One Mirror Is "Not Enough" in Beckett's Footfalls and Ohio Impromptu

Abstract

In Beckett's stage world, word echoes word, sentence echoes sentence, scene echoes scene, act echoes act, character doubles character, the embedded text mirrors the enclosing text, the stage scene mirrors the auditorium, and finally the stage action echoes the mise-ell-abyme text. This "echo principle" is mentioned by many Beckett critics: James Knowlson, for example, discusses the parallelism and repetition in Footfalls, in terms of "an echo principle" that "confer[s] shape and strength on a work which inevitably appears lacking in the interest derived from conventional narrative or delineation of character."] Beckett's dramatic text thus becomes "a musical score" with a set of variations on a few specific motifs (words, phrases, characters, scenes). Knowlson's insight, when fully developed, points to one of the most crucial aspects of Beckett's aesthetics. Knowlson's discussion of the echo principle is, however, confined to verbal and visual imagery manifested on the level of word, sentence, and character; further, his interpretation is based on a formalistic approach, which does not touch on a philosophical and cultural implication of this phenomenon.