Table Of ContentSay It
The Performative Voice
in the Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett
FAUX TITRE
352
Etudes de langue et littérature françaises
publiées sous la direction de
Keith Busby, †M.J. Freeman,
Sjef Houppermans et Paul Pelckmans
Say It
The Performative Voice
in the Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett
Sarah West
AMSTERDAM - NEW YORK, NY 2010
Cover photo: © Yuri Arcurs | Dreamstime.com
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Contents
Acknowledgements 7
Abbreviations 9
Introduction 11
I. A Voice Within and Beyond the Twentieth Century 17
II. Genesis of the Performative Voice 27
III. Re-enacting Voices from the Past 41
1. Rewinding Memories: Krapp‟s Last Tape 41
2. Talking Ghosts: Embers 64
3. The Voice Closes In: Eh Joe 88
IV. Voice as Protagonist 107
1. Voice and Music: Cascando 107
2. Voice and Image: Not I 129
3. Voice and Movement: Ghost Trio 152
V. Voice from Page to Stage 173
1. Script or Text? A Piece of Monologue 173
2. Voice and Performative Text: Ohio Impromptu 190
3. Transformation of Voice: Company 215
Conclusion 243
Bibliography 249
Chronology 263
Index 273
I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Michael Pfeiffer at Univer-
sitat Pompeu Fabra for his invaluable contributions and continued
support during the writing of this book. I would also like to thank my
colleague Gerry Sweeney at ESADE for his insightful criticisms and
constant encouragement.
Abbreviations
The following abbreviations will be used to refer to works by Samuel
Beckett. Dates of writing, translation, first publication and perform-
ance are included in the chronology.
C Company (London: Picador, Pan Books Ltd., 1982).
D Disjecta. Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment,
Ruby Cohn (ed.), (London: John Calder, 1983).
DR Dream of Fair to Middling Women (London and New York:
Calder Publications Ltd. and Riverrun Press, 1996).
E Endgame (London: Faber and Faber, 1985).
EL Eleutheria (London: Faber and Faber, 1996).
HIS How It Is (London: John Calder, 1996).
ISIS Ill Seen Ill Said (London: John Calder, 1982).
M “Molloy”, in The Beckett Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, The
Unnamable (London: Picador, Pan Books Ltd., 1979).
MAC Mercier and Camier (London: John Calder, 1999).
MD “Malone Dies”, in The Beckett Trilogy: Molloy, Malone
Dies, The Unnamable (London: Picador, Pan Books Ltd.,
1979).
MUR Murphy (London: Picador, Pan Books Ltd., 1983).
P “Proust”, in Proust and Three Dialogues with Georges
Duthuit (London: John Calder, 1999).
TD “Three Dialogues: Samuel Beckett and Georges Duthuit”, in
Proust and Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit (London:
John Calder, 1999).
TFN “Texts for Nothing”, in The Complete Short Prose 1929-
1989 (New York: Grove Press, 1995).
U “The Unnamable”, in The Beckett Trilogy: Molloy, Malone
Dies, The Unnamable (London: Picador, Pan Books Ltd.,
1979).
W Watt (London: John Calder, 1998).
WFG Waiting for Godot (London: Faber and Faber, 1985).
WH Worstward Ho (London: John Calder, 1999).
Introduction
The acts of speaking and listening are paramount in Beckett‟s dramat-
ic works: seeing is not enough. As the stage play Catastrophe1 both
literally and visually illustrates, images must be said, and they must be
heard to have been said.
DIRECTOR: How‟s the skull?
ASSISTANT: You‟ve seen it.
DIRECTOR: I forget. Say it. (298)2
Given that saying is so central to Beckett‟s writing as a whole (it is the
subject of his first published work of fiction, “Assumption” (1929),
and his final poem, “What is the Word” (1989)3), it is surprising how
relatively little has been written about voice in his literature. The
enigma of voice in his work, the mystery of its location and source,
and his own literary voice in relation to twentieth century artistic prac-
tice, have all been explored, but the performative nature of voice has
so far received little critical attention.
The term „performative voice‟ has been used by Enoch Brater in his
critical study The Drama in the Text: Beckett‟s Late Fiction (1994),
and more recently by Jeanette Leigh Callet in an essay entitled “The
Performative Voice in Mallarmé‟s Poetic Reverie” (2004).4 Callet
considers the relationship between literature and music in Stéphane
Mallarmé‟s poetry, showing how voice acts as a unifying force be-
tween music and poetry. While the relationship between voice, lan-
guage and music is relevant to Beckett‟s work, and is discussed in
1 Catastrophe was originally written in French in 1982 and translated into English by
Samuel Beckett. Given that Beckett translated practically all of the French texts I
make reference to, I quote from the English translation throughout, and include the
original in footnotes where there is a notable difference between the two versions.
2 “Catastrophe”, in Samuel Beckett, Collected Shorter Plays (London: Faber and
Faber, 1984). Unless otherwise indicated, page numbers for the dramatic works refer
to this edition.
3 Originally written in French in 1988 under the title “Comment dire”.
4 Jeannette Leigh Callet, “The Performative Voice in Mallarmé‟s Poetic Reverie”, in
French Forum, vol. 28, no. 3 (2003), pp. 41-58.
12 Say It
relation to his radio plays, it is Brater‟s rather than Callet‟s use of the
term „performative voice‟ that comes closest to my own. He argues
that Beckett‟s language is „performative‟ in the sense that it is seeking
a voice to speak it: his prose demands to be read out loud. This study
focuses primarily on Beckett‟s dramatic works, and extends Brater‟s
use of the term to argue that the performative voice is not only lan-
guage looking for a way into sound, but is also a force which is re-
sponsible for creating and sustaining drama in the plays.
My aim is to find the performative voice in Beckett‟s dramatic works,
show how it performs, and determine what role it plays in the drama.
I have chosen to use the term „performative‟ as it encapsulates the
ideas of both the ambition and the capacity to perform.5 Voice in
Beckett‟s prose work has dramatic ambition: it “clamours” in the head
of the Unnamable (U, 281),6 but it does not have the means to sound;
it is trapped in print. When Beckett unleashes this voice in his drama,
it has „intentionality‟ (a will which drives it to speak) and „materiality‟
(it exists in sound). In the discussion of Beckett‟s plays I consider
both of these aspects of the performative voice, and probe the discrep-
ancies that often exist between them. In addition, as voices, once
„live‟, often strain away from spontaneous speech and back towards
reading, recital, and the control of written forms, I also examine the
performative voice in relation to spoken and written discourse.
The voices treated are various: they may visibly issue from a body, or
they may be „acousmatic‟,7 coming from an unknown source. The
embodied voice in Beckett‟s stage drama is frequently associated with
characters that are compelled to speak, like the three talking heads
5 My use of the term „performative voice‟ is distinct from the philosopher J. L. Aus-
tin‟s term „performative utterances‟. Austin distinguishes „constatives‟, sentences that
are true or false, from „performatives‟, utterances that not only say something, but
also do something. Austin gives the following example of a performative utterance:
“When I say „I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth‟ I do not describe the christening
ceremony, I actually perform the christening.” J. L. Austin, Philosophical Papers
(1990; 1961), p. 235. Also see “Performatives and Constatives” in J. L. Austin, How
to Do Things with Words (1962; 1990) pp. 1-11.
6 The Unnamable is the protagonist of The Unnamable, a novel originally written in
French 1949-50 under the title L‟Innommable.
7 See “The Acousmatics of the Voice” in Mladen Dolar‟s study of the theory of the
voice, A Voice and Nothing More (2006), pp. 60-71.
