The Last Band

the Last Band is a text of theater of Samuel Beckett.

The author initially intended to write for the English radio, but it quickly decided to intend for the representation this very short text (some pages whose English title is Krapp' S Last Tape ) which was assembled in complement of Fin of part and was played in English in 1958 .

Samuel Beckett translated it itself into French - with the assistance of Pierre Leyris - in 1960 and work, since, is often put in scene, sometimes associated with other short parts of the author.

Work analyzes

In this " monodrame" as it sometimes is qualified, the old man Krapp, writer missed and clochardized, soliloquy by réécoutant an old magnetic band, left newspaper where he testified to the happiness of his love and his afflicting rupture. Confronted thirty or forty years later with the vacuum, it seems to give direction to its life only while remembering, with nostalgia and derision, in a " monolog sentimental" " beautiful days of happiness indicible" what evokes Verlaine at the end of the Gallant Fêtes and which Beckett will take again for title in a famous work. The words of the past survive and testify: it is with them that despite everything the old man like other characters becketiens - Villie in Oh is hung up again! the beautiful days, for example.

" I liked! " seem it to say with the romanticism of Perdican of Musset, revealing a underestimated face of Samuel Beckett whom one too easily reduces to the feeling absurdity.

Quotation

( It listens to the old band ): " I still said that seemed to me without hope and not the sorrow to continue. And it made yes without opening the eyes. (Pause) I asked him to look at me and after a few moments - (pause) - and after a few moments, it did it, but the eyes like slits because of the sun. I leant on it so that they are in the shade and they opened. (Pause) let Me enter. (Pause) We derived among the reeds and the boat was wedged. As it yielded with a sigh in front of the prow, I ran myself on it, my face in his center and my hand on it. We remained lying there. Without stirring up. But under us, all stirred up, and stirred up us, gently, the top in bottom, and on one side to the autre."

- Spent midnight. Ever heard similar silence. The ground could be uninhabited. (END)

Random links: