Samuel Beckett (Irish novelist, poet, and dramatist) is perhaps best known for Waiting for Godot, the absurdist drama originally written in French, and translated to English in 1954.
In Waiting for Godot, Beckett writes: "The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all. It is true the population has increased."
Ultimately, "all will vanish and we'll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness!" It's the existential angst. In an absurd and meaningless universe, where and how do we find the reason to keep living?
In the last line of The Unameable, he leaves us with: "Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on."
Comments
Looks like a math formulae: 1+1-1 = 1, although the population has increased and in spite of it nothing has changed and therefore it’s not worth mentioning.
Hi Esther!!! I am from Europe, and I wanted to let you know how much I like your section. It is amazing!!! I do love Literature, and I enjoy very much reading the wonderful job you do. Samuel Beckett with “Waiting for Godot” and Ionesco with “The Bald Singer” are two of most representative works in the Theatre of Absurd. Thanks again!!!
In truth, the joy and sadness of the world are not a constant sum set against a rising population, because that would require that the capacity of any individual, on average, to travel between the two has declined; rather, it is the capacity of the individual that remains unchanged through generations, and the capacity of our species, our world, to feel these things is ever increasing. The greater question begged is which shall we choose, and how shall we learn to accept that which we cannot choose.