Lagarce, J'étais dans ma maison.../2

15 Dezembro 2023, 14:00 • Chiara Nifosi

During this final session of the semester, we completed our discussion of Lagarce's play. In the first part of the session, students presented their work on the play and highlighted the following aspects: longing and nostalgia; lack of real communication; suffering and isolation. According to the students, the complexity of family relations and the intentional lack of definition of the exact contours of the story seem to constitute the main content of the story. The close reading focused, among other things, on the room of the young brother as the center of the emotional energy of the play, as well as the main center of power. Then, we tried to counter this idea by reflecting on the actual agency of the five protagonists: as women, they are in charge of a household from which men have disappeared; while their life revolves around the figure of the brother and was very much determined by his opposition to the father, the return of the former allows for the verbalization of inner (repressed?) struggles; we also saw in this process the attempt to at least claim the opportunity to give their own account of past events. The gender component, then, is key to understand the implications of this play, which, as in Beckett, seems to offer very little progression in terms of action and focus, on the contrary, on language itself.

Lagarce, J'étais dans ma maison.../1

13 Dezembro 2023, 14:00 • Chiara Nifosi

Today, we discussed Lagarce's play J'étais dans ma maison et j'attendais que la pluie vienne, which is also the final text that we are going to read this semester. I gave some contextual elements about the play, especially its insertion into a trilogy that deals with the theme of the return of the prodigal son (Juste la fin du monde, Le Pays lointain + trailer of Xavier Dolan's movie available in slides). After that, we discussed the title of the play, which also corresponds to the first words uttered by the character “L’aînée”. We analyzed her very first words and looked for indications of time and space. While we have indications of a house in the middle of the countryside, no other indication helps situate the story in time and/or place, thus leaving the interpretation quite open. 

We analyzed some other passages that highlighted the very peculiar chronology built by the author: the use of multiple verbal tenses in a constant attempt to “rewrite” the events and reinterpret the past in light of what was and what could have been (présent, imparfait, passé composé, plus-que-parfait, subjonctif, conditionnel). 

Moreover, we discussed the spatial organization of the scene by referring to Barthes’ analysis of the spaces of tragedy in Racine’s theater (chambre / anti-chambre / extérieur). See slides for further details.

Finally, we read a couple of excerpts from the synopsis written by Lagarce, where he describes the situation of these five women through a musical metaphor (“pavane”): the slow dance of these women around the (absent) body of the jeune frère seems to relegate them to complete passivity. 

Beckett, Fin de partie/3

6 Dezembro 2023, 14:00 • Chiara Nifosi

In the first part of the class, students presented their work on Beckett’s play and highlighted the following themes: the futility of language faced with a reality that holds no apparent meaning; the cyclical pattern of time; the absurd as a means to question traditional logic. After the presentation we discussed possible interpretations of the play that may redeem its presumed lack of meaning, starting from the paradoxical idea that characterizes Beckett’s writing: lack of progression in terms of action, in fact, coexists with a profusion of language (testified by a less rarefied presence of speech in the last part of the play). We also discussed how Beckett’s work on language challenges bonds of referentiality (we mentioned Saussure’s theory of the sign).

Finally, we discussed Hamm’s final monologue(s) and the possibility that language offers to develop a minimal / nuclear form of self-awareness. 

Samuel Beckett, Fin de partie/2

29 Novembro 2023, 14:00 • Chiara Nifosi

Today we continued our discussion of Beckett's play. After a presentation prepared by the students on the topics of misery/suffering and codependence/companionship in the play, we continued to reflect on the relationship between Hamm and Clov, especially intended as a master/slave kind of relationship that entails inevitable power dynamics between the two. In this sense, we discussed stage directions that define Hamm and Clov's attitudes towards each other and some individual characterizations (e.g., Clov's love for order and tidiness, which generated an interesting debate on the use of irony/sarcasm by Clov as rhetorical weapons of revolt and/or defense).

Samuel Beckett, Fin de partie/1

24 Novembro 2023, 14:00 • Chiara Nifosi

During this first class on Beckett's Fin de partie / Endgame, I gave some biographical information author--namely his relationship with his native country, Ireland, and the choice to write a part of his literary production originally in French. In order to define some typical aspects of his theater, we analyzed the definition of the adjective "Beckettian" (see slides Week 12) and we tried to apply some keywords of this definition to the first part of the play, especially the characterization of Hamm and Clov. Before diving into the text, we also read a couple of quotes about the idea anticipated by Delbo in Qui rapportera ces paroles ?, i.e., the death of the subject, and Beckett's modus operandi as a writer, a method that is very much based on subtraction.