Explaining “Pete & Rob are Waiting For Godot”
Saturday, August 8th, 2009
Two quotes from Friedhelm Rathjen internet-essay “The Joys of Cycling with Beckett” will help you to understand this adventure of Pete & Rob more clearly:
“[A] cycling connection can be reported for Beckett’s most famous play, Waiting for Godot. No bicycle appears in this play, but Hugh Kenner in his essay “The Cartesian Centaur” reports that Beckett once, when asked about the meaning of Godot, mentioned “a veteran racing cyclist, bald, a ’stayer,’ recurrent placeman in town-to-town and national championships, Christian name elusive, surname Godeau, pronounced, of course, no differently from Godot.”
“The main point in Waiting for Godot, as well as in most of Beckett’s works, is that nothing seems to change and something is repeated more or less eternally. These are exercises in repetition and variation — and the same can be said of the motions of the bicycle: its rider is moved through the landscape but does not move in relation to the vehicle. The bicycle’s chain and wheels are continuously moving forward but never escape their cyclic nature and always return to where their motion starts. The bicycle for Beckett seems to have been an infinity machine. Cycling enthusiasts know that of all moving animals and machines, the bicycle has been scientifically proven to be the most efficient. Mankind never came closer to the old dream of a perpetuum mobile than with this fascinating two-wheel machine. Weather and terrain permitting, a bicycle and its rider can stay in motion for hours on end without exhausting all energies.”
Click here to read the whole Internet-essay!
Watch “Pete & Rob are Waiting For Godot” here!
