The Halt and the Blind

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 949, 18 October 1957, Page 16

The Halt and the Blind

HEN James Joyce lived in Paris he influenced and befriended a younger Dubliner in exile, another of the expatriate literary Irish, Samuel Beckett. Although he wrote and published various novels and short stories Beckett first became known when he turned to the theatre and wrote Waiting for Godot, a play which delighted critics and baffled audiences. Last year the: BBC commissioned a radio play from Samuel Beckett. The result, All That Fall-an anecdote set in a rural community in Ireland-was broadcast in January. Next week it will be heard from the YCs, from 1YC and 4YC on Monday, October 21; from 3YC on Tuesday, October 22; and from 2YC on Thursday, October 24, The producer, Donald McWhinnie, travelled to Paris to meet the author, and they worked together over the text, elucidating, modifying, and adjusting even the tiniest point of emphasis. For although on the.face of it the play is a simple affair-an old woman goes to meet a train with her husband on itDonald McWhinnie found it a "careful synthesis of speech, sound, and-as you might expect-silence; hectically funny and bitterly tragic; a story of the in-

adequacy of life and death, breathing an atmosphere of vitality and ruin, farce and suffocation." The critics were enthusiastic about All That Fall, comparing it with Under Milk Wood in its impact, and describing it as "more impressive, more loaded with words and the half-comic aches of humanity" than anything since the Dylan Thomas play, and using sound effects "in a most painstaking and brilliant fashion." The central character is Mrs Rooney, described as "a large, sorrowful importuning Irishwoman who shambles around in search of love and compassion and ends, of course, where she began." No one changes and nothing happens; in the bad weather the wasted lives endure ahother of those long waits. The train is overdue and when it does arrive with Mr Rooney aboard, all that ‘develops is anticlimax, two old people, the halt and the blind, going home in the rain. The play, recently published by Faber* reads well, but it was definitely written for hearing. The characters speak realistically most of. the time, but other meanings are very close to the surface. From the beginning Maddy Rooney makes her mad runes upon names and words. Early in the play she asks the carter, "Why do you halt?" and then reflects, "But why do I halt?" and we recall her dragging footsteps. "I use none but the simplest words," she says fearfully, in what could be the author’s defence, "and yet I sometimes find my way of speaking very bizarre.’"’ Both Maddy and Dan are acutely aware of the senses in and behind words. Their speech, and ‘the whole play, is (as someone put it) made up of "radioactive participles." Roy Walker, in the BBC Listener, thought that this style was magnificently successful. "It makes mysterious relativities imaginatively instantaneous," he said. "Ail That Fall is certainlythis is now being said on all sides-the most important piece of pure drama since Under Milk Wood. I burn my boats and admit that I rate it higher. Mr _ Beckett’s work comprehends a wider and deeper range of experience. Its subject is the thing itself, unaccommodated man-Mary O’Farrell was a superb Maddy, J. G. Devlin [gave] a very fine performance, and Donald McWhinnie’s Third Programme production, with masterly pauses, human animal-noises, a railway that was Emmet-made audible, and a wind that seemed to blow across miles of dreary bog, is something of a radio classic." Samuel Beckett was born in Dublin in 1906. He went to Portora Royal School at Enniskillen (Oscar Wilde’s school), and to Trinity College, Dublin, graduating in 1927 with a B.A. in French and Italian. From 1928 to 1930 he was in Paris as Lecteur d’Anglais at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, and published his long poem Wahoroscope. He returned to Trinity College as lecturer in French and took his M.A. That year his essay on Proust appeared. In 1932 he resigned from the college and began four years’ travels on the Font tinent. The essay on Proust was followed by a collection of short stories, More Pricks Than Kicks (1934), and some *ALL THAT FALL, by Samuel Beckett; Faber and Faber, English price 5/-.

poems (Echo’s Bones) (1935). In 1937 he settled definitely in France, but he was still writing in English, His first novel, Murphy, appeared in 1938. During the war he stayed in France, translating Murphy in French and writing Watt, his last work in English. During 1945-46 he worked as a storekeeper and interpreter with the Irish Red Cross at St. Lo. He returned to Paris in 1947, when the French translation of Murphy was published, and then followed a trilogy of novels, Molloy, Malone Meurt, and L’Innommable (1951-53). En Attendant Godot was published in Paris in 1952, and produced in January, 1953, when it ran to over 500 performances. In Beckett’s own translation as Waiting for Godot, it was an instantaneous success in London, becoming one of the most talked-about plays on the English stage. All That Fall followed, and Fin de Partie, produced this year. Samuel Beckett himself was described by: Donald McWhinnie after his trip to Paris. "I tried to visualise the man ‘I was going to meet-the, to me, mysterious author of Waiting for Godot. Inevitably I was taken aback by the real Samuel Beckett. Figure, athletic; manner, decisive; a blend of extreme seriousness and twinkling good humour; modest; kind; thoroughly good company." b Y The humour pervades the literary and philosophical. allusions, spices arguments that are the main actions of the play, and redeems the absolute grimness of Beckett's world-picture. Grim it is, for although the characters may see the stars as they lie in their ditch, they nae been irretrievably "ditched. ix 2