Human Machines Petrified: Play's Mineral Mechanics and Les statues meurent aussi. Issue 2 (September 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Beloborodova, Olga; Verhulst, Pim
• Is Part Of: Journal of Beckett studies. Volume 28:Issue 2(2019)
• Page Start: 179
• Page End: 196
• Publication Date: 2019-09
• Subjects: Alain Resnais -- Play/Comédie -- sculpture -- intermediality -- (non)human; English literature -- Periodicals; French literature -- Periodicals; Periodicals; 848.91409
• DOI: 10.3366/jobs.2019.0267
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0309-5207

Abstract

Abstract : Play is usually regarded as the starting point of Beckett's late theatre, introducing a radically new approach to the body and language that set a benchmark for subsequent plays such as Not I, That Time and Footfalls . Building on Krapp's Last Tape and Happy Days, Play dehumanizes its characters by means of the audiovisual technologies that Beckett was experimenting with at the time. In this process, his human subjects are increasingly reduced to mechanical devices or mouthpieces for the conveyance of speech, instead of represented as recognizable and sentient beings of flesh and blood. The nonhuman aspect of Play is enhanced by its foregrounding of Beckett's long-standing fascination with the mineral, with the characters' faces being ' so lost to age and aspect as to seem almost part of the urns '. Whereas, separately, the influence of radio, television and cinema on Play has received some critical attention, and James Knowlson, Claire Lozier, Mark Nixon, Jean-Michel Rabaté and Conor Carville, among others, have noted Beckett's fascination with the sculptural arts and the inorganic, this paper aims to merge those two strands by discussing the docufilm Les statues meurent aussi (1953) as a potential but overlooked source of inspiration. By combining the technological and the sculptural in Play, Beckett stages a 'mineral mechanics' verging closely on the nonhuman without being fully dehumanized, as characters continue to laugh and hiccup, barely retaining a trace of their humanity. This oscillation from the human to the nonhuman and vice versa is clearly traceable in the genesis of the text, as well as its French translation ( Comédie ). The result, Play 's iconic stage image, is marked by the familiar Beckettian trope of in-betweenness: between life and death, between the organic and the mineral, between the natural and the technological.