Time allowed: three hours
Answer THREE questions, ONE from EACH SECTION (all three questions carry equal marks). Candidates may NOT discuss the same text in more than one answer, whether in this paper or in any other part of your examination.
I am in my mother’s room. It’s I who live there now. I don’t know how I got there. Perhaps in an ambulance, certainly a vehicle of some kind. I was helped. I’d never have got there alone. There’s this man who comes every week. Perhaps I got here thanks to him. He says not. He gives me money and takes away the pages. So many pages, so much money. Yes, I work now, a little like I used to, except that I don’t know how to work any more. That doesn’t matter apparently. What I’d like now is to speak of the things that are left, say my goodbyes, finish dying. They won’t want that. Yes, there is more than one apparently. But it’s always the same one that comes. You’ll do that later, he says. Good. The truth is that I haven’t much will left. When he comes for the fresh pages he brings back the previous week’s. They are marked with signs I don’t understand. Anyway I don’t read them. When I’ve done nothing he gives me nothing, he scolds me. Yet I don’t work for money. For what then? I don’t know. The truth is I don’t know much. For example my mother’s death. Was she already dead when I came? Or did she only die later? I mean enough to bury. I don’t know. Perhaps they haven’t buried her yet. In any case I have her room. I sleep in her bed. I piss and shit in her pot. I have taken her place. I must resemble her more and more. All I need now is a son. Perhaps I have one somewhere. But I think not. He would be old now, nearly as old as myself. It was a little chambermaid. It wasn’t true love. The true love was in another. We’ll come to that. Her name? I’ve forgotten it again. It seems to me sometimes that I even knew my son, that I helped him. Then I tell myself it’s impossible. It’s impossible that I could have ever helped anyone. I’d forgotten how to spell too, and half the words. That doesn’t matter apparently. Good.
(SAMUEL BECKETT, from Molloy, 1959)
b)
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
(W.B. YEATS, ‘The Second Coming’, 1919)
When the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtains it was between seven and eight o’clock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather’s and when Father gave it to me he said, Quentin, I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it’s rather excruciatingly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father’s. I give it you not that you should remember time, but that you should forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.
It was propped against the collar box and I lay listening to it. Hearing it, that is, I don’t suppose anyone ever deliberately listens to a watch or a clock. You don’t have to. You can be oblivious to the sound for a long while, then in a second of ticking it can create in the mind unbroken the long diminishing parade of time you didn’t hear. Like Father said down the long and lonely light-rays you might see Jesus walking, like. And the good Saint Francis that said Little Sister Death, that never had a sister.
Through the wall I heard Shreve’s bed-springs and then his slippers on the floor hishing. I got up and went to the dresser and slid my hand along it and touched the watch and turned it face-down and went back to bed. But the shadow of the sash was still there and I had learned to tell almost to the minute. So I’d have to turn my back to it, feeling the eyes animals used to have in the backs of their heads when it was on top, itching. It’s always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret. Father said that. That Christ was not crucified: he was worn away by a minute clicking of wheels. That had no sister.
And so as soon as I knew I couldn’t see it, I began to wonder what time it was. Father said that constant speculation regarding the position of mechanical hands on an arbitrary dial which is a symptom of mind-function. Excrement Father said like swearing. And I saying All right. Wonder. Go on and wonder.
(WILLIAM FAULKNER, from The Sound and The Fury, 1929)
d)
DOOR-KEEPER [cap in hand]. Excuse me, sir . . .
THE MANAGER [rudely]. Eh? What is it?
DOOR-KEEPER [timidly]. These people are asking for you, sir.
THE MANAGER [furious]. I am rehearsing, and you know perfectly well no one’s allowed to come in during rehearsals! [Turning to the CHARACTERS.] Who are you, please? What do you want?
THE FATHER [coming forward a little, followed by the others who seem embarrassed]. As a matter of fact . . . we have come here in search of an author . . .
THE MANAGER [half angry, half amazed]. An author? What author?
THE FATHER Any author, sir.
THE MANAGER But there’s no author here. We are not rehearsing a new piece.
THE STEP-DAUGHTER [vivaciously]. So much the better, so much the better! We can be your new piece.
AN ACTOR [coming forward from the others]. Oh, do you hear that?
THE FATHER [to STEP-DAUGHTER]. Yes, but if the author isn’t here . . . [To MANAGER.] unless you would be willing . . .
THE MANAGER You are trying to be funny.
THE FATHER No, for Heaven’s sake, what are you saying? We bring you a drama, sir.
THE STEP-DAIGHTER We may be your fortune.
THE MANAGER Will you oblige me by going away? We haven’t time to waste with mad people.
THE FATHER [mellifluously]. Oh sir, you know well that life is full of infinite absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true.
THE MANAGER What the devil is he talking about?
THE FATHER I say that to reverse the ordinary process may well be considered madness: that is, to create credible situations, in order that they may appear true. But permit me to observe that if this be madness, it is the sole raison d’être of your profession, gentlemen. [The ACTORS look hurt and perplexed.]
THE MANAGER [getting up and looking at him]. So our profession seems to you one worthy of madmen then?
THE FATHER Well, to make seem true that which isn’t true . . . without any need . . . for a joke as it were . . . Isn’t that your mission, gentlemen: to give life to fantastic characters on the stage?
THE MANAGER [interpreting the rising anger of the COMPANY]. But I would beg you to believe, my dear sir, that the profession of the comedian is a noble one. If today, as things go, the playwrights give us stupid comedies to play and puppets to represent instead of men, remember we are proud to have given life to immortal works here on these very boards! [The ACTORS, satisfied, applaud their MANAGER.]
THE FATHER [interrupting furiously]. Exactly, perfectly, to living beings more alive than those who breathe and wear clothes: beings less real perhaps, but truer! I agree with you entirely. [The ACTORS look at one another in amazement.]
THE MANAGER But what do you mean? Before, you said . . .
THE FATHER No, excuse me, I meant it for you, sir, who were crying out that you had no time to lose with madmen, while no one better than yourself knows that nature uses the instrument of human fantasy in order to pursue her high creative purpose.
THE MANAGER Very well, — but where does all this take us?
THE FATHER Nowhere! It is merely to show you that one is born to life in many forms, in many shapes, as tree, or as stone, as water, as butterfly, or as woman. So one may also be born a character in a play.
(LUIGI PIRANDELLO, from Six Characters in Search of an Author, 1922)
e)
(DENISE LEVERTOV, ‘Hymn to Eros’, 1967)
Answer ONE question. Your answer in this section must refer to AT LEAST TWO texts by any ONE writer of the period.
Answer ONE question. Your answer in this section must refer to AT LEAST TWO DIFFERENT authors.