Beckett at the time of Coronavirus

This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)

I wrote before about Beckett in relation to Tolkien; even to Pokemons.

It’s not my fault.

It’s his merit.

It’s Five days To Saint Patrick’s. The Saint Patrick’s day that won’t happen. Five days to the Pre – San Patrizio Livorno Festival that won’t happen.

On Saint Patrick’s day I would have given a talk about Marxism in Roddy Doyle. Ubi virus, SPLF cessat.

I have heard the SPLF named as my brainchild. Maybe, in 1 year, we’ll celebrate and we’ll have a great SPLF. Maybe not, but; and the SPLF will share the doom hoped (because it’s hope, in All That Fall, right? Or it’s just my interpretation of it, of that nip some doom in the bud?) for other children, the whole lot of them, by Beckett.

Yes, it’s true: we are dealing with an emergency. I mean: mankind. There are worse ones. From much more time. This is more evident. Mankind love evidence.

Italy, at the moment, is the center of the emergency. I do not know if it’s so, if “the center” is still China. China would be less evident from here, but. Italy is, at the moment, the center of the emergency from a western world point of view (not forgetting, quoting Mr B who was quoting someone else, I don’t remember whom right now, the real question would be: the centre of what?). I came back from there two weeks ago. I self-isolated, but for a trip to Fallon & Byrne. I confess. But I had washed my hands, and I didn’t – I don’t – sneeze.

I am realising that, with my kind of job (and, well: of attitude) my normal life is not that different from self-isolation.

I am in Dublino, I am at home, waiting for seeing what will happen. Because the feeling that the Coronavirus is not Godot: it’s coming indeed.

From here, from this almost normal life, I watch Italy. Through social media; hence through two filters: the actual medium; the user. I watch Italy through WhatsApp and news agencies sites. I watch Italy through the Whatsapp messages back and forth with my niece and nephew: trying to imagine if they are concerned, and how much.

While asking to myself: will everything be fine?

But, at the same time, inside me, there is the backbrain at work. I do not know if it is Pascoli’s fanciullino, after all. Backbrain sounds better for sure. I didn’t even coin the name, by the way. It’s Marco’s. A friend from another life. But still a friend indeed.

The backbrain, while I was reading news, browsing messages, trying to understand the feelings behind Niece’s and nephew’s emoticons, was thinking about how Beckettian, the whole of this is. How loud it screams Beckett-ly.

In these very moments you are having millions of Krapp in Italy. Many of them still sedated by TV. That Enzensbergerian nothingness. But others recording their, if only potentially, tapes. Digitally, on paper, or whatever.

There are interrupted love affairs. The impossibility of touching the other of Play.

There are separations that can’t be separated, now. A mandatory, unwanted togetherness, made by an opposite necessity.

Couples.

Hamm and Clov, I mean. Add more to spice things up: stuck to Endgame, add some infirms: bring Nagg and Nell in.

I perfectly remember Clov watching outside. Where there was nothing to see anymore.

And what about being forced to share a small space in the wrong… Company: Indeed it might be argued the lower the better (?!).

There are the fugitives. Didn’t they watch 28 Days Later and all that zombie shit (it’s so intriguing the fact that an enemy endlessly replicating itself is the perfect fit for TV series doped with plot holes, the kind of by-product of what I define the pornography of everything)?

They didn’t read Beckett, but.

He knows trying to escape is useless, and, to make it crystal clear, he gives you characters with no legs. Or half buried in a bin or a jar. Or just half buried, like Winnie in Happy Days.

They will wait (we will too: it’s just a matter of time) for Godot.

The problem is we don’t know what Godot is going to be. The end, of course, But the end of what?

Now and then it comes back to my mind that 1 – star review of Waiting for Godot from a user on some social media.

I wasn’t disturbed by the imbecility of the thing.

And, frankly, I don’t know if I’ll ever write that thriller in which the victim is the one who gave 1 star to Waiting for Godot, the culprit having all the well deserved extenuating circumstances…

I was just envious.

Envious because for giving 1 star to Waiting for Godot you have to be a very lucky guy, who never experienced the excruciating human condition of having to wait for something; for someone. Envious because sometimes I was waiting for two, three Godot, and they were not coming, while bad news were flowing in, instead.

Well: now, maybe, even Mr 1 star know what it means…

Ecco, magari ora quello che aveva dato una stellina lo sa, lo sa anche lui, ora, cosa vuol dire.