The Old Tune by Samuel Beckett
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What is the significance of Samuel Beckett's adaptation of The Old Tune?
rte.ie forward slash drama on one.
Drama on One is offered as a podcast at rte.ie forward slash drama on one and of course here on RTE Radio 1 on Sunday nights. This year we celebrate the 120th anniversary of Samuel Beckett's birth. Our Beckett season is available online featuring radio versions of What?, a piece of monologue, All That Fall, and tonight's featured work, The Old Tune. The work is introduced by Gerry Dukes, whose stage adaptation with Barry McGovern of Beckett's post-war trilogy of novels, I'll Go On, has played around the world. So, before we hear the play itself, Gerry introduces The Old Tune by Samuel Beckett, adapted from the radio play La Manivelle by Robert Pangey.
Interestingly, the old tune is not described as a translation. It's described as an adaptation of a play by Robert Pange, who was an acquaintance of Beckett's. In fact, I think he was a good friend. Pange had written a radio play called La Manivelle. The word in French means crank. as in a crank that you would crank a bicycle with or it opens with a barrel organ and of course a barrel organ is driven mechanically by a crank turning the drum to make music. And what Beckett has done with it is to adapt the play for two old cranks, two elderly gentlemen who are committed to reminiscence and gossip. Pagé was a parallel to Beckett. He was a French-speaking Swiss national who moved to Paris because the centre of culture was Paris.
He was a novelist and a playwright. There is some suggestion that he gave Beckett some support during his struggles with translation from French into English and English into French. for some of the more difficult theatrical pieces in the late 50s, early 60s. And Beckett was a promoter of Pange's work. Any American academic that came to you would always recommend Pange's work. So he brought Pange's French language work into English. but he played fast and loose with it, obviously with permission, because the two characters in that play, Cream and Gorman, they're both ex-servicemen. They've served in the First World War. Survivors of the First War who were Irish weren't particularly welcome back in Ireland post-1916, and quite a few of them stayed on in Britain.
Beckett had, memorably, he described two of his uncles on his father's side, I believe it was, who were survivors of the war and, quote, they shared one leg between them. So they were obviously both in the infantry. And, of course, being in the infantry in the First World War was the deadliest place to be. Particularly if you happen to be in the place called Wipers or Ypres. or anywhere on the Western Front. And of course, that devastation, that world, there's a suppressed reference to Picardy in Endgame. In Endgame, Clove, the manservant, one of the things he does every morning is when he unveils Ham and the parents in the dustbins, and he then checks the landscape. he gets a stepladder that is in comic business with the stepladder and a telescope and he checks the landscape and he describes it on one occasion as corpsed which sounds to me like post-war picardy
or even post-war st louis for that matter where becket served as an orderly ambulance driver general factotum in the irish red cross hospital in that devastated town in normandy this adaptation is very interesting in other respects as well because becket simply uses le manivelle to jump into something entirely different
Who are the key figures involved in the creation of The Old Tune?
The two characters, Cream and Gorman, these elderly gentlemen, one of them is living with his daughter and he complains bitterly about the fact that she discourages him from smoking and steals his cigarette lighter and all that kind of carry on. He lives with her because he is a widower. The other character, his wife is still alive. She's still in it, as it's put. In fact, the play is an extraordinary deployment of Hiberno-English, which, of course, is, in many respects, Beckett's native language. It's the English spoken in Ireland. And, of course, he in particular... Exposure to it, I would think. Now, I can't cite chapter and verse on this, but he grew up in a very comfortable suburban home with a father, a professional quantity surveyor.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the significance of Samuel Beckett's adaptation of The Old Tune?
0:00–4:31
2
Who are the key figures involved in the creation of The Old Tune?
4:31–5:52
3
How does Beckett's adaptation differ from the original play La Manivelle?
5:52–13:09
4
How does the play reflect on the experiences of Irish ex-servicemen?
13:09–19:17
5
What themes are explored through the characters Cream and Gorman?
19:17–20:33
6
What linguistic elements are present in The Old Tune?
20:33–29:00
7
How does nostalgia play a role in the characters' dialogue?
29:00–30:36
8
What are the concluding thoughts on the impact of The Old Tune?
30:36–51:08