76
RICHAR D GILMAN
The "story" the three voices tell in
Play
is·of desire, jealousy,
egoism, disgust, in some ways a conventional narrative of sexual
entanglement. But it is not this tale that matters nearly so much as
the manner of its telling, more precisely the terrifying inability of
these "dead" souls to keep from speaking. The material is not a
matter of indifference; if they were talking about a croquet game
or a memorable meal they had shared, we would feel a discrepancy
between such a subject and their present condition, an excessive
quality to their fate. As it is, the moral and emotional substance
has an almost classic gravity· which is balanced by the despairing
need to go on giving it expression.
And it is this need to express themselves, to account for their
passion and torment, in short
to be actors,
that constitutes the
damnation, if we want to call it that, of the three. In the stage
directions Beckett refers to them as "victims" and to the spotlight
darting from one to another as an "inquisitor." Once again he is
placing the theatrical at the forefront of his theater: a spotlight,
instrument of publicity, conjuror of presence, coercer of the
expressible. It holds them in this rehearsal of what their lives came
to, of what life comes to. Beyond morality or emotions, beyond
memory even, is speech, words with their traces of our truth,
whose body lies elsewhere. "Is it that I do not tell the truth," one
of the women says, "is that it, that some day somehow I may tell
the truth at last, and then no more light at last, for the truth?"
Voices, ghostly faces, in the light still. The theater in
Beckett's hands has abandoned events, direct clashes, inquiries,
representations. What remains is the theatrical impulse itself, this
thrust toward the truth about our condition: that it consists in
enactment, presence, the painful necessity to remain visible. "Tell
him you saw us," Didi says to Godot's messenger. To be seen,
heard, by a Godot, by each other and, in the darkness, ourselves:
this is an obligation, a fate, and, finally, a story.
