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Bopy, THE GAZE, AND ABSTRACTION: FROM SAMUEL BECKETT TO BRUCE NAUMAN
absent, as if to point to the “angle of immunity”!° which, situated behind the
viewer’s back, allows for unified representation to take form in accordance
with the laws of perspective. Movement here is considered independently of
any notion of place or sight. The alternation between north and south involves
that of the bust and each leg successively pointing in opposite directions.
This splitting is itself enveloped in an overall division: in order to head from
west to east, Watt must alternate between north and south, describing a line
perpendicular to the former. He also advances in a pointedly paradoxical way:
“headlong tardigrade.”" It thus seems that Watt does not move forward, but
rather executes radiating gestures.
The adverbial complements are revealing: with each movement, Watt seeks
to “turn” and “fling” “as far as possible.” It is as if he were seeking, on the
one hand, to attain maximal extension in space, in order to reach the point
of absolute north or south and, on the other hand, to ascertain the limits of
what Beckett calls elsewhere “the field of the possible.” This also means that
Watt’s walking supposes an initial, overall calculation, whereby he decides on
a destination, and submits himself to the arduous task of “tacking”: accepting
a form of detour that excludes any reference to tangible space.
ABSTRACTION
The abstract, geometrical division of space, which frames the movement of
Beckett’s characters, is omnipresent in his work. In What Where and ...but
the clouds..., the cardinal points determine the playing area, while the woman
in Rockaby searches for an alter ego, turning her eyes systematically along
horizontal and vertical axes: “all eyes / all sides / high and low.”* Her “going
to and fro” repeats the “come and go” motif that, in the incipit of A Piece of
Monologue, is associated with the original inscription in human existence:"®
“Birth was the death of him. [...] From mammy to nanny and back. All the
way. Bandied back and forth. So ghastly grinning on.”"®
10 Samuel Beckett: Film, in The Complete Dramatic Works, London, Faber & Faber, 2006, 324.
HU Beckett: Watt, 30.
2 Ibid.
13 Samuel Beckett: Disjecta, London, John Calder, 1983, 139.
Samuel Beckett: Rockaby, in The Complete Dramatic Works, 435.
Taken, for example, from Job 1:7 (cf. Chris Ackerley’s notes on Texts for Nothing, Paris,
Lettres modernes — Minard, La Revue des Lettres modernes; Serie Samuel Beckett, no. 5.
2018, # 3.4).
Samuel Beckett: A Piece of Monologue, in The Complete Dramatic Works, 425.
* 103