Abstract
1952 Paris was not a silent place. Earlier, after the bombs fell on Europe, there was not exactly calm after the storm. Even though a renewed hope in peace briefly followed the end of the war, immediately after there was the overwhelming prospect of rebuilding Europe after the devastation it had endured.3 As I attempt to show, the nonlinear historical progression following WWII provided 1952 Paris with a situation rife with philosophical conflict. The philosophical (and, in a sense, political) debate that Camus and Sartre had in Les Temps modernes in mid-1952 was indicative of the historical moment, much like the philosophical conversations that Samuel Beckett engaged with in Waiting for Godot. I argue that Waiting for Godot explores the same (epistemological) dilemma that Merleau-Ponty says defined his era: being versus doing.
En attendant, essayons de converser sans nous exalter, puisque nous sommes incapables de nous taire.1
In the meantime let us try and converse calmly, since we are incapable of keeping silent.2
—Estragon in Waiting for Godot
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Notes
Samuel Beckett, En attendant Godot (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1952) 87.
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (New York: Grove Press, 1954) 40.
Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2005) 86.
Alan S. Milward, The Reconstruction of Western Europe: 1945–1951 [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984] 494.
Herbert R. Lottmann, The Left Bank: Writers, Artists, and Politics from the Popular Front to the Cold War [Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1982] 265–266).
Charles Forsdick, “Camus and Sartre: The Great Quarrel,” The Cambridge Companion to Camus, ed. Edward J. Hughes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) 118–130.
Michael Kelly, The Cultural and Intellectual Rebuilding of France after the Second World War [Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004] 161–162.
David Drake, Intellectuals and Politics in Post-War France (London: Palgrave, 2002) 3–4.
see, Anna Boschetti, The Intellectual Enterprise: Sartre and Les Temps Modernes, trans. Richard C. McCleary (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988).
See, Annie Cohen-Solal, Sartre: A Life, trans. Anna Cancogni, ed. Norman Macafee (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987) 327–331.
Germaine Brée, Camus and Sartre: Crisis and Commitment [NewYork: Delacorte Press, 1972] 6–7).
see Leo Pollmann, Sartre and Camus: Literature of Existence, trans. Helen and Gregor Sebba (New York: Frederik Ungar Publishing Co., 1970).
see, Peter Royle, The Sartre-Camus Controversy: A Literary and Philosophical Critique (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1982).
Edward J. Hughes, The Cambridge Companion to Camus, (Camridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
Christina Howells, The Cambridge Companion to Sartre, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt (New York: Vintage Books, 1956) 15.
Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism,” Existentialism: From Dostoevsky to Sartre, ed. Walter Kaufman (New York: Plume Book, 1975) 349.
Ronald Aronson, Camus and Sartre: The Story of a Friendship and the Quarrel That Ended It (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004) 115.
Francis Jeanson, “Albert Camus, of The Soul in Revolt,” Sartre and Camus: A Historic Confrontation, ed. and trans. David A. Sprintzen and Adrian van der Hoven (Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 2004) 95–96.
Albert Camus, “A Letter to the Editor of Les Temps modernes,” Sartre and Camus: A Historic Confrontation, ed. and trans. David A. Sprintzen and Adrian van der Hoven (Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 2004) 111–112.
Jean-Paul Sartre, “Reply to Albert Camus,” Sartre and Camus: A Historic Confrontation, ed. and trans. David A. Sprintzen and Adrian van der Hoven (Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 2004) 155.
Michael Y. Bennett, Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd: Camus, Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, and Pinter (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) 27–51.
Michael Y. Bennett, “‘The Essential Doesn’t Change’: Essence Precedes Experience and Cartesian Rationalism in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot,” Notes on Contemporary Literature 42.1 (January 2012): 6).
Vreneli Farber, “Review of Waiting for Godot,” Theatre Journal 53.4 (December 2001): 653.
Michael Y. Bennett, “Review of Waiting for Godot,” Theatre Journal 62.1 (March 2010): 110.
Holland Cotter, “A Broken City. A Tree. Evening,” The New York Times December 2, 2007: 2:1.
Michael Y. Bennett, “Sartre’s ‘The Wall’ and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: Existential and Non-Existential Nothingness,” Notes on Contemporary Literature 39.5 (November 2009): 2–3.
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© 2012 Michael Y. Bennett
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Bennett, M.Y. (2012). 1952 Paris: Waiting for Godot and the Great Quarrel. In: Words, Space, and the Audience. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137052599_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137052599_4
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