‘Beautiful in Its Time’: A reflection on ‘Endgame’ through the lens of Ecclesiastes By: Elsa Bentz

This reflection piece was created in response to my reflections on Beckett’s ‘Endgame’. While the play offers ample material in striking parallel to our currently isolated world, what commanded my attention was the piece’s fascination with meaninglessness. As a work of existentialist drama this is run-of-the-mill thematic material; however, what intrigues me most about an existentialist viewpoint is the vacuum for response it leaves in its wake. What does one say against a worldview in which language itself is meaningless? There even comes a point in the dialogue where Hamm muses to himself while Beckett, using the character as a mouthpiece, warns any aspiring philosophers away from constructing a meaning out of his words for, he asserts, there is none. And indeed the dialogue is filled with false starts from beginning to end; I found myself in a cyclical pattern of hope on the cusp of burgeoning meaning, only to be dashed from the precipice as Hamm, Clove, Nagg, or Nell diverted the inane flow of their thoughts down another rabbit-hole.

My search for dialogical meaning thwarted, I turned instead to the subtle and impressively academic references within the fragmented flow of the play where I was immediately drawn to the line: “Moment upon moment, pattering down, like the millet grains of...that old Greek, and all life long you wait for that to mount up to a life” (Beckett 23). Upon investigation, “that old Greek” refers to the philosopher Zeno who’s philosophical fame has lived on through a series of infamously unanswerable paradoxes he posed, one of them having to do with millet seeds and sound. This seemed an appropriate reference for an existentialist playwright to make, but I was struck more by the common symbological connection between agriculture and life that the positioning of this reference highlighted. My thoughts immediately flew to Christ’s parable of the sower recorded in the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and Mark in which the word of God is likened to seeds sown in varying types of soil to grow with differing success. But while the semiotic devices shared between these three instances of paradox, play, and parable are fascinating, what kind of significant comparison or reflection can be made between the inherently objective and meaning-rich teachings of Christ and the meaninglessness of existentialist thought?

My mind then turned instead to the only existentialist text of the Judeo-Christian scriptures: the book of Ecclesiastes. The writer of Ecclesiastes considers a world devoid of God and therefore bereft of meaning. He quickly arrives at the same conclusion as Beckett: “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all at which he toils under the sun?...All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing or the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecc. 1:2-9). However, the author does not stop there, instead he examines every possible avenue of pleasure and meaning. He seeks purpose in wealth, honor, feasting, sex, and wisdom and finds each in their turn to be worth nothing in a world without the grounding principle of divine agency. The writer concludes: “I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil--this is God’s gift to man...And I commend joy, for man has nothing better under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun” (Ecc. 3:12-13, Ecc. 8:15). In searching for meaning and purpose in a godless reality, the writer, like myself, has been ensnared in the circuitous vacuum of existential despair. Instead of constructing a philosophical rebuttal of existentialist thought, which itself would also be found meaningless, the writer chooses joy. He chooses joy in the menial, mundanity of life, in toil, in eating and drinking, and in love. He chooses to see all as gift. This is what ‘Endgame’ fails to do. It offers no answer to its existential groanings, I believe, because in its heart of hearts, it does not want to. Hamm is sunk in apathy and he refuses to stand up because that is what is easiest. It is far simpler to choose ingratitude and despair in the face of everyday evils than it is to choose to rejoice in the work and lives we have been given. The only answer, in my opinion, to existentialism is to consciously choose to be and live otherwise.

This brings me to my painting. I have titled this piece: “Beautiful in Its Time”, another excerpt from Ecclesiastes. I wanted to take everything that I had just wrestled through and communicate it both simply and powerfully. I chose the red and yellow color palette because it best communicates the scorching, drought of a meaningless existentialist worldview that the characters in the apocalyptic setting of ‘Endgame’ embody, while simultaneously evoking the warmth at the end of a long day toiling in the field. The brown fields and solitary sprout are my way of incorporating the heavily agricultural language of Ecclesiastes and the millet seeds of Zeno’s paradox. The sprout growing above represents also all that will come after the brief span of our lives. And while my original plan was to populate the fields with little painted seeds, I chose the simplicity of a singular sprout because it turns out that a whole pile of millet seeds, a whole pile of moments is not needed to add up to a life. The sun centers my piece as a reference to the ‘nothing new under the sun’ refrain of Ecclesiastes. The skull lying buried in the fields hearkens back to the skull trope popular in the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic traditions, while incorporating the desirability of death in ‘Endgame’ as the only solution to the torments of an existentialist worldview. I wanted to make this symbol of death the main focal point of my piece because I think it strikes at the heart of my reflective conclusion. As the Preacher says: “All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return...So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot” (Ecc. 3:20-22). I, like the writer, conclude that death comes to all alike, as does suffering and toil. In the face of this, as in the face of our current crisis, there is nothing to do but live; consequently, there is no way to exist bearably other than to choose joy for, as the writer has said, that is God’s gift to man.

Citations

Ecclesiastes (ESV)

Beckett, Samuel. “Endgame”. 1957. PDF file.