Objective viewpoint

I was re-reading Agatha Christie's 'Roger Ackroyd' and a thought came to my head. Is an objective viewpoint actually possible? After all even when I say I am being objective, I am being subjective. I can be objective relative to someone else, but eventually my opinions only reveal my interpretation of a particular event and my interpretation in turn, reveals my character, my personality. It does not reveal any thing about the event or person or thing about which I have expressed an opinion. There are after all, as many interpretaions as there are interpreters and two people never see the same thing in the same way, which, perhaps explains the existence of innumerable analytical works.

La Princesse de Clèves

La Princesse de Clèves is a French historical novel published in 1678. It was written by Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, comtesse de La Fayette (1634-1693) and is one of the earliest examples of the psychological novel or the roman d'analyse in western literature. The story takes place in the court of Henri II (1519-1559), king of France, in the final years of his reign. Almost all the major characters, except the heroine, are real historical characters. Although the authoress lived nearly a hundred years later, the events in the book have great historical accuracy.

The novel was an exception at the time in many ways. The popular novels of the period like L'Astrée of Honoré d'Urfé or Clélie, histoire romaine of Madeleine de Scudéry were massive books running upto ten or twelve volumes. La Princesse de Clèves, on the other hand, is a short novel with less than 250 pages in most editions.

The novel emphasises character rather than incidents. While novels of the period featured fantastic events and heroes overcoming all odds to be with the heroine and then live happily ever after, La Princesse de Clèves featured a realistic plot, and is sometimes considered to be a roman à clef.










                                                                                                           

Liebe kennt der allein, der ohne Hoffnung liebt.
- Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805)

Chekhov and Beckett

Anton Chekhov's best plays like Ivanov, Three Sisters sometimes resemble the plays of Samuel Beckett or Harold Pinter. Chekhov also seems to have influenced the technical aspects in Beckett's plays like gaps in dialogues or dialogues which do not have any relevance and are sometimes illogical. The action in Chekhov's plays is also more internal than external, and in this respect, Chekhov was an innovator and has been a great influence on modern drama.

Godot never appears in Waiting for Godot and the sisters never reach Moscow in Chekhov's Three Sisters. Both Godot and Moscow seem to symbolise, for the characters, the ideal life.

The title of Samuel Beckett's famous play is an interesting study in itself. In the original french the title is En attendant Godot, while in english it has been translated as Waiting for Godot. The french title seems to suggest that the play is about what happens and what the characters do while they are waiting for Godot. But the english title puts the emphasis on Godot himself, who never even appears in the play. Thus the play seems to make some sense if one accepts the french title. The english title, on the other hand, never seemed to be very clear or meaningful to me.