PARTISAN REVIEW
63
fully" with a turnip in one's mouth and wearing shoes two sizes
too big or too small.
In the same way that the "meaning" of the circus and of
physical comedy is in their relation to the sober significances we
attach to everything else in life, that of
Waiting for Godot
is in its
relation to the values of logic, purposefulness, psychic or moral
revelation, etc., we have been trained to expect from drama. Like
the clown and the tap dancer, Didi and Gogo instruct us, by their
improvisatory presence, in unseriousness, in a revivifying frivolity
whose desperate edge is the result of a recognition that it is
covering over an abyss. Their talk is not so much anti-intellectual
as counterintellectual; in the course of the play they mock or
demolish all our myths of meaning, using language against itself so
as to prevent it from disguising their radical vulnerability. After an
absurdly grave exchange about radishes, Didi says, "This is be–
coming really insignificant," to which Gogo replies, "Not
enough."
This process of what we might call a decantation of meaning
is continuous in the play, which takes up themes of many kinds
-- religious, philosophical, psychological -- without allowing
any of them to become the drama's motif, and with a fierce comic
opposition to their pretensions. "We have kept our appointment
and that's an end to that," Didi orates at one point. "We are not
saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can
boast as much?" Gogo's wonderfully deflating reply is "Billions."
In another exchange Didi asserts, "We are happy," words which
Gogo mechanically repeats before asking, "What do we do now,
now that we are happy?" Didi's answer is a pressure back to the
naked ground of their existence, beneath emotions, psychic
particularities, or humanist values: "Wait for Godot."
Beyond this, language and gesture are in a wholly ambiguous
causal relationship. In another break with dramatic tradition,
speech does not predict gesture or gesture speech. Instead of
instigating physical actions or articulating their relevances,
language now operates to ignore, question, or annul them. The
most striking examples of this are the last lines of both acts -–
"Yes, let's go" -- which are followed in the text by the words
"They do not move" and on the stage by the tramps' remaining
immobile. There is no explanation of the failure to stir, only the
