Ivan Nyusztay

In Shakespearean drama reason at times falters and becomes ineffective in coping with the events. Its limits appear as temporary but dramatic reminders of the necessarily curbed scope of human understanding. Instances of ‘reasonless’ and meaningless phenomena abound in the plays and present themselves mostly in the forms of paradox and the absurd. In the selective recourse to paradoxes in Shakespeare, this article will focus on the tragedies — together with a potentially tragic instance in a chronicle play — which most blatantly expose the limits of reason. I believe that these momentary lapses demonstrate recurring structures of containment characteristic of Shakespeare. Demonstrating the ways paradox and the absurd are contained in Shakespearean drama also entails an overview of the fundamentally different handling of these concepts in the Theatre of the Absurd. The question whether reason in Shakespeare is the “be-all and the end-all,” like the deadly blow for Macbeth,1 is a temp...

The infinite and useless struggles of Camus's Sisyphus have long informed discussions of the philosophy and theatre of the absurd. In the Greek myth, which Camus reductively appropriates, Sisyphus relentlessly repeats his efforts to roll the rock up the hill, regardless of the sheer pointlessness of the endeavour. But what would be the consequences of a sudden termination of these struggles? What existential paradigm shift would be brought about if the rock finally stayed put at the peak, and what would be its repercussions in absurd drama? In Beckett's short play, Catastrophe the Protagonist's final gesture unexpectedly and irrevocably undermines the Director's coercive strategies. Dedicated to Havel, this play is politically inspired and presents a positively subversive cadence unknown in his other works. This epiphanic moment clearly disqualifies precepts of the absurd advocated by Camus, like hopelessness, meaninglessness, or uselessness. In this study I first de...

Abstract:The heroine's gradual sinking into the mound in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days is one of the most baffling instances of human suffering in world literature. Yet Winnie's lighthearted concern with her imminent death is not only astonishing but also uniquely authentic. I adopt Heidegger's understanding of authenticity and present a Heideggerian reading of Beckett's play. Simultaneously, I address Beckett's unique counterpoint to suffering in Happy Days: the merriness characterizing authentic being. While a Heideggerian reading of Beckett helps to trace the development of authentic being, a Beckettian reading of Heidegger may help to see the delight (absurdly) accompanying it.

... Ju-hasz and Rob Ormsby, Augustijn Callewaert, Michel Gillain, Prabhat Avasare, Annelein Masschelein, Agnes Orzoy, Aron and Gabor Buzasi, Peter Szalai, Agoston Schmelowszky, Andras Monori, Aakash Sing, Serena Parekh, Laszlo Komorjai, Gabriella Somlyai, Katalin ...

Abstract:The heroine's gradual sinking into the mound in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days is one of the most baffling instances of human suffering in world literature. Yet Winnie's lighthearted concern with her imminent death is not only astonishing but also uniquely authentic. I adopt Heidegger's understanding of authenticity and present a Heideggerian reading of Beckett's play. Simultaneously, I address Beckett's unique counterpoint to suffering in Happy Days: the merriness characterizing authentic being. While a Heideggerian reading of Beckett helps to trace the development of authentic being, a Beckettian reading of Heidegger may help to see the delight (absurdly) accompanying it.

In this article I test Levinas' well-known presentation of alterity in the context of Pinter's two most well-known absurd dramas, The Birthday Party and The Caretaker, where condensed everyday life situations present some extraordinary encounters with Others. Harold Pinter has proved to be the most prominent dramatist of alterity, whose work can be seen in many ways to tally with the basic concerns of Levinasian ethics. Drama is always instructive in such investigations, since the validity of theoretical axioms in question is tested in concrete dramatic situations. As I will try to show, these dramas of alterity address ethical issues that are also at the centre of Levinasian ethics. At the same time, they disclose a plurality of alterities, a multitude of Others marginalized in Totality and Infinity. Besides their obvious and explicit concern with alterity, I feel encouraged to read Levinas and Pinter together because of their shared sensitivity to the world of ethics and politics as contemporaries (considering the major works discussed in the article), and their common intellectual background.