THE WANDERING JEW IN SAMUEL BECKETT'S WAITING FOR GODOT

Abstract

Very little attention has been focused on tracing evidence of the myth (or legend) of the Wandering Jew in Samuel Beckett's mould-breaking play Waiting for Godot (completed 1949), Rosette C. Lamont (1990) being the exception. This article suggests that Beckett used at least three disparate versions of the legend to derive much of the raw material in Godot. A good deal of the two vagabonds' dialogue may be derived from the generic myth of the Jewish carpenter whom, the day of the Crucifixion, Christ damned to a miserable life wandering the earth until the Second Coming. But the pair's predicament also fits perfectly with a little known version of the myth from Podolia (Ukraine) published as an annotation in English by Avrahm Yarmolinsky in 1929. Furthermore, important elements of Lucky's character may have been derived from Le Juif Errant, trois acts, prologue et intermède (1946), by the relatively unknown Alsatian surrealist Maxime Alexandre (1899–1976). Alexandre portrays Jews as bearing a heavy burden for mankind as guardians of humanity and of higher aesthetics, who will (exactly like Lucky) under no circumstances put down their heavy load. Although the origins of the myth are anti-Semitic, this reading appears to underline Beckett's reputation as a philo-semite.

Notes

Beckett, Three Novels, 414.

Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works, 50. All quotations from Beckett's plays in this paper come from this source.

Shelley, The Complete Poems, 660. The Wandering Jew (often as Ahasuerus) makes at least seven appearances in Shelley's works: “The Wandering Jew's Soliloquy,” “Song of the Wandering Jew,” and “Fragment from the Wandering Jew” (all juvenilia); “The Wandering Jew, A Poem in Four Cantos” (1810); “Queen Mab” in which Ahasuerus makes a long appearance (1813); “The Assassins” (1814); and “Alastor” (1815).

Anderson, The Legend of the Wandering Jew, 42.

Ibid., 47–8.

Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works, 28.

Ibid., 14.

Ibid., 11.

Ibid., 29.

Ibid., 21.

Béranger, Œuvres Complètes, 387.)

Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works, 27–8.

Anderson, The Legend of the Wandering Jew, 62.

Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works, 13.

Doré, La Légende, 8. This and all translations from French are by this writer.

Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works, 12.

Ibid., 18.

Kenner, Samuel Beckett, 123–4. (Beckett himself suggested this idea.)

Ackerley, The Grove Companion, 183.

Féval, The Wandering Jew's Daughter, 72.

Yarmolinsky, “The Wandering Jew,” 324.

Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works, 68.

Ibid., 13.

Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works, 15. The willow tree has significant connections to Jewish ritual. It is one of the “Four Species” that “form an obligatory part of the ceremony of Sukkot” (Rabinowitz, “Four Species”). In this, willow branches are woven in with palm and two other species of tree to form the “booths” that commemorate the time after the Exodus when the Children of Israel lived in the wilderness. Willow branches are also associated with the last day of the festival of the Tabernacles (Feliks, “Willow”).

Ackerley, The Grove Companion, 115.

Beckett was born on Good Friday.

Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works, 51.

Ibid., 34.

“Tree.”

Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works, 71.

Ibid., 46.

Ibid., 12.

Augustine qtd. in Corey, Messiahs and Machiavellians, 91.

Yarmolinsky, “The Wandering Jew.”

Ibid., 326–7.

In Podolia, Palm Sunday is known as “Willow Sunday,” the willow substituting for a tree, which is non-native to the area. The inhabitants have a tradition of tapping each other on the shoulder with a willow branch and saying: “The willow is hitting, / I'm not hitting, / one week from today, / it will be Easter” (“Ukraine and Ukrainian Easter at BRAMA.”) (See also Westukrainegirl).

Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works, 16.

Ibid., 17.

Ibid., 82.

Ibid., 49, 85.

Ibid., 30.

Ibid., 50–51.

Ibid., 53.

See Beckman, “What's in Store”; Brody, “Personal Health.”

Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works, 14.

Ibid., 52, 88.

Ibid., 69.

Ibid., 53.

By 1976, when a considerably revised version of the play was published at the time of Alexandre's death, Le Juif Errant had only received one airing—as a radio play on French Radio Nationale in March 1961 (B. Alexandre, Présentation, 8).

M. Alexandre, Le Juif Errant, 51.

Ibid., 87–8. This is the first stanza of the well-known Brabantine Ballad (Doré, La Légende, 5; Anderson, The Legend of the Wandering Jew,166). Note also that the first four lines are vaguely paraphrased in Hamm's first speech in Endgame: “Can there be misery […] loftier than mine?” (Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works, 93). Hamm also wears a toque in Endgame, but not in Fin de Partie.

Alexandre, Le Juif Errant, 91.

Ibid.

Kuhn, “‘L'effervescence du grand écart’,” 135.

This was not always the case; some became Christians and still suffered.

Alexandre, Le Juif Errant, 13–14, italics in original.

Ibid., 14.

Ibid., 15.

Ibid., 64–5.

Ibid., 75.

Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works, 26–40.

Ibid., 31.

Ibid., 32.

Alexandre, Le Juif Errant, 14.

Beckett, The Complete Dramatic Works, 26.

Ibid., 36.

Ibid., 82.

Ibid., 33.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid., 34.

Ibid., 37.

Ibid.

Ibid., 37–8.

Ibid., 33.

Ibid., 74, italics added.

Juliet, Conversations, 16.

Casanova, Samuel Beckett, 10.

Eliot, Selected Prose, 177.

Lamont, “Samuel Beckett's Wandering Jew,” 42.

Ibid., 46.

Ibid., 37.

Ibid.

See Beckett, Nohow On, 9; Amiran, Wandering and Home, 63.

Fuchs, The Death of Character, 36.

Ibid., 37.

Ibid., 48.