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Beckett started his literary career as a translator in 1930. He published
among other things translations of poems in verse by André Breton,
Paul Eluard, René Crevel, and Guillaume Apollinaire. His experiences
a translator served him well; in 1945, he began to use the French languages
the primary form of his literary expression.
We need not talk about the author and his life, a life composed only of
words. "Words, words, my life was never more than that, the seal of
silences and words at random, my life which I say to be over, or to come,or
ongoing, hanging on words, hanging on hours, may it linger on some more
in this odd sort of way." Beckett's life and biography can be summarized
in one way thus: words. Who else loved words as much as he? Words are his
companions, his only real support. He who steered clear of claiming any
absolutes, finds himself on firm ground with words.
Beckett originally wrote Krapp's Last Tape in English. He first intended
it as a radio show, but decided instead to turn it into a theatrical play
and to present it with another creation in English, Endgame . These
plays thus opened together in 1958 in London. Shortly thereafter, Beckett
undertook the adaptation the play in French. It was introduced in 1960 at
the theater Récamier in Paris with Roger Blin as director. Blin had
already directed many of Beckett's plays including Waiting for Godot
in 1953 and Endgame in 1957. Later, Blin directed Madeleine Renaud
in Happy Days . In Krapp's Last Tape, Krapp's role was performed
by R. J. Chauffard though Beckett had wished that Blin play the role himself.
It is interesting to note that many comedians refused to play the roles
offered to them in Beckett's plays possibly because they found his complex
and cryptic characters to be intimidating or even bewildering.
Krapp's Last Tape is a plotless monodrama about an old man named
Krapp who confronts various moments of his past by listening to reels of
himself talking -- reels he had recorded 30 years previously. Rarely has
the depressing plurality of the moments of one's life been brought to light
in such a poignant way; this was made possible thanks to a device that had
barely begun to make its way into people's daily lives at the time that
Beckett wrote his play. Krapp is a clown. He listens to his recordings while
eating bananas. Twice the clown, now an alcoholic, leaves the room for a
drink. He guffaws and makes gestures of impatience...
It was Beckett's modern and theatrical idea to replace the word and the
page with the recorder and the reel -- concrete and visual symbols of the
passage of time. Likewise, the character is no longer one who talks, but
rather one who listens to himself, who voyages back to meet his multiple
pasts. Although only one character appears on stage, the monologue turns
into a dialogue; a conversation emerges between the aged and faltering clown
and the hopeful voice of the youthful Krapp.