FRED MISURELLA
95
A history of famous picarros, the passage can be read as a his–
tory of the reign of sentiment also, moving from Cervantes's broad
social commentary to the individual, philosophic one of Beckett.
Don Quixote went out to fight the sixteenth century in order to
create in it his romantic visions of chivalry; Toby Shandy relived the
glory of his days on the battlefield of Namur; and the good soldier
Svejk stumbled his straight-faced way through the collapse of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire during World War
I.
With that empire
fallen , bringing down with it the reign of sentiment, the age of mod–
ernism began, and Vladimir could strut and fret an hour upon the
stage, reasoning his way through the difficult questions of existence.
The scene, as Beckett describes it, "a country road and a tree," is as
empty as the scene in
Jacques et son Maitre,
and the Godot whom he
awaits is as absent as Diderot's narrator, whose voice Kundera has
excised from his adaptation (or "variation," as he calls it).
Kundera opens the play by placing into Jacques's mouth sev–
eral questions about destiny that Diderot had given to himself as
narrator. As Jacques and his master walk onto the stage, Jacques
glances at the audience, wonders who they are, and then addresses
them . He asks if they cannot look elsewhere. Then he asks what they
want. "Where we come from?
(He points in back of him. )
There. And
where are we going?
(Philosophically.)
Does anyone know where he's
going? Do
you
know where you are headed?" A few lines afterward
he recites his famous fatalistic formula to his apprehensive master:
"Sir, you never know where you are going. Believe me! But as my
captain always said, it is written above."
From that point the play moves forward, through the charac–
ters' travels, the recitation of Jacques's first love, his master's frus–
trated passion for Agathe, and the famous affair of Madame de La
Pommeraye, whose story is told by a lady innkeeper. The characters
move on two levels of scenery. The forward part of the set, at stage
level, occupies the present, containing the travels ofJacques and his
master, their conversation, and the people they encounter on their
journey. The rear of the set is a raised platform, connected by a stair–
way to the main stage, that occupies the space of the stories Jacques
and his master tell about themselves and that the lady innkeeper tells
of Madame de La Pommeraye. The characters move freely between
the two levels and frequently act within the stories that they narrate,
addressing their interlocutors as they do. By that means the raised
platform occupies the present as well as the past, and much of the
play becomes a dialogue between the real and the imaginary, and
the world of experience versus the world that exists in memory. As
