En attendant Godot

En traînant mes godillots, mes godasses

"Waiting for Godot"

"a tragicomedy in two acts"

(July 26th, 2021, q.v.)

"— danser d'abord et penser ensuite? —

C'est d'ailleurs l'ordre naturel."

Though enslaved and roped,

only Lucky performs a dance

— Loki, a shapeshifter —

The name — Loki— might originate from the Germanic root *luk-, which denoted things to do with loops (like knots, hooks, closed-off rooms, and locks).

🢂 This identity as a "tangler" may be the etymological meaning of Loki's name.

🢂 Hexagram 30 is named 離 (lí), "Radiance" or "the clinging, fire" and "the net" 🔁 "Ionisation"

• Its inner trigram is ☲ (離 lí) radiance = (火) fire.
• Its outer trigram is identical.
• The origin of the character has its roots in symbols of long-tailed birds such as the peacock or the legendary phoenix.

The poem Lokasenna (Old Norse "Loki's Flyting") centres around Loki flyting with other gods.

🢂 Then arrives Thor and the bondage of Loki happens.

🢂 Pozzo — a well (from which water is drawn)

🢂 Hexagram 48 is named 井 (jǐng), "Welling" or"the well".

• Its inner trigram is ☴ (巽 xùn) ground = (風) wind.
• Its outer trigram is ☵ (坎 kǎn) gorge = (水) water.

“Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order.”

— Samuel Beckett, or more accurately*, from his play "Waiting for Godot" — Act I

ESTRAGON: Wouldn't it, Didi, be more fun?

VLADIMIR: I'd like well to hear him think.

ESTRAGON: Perhaps he could dance first and think afterwards, if it isn't too much to ask him.

VLADIMIR: (to Pozzo). Would that be possible?

POZZO: By all means, nothing simpler. It's the natural order. [He laughs briefly]

Waiting for Godot is Samuel Beckett's translation of his own original French-language play, En attendant Godot, and is subtitled (in English only) "a tragicomedy in two acts" written between October 9, 1948, and January 29, 1949.

🢂 Deux vagabonds (deux frères ?) — Vladimir et Estragon — se retrouvent sur scène, dans un lieu (« Route de campagne avec arbre ») à la tombée de la nuit pour attendre « Godot ».

• Estragon is Gogo (Gēgē 哥哥) He is inert. He belongs to the stone.
• Wladimir, Didi (Dìdì 弟弟) He is restless. He belongs to the sky.

Jungian interpretation

"The four archetypal personalities or the four aspects of the soul are grouped in two pairs: the ego and the shadow, the persona and the soul's image (animus or anima). The shadow is the container of all our despised emotions repressed by the ego. Lucky, the shadow, serves as the polar opposite of the egocentric Pozzo, the prototype of prosperous mediocrity, who incessantly controls and persecutes his subordinate, thus symbolising the oppression of the unconscious shadow by the despotic ego. Lucky's monologue in Act I appears as a manifestation of a stream of repressed unconsciousness, as he is allowed to "think" for his master. Estragon's name has another connotation, besides that of the aromatic herb, tarragon: "estragon" is a cognate of estrogen, the female hormone (Carter, 130). This prompts us to identify him with the anima, the feminine image of Vladimir's soul. It explains Estragon's propensity for poetry, his sensitivity and dreams, his irrational moods. Vladimir appears as the complementary masculine principle, or perhaps the rational persona of the contemplative type."

— Sion, I., "The Shape of the Beckettian Self: Godot and the Jungian Mandala". Consciousness, Literature and the Arts Volume 7 Number 1, April 2006. See also Carter, S., 'Estragon's Ancient Wound: A Note on Waiting for Godot' in Journal of Beckett Studies 6.1, p. 130.

“In the beginning, we all danced. Our ancestors danced till they disappeared in the dance, till they felt the full force of Spirit unleashing their souls.”

— Gabrielle Roth

“Dance is a symbol of Life – rhythmic, glorious, immortal. It is a language and hieroglyphic of divinity. Let us learn to speak it and to read it…Our Dance is the living sculpture of ourselves.”

— Ruth St. Denis

Saturday, August 7

"Happiness is the love of something outside of ourselves!

It may never be obtained, may never be known — 

by loving only things within ourselves or our own domain!" 



(ECRL 281-30)

 

WE HAVE COME … TO BE DANCED

We have come to be danced

Not the pretty dance

Not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance

But the claw our way back into the belly

Of the sacred, sensual animal dance

The unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dance

The holding the precious moment in the palms

Of our hands and feet dance.

We have come to be danced

Not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance

But the wring the sadness from our skin dance

The blow the chip off our shoulder dance.

The slap the apology from our posture dance.

We have come to be danced

Not the monkey see, monkey do dance

One two dance like you

One two three, dance like me dance

but the grave robber, tomb stalker

Tearing scabs and scars open dance

The rub the rhythm raw against our soul dance.

We have come to be danced

Not the nice, invisible, self-conscious shuffle

But the matted hair flying, voodoo mama

Shaman shakin’ ancient bones dance

The strip us from our casings, return our wings

Sharpen our claws and tongues dance

The shed dead cells and slip into

The luminous skin of love dance.

We have come to be danced

Not the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance

But the meeting of the trinity, the body breath and beat dance

The shout hallelujah from the top of our thighs dance

The mother may I?

Yes you may take 10 giant leaps dance

The olly olly oxen free free free dance

The everyone can come to our heaven dance.

We have come to be danced

Where the kingdom’s collide

In the cathedral of flesh

To burn back into the light

To unravel, to play, to fly, to pray

To root in skin sanctuary

We have come to be danced

WE HAVE COME.

poem by Jewel Mathieson, ©2004

* A Beckett Corruption

“Dance first. Think Later. It’s the natural order” goes the quote, but it is nowhere to be found in the Beckett canon, at least not in this form. This is a mistranslation & redaction of the following passage from En attendant Godot:

ESTRAGON: J'aimerais mieux qu'il danse, ce serait plus gai.

POZZO: Pas forcément.

EXTRAGON: N'est-ce pas, Didi, que ce serait plus gai?

VLADIMIR: J'aimerais bien l'entendre penser.

ESTRAGON: Il pourrait peut-ȇtre danser d'abord et penser ensuite? Si ce n'est pas trop lui demander.

VLADIMIR [à Pozzo]: Est-ce possible?

POZZO: Mais certainement, rien de plus facile. C'est d'ailleurs l'ordre naturel. [Rire bref.]

I suspect that this is someone’s own translation from French as Beckett, in the English version of Godot, translates ensuite not as “later” but as “afterwards”:

ESTRAGON: I’d rather he’d dance, it’d be more fun.

POZZO: Not necessarily.

EXTRAGON: Wouldn’t it, Didi, be more fun?

VLADIMIR: I’d like well to hear him think.

ESTRAGON: Perhaps he could dance first and think afterwards, if it isn’t too much to ask him

VLADIMIR [to Pozzo]: Would that be possible?

POZZO: By all means, nothing simpler. It’s the natural order. [He laughs briefly.]

Then someone comes along, scoops the first phrase out of its deontic modality (which the infinitive prevents one from doing in the French). Thus reduced to the imperative mood, it is paired with the second phrase and a curious Beckett-as-Fred-Astaire quote is born.