Ohio Impromptu
Ohio Impromptu is a short piece ( " playlet " ) by Samuel Beckett. Beckett wrote it in 1980. Originally it should be a pleasure for Stanley E. Gontarski that Beckett had asked for a piece that should be listed on an academic symposium in honor of Beckett fünfundsiebzigstem birthday in Columbus, Ohio. Beckett was uncomfortable to do a commissioned work and he wrestled nine months with the piece before it was finally finished. It was on May 9, 1981 premiered two theaters in Ohio, directed by Alan Schneider and David Warillow as " Reader" and Rand Mitchell as a " listener " at the Drake Union Stadium. Erika and Elmar Tophoven translated the play into German. This translation is also under the influence of the self-written by Beckett transmission of the play into French.
"It's the first piece of Beckett, showing a doppelganger on stage, another Beckett - pair, but this time in terms of a mirror image; it comes from Beckett's ghost phase, are shown in the phantoms on the stage, let the ghostly nature of memory and nostalgia resound. "
- 3.1 Beckett on Film
Action
Characters and storyline
Two old men sit facing each other at a right angle table diagonally opposite. They are " [ i] n look so much alike as possible," [ os 1] both wearing long black coats and have long white hair. The table and the chairs are white. The figure listener [ os 2] looks towards the audience, but his head is bent down so that his face is hidden. The attitude of the other figure, reader [ os 3] is equal to the difference that this has a book in front of him, which is open on the last pages. A single " [s ] chwarzer, wide-brimmed hat " [ os 4] is on the table. The figures " may be borrowed by Rembrandt " or Gerard Ter Borch's painting " Four Spanish monks ", but Beckett has even given a special picture as inspiration. Even Edgar Rubin foreground background experiments are mentioned as a possible source of inspiration.
Once reader begins to read, beats headphones with his left hand on the table, so that readers interrupts himself, and the last full sentence repeated to wait for the next knock before he starts again. This goes on throughout the reading and reminiscent of " Krapp's enjoyable dealing with selected passages of his tapes " in Beckett's play The last band. " At one point, the handset keeps readers not to flip to a previous page to which refers the text, and at another point paused reader on a seemingly grammatically incorrect text passage says 'yes' - his offhand remark in promptu - and reads them again. " Except for that one word he speaks exactly the text that is printed in the book.
Listeners can readers repeat the last sentence of his story and then the book is closed. " There is nothing more to say ". [ Os 5] listener still knocks one last time, but there's nothing more to read. The two look at each other staring, until the light is dimmed.
The narrative
Written in the past tense narrative tells a story of a man, perhaps from handset itself, which is " in a final attempt to relieve " [ os 6] from the losses of people close to erhaltendem loss of someone close to Swan Island, where the two never had been together. He disregarded the warning that had been given to him as " the beloved face" had appeared to him in a dream: " Stay where we have been so long alone together, my shade will comfort you." [ Os 7]
He soon realizes that he has made a terrible mistake. " The familiar environment could soothe him by their connection to the lost person and calm down, but an unfamiliar environment emphasizes his total sense of loss. In his grief state conspires anything to remind him of what he has lost. "It remains unclear why it is impossible for him to go back and make this mistake undone. He is haunted by an old fear of the night. At this he had suffered for the last time so long ago, " as if it never existed " [ os 8] As a result, he notes that he can not sleep. One night, however, as he sits propped his head on his arms and shivers all over my body, a man appears out of nowhere. He explains that he was sent by the relatives to bring him comfort. He moves " a worn book out of his pocket his long black coat, [sits ] down and [ reads ] until it [ shudder ]" [ os 9], after which he disappears without a word. We learn that it is a " sad story " [ os 10], but no more. This is repeated night after night, the man appears " unannounced " [ os 11] and begins without preamble [ os 12] to read and disappears dawn " wordless " [ os 13]
Finally, the lost person determined [ os 14] that this has given long enough. After the man has ended his reading for the last time, it stays there and explained that this was his last appearance; he was told that his consolation was no longer necessary and that he was not authorized longer recur, even if he wanted. For a while still sitting the two, the " as if one" [ os 15] through the many nights in silence, " Lost in who knows what kind of depths of the mind [ ... ] petrified " [ os 16]
David Warrilow recalls Beckett's advice when he took over the role: "Well, the most useful clue that gave me Beckett from the start when Ohio Impromptu, was to treat it like a bedtime story and it reassuring to tell " "
Biographical insights
Beckett took often biographical events from his own life and they got rid of all the biographical details by leaving only a bare minimum of language and subject left.
" Beckett worked for a time as an amanuensis for James Joyce " ... the two men used in the thirties, together, on the Ile de cygnes to walk and ... Joyce wore a hat Quartier- Latin [ as also in the piece is mentioned. ] " Beckett confirmed these details during a dinner with his biographer James Knowlson. Knowlson mentioned here that he people of the " beloved [n ] face" [ os 17] have heard that it was the face of Joyce. Knowlson believed that it was in fact a woman, and Beckett agreed with him: "It is Suzanne ... I got it to me so often presented after her death. I even imagined what I drag myself to her grave " " When he wrote Ohio Impromptu, was [ his wife ] eighty years old, and they were nonetheless ( even though they had been separated for some time ) for over forty years a pair " and " to think of the dying Suzanne was unbearable for him "
The figure in the history of the piece is just as Beckett himself haunted by night terrors and insomnia. Throughout his life, suffered from nightmares Beckett. "Maybe his insomnia was inherited from his mother's side, who was also suffering from the same symptoms. " In the thirties Beckett also began to undergo panic attacks. " The worst of these attacks was a feeling of suffocation, which often came over him when he was at nightfall in his room.
The title of the piece is commenting in need. Ohio Impromptu is a " unverschnörkelt descriptive title, the opportunity and genre called - Impromptu on the type of metatheatralischen, self-reflexive nature studies by Molière and Giraudoux - or even like those referred to as Impromptu, 'complicated solo pieces for piano by Schubert, Chopin and Schumann " " by promises an Impromptu - a performance without any preparation - subverts the piece his own promise, if it is followed by a text that does not allow extemporaneous composition, not improvisation of the actors "
Interpretation
The critics differ in their interpretations on the question of who or what readers is: whether it is a phenomenon to listener alter ego or a different aspect of his mind. In any case, the nightly reading is an essential part of the listener healing process. The Beckett specialist Anna McMullan notes that " is both Rockaby as well as in Ohio Impromptu the text to a rite of passage, which causes a change of loss towards the consolation of life to death and from speaking to silence. " Was in Rockaby the wife after the death of her mother remained in the family home; Listeners decided to run away.
" As in Company, the author returns to a theme back that he has repeatedly shown: that loneliness and longing for some time to have personally, as that they could be shared with others. " "The image of the Seine with its two arms that flow into each other after they have separated if they flow around the island ... is a key to the meaning of the piece. For in his emotional center are sadness, loss and loneliness, which are contrasted by a memory of togetherness " So why the man goes to the island, rather than to avoid them? The place might have had a special meaning for the person Beckett, but the author Beckett chose probably more because of their geographical phenomenon: the two branches of the river that flow into each other and also the fact that a smaller copy of the statue of liberty on the island is that the ( literal ) New world represent, is located in the Ohio and the new world in which the man moves in a figurative sense.
The arrangement of the figures is similar to " the figures that were used in the early twentieth century to demonstrate the principles of Gestalt psychology. " Divided Self is a general access to the interpretation of many texts Beckett, who on the last band, kicks, Then and was applied to waiting for Godot.
Beckett might have thought of his own wife when he wrote the piece, but he never identifies the name or gender of the lost person close to accurate. This gives the text an additional depth. The man could also be his father, or - more likely if you have Beckett's other works in mind - his mother grieve. Also, however, that it is a male partner, there is nothing, which is why even a homoerotic reading of Beckett's work is widespread.
As for readers, has Gontarski argues that we here a dramatization of " elementary creative Vorgans " see the ' has already been indicated in those days, where the protagonist of the story A hid as a teenager in order to think up a conversation to not only to be "
Others suggest that reader is a listener of " beloved face" RPA shadow, a kind of ghostly messenger who will help him with the grieving process. In a very early draft of the play Beckett thought of a "spirit who returns from the underworld to speak at a conference ." " The narrative suggests the image of the stage ahead without it but to replicate or anticipate ," " The text tells that the figures, lost in who knows what depths of their mind to remain '. On stage, however, they raise their heads to each other in the meaningful senses to look at. " Therefore, it is plausible that the two men are not the two men from history are on the stage. " As one author calls listener sometimes the repetition of a sentence, but reader has its own timetable according to which he also uninvited repeated each sentence at least once. " A fact that suggests that this is not actually the case, is the fact that only one cap is provided.
After the story is read and the book is closed, handset throbbing again, the signal again to start where readers had begun. " What say words when there is nothing left to say? " Beckett was obsessed with the desire to create something that he called " literature of the non- word " ( " literature of the unword " ), and this is probably one of the best examples of this effort.
Beckett on Film
In Beckett on Film project enabled modern cinematographic techniques that readers and listeners could be represented by the same actor, so Beckett's stage directions, both figures should each other " in appearance so similar as possible" to be. For this film follows the interpretation that both figures are elements of a single personality. In the text, the two see each other only at the very end in the eye, but in this film they have during the whole piece again and again eye contact.
Anna McMullan complained that this interpretation of Ohio Impromptu " is passed a second time by a psychologizing access, as Jeremy Irons plays both games and the 'spirit' faded dawn "