im still thinking about susan sontag directing waiting for godot in sarajevo 1993. the besieged town a set for tragedy, a poem in one decision: the affirmative power of seeing your own tragedy reflected back to you. when asked about this decision — about its inherent pretentiousness, the insensitivity, sontag mused: “as if the representation of despair were redundant when people really are in despair; as if what people want to see in such a situation would be, say, the odd couple.”
[when faced with tragedy: what comforts us?]
i think the increased sales of camus the plague in 2020 can be a clue towards the answer of this question. i (like many people), befuddled by the uneasiness and general lack of knowledge about the future and the course this virus would chart, picked up camus. sold out on am*z*on, sent for several reprints — headline after headline each trying to phrase the fact more cleverer than the other — the fact remained: why had so many turned to this piece of fiction? i think the answer comes from sontag: “in sarajevo, as anywhere else, there are more than a few people who feel strengthened and consoled by having their sense of reality affirmed and transfigured by art.”
putting on the play was therefore not a pretentious act, it gave its viewers an experience: to see their sense of reality affirmed on stage. sontag writes about this experience, when she and the audience are watching the end of the play, and the characters are, once again, told that mr. godot isnt coming today — but will certainly come tomorrow — and it is here the pathos hits: the quiet of the audience, sontags eyes stinging with tears; the only sound coming from the thunder of sniper fire outside.
a tragedy performed in the midsts of destruction. both the audience and the characters waiting for something that will never come, waiting for and end to violence: wishing for a release from suffering, that will, certainly, arrive tomorrow.
a parallell scene comes from the plague. where, trapped after the lock-down of the city, a traveling theater-company have been playing the same performance of orpheus and eurydice each week for several months. always the same laments sung at the end, always the same tragedy affirmed — and always to seats occupied by a full house. the residents of the plague-stricken city regularly came to this showing, and according to camus: “regained the same confidence denied to them when they walked the dark streets of the town; evening dress was a sure charm against plague.” it seems that here too, we can find a welcoming affirmation of a reality that is quickly fading from ones sight.
but on this particular night, just as the big moment comes up, when eurydice is slipping back down to the underworld, torn from her precious lover: orpheus staggers grotesquely into the stage-light, falls down with arms and legs wide; the latest victim of the disease occupying the city. the audience is startled, their slow exit gradually turning into a stampede. plague has inevitably intruded the stage, invaded the citizens last space free from the reality of suffering. tragedy once more turning her terrible gaze onto the audience, no longer seated witnesses, but as mortals reminded the of the unescapable wills of fate.
just as the audience in sarajevo watches godot never arriving to the sounds of gunshots; the novels audience too becomes subjects of their play, reality reflected back to them on the stage. yet still, that terrible human itch to refuse fates peripeteia; perhaps orpheus wont turn back today, perhaps godot will come tomorrow, perhaps the pandemic will be over next month. i dont know the answer as much as anyone [who can foretell the arrival of the deus-ex-machina?]
im not intending to turn anyone into a nihilist, nor give anyone false hope. what i intend to do is what sontag decided to do for sarajevo: “to pitch in and do something.”
this is also what camus has his main-character doing: rieux, a doctor, decides that the best he can do is perform his profession:
“However, there’s one thing I must tell you: there’s no question of heroism in all of this. It’s a matter of common decency. Thats an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting a plague is — common decency.”
“What do you mean by ‘common decency’?” Ramberts tone was grave.
“I don’t know what it means for other people. But in my case I know that it consists of doing my job.”
its the same thing for sontag — the director, the writer — to pitch in the knowledge she carried to do something, to ease the suffering the only way she knew how. which is what each of us must do: find a way to pitch in. maybe some people scoff at the artists, question their agency — a sentiment one of sontags actors received from a journalist, when asked about how this performance was: “just like fiddling while rome burns”; an implication of apathy, of frivolous entertainment in the face of tragedy. how do you dare turn to art in times of crisis? how do you dare play the violin as the titanic is sinking? because according to sontag: “it is a serious expression of normality.”
watching the same performance every week, knowing godot will not come tonight, knowing orpheus will lose his lover — but watching the play anyway; allows us this serious affirmation of reality. its stories like these that help us affirm our existence; stories that does not extend us false hope of a fairy-tale ending, but helps us feel strengthened by having our experiences transfigured by art. these are the stories we come back to when faced with tragedy. stories that, in the words of comedy-expert matthew bevis, “gestures towards a future that cannot be known, saying not so much that ‘they both lived happily ever after,’ but that ‘they lived’ — nothing less than this, and the hopes which go along with it.”
[after the plague, they lived. nothing less than this]
and this hope that goes along with it, yes. but there is an inherent hopelessness in waiting for a resolution, pre-built. despite this inherent quality, its wrong to believe that all which will comfort us during times of crisis are sitcoms with laugh-tracks. tragedy can be a comfort too: it can teach us how to better endure the darkness, and in turn how to better endure reality. it was that kind of hope sontag gave sarajevo, that kind of hope camus offered the world with his novel. (if we can call that kind of comfort hope — which i believe we can).
