“The Expelled’ (1945) :
Memories are killing. So you must not think of certain things, of those that are dear
to you, or rather you must think of them, for if you don’t there is the danger of
finding them, in your mind, little by little. That is to say, must think of them for a
while, a good while, every day several times a day, until they sink forever in the
mud. That’s an order.

Beckett knows, of course, that nothing is “forever,” and that he can hardly
obey his own order to put the matter behind him. “Little by little,” those
“killing” memories return.

Samuel Beckett

Beckett was a perfectionist, but can one be a perfectionist without an
intuition of perfection? Today, with the passage of time, we see how false
were the labels first stuck on Beckett – despairing, negative, pessimistic.
indeed, he peers into the filthy abyss of human existence. His humour
saves him and us from falling in, he rejects theories, dogmas, that offer
pious consolations, yet his life was a constant, aching search for meaning.
He situates human beings exactly as he knew them in darkness. Constantly
they gaze through windows, in themselves, in others, outwards, sometimes
upwards, into the vast unknown. He shares their uncertainties, their pain.
But when he discovered theatre, it became a possibility to strive for unity,
a unity in which sound, movement, rhythm, breath and silence all come
together in a single rightness. This was the merciless demand he made
on himself – an unattainable goal that fed his need for perfection. Thus
he enters the rare passage that links the ancient greek theatre through
shakespeare to the present day in an uncompromising celebration of one
who looks truth in the face, unknown, terrible, amazing …