Pozzo: (suddenly furious). Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It’s abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we’ll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? (Calmer.) They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, 1952
The bleakest bastard who ever put pen to paper, and somehow, impossibly, funny.
Waiting for Godot, 1953. Two guys waiting for someone who never comes. That’s it. That’s the play. Nothing happens. Twice. It changed theatre forever. Absurdism. Existentialism. The meaninglessness of existence laid bare on a stage with minimal props and maximum despair.
Endgame. Krapp’s Last Tape. Happy Days, a woman buried up to her waist in dirt, then up to her neck, still talking, still going on. That’s life, according to Beckett. We keep talking, keep waiting, keep going even when there’s no point.
Minimalist. Every word mattered. Cut everything that wasn’t essential. Silence was part of the language. Pauses meant something.
Lived in Paris most of his life. Wrote in French first, then translated himself into English. Why? Control. Precision. The discipline of working in a second language forced him to strip everything down even further.
World War II: Resistance fighter. Literally. Worked for the French Resistance, barely escaped the Gestapo. After the war, didn’t talk about it much. Just went back to writing about nothingness.
1969: won the Nobel Prize. Didn’t go to the ceremony. Sent his publisher instead. Fame made him uncomfortable.
I met him once in Paris with my father at his apartment. I was eight, maybe nine. He was kind. Funny. Charming, even. Talked to me like I was an actual person, not just some kid to be tolerated. The man who wrote about despair had warmth.
That encounter changed how I later read his work. I saw the Laurel and Hardy in it. The Buster Keaton. The physical comedy, the pratfalls, the ridiculous repetition. It’s not just despair, it’s absurd, and absurd is funny. The two tramps in Godot are vaudeville performers stuck in an existential nightmare. That’s the point.
And here’s what stuck with me: as an adult and now father, I try to listen to kids. Pay attention. Treat them with the same respect he showed me that day. Because he didn’t have to. He could’ve brushed me off, ignored me, done the polite nod and moved on. He didn’t.
Shot on infrared film in Cimetière du Montparnasse. Signed Limited Edition 11” x17” print of 10; stamped on verso. Professional black & white printing on Hahnemühle fibre-based Matt paper.