What Where is Samuel Beckett's last play produced following a request for a new work for the 1983 Autumn Festival in Graz, Austria. It was written between February and March 1983 initially in French as Quoi où and translated by Beckett himself.
Synopsis
The play begins with a voice issuing forth from a dimly lit megaphone: "We are the last five."Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 310 Only four characters appear throughout the performance however, Bam, Bom, Bim, and Bem (an echo of Rimbaud's sonnet, "Voyelles") but the voice does not belong to a putativeThefreedictionary.com Bum, rather it is the "Voice of Bam".Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 309 The men are all dressed in identical grey gowns with the same long grey hair.
Before the drama proper commences there is a quick run through of the action without words. The four characters enter and exit, as they will all do later, in a style more reminiscent of Quad than the two Act Without Words mimes. Satisfied with this the Voice of Bam says, "Good,"Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 311 switches off the light and prepares us for the action.
The play follows a seasonal pattern. The voice tells us that it is spring and turns on the light. Bom enters from the north and is questioned by Bam as to the results of an interrogation. We do not learn who has been subjected to his ministrations – the assumption is Bum – only that he was given "the works", that he "wept", "screamed" and although he "[b]egged for mercy" he still refused to "say anything".Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 312
The voice is dissatisfied with how this scene is playing out and makes them start again. This time Bam asks whether Bom got the man to "say it" and then wants to know if Bom attempted to revive the man. Bom claims that he couldn't at which point Bam accuses him of lying saying that he had been given the information and he would also be subjected to the same grilling until he confessed.
Bim appears and asks what information he needs to extract from Bom. Bam maintains he only wants to know: "That he said it to him."Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 313 Bim wants to make sure that is all he needs to obtain and then he can stop. Bam tells him, "Yes."Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 314 Bam's voice repeats "not good, I start again". Bim then asks what is he to confess. Bam tells him that he needs to confess that he said "it" to him. Bim asks if that is all and Bam says "and what". Bim asks again and Bam says yes. Bim then calls Bom to come with him and they both exit.
The same scene is now replayed only it is summer. The Voice of Bam tells us that time has passed but no effort is made to visually convey this fact; it is simply stated. Bim reappears and is questioned. Bam wants to know if he said "it" but the voice is again unhappy and makes them start again. This time Bim is asked if he managed to find out "where" from Bom which he had not as he had not been asked to. In the end Bem appears and is told to find out "where" from Bim. Bem and Bim both exit like before.
We are again informed that time has passed. It is now autumn and Bem returns to report he has been unable to extract "where" from Bim. The voice no longer needs to hear the complete interchange and jumps to Bam accusing Bim of lying and threatening him with "the works". Since there is no one left to carry out his orders Bam escorts Bem away himself.
The voice tells us that winter has now arrived. Bam appears from the west and waits with his head bowed. There is no one left to ask if he got the information or to accuse him of lying if he has proven as unsuccessful as the others.
The voice tells us that he is alone now, "[i]n the present as were I still."Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett, p 316 There are no more journeys to make and nothing to do apart from let time pass. He leaves the audience to try to make sense of things on their own and switches the light off.
Sources of inspiration
Bim and Bom
Just as Beckett has a fondness for characters whose names begin with M, there are also a host of characters whose names end with an M.
From the time of his collection of stories More Pricks Than Kicks Bim and Bom appear periodically in Beckett's work. These were Russian clowns of the 1920s and '30s, who for a while were granted permission by the Soviet authorities to satirize the shortcomings of the state. There is a Wikipedia article on Bim Bom which treats the Russian clowns as if they were an individual.Time (6 December 1926) refers to "'Bim' and 'Bom' famed and beloved Russian clowns"Time.com as does the issue dated 30 April 1956.Time.com The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett has an entry for "Bim and Bom" (p 56) which also refers to them in the plural. James Knowlson in his biography of Beckett, Damned to Fame, suggests that the names may echo Richard Aldington's Enter Bim and Bom, the epilogue to his 1931 novel The Colonel's Daughter, on an English football field to comment upon the degeneration of English society and "became for Beckett emblems of human cruelty, disguised under a comic garb."Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett, (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p 56 They first appear in the short story Yellow, then in Murphy (along with Bum), in draft passages deleted from Waiting for Godot and Endgame, Bom and Bem pop up in How It Is before finally bowing out in What Where.
Schubert
"Beckett adored Franz Schubert's song cycle, Winterreise (Winter Journey) … [and ] used to listen spellbound to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's stunning recording of the songs … He also knew about his connections with the town of Graz [Schubert had stayed there for a time] … In the Schubert Lieder, the traveller in the opening poem, Gute Nacht (Good Night) has lost his love and journeys disconsolately from May into snowy winter … [This] provided Beckett with the formal structure of his play, moving from spring to winter … suggesting death."Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 685
Thomas Moore
In his notes for the German TV production, Beckett wrote "'For PA [i.e. playing area] the light of other days'.Reading University Library RUL 3097 And he admitted that he expressly associated this play with Thomas Moore's poignant poem, Oft, in the Stilly Night,Moore, T., Complete Poetical Works, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1895), p 224 which includes the lines 'Sad memory brings the light / Of other days around me'."
James Joyce
Earlier in his career, Beckett—a disciple of Joyce in his younger days—had previously contributed the essay, "Dante...Bruno.Vico..Joyce" in the critical anthology, Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress, a work meant to prepare the reading public for what would be the final phase in Joyce's writing.
It is possible that Beckett may have been inspired to name his characters from the sixth verse of the so-called "Ballad of Humpty Dumpty" in Finnegans Wake:
So snug he was in his hotel premises sumptuous But soon we'll bonfire all his trash, tricks and trumpery And'tis short till sheriff Clancy'll be winding up his unlimited company With the bailiff's bom at the door, (Chorus) Bimbam at the door. Then he'll bum no more.James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (London: Faber and Faber, 1939. New York: Penguin Group, 1999) 46.5-11 Notice that, just as "Bum" is the only unspoken name in Beckett's "last five," so too is "Bem" the only vowel variant missing from Joyce's wordplay. More importantly, however, is the context that Joyce's combination of "bom," "Bimbam," and "bum" suggest. The percussive "bailiff's bom at the door," immediately followed by "Bimbam at the door," all suggest physical intimidation by agents of the state—something which could only have informed Beckett's choice in naming his characters, even if Joyce's work was not his only source of inspiration.
Interpretation
As with many of Beckett's later works for the stage and television, one definitive interpretation of What Where has proven elusive. A clear totalitarian edge exists which is why many opt for a political reading but, as with Catastrophe before it, there is more going on here. It can also be interpreted as a portrait of a single consciousness engaged in a self-reflective act. When the Voice of Bam wants the action to restart, rather than instruct the two player to "Start again," it says – significantly – "I start again" suggesting that the words and actions of the two men are being directly controlled, remembered or imagined by the consciousness behind the voice, presumably the Bam as he is in the present.
A political reading cannot be simply dismissed though since Beckett himself "briefly entertained making each character wear a tarboosh, fezlike headgear associated with Armenians."Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett, (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p 642 Even today "[t]orture and ill-treatment in police custody remain widespread in Armenia. Torture usually occurs in pre-trial detention with the aim of coercing a confession or evidence against third parties."Quotation from Human Rights Watch website HRW.org
Beckett is famously reported as saying of What Where: "I don't know what it means. Don't ask me what it means. It's an object." There is clearly a danger in taking this remark at face value. Beckett undoubtedly had something quite specific in mind as can be seen in the way he moulded his vision over the three productions in America, Germany and France detailed below. One significant remark he did make was that the Voice of Bam could be thought as coming from "beyond the grave".Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 686
Beckett, in Proust, calls memory "some miracle of analogy;" he qualifies it in the preceding phrase as "an accident".Beckett, S., Proust (New York: Riverrun, 1989), p 72 The inability to remember, to get at the truth, is a focal point in much of his work. Beckett's characters (e.g. May in Footfalls, Mouth in Not I) seem doomed to repeat themselves, as much as the accidents or miracles of analogy allow them some momentary insight into their situations. For Beckett, memory is second-hand knowledge. You were not there. Another "you" was. Can you trust what he says he saw and heard?
This would not be the first time Beckett has fragmented an individual for dramatic effect (e.g. That Time or Ohio Impromptu). Beckett believes people to be in a continual state of flux, often finding it hard to relate to earlier versions of their own selves (e.g. Krapp: Just been listening to that stupid bastard I took myself for thirty years ago, hard to believe I was ever as bad as that.Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 62). With each passing day "we are other", Beckett notes in his monograph, "no longer what we were before the calamity of yesterday."Beckett, S., Proust: And Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit, (London: Calderbooks, 1987) p 13 Bam is not wallowing in nostalgia though (like the women in Come and Go), rather he is trying to remember something – an "it", a "when", a "where" – that insists on remaining just out of reach.