Selfhood and Story: a Short Reaction to Beckett’s “A Piece of Monologue”
The only other Beckett I’ve read is Molloy, which introduced me to the concept of a “poioumenon” - a work that is a story about the process of making a story. While I don’t think that “A Piece of Monologue” is a poioumenon to the same degree that Molloy is, keeping that concept in mind helped me wrestle with some of what was at work in the piece. For example, the line, “foot of pallet just visible edge of frame” bears similarity to the stage direction included in the beginning. This adds weight to the concept that the character of this monologue is secondary to the process or state of being that his words portray.
I see further evidence for character-as-subordinate in the total linguistic removal of subjects and possessives from their sentences. The deletion (“holds it in left hand” instead of “he holds it in his left hand”) informs the themes of the monologue more than it indicates the character’s casual speech. Furthermore, and even more unsettling, is the effect that the deletion produces: although there is no subject in the sentences, the actions are still happening. The reader can only assume who is performing the actions, but taking away the directness of the information destabilizes the sentences. It’s also worth bearing in mind that these actions are described but not indicated as stage directions, which makes this monologue both performative and dizzyingly not at the same time.
If there is nothing happening, but the words are saying that there is, is it still a play? Or, as the question was posed in class, is the play different from its script? Rather than outline difference, the monologue approaches a border, or enters a space that is not binary. A play exists in many forms and they are all part of the same (w)hole.
It is rather a sequence of images about light and dark, death and birth, both the process of performing/creating a monologue and being one, but we as readers can still turn it into a semblance of a story ourselves. It reminds me of the Arthur Miller quote discussing what the audience is capable of. He wrote: “It is not true that conventionalism is demanded. They will move with you anywhere, they will believe right into the moon so long as you believe who tell them this tale. We are at the beginning of many explosions of form. They are waiting for wonders.”
And even if it does take a circuitous route to arrive (what with the explosion of form), even if the character in it is secondary, there is story in this monologue. The repetition of “…he all but said loved one” adds pace and gives us a phrase to hold on to, like a song refrain or a repeated line in epic poem of antiquity. The repetitions, the intriguing linguistic aspects – all these are enough for me to know, at the end of this monologue, that something just happened.