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Fortress Beckett. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
To subscribe to a creed of any kind, political or religious, would have been to have faith, of which Beckett never had a shred, at least not in the conventional sense ...
I'm not sure about that. Genuine faith, I think, makes one cautious, at the very least, regarding articles of faith.
... it was in those ordinary decencies–drink, food, conversation–that Beckett believed, and in Art, and in little else.
Again, I think it is genuine faith that is likely to inspire reverence for such "ordinary decencies."
Well, Frank, my reading of WAITING FOR GODOT persuades me that Beckett may have rejected fixed ideologies (i.e., conventions and doctrines of religions) but he was very much concerned with the vague (perhaps remote) possibilities of the legitimacy of faith in something or someone beyond an observable existence. Beckett, like his characters in GODOT, was indeed--like the rest of us in life--simply waiting. And waiting, after all, is not the same thing is denial.
ReplyDeleteI tend to agree. I tend to view Beckett as a wounded agnostic, perhaps sensing Something Larger out there, some Mystery, but unable to accept any conventional human-made definitions or forms of faith. I can understand that, as I often share that viewpoint.
ReplyDeleteBeckett was on the cusp of the historical period in which all the old maps were proven to be invalid, but there weren't any new maps as yet to replace them. I think we're still on that cusp, actually—which is why the infighting has gotten so fierce.