Breath (play)

Breathing (English Original title: Breath; French Title: Souffle ) is a one-act play by Irish writer Samuel Beckett. Of all his minimalist pieces, breath is the most reduced, but still met the minimum conditions of Aristotelian beginning, middle and end. The absurd, only about 35 -second scene in 1969 in New York as a prologue to Kenneth Tynan's scandalous revue Oh! Calcutta! premiered.

Content

Since the piece entirely without protagonists, plot and text, his written record exhausted in the mere stage directions: " Dark. Then, 1 ) dim lighting of the stage, lying around on the diverse, unrecognizable debris. About five seconds. 2) Weak, short cry and immediately after inhalation and at the same time gradually lightening lighting up to about 10 seconds at the same time to reach maximum. Silence for about five seconds. Exhale while gradually darkening lighting to the after about ten seconds at the same time to reach minimum ( lighting, for one ) and immediately cry as before. Silence for about five seconds. Then the darkness. "

Is supplemented by the following detailed description of the specifications on the part of the author: " Refuse: there is nothing, everything is scattered around. Cry moment of a tape-recorded Vagitus [lat Wow; Infant cry ]. It is important that both screams are identical and that lighting and breath sounds exactly coincident increase and decrease. Respiratory: increased tape recording. Maximum of the lighting: not too bright If 0 = dark and 10 = bright, the lighting should increase from 3 to 6 and decrease accordingly. "

Interpretation

Interpretable is this like a bad joke acting parabolic scene than the reduced to an aesthetic skeletal realization that human life between birth ( first cry ) and death ( last cry ) no more than a brief Will ( inhalation and brightening ) and misdemeanors ( exhaling and darkening) the mindless chaos ( refuse) is the world.