"Consciousness on the Stage"

As the actress in this video says, Beckett puts consciousness on the stage. In other words, the substance of his work is consciousness. Not I confronts the reader (or watcher/listener) with the consciousness of another person.

To actively read such a work, I feel forced to try thinking the words that I'm reading. This is possible because the feelings, senses, and ideas about which Mouth speaks are so boiled down. So when I read or hear "what to try . . . no matter . . . keep on," I think of instances in my own life in which I've responded to uncertainty with simple trying, without knowing why I'm trying (often, Beckett hints at the idea that life is uncertainty and that people have no choice but to move forward blindly). Maybe Beckett wants his character's consciousnesses to be the reader's experience.

The monologue in Not I is a brief excerpt of a mind that seems to stretch out of the past and into the future (implied by Mouth's fading in and out, as well as repeated use of the word "stream" in reference to the words being spoken). Hearing the words that flow through Mouth reminds me of Buddha's metaphor of the river as life. But if in Buddhism awareness of this stream of life can be freeing, the minds of Beckett's characters seem like prisons (imagery of white domes (skulls) or other cramped, but dark, places (as in Company) abound). There's also a sense that the stream of words and thoughts pouring out of Mouth don't belong to Mouth's owner, but are rather something outside of that person. To try to confirm this, characters interact with their environments (internal and external), making observations and asking questions. The title - Not I - implies an answer. One's identity is not the sum of these words. Then what is it?

Miscellaneous: Belacqua's namesake is a soul (himself based on a friend of Dante) held in the Ante-Purgatory of Dante's Purgatorio and characterized by laziness and an interest in food.