THE PROBLEM OF WAITING IN VAIN
THE PROBLEM OF WAITING IN VAIN

Summary/Abstract: Waiting is a constant in the different ages of literature, having a psychological invoice function. A first pose of the expectation entered into the archetype is that of Penelope, the queen of Ithaca. Indeed, the paradigm of waiting draws its sap, par excellence, from the tribulations of Odysseus whose wife, Penelope ennobles his existence on the other hand, Lucius the character of Apuleius tries his best to reach that desired called "prosopon" recte the full manifestation as a being human. In Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa is the prototype of vain expectation. Human appearance is denied him forever. In the register of modern dramaturgy, Eugen Ionescu creates the premises of an expectation of invisible characters. The old man and the old woman manage through their lines to establish a climate that we would call: waiting for some specters. Gabriel Garcia Marquez surprises us with the successful atmosphere in the micro-novel: The Colonel has no one to write to. The colonel's waiting in the harbor, where the illusion boat was supposed to appear, is tragic par excellence. The following nuances of waiting will be nuanced in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot where the intrusion of the absurd is total. Also the novels: The Desert of the Tartars by Dino Buzzati and Waiting for the Barbarians written by John Maxwell Coetzee advertise the same coordinate of waiting. Giovanni Drogo and the magistrate, the characters in the two books seem to "feed", paradoxically, on this substance of vain expectation.

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