images or psychic elements, as what the psyche considers to be true and not false for her, like many fancy and invasive books constantly. and plays like happen to become what is closest to the standard of fiction book. strong as music or cinema can be, no weaker, no weaker than poems. I almost do not believe that the authors wrote plays really for the theater, productions, as a textual basis...it seems to me that the play matters for one room, so that also more likely about half-lights or no any lights, so definitely not immediately for something like stages, it's just a mental addictive rhythm. so radioplays are phenomenal, their existence is almost miracle, but especially when you're just imagining them, when they're so already ghostly. books are not as close to books as plays, no thousands and thousands of pages, it's more a sand, sand even closer. but I understand the desire to infiltrate. and this «room» for which is «matter»...ideally, of course, it should be open and shared with every and everybody, really spread out like a stage that spread like heart that spread like a stage and bed. and it's others, many many, who should be in the shade and silence. so yes, the stage is like a next product of psyche, which creates a reflection of play inside itself, an image of stage as a reaction, impression, psychic coded allusion. now I have a feeling like straight tube in the middle of myself that books were conceived as plays, and people fell asleep or somehow confused everything, but they were clearly told that plays are novels. but people...they forgot, they got mixed up...like in these plays. don't know. I would probably now want copies of all classic books in form of play. or that since childhood I have been surrounded by bodies of non-linear works. I want it to be enough to really get a foothold there, and not just occasionally remember the real soul in flashes, pop up, dive in, and kicked out to live again linearly, not according to the laws of subconscious, which already knows what to do, unlike the daytime poor consciousness, which constantly busy with fear how to do something (almost always «don't», like «don't write», of course, and all of this). when I'm in this rhythm, which is just synchronized with rhythm of plays, I just know blood of my life, what to do with my life, I feel like ego is being replaced by the total being and more total self - and stage as symbol may be an self. I just want to make my brain more drowned and fixed in this rhythm, I wonder what it would be like...more creative? still thinking that plays are a more natural, humanistic thing for a person's psyche when people want to write and even read (even their size!!). and it doesn't work out because a book is considered as novel, not as play or poem. also at the beginning of time people had another profound perfect form of texts - on mysticism, where spiritual things considered as real, where the word and idea was in union. and even Hermes as god is always was about two things - writing and playing. if only it were one thing, one word that is chosen accurately and correctly as it should be in literature, according to human rumors at least. do people write with such desperation, are they such half-shadows as in these raw dark carcass-plays, because they have to waltzing back on bloodline - to form of dictionary, a book with just columns of words, enter the one word that describes what they're doing all the time, at the end of a their thick sick book...remember that "writing" in the dictionary of meaning should be like "playing"? but then, what about "laying"? and I really still don't understand why "write" is consonant with the word "right". indecisive daytime part of me still doesn't believe this is the right, not self-cheating trap. I don't fully understand what "writing" is. I need to see the word "write" written many times in all sorts of places to feel its authenticity, that in an explanatory dictionary this word can mean itself too, that it is a desire and need in the end, as it was before any pain
June 28, 2024
A little bit too difficult for me
December 19, 2013
Embers is told from the perspective of Henry, a lonely man sitting by the sea recounting the memories and stories that might be able to give his life some meaning. This meaning he seeks is fleeting, despite his obsessive flights into rapid-fire poetry, conversations with possibly dead family members and calls into the wilderness for aural order. His voice is always countered, sometimes dominated by the "sucking" sounds of waves crashing; he can never drown it out, but he can't seem to leave it behind. In this way, Embers is a mystery story, as the listener must try to find order and points that tie things together just as Henry must.
March 6, 2014
Someone has systematically gone through Beckett's work cutting out the funny punchlines!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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