What is a birth astride a grave?: 'Ohio Impromptu' as Zen Koan
John L. Kundert-Gibbs
Modern Drama
Vol.40 No.1
Spring 1997
pp.38-56
            
COPYRIGHT @ 1997 University of Toronto (Canada)

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            Seeing into Nothingness -- this is the true seeing, the eternal
            seeing. 
            -- Shen-Hui 
            When, after the approximately ten minutes of static, nearly 
            motionless monologue which comprises Ohio Impromptu,(1) we hear R 
            pronounce "Nothing is left to tell," it is quite apparent that in 
            this, one of Samuel Beckett's last plays, the author has taken yet 
            another step toward the zero point of "lessness" (to use his own 
            term) to which he had been striving in his late works.(2) In 
            previous plays like Footfalls, we can see a "winding down" of motion 
            and interaction as May and V begin with dialogue and fairly 
            consistent movement, only to (d)evolve into monologue, then silence 
            and stillness in the final blank tableau. In Ohio Impromptu, 
            however, the play as a totality apparently eliminates nearly all 
            motion and interaction between characters. Two characters, owning 
            only the titles L and R, simply sit, R reading a story from a "worn 
            volume" of two other, implicitly related characters who eventually 
            sit and read from a 11 worn volume" themselves. In this quiet, 
            "Noh-like" play,(3) the only motion and interaction we see for most 
            of the play are L's knocks on the table at which they sit, which 
            cause R to repeat the last sentence from the book he reads. 
            We seem far here from the easier comprehensibility of Beckett's 
            earlier, more physically active and representational plays like 
            Waiting for Godot, yet Ohio Impromptu's internal narrative and 
            physical representation are each remarkably straightforward (akin to 
            the immediate context of, say, Catastrophe). We hear a story of a 
            man who tries, but fails, to escape the memory of his lost love by 
            moving to what seems fairly obviously to be the right bank of the 
            Seine river in Paris;(4) after a time, he is successfully comforted 
            by one sent from his Beloved, who comes to him at night and reads 
            him a narrative from a "worn volume." We see two men sitting at a 
            "white deal table" with a "Black wide-brimmed hat" resting at its 
            center, R reading from a book, L apparently listening (285). Why 
            then the frustrating strangeness of the play? Quite simply because 
            of slippage: slippage between what we see on stage and what we hear 
            in R's narrative, slippage between the categories "play" and 
            "fiction," slippage between past and future, and so on. 
            Language, for example, slips between the expected (or read) and 
            unexpected (or spontaneous): once, on reading the odd, 
            quintessentially Beckettian sentence, "After so long a lapse that as 
            if never been," R pauses, and then exclaims, "Yes" (286). As has 
            been noted, this word is almost the only qualitative match to the 
            title word, "impromptu," as it seems the only spontaneous event in 
            R's speech. It is the "sudden appearance of the unanticipated"(5) 
            which throws the movement of the play off to a distant point. 
            Moreover, even the static nature of the play itself is disrupted: 
            ... [T]he visual image constitutes a[n apparently] stable point of 
            reference throughout the performance, but its essentially static 
            nature is 
            undermined, firstly by the gestures, which introduce a dynamic 
            element 
            into the stage image, and which may radically affect, even challenge 
            our 
            interpretation of it, and also by the continual modification or 
            [iterative] 
            re-view of the scenic image in light of the text.(6) 
            Image is effectively destabilized by action, and both are 
            destabilized by the repeated words and images generated by the 
            narrative read. Like the protagonist of the narrative who walks out 
            to the Isle of Swans over and over seeking "some measure of relief" 
            (285), the text replays words and "events," constantly affecting and 
            altering the "reality" we see before us. In Ohio Impromptu, as with 
            other of Beckett's late plays, there is no straightforward way to 
            assign all our sensory information into any single set of 
            complementary referents: Ohio Impromptu is multi-vocal (or, in 
            Mikhail Bakhtin's word, polyvalent); its elements are in continuous 
            flux, combining harmoniously and dissonantly as they rub against one 
            another. 
            The nature and unique structure of the play is crucial to the way in 
            which Ohio Impromptu creates and destabilizes meaning; this is 
            certainly a play on the edges of drama, of size, and of 
            comprehension, where Beckett disrupts dramatic convention through 
            the nearly static, minimalized actions on stage. Although we as 
            audience feel the multiplicity and ambiguity of who and what is 
            happening on stage and are thrust into a quandary about how it is 
            related to what we hear, the import of the singular structure and 
            content of this play may not be apparent immediately. To begin 
            delving into the effect of the play as a whole -- both for 
            characters and audience -- let us work from the end of the play, 
            beginning with the inner relationship of the characters on stage and 
            in the narrative. 
            After reading of characters matching L's and R's descriptions who 
            are "[B]uried in who knows what profounds of mind. Of mindlessness," 
            the pair on stage seems to mirror the narrative pair, as they are 
            also "turned to stone" in a stare which calls to mind the 
            death-birth image so common to Beckett's plays (288). At this point 
            we see in the stage characters both the advent of unconsciousness 
            and the possibility of a new state of consciousness (heralded in 
            part by the simultaneity of their "lower[ing] their right hands to 
            [the] table") in the final words of the "sad tale" and final tableau 
            of the play (288). In these "stone" stares, which both the story and 
            stage pair share, there is obviously an element of "mindlessness" -- 
            an escape from conscious consciousness -- yet at the same time, some 
            vague notion that the characters are indeed very aware; only at a 
            different level than would normally constitute awareness. If there 
            is reason to believe that these characters disrupt the flow of our 
            conventional understanding of consciousness and reality, moving on 
            to something else, then what is this something else? What state of 
            mind are these pairs of characters moving toward, and where do their 
            minds go if they are no longer utilizing the normative mode of 
            consciousness where events are separated and linguistic signs 
            indicate unique conceptual signifiers? 
            Though Beckett eschewed any knowledge of Oriental mysticism, there 
            are striking parallels between the final moment of Ohio Impromptu 
            and the experience which Zen mystics call Satori or enlightenment; 
            and there are striking parallels between the play as a whole and the 
            Zen koan, a short, riddle-like device used by Zen masters in China, 
            Japan, and other far-eastern countries to lead their followers to 
            enlightenment. The koan, a brief, paradoxical, sometimes humorous 
            statement, often couched in a small story, which can be used to 
            "awaken" the struggling student, bears many similarities to the four 
            page "playlet" about two pairs of men who take solace in the ritual 
            reading of a (their?) story. Further, as Yasunari Takahashi notes, 
            Beckett started writing plays at the point in the history of the 
            Western theater where all realistic conventions of drama, including 
            the assumptions that the theater has nothing to do with the sacred, 
            broke down, and it seems to be that, in his ruthless effort to strip 
            the theater of everything that is not absolutely necessary, he has 
            arrived somewhere close to where Zeami [the founder of Noh] started 
            six hundred years ago. In both Zeami's and Becketts theater, nothing 
            happens (everything has already happened), but someone does come out 
            of an unknown "sacred" country that Beckett [,in] ... Ohio 
            Impromptu, calls the "profounds of mind." That "someone" is at once 
            "the other" and one's deepest self, that "country" is at once 
            "unknown" and half remembered.(7) 
            Given these encouraging similarities, let us further examine the 
            interplay of Ohio Impromptu and the Zen koan -- two disparate, yet 
            fascinatingly intertwined methods of existential inquiry -- in order 
            to see what new layers of Beckett's work we may uncover. 
            We begin by noting that the Zen koan potentiates a paradigm shift 
            between our common, dualistic mode of thought and a more visceral 
            "pre-reflective" mode of interacting with the world. If we regard 
            Ohio Impromptu in this light, we see that, via destabilization on a 
            multitude of levels, the play not only potentiates, but comes as 
            close to realizing this shift in thought as is probably possible on 
            stage. The play is, on many levels, a Zen koan read, meditated on, 
            and finally identified with and through. This device, used 
            especially by the Rinzai school to force the Great Doubt and Great 
            Death -- a period of crisis in which the rational mind loses its 
            primacy and a less reflective, more direct mode of being takes its 
            place -- can, if meditated on with all of one's being, produce an 
            intense "state of thought without thinking, of consciousness beyond 
            thought"(8) -- in other words "[p]rofounds of mind. Of mindlessness" 
            (288) -- which leads to the state of Satori, or Nirvana. Like a 
            koan, the brief, paradoxical, sometimes humorous narrative and stage 
            "frame" of meditative ritual reading which constitutes Ohio 
            Impromptu presents us with many seemingly contradictory concepts and 
            juxtapositions that cannot be systematically resolved, necessitating 
            the shift in vision to what T.P. Kasulis calls the 
            "without-causal"(9) state arising from the Great Death of the 
            ego[-consciousness].(10) 
            If the "sad tale" which R relates -- indeed the very act of 
            repeatedly reading the sad tale -- moves characters (and audience) 
            to a position in which our normal mode of rational thought is no 
            longer valid, then the final reading of the tale which we witness is 
            the culminating point. Here, a period of months or years of 
            practice, suffering, and the gradual build up of enlightenment are 
            intensified and foreshortened as the former ego-centered paradigm is 
            cast off in favor of the "without-context" of Satori. This quiet, 
            still, yet intensely suffering period is what we see before us on 
            stage. As with Zen practice, this critical moment is brought on by 
            intensity of repetition, on both large and small scales. For Zen, 
            repetition is the key to perfecting any act, be it zazen (sitting in 
            the lotus position and concentrating on Mujo -- no mind, or 
            no-thing), martial arts, or even breathing. Perfection comes through 
            repetition,(11) and only then can enlightenment come. Attempting to 
            achieve Mujo (or "without mind") purposefully(12) requires endless 
            repetitive practice, as any form of striving for, or desiring the 
            enlightened state will invariably call the ego (or active conscious 
            mind) into play, which will create a state of wanting or waiting for 
            "something" to happen, destroying the subject's chance of finding a 
            consciousness beyond consciousness. 
            Finally, after "revolving it all" in an endless series of ritual 
            mental iterations (analogous to May's physical pacing in Footfalls), 
            the student ceases to wait for something to happen while sitting in 
            zazen. 
            No longer sitting to be enlightened, one merely sits to sit. Feeling 
            almost dead in any case, no longer protecting any part of the self, 
            the disciple sits with abandonment, totally unconcerned with the 
            consequences. At this point, the Great Doubt may arise: a 
            still-point of terrible tension in which one gives oneself up to the 
            feeling of nowhere to go.(13) 
            At this point, scales of time and space cease to exist in a 
            logically connected, contiguous sense. And once this state comes to 
            pass, the Great Death can occur, allowing enlightenment to fill the 
            void. It is only through repetition of "right action," and 
            especially of zazen, that one can purposely attain the state of 
            Satori, or Nirvana. There is no great mystery, then, why Zen monks 
            spend their entire lives repeating the zazen meditation and 
            question-answer periods many hours a day: to achieve the new vision 
            of the world which enlightenment affords, any cost is deemed 
            acceptable. 
            As far as Ohio Impromptu is concerned, the Zen practice of ritual 
            repetition can help to explain the ostensibly repeated reading of 
            the "sad tale," as well as R's repetition of certain pieces of the 
            narrative on L's command: the two (or four, if we include the 
            narrative pair) are involved in the process of zazen; they sit in 
            meditative poses and ask questions of each other (via the knocks). 
            This iterative patterning of reading, knocks, and repeated text will 
            "grind text, wear down the book in the center of the deal table ..., 
            softening meaning - until ... [the] mind reawakens to true 
            mindlessness"(14) -- a re-visioning of the patterning of reality 
            which takes "the mind out of a rationalistic habit of thought into 
            true mindlessness."(15) The characters are working toward 
            enlightenment -- escape from the suffering of the singular "I" -- 
            and use the repeated zazen ritual of reading and mulling over 
            "their" koan to achieve -- or better yet, be -- this state. 
            At this point, we might be inclined to try to figure out "who is 
            who" in Ohio Impromptu: as with many of Beckett's other plays, a 
            pair is present -- and in this case one exists in the narrative as 
            well. Is one a "Zen master," the other a student? This is not a 
            simple issue, as this pair of pairs is in constant flux, the 
            relationship(s) changing as identity shifts and recombines from 
            moment to moment. To simplify matters, then, we will momentarily 
            dissect the play into pieces, each populated by a pair of characters 
            or a doubled event. Though this effectively kills the organic unity 
            of the play, our discourse is, of necessity, still trapped within 
            the normative logical framework and thus a distillation of arbitrary 
            parts is at least momentarily necessary.(16) 
            If we first consider the play's internal narrative (the "sad tale") 
            as a koan in itself, then it follows that either of the stage 
            characters reading this koan -- L or R -- can be master or student. 
            The next logical question is, of course, which is which? Apparently 
            L is the student, as he listens to R's reading, yet other 
            possibilities are also viable: perhaps R is the student, as L forces 
            him to read and re-read a text which he, as Mary A. Doll puts it, 
            "seems at a loss to comprehend";(17) perhaps both are students, 
            reading the printed words of some unidentified master -- possibly 
            (and recursively) themselves -- in an attempt to understand it. 
            Within the narrative, the apparently distinct reader and 
            listener/protagonist are also mingled in a dynamic pairing as they 
            grow "to be as one" during their repeated ritual of reading (another 
            koan?). They, we are told, find a state of "mindlessness" together. 
            Reflecting this internal event, L and R apparently also come to an 
            understanding of the narrative's koan by the end of the piece, as 
            they replay what has happened within the story when they themselves 
            turn "to stone." Although the characters L and R, reader and 
            listener, are in flux, there is good evidence that their relational 
            pairing approaches the new vision of "without context" which is 
            Nirvana. As opposed to most if not all of Beckett's other drama, the 
            final tableau we witness is a "visual realisation of intimacy and 
            communion longed for, but never achieved in Berceuse [Rockaby -- or 
            other plays]," a "closure" which "can . . . only be achieved in the 
            formless state of being/non-being beyond temporal existence."(18) 
            The dynamic interplay of the pairs L and R, narrator and listener, 
            narrative and stage, as well as the destabilization of our "normal" 
            paradigm to make way for a new, discontinuous visioning of the 
            world, can be explicated to a remarkable extent by the play's 
            powerful image of the (Seine) river dividing about the Isle of 
            Swans. 
            From its single window he could see the downstream extremity of the 
            Isle 
            of Swans . . . . Day after day he could be seen slowly pacing the 
            islet. 
            Hour after hour. In his long black coat no matter what the weather 
            and old world Latin Quarter hat. 
            At the tip he would always pause to dwell on the receding stream. 
            How in joyous eddies its two arms conflowed and flowed united on. 
            (285-6) 
            Apart from the nice complication of the issue of perception (who 
            sees whom?), we here have, metaphorically, a third element -- the 
            Isle of Swans -- which destabilizes the pair of arms which is the 
            river, forcing them into an apparent doubleness; yet here also is 
            the image of reunification as the river reclaims its wholeness via 
            the revisioning of itself on the "downstream" tip of the isle. This 
            same type of image is utilized by David Loy to describe Buddhism's 
            rejection of conceptual absolutism: "Buddhism denies that there is 
            any rock [or island dividing the current], asserting that there is 
            only a flux. The rock is a thought-construction [, a destabilizing 
            force,] and the sense-of-self might better be compared to a bubble 
            which flows like the water because it is part of the water [of 
            change] . . . ."(19) 
            Once we lock on to the implications and importance of this 
            analogy/identity, the dynamic flux of characters and actions takes 
            on a richer, more positive aspect. L and R, and the pair in the 
            internal narrative by association, are "[a]s alike . . . as 
            possible," not only "in appearance," but also in the way they sit 
            and their sharing of the single "[b]lack wide-brimmed hat" between 
            them (285). Whether these pairs are taken to represent the halves of 
            the divided river, left and right, two aspects of a brain (as in 
            Endgame), listener and reader (or speaker, as in Not I), "real" and 
            "projected," psychotherapist and patient, mother and child (Molloy, 
            Footfalls, and others), just two pairs of unrelated characters, or 
            all of the above and more,(20) L and R (and the narrative pair) are 
            twinned -- at the same time definitely two ones and a single whole. 
            The destabilizing "trace" of the Isle of Swans -- and the 
            destabilizing force of memories of the protagonist's ubiquitously 
            absent, potentiated Beloved -- necessitates a revisioning of the 
            pair in terms of their relational "without-context": they are beyond 
            the categorical distinctions of two or one, ". . . identity and 
            difference . . . ,"(21) even L or R, as they "conflow" around 
            distinctions and "flow united on." While the play appears to be 
            comprised of simple, static halves or doubles with no gray areas, 
            these distinctions are effectively destabilized like the river 
            around the Isle, signs and referents turbulently dividing and 
            mingling like the interpenetrating halves of the white-on-black, 
            black-on-white field of the Yin-Yang symbol.(22) 
            L and R are thus one and not-one; they are beyond the pigeon-holed 
            distinction of one or the other. Likewise, the relationship between 
            L and R and the characters in the internal narrative cannot be 
            categorized: L is and is not the listener in the story; R is and is 
            not the reader; L is and is not the reader, R is and is not the 
            listener. Yet what, presented in this light, seems to make Ohio 
            Impromptu frustratingly complex, appears much simpler if one can 
            achieve the enlightened state spoken of by Zen philosophers: there 
            is no need for any one of the possible distinctions and connections 
            between L and R and listener and reader to be any truer than the 
            others: they are all true, while at the same time none of them is 
            true. By making this assertion, we are taking the Buddhist "middle 
            way," which "means not setting up any opposition between subject 
            [me] and object [you]"(23) -- not making a distinction because that 
            would belittle, or even destroy the vastness and simplicity of the 
            koan that is Ohio Impromptu. 
            One of the reasons that L and R originally perceive themselves (or 
            are perceived) as different is because they have not yet found their 
            original faces, their (original) enlightened selves. From the 
            internal narrative (and assuming a congruence between what's going 
            on stage and in the narrative), we are told that since the 
            listener's separation from his Beloved (the owner of "the dear 
            name"), he has been subject to "his old terror of the night" (286-7) 
            -- he, like Vladimir, Estragon, and many another Beckettian 
            character, is a conscious, wanting, and waiting "I" who suffers from 
            desire: desire to perceive and be perceived; desire for "another 
            living soul"(24) With whom to interact and from whom hopefully to 
            find relief. This other (more exactly, the messenger of this other), 
            is perceived as someone separate, a distinct and therefore 
            unknowable other. According to Zen philosophy, however, it is only 
            because the listener maintains a causal, historically influenced 
            frame of reference that he perceives the reader as separate, or even 
            feels the anguish of separation and waiting/ longing for his 
            Beloved. The listener is both correct and incorrect when he claims 
            that "Nothing he had ever done alone could ever be undone. By him 
            alone" (286). So long as he maintains a distinction between self and 
            other, he is correct: nothing can be undone by him alone. If, 
            however, he changes his vision to that of the marginalized frame of 
            reference -- the without-context of Zen -- he will perceive all 
            around him without the need for self-reifying categories like 
            "alone," and will therefore be released from everything he ever did 
            alone (in the old frame of reference). 
            From the new frame of reference, what plagues the listener (and thus 
            L and/ or R) is not the loss of his Beloved one but the loss of his 
            true nature -- his prereflective consciousness beyond consciousness 
            -- or equally, his inability to return to the state of 
            without-subjectivity. However, this changes during the play: though 
            the listener (and L, R, and us along with him) initially regards the 
            messenger as a completely separate entity, as the play progresses we 
            are told that "[w]ith never a word exchanged they grew to be as one" 
            (287); through the repeated ritual of reading the story/koan, the 
            two lose their distinctness, slowly merging into a single "one." 
            What occurs at the end of the narrative, then, is a final "mindless" 
            union of the two into a whole -- not a whole where there are no 
            longer protagonist and reader (for that would be to make an absolute 
            distinction) but a dynamic one in which the two are 
            "without-separation." In other words, the two are still individual, 
            but their categorical individuality has been destabilized by the 
            koan that is the play. Via this radically decentering force, they 
            subsume their egos, their "I-ness," or their subjectivity; they are 
            able to pass beyond individual consciousness to a state which 
            precedes reflective consciousness, and in which the conceptual 
            distinction between self and other cannot be made. They are 
            therefore two-in-one and one-in-two. 
            If we next expand the study beyond the confines of the internal 
            narrative, the relationship of L and R to the listener and the 
            reader can be described in similar manner. At first, what goes on on 
            stage and what is taking place in the narrative appear to have 
            nothing in common, but as the play progresses, these two individual 
            entities as well conflow, growing to be as one. The narrative passes 
            through the present moment on stage to its future, and stage and 
            story achieve a dynamic, intersecting relational cohesion (though 
            they are never simply identical). Similarly, the L and R pair also 
            becomes one-in-two as they merge with the characters of the internal 
            narrative and with each other. What is left is both utterly complex 
            and "absurdly simple":(25) all the possible pairings of characters, 
            relationships, and actions become a moving montage which, if we drew 
            connecting lines between possibly linked characters, would have the 
            complexity of a spider's web; yet if we step back from the 
            perplexing picture, we can look at the "spider's web" of the play as 
            a simple and beautiful whole. And, to carry the web analogy one step 
            further, the whole is composed of indispensable and individual 
            parts, yet each part is nothing without the whole to give it shape 
            and function. Through their repeated ritual readings, the characters 
            have learned a new way of being themselves and their world: "When 
            the senses reawaken, words fill and flow, becoming so much more than 
            the things signified."(26) And once this "reawakening" takes place, 
            the world becomes "green again with wonder."(27) Without the need to 
            connect causally any two points of time or space, each moment falls 
            like the millet grains of Zeno's heap with which Hamm is so taken in 
            Endgame,(28) but now each grain is self-sufficient, creating a heap 
            of "being-time"(29) all its own. 
            The divided arms of distinction are radically destabilized in the 
            staging of the play as well. For example, the stage directions 
            require darkness on the bulk of the stage surrounding the white of 
            the deal table -- a clear case of light and/separated-from dark -- 
            yet the Latin Quarter hat lying at the center of the table puts a 
            black blot at the center of the light table; similarly, the table 
            reflects white light inside the circle of darkness of the stage. 
            Light flows around the dark hat, darkness flows around the pool of 
            light "midstage," like islands within rivers within islands. Dark 
            interpenetrates light which interpenetrates dark in a 
            scale-invariant fashion. As with his use of white and black in Ill 
            Seen Ill Said, in Ohio Impromptu Beckett seems to use apparently 
            simple divisions only to point out the impossibility of determining 
            where one half stops and the other starts. In Ill Seen Ill Said, 
            Beckett writes, "Nothing left but black sky. White earth. Or 
            inversely."(30) First, we are given a simple division between black 
            and white; then Beckett pulls the rug out from under us, so to 
            speak, as he unequivocally states that the division could be just as 
            easily the other way around. 
            Additionally, the apparently static physicality of the staging is 
            destabilized. From first to last, there are only table, hat, book, 
            chairs, and two men, "[a]s alike . . . as possible"; nothing moves 
            much, the staging not at all. As opposed to Beckett's other late 
            plays, the table is even positioned "midstage," allowing an apparent 
            centrality that has been missing in recent works. But this 
            apparently stable image is in fact no such thing: the table may be 
            midstage, the "[b]lack, wide-brimmed hat at center of table," but L 
            and R are both "audience right" (285). The image, then, is weighted 
            to the right, and an implicit rotational motion is potentiated: 
            Viewed from above, the hat resting at the table's center acts as a 
            pivot point around which the table seems destined to rotate because 
            of the mass -- both physical and dramatic -- situated at the right 
            end of the table. Within the stasis of the staging is then a 
            physical and emotional decentering -- an implicit motion which 
            destabilizes any centrality in the staging of the play. The radical 
            relativity of Zen tells us that the table, like the still Isle in 
            the river, must of necessity be destabilized, as it is only "a 
            thought-construction": there can be "no rock at rest relative to the 
            water,"(31) since there is no causal connection to provide stability 
            from one moment of being-time to another. Stasis and stability (and 
            movement, for that matter) are results merely of our vision of what 
            occurs, not what necessarily is. 
            Apparently, then, even in the static, stable staging of Ohio 
            Impromptu, none of the distinctions which on first viewing seem so 
            clean and easy are, on a closer look, valid. Light and dark 
            intermingle, forming a simple whole which contains both; motion and 
            stillness interpenetrate. Order, distinction, and stability give way 
            to the richer, chaotic patternings of visceral reality. From our 
            causal point of view these interfering(32) images present a complex, 
            daunting problem. If, on the other hand, we are willing to shift our 
            vision to the radical relativity of Zen, we can apprehend in a 
            pre-reflective manner that which is before us: a moment of 
            experience which simply is. "The one is a predicament, the other 
            not."(33) 
            In addition, there are many more layers at work within the play, 
            further eroding any stable, centered meaning. The duality of past 
            and future are destabilized, as what occurs in the narrative being 
            read -- which is ostensibly the narrative of the two before us -- 
            crosses over from relating events past to relating the impossible: 
            what will take place next in stage reality. Our common notions about 
            how past and future are divided and interrelate is fragmented by the 
            immediacy of the stage present. Intimately related to this is the 
            relationship between genres: in Ohio Impromptu, drama is fiction and 
            fiction drama, the two combining in a form which defies 
            pigeonholing, yet is compelling in its uniqueness. 
            Furthermore, in addition to the iterative nature of L's and R's 
            (re)reading, there are other ways in which the apparent linearity of 
            the play is destabilized, most notably, the tidal ebb and flow of 
            language, movement, lighting -- and of course, reading as well. Even 
            language itself, as a spoken, visceral element of drama, is 
            destabilized, approaching a level of effacement and reduction which 
            might carry it out to the still, silent point of "Nothing is left to 
            tell." "One of the important ways in which this is attempted is by a 
            return to the repetitive and auto-citational devices of the 
            fiction."(34) In other words, in deconstructive fashion, the 
            immediacy of the spoken word is eroded by the iterative 
            self-referentiality of the words being spoken. The pair on stage ". 
            . . quote themselves . . . ,"(35) their present linguistic moment 
            intermeshing with past (and future) language and reality. 
            If we move from these temporal and spatial dimensions to another, we 
            can also see that narrative, stage characters, stage set, and 
            lighting also function to destabilize each other. If, for example, 
            we look at the interplay between text and stage context, we find the 
            two are open to an infinite Derridean rereading of themselves in a 
            cyclic, creative manner. 
            The stage image can be seen as a metaphor for self-creation: the 
            creator creates himself through the narrative, or is created by it 
            (the self being as much a Action as the fictional self) in a process 
            of scissiparity (schizogenesis) presented on stage: a dramatic 
            concretisation of the play between creator and created . . . .(36) 
            Here, as well, our common ways of conception are shorted-out via the 
            iterative interpenetration of levels of text and con-text with one 
            another. 
            If we are not yet exhausted by the multitude of layers functioning 
            simultaneously in Ohio Impromptu and will allow a momentary look 
            outside the immediate context of the play itself, we unearth yet 
            more layers of information which intersect the play tangentially. 
            First, as H. Porter Abbott has pointed out, the play is partially a 
            humorous send-up of the conference that commissioned the work. 
            It is hard not to entertain the idea that a dramatic piece 
            consisting entirely of two ancient white-haired men, "As alike in 
            appearance as possible," poring over a text, was intended to cast 
            back an image, however refracted, of the audience for which it was 
            composed -- scholars whose professional life is spent poring over 
            texts and reading them to each other.(37) 
            Those who read and reread texts for a living, watch two who read and 
            reread texts for life. The cycle of refractions, which this level of 
            information exhibits destabilizes the distinction between audience 
            and stage (a relationship with which we will have further dealings 
            later) in a backhanded ironic manner. 
            Further destabilizing the distinction between fact/biography and 
            fiction, the Isle of Swans, which figures so prominently in the 
            play, is a real island in the Seine river.(38) Thus, the narrative 
            as told could actually take place in our reality. We could (as I 
            have done) walk out to the downstream tip of the Isle and, beneath a 
            replica of the Statue of Liberty (a further fixed-point conflation 
            -- this time of old and new worlds), contemplate the Seine, "How in 
            joyous eddies its two arms conflowed and flowed united on" (286). 
            Biography and reality could effectively trade places with stage, as 
            the narrative subsumes reality within its fictional confines. Fact 
            and fiction lose meaning but gain vast informational surprise in 
            their commingling. 
            The vast number of mutually intersecting and interfering layers 
            which constitute Ohio Impromptu are simply too difficult to 
            understand from a rational point of view. We must instead see the 
            play not as a series of distinct signs and images but as a dynamic 
            system of relationships which, while altering all of its double and 
            triple parts in a dense, impenetrable flux, is stable as a system, a 
            system beyond logic and causality, the system of Mu,(39) or 
            No-thing-ness into which L and R (etc.) apparently enter during the 
            play's final moment. Presence and absence, stage and narrative, and 
            so on, are abandoned as viable constructs, and ". . . if being or 
            lack of being cannot be figured, at least some shape or pattern, 
            however faint, can be traced against the void."(40) 
            If Ohio Impromptu is primarily systemic and relational, then the 
            images with which we have been dealing reveal that these 
            relationships are the "without-context" of self-reflecting and 
            refracting images with no stable "thing" to reflect. In other words, 
            the play can be described in terms of a specific koan:(41) "What do 
            two facing mirrors reflect?" Without a subject (or object) between 
            them, the mirrors can only reflect each other -- but what image 
            would that produce? If we choose an element of the play that most 
            readily reveals this vision, the final image of L and R facing each 
            other in "profounds of mind. Of mindlessness" must certainly jump 
            Out (288). These two men, "As alike in appearance as possible . . . 
            , raise their heads and look at each other. Unblinking. 
            Expressionless" (285, 288). In their "stone" stare, these two lose 
            subjectivity ". . . thus blindly mirroring each other"(42) across a 
            relational context of "without-self" This final tableau is at once 
            (again pairs being destabilized) the "mirror koan" and its 
            resolution, as the two become the koan, losing any sense of 
            subjectivity in their "stone" stares. Because of their subjective 
            absence, the myriad signifiers cycling around the empty "hole" at 
            the center of the play(43) tear themselves apart under their own 
            conceptual weight. With subjectivity and causality dispersed, all 
            distinctions, all dualities -- all conceptual frameworks -- die, 
            fading away into the "without-relationship" that exists between all 
            the elements within and without Ohio Impromptu, and which only can 
            be pre-reflective reality. Thus the characters, the set, the "sad 
            tale" (287) -- all the elements which we have broken apart -- no 
            longer exist, as the play in its entirety is "properly" born into 
            the "without-perception" and "without-presence" of No-thing.(44) 
            Though we have by now spent the bulk of our time with L and R and 
            the reader and listener in the narrative, we must return to the 
            beginnings of this inquiry once again: there is another, very 
            important level at which the play functions as koan: it is an 
            existential riddle for the playgoer as well. The ultimate forum for 
            Ohio Impromptu must be those who view its performance; and here as 
            well, the little play functions as koan. Via the fluid multiplicity 
            of images at work in Ohio Impromptu, Beckett skillfully pulls us 
            into the world and language of the characters until we ourselves 
            begin to feel like L and R on stage: confused and agonized, 
            listening intently to try to find relief from the vast levels of 
            signification which assault our senses in the few words and fewer 
            actions we observe. As noted above, our sense of logic is assaulted 
            on many levels, one of the most shocking of which is the temporal 
            destabilization of past, present, and future by the intersection of 
            the narrative with stage time. Here again we are frustrated in an 
            attempt to pile the "millet grains" of the play -- as Hamm would put 
            it -- into a heap of meaning; yet here again it is only our need to 
            connect together these self-sufficient, dynamically interacting 
            moments of "being-time" which creates a problem. If we allow each 
            moment to fall where it may, a pattern of discontinuity appears 
            which releases us from the logical death of the play. 
            As with its internal elements, the structure of the play as a whole 
            is similar to that of a traditional koan: a short, sometimes 
            humorous riddle "with no rational entrance or exit." The upshot of 
            these brief stories is usually a mental (and/or physical) blow which 
            we are told finally jars the student out of the old, causal frame of 
            mind and "enlightens" her (and us as well, if we devote ourselves 
            unreservedly to the problem the master presents). And the answer for 
            us to the "mirror koan" of Ohio Impromptu is the same as Joshu's 
            answer to the question put to him, and L's and R's answer to theirs: 
            Mu, or no-thing. In order to understand the answer (or answers) to a 
            koan, one must cease thinking in the old yes-or-no way. 
            In form and content, then, Ohio Impromptu destabilizes any logical, 
            meaningful (as opposed to informational) cohesion. "Generated out of 
            a friction among texts, genres, and writing processes, the work has 
            no center at all and no rational entrance or exit."(45) As audience 
            members, then, we must join the characters in the state of Great 
            Doubt, iterating the play over and over again in a silent "expanse 
            of ice"(46) as our need for, and ability to hold on to, a 
            categorical consciousness drops away. To solve the dilemma of 
            understanding, which the play causes, we must participate in the 
            shock of the Great Death, changing the paradigm from which we view 
            Ohio Impromptu, and all Beckett's plays: we must see the play 
            relationally instead of "meaningfully": we must become the koan 
            which is Beckett's drama, apprehending the mingling layers in a 
            state which comes before logic and distinction. Thus Ohio Impromptu 
            is its own riddle and its own answer:(47) in order to fully 
            understand it, we must cease looking into the play, trying to 
            "break" its code; we must look within ourselves and try to see the 
            play, and therefore the world, differently. 
            Why, then, we might ask, is the play even necessary? If we are to 
            look within ourselves to find the play's meaning, then why do we 
            need Ohio Impromptu at all? The answer is that the play, like a 
            koan, is "a piece of brick to knock at a gate,"(48) and just as when 
            L and R attain their "true nature" they no longer need the text from 
            which they are reading, once the audience achieves this state of 
            Satori, once "the gate is opened[d the brick is useless and is 
            thrown away."(49) The play, like the elements within it, is yet 
            another indicator, a signpost showing us the path (the Tao, or way) 
            to escape Beckett's vision of the terrifying world of ourselves. 
            Thus, 
            If we do not take perceptions as signs of named things, the most 
            fundamental and problematic dualism of all -- that between my 
            fragile sense of being and the nothingness that threatens it -- is 
            conflated; if we do not need to fixate ourselves, if we can "let go" 
            of ourselves, we unfind ourselves "in" the dreamlike world... , and 
            plunge into the horizontality of moving and light surfaces where 
            there are no objects, only an incessant shifting of masks; where 
            there is no security and also no need for security, because 
            everything that can be lost has been, including oneself. Especially 
            oneself.(50) 
            Thus the (non)actions of L. and R, listener and reader, light and 
            dark, birth and death -- in fact all of the destabilized dualities 
            of Beckett's plays -- are eventually redirected toward us, the 
            audience. Across the void between ourselves and the stage, it is we 
            who must learn to see correctly, ceasing to value those elements 
            conserved in the old style -- linearity, logic, division -- 
            apprehending instead the scale-invariance and radically relational 
            without-context within which "we" function. 
            In order to succeed with the audience, Ohio Impromptu must turn 
            inward in us, becoming, in effect, the drama of the Great Death 
            within each of the audience members as the egoistic, logical, 
            controlling Self struggles against the impossibility of what it 
            perceives on stage and in the narrative, finally "shorting-out" as 
            recursive words, sentences, actions, and staging float beyond their 
            denotative space into that of a connotative flux. In the interplay 
            between Zen and Beckett's plays, we have discovered how both of 
            these systems, making use of pairs that are destabilized by a third 
            element, decenters the entrenched order of bipolar vision, replacing 
            it with a vision of reality that is not based on meaning and 
            concepts, but rather on experiencing each moment of reality in 
            holistic fashion. For both Ohio Impromptu and Zen, a progressive 
            movement from the old style, normative paradigm to this new one 
            occurs via a series of iterations of supposedly fringe elements of 
            reality -- the "without-context" of Mu, discontinuous yet repetitive 
            characters, language, and action -- which first lays bare the 
            paradoxical nature of the causal paradigm, then allows for a 
            cathartic moment -- the Great Death -- in whose potential space this 
            new vision of the world takes form. 
            In the miniature world of Ohio Impromptu, the compression of levels 
            of imagery, the koan-like nature of the internal narrative and the 
            play itself, and the "conflowing" nature of the characters 
            themselves allows a complete break with the old paradigm, "relief" 
            flowing from the erasure of subjectivity into the relational context 
            of Mu, or no-thing. In the final moments of the play nothing exists, 
            but everything is in the plenary void of self-sufficient existence. 
            In Ohio Impromptu, Beckett moves beyond his earlier expression of 
            the logical paradox of existence, presenting a koan which allows us 
            to join the characters in achieving a state of pre-reflective 
            "without-consciousness." 
            Once we gain the vision of this new paradigm, we are free to absorb 
            the information of the plays in a pre-reflective state wherein 
            fragments are universal and vice versa; we learn to make 
            "without-sense" of the plays by seeing, "not some thing different, 
            but in a different way."(51) Or, as Schopenhauer, who was heavily 
            influenced by contact with Buddhism, describes the profound, 
            mind-numbing experience of witnessing a great work of art, 
            "aesthetic pleasure in the beautiful consists ... in the fact that, 
            when we enter the state of pure contemplation [when logic and 
            linearity are destabilized and association begins], we are raised 
            for the moment above all willing, above all desires and cares; we 
            are, so to speak rid of ourselves."(52) Only when we are "rid of 
            ourselves," can R's final words, "Nothing is left to tell," begin to 
            make sense in a different way: it is only after we and the 
            characters (and Beckett) have struggled through the play together 
            and discovered Mu shin -- the state of no mind, or "consciousness 
            beyond thought" -- that we can understand No-thing the "positive 
            nothingness of nonbeing,"(53) as the path to the play's (and our) 
            enlightenment. 
            NOTES 
            (1) Samuel Beckett, Ohio Impromptu in Collected Shorter Plays (New 
            York, 1984), 288. Subsequent references appear parenthetically in 
            the text. 
            (2) For use in this term, see Samuel Beckett's short story, 
            "Lessnesg". 
            (3) Yasunari Takahashi, "The Theatre of Mind -- Samuel Beckett and 
            the Noh," Encounter, 58 (April, 1982), 66-73. Reprinted in Critical 
            Thought Series: Critical Essays on Samuel Beckett, ed. Lance St. 
            John Butler (Brookfield, VT, 1993), 260. Takahashi has noted that 
            one is reminded, by Beckett's minimization and abstraction, of 
            Japanese Noh theater, which reduces to essential movements and 
            energy states a vast range of human emotion and action. In this form 
            of theater, "nothing happens, everything has already happened ... 
            but someone emerges out of an unknown country." As with Beckett, 
            stillness and memory (often in third-person) are primary dramatic 
            "actions." 
            (4) See Pierre Astier, "Beckett's Ohio Impromptu: A View from the 
            Isle of Swans," Modern Drama, 25 (September 1982), 336-8. 
            (5) H. Porter Abbott, "Reading as Theatre: Understanding 
            Defamiliarization in Beckett's Art," Modern Drama, 34:1 (March 
            1991), 15. 
            (6) Audrey McMullan, "The Space of Play in L'Impromptu d'Ohio," 
            Modern Drama, 30:1 (March 1987), 24. 
            (7) Yasunari Takahashi, "Qu'est-ce qui arrive? Some Structural 
            Comparisons of Beckett's Plays and the Noh," in Samuel Beckett: 
            Humanistic Perspectives, ed. Morris Beja, S.E. Gontarski, and Pierre 
            Astier (Columbus, 1983), 106. 
            (8) Taisen Deshimaru, Questions to a Zen Master (New York, 1985), 
            10. 
            (9) Kasulis very carefully lays the groundwork for this terminology 
            in Zen Action/ Zen Person (Honolulu, 1981). The basis of the 
            technical terminology, "without-x," is to avoid the trap of 
            dualistic conceptualization. In Kasulis's primary example, that of 
            thinking, there seem to be two states of mind -- thinking and 
            not-thinking -- yet the negative term indicates a causal relation 
            between itself and thinking (a denial of the state of thinking), 
            which requires an objectification of the term thinking, and then an 
            application of its opposite. Thus, these two terms, like the 
            illusory pairings in Ohio Impromptu, are not in reality the primary 
            center of thinking (or not-thinking). The state of 
            "without-thinking" is an a-priori, non-reflective state of being 
            which gives rise both to thinking and not-thinking, and thus 
            "without-thinking" is a true "middle way": it is the normally hidden 
            trunk of the thinking "tree" which gives rise to the two (apparently 
            bipolar) "branches" of thought and not-thought. For a more complete 
            treatment of this important terminology (which is beyond the scope 
            of this article), please see Kasulis's book, especially chapters 1, 
            2, and 6. 
            (10) Ibid., 115. An important Western parallel to this Zen 
            re-visioning of the universe is the Husserlian (and post-Husserlian) 
            theory of phenomenology. In "`Still living flesh': Beckett, 
            Merleau-Ponty, and the Phenomenological Body," Theatre Journal 45:4 
            (December 1993), 443-60, Stanton Gainer has recently attempted to 
            revitalize the use of this "out of favor" philosophy for the study 
            of Beckett's drama, citing the problem of "scriptocentrism" which 
            generally pertains to textual (structural or deconstructive) studies 
            of Beckett's plays. In opposition to a linguistic study which is 
            based on dissecting pieces of dramatic texts to show how they fit 
            within a conceptual framework, "Phenomenology is the study of 
            givenness of the world as it is lived rather than the world as it is 
            objectified, abstracted, and conceptualized" (448), and this is true 
            whether the world is ours or the one we see on stage. 
            (11) Taisen Deshimaru, The Zen Way to the Martial Arts (New York, 
            1982), 49. 
            (12) One can achieve this state of enlightenment accidentally -- in 
            cases of a pre-reflective response to an intense aesthetic 
            experience, or an emergency situation, for example -- as it is "the 
            return to the normal human condition" (Deshimaru, The Zen Way 55). 
            (13) Kasulis, 113-14. See note 10. 
            (14) Mary Doll, Beckett and Myth: An Archetypal Approach (Syracuse, 
            1988), 52. 
            (15) Mary Doll, "Rites of Story: The Old Man at Play," in Myth and 
            Ritual in the Plays of Samuel Beckett, ed. Katherine H. Burkman 
            (Rutherford, NJ, 1987), 73. In this article, Doll notes the 
            similarities between the koan and Beckett's later plays. 
            (16) Suzuki has an appropriately metaphorical warning for such 
            overzealous conceptualization: "Let the intellect alone, it has its 
            usefulness in its proper sphere, but let it not interfere with the 
            flowing of the life-stream ... . The fact of flowing must under no 
            circumstances be arrested or meddled with; for the moment your hands 
            are dipped into it, its transparency is disturbed, it ceases to 
            reflect your image which you have had from the very beginning and 
            will continue to have to the end of time." Like the river in R's 
            narrative, we should be content to experience life's "joyous 
            eddies." Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism: First 
            Series (New York, 1949), 19. 
            (17) Doll, 50. See note 14. 
            (18) McMullan, 31. See note 6. 
            (19) David Loy, Nonduality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy (New 
            Haven, CT, 1988), 218. 
            (20) Most, if not all of these hypotheses have been circulating 
            throughout the critical literature for years. 
            (21) McMullan, 28. See note 6. 
            (220 The Yin-Yang, an ancient Oriental symbol, operates like the 
            river-Isle image: it indicates at once the duality of the universe 
            (the separate black and white halves of the circle) and its ultimate 
            unity (the white and black dots on the opposite-colored fields, and 
            the fact that the black and white halves are contained within a 
            single circle). Concepts which our western culture has taught as 
            distinct, separate entities, even down to simple matters like Hot 
            and Cold, are in reality both two and one: two in the sense that 
            they are not, in our usual frame of reference, conceptualized as 
            "the same," and from a causal framework, it is generally easier to 
            think of them as separate or polar opposites, and one in the sense 
            that it is only our mental activity -- our consciousness -- which 
            separates them. As Kasulis puts it, the Zen master's teachings are 
            usually aimed at making explicit "the relativity of all 
            conceptualizations -- even those which constitute the doctrines of 
            the Buddhist tradition itself" (Kasulis 13). Under this radical 
            relativity, even Buddhism's own teachings ultimately must be 
            secondary to immediate experience -- a point which we will find is 
            also important to Ohio Impromptu. 
            (23) Deshimaru, 4. See note 8. 
            (24) Samuel Beckett, Rockaby, in The Collected Shorter Plays of 
            Samuel Beckett (New York, 1984), 278. 
            (25) A Westerner, D.E. Harding, who "found" Zen through an 
            accidental encounter with the enlightened state, speaks in words 
            which sound as if they could have come from the "worn volume" when 
            he describes his experience: "What... happened was something 
            absurdly simple... . For once, words really failed me. I forgot my 
            name, my humanness, my thingness, all that could be called me or 
            mine.... It was as if I had been born that instant, brand new, 
            mindless, innocent of all memories" (D.E. Harding, On Having No 
            Head: Zen and the Re-Discovery of the Obvious (Boston, 1986), 1-2. 
            In other words, he found himself free from the mental grid within 
            which we normally try to force the ever changing world, and became 
            one with everything as his "I-ness" dropped away. As Harding puts 
            it, he was still himself, but he was no longer himSelf. What seems a 
            complex paradox to the logical, conscious mind, is, as Harding says, 
            "absurdly simple" when the forebrain stops trying to figure it out. 
            The listener and the reader are two and they are one; it is that 
            complex -- and that simple. 
            (26) Doll, 50. See note 14. 
            (27) Houston Smith, Introduction to D.E. Harding, On Having No Head: 
            Zen and the Re-Discovery of the Obvious (Boston, 1986), vii. 
            (28) The paradox which Hamm refers to is actually a conflation of 
            two Greek paradoxes: one in which, logically, one can never create a 
            "heap" of sand grains by adding on at a time to the pile; the other, 
            Zeno's paradox of the millet grains, states that, as one cannot hear 
            one millet grain fall, then logically one cannot hear bushels of 
            millet grains as they fall. 
            (29) Loy, 222. See note 19. 
            (30) Samuel Beckett, Ill Seen Ill Said (New York, 1981), 31. 
            (31) Loy, Nonduality, 218. 
            (32) I use this term here in its technical sense: the interplay, 
            constructive and destructive ("positive" and "negative"), between 
            differing wave forms. An example would be ripples in a pond, which 
            can merge to create larger waves or "cancel" each other, creating 
            nodes of stillness. 
            (33) Samuel Beckett, "There Dialogues with Georges Duthuit," 
            Transition 49:5 (December 1949), 102. 
            (34) Steven Connor, Samuel Beckett: Repetition, Theory and Text (New 
            York, 1988), 126. 
            (35) Ibid., 126. 
            (36) McMullan, 29. See note 6. 
            (37) Abbott, 8. See note 5. 
            (38) Actually it is/was two: an older island upstream, which became 
            part of the Port du Gros-Caillou, and a newer, man-made Allee des 
            Cygnes. In this image, then, any simple linearity of past and 
            present is effaced (see Astier 336-7). 
            (39) This is the "punch-line" of the famous koan in which Joshu 
            responds to the question, "does a dog have Buddha-nature?" with a 
            strident "Mu!" For further commentary on this koan see Paul Reps, 
            ed. and trans., Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and 
            Pre-Zen Writings (Garden City, NY, 1975), 89-90. 
            (40) Anna McMullan, Theatre on Trial: Samuel Beckett's Later Drama 
            (New York, 1993), 102-3. 
            (41) As far as I know, this is not a canonical koan, but it 
            certainly destabilizes the sense of the self-in-reality, and thus 
            seems to me a pretty good approximation. 
            (42) Astier, 338. See note 4. 
            (43) Elizabeth Klaver, "Samuel Beckett's Ohio Impromptu, Quad, and 
            What Where: How it is in the Matrix of Text and Television," 
            Contemporary Literature 32 (Fall 1991), 373. 
            (44) As an aside, we might note that this image of birth so 
            important to Beckett's work is refracted in the physical image of 
            the Isle mid-river, adding yet another level on which the play 
            operates. Like a child being infinitely born, the Isle is poised 
            forever to be set in motion down the flowing river around it. 
            (45) Klaver, 372. See note 43. 
            (46) Kasulis, 114. See note 9. 
            (47) Since "...there are many right answers and there are also 
            none... .For the koan itself is the answer." Reps, 86. See note 39. 
            (48) Reps, 88. See note 39. 
            (49) Ibid., 88. Note how this reiterates Zen's rejection of absolute 
            authority or dogma, as noted by Kasulis above. 
            (50) David Loy, "The Deconstruction of Buddhism," in Derrida and 
            Negative Theology, ed. Harold Coward & Toby Foshay (Albany, 1992), 
            250. 
            (51) Smith, vii. See note 39. 
            (52) Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, vol. 
            I, trans. E.F.J. Payne (New York, 1969), 390. 
            (53) Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd, Revised Updated 
            Edition (New York, 1969), 58.