A Galway peeping tom case recalls an obscure parallel between two philosophers…
It’s funny that Heidegger (of Being and Time), like Sartre (of Being and Nothingness), spent his wartime army service in a meteorological unit. Was that where they developed a nose for the winds of fashion?
Photo (c) Marie Claire
The French expression “un ange passe” is used when the conversation in a gathering suddenly ceases, not by any interruption but for example when all ideas are exhausted.
In late 1952 the most famous play of the twentieth century was marooned at a little theatre that was going broke. The actors had recently got a grant to rehearse and keep paddling but there was no sight of land.
Delphine Seyrig was only twenty when she gave an inheritance from an uncle to Jean-Marie Serreau at the Théâtre de Babylone. With this unexpected contribution, Serreau then had enough money to stage the first run of Waiting for Godot, which opened on 3 January 1953.
After famous films such as Last Year at Marienbad (1961), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) and The Day of the Jackal (1973), Seyrig reunited with Beckett for a final collaboration in the spring of 1978.
It was a production of Footfalls in Paris. Beckett let it be known, to others at least, that he was very fond of Seyrig and admired her talent, but it seems she was intimidated even then by his reputation and by his persona, as a man of few words.
As if she was still twenty, she thought she might have done more with her part, had it not been so, but, in the context, just who should have been in awe of whom?
Dr. John Flynn 