Godot's Shadow
Godot i jego cień
RIGHTS: WORLD
Godot’s Shadow tells the story of the author’s fascination with Beckett and his attempts to understand the thought behind his work. It is a book about the ways in which literature can bring self-understanding and give meaning to one’s life, even if its message is one of doubt and despair; about the magic of literature and the vital role it can play.
A distinctive feature of the book is that most of the action is set behind the Iron Curtain, in Eastern Europe under Soviet occupation. Viewed from his perspective, Beckett’s work acquires new layers of meaning which emphasize its universality.
The book – part novel, part autobiography, part literary criticism – combines conventional storytelling with personal reminiscences, philosophical reflection and detailed analysis of a number of Beckett’s works, such as Endgame, The Lost Ones, Footfalls, That Time and particularly Lessness, with its allusions to the last canto of the Divine Comedy.
There are also descriptions of meetings and conversations with a number of well-known figures from the world of theatre, like Jean-Louis Barrault, Roger Blin, Alan Schneider, David Warrilow and the Polish playwright Slawomir Mrozek. These are interwoven into a narrative which is fast-paced and varied, taking the author from Warsaw to New York, then to London and finally to Paris. Some of the episodes from his life, as well as the descriptions of how he goes about getting to grips with Beckett’s work and solving the various puzzles in it, are recounted in a way that resembles detective fiction. All this makes the book difficult to pigeonhole in terms of genre; it is, in a way, sui generis.
The last chapters, set in Paris, describe the elaborate manoeuvres and absurd subterfuges to which the author resorts in order to run Beckett to ground. They end with a detailed description of their meeting and his conversation with this enigmatic “poet of silence”.
About the author:
Antoni Libera (1949) is a writer, translator and stage director. Among his translations into Polish are all of Samuel Beckett's plays and much of his prose. He has also directed many of Beckett’s plays, both in Poland and abroad (among others Krapp’s Last Tape with David Warrilow at the Haymarket Leicester and Riverside Studios 1989-1990, and Endgame with Barry MacGovern at the Gate Theater, presented at the Barbican in 1999), and has presented them at a number of international theatre festivals. Beckett, with whom he was in regular contact, called him “my deputy in Eastern Europe”. He has also translated and written librettos, among others for the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. In 1990 he made his debut as a playwright at the Royal Court Theatre in London with his “Platonic dialogue” entitled Eastern Promises (published by Methuen).
Also by this author:
Madame
