Less and Less: Beckett, Minimalism, and the Discipline of Meaning

Introduction: After Excess, After Play

Having traced meaning at the limits of saturation — through Joyce, Greenaway, the kaleidoscope, and total play — a question becomes unavoidable:

what happens when meaning is generated not by proliferation, but by deliberate refusal?

Samuel Beckett, Ravel’s Boléro, and the minimalist music of Michael Nyman all approach this question from different media, yet arrive at a shared strategy: hold meaning open by constraining it almost to the point of disappearance.

This is not negation.

It is discipline.

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1. Beckett’s Radical Subtraction

Waiting for Godot is often described as empty. This is a misdiagnosis.

What Beckett removes is not meaning, but progress.

• The setting is minimal.

• The action does not accumulate.

• Dialogue repeats, stalls, loops.

• Anticipation is never discharged.

Yet something persists — insistently.

What persists is relational tension:

• between characters,

• between speech and silence,

• between expectation and deferral.

Meaning does not advance.

It waits.

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2. Waiting as Ontological Strategy

Waiting in Beckett is not a psychological theme. It is a structural operation.

Waiting:

• suspends closure,

• prevents narrative payoff,

• holds the system in a state of unresolved readiness.

This is crucial:

meaning is not denied — it is kept from collapsing.

In relational terms, Beckett creates a system in which instantiation is endlessly deferred without dissolving the field of possibility.

The play does not end.

Nor does it begin properly.

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3. Minimalism and Time as Generator

Musical minimalism shifts the burden away from structure and onto duration.

Ravel’s Boléro is exemplary:

• one rhythmic figure,

• one melody,

• no thematic development,

• no modulation in the classical sense.

Nothing happens — and yet everything intensifies.

Value emerges not from variation, but from staying.

This is not stasis.

It is temporal pressure.

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4. Repetition Is Not Redundancy

Repetition is often misunderstood as sameness. In minimalist systems, repetition is a magnifier.

Each return:

• recontextualises what came before,

• thickens expectation,

• alters perception without altering material.

This is why minimalism is generative despite its poverty of means.

The system does not change.

The relation to it does.

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5. Nyman: Relentless Constraint as Engine

Michael Nyman’s music, particularly in Greenaway’s films, makes this principle explicit.

• short motifs,

• rigid harmonic limits,

• obsessive repetition,

• mechanical forward motion.

There is no emotional narrative.

No expressive arc.

Yet the music drives.

It generates:

• propulsion without development,

• intensity without climax,

• urgency without destination.

This is minimalism at full power.

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6. Why Nyman and Greenaway Belong Together

Greenaway’s images:

• proliferate,

• saturate,

• overwhelm.

Left alone, they would risk uninhabitability.

Nyman’s music does the opposite:

• it constrains,

• anchors,

• refuses variation.

Together, they form a relational equilibrium:

• excess stabilised by repetition,

• saturation held by temporal discipline.

This is not contrast for effect.

It is structural counterplay.

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7. Beckett as the Other Limit Case

If Finnegans Wake demonstrates the limit of excess, Beckett demonstrates the limit of withholding.

Both are limit cases:

• Joyce risks dissolution through overgeneration.

• Beckett risks evaporation through subtraction.

Neither collapses — because both understand where the boundary lies.

Meaning does not require abundance.

But it cannot survive total erasure.

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8. Minimalism and the Ethics of Attention

Minimalist works place a different ethical demand on their audience.

They do not ask you to interpret more.

They ask you to stay longer.

The challenge is not comprehension, but endurance:

• to remain present,

• to attend without reward,

• to resist impatience.

This is an ethics of attention — and it is no less demanding than the ethics of total play.

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9. Constraint as Care (Again, From the Other Side)

From excess, we learned that constraint preserves inhabitability.

From minimalism, we learn the same lesson — inverted.

Constraint here:

• protects meaning from evaporation,

• keeps tension alive,

• prevents premature closure by denying it material to close around.

Less becomes not a lack, but a holding form.

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10. The Shared Ontological Insight

Across Beckett, Boléro, Nyman, and Greenaway, a shared insight emerges:

meaning is not produced by what is added,

but by how long relations are sustained under constraint.

Whether through:

• saturation or subtraction,

• proliferation or repetition,

the aim is the same:

• keep meaning open but inhabitable.

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Conclusion: Saying Almost Nothing, Very Carefully

Minimalism is not silence.

Waiting is not emptiness.

Repetition is not redundancy.

They are strategies for protecting meaning from collapse — by refusing to let it resolve.

If total play risks shattering the kaleidoscope,

minimalism risks letting it fall still.

The art — always — lies in knowing how close to the edge one can go.

Beckett waits.

Boléro insists.

Nyman drives.

Greenaway frames.

And meaning — against all odds — stays.