All That Fall:

Mr R: Do you know, Maddy? Sometimes one would think you were struggling
with a dead language.
Mrs R: Yes indeed, Dan, I know full well what you mean, I often have that feeling,
It is unspeakably exhausting.
mr R: I confess I have it sometimes myself, when I happen to overhear what I’m
saying .
Mrs R: Well, you know, it will be dead in time, just like our own poor dear Gaelic,
there is that to be said.

Mrs Rooney: Do you find anything…bizarre about my way of speaking? I do not

mean the voice. [Pause]. No, I mean the words. [Pause. More to herself]. I use
none but the simplest words, I hope, and yet sometimes find my way of speaking
very…bizarre. [Pause.] Mercy! What was that?

 Like she doesn’t really understand what she means when she speaks. These
words are just stuck to her. And Same goes for Mr Rooney, in a passage
where he confesses to also be ‘struggling with a dead language’, ‘I have it
sometimes too, when I overhear what I am saying”. The characters are at a
standpoint, existentially they can not bear life anymore – we can hear it in
Mrs Rooney’s loose grip on her surroundings. She retreates into solitary
language whenever she can. By solitary language, I mean solipsism that can
be heared through her speech, as a counterpoint.(As a counterpoint to what
they mean separately?)

Uncertainty – the expression of uncertainty haunts the speech of characters.
They are unsure of the meanings their words carry . ‘I use non but the
simplest words, I hope, and yet sometimes find my way of speaking very…
bizarre’

 Even musically dashed (used dashes). There is an inner language that
Beckett’s characters speak. And they all have-awareness of solitary self- to
the point when even when one isn’t alone, the guest remains to stay.

 This disbalance between form (to which we are always exposed to during
speech, as we perceive sounds and read out the symbols that make words)
and meaning (to which, ascribing one, unchangeable value is impossible.
Maybe because the meaning alters every time its form is summoned a little
more than before. And repetitive exposure of a form, of words

R: how is your wife?

C: no better Ma’am
R: your daughter then?
C: no worse ma’am

Self-involved speech, solipsism

R:… talking about how ‘genuinely pleased’ people are to see her back on her
feet…
A few simple words…from my heart… and I am all alonce… once more

R: Oh, there is that Fitt woman, I wonder will she bow to me (Solipsistic, self-
involved, self-doubt, she’s growing old and seems to be no one to anyone
anymore’)… Am I then invisible, Miss Fitt?..That is right Miss Fitt, look closely
and you will finally distinguish a once female shape. – she’s withering away and
that is her BIG CRUX in the play. Everything she says, is a manifestation of decay,
of forgetfulness, of lack of aim (When she says let’s stop, then says what are we
doing stopping? Let’s go on. And stuffs like that)

Just how much can language betray our characters. Just how much do they show
our happiness and sorrow, through the memories that are chosen to be verbalized –
maybe consciously, sometimes unconsciously – accidental expression of regret in
time.

R: Do not imagine, because I am silent, that I am not present, and alive, to all that
is going on.

It Can be reversed: Do not imagine, because I speak, that I am present and alive, to
all that is going on –

Rough for Radio I: 1961

SHE: is it true the music goes on all the time?

He: Yes.
SHE: without cease?
He: without cease.
SHE: it’s unthinkable! [pause] And the words too? All the time too?
He: All the time.
She: without cease?
He: without cease.
SHE: It’s unimaginable. [pause.] So you are here all the time?
He: without cease.
Form - > She asks: is he alone? All alone?
He: when one is alone one is all alone -> All and Alone contradict each other here
and contribute to the expression of solitude, not by meaning but by form and
structure into which they are put in.

When one is alone, one is all, alone = when one is alone one is everything/all,
only/alone.

For instance? [pause] for instance?

One cannot describe them -> the ineffability abides in silence. Silence sometimes
means the space of inexpressibly? But SHE: well, I’m obliged to you = using this
word in a completely different sense ( being thankful) but also echoing his own
words of the ‘obligation to express?’

The ellipsis here is to accommodate whatever whoever’s on the other line of the
phone is saying. All the audience hears is silence.

Rough for Radio II: 1976

He is weeping, sir, shall I note it?

I really do not know what to advise, miss
Inasmuch as … how shall I say? … human trait… can one say in English?
I have never come across it miss, but no doubt
Scrabble Scrabble – yeah, try to write it down, what I’m feeling you ignorant
foolsz!

[discussing who the woman Maud is]

S: You see? My nanny was Maud, so that the name would have truck me, had it
been pronounced.

A: what counts is not so much the thing, in itself,… no, it’s the word, the notion ->
so the conceptual sphere/understanding behind the words we use not the exact
same/identical/literal thing that is meant. That’s what matters - > that is under
question in Beckett. What is the word and notion’

A: Be reasonable….you might prattle away to your latest breath and still the one…
thing remain unsaid that can give you back your darling solitudes, we know. But
this much is sure: the more you say the greater your chances. Is that not so, miss?
S: It stands to reason, sir.
A: [as to a backward pupil] Don’t ramble! Treat the subject, whatever it is. [snivel]
More variety! [snivel] Those everlasting wilds may have their charm, but there is
nothing there for us, that would astonish me.
[con’t]
A: Of course we do not know, any more than you, what exactly it is we are after,
what sign or set of words. But since you have failed so far to let it escape you, it is
not by harking on the same old themes that you are likely succeed, that would
astonish me

In Rough for Radio I and II works the idea of ineffable into words.

Can language, speech, be anything other than solipsistic? The

Language and thinking are the same activity. So whatever it is we understand
about ourselves introspectively, needs to be reduced to verbose. This is obviously
not true… neither Beckett or Wittgenstein - I think – would agree to this, but they
could have started from here. For the reasons that they were both seeking to find if
such a language existed that could read and sound like what sensations feel like.
By trying to understand sensations, we project them onto the mirror of language,
and its reflection is, somehow, missing key particles that made the ray in the first
place. Feelings and sensations become utterly abstract and incomprehensible the
moment they are subject to language. And as we often can’t withstand the high
frequency frustration of silence, the silence must always be broken. It always is.
An empty vessel – devoid of meaningAnd sensations are only the mirrors of
embedded language meaning too, right? Wittgenstein about pain – how do I know
that what you call pain, is the same sensation that is pain for me.

It is not that sensation is nothing, but it is not something either. The power of this
axiomatic-sounding sentence is how nonsensical it can sound, when expressed in
language. But the impression of what it feels like, is left exactly through the tunnel
of non-meaning (nonsense) that the sense-impressions of other kind remember.
Bodily ones. It is not an impossibility that confusion can be verbalized as the
above sentence. And so, as Beckett’s characters continue misinterpreting
utterances, and then trying to understand the meaning – just more confusion is the
result. Nothing is clarified, because nothing was an issue. Vladimir and Estragon
might have been waiting for Godot for three days before we saw them, or weeks or
perhaps it had been three months since they sat there. But that is not the important
part, becaue anyways the whole play is written about waiting, and what we do to
pass our time meanwhile. And one would like to make connections on the way,
develop ideas and ponder over them, learn and explore – be curious with their
language. Listen to stories and tell some stories. Language in Godot is the only
thing that is never ending. Maybe because it is two of them. But language is
needed to maintain company. And so we see what sort of trivial nothingness
language can reduce itself to. While the speaker tries to betray as little of their state
of mind as they can. But it still somehow comes through the language. Nervous
agitation in winnie, word vomit of the woman in Not I, Lucky’s thinking – chaos,
absolute emotional paradox of misunderstanding and half-understanding.
Especially when put to words. Words are very very very binding.
We didn’t see Godot, we as audience do not even know that Godot is real. Only
throughcontradictions is that it often turns to nonsense when put to words.

IT is summer, For me:…

Beckett plays with these concepts, I think, by these subtle, or sometimes not so
subtle, phrases throughout the plays.

Beckett, throughout his literary career, was concerned with expressing the
‘ineffable’ and expressing ‘nothing’ by means of nothing. The ineffability of the
ineffable, or the ‘unword’, rests on an assumption that what he wants to express is
a non-verbal experience during Being.Something that we feel, but we cannot
express in words. Thus, the neologism ‘unword’. Insistent, however, upon exe

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