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Reference:

Absurdism and its relation to faith in Beckett's play "Waiting for Godot"

Ponomareva Anastasiia

Lecturer, Department of General Education and Humanitarian Disciplines, Voronezh Industrial College of Humanities named after Vasily Mikhailovich Peskov

394063, Russia, Voronezh region, Voronezh, Revolution Ave., 20

As-ponomareva@yandex.ru
Other publications by this author
 

 

DOI:

10.7256/2454-0625.2024.3.39307

EDN:

ZZAJTU

Received:

03-12-2022


Published:

14-03-2024


Abstract: The aim of the work is to pose the problem of the relation of absurdism to faith, considered by the example of the text of S. Beckett's literary work "Waiting for Godot". Research objectives: to give a philosophical analysis of artistic images, to reveal the specifics of the attitude to God among existentialist authors. The object of the study is the text of the play "Waiting for Godot", the subject is the connection of absurdism with the theological and providentialist attitude. The philosophy of the absurd is considered as bringing existentialist thinking to its ultimate foundations. The absurd, as the antipode of the theory of providentialism, represents a pole in the thinking of a religious person who is desperate to find cause-and-effect relationships in the world. According to the author, absurdism as a philosophical trend is rooted precisely in the religious worldview. The author tries to revise the term "absurdism" and find an answer to the question of what place the search for God occupies in absurdism. Examining the work of S. Beckett "Waiting for Godot", the author seeks to prove that one of the sources of absurdism is the awareness of abandonment by God (in the variation "God died" or "God turned away"), which is necessarily associated with attributing to God the function of giving meaning to things, processes, phenomena. The author's main contribution to the research of the topic is to identify the theological attitude as the basis for philosophical trends that position themselves as atheistic.


Keywords:

absurd, Absurdist fiction, teleology, atheism, Nietzsche, teology, The Last Human, existentialism, Waiting for Godot, existential crisis

This article is automatically translated.

It is well known that philosophical existentialism is divided into two currents: religious, represented by Marcel, Jaspers, Lev Shestov, and atheistic, to which researchers include Sartre, Camus, and partly Heidegger. This tradition originates from Jean-Paul Sartre, who claimed that he did not believe in God, and "Existentialism is nothing more than an attempt to draw all conclusions from consistent atheism" [1]. The atheistic position is considered to be "consistently atheistic", as suggested in the studies of Vasenkin A.V. [2] and Bessmertnova S.V., the latter even sees the opposite of atheistic existentialists to "inconsistent atheism", "depending on religion because of its belief in the reasonableness of being itself" [3, p.72].  And although, in general, one should agree with the definition of existentialism as a broad ontology that includes the problems of human existence, it seems possible and relevant to challenge the view of the "consistently atheistic" position of some well-known representatives of the "philosophy of existence", among whom not only philosophers, but also writers, playwrights, artists.

The features of the atheistic worldview are most sharply expressed in absurdism, by which Camus understood "the clash between our expectations and the world" [4, p.38], and his overseas colleagues, for example, Nagel, "clashes within ourselves" [5, p. 287].

The starting point of the absurdist reasoning is the Nietzschean proclamation of the "death of God." The thesis itself first appeared in 1885 on the pages of the novel "Thus Spake Zarathustra." The concept of dissociation from God and turning towards endowing people with truth is placed at the very beginning of the book:  Nietzsche resolutely makes it clear that his hero is not on the path with a God-glorifying hermit who turned away from people because of their imperfections. Nietzsche's anti–Christian position does not tolerate any "ifs", he completely turns away from divine "truths" and turns to man, arguing that ... "the most terrible crime is to blaspheme the earth and honor the incomprehensible above the meaning of the earth!" [6, p.8].  The starting point of his philosophy, therefore, is in many ways similar to the later existential trend, it begins with the statement that "if there is no God, then everything is allowed."  

But, unlike nihilism, where this attitude receives a positive reception, turning the thinker to the problem of man as the highest value, in absurdism this situation is perceived as traumatic, undesirable. God, being a concept of human thinking, enslaves the absurdist with a philosophical attitude towards "abandonment" in the world, homelessness in it. The path of liberation that Nietzsche saw in his famous Zarathustra, refusing to stay with a hermit worshipping God and devoting his life not to God, but to people, is paved with symptoms of painful separation for atheistic existentialists. "Despair", "anxiety", "loneliness" are the existentials of a person in a crisis situation, which adherents of the philosophy of existence try to extrapolate to the entire human race. Evola spoke exhaustively about this, noting that ... "what Nietzsche had as an imperative, the existentialists acquired the character of duties", "in emotional tone, it is almost equivalent to a feeling of absolute freedom as an onerous burden rather than as a conquest" [7, p.169]. That is why all works of absurdism are imbued with mood anxiety, reflecting the characters' rootlessness in the world.

"Waiting for Godot" is well known to researchers of absurdism, it expresses it in two ways: both in a philosophical and artistic dimension. The comprehension of this work, however, is limited to several types of interpretations (Freudian, historical, biblical) and general statements about the meaning of life, which supposedly can consist only in meaningless expectation. Despite the fact that Beckett vehemently protested against the interpretation of the missing character – Godot – as a God, the most fruitful research was in this direction.

The biblical references in the play are tightly sewn into the canvas of the work. Moreover, the arsenal of allusions to the Bible is constantly being updated, the connections between this text and other works of Beckett make it clear about the importance of the biblical level of interpretation.  Thus, N.I. Mikeladze, a researcher of Beckett's work, notes that "Beckett's constant return to these issues speaks, rather, of his tormenting doubt about the randomness of God's mercy, as well as in the Augustinian concept of Predestination" [8].   Despite the importance of understanding the basic semantic field of the play, the analysis of biblical allusions is not part of the task of our philosophical research. It seems more productive to compare the nihilistic attitude with the absurdist one and Beckett's reception of Nietzsche's philosophy.

O.V. Zatonskaya, for example, draws attention to the proximity of Beckett's poetry with some of Nietzsche's theses, considering the connection between the concept of Superman and the main character of Beckett's poem "Vulture" to be important.  Carrion for a vulture is an allegory of everything that exists, as long as existence burdens a person, a Superman will not be born in him. According to the researcher, in the poetics of the poem there is a desire for transcendence, which, due to the passivity of the hero, remains without realization. "A person initially has a desire to evolve, develop, become above the conventions of the outside world, which are offal. But at the same time, the hero of the poem "Vulture" is present in the text only indirectly. He is incapable of action, his character is passive due to his doom to exist in a world where everything is alien to his nature. This causes loss and only a torment frozen in eternity, the liberation from which is death" [9, p.298]. The concept of superman is also found in "Waiting for Godot", and here it appears in two interpretations: first, it is a caricature of a person who has realized his will to power, the symbol of which is well recognized from the philosophy of Nietzscheanism, the whip. Secondly, it is an attempt to present the antipode to passive characters.

Pozzo is a hero who does not associate his existence with an encounter with the mysterious Godot, but this does not mean that he is not looking for the meaning of his being outside himself. Pozzo, driving his servant with a whip, is presented as a satirical image of Zarathustra, and he needs his slave no less than Lucky needs his master. At the same time, Pozzo is the only one of the four who has a unique vision of why he needs another person: "The most insignificant being can enrich you with something, teach you something, make you feel your happiness better" [10]. This character is fundamentally different from the others in that he does not act as a supplicant.

Lucky, loaded with things, is a clear reference to the three stages of the human spirit, namely the camel, bearing the burden of public morality. The pretender Pozzo is seen not only as a caricatured superman, but also as a God, which suggests that Estragon imagined God like this: with a whip and a leash. The function of Pozzo and Lucky in the play, among other things, is to concretize the generalizations of the main characters about Godot. Godot is a person whom Vladimir and Estragon are unlikely to see and recognize, but they admit that they were engaged in "begging" and "begging" in relation to her. Their immediate plans depend on who allegedly sends them a message to wait through a messenger, but their expectation of this meeting only exacerbates their torment.

Godot is a person who has taken care of the absence of signs of his existence to such an extent that he may well not be found behind these loud statements about her with an equal degree of probability. In this regard, it seems appropriate to cite the parable of the invisible gardener, first told by the religious philosopher Anthony Flue in 1953 [11]. One day, two researchers came to a clearing in the jungle. One of the researchers suggested that some kind of gardener must be taking care of the clearing. Another objected, "There is no Gardener here." Then they set up a tent and started watching. In view of the absence of any signs of the Gardener, one of them suggested that the Gardener was invisible. And they surrounded the clearing with barbed wire, through which they passed a current. There was not a single scream that would have betrayed the guest. The movements of the wires did not betray a single attempt to get through them. All the same, the Believer insisted on his own: "There is a Gardener here, invisible, disembodied, not subject to electric shock; A gardener without smell and making no sounds; A gardener secretly caring for his beloved garden." And, in the end, the Skeptic wondered how the Invisible Gardener differs from the imaginary gardener, and indeed from the statement that the Gardener does not exist.

The absurd effect of waiting for Godot is created by the impossibility of verifying the idea of this existence. As the characters admit, they hardly remember a couple of Pozzi and Lucky, and everyone could play the role of Godot if they wanted. It is no coincidence that, playing this option in the mouth of Pozzi, the author asks: "How do you find me? Ok? Average? Is it tolerable? So-so? Is it frankly bad?" . To know Godot, this invisible Gardener, is possible only with the help of an apophatic approach. The characteristics that the main characters give to God make him transcendent: "Taking into account the existence of a personal God as it stems from the latest sociological works of Poinson and Watman in the form of a substance of a gray-bearded timeless extra-spatial cocoon, which from the height of its divine apathy, divine aphasia, divine agnosia, will fall in love with us all except some..." [10].

From the point of view of the artistic analysis of the text, the above passage is nothing more than a stream of consciousness, a technique that gained love among modernist writers of the period after World War II. The repeated repetition of the same words and symbols, the obvious incoherence, the rejection of normal punctuation symbols help to simulate the work of thought, while, however, the artistic conventionality of everything that happens is deliberately emphasized: Lucky begins to "think" after he is ordered to "think". The God of the characters is all the existing stereotypes about him, he combines the features of the Old Testament Yahweh and the "indifferent" God of the deists, who does not interfere in the earthly affairs. It is no coincidence that the three "a's" in the words aphasia, apathy, agnosia indicate to us the negative characteristics of God, who is, of course, a projection of a human being as the absurdists imagine him to be, on a higher, "divine" level. It is not Godot who loses the ability to recognize, participate and speak coherently – it is the heroes of the works of the absurd who attribute to him their characteristics of a broken, left waiting for something unclear human type.

The expectation of divine patronage does not spiritualize the characters, but, on the contrary, kills all the best in them. Pozzo, for example, complains that his slave partner used to perform "incredible jumps" and danced different dances. And now he's dancing the only one – "dancing with nets." And here again, an association with Nietzsche suggests itself, who perceived dance and bodily practices in general as a way to know the world. An absurdist hero cannot be a dancer, because a dancer is a Nietzschean symbol for a soul rejoicing in itself. The hero of the drama of the absurd, as represented by Beckett, is a weak puppet pretending to be a master or a slave, in this case it does not matter. They are wanderers entangled in the nets of the world, as evidenced by Lucky himself, pretending to be entangled in the nets.

Three characteristics of the absurd: inability to act, speech distortions (up to aphasia), as well as the expectation of God's judgment, traditionally encourage us to consider "Waiting for Godot" as a typical example of an absurd work. It is characteristic that among all literary works, the creation of the absurd is the most artistic, and therefore the most verified, technically the most difficult to execute. Through the contradictory assessments of critics and the controversial statements of Beckett himself, the researcher finally comes to a single question: If the play is really about man and God, then why would a man abandoned by God need God? The answer to this question contains the mystery of the genesis of the absurd as an existential experience.

Beckett defends a kind of anti-epistemology that criticizes Western epistemologies that trust either feelings, reason, or intuition and revelation and proclaim the possibility of knowledge of God. Dr. Maroof Shah, an Indian researcher of the ideological foundations of Beckett's work, notes that Beckett rejects the intellectual intuition of the mystic and remains in the positions of rationalism, being faithful to its initial positions, despite the acute awareness of its limitations.

Beckett's characters, without exception, are uncompromising rationalists. However, their minds cannot tell them with certainty at least one thing they want to know. Vladimir and Estragon ask questions about their own and others' identity, the essence of Godot, the nature of space and time. They're not even sure if they wake up under a tree every day, or maybe it's a bush. It is generally accepted in Beckett's text that the tree is interpreted as a symbol of Golgotha, but in fact, if it is actually a bush, it can be interpreted as a prototype of the Burning Bush lying in the center of the universe of the main characters.

Here it is worth paying attention to the very nature of the absurd character's questioning. This type of questioning betrays an absolute misunderstanding of the spiritual foundations of being, a complete lack of rootedness in them.

"What is love? What is creation? Aspiration? What is a star?" is how Nietzsche's Last Man asks and blinks. The very fact that he cannot explain these terms to himself testifies to their misunderstanding, alienation to the very nature of the last person and deep distrust or (it is unknown which is worse) deep indifference to them. The latter person is clearly connected with the type of the absurd hero, because they both represent models of existence that are denied transcendence. Anticipating Sartre's concept of man as a project of himself, Nietzsche writes about the need to build himself rectangular in relation to body and soul, and urges to grow not only in breadth, but also upward [6, p. 81].

Nietzsche's godless world presupposes the existence of a positive worldview project, the philosopher's calls to "carry chaos inside yourself", "give birth to a star", "create a self-rolling wheel" are widely known. All of them are ultimately united by the consciousness of a high spiritual mission. The absence of a theological and teleological attitude does not prevent the development of a self-sufficient nihilistic concept, where the statement of the impotence of reason to exhaustively explain the world and the person in it does not lead to ontological pessimism.

The situation is different with absurdism in the texts of representatives of the "atheistic" mainstream within existentialism.

Dr. Maroof Shah, an Indian researcher of the philosophical dimension of Beckett's legacy, compares the wandering of Beckett's characters with staying in the circle of samsara [12, p.88]. Despite the stated continuity in relation to the philosophy of life, absurdism is based in its origins on the teleology of Aristotle, which means that it assumes the existence of a cause of causes, even if it puts it in the form of a signifier without any real signified. If we return to the parable of the Invisible Gardener, we can imagine the absurd hero as a child left in the Garden, and liken the Gardener to an adult who does not respond to his call. In more extreme interpretations, the Garden is replaced by a Jungle, and the Gardener is replaced by a parent figure.

         The doom of absurdism as an independent philosophy in this sense is rooted in its origins: the installation, on the one hand, on rationalism, and the rejection of dialogue with other traditions, on the other hand, on its fixation on the a priori sense, even if its representatives claim the opposite. Camus's notorious "revolt" against the absurd reflects nothing more than an attempt to restore man to his rights, which are a mental abstraction, to establish a "dialogue" with the unreasonable silence of the world, again conceivable from the standpoint of logocentric speculation. In view of the fact that the search for a divine being and the actual linking of life meanings with it occupies one of the leading topics in the philosophy of absurdism, the author believes it possible to revise the interpretation of the concept of "absurdism" as a concept necessarily associated with an atheistic perception of the world.  The longing for the World Builder betrays in the representatives of philosophy and literature the absurdity of adherents of a rationalistic teleological approach, which, having been removed in Nietzsche's philosophy, is paradoxically not discarded in the work of his followers. Representing a reception of Nietzsche's ideas, Beckett's text seems to illustrate the attitude towards the search for God, while simultaneously depicting a caricature of some of the key ideas set out in "Thus Spoke Zarathustra". At the same time, it is difficult to assume that the correspondence polemic with Nietzsche ended with Beckett's victory. The condition of God's death did not prompt the absurdists to create a positive program of worldly and self-improvement, defining the existence of the heroes of the works of the absurd as self-immersion, lack of disclosure in relation to the universal being. The unavailability of original solutions that could be deduced from the premise of the death of God somehow forced representatives of this trend to concentrate on the nature of this event and return to it again and again in philosophical works, essays, plays, short stories, novellas and novels.

         The logical conclusion from the situation of absurdity outlined by Beckett in his famous play could be to accept life without Godot. In the original text, however, we observe not only the death of God, slowly poisoning his creatures with false hope, but also the death of a man who descended to the level of the "Last Man" of the German philosopher Nietzsche, with whom Beckett so desperately argued.

 
References
1. Sartre, Jean Paul. (1953). Existentialism is humanism. Jean-Paul Sartre. Per. from fr. M. Gretsky. Moscow: Publishing House of Foreign Literature.
2. Vasyonkin, A.V. (2018). Existentialism is consistent atheism. Culture. The science. Education. Irkutsk, 1(46), 17-26.
3. Bessmertnova, S.V. (2012). Existential philosophy: on the question of irrationality and attitude to religion and atheism. Proceedings of PSPU im. V.G. Belinsky, 27, 70-74.
4. Camus A. (1990). A rebellious man. Moscow: Politizdat.
5. Nagel, T. Absurd (2020). Trans. from English, note. and intro. Art. E. V. Kosilova. Philosophy. Journal of the Higher School of Economics, 4, 275-294.
6. Nietzsche, Friedrich. (2018). Thus spoke Zarathustra. Thus spoke Zarathustra. Friedrich Nietzsche. Moscow: AST Publishing House.
7. Evola, Julius. (2005). Riding the Tiger. Julius Evola. Per. from Italian. V. V. Vanyushkina. St. Petersburg: Vladimir Dal.
8. Mikeladze, N. E. (2014). Three parables of the Kingdom of Heaven in the play by S. Beckett “Waiting for Godot” [Electronic resource]. Mediascope, 2. Retrieved from http://www.mediascope.ru/1534
9. Zatonskaya, O. V. (2013). Philosophical ideas of F. Nietzsche and poetry of S. Beckett. Knowledge. Understanding. Skill, 3, 296-299.
10. Beckett, S. Waiting for Godot. [Electronic resource]. Retrieved from http://opentextnn.ru/man/bekett-sjemjuel-v-ozhidanii-godo/
11. Flew, Antony. Theology and Falsification, University, 1950-51; from Joel Feinberg, ed., Reason and Responsibility: Readings in Some Basic Problems of Philosophy, Belmont, CA: Dickenson Publishing Company, Inc., 1968, pp. 48-49. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20160912194021/http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/flew_falsification.html
12. Maroof, Shah. (2012). The Problem of Nihilism and Absurdist Impasse in (Post) Modern Literature: A Metaphysical Appraisal of Samuel Beckett and Albert Camus. Department of English, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad.

First Peer Review

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The list of publisher reviewers can be found here.

The reviewed article is an experience of a holistic analysis of S. Becket's well-known play "Waiting for Godot". The author points out that this work has received various interpretations, however, the most natural is still the perception of the play in the context of the history of religious consciousness – albeit taking into account the obvious atheistic sound, because atheism is also a phenomenon of religious consciousness. According to the author of the article, the searches of critics and researchers carried out "in the direction of religious interpretation" turn out to be "the most fruitful", even though Beckett himself, as is known, did not accept them (the first decades of comprehension of the play fell just at that time in the history of French humanitarianism, when the influence of the resurgent structuralism in literary criticism was limited to the "author's intention", if not ignored at all). The analysis of the presented article convinces that it can be published in a scientific journal, although the author should have previously eliminated some shortcomings. First of all, the title needs to be clarified, the reader should know which work the article is dedicated to, this clarification can be given through a colon or in parentheses. Further, it would be preferable to define "absurdism" at the very beginning of the article, in the presented text the reader only "guesses" what exactly the author means as he progresses. However, the author points out "three characteristics of the absurd: inability to act, speech distortions (up to aphasia), as well as the expectation of God's judgment," which define "Waiting for Godot" as "a typical example of an absurd work." The relation of "absurdism" to existentialism is not exactly specified (the distinction between religious and atheistic trends in the latter should be removed as well–known): "Waiting for Godot is well known to researchers of existentialism and, in particular, its narrower semantic variety - absurdism." Of course, "absurdism" does not correlate with existentialism as a "species" and "genus", there were many thinkers among existentialists who are difficult to suspect of "absurdism". We also point out that the author hastily attributes the "death of God" to Nietzsche's "competence" (in connection with which, apparently, he makes certain observations about him), which, however, is by no means uncommon. In fact, the experience of the "death of God" is represented in a variety of cultures (how not to recall Borges' thought that there are only four stories, and people have been telling them over and over again since ancient times), in the "Faustian culture" long before Nietzsche, these words describe the "tragic fate of the authenticity of oneself", represented in the image of "unhappy consciousness": Hegel speaks of "sorrow, which is expressed in cruel words that God is dead." There are almost no stylistic or syntactic mistakes in the text, but it can be recommended, for example, to correct the unsuccessful formula "... similar to the subsequent existential current that developed from nihilism ..." ("formed later"?). It seems that the comments made do not prevent the possibility of recommending the reviewed article for publication, the author will be able to take them into account in a working order, especially since the relatively small volume of the text (0.4 a.l.) allows for detailed comments, and the list of references can be supplemented with sources that could compensate for the too brief characteristics of the concepts used in the article. Based on the above, I recommend the article for publication in a scientific journal.

Second Peer Review

Peer reviewers' evaluations remain confidential and are not disclosed to the public. Only external reviews, authorized for publication by the article's author(s), are made public. Typically, these final reviews are conducted after the manuscript's revision. Adhering to our double-blind review policy, the reviewer's identity is kept confidential.
The list of publisher reviewers can be found here.

The subject of the study has not been explicitly formulated by the author. Based on the title of the article, the subject of the study should be allusions to religious consciousness and the concept of "God" in the play "Waiting for Godot" by the French writer Samuel Beckett. However, the text of the article is poorly structured and it is difficult to follow the development of the author's thought, and therefore the subject of the study is blurred. The research methodology has not been formulated. The title of the article mentions "philosophical analysis", but what is the essence of this analysis, including in relation to the stated topic, remains unclear. The relevance of the study is far from obvious and the author does not justify it in any way. The same can be said about the scientific novelty of the work. The structure of the article, as already mentioned, is not well thought out. There is no introduction to the problems of the article. The article opens with the sentence: "Answering the question, for what purpose an absurdist addresses the topic of God in his work, one should first consider the very concept of absurdism." But it is not clear where such a question comes from at all and who needs an answer to it. At the same time, the concept of absurdism, which, of course, should be considered, since it directly appears in the article and is reflected in its title, remains not considered (because it is hardly possible to call an uncredited quote from the online encyclopedia, which the author cites, a consideration). There is also no characteristic of the analyzed work, which looks strange. The bibliography contains 10 items of literature. The list is designed carelessly. For example, the article contains a quote from P. S. Gurevich's "Modern Dictionary of the Humanities", and the whole book is indicated as the source, although it would be correct to indicate a specific article ("Nihilism"), to which, in fact, the author refers. The description of The Problem of Nihilism and Absurdist Impasse in (Post) is incorrectModern Literature: A Metaphysical Appraisal of Samuel Beckett and Albert Camus, which is a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In English. The bibliographic description does not give an understanding of what kind of text it is. The same remark applies to the Absurdism article from the New World Encyclopedia, based on Wikipedia materials. By the way, this dictionary entry does not look like a serious enough source. I would like to see in the article signs that the author has deeply studied serious professional literature on the topic of research, and has not limited himself to such brief extracts on this subject. Apparently, a superficial acquaintance with the topic led to the fact that there is no appeal to opponents in the article. The author's considerations do not have a clear connection to the scientific context, the reader cannot understand whether such a topic has been studied before, if so, what opinions exist in the scientific literature on this issue, if not, why this issue did not attract the attention of scientists before and why it should suddenly interest the scientific community now. Summarizing the above, it remains to be stated that the target audience of the article is not clear. It is difficult to understand who this article would be interesting and useful to, especially since the author does not make any explicit conclusion in it and it is not necessary to talk about the increase in scientific knowledge in this case. Strictly speaking, the text is not a reflection of some kind of scientific research, and looks more like a literary essay. The author shows that he has a good command of the word, but this is not enough for a scientific article. It would also be worth thinking more about the title, since the question stated in the present title (Why would an absurdist need God?) if it is possible to answer, it is clearly not based on one literary example, but only on the basis of an analysis of the corpus of texts. And asking a question in the title that the author is unable to answer is hardly fair to readers. In order for an article to be worthy of publication in a scientific journal, it needs to be deeply revised. To do this, the author of the article needs first of all to answer 2 fundamental questions for himself and for the readers: 1) What is new and original that he wants to communicate to the scientific community? 2) Why should the scientific community meet this message with interest? The article should have a clear structure and end-to-end narrative logic, as well as links to modern and relevant scientific literature.

Third Peer Review

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The list of publisher reviewers can be found here.

This article is devoted to a rather interesting cultural topic related to such a trend in art as absurdism. Reflecting on what the poetics of absurdism is, we find in it a type of imagery in which "non-artistic" moments prevail over "artistic ones" (pictorial and descriptive). It is about reflection as a means of presenting the subject of a work of art. This type of imagery seems to indicate the birth of a new aesthetic in which the suggestive possibilities of literature are becoming less relevant than before. The recipient of an artistic work should be less and less sympathetic to what is happening on stage (in the art world) and more and more forced to reflect on what is happening. This is the basis for the artistic effect of S. Beckett's plays, plunging the reader (viewer) into a state of depression, in which he must remain in order to feel the absurdity of existence. With regard to the artistic features of the playwright's work, we can talk about the incompleteness of what is depicted and expressed in the text (meaning the performance as a text), filled in from the outside by the viewer, about the discreteness of the artistic form. The author creates a specific atmosphere, or "environment", in which people are lonely, clown-like characters who wander through life because they do not know what else to do. When receiving plays by representatives of the theater of the absurd, the perception of what is happening on stage as a "visual metaphor" of reality is productive. It is even possible to talk about a new "absurd conventionality", which is based on the reduction of the main traditional parameters and at the same time semantic carriers in the drama: "And, finally, all the components of the play not only conflict with each other, but cause "disagreement" of the audience when what is heard and seen on stage does not add up to a single image or system of images. In the plot, absurdism can be characterized as the poetics of the non-descending. Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for Godot, who never comes. At the same time, they constantly try to leave, but stay in place, make attempts to break up, but every time they reconnect, they want to hang themselves, but do not dare. The play has a cyclical plot: the second act repeats the first with some "variations": the beating of Tarragon, the meeting of the characters, the episode with the shoes, the meeting with Lucky and Pozzo, the episode with the tree (the thought of suicide), the episode with the boy who informs that Godot will not come today. At the same time, it is characteristic that the second part unfolds as the "second take" of the first: Estragon does not remember what friends talked about yesterday, the boy says that he sees Vladimir for the first time, Lucky turns out to be mute, although in the first act he acted out a monologue, etc. The play ends in its original position: two people stand in place waiting for a certain Godot. The "deja vu" effect used in this play serves as a synthetic metaphor with philosophical meaning. In the absence of a complete plot basis, we can consider the plot of Beckett's play as a set of motives. Such motives in the play are: the motive of expectation; the motive of emptiness; the motive of search - the characters are constantly looking for something, then looking at a shoe, then looking into a hat, then peering into the distance; the motive of loss, deprivation, as well as the motive of sin and punishment; the motive of the path (the potential opportunity to leave, which is important it has never been realized), which is associated with the motive of vagrancy (lack of a place in life), the motive of parting, the motive of despair. The totality of these motives as a whole defines the semantic mode of the play as reasoning about the main existential problems of man. The characters of the plays themselves are specific in absurdism. With regard to the characters of Beckett's plays, we can talk about squalor as the semantic dominant of character: they have one carrot for two, they cannot take off their shoes themselves, and most importantly, they cannot make any decision. These characters cannot be perceived either as tragic or comic: they are too "pathetic" for that. Speaking of intertextuality, it should be noted that allusions and hidden quotations play an important role in Beckett's plays. The Bible can be considered as the most obvious "subtext" of the play "Waiting for Godot", almost every fragment of the text of which refers the viewer to biblical subjects, starting with the discussion about the four evangelists and the rescued robber, and ending with the figure of Godot himself, whose name is consonant with the word "God". Finally, the question of the author's place and role in relation to the content of the work is fundamental. In an absurdist work, the author acts not so much as the creator of the world, but as an exponent of its "absurdity": his task is to do this most adequately, having thought through every gesture and rhythmically calculating every phrase of the character. Beckett's plays are very rich in remarks prescribing every gesture and every smile, it seems that the author painted a "score" for the performing characters (the difference between the hero and the performer is thus leveled). It is known that Beckett himself was also the director of his plays, and the productions of other directors turned out to be all the more successful the more the director followed the instructions given by the author of the play. In this way, the installation is implemented for the reproducibility and repeatability of the presentation effect, which can occur several times on the same "notes". It may be recalled that S. Beckett himself, like other authors of absurdist plays, strongly rejected the terms "absurdity", "absurdism", arguing that their works are no more absurd than reality. This fact suggests that the plays of the theater of the absurd, from the point of view of the pragmatics of the text, are quite traditional and "classical" (unlike, for example, the practice of representatives of the Russian avant-garde, with whose work they are often compared), since they are aimed at adequately recreating real socio-moral contradictions and shortcomings. The article is written in a good stylistic manner, there are references to the arguments and counterarguments of opponents, it is based on relevant bibliographic material and may be of interest to a certain part of the journal's audience.