I can't go on.


painting by Maggie


hi hb,
I was reading through interiority/exteriority/unnanable and I did some research on Samuel Beckett....so, I thought I could add an artwork linked to the second last line of the text ....'I can't go on'. I've attached a painting that I did in 2005....
I hope I'm understanding the project correctly but you can let me know if it's inappropriate :>

thanks and hope you're having a good day!
maggie


Maggie...
this work of art is a perfect match to that sentence... 'I can't go on.'
the posture of the body... the 4 right angles dominant in the painting... connoting stillness... the fact that we don't see any legs... and that the character's back is to us... all reinforce this theme of 'can't go on'...

but i see the last sentence of the text inherent in this beautiful art work too: 'I"ll go on.'
how?
to me the bare body signifies a kind of birth... or rebirth... and with each birth comes a path on which we go on...

so happy you took part in Jon's project...
so honored you shared your precious artwork...
so excited i could step in it...
lots of love
HB

4 comments:

human being said...

Maggie...
you're a sparkly gem!
;)

Jon said...

Maggie,

This painting is just right for this line, and in fact for a great deal of Beckett's work. "I can't go on" is a phrase so often repeated in Beckett's work that often a reader can overlook that Beckett always "goes on"...

For me, this is a big part of the artistic drive and perhaps you'll have resonances with this as an artist yourself.

It seems that sometimes the artist questions the value and the potential of the artwork and wonders why bother at all. The answer, at least for Beckett, is that there is no choice. Artists do not create to fulfill some lofty purpose or end... but simply because there is no choice about it. The artist must create.

I want to thank you so much for sharing this painting with me and with us here in this project. Please feel free to contribute however you like and if you want access to the site so that you can post on your own that's no problem... one of us will do the paperwork so to speak.

Thank you again,

Jon

Harlequin said...

this is such a powerful example of why it is that poetics is not able to stop itself from poetizing... and I hope you will forgive me, Maggie, if I include your absolutely resonant artwork as a poetic...
how likely is it that any of these expressions would have found their way to each other... and how wonderful that they have... and how equally wonderful if other connections, resonances and roads were/had been taken as well..
such an organic, rhysomatic project

r said...

very insightful hb, as always.

Jon, thanks for the opportunity to participate.

Harlequin, absolutely no forgiveness required here, it's a compliment. I think
painter and poets
are doing the same things, just using different tools.
You have a real collaboration going on here, many voices.