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“What can I talk with Samuel, this absurdist writer?” that
was my reaction to stenote, the publisher, when he first asked me to interview
Samuel. “He wrote this book titled ‘Texts for Nothing’, what can one expect to
discuss about nothing? He even wrote this in the book ‘He thinks words fail
him, he thinks because words fail him he's on his way to my speechlessness, to
being speechless with my speechlessness, he would like it to be my fault that
words fail him, of course words fail him’. What can we talk with such words,
they are so obscure. I heard from Charles Juliet that he is quite capable of
meeting somebody and sitting for two hours without uttering a word.”
My publisher said: ”No, not really, he is not such a
reclusive person, he likes to drink quite heavily, hopping with friends from
one bar to another, enjoys chatting about cricket, actually he played cricket
for Dublin University, and he had won medals for swimming and boxing. He also
played golf and tennis. So, to start the conversation with him, try bringing a
bottle of wine and talk about sport.”
Encouraged by my publisher, I flew to Paris and made
appointment with Samuel to meet at Îles Marquises restaurant in Monparnasse. I
brought with me a bottle of Lacrima Christi which he took delightedly. But, his
tall, gaunt and archaic presence made him seemed aloof from the cozy
surrounding.
I started:
“Sam, who is your favourite cricket player?”
Samuel glowed with pleasure and responded:
“Frank Woolley, I had admired as a boy. You know, I saw him in the bar at Lord's cricket ground. He was escorting the legendary 84-year-old Wilfred Rhodes, perhaps the greatest England cricketer ever. By that time, Rhodes was totally blind.”
Then he stared and pointed out on the wall above our table photographs of the great boxers: Joe Louis,Georges Carpentier and Jack Dempsey.
I said:
“My first thought, sport seems out of place in your world. Your characters emerge as homeless people, down-and-outs, tramps, failures, and you wrote ‘Fail again, fail better’ in your ‘Worstward Ho’ story.”
Samuel:
“Actually, I wrote ‘All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try
again. Fail again. Fail better.”
I said:
“ You achieved your own gold in 1969 for Nobel Prize in Literature. How
did you feel?”
Samuel:
“My publisher, told me in a telegram ‘Dear Sam and Suzanne. In spite of
everything, they have given you the Nobel Prize. I advise you to go into
hiding.’ We anticipated a spike in publicity and people trying to reach them.”
“You were right, the Swedish Television asked for an interview”.
Samuel:
“I agreed only with the stipulation that the interviewer couldn’t ask
any questions. “
I said:
“Thus you created a bizarre ‘mute’ interview and sent the video clip to
them showing yourself in silent in nature, with background of the sound of wave
from the beach, and the sound of bird chirping. And you didn’t attend the
award, you sent your publisher to take the award, while you and your wife
Suzanne travelled to Tunisia to avoid publicity.”
Samuel, citing the opening of Texts for Nothing 4:
“Where would I go, if I could go, who would I be, if I could be, what
would I say, if I had a voice, who says this, saying it's me?”
I said:
“When your play ‘Waiting for Godot’ premiered at Théâtre de Babylone in
Paris, it is reported that many audience members walked out of the theater,
perhaps because of the unconventional form of the show, there is no plot, the
characters are not revealed, the dialogues are random and ridiculous. Two
tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, are waiting to meet someone named Godot, who
eventually does not turn up. But some of the critics liked it, some critics
said that pointlessness is its very point in this kind of theatre.
Martin Esslin called it The Theatre of the Absurd, in his book with
same title, depicting ‘sense of metaphysical anguish at the absurdity of the
human condition’. And this type of theatre has been associated with your name.”
Samuel:
“The early success of Waiting for Godot was based on a fundamental
misunderstanding, that critics and public alike insisted on interpreting in
allegorical or symbolic terms a play which was striving all the time to avoid
definition.”
I said:
“The greater part of Waiting for Godot's success came down to the fact
that it was open to a variety of readings and that this was not necessarily a
bad thing.”
Samuel:
“Why people have to complicate a thing so simple I can't make out. It's
all symbiosis; it's symbiosis”.
I said:
“Then, may I ask you who or what is Godot?”
Samuel:
“I don't know who Godot is. I don't even know, above all don't know, if
he exists. And I don't know if they believe in him or not – those two who are
waiting for him.”
I said:
“Godot’s messenger boy tells Vladimir that Mr.Godot has sheep and
goats, and the boy tends the goat is not beaten by Godot, while the boy’s
brother who tends the sheep is beaten by Godot. This seems to be the reversal
of the Bible story in which Christ separates the sheep, representing people who
will be saved, from the goats, representing people who will be damned.
In the play Vladimir asks if Estragon has ever read the Bible. Estragon says all he remembers are some colored maps of the holy land. Vladimir tells Estragon about the two thieves crucified along with Jesus. One of the gospels says that one of the thieves was saved, but Vladimir wonders if this is true.”
Samuel:
“St Augustine’s reflection on this story is ‘Do not despair, one of the
thieves was saved: do not presume, one of the thieves was damned.”
I said:
“I reckoned that perhaps the theme of the story is the two who are
waiting for Godot, rather than Godot.”
Samuel:
“An inmate of Lüttringhausen Prison near Remscheid in Germany, stage the play in German and after that wrote to me: ’You will be surprised to be receiving a letter about your play Waiting for Godot, from a prison where so many thieves, forgers, toughs, homos, crazy men and killers spend this bitch of a life waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting. Waiting for what? Godot? Perhaps.”
I said:
“During the World War II in 1941 you and Suzanne joined the French
resistance unit Gloria SMH, an information network, but in 1942 the group was
betrayed by a double agent, members of your group had been arrested by the
Gestapo. You had to flee Paris, heading for the Unoccupied Zone in the south of
France. It took almost six weeks, sometimes alone, sometimes with other
refugees, to cross into the free zone at Chalon-sur-Saône in Burgundy; you made
your way by hiding in barns and sheds and sometimes behind trees, inside
haystacks and down in ditches.”
Samuel:
“I can remember waiting in a barn, there were ten of us, until it got
dark, then being led by a passeur over streams; we could see a German sentinel
in the moonlight. Then I remember passing a French post on the other side of
the line. The Germans were on the road so we went across fields. Some of the
girls were taken over in the boot of a car.”
I said:
“You also witnessed the aftermath of bombing of St-Lô in 1944. The town
located in Normandy bombed by the American, as it served as a strategic
crossroads. It caused heavy damage, most of the city was destroyed, and a high
number of casualties, which you reported as ‘The Capital of Ruins’, you
witnessed real devastation and misery, people in desperate need of food and
clothing, yet clinging desperately to life.”
Samuel:
“St.-Lô is just a heap of rubble, la Capitale des Ruines as they call
it in France. Of 2600 buildings 2000 completely wiped out. . . . It all
happened in the night of the 5th to 6th June. It has been raining hard for the
last few days and the place is a sea of mud. What it will be like in winter is
hard to imagine.”
I said:
“After the War, a lengthy clean-up began, literally by hand including
the corpses of residents and soldiers, which lasted about six months. However,
officials hesitated to rebuild Saint-Lô, some were willing to leave the ruins
as a testament to the martyrdom of the city. The population declined,
preferring to reinhabit its city. You volunteered to join the Irish Red Cross
to build a provisional hospital in this town”
Samuel:
“The new hospital was designed to be provisional. But ‘provisional’, is
not the term it was, in this universe become provisional.”
THE END
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