Samuel Beckett had a great love for the visual arts, and largely as a consequence of a love affair during the 1920s and 1930s made several trips to Germany, followed by a longer trip in 1936-7, in which his diaries detail extensive visits to art galleries.
It is interesting therefore, to learn that the author of Waiting for Godot, considered by many to exemplify the most profoundly pessimistic vision of humanity in Western literature, and the absurd insignificance of mankind, should have identified a work by Caspar David Friedrich as the inspiration for his play. According to his biographer, James Knowlson (whose work is based on extensive interviews with Beckett himself) the writer told his friend, theatre critic Ruby Cohn, while looking at the 1824 painting Two Men Contemplating the Moon in Berlin: “this was the source of Waiting for Godot, you know.
Two Men Contemplating the Moon by Caspar David Friedrich, painted in 1819. Two men stand on a mountain path and look at the crescent moon in the night sky. Next to it the evening star shines. The men are dressed in old German costume with blue robes, black Barrett and Kranzmütze. Both seem familiar, one puts his hand on the other's shoulder. At dusk, which the painter symbolizes through the brown coloring, they are engrossed in conversation. The wind-ruffled and uprooted oak, leaning on a mighty rock, and the forest appearing in the distance complete the picture.
Waiting for Godot is a play by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett in which two characters, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), engage in a variety of discussions and encounters while awaiting the titular Godot, who never arrives. Act II begins with the stage directions “Next Day. Same Time. Same Place. “The tree now has leaves, and Pozzo and Lucky, a master and a slave, respectively, have been struck blind and dumb. Time has passed, yet we have no sense of accumulation. In seeming perpetuity, and perhaps in vain, Estragon and Vladimir continue to wait—and we with them”.
Representing the viewer of the picture, the two men stand in nature. Caspar David Friedrich does not paint a lifelike scene but depicts the view of nature in the age of Romanticism. The crescent moon, with light shading, the full moon is traced, is the focus of the painting. Does the Moon becomes Godot as these two men wait. The melancholy motif is an invitation, similar to the two depicted men, to engage in a contemplative view of nature.
Beckett was fascinated by Rückenfigur. In painting, the term Rückenfigur refers to a figure seen from behind. Instead of catching our eye, the Rückenfigur (in German meaning “back-figure”) turns away from sight. In Waiting for Godot his characters are mostly seen from behind.
Samuel Beckett, the renowned Irish playwright and novelist, had a deep fascination with the works of the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich. I have a deep feeling that Beckett's interest in Friedrich's paintings is particularly evident in how he conceptualized and visualized his own literary and dramatic works.
Both Beckett's writings and Friedrich's paintings often explore themes of isolation, desolation, and the sublime. Friedrich’s works, like: Two Men Contemplating the Moon and the Wanderer above the Sea of Fog depict figures in vast, overwhelming landscapes, emphasizing human insignificance in the face of nature's grandeur. Similarly, Beckett's characters frequently inhabit bleak, desolate environments, confronting existential dilemmas and the absurdity of human existence.
Beckett delves into the concept of the sublime, but often through the lens of the void and emptiness. His minimalist stage designs and sparse narratives reflect a stark, almost desolate beauty, akin to the haunting stillness found in Friedrich’s canvases. Friedrich's landscapes are imbued with a sense of the sublime, where nature's vastness and mystery evoke awe and contemplation. Beckett's aesthetic sensibilities were influenced by Friedrich’s use of light and shadow, creating a monochromatic and minimalist effect. This is evident in Beckett's stage directions and his preference for minimalistic set designs, where the emphasis is on the characters' existential struggles rather than elaborate backdrops.
Beckett employed techniques in his plays, where characters are frequently isolated on stage, emphasizing their introspective and often futile quests for meaning. Waiting for Godot. Friedrich's compositions often feature a central, solitary figure set against a vast, empty background, drawing the viewer's focus to the individual's contemplation or journey. Friedrich’s paintings often use windows and doors as metaphors for the boundaries between the known and the unknown, the interior and the exterior. Beckett, in his literary works, also uses such symbols to explore themes of confinement and the longing for transcendence or escape.
Beckett’s plays serve as metaphors for the characters' existential angst and internal void. Friedrich’s landscapes can be seen as external representations of inner states of mind. Beckett’s works similarly depict landscapes of the mind, where the external environment mirrors the characters' internal psychological states. The barren, desolate settings in both artists emphasize moments of stillness and contemplation. Friedrich’s figures are often seen in meditative poses, lost in thought as they gaze upon nature's vastness. Beckett’s characters, too, engage in deep introspection and existential musings, often within static, unchanging environments.
Beckett's exploration of time is more explicit, as he delves into the cyclical, repetitive nature of existence, highlighting the futility and absurdity of human endeavors. Friedrich's works subtly hint at the passage of time through natural elements like the changing light or the presence of ruins.
Samuel Beckett's fascination with Caspar David Friedrich's paintings is reflected in the thematic, visual, and philosophical parallels between their works. Both artists grapple with profound existential questions, using their respective mediums to explore the human condition's solitude, desolation, and search for meaning. Beckett's minimalist and contemplative approach to literature and theater resonates deeply with the introspective and sublime qualities of Friedrich’s landscapes.
Caspar David Friedrich (5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840) was a German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his allegorical landscapes, which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic ruins. His primary interest was the contemplation of nature, and his often symbolic and anti-classical work seeks to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world. Friedrich's paintings characteristically set a human presence in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, reducing the figures to a scale that the viewer's gaze towards their metaphysical dimension.
Samuel Barclay Beckett ( 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and tragicomic experiences of life, often coupled with black comedy and nonsense. His work became increasingly minimalist as his career progressed, involving more aesthetic and linguistic experimentation, with techniques of stream of consciousness repetition and self-reference. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in the Theatre of the Absurd. He was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".