Notes from the Underground: Waiting for Godot and Endgame

Summary

There is nothing so stimulating as nothing, at least now and then.

—Max Frisch, Diary

You could not be born at a better period than the present, when we have lost everything.

—Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

Horatio: Oh, day and night, but this is wondrous strange!

Hamlet: And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.

A woman once asked Chekhov: “What is the meaning of life?” He replied, “You ask me, what is life? It is just as if you had said, what is a carrot? A carrot is a carrot; that is all there is to it.”

I have a feeling he really knew there was more to it than that, but a goodly amount of art in our time has been created or talked about to put off people who are always looking for meaning. That is why so much of it has acquired the reputation of being without meaning. The artists encourage this. Eliot says he would tell us the meaning of Sweeney Agonistes if he knew; Beckett says he would tell us who Godot is if he knew. In a discussion after our production of Godot, a chemist insisted it couldn't be a good play because there was no meaning, no message. “I want to know the message,” he said, pounding the table.