SHORT QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS of The Retreat

1.  'Some men a forward motion love. And I by backward steps would move'

    Why does the poet long to travel back? Where does he want to go?  

                                               

Ans.  The poet is engrossed in material pursuits and he feels that he is in worldly fetters being oblivious of the pristine divine glory of childhood. So unlike other people he wants to move backwards instead of going forward. His heart longs for the innocence of childhood that was invested with the angelic goodness and celestial thought when he seems to be bowed down under the heavy pressure of sinfulness. So he wants to go back to his ‘first love’ i.e. God from whom he has been divorced long ago. He wants to break away from material ties to be united with the Almighty.

2.  'From whence the' enlightened spirit sees That shady city of palm trees'

    Where does this line occur? Comment on the allusion.

                                               

Ans.  By the 'shady city of palm trees’ the poet means Heaven. In Heaven there are no troubles and tribulations but everything is peaceful and quiet there. The Jews conceive Heaven as ‘ shady city of Palme trees’ in the burning sands of Arabia and Palestine.

               This also refers to the Biblical account of the death of Moses who was granted the sight of the plain of the valley of Jerricho, the city of palm trees.

3.  'But (oh!) my soul with too much stay. Is drunk and staggers in the way'

    Where does this line occur? Comment on the conceit. 

                                               

Ans.  The poet feels morbidly that his worldly life is an Iliad of  woes. His loo-long stay on earth has robbed him of the sanctity of Heaven. He wants to consecrate his life to the services of God. His material existence is an act of desecration as it were. Like a drunken man he staggers and totters in the way. He has drunk the tot of life to the dregs only to enhance his insanity. He wants to win back the angelic purity of infancy.

4.  'My conscience with a sinful sound. Or had the black art to dispense'

    Where does this line occur? What does the poet mean by 'The black art'?                                 

Ans.  Compared to God, the clouds and flowers appear to be ‘weaker glories’. But the poet’s soul could discover through inner reflection the presence of some divine spirit in them. His inmost vision could have a glimpse of celestial illuminatiion into those natural objects. To the mystic vision of the poet every natural element bore the traces of eternity.

5.  'My conscience with a sinful sound. Or had the black art to dispense'

    Where do these lines occur? What does the poet mean by 'The black art'?                                                                 

                                               

Ans.  ‘The black art’ suggests sinful act. His close association with the worldly life has inflicted upon him the irretrievable wounds of untold miseries. His conscience has been suffocated by profane speculations that never allow anything godly to him. They have injured his pure feelings. Both in speech and sensual indulgence and voluptuons passions he has committed a thousand sins. He longs to travel back and tread the path of divine glory which he has left behind long ago.

6.  When I

    Shin'd in my Angell infancy'

    why does the poet call infancy angelic?

                                               

Ans.  ‘Infancy’ or childhood is angelic. Wordsworth says ‘Heaven lies about us in our infancy’. When a child is born, it is apparelled in a robe of innocence and purity. It is yet to know the gross practices of the material life. The prison-house of the mother earth can never cast her ill-starred shadow upon it. The fresh warmth of paradise surrounds the boy with faint flickers of divinity.

Write a note on the title of the play ‘waiting for Godot’.

         A lot of controversy has risen since the publication of ‘waiting for Godot’. Critics have not been able to reach any kind of agreement about this play. Even Beckett himself did not offer much help to interpret the play. The chiet concern of this absurd drama is ‘waiting’ and ‘Godot’ which are ever puzzling. Throughout their lives, human beings always wait for something, and Godot simply represents the objective of their waiting — an event, a thing, a person, death. Beckett has thus depicted in this play a situation which has a general human application.

         The source of the title of the play has aroused a greater controversy than anything else connected with it. An earlier version of the play was simply called ‘waiting’. Martin Esslin holds the view that the subject of the play is not Godot but waiting. There is a general agreement that Godot is of less importance in the play than waiting, but the source of the word Godot has excited much curiosity. Beckett himself was of little help and, when asked about the meaning of Godot he replied, “If I knew I would have said so in the play.” One of the critics, wishing to pinpoint the foolishness of trying to identify Godot too closely, said, “Godot is that character for whom two tramps are waiting at the edge of a road and who does not come.” Yet those hunting for the meaning of ‘Godot’ have ignored the advice offered by this critic and by Beckett himself and have displayed much ingenuity in interpreting the word ‘Godot’. It has been said, for instance, that the word has been formed from the English ‘God’ and French ‘eau’ (water). It has also been said that ‘Godo’ is spoken Irish for God. Hugh Kenner has connected the name with his famous theory of the ‘cartesian centaur’ by mentioning the name of a French racing cyclist whose last name was godean.

         The source for the full title of the play caused similar anxiety. The most convincing suggestion in this case comes from Eric Bentley who traces the title to Balzac’s play ‘Marcadet’. In Balzac’s play, the return of a person named Godean is anxiously awaited, the frustration of waiting is an much a part of Balzac’s play as it is of Beckett’s. Martin Esslin has heartily endorsed another suggestion and so have several commentators. According to another suggestion, the title of Beckett’s play comes from simone will’s play ‘waiting for God’. It has been pointed out that Beckett and simone knew each other well and that Beckett’s play appeared a year after the publication of simone’s. The influence of will on Beckett is thus a distinct possibility. If this view be accepted, then ‘waiting for Godot’ can be understood as a religious allegory. According to yet another view, the source of the title for the play was odets’s ‘waiting for lefty’. It is believed that the name “odets” might have itself have suggested to Beckett the name ‘Godot’. There is still another possibility beckett’s title may have its source in Tom Kromer’s book called ‘waiting for Nothing?’

         The play is a direct presentation of waiting, ignorance, impotence, boredom. We all are impotent and suffering from boredom, loneliness and alienation. We have no sons, no danghters, and no women with us, we are all alone like Estragon and Vladimir. There is no one to accompany is, no one to relieve us of our inisery, pain and suffering. There is indeed, no system, no philosophy, person or even God that can deliver no free. We wait and wait, that finale, our relief or freedom does not come, probably Godot would never come whether we wait hopefully or not.

         ‘Waiting for Godot’ is a dramatization of the themes of habit and ‘The sufferings of being’. Habit is a great deadener, says Vladimir’, and by the time he says so, he and Estragon have had about ninety minutes on the stage to prove it. Itg is the sound of their own voices that re-assumes the two tramps of their own existence, of which they are not otherwise always certain because the evidence of their senses is so dubious. The tramps have another reason also to keep talking. They are drawing out those voices that assail them in the silence, just as they assailed nearly all Beckett’s heroes.

         Vladimir and Estragon, have traveled for towards total milulism, but they have not fully achieved it. They still retain enough remants of hope to be formented by despair. And in place of hope as a dynamic, they have expectancy. This is the main molif of the play. The two tramps are in a place and in a mental state in which nothing happened and time stands still. Their main preoccupation is to pass time as well as they until might comes. They realize the futility of their exercises and they are merely filling up the hours. In this sense their waiting in mechanical, it is the same thing as not moving. In another sense it is an obligation. They have to remain where they are, though they resent doing so and would like to leave. This mood of expectancy has also a universal validity, because whenever we wait we are expectant even though we are almost certain that our waiting will be rewarded.

         The title of the play thus brings into our mind about the meaningless waiting and it is the waiting for Godot who may stand for God, or for a mythical human being, or for the meaning of life, or for death or for something else.