from Adil Kufaishi

Dear Siddek

This is wonderful work. I am sure that enjoy what you are doing. Best of luck

Adil

On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 2:44 PM

Lest I become boring

Lately I had a comment published in "The New York Times" in which I said that Dennis Hopper's 1969 movie "Easy Rider" influenced my way of thinking in teaching English literature to Mosul University students in Iraq in early 1970s. A colleague of mine for over 35 years wondered why he wasn't aware of "Easy Rider" having such an impact on me. I told him it was because it is my habit when I am with the others not to discuss my subjects but their subjects, as from personal experience, I came to realise that people are interested in talking about themselves more than about me. If I didn't do so I would have ended a recluse which I am now happily because now I am living my life true and honest to myself, not pretending or seeking to please the others at the expense of my pleasure. I have lost a life-time in not being honest to myself. For this purpose, it is my habit to seek to know about acdemicians' specialisations and alma mater universities, to talk about their subjects and not mine so that I don't become boring

Elaborating on Maria Juseppa

Elaborating on my comment above, and making of Maria Juseppa a collage of Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear, I say that Maria Juseppa who, like Lear, being in dementia, screaming, "Howl, howl, howl," uttering some unintelligible, to quote Hamlet, "words, words, words", becomes the embodiment of all humanity in demonstrating that human life is, to paraphrase Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech, a tale told by an idiot where man, on his way to dusty death, is like a poor player who struts and frets his hour on the stage, then is heard no more. Indelible remains that 1973 Spanish-language staging by Nuria Espert of "Le Casa del Bernarda Alba" at the Aldwych-London, as part of an international theatre festival engineered by that disabled man of theatre whose photograph, with him posing is Peter Ustinov, I very well remember but whose name memory is not serving

The Paradise of Movies

In the beginning God created 120-millimetre optical discs. And the discs were blank; and worn-out VHS tape was upon the face of TV. And God said: Let there be encoded MPEG-2 compressed video, and a 650-nanometer red laser moved upon the face of the discs, and this developed to present-day DVDs. Films on dvds are a great technological feat, as well as a great gift from God to man to while away the time till he regains the Paradise he has lost. A friend of mine and a life-time-fellow-movie-goer once sadly wondered that if there were going to be no movies in returned-to Eden, then there is no true Paradise.

from Dinha Gorgis

Sun, 6/6/10, Dinha Gorgis wrote:

What a memory!

special taste

I have a special taste for dramatic characters who include, not stars like Hamlet and co, but co-stars like Shylock, Thersytes of Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida", Karla Zachanasian of Durrenmatt's "Der Bezuch", Becket's Pozzo and Hamm, de Sade in Weiss' "Marat/Sade", Nat Goldberg of Pinter's "The Birthday Party", and not any of the nine sisters, charming as they are, of Lorca's "Casa de Bernarda Alba", but their grandmother Maria Juseppa, a character living in dementia away from the sea of troubles of this world but who, time and time again, stands up in agony to utter some unintelligible remarks, presumably about life and death. I take her to be the symbol and epitome of Nietzsche's eternal return of us humans dying, then coming back to existence, and our death and life recur infinitely, as Maria Juseppa in her on-and-off stillness and eruption represents us dying (stillness and peace of the grave),  then coming back to the (much ado of human life, a tale told by an idiot where man, on his way to dusty death, is like a poor player who struts and frets his hour on the stage, then is heard no more). Maria Juseppa's utterances then relaping to stillness is us in real human existence who are like the actor who struts his words, words, words  then is heard no more. In the on-and-off consciousness of the Father, Strindeberg does the same thing. There can never by a staging of "Bernarda Alba" like the 1973 the Spanish-language one by Nuria Espert at the Aldwych-London, as part of an international theatre festival held at each 3rd year of each decade--I hope the tradition is still on-going-- started by a disabled man of theatre whose photograph with him posing with Peter Ustinov I very well remember but whose name memory is not serving

a favourite: Steal from the World

SOLITUDE
by: Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

HOW happy he, who free from care
The rage of courts, and noise of towns;
Contented breaths his native air,
In his own grounds.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.

Blest! who can unconcern'dly find
Hours, days, and years slide swift away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mix'd; sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please,
With meditation.

Thus let me live, unheard, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me dye;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lye.

The "WAoVW?" dvd

Films on dvds are a great technological feat. When I first purchased the "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" dvd in 2004, I used to view it every night for about a fortnight. Each time, I experienced meeting Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton as my own guests at my place exactly as they themselves expect guests to come to their place. I like it when reality and art intermingle, or at least when both come as much as possible close to each other, and hence I hope to achieve, as Bernard Shaw hoped, an art that is truly realistic and a reality that is aesthetically artistic. One doesn't have to write verse to elevate speech to the level of poetry, as poetry for me is partly, and a small part of it at that, in verse, whereas poetry in its widest sense has the sky for its limit. I find poetry in Nick repeating what he has just heard from Martha: "George and Martha; sad, sad, sad, sad" as much as I find poetry in "To be or not to be". But, isn't "to be or not to be" a phrase we first heard in our school days from our teachers teaching us English verbs of "to do', "to have' and "to be", only that the great Bard put the phrase: "to be" within the centrafugal of language to come out with a poetic potential as active as uranium, just like the ordinary simple everyday-life word, "Go"--the last word spoken in Strindberg's "Miss Julie"--which Strindberg put in the atomic oven and brought out with a poetic force rarely if ever found in verse. There are, therefore, two types of poetry: language poetry and non-language poetry. There is even the poetry of utter silence as in the Mona Lisa. There is poetry of yelling in the streets, like Stanley in Tennessee Williams' "Streetcar Named Desire", yelling: "Stella", and there is poetry in mooing like a cow, as Lopakhin moos like a cow in Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard"

Knight on Cleopatra

On 17th (ides of) March 1983, G Wilson Knight delivered a lecture in University of Exeter on Shakespeare and Spiritualism, and he started the lecture by saying that he was going to concentrate on Shakespeare' "Antony and Cleopatra" because it was associated with a person (he meant me) who "comes from the Middle East, and who I telephoned yesterday to be here with us now."  Sitting at the lecture, I kept a low profile. Knight indeed telephoned me the previous afternoon about his lecture, and we had, in one of our frequent meetings--some at his home, Caroline House, Streatham Road, or my home, 41 Danes Road--discussed, among many other topics, Cleopatrta's joyfulness about preparing herself for death. Oh, how G Wilson Knight in his mellifluous dramatic voice (he was a professional one-man-show actor) recited to me Cleopatra's words: in the "O, I have such longing in me for immortality" speech

G Wilson Knight was to die on 15th (ides) of March, 1985 at the age of 88

from Ruby Cohn

Dear Siddeek
I was glad to get your email in your very literary style. I can't begin to equal it, so may I just appreciate it?
Friendlily
Ruby Cohn

17/11/2005

In a paper on "Hamlet"

In a paper on "Hamlet" I wrote in mid-1970s I say that the play could be considered a game of cards where the two players, Hamlet and Claudius, try their best to win, including resorting to cheating by spying on each other's cards. Claudius tries to understand what is on Hamlet's mind, Hamlet wants fo figure out whether or not his uncle is guilty of murdering his father. The play's whole characters are like cards in a deck of cards: Claudius is King, Gertrude Queen, Hamlet Jack, Ophelia Ace of Hearts, Two Grave Diggers are Two of Spades, Fortinbras and His Troops are Ten of Clubs, and Polonius is Joker

from Peter Brown

From: Peter Brown
Date: Monday, July 12, 2010, 5:13 AM

Hi
Your blog is extensive and your detailed knowledge of the theatre is
extremely impressive. I will do my best to catch up with your blog from
time to time. Keep up the great work.
Best wishes
Peter

Stronger than sex

Pinter came from N London. When one evening my London girlfriend Caroline took me to see some of her friends in N London, my mind, when I was sitting beside Caroline in a taxi, was visualising where Pinter's original whereabouts could be. I was attracted to Pinter in his absence and in my imagination more than to Caroline in her presence and in my reality. Contrary to Dr Freud, there are things in the human psyche stronger than sex, intellectuality being one of them, and if I were given the option whether to be in Caroline's or Pinter's company that evening, I would have chosen Pinter's. Action is another impetus that is more powerful than sex. Hotspur in "Henry IV" 1 leaves his warm bed with his wife at dawn of a Scottish winter to go to the battlefield, and he eventually meets his death. In Elia Kazan's 1951 movie, "Viva Zapata!", starring Marlon Brando, Zapata leaves his warm bed while still in the first few nights of his honeymoon, and goes to meet his violent death. In Arabic history, the famous army leader Khalid preferred a freezing dawn waiting for the next battle to his wedding night

Pinter dialogue

GOLDBERG. [sitting at the table] ... every second Friday of the month my Uncle Barney used to take me to the seaside, regular as clockwork. Brighton, Canvey Island, Rottingdam — Uncle Barney wasn’t particular. After lunch on Shabbuss we’d go and sit in a couple of deck chairs — you know, the ones with canopies — we’d have a little paddle, we’d watch the tide coming in, going out, the sun coming down — golden days. Uncle Barney. Of course, he was an impeccable dresser. One of the old school. He had a house just outside Basingstoke at the time. Respected by the whole community. Culture? Don’t talk to me about culture. He was an all-round man, what do you mean? He was a cosmopolitan.




The above is Pinter in "Birthday Party". To me, Pinter is the best and greatest dramatic dialogue writer--better than Beckett, Shaw, Wilde and et tu Shakespeare. When I read a Pinter dialogue, I feel mesmerised, and a sort of nice soothing cool current goes through my bones. Pinter 's dialogue is very down-to-earth, made of the stuff daily kitchen sink conversation is made of. Place names of real cities, towns, neighbourhoods and even coffee shops Pinter mentions in his dialogues add to the magic

from Peter Brown

July 25, 2010 2:15 PM,       from Peter Brown

 Siddeek.

I love your stories, Very funny.

Hope you are well and prospering.
Very best
Peter

The Joy of Silence

Perhaps we dont imagine the pleasure of silence enjoyed by the likes of Samuel Beckett, Ezra Pound, James Joyce and George Bernard Shaw who in his Back to Methuselah puts it like this: At end of this tetralogy, there are two races in the far future, in the year 31820 AD, the first race is that of the short-livers and the other one of the long-livers who live up to many centuries. On the face of it, these ancients dont look to have something to occupy or fulfil their existence, but one of them explains to a questioning short-liver, "Infant, one moment of the ecstasy of life as we live it, would strike you dead." Beckett himself said something to this effect: Our allotted time on earth is not long enough to be used for anything other than ourselves. In The Koran, silence is a component of paradise

Back to Mumayiz

My dear friend Professor Ibrahim Mumayiz, my fellow-Iraqi, who in the early-1960s did his PhD in English literature in Trinity College-Dublin where Oscar Wilde, JM Synge and Samuel Beckett had studied, made himself known to AA Luce, Beckett's supervisor way back in the 1920s. Mumayiz, too, personally knew Brendan Behan who frequented the same local pub in Dublin.

from James Knowlson

Dear Siddeek, Good to hear that you are so busy with your different projects and activities. I do hope you keep well. Warm wishes Jim K. On Jul 20 2010

Knowlson's Beckett Scholarship

In my capacity as Visiting Scholar researching Beckett in Ulster University, Coleraine, NI, I was received by Faculty of Arts Dean, Professor Robert Welch, my MA supervisor in The University of Leeds when he supervised my dissertation, THE ATTEMPT AT FAILURE: A STUDY OF SAMUEL BECKETT'S PLAYS in 1971. 1971 was more or less about the same time when Beckett biographer and founder of Beckett International Foundation, James Knowlson shifted from 18th-Century Literature scholarship in Glasgow to Beckett in Reading. That lucky shift provided Becketteers, among other things, with a bible, Knowlson's SB biography, DAMNED TO FAME. One of the most interesting things I had discovered in my latest Beckett researching in Coleraine was that the role of Krapp was in 1985 played in East Berlin by Brecht's son-in-law. When meeting Knowlson at BIF in July 2005, I told Knowlson this anecdote which he told me had had already known, and I explained to him that one would feel totally apprehensive to mention any data about Beckett to him because, being the Beckett doyen he is, he would make even the angels stand corrected or at least checked

Writing With Honesty

After ENDGAME, Beckett became scant in writing that he wrote plays [Ruby Cohn described them to me as "not active plays"] which were growing tinier in length in a way some cynics thought that Beckett would one day publish a volume entitled PLAYS BY SAMUEL BECKETT containing absolutely blank pages. But Beckett, having another side, explained to a fellow-Irishman that he was finding it difficult to write because he was finding it difficult to write with honesty. The reason why I sometime cease writing is because, like Beckett, I have been finding it difficult to write honest things

tsadeek

In her friendly, intimate private and homely personal domestic book on Beckett titled HOW IT WAS, Ann Atik doesn't find in the English language sufficient adjectives to describe SB's nicety so she resorts to borrow from the Hebrew language the word "tsadeek" which she explains that it means the rightuous, the veracious. "Verily, verily I tell ye" says Christ which quotation Dostoyvsky used as epigraph for his THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. Indeed, my name Siddeek means the same in Arabic as in Hebrew. When I read Ann Atik's "tsadeek" in the Beckett International Foundation at the University of Reading Library, I rushed to the secreatary Verity Andrews and told her that her name, Verity which means the veracious, ie tsadeek, and mine, Siddeek, mean the same

The Joy of Pain

When in Exeter in early 1980s, I once read and a book titled THE JOY OF SEX. Looting that book's title, I venture to say that Beckett celebrated, welcomed and even, when it wasn't there, missed and eventually sought pain. THE JOY OF PAIN could be an apt title of a book on SB. SB wrote with exuberant ecsatasy about maladies, aliments, illnesses, injuries of the heart and body and wounds of the soul as a result of "the slings and arrows that human flesh is heir to." The last quotation is snatched from Hamlet. There is a Boris Karloff film titled THE BODY SNATCHER, and like that body snatcher I snatch allusions, quotations and phrases. I am like SB's HAPPY DAYS Winnie, an inveterate allusioner, and these allusions swarm in my head that I want to cry with Pozzo when he says:" But this is unbearable". Yes, these allusions and quotations swarm in my head like the locusts that swarmed in Egypt with such huge numbers that turned daylight into night. Thus speaks THE BIBLE about those locusts in Pharaoh's days, and thus speaks John Milton in PARADISE LOST about Satan and his followers falling from Heavan and as THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA speaks SB Tawfeek about allusions and quotations that come to him, as Pozzo says, "all unawares."

from Rodney Sharkey

Sideek


Delighted to hear from you and what a mail! It is full of interesting details.

regards
Rodney

Great Actors Who Didn't Play Beckett

 'Tis pity there wasn't such a cast:

 Laurence Olivier ..... Hamm
 Anthony Perkins ..... Clov
 Marlon Brando .... Pozzo
 Peter O"Toole .... Lucky
 Rod Steiger ..... Vladimir
 Eli Wallach ..... Estragon
 Liz Taylor ..... Winnie

What I meant was in the mid-1950s and early-1960s when Beckett established himself as a major dramatist and when the cast I suggested were in the meridian. Olivier when he played Archie Rice in John Osborne's THE ENTERTAINER, Brando in the days of the films THE YOUNG LIONS and ONE-EYED JACKS, even in 1972 when he played Don Vito Corleone in THE GODFATHER, Liz Taylor in the days of BUTTERFIELD 8 and Martha in WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? and for both roles she earned Oscars, when Eli Wallach played in Elia-Kazan-directed 10 c.'s BABY DOLL, in the days when Anthony Perkins played that cult role in Hitchcock's PSYCHO, and when Peter O'Toole was fresh from LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, and last but by no means least, in the days when Rod Steiger earned his Oscar for his role in IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT. Now, does my casting suffer from low taste?

Barbara Bray

Through my recent researching on this topic I found out that Barbara Bray, Beckett's lady-friend later, in early 1950s taught English in Alexandria University, Egypt and one of her students, an Egyptian named Mensi, went to continue his studies in Liverpool Universitty, and later Bray became Head of Drama Department at BBC Radio 3, and then Mensi joined her there and she liked and admired his eccentricities and wild ways so much that she was instrumental in introducing him to Beckett with whom he established a firm friendship. Mensi who started his life in England as a dish washer in restaurants ended as a man of property in southern England

1949 Mutter Courage

George Steiner was anti-Becketteer. In the last few pages of his book THE DEATH OF TRAGEDY, he says things to the effect that Beckett's plays are not theater but they make use of the theater. Steiner was a Brechteer. In the closing pages of the same book he says that the best stage production of any play he had seen was the 1949 Berliner Ensemble one of MUTTER COURAGE UND IHRE KINDER, directed by Brecht and starring his wife Helene Weigel in the title role. He says that at the end, when the body of her second son is brought in front of her, to avoid being arrested by the enemy troops, she has to deny him, she turns to the audience in the theater auditorium and give a mute shriek, Steiner says, "made us want to lower our heads as if a gust of wind was blowing over us." During my first visit to Bentley in his Manhattan flat, I brought up the subject of that l949 production, and Bentley told me that he attended that production, and he said he was going to tell something he hadn't said in print. He told me that between one scene and another, Weigel appears as if she has aged 20 years with her face lowered and her jaw dropped. After the show there was a sort of press conference during which she was asked about the magic make-up that made her look 20 years older. She burst into an uprorious laughter and then she put her hand into her mouth and took out her artificial teeth, and she looked, as in the play, 20 years older. "This is the magic make-up I used," said Weigel. Bentley concluded the anecdote by saying that he and the others dropped their jaws in total astonishment. Bentley and I laughed wildly at the incident

from Ibrahim Mumayiz

Sid

You're a great correspondent and letter-writer. Use it to make your blog known to all those you correspond with. You deserve to have your blog well- known.



Ib

from Ibrahim Mumayiz

From Ibrahim Mumayiz:



I have known Siddeek Tawfeek for many, many years. He is a great scholar - an addict, in fact - of English literature. There is hardly a figure or an era in English literature he could not expound on at great, highly informative, lengths. What makes his blog especially significant is that Siddeek is a fertile, and avid, letter-writer. As a lucid, learned communicator his blog is a most appropriate vehicle for conveying his wealth of learning and Knowledge.



Ibrahim Mumayiz

from Ibrahim Mumayiz on launching blog

I think it's a great idea. You should have done it a long time ago. Good luck!

On, on

"On, on", shouts Pozzo at Lucky. "On, on" turned out to be Beckett's motto in life as when one day he told the man who was later to write his obituary in "The Guardian", and rumour has it that Beckett had picked up that motto from his father whose dying words were: "Fight, fight, fight, fight", and with some variation, Beckett made it his motto

My wife as Estragon

My wife, the down-to-earth rationalist, sees dreams; whereas I, the romantic absurdist, sleep like a log. Yesterday morning when about to tell me about her last night's dream, I told her to call it a day. Without being aware of Estragon's remark to Vladimir, she said in Arabic to me: "Who to should I tell my dreams but you?"

Professor Ibrahim Mumayiz

Dr Ibrahim Mumayiz, Professor of English Literature, an avid reader, active researcher and passionate lover of English literature. Professor Mumayiz and I have been friends since early 1990s when I fell in love with him academically after he had delivered a lecture on English literary history. A year or so afterwards, I attended the viva of a student who wrote his MA dissertation on Tennyson, and Mumayiz was one of the main external examiners. Mumayiz with his knowledgability of the subject stole the entire show; from the student, the other external examiner and the examining committee chairman. The way Mumayiz explained to the examinee--and to us the audience--Tennyson's daily life and habits, created in us the impression as if he had lived with poet in the same household.
In recent years, Mumayiz, who is currently living and researching in USA, has been concentrating on Orientalism, especially Arabic-English literary common channels. He has authored about a dozen of books, all published, beside scores of articles and papers read at conferences and forums. The way Mumayiz describes life and poetry in pre-Islamic Arabia transports the reader to those locations in that fabulous era. Reading Mumayiz's writings is a joy that reconciles us to life, and helps us ward off, to pilfer a phrase from Hamlet, "the slings and arrows flesh is heir to". Now published is:


IBRAHIM MUMAYIZ

SOCIETY, RELIGION AND POETRY

IN PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

(Antwerp, GARANT) ISBN: (9789044125122) 244pp.


PART ONE of this new book contains seven essays, by the author, on selected aspects of Pre-Islamic Arabia: “The Land and the people”; “Nabataean Influences on Pre-Islamic Northern Arabia”; “Christianity in Pre-Islamic Northern Arabia – Part- I”; “Christianity in Pre-Islamic Northern Arabia-Part-II’; “Collyridianism and the Virgin Mary”; “The Reign of Queen Mavia” and “Poetry and the Mu’allaqat”.

PART TWO contains a poetic translation of the seven Odes –Mu’allaqat- based on Al-Zawzani’s text. The first, that of Imru’Al-Qays, is in English iambic couplets, and the remaining six Mu’allaqat – those of Tarafa; Zuhayr, Labid ,’Amr b. Kulthoum, ‘Antarah, and Al-Harith b. Hilliza are poetically translated in rhymed alexandrines.

This book makes the latest - and a valuable - contribution to Pre-Islamic Arabian studies.

Copies could be ordered directly from the publisher at:

www.garant-uitgevers.be

uitgeverij@garant.be

"Easy Rider"

"The New York Times"
146
Siddeek Bakr Tawfeek
Qatar
June 6th, 2010, 12:01 pm

"Easy Rider" influenced my way of thinking in teaching English literature in Iraqi universities in the 1970s


Siddeek Tawfeek

Formerly Professor of English Literature, Mosul University, Iraq

from Ibrahim Mumayiz

I have known Siddeek for the past 18 years, and have been more than impressed by his encyclopedic, comprehensive and scholarly command of English literature. During all these years he and I have been in constant touch, exchanging letters and email messages on every period of English literature - Anglo-Saxon, Chaucerian, Fifteenth century, Elizabethan, Restoration, Augustan, Romantic, Victorian and modern. I personally have benefited much from Siddeek's wealth of knowledge in all these periods and found him to be a lucid, expressive and informative letter-writer.

Professor Ibrahim Mumayiz M.A (Trinity College, Dublin) M.A (Manchester), Ph.D (Trinity College, Dublin)

from Eric Bentley

Recommending Siddeek Tawfeek


Alas I am not strong and well enough to write adequately on this subject, but even in a few words I can highly recommend him as a scholar and critic. My qualification to do so is that I have been in correspondence with him for years, he was my guest also at one point in New York, and he has translated a short book of mine into Arabic.



He is a man of great learning and sprightly intelligence. His knowledge of English literature surpasses that of many of his colleagues in England and America. His passion for his subject is excelled by no one I know.



He deserved nothing less than the highest commendation .



Eric Bentley

the importance of being naughty

I am attracted to eccentrics and find me bored by rational, wise and common-sense people. Perhaps, for some, I need psycho-analysis to be cured from my deep passion and profound admiration of the following: the Marquis de Sade, Rasputin, Mussolini, Al Capone and Charles Manson. I hardly find a thing to attract me to the personal habits and ways of such wise guys as Plato, Christ, Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill. I love the likes of the aforementioned naughty enfant terrible, and femmes fatal such as the Metford Sisters and Mata Hari whom I prefer to Mother Tereasa. I find white-collar well-shirt-stuffed people dull and boring. I prefer failures and trouble-makers to successful law-abiding people. I prefer to Beckett, the escaped prisoner who travelled all the way from Germany to Paris to meet Beckett about staging "Waiting for Godot" and when Blin telephoned Beckett about it, Beckett avoided the prisoner by telling Suzanne to tell the prisoner that he was not in Paris. It is for this reason of naughtiness and not for his cantos I love Ezra Pound. I neither care nor mind what each of these naughty guys and dolls fight for or againt; the important thing is their naughtiness

why I am attracted to samuel beckett

Pozzo and Hamm, my personal heroes due to their cynisim and scoffing (heroic because they are cynical, and cynics because heroic) are what mainly attracts me to Samuel Beckett; the rest of Beckett is quicksand, and because I am a passionate reader of biographies (and Beckett has three excellent biographies) and biographical writings (Beckett's letters), Beckett was lucky in my choosing to love him

Loving Villains

I love intellectually literary villains because they are tough, foul-mouthed, bold, daring, brave and unafraid of life, people, things or death, and have a dramatic flair that is to my liking. I find the following dull, therefore I am not attracted to them: Oedipus, Creon, Hamlet, Lear and Othello, whereas I madly love these naughty boys and girls: Medea, Agave, Richard III, Barabbas Jew of Malta, Shylock, Thersytes, Viloet Venable, Karla Zachanasian, Pozzo, Hamm, Nat Goldberg, Marquis de Sade. I love them for their cynicism, curses, swears and railings against people and human nature and the supernatural

"The Romantic Agony" and Other Books

On a shelf fallen prey to dust and dampness in Mustansiriyah University Centreal Library, Baghdad lay a volume dear to my heart titled, "The Romantic Agony", by University of Rome Professor of English Literature Mario Praz. The book is mainly on the Marquis de Sade. When I joined Mustansiriyah University in September 1992, I eyed that book, and at once I borrowed it and re-read it, as I had read it in Leeds University's Brotherton Library a couple of decades earlier, and half a decade before Leeds I had read it in Mosul University Central Library.It is one of those books the heart grows fond of as time goes by. It is an evergreen book, like TS Eliot's "The Sacred Wood", G Wilson Knight's "The Wheel of Fire", Eric Bentley's "The Playwright as Thinker", George Steiner's "The Death of Tragedy",  Martin Esslin's "The Theatre of the Absurd", Hugh Kenner's "The Pound Era", Robert Brustein's "The Theatre of Revolt" and Jan Kott's "Shakespeare Our Contemporary"
Mario Praz (1896-1982), author of the monumental phenomenal book The Romantic Agony, Italian literary critic and arts historian, got his BA at University of Florence and his PhD in English Literature at University of Liverpool where he was later appointed lectrurer in English Literature. In 1930, he published came la morte e il diavolo, translated into English, titled The Romantic Agony in which book, Praz traced the embedded and overt erotic and sadistic impulses in the Romantic movement through the work of Baudelaire, de Sade, Flaubert and Oscar Wilde

Beckett, my mother, my wife and the lady-guest

Yesterday evening, I telephoned my mother in Mosul, Iraq. After hanging up, our lady-guest turned to my wife and asked her about her mother in Mosul, and my wife, having alive neither parent, said to the guest, "I have no mother and no father". I declaimed in English, Hamm's line: "But for me, no father;and for Hamm, no home".The guest, flabbergasted, wondered what I was saying, and my wife, winking to her, said, "My husband is cokoo about someone called Beckett". She pronounces the name the Arabic way, /bickit/

Bentley and Cohn

In the 20th-Century Views series volume on Brecht, there is an essay where Eric Bentley slights Beckett by saying that he was incapable of writing a full-length play. In the Case Book series on "Waiting for Godot", Ruby Cohn included Bentley's review of the play which had appeared in "The New Review". It was democratic of Cohn, Becketteer and anti-Brechteer to include in her book an article by Bentley, Brechteer and anti-Becketteer. Bentley told me later that in his book, "What's Theatre?" he was less unfriendly with "Godot" and its author

From Ruby Cohn

At 6:19 PM  12/2/2005 Ruby Cohn wrote:

Dear Siddeek
I was glad to get your email in your literary style. I can't begin to equal it, so may I just say that I do appreciate it?

Whatever gave you the idea that I dislike your emails? I LOVE them, so please don't stop.....Please don't sell your computer. Friendlily, Ruby

From Ruby Cohn

Ruby Cohn wrote:

Dear Siddeek,
I hardly know anyone who puts his personality into his letters as you, and not trying to emulate you.
Friendlily, Ruby

AT 10:59 PM 3/8/2005 -0800

From Basil Hatim

SID




YOU HAVE ALWAYS HAD SIGNS NOT ONLY OF GENIUS BUT A SCHOLARLY DOWN-TO-EARTHNESS VERY RARE IN LATTER_DAY ACADEMICS!





BAZ



Dr Basil Hatim

Professor of Translation & Interpreting Studies

JJ and Irish Orientalism

In his slim volume, THE STORY OF IRISH ORIENTALISM, Malikarjun Mansoor attempts to show the richness of Ireland's contribution to oriental studies and to demonstate that the "island of saints and sages" had a role in the subject of orientalism in ways more than one. "The Island of Saints and Sages" was the title of a lecture James Joyce delivered in Trieste in which JJ linked the Irish language to oriental languages, substantiating his viewpoint by the belief of many philologists that the Irish language belonged originally to the ancient language of the Phoenicians, the originators of trade and navigation. And not without a sense of nationalism, JJ wanted to point out that the Irish preceeded the British in orientalism, thus from a Saidesque viewpoint, orientalism, in the hands of JJ became part af an anti-imperialist strategy that could evoke a sense of Irish identity founded neither on the English language nor on the expansionism in British rule. Mansoor identified himself not with Ireland as a whole but with the Irish ascendancy with Trinity College and with a school that traced its founding in 1591 to Queen Elizabeth who later granted the first charter to the newly constituted East India Co whose trading activities reached as far as my city Mosul in northern Iraq from where mousseline--derived from the word Mosul--was imported to the London markets. Mansoor says that oriental studies did not begin until Trinity College had been founded, and he credits two brothers, Ambrose and James Ussher in late sixteenth century with offering the first lectures in Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac for undergraduates. In beginning of the seventeenth century Dudley Lofts distiguished himself as a superb linguist and translator of texts in Arabic, Persian, and Syriac

Endgame in Ancient Iraq

The writing on the wall Hamm speaks of, Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsen, happened originally in ancient Iraq, Mesopotomia, and the Muse made Beckett's imagination travel to southern Iraq, to write a play, teasing and spiting both God and man, about the end of creation in the location which witnessed the beginning of civilisation, and, alas, memory is not serving about the Beckett scholar who wrote in the 1960s that as much as the old Iraqi poem, The Epic of Gilgamesh is about creation, Beckett's Endgame is about anti-creation. Belshazzar of the Mene Mene incident was an ancient Iraqi ermperor. Hammurabi was another ancient Iraqi emperor. It is no co-incidence that Beckett's "Endgame" main character is called Hamm, derived from Hamm[urabi]. John Sheedy in an article titled "The Comic Apocalypse of King Hamm", published in "Modern Drama" in mid-1960s, tries to point out that Beckett's Hamm is an ancient (Iraqi?) emperor who had seen better days and now his empire has crumbled

Beckett and "The Old Testament", "The New Testament" and "The Koran"

In "Waiting for Godot", Beckett poohpoohed "The New Testament", in "Endgame", he poohpoohed "The Old Testament" and had he lived long enough to see Moslem women wearing hijab in Paris streets, he would have poohpoohed "The Koran"

Becketteers

"Rodney Sharkey of Trinity College, whose meticulous research illuminated so many areas of Beckett biography and who so often discussed the results with me with such keen interpretation"
from Preface to SAMUEL BECKETT: THE LAST MODERNIST by Anthony Cronin, London: Flamingo, 1996, pp viii-iv



With compliments of

Siddeek Bakr Tawfeek, MA (Leeds), 1972

Formerly Professor of English Literature, Mustansiriyah University, Baghdad, Iraq

Currently Senior Translation Specialist, Supreme Council for Family Affairs, Doha

MA dissertation topic THE ATTEMPT AT FAILURE: A STUDY OF SAMUEL BECKETT'S PLAYS, supervisor: Robert Welch, currently Dean of Faculty of Arts, Ulster University-Coleraine, N Ireland. Welch is Cronin's personal friend and he is mentioned in Cronin's book above on p 469

Following is an email I sent  in April 2007 to Professor Rodney Sharkey



Dear Dr Sharkey

Your lecture which you wittily opened with the Krapp banana tableau yesterday evening was, among other things, interesting and illuminating and at times more than one, eye-opening to things Beckettian. You rang genuinely Beckettian, or to use the form coined by Ruby Cohn, Becketteer. In my remark yesterday, memory didn't serve to mention Nagg's statement "There's nothing funnier than unhappiness" to be an apt translation of Mohammed's saying "The gravest calamity is that which evokes laughter." All things considered, as WC Fields said once, I usually attempt at enhancing the dialogue of cultures, to bring east and west closer, introduce the foreign community to Arabic culture and also because I am in the habit of collecting material on Beckett in the Arab world, especially that Beckett frequented Morroco and Tunisia where he was when the news about his Nobel winning was broken and Knowlson in DAMNED TO FAME explains how Tunisians helped Beckett and Suzanne in hiding from press and media people, and it was also in Tunisia, sitting in a cafe where Beckett was inspired with the idea of NOT I. Beckett was a man of action more than what is known about him. In WWII, he assisted in resisting the Nazi. During my visit in July 2005 to Professor John Pilling, University of Reading, I asked him why there isn't a good study or research or even a book on Beckett's war affiliations and as you mentioned in your lecture that Beckett lost many friends in concentration camps, Pilling told me that there isn't sufficient material and documents and because, and this typically Beckettian, Beckett didn't talk a lot about the subject--whenever did he talk a lot at all about anything! Now going back to the banana tableau associated with Krapp, during having lunch with Beckett biographer James Knowlson and Elizabeth his wife in the University of Reading Senior Common Room where he invited me also in July 2005, Knowlson talked to me things Beckettian one of which things was about how during rehearsals of KRAPP at the Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square-London in 1972, Beckett told Albert Finney playing the part to make the gesture of turning his head back slowly as if touched on the shoulder by someone whom Beckett intended to be death coming to Krapp, and was Knowlson furious when he saw the play with Finney not doing as Beckett had directed him. Beckett was not there because he never saw any of his plays. Of course Beckett wasn't there as he attended rehearsals but never full performances of his plays. Knowlson would have gone on telling me more things Beckettian, in the end Knowlson apologised to me that he couldn't continue talking because he was feeling unwell in his throat, especially that he was fresh from an operation of cancer of the mouth

In "The New York Times"

"The New York Times"
December 6th, 2009


11:50 am


32.

Ben Brantley's Theater Reviews

Ben Brantley writes so truly, sincerely and intimately that his writings read like everybody's--at least my--inner biography. Like Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Dostoyvsky and Proust and the rest of them great writers, Brantley has roamed the entire road-map of human nature, and like Gilgamesh, has come back to tell us the full story. Brantley's reviews transport the reader from the fog of the prose of daily reality to the sun of the poetry of art. Located thousands of miles from NYC, I couldn't go and see this recent STREETCAR staging, but like Hamlet seeing his dead father in his mind's eye, I likewise could see the play in my heart's eye, thanks to Brantley's vivid and colorful description. I salute Ben Brantley for removing geographical distances to make loving souls of the theater be present in NYC watching plays--without paying for the tickets.

After all, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers

Sincerely

Siddeek Tawfeek,

Iraqi Academic and Translator

— Siddeek Bakr Tawfeek, Qatar

From Peter Brown

Hi




Thank you for getting in touch.



Your blog is extensive and your detailed knowledge of the theatre is

extremely impressive. I will do my best to catch up with your blog from

time to time. Keep up the great work.



Best wishes



Peter

What and Where Beckett Drank

Beckett was a pub crawler in Dublin. He drank at the Bailey, a pub frequented by poets and authors, David Byrnes' pub where drank Padraic O'Connor, the Galway poet famed for drinking stout heavily laced with black pepper and Francis MacNamara, Dylan Thomas' would-be father-in-law. Beckett's drinking habits included drinking a brand of stout brewed in Cork called Beamish at a pub near Trinity College called Madame Cogley's Cabaretcome back home

There was a time when Beckett went to see DW Griffith, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy films at Dublin local cinemas. Vladimir and Estragon are modelled on Laurel and Hardy. Keaton played Beckett's protagonist of "Film"

The Other Side of Samuel Beckett

The Romanian-born, Paris-based philosopher EM Cioran who and Beckett for some time were best friends, once asked Suzanne, Beckett's then-would-be wife, how could Beckett manage to live with all those pessimistic, gloomy and depressing ideas, attitudes and convictions. Suzanne replied tersely, "Beckett has another side." In this succinct answer, Suzanne summed up Beckett in a way that the three biographies could hardly do, and showed she understood Beckett viscerally more than all of the three biographers. Like when Horatio suggesting to Marcellus and Bernardo to sit down and discuss the meaning of why Denmark is too busy in a way that work is not separating weekends from weekdays, I say, let us sit to consider to know and understand Beckett's other side which seems to be a side, and here I once more pilfer from the great Bard, Hamlet's remark to Horatio, "undreamt of in all" Beckett books on Beckett. No wonder Beckett warned Bair, his first biographer, that he would read her book on him neither before not after it is published, and saying "yes" to Knowlson about a biography, stipulated to Knowlson that the book was to be published after his and wife Suzanne's deaths, and, of course, Beckett had died before Anthony Cronin's biography was out


The Other Side of Samuel Beckett Revisited


EM Cioran once asked Suzanne, Beckett's then-would-be wife, how Beckett could manage to live with all those pessimistic, gloomy and depressing ideas, attitudes and convictions. Suzanne replied succintly, "Beckett has another side." In this terse answer, Suzanne summed up Beckett in a way that the three biographies could hardly do, and showed she understood Beckett viscerally more than all of the three biographers. Like when Horatio suggesting to Marcellus and Bernardo to sit down and discuss the meaning of why Denmark is too busy in a way that work is not separating weekends from weekdays, I say, let us sit to consider to know and understand Beckett's other side which seems to be a side, and here I once more pilfer from the great Bard, Hamlet's remark to Horatio, "undreamt of in all"books on Beckett. And once again, as in another phrase from the great Bard as in this bit of dialogue in "Hamlet":

Bernardo: What, is Horatio there?"

Horatio: A piece of him,

Suzanne told the world that it only sees a piece of Beckett! No wonder Beckett warned Bair, his first biographer, that he would read her book on him neither before not after it is published, and saying "Yes" to Knowlson about a biography, stipulated to Knowlson that the book was to be published after his and wife Suzanne's deaths, and, of course, Beckett had died before Anthony Cronin's biography was out

Audio or Visual?

Rod Steiger is one of my chosen few actors, and 'tis great pity indeed that he didn't play Pozzo and Hamm. My favourite Beckett actor is Patrick Magee. I like him mainly for his voice. Beckett it like it, too, so he wrote "Krapp's Last Tape" for Magee to play Krapp. There was an excellent performance of Magee as Mephistopheles in Marlowe' "Dr Faustus" in the Lyric-Hammersmith in 1981. I have rather unorthodox habits of enjoying the performing arts--I prefer listening to spoken word recordings of plays to viewing visual presentations of plays whether on stage, screen or tv. I may enjoy a good visual presentation once or twice, but the more I listen to spoken word records, the more I enjoy them, just like Estragon enjoying carrots the more he eats them. I memorised Peter Weiss' MARAT/SADE from the numerous times I listened to the Caedmon Records of the play, especially Sade's part spoken beautifully by Magee: "Before understanding what's right and what's wrong, we first must understand what we are. I cannot understand myself, I do not know if I am a victim or a hangman, and no longer do I discover some truth about myself than I begin to doubt it. ... Nature would stand unmoved if we destroyed the entire human race. I hate nature." Bravo, Magee reading de Sade

Associations

As Macbeth is associated with the weird sisters, Hamlet with the ghost, Othello with the handkerchief and King Lears with his daughters, Beckett is associated with bicycles dust-bins through some of his people (the word he preferred when he referred to his characters): Molloy and Hamm. To confirm and celebrate and even to become part of this association with Beckett's bicycles, Hugh Kenner, in the introduction to his 1961 book on Beckett, gives an account of his first visit to Beckett in Paris and how he discussed with Beckett the dust-bins in "Endgame" and Molloy's bicycle. When leaving Beckett's Paris villa, he went wrongly through the back yard where he saw a dust-bin and stumbled over a bicycle placed in the entrance

Schneider Directing Brecht

I never thought that that Beckett sniffer Alan Schneider directed Brecht plays. Yesterday, I learned that he did THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE at the Arena Stage, Washington, DC, on October 30th 1961.

On another occasion, Brecht's nephew playd Beckett's Krapp

It is obvious that Brecht influenced Beckett. There is a lot of Azdak in Pozzo, and Mother Courage's waiting in vain for the coming-back of her son in Vladimir and Estragon waiting for Godot. Beckett mocked Brecht's verfremdungseffekt when he makes Estragon direct Vladimir where the toilet is, and when Clov asks Hamm what is keeping him with him and Hamm replies, "The dialogue." Did Beckett go to see Brecht's plays? I don't think Beckett attended that memorable--can we say the most important stage event?--MOTHER COURAGE production in Berlin in 1949. Was there any contact/communication personal/artistic/professional between the two playwrights? "Questions", as Falstaff says to Prince Hal, "to be asked."

From Eric Bentley

From: Eric Bentley:

and the someone was Helene Weigel who was acting as costume mistress at the time

Suzanne Beckett

Bair glamourised Suzanne, Mrs Beckett, whereas Knowlson kept her in the shade, as much as she deserves a biography of her own like the one Nora Joyce finally got. Suzanne championed Beckett's early work. She went from one stage-director to another carrying in her handbag the Godot manuscript to be staged. She went all the way to Germany to see a Beckett play production then report to SB about it. Asking Ruby Cohn if she met Suzanne, she informed me that she never met her because Suzanne avoided English-speaking visitors of Sam's and she received French-speaking ones, and for that purpose, the house had two entrances, one for the former and the other for the latter

Sam & Ez

Calder was preparing Christmas tree and buying sherry and port wine in London when Samuel Beckett was dying in a Paris home for the elderly. Nephew Edward Beckett informed Calder about his uncle's death

Ezra Pound had a shelf full of Joyce's and Eliot's works. Well, that is expected, since the former was his mentor and the latter his disciple--but to have a shelf of Beckett's works is rather a tale of the unexpected, because Ez's couldn't stomach Sam ever since they met by chance at Joyce's in Paris, and Beckett never forgot his annoyance at Ez's egocentricity back in the 1930s. But on the other hand, Ez, passing thru Paris in January 1965, "summoned" SB. Ez  attended a memorial service in London of TS Eliot who had died on 5th January and visited the widow of his sometime employer WB Yeats. Ez stayed a couple of days in Paris during which Beckett, out of respect not love for the old man who was a Joyce associate, went to see him at his hotel and Ez invited Sam to dinner. Next day, Ez attended an "Endgame" show, and later recited to a street public some latter-day cantos

Charles Laughton rubbing

In an email, I asked Ruby Cohn if she had seen any Brecht, and she replied that she had seen Charles Laughton playing Galileo, and in particular she remembered Laughton rubbing his chest every now on then. Eric Bentley, during my visit to him, had mentioned to me a lot of things, he told me, he hadn't said in print, one of which was that he knew Laughton in Hollywood and knew some of his personal habits. Bentley went on saying that he came to know that Laughton, whether in the corridors of a theatre or a Hollywood studio, was in the habit of walking around and rubbling his genitals. To facilitate the job for himself so that his fingers could reach easily, Laughton made a hole in his trousers pocket. One day, and Bentley was an eye-witness, Laughton was yelling and cursing because someone had sewn the hole in his trousers pocket. That someone, as Eric Bentley has just informed me in an email message, was Helene Weigel (Mrs Brecht) who was acting as costume mistress at the time

questions to be asked

The tape-recoder is everything Beckett's "Krapp's Last Tape"consists of. The play title itself is "Tape". Beckett wrote "Krapp's Last Tape" in 1958, immediately after his discovery of the tape-recorder when, according to Martin Esslin himself, Esslin introduced Beckett to the tape-recorder in 1957 after Esslin carried with him a tape-recorder on board of the plane that took him to Paris to meet SB. Purpose was to make SB listen to the recording of his radio play, "All That Fall" which he couldn't hear properly broadcast from BBC Programme 3 in London due to windy weather. Arriving at SB's in Paris, Esslin unpacked a tape-recorder and made SB listen to his play,"All That Fall". Beckett, wondering what the new equipment was, Esslin explained it was a new invention. That inspired him to write "Krapp's Last Tape". My father was interesed in Arabic classic singing, and he himself was a singer. We lived in Telkaif, 10 miles north-west of Mosul city, in northern Iraq. One day my father visited a friend, Noori Assar, in whose house he had a tape-recorder his relatives in US had sent him. Noori explained to my father what it was. My father sang and had his voice recorded, and when rewinding the tape, the Dr Jekyll in my father was amazed to hear the Mr Hyde in him singing from the tape. Immediately, my father bought a Grundig TK-5 tape-recorder. That was in 1956 in the village of Telkaif which was supplied with electricity power only a few months before the tape-recorder incident. Now, I pride myself that I was introduced to the tape-recorder in the obscure village of Telkaif in northern Iraq about a year prior to SB's introduction to it in Paris, capital of the world. A question to be asked. Likewise, I wonder how SB wasn't aware of the tape-recorder Arthur Miller used in his 1949 play,"Death of a Salesman". Another question to be asked

Some Contemporary Theatre History

Sometimes I dabble in doing a little history of contemporary theatre, and I come across points that need clarifying, for instance:


Circa 1952, Beckett saw and admired Roger Blin's staging of Strindberg's The Ghost Sonata by which the pre-Godot author was so impressed that when wife Suzanne, who, with the Godot manuscript in her hand-bag, going out in the streets of Paris looking for a director to do Godot on stage, brought word that Blin finally agreed to stage Godot, Beckett instantly approved. In 1953, Blin staged the world premier of Waiting for Godot on January 5th at The Theatre de Babylone, Paris. In gratitude, Beckett dedicated his next play Endgame to Blin who played the first Hamm in the world.

On the other hand, a highly charged movement for foreign, especially German theatre, an era of retrenchment and polarisation began in the Theatre des Nations in Paris in 1954 with the guest appearance of the Berliner Ensemble's Brecht's Mother Courage, the original show in Berlin in 1949 that was attended by no lesser theatre VIPs than Eric Bentley, George Steiner and Martin Esslin. Did Beckett go to see this show? A question to be asked

Beckett and My Wife

Yesterday night, I read that Beckett once advised a director to focus on laughter in "Endgame". I went to bed, and by the time I fell asleep, I saw me about to play Hamm with focusing on laughter. While I was about to utter "Me--to play" to mix it with a guffaw, I produced some sounds which awakened my wife. I explained to her the situation.  She felt annoyed that I dream of Samuel Beckett and not of her

Communist Samuel Beckett

After the death of Zosima the holy father in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, there comes out a very bad and rotten smell from the room where his body is prepared to be buried--a smell, a bad rotten one, which everybody found it hard to believe that from the body of such a holy father such a bad smell would come. Queer, but true, all the same. Likewise, I could detect communism in--you wouldn't believe it, nobody would, I myself hardly do--Beckett's Waiting for Godot where I found that Vladimir and Estragon are like two Radicalists (Lenin and Trotsky) waiting for the Revolution. No wonder, and it is no co-incidence that one of the twosome has a Russian name: Vladimir, and the other one, Estragon, who according to Martin Esslin was originally called by Beckett: Levy, a typical Jewish name, and Trotsky was Jewish (Karl Marx, churns the topic even thicker). Vladimir's reference to "the nineties when we were respectable" is to the 1890s when these Radicalists were active

B&B

Prologue


I condemn Brecht the politician who is dead, but salute Brecht the man-of-theatre who will never die



Body

In Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle, written and produced in 1945, if you go to the scene where Azdak enters being pulled with a rope round his neck, abused and treated as a dog, you will wonder if this scene was not the stuff Beckett's Pozzo-Lucky entrance scene is made of!

I salute Beckett and Brecht the two men-of-theatre who will never die

"Brothers in battle--a band of one blood", says the anonymous poem Beowulf, and I say that Beckett and Brecht--the irony that their names are close in sound and have the same initial, together with the Beowulf line above having the alliteration of the letter and sound "b" and the name Beowulf itself sharing the same initials of the two men-of-theatre, churns the irony thicker--have a bond of art that brings them together, no matter how we, readers and critics, try to ignore it. Brecht's Mother Courage, written and produced in 1939, closes with the theme of waiting. Mother courage waits for her son to return one day, and we know that her son, like Godot, will not return to her because we saw him being executed. Isn't the theme of Mother Courage awaiting in vain her son who is dead, and her waiting, therefore, being a false pointless and purposeless act, the stuff Beckett made his Waiting for Godot of!

Beckett and Brecht

Living the events of WW1 and the Easter 1916 incident, and then WW2, Beckett was saturated subconsciously with the atmosphere of war and action, yet some "crrrrrrrrrrrritics" complain of inaction in his plays where, they say, nothing happens, and in "Waiting for Godot", they claim, nothing happens-- twice. Brecht also lived through WW1 and WW2 and witnessed Hitler's years, but while Brecht ran away from Berlin to peace-augmented California to bask in its sunshine and the warm reception by George Tabori, Charles Laughton and Eric Bentley, Beckett "remained in Paris" which he "preferred in war to Dublin in peace"

Fantasia and Realism

Jan Kott, the Pole with "Shakespeare Our Contemporary", once remarked that when he wanted fantasia, he read Brecht, and when he wanted realism, he read Beckett, and here's down-to-earth evidence of Beckett's realism. Khalid, a Mosul University professor told me that on the eve of 2003 war in Iraq, Mosul University professors were ordered to keep night sentry duty, reminiscent of Marcellus when shouting at the very beginning of "Hamlet": "Who's there?", and in the following morning, Khalid went on, they had to write a report on the occurrences of the vigilance. In the morning of his night-watch, Khalid had nothing to report as the situation was like in "Hamlet", "not a mouse stirring", but that he had to write something, he wrote, in his own Arabic translation, Vladimir's words at the opening of "Waiting for Godot": "Nothing to be done. Nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful." Khalid's superior in the sentry who was also a senior party member, after reading Khalid's report, got extremely alarmed, reminiscent of Pozzo's remark: "This is becoming very alarming", and told Khalid furiously that it was an uncanny report and he wanted Khalid to tell him what it meant. Khalid explained that it was a quotation from a foreign play. The party member, pulling himself together, told Khalid not to write such an unnerving report, especially that the country was on the brink of war

In "Endgame" world

By entering "Endgame" world, I would realise Hamlet's dream that this too solid flesh would melt, thaw and dissolve itself into "Endgame" world, so that like Hamm I would dream of forests, and Hamm's dream would connect me with Edgar Allan Poe's summer dream under the tamarind tree. The word connect in the previous sentence means Ettesal which is the name I chose for my blog, and this choice was inspired by Ezra Pound's use in one of his Cantos of the Arabic word atesal written with transliteration and which means: connect, a Sufi (Mystic) word meaning to connect with the spirit of the universe, part of which is the world of literature, part of which is the "Endgame" world

Sam's Hamm

Sam's Hamm is my favourite character. I like him so much that one of my personal wishes for the future is that one day I'll be like him: blind, crippled and alone, just according to his own prediction to Clov: "One day you be blind, like me. You'll be sitting there, a speck in the void, in the dark, for ever, like me." Usually it is literature that imitates life; in my case I want life to imitate literature. If I were as lucky as that and Hamm's prediction applied to me, then I would enter "Endgame" world and this is my ultimate wish, my entire happiness. Hamm says to Clov: "Outside of here is another hell". Since outside as well inside of "Endgame" it is hell, I might as well be in "Endgame" hell. There is a song by the celebrated Iraqi Jewish brothers Saleh and Dawood Al-Kuwaiti, about a lover addressing a lover saying: "Your hell rather than my parents' paradise"

two parallel trios

I have made Samuel Beckett a houshold name and person. I live with my wife and son Ali. In our trio, my wife and I tend to be reticent and silent whereas son Ali is rather articulate. During my visit to Ruby Cohn at her studio in Crane Court, London on 26th July 2005, she told that once at Beckett's in Paris, Beckett and she were sitting quietly and James Knowlson was articulate. Beckett, being the shy man he was, signalled to Ruby, and Ruby, being the brave woman we all know her to be, told Jim to call it a day. I told my wife and son about the incident, and the threesome agreed that the Beckett-Cohn-Knowlson incident so corresponded to our situation that there was a time we addressed each other with nicknames, I was Beckett, my wife was Ruby and Ali was Knowlson. It became common to hear Ali saying: Dad Beckett and Mom Ruby and my wife and I call Ali: "Jim". In a postcard Ruby Cohn told me how fortuitous I was to have my first two initials S[iddeek] B[akr] Tawfeek the same as S[amuel] B[eckett]

Lucia Joyce's Song to Sam in My House

At breakfast this morning, I stood up with mug in hand and burst into song addressing my wife: "You're the cream in my coffee", the song Lucia Joyce used to sing to Samuel Beckett which I translated into Arabic, and with an Arabic ad lib, the lyric developed into a full-bodied serenade to the accompaniment of my son Ali's tapping on the table. The stanza of my lyric in Arabic sang like this:

Intil-haleeb ibqahwiti (You're the cream in my coffee)
Intil-habeeb ibmuhjiti (You're the darling in my heart)

This situation was multi-sided, as it reminds of Buck Mulligan standing up with a shaving bowl and bursting into song at the very opening of JJ's "Ulysses"

One day, my son Ali was studying for the end-of-term exams, and my wife and I were chatting when he yelled from his room: "Please be quiet, I want to study." This instantly reminded me of Hamm yelling at his parents Nagg and Nell to be be quiet. I told my wife and later Ali about the similarity between Hamm, Nagg and Nell and us. As a result of my continuous references and mentioning of Beckett in my house, the man has become a household catch-phrase

literary allusions in domestic life

At home, my conversation with my family is full of literary allusions and mentioning names of authors some of whom have become familiar domestic names and quotations from whom have become catch-phrases with us. In a letter to me, Ruby Cohn refers to this aspect in me as "allusionistic talent". The other day, my wife and daughter met an American on the plane, and my wife riddled him with a series of names like this, "Do you know Samuel Beckett, do you know Bernard Shaw, do you know Ezra Pound, do you know Tennessee Williams, do you know Eric Bentley?" Jaw-dropped, the American whom later my wife introduced to me when on ground, had answered her, "I am only a chemical engineer from Florida."

This dust

Amidst the messy security situation in Iraq, an Iraqi VIP was assassinated in Iraq and I went to conodole his brother who is a University of Qatar Professor. Among those present to condloe the berieved brother was Najji Sabri, Saddam's last Secretary of State. Naji and I were fellow-students at the English Department, University of Baghdad in mid-1960s. In an aside to Najji yesterday, I described the deteriorating situation in Iraq by quoting Samuel Becket: "This dust will not settle in our time"

I don't like blogs

i 'm sorry . i don't like blogs.

Joanne Akalaitis

Better than Pozzo!

Thank you, Professor Tawfeek, though you are a much better person than Pozzo and his creator.




Cordially, Muhammed Al-Daami

How do you find me?

Dear All


Please view my blog, and I ask you for opinion as Pozzo in Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" asks Vladimir and Estragon:

"How did you find me? Good, middling, bad, positively bad?", and once again I say like Pozzo says, "I hate to talk in a vacuum," and thank you profusely

Verfremdungseffekt where least expected

The way Mr Osborne employs verfremdungeffekt in "The Entertainer" surpasses Herr Brecht's use of it in his plays. Osborne proves he is more royalist than the royalists. The play consists of 13 scenes that run alternatively: off-stage (Archie's social life) and on-stage (Archie playing his numbers in the music hall). He plays his numbers to two audiences: his imagiary audience according to the world of the play, and the audience actually sitting in the auditorium watching the actor (Lord Olivier for an instance) playing his numbers

verfremdungseffekt in a counter-camp

In a Leeds University students' presentation of Strindberg's "Miss Julie" in 1972, in order to pull down the play's thick fourth wall with Brecht's verfremdungseffekt, the director, a deeply resourceful person, transferred the mid-summer night's fesitvity that occurs in the middle of the play from stage to house by making the actors come in pantomime from stage to the audience and serve each spectator, me included, with a glass of wine, and the director at the same and without violating the playscript turned round Strindberg's wish not to have an intermission in the play when the spectators enjoyed their wine and became part of the world of the play and the characters from the world of the play came to the world of reality in an occasion that was no less important than when Pirandello, in "Six Characters in Search of an Author", made characters from house walk onto the stage

Barabbas and Faustus

Damn'd Christians and Turkish infidels.
But now begins the extremity of heat
To punish me with intolerable pangs.
Die life, fly soul, tongue curse

These are the dying words of Christopher Marlowe's Barabbas. I find that Barabbas dies heroically uttering these bold words to the face of his foes at the moment of being pushed into a boiling caldron in comparison with Dr Faustus dying like a chicken pleading for a drop of Christ's blood to save him

Tolstoy or Dostoyvsky

George Steiner's "Dostoyvsky or Tolstoy" is still readable and/or re-readable for an appreciation of Tolstoy and Dostoyvsky. From a special viewpoint and for special reasons, Tolstoy was championed by Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky and the rest of Bolshovists, including their writers: Gorky, Yessenin and Maykovsky. The reason for this preference was Tolstoy's optimisim, futurism as he wrote about supermen and Dostoyvsky's pessimism and nihilism as he wrote about submen, although in a letter Nietzsche tells Dostoyvsky that his subman and his superman was the same man struggling his way out of the pit of human existence. Tolstoy leads to Ibsen, Shaw, Brecht and Arthur Miller, whereas Dostoyvsky leads to Strindberg, Chekhov, Tennessee Williams and Samuel Beckett

Heart of Darkness

No one, whether scholar or layman, has given a satisfactory account why the domino game with which Conrad's Heart of Darkness opens is not finished. Marlow comes in the end to Mrs Kurtz narrating to her her husband's death whose dying words were, "the horror! the horror!", but when she asks Marlow what her husband's last words were, Marlow lies to her by saying that her husband's last dying word was her name. Does this show Conrad's cynicism towards women that one's wife's name is synonymous of the word horror? Or does it show another cynicism towards women that tell women lies to make them happy and put them in a self-congratulatory mood?

Memorable Conrad

Joseph Conrad is memorable for such phrases as: "Mistah Kurtz--he dead" and "The horror! The horror!" (Heart of Darkness); "Among us was the bond of the sea" and "He was one of us" (Lord Jim); "The butterfly is a masterpiece of nature, man is amazing, but he is not a masterpiece" (Victory). Plus such a scene when Jim abandons the Pakistani pilgrims doing their prayer, unaware of their fate of imminent perdition in the sinking ship, but maintaining their faith in the High and Mighty, while Jim loses a battle with his conscience

beauty

Circa 1982, at the Ship Inn in Exeter where legend has it that the great Elizabethan Sir Francis Drake drank, I used to drink with an Englishman, Bill, a glider-pilot who lost four fingers of his right hand in a combat in latter-days Berlin during WWII and who was an ex-actor who recited to me lines of Prospero's speech, "Our revels are ended" etc..., and after finishing the reciting and taking a sip of lager he would exclaim to me, "Siddeek, if this isn't beauty, what can beauty be, then?"

Plato and Mohammed

Plato rejects altogether wine and its god in his Republic because he considered wine to be an oriental, therefore, a barbarian invention and practice, a practice, like poetry, whose substance is wholly irrational, a thing totally anti-Platonic, anti-Hellenistic. It is curious that Mohammed, too, dismisses wine and poetry in "The Quraan"

MM & AM

Mrs Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe disliked her husband's plays and sought to beat him in conversations on matters literary, so she always depended on the kindness of strangers, one of whom was George Tabori who claimed that during an elevator ride with Marilyn Monroe, he gave Mrs Arthur Miller, upon her request because she wanted to impress husband Art that she was familiar with his favourite literary work, a plot synopsis of Dostoyvsky's "The Brothers Karamazov"

Literature and neurosis

Modern era dramatists throve by making their characters: neurotics, like Hedda Gabler, Miss Julie and Blanche de Bois; schizophrenics like Enrico Quarto and Willy Loman; eccentrics, like Mutter Courage and Karla Zachanasian; absurdists, like Pozzo and Hamm; and madmen, like Romulus der Grosse and the Marquis de Sade

Shaw probed the trick in "St Joan" where one of the characters remarks that Joan is mad, and the other character replies, "What we need now is some mad people." Emma Bovary, a generation earlier, epitomised all human tragedy, in reality and in fiction, when she said, "It's all a matter of nerves." Hence, all Achilles's wrath, Oedipus' blinding himself, Agave's frenzy, Hamlet's frustration, Lady Macbeth's hysteria, Lear's madness, plus the agonies of the characters in the catalogue of the modern theatre above, are a mere matter of nerves

When Arthur Miller in 1947 found that Tennessee Williams' "A StreetcarNamed Desire" proved a highly dramatic play on basis of its main character Blance de Bois being neurotic, Miller rushed in 1948 to write a play which also proved a great success on basis of having its main character Willey Loman schizophrenic

3 dramatists' dialogue

The three dramatists whose dialogue really fascinate me are Oscar Wilde, Joe Orton and Harold Pinter; I relish Wilde's dialogue more than Shaw's, Orton's more than John Osborne's and Pinter's more than Beckett's. If any objections, stage a demonstration at the entrance of the Iraqi Embassy in your area

Masterpiece

Hi Mr Siddeek

I share with many the same views. In summary you are a masterpiece yourself. Like fish out of water, you cannot be away from your soul, literature.

Venus

Godot in Arabia

Yesterday, I attended a French production of Godot at the National Theatre-Doha. Following are my quick responses to yesterday's show:


At the outset, I say that theatre is lighting, and yesterday's "Godot" lighting was very far this, and when the moon rose towards the end of the act, lighting totally went to the dogs.

The tree is supposed to be almost bare of any leaves, but yesterday's tree was bushy, in a place where trees are anything but bushy. This is reminiscent of when in the movie "Casablanca" someone asks Humphrey Bogart about the reason that made him leave USA and come to settle in Casablanca in the African desert and Boggie says to him: "Water".

My criterion of a good play show is that once I feel that the show is a matter of people reciting lines they have memorised from a play, then the show is dead, and yesterday's show was very much like this. Theatre audiences of the world, unite and yell with me: Live theatre is no radio drama!

Again, theatre is a place where actors show their faces as if in close-ups on the television so that we enjoy looking at the beauty and aritistry of the human face, but in yesterday's show Vladimir and Estragon kept low profiles that I couldn't tell whether Estragon was a man or a woman. Nowadays, that we live in the post-modernist era, Estragon could possibly have undergone transvestism.

Pozzo, one of the best dramatic characters I admire, and, besides Hamm, Beckett's best creation, in yesterday's show was extremely disappointing, dull and undramatic

Lucky stole the entire show. I also liked the director's ad lib of making Lucky, after the tirade, chase the three characters who, including Pozzo, were intimidated by Lucky. I really enjoyed Pozzo being subdued and frightened by Lucky and I found this to be original on the director's part

After the closing dialogue exchange between Vladimir and Estragon, "Well, shall we go?"/"Yes, let's go,"the actors rushed off stage, as if the director hadn't read Beckett's final stage direction They do not move. But by missing this stage direction, the director missed a highly uncanny effective Beckettian poetic image

In addition to enjoying Lucky's performance, I was lucky in watching "Godot" in the French language, a thing that reminded me, and made me live the experience of that audience which watched the play's premiere in 1953 at the Babylon Theatre, Paris. But when I remembered Roger Blin playing Pozzo in that show, I felt a deep frustration

God bless (Beckett's parting phrase, according to James Knowlson's Beckett biography, "Damned to Fame")

Friendlily (Beckett's own closing word in his letters to Ruby Cohn, according to what Ruby told me during my visit to her in her London studio, July 2005)

Sincerely
Siddeek Tawfeek
Arab of Beckettia