Bogdan Szweda
PSYCHOLOGICAL IMAGE OF MAN IN SAMUEL BECKETT`S NOVELS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
IDENTITY PROBLEM
1.1 The problem of identity in the West and the East
1.2 The characters of Beckett`s novels in search for true identity
ESCAPE INTO MADNESS
2.1 Madness in literature
2.2 Beckettian characters in the light of psychology
2.3 Moran and Molloy - from integration to disintegration
2.4 Three stages of schizophrenia
SEARCH FOR HIEROPHANY
3.1 The origin of morality
3.2 Samuel Beckett and his religious and philosophical background
3.3 Beckett`s protagonist on the way to enlightenment
3.4 The obstacles to enlightenment
3.5 Clinging to self-enjoyment as the crucial obstacle
AGGRESSION AND SEARCH FOR DEATH
4.1 Suicide as a solution to the problem of existence
4.2 Freud and the theory of death instinct
4.3 Other theories
4.4 Malone in the face of death
4.5 The Unnamable - the unfinished story
CONCLUSIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
STRESZCZENIE
INTRODUCTION
The main aim of this work is to give some psychological background to the problem of identity presented in Beckett`s prose and to provide some psychological analysis of his protagonists` behaviour, especially as regards their efforts to evade suffering and misery of their existence. Most Beckett`s characters are alienated from society vagabonds, afflicted by either physical or mental indisposition, who, despite of these flaws and difficulties, spare no efforts to make their lives bearable and sagacious.
Although Beckett`s characters constitute a colourful patchwork of personalities, who have different aspirations and recipes for a successful life, they can be considered as an incarnation of one person. Their roots can be found in Belacqua Shuah, the first writer`s antihero. In the following Beckett`s works, Belacqua undergoes several metamorphoses to end up his life as an insensitive talking object.
As regards the ways Beckett`s characters want to solve the problem of existence, they can be divided into three categories. The first one concerns philosophy and religion. By philosophical search, contemplation and company of holy men, one can achieve eternal peace and harmony. Murphy and Watt are examples of such way of thinking. Murphy, a disciple of a Hindu guru, leaves his beloved woman in order to find a secluded place where he can stay without being bothered by the world. Watt goes to a house where he works as a servant. He wants to meet his Master, who may symbolize an absolute Being.
Madness is another form of evasion the predicament. Beckett realized that there was something wrong with the world. He himself witnessed bloody fights in Ireland when he was young, cruelty of Nazi occupation in France and different forms of social injustice. All these experiences and his inborn fondness to analytical thinking encouraged him to scrutinize the phenomenon of madness.
Death seems to be the easiest solution to liberate us from distressful life. It was popular especially among existential writers after the second world war. Beckett`s characters expect death to end their agony. Malone contemplates the possibility of advancing the moment of death and Mercier , who has enough of his wretched existence, wants to end his life in a canal. The third part of the Trilogy indicates that their expectations are groundless.
Samuel Beckett was not an ordinary, easy-going man. Like his protagonists, he was deeply engrossed in terrestrial existence, but on the other hand, he was an influential philosopher and thinker. Apart from philosophy, he was keenly interested in psychology. He used to read Freud and Jung, many of his friends were psychoanalysts and one of them treated him for his depression. Out of many problems he tried to solve on the psychological ground, is the problem of identity. As early as in his twenties, when he wrote the essay Proust, he started to think of the question: “who am I”. If the world is constantly changing, there is nothing stable and therefore we cannot be identified with our `I`. And if there is no `I`, who suffers or who is going mad and what the real existence is?
Like Beckett, contemporary psychology is keenly interested in our true identity. The simple, traditional, Freudian theories concerning human mind have been phased out or developed by more holistic approach in which man is `provided with` many selves. Like Molloy can be perceived as the alter-ego of Moran, human psyche consists of many layers of consciousness. Apart from identity, contemporary psychology deals with many other problems, which can give us a vantage point to view Beckett`s novels anew.
In order to illustrate and explain the subtlety of psychological processes that Beckett`s protagonists underwent, a numerous characters taken from other books have been used. Apart from fictitious characters, some real persons` lives also appear in the paper. It has been done because the modernist climate and philosophy, however well reflected in the writers, painters and musicians` masterpieces, are even better visible in the artists` bohemian lives. Their colourful biographies, permeated by the fin de siecle decadence, give us immensely fertile material for analytical study of Beckettian characters. The using of true people`s lives for the illustration of some processes is also justifiable on the grounds that Beckett had a strong leaning towards finding archetypical patterns which govern human behaviour. In order to comprehend the mechanism of the relevant psychological phenomena, the opinions of purely professional scientists, such as A. Kępiński or R. D. Laing, have been introduced.
I
IDENTITY PROBLEM
1.1 The problem of identity in the West and the East
Samuel Beckett was passionately interested in the problem of identity. The new psychological discoveries concerning human brain raised many fundamental questions such as to what extent our identity is conditioned or where is the center of our consciousness. Almost all main characters of Beckett`s novels are engrossed in the search for answer to such questions and the results of their efforts will be analyzed in the next subchapter. Before the analysis of Beckett`s texts, I am going to present different approaches to this subject by a randomly chosen selection of other writers, philosophers, mystics and psychoanalysts, both, in the East and in the West. It seems reasonable to give some examples of how they saw the problem. One of the philosophers, I will consider, is Chuang Tzu (369-286 B.C.) mentioned in Basho`s (1644-94) famous poem:
“You the butterfly-
I, Chuang Tzu`s
dreaming heart.”
The short Basho`s poem, written in the form of haiku, is an attempt to deal with the problem of elusive identity. The Japanese indefatigable traveller, who used to commute to monasteries all over the country, and a man who spent several years as a hermit, had unique insight into life. His frequent contacts with nature and people gave him an inspiration for writing numerous poems and diaries. What is especially praised in his writings is a sense of lightness which originates from the feeling of nonattachment. Basho claimed that no man had a soul of his own but shared the universal one, called Tao [based on Chinese dao `way``].
Out of hundreds poems and travel sketches Basho wrote, the one that evokes Chuang Tzu`s dream that he was a butterfly is the most widely renowned. When the philosopher was hovering pleasantly from flower to flower, he was disturbed and woken up. Then he discovered that he was not a beautiful insect, but a man. On second thoughts, however, he reflected that perhaps he was not a man at all, but a dreaming butterfly. The point of reference seemed to be lost.
Basho was directly inspired by Zen Buddhism, the religion whose main emphasis is placed on one`s search for true identity. Devoid of any unnecessary ideology, it tries to find a solution to the confused kind of life we experience every day. Basho himself was tormented by self-doubt but ultimately he managed to overcome the crisis.
In the poem, Chuang Tzu`s heart is dreaming. In Eastern countries, it is not the mind but the Heart that is generally perceived as the centre of human consciousness and intelligence. There are a lot of Hindu and Buddhist scriptures referring to the Heart. The Upanishads compare the Heart to Brahman, the ultimate reality or the Self. In The Heart Sutra, studied by monks in monasteries, and whose verses are considered as the essence of wisdom, the key term is emptiness. The reason for this is that we cannot find anything definite in our Heart. Emptiness may mean absence of self or, in other words, existence without any particular identity. In the ethical sense, it may stand for complete freedom from any form of worldliness. Dhammapada advocates a similar approach saying that “all things lack a separate self.” Chuang Tzu compares emptiness to Spirit:
“The work of the Ear ends with Hearing;
The work of the Mind ends with Ideas.
But the Spirit is an emptiness ready to take in all things.”
Chuang Tzu devalues the role of impermanent mind and transitory senses, pointing out their limitations and indicating that only spiritual Heart is real and eternal. A Hindu sage, who lived in the 20th century and who recommended a traditional, reductionistic `neti neti` (not this, not that) method of discovering one`s true Self, Sri Ramana Maharshi (1879 - 1950), explained more clearly the whole doctrine: “The Self is the Heart. The Heart is self-luminous. Light arises from the Heart and reaches the brain, which is the seat of the mind. The world is seen with the mind, that is, by the reflected light of the Self. It is perceived with the aid of the mind. When the mind is illuminated it is aware of the world. When it is not itself so illuminated, it is not aware of the world. If the mind is turned in towards the source of light, objective knowledge ceases and Self alone shines forth as the Heart”.
However helpful senses may be in everyday life, they obstruct our vision. There are numerous stories in Eastern literature that show how senses can mislead human perception of reality. One of the most popular is narrated by the same sage and it depicts two young men who went to Benares on a pilgrimage. During the journey, one of the pilgrims died. The other one, undaunted by the sad incident, decided to continue his peregrination alone. When he met a wandering monk coming, by accident, to his native village, he asked him to break the bad news of his deceased companion to his parents. The monk did exactly as he was told but he confused the names. As a result, the parents of the living man were stricken with grief, whereas the parents of the deceased rejoiced the good fortune. The story illustrates how easily we can be deluded by mental conceptions.
There are also a great amount of stories in the Western literature describing the unfortunate results that may follow the blind trust in the imperfect human mind and the lack of firm foundation built on good family relations. Psychological books offer multitude of similar examples. One of them is provided by a Scottish psychoanalyst, R.D.Laing (1927-1989). The story shows how destructive the loss of the mother can be to one`s identification with the world. Lack of identity means that you lose security and the foundation on which you could support your life. Your existence is more like a meaningless play, the same sort of play that is characteristic to Molloy or Malone who seem to live in a constant state of suspension.
Brian, the main character of the story, was left by his mother at the age of four. He was also convinced that he had no father as he had allegedly died a few years earlier. The departure of his mother was especially a traumatic experience for the boy because, at the same time, he lost the world he identified with and, as he claimed, his identity. The new parents wished him to be called `mum` and ` dad` but having felt no familiarity with them the boy was embarrassed and unwilling to respect their request. The feeling of alienation, augmented by the thought that his real mother fled from him because of his bad behaviour, took root in his psyche which resulted in his rude treatment of his foster parents and schoolmates. His foster parents had two almost grown-up children, Jack and Betty. The forlorn boy noticed that Jack was interested in befriending him but he was too upset by the weird situation to accept the offer. Then Jack went to Canada. A few years later, Brian found documents that stated that he was an adopted child. The feeling of alienation grew even stronger. He accused his `parents` of false play and hypocrisy. He thought that their love for him was feigned and that they had wanted him to be bad. The discovery of the `dirty game` made him change the stratagem. He started to play a good boy, he improved at school and later he was successful at running business. Then he got married and had one child. At first the marriage was harmonious, but when the child was four, the recollections of his grim childhood, and the departure with his mother, affected him so badly that he started to drink and beat his wife. Before the ultimate crisis came, when he was diagnosed mentally ill and taken to asylum, he had visited his foster parents. During the conversation with Betty he expressed his regret that he had not known who his father was. This surprised Betty who said that it was his `brother`, Jack. The unexpected revelation made an incredible impression on Brian who always considered himself as an alien in the family. Now he learned that he grew up among his relatives.
Laing claims that if you want to know who you are, you will have to listen to other people. Our opinions about ourselves are biased by our dreams, prejudices and wishes. Brian, who subconsciously created his own imaginary world, belatedly realized his horrendous mistake.
Equally unfortunate victim of false identification is Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). The author of the autobiographical book, De Profundis, describes his own life in the form of memoir and meditation on life; the form of narration which is similar to Beckett`s. Although the Irish writer never wrote a book directly about himself and he never admitted that his novels were autobiographical, no one who is familiar with his life and books has any doubts as to the falsehood of that admittance.
Wilde was once endowed with everything that man could dream of: money, social position, wit and talent for writing. Then the unfortunate writer unexpectedly loses everything in an odd way. The homosexual relation with his friend, Bosie, upsets the boy`s father who decides to bring the case to court. The trial and the sentence to two years imprisonment starts a series of calamities which the writer can hardly bear. The embarrassing situation severely affects his mother who dies a few months later. Soon after the death of his beloved mother his children are taken from him, which is also “a source of infinite distress.” Loss of good name, reputation, family and friends leads him to a serious emotional and mental breakdown: “While I was in Wandsworth prison I longed to die. It was my one desire.” His joyful temperament which has always been characteristic to the writer has gone forever.
But the stay in prison becomes a good opportunity for Wilde to reflect on life. He points out his complacency and recklessness both in his behaviour and in contacts with other people. He also discovers some positive sides of suffering; “Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask.” Once criticized for being a dandy, now in prison, the sorrowful experiences help him to abandon the false part of his personality. Apart from body, he claims, we should also pay attention to our soul: “What the artist is always looking for is the mode of existence in which soul and body are one and indivisible.” This discrepancy between body and mind or soul is also the the salient idea which is presented in Beckett`s novels, especially in Murphy.
Beckett`s novels illustrate different psychological theories and hypotheses, which were in vogue at that time. The great interest in human psyche was awakened by S. Freud (1856-1939) and the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams. Freud was particularly interested in neurotics, people who could not function properly in society. Through detailed study of his patients` dreams, he drew a conclusion that the principle cause of such disorders as impotence, depression, delusions or hysteria is repression of sexuality. In the course of time, Freud took interest in ego psychology. He is believed to have laid foundation for the theory of divided self, according to which people are accompanied by a kind of shadow personality, a phenomenon which was illustrated by Beckett, especially in the book, Molloy. N.F.Cantor, describing the theory says, that “there is always a shadow personality that accompanies us, the Other that moves with the formal, social person. The Other lives in the unconscious”. He also quotes Jacques Lacan, a French psychoanalyst and linguist, who describes the Other, as “man`s radical extraneousness to himself.” Although the Other is hidden in the unconscious mind, it has great impact on human life.
The idea for separating mind or consciousness into different parts turned out to be extremely potent in the field of psychiatry and many scientists decided to follow this direction. New research was conducted to find out how the parts or selves interact with each other. As a result, the traditional perception of consciousness changed fundamentally. As far as the interpretation of Beckett`s novels is concerned, we concentrate only on chosen aspects of the problem.
The new theories concerning human consciousness emphasize non-linear, dynamic features of our mind. Mind becomes a dynamic system of interactions, which works in unpredictable fashion. The dynamism makes us unable to categorize things. The traditional linear system saw the phenomenon in a simplified way: “Linear systems lend themselves to a reductionistic perception of a concrete and predictable universe that can, for the sake of analysis, be fragmented into identifiable sections. Such sections can be separated and labeled, and then almost magically, in the process of labeling and separation a certain definitive understanding can be reached.”
The tendency to name things in order to organize the chaos is characteristic only to one part of human brain, called ego. Ego, which works in a linear way and which is responsible for rational thinking, is only a small part of the large Self-system. Apart from ego, there are deeper layers of the consciousness, about which we do not know much. The neuropsychological brain research also points out the advantage of the non-linear system, which seems to be more adequate to reality: “Current thinking in neurology indicates that the notion of linear consciousness is in error and that the brain tends to organize itself in a modular fashion. That is, instead of a group of separate organizational structures connected in series, there are independent functioning units that operate in a parallel fashion and can be totally separate from our verbal self.”
Then, some theories state that our mind has a modular structure. It consists of separate segments which can work independently. Each segment can be divided into smaller units, and the units still into smaller. The complexity of human mind and the outside world suggests that “the universe cannot be understood in a singular, unitary fashion, but only within a multiple, overlapping reality perspective applied to brain, consciousness and the Self as well”. Although most of the quantum psychology theories were formulated after Beckett had written his novels, the Irish writer was able to portray human mind in a very similar way.
The short introduction shows how multifaceted the problem of identity is. All the stories presented in this subchapter which were taken to provide a basis for comparisons, point at the similarities and dissimilarities in perceiving our changing identities. No matter what culture and mentality is represented by a particular story, the ultimate conclusion can be drawn that as long as the source of our identity is ascribed to our mind we can distinguish no one self, but numerous and constantly changing. This conclusion perfectly agrees with the one that Beckett elucidated in his essay on Proust. The modern scientific research on human brain also proves the accuracy of the theories pronounced and illustrated by the Irish writer. On the other hand, there are theories that point at the spiritual Heart as the seat of the real Self, whereas mind is considered only as a peripheral element of human body. Difficult to detect, the `formless form`, sometimes called Emptiness or Nothingness is usually identified as God himself. In the following subchapter, I am going to analyze Beckett`s novels and try to submit his vision of the identity problem in detail.
1.2 The characters of Beckett`s novels in search for true identity
Samuel Beckett, who grew up in the modernist and existential ambience, created a very sophisticated type of novels. Although they have never gained great popularity, their influence on contemporary, especially postmodernist writers and linguists is undeniable. He was deeply embedded in both, European and Oriental literature, philosophy and religion. As a philosopher, he was deeply interested in such concepts as: what is the role of time in our life, what is freedom and who we are. The problem of identity seems to have been the salient issue for the writer. His essay Proust, which was written after Beckett had read the monumental book In the Search of Lost Time, reveals some of his speculations on this subject. Beckett`s perception of identity can be encapsulated in the following way.
Our identity is ever changing and ephemeral. It has no permanent reality apart from the reality of change.
We cannot achieve anything. `I` which existed yesterday is the same today. Like Tantalus, who could not satisfy his desires, we cannot find satisfaction because the achievement does not belong to the same person. Similarly, we cannot allay our hunger by mere looking at an uncle eating dinner.
The split between subject and object is impossible to remove. It would be possible if there were no I`.
Permanence is an illusion of senses. It is only due to memory that the continuity is felt. But memory is flawed and therefore unreliable.
The objects we perceive are dynamic and undergo a constant process od changes.
Memory, as Beckett wrote in his essay Proust, gives us a sense of identity. If there were no memory, recognizing people, places or time would not be possible. Samuel Beckett incorporated this idea by endowing some of his characters with extremely limited mental retention. Molloy, Mercier and Camier are good examples of such impairment but Vladimir and Estragon, the main characters of Waiting for Godot, are still better illustration of this phenomenon.
VLADIMIR: He said Saturday. (Pause.) I think.
ESTRAGON: You think.
VLADIMIR: I must have made a note of it. (He fumbles in his pockets, miscellaneous rubbish bursting with.)
ESTRAGON: (very insidious). But what Saturday? And is it Saturday? Is it not rather Sunday? (Pause.) Or Monday? (Pause.) Or Friday?
VLADIMIR: (looking wildly about him, as though the date was inscribed in the landscape) It is not possible!
ESTRAGON: Or Thursday?
Our identity depends on our memory. The two tramps live almost in an isolation from the outside world. Neither mentally nor emotionally are they involved in everyday life. Their alleged waiting for Godot cannot be taken seriously as the mysterious man obviously lives only in their imagination. As during the day nothing happens and having no duties to accomplish, measuring time or distances and giving names become irrelevant. The sense of identity fades into obscurity.
Molloy also has problems with defining his identity. When he is interrogated by a policeman, at first, he does not remember his name. Although he is on his way to his mother he cannot tell where she lives or show any official papers which would prove his identyfication. But even though he does not know his mother`s address he has some clues which could be helpful on establishing her whereabouts. ”As to her address, I was in the dark, but knew how to get there, even in the dark. The district? By the shambles your honour, for from my mother`s room, through the closed windows, I had heard, stilling her chatter, the bellowing of the cattle, that violent raucous tremulous bellowing not of the pastures but of the towns, their shambles and cattle-markets.”
Molloy lives in a nameless world. His scarce contacts with other people create a situation in which giving names becomes unnecessary: “I had been living so far from words so long, you understand, that it was enough for me to see my town.” He lives in his own microcosm, constantly engrossed in his thoughts and feelings. He attaches no importance to anything, especially to words. Words have the quality to distinguish one thing from another, but Molloy appears to be totally insensitive to them. He notices some falsity and difficulty in naming things: “even my sense of identity was wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate”. Words are incongruent with reality as “saying is inventing.” In the course of time, things change but the names stay the same which adds to the confusion: ”all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names.”
Molloy, who has problems with defining his identity, bears close resemblance to Laing`s Brian, whose mother fled from him in his early childhood. Beckett`s book describes Molloy whose only purpose of life is focused on searching for his mother. For a person who lives in a ditch, on the margins of the society, the mother may symbolize a return from the anonymous, very often hostile world to the archetypical centre, a place which is the most meaningful for human beings. Molloy`s relation with his mother was rather strained but as he says his mother “has never refused to receive him.” He travels on his bicycle. His ride abounds in adventures. First, he is accosted by a brusque policeman, then he runs over a dog, which provokes the wrath of the passers-by, but the intervention of the owner of the dog, Lousse, saves him from their violence. Lousse takes the tramp home and takes care of him. But Molloy does not have a good time with Lousse. He feels constrained and suspects a foul play on her side thinking that he is being poisoned and that he might be sexually abused during his sleep. Undisturbed by anybody, he leaves the house. Meantime, his physical condition is getting worse. His healthy leg stiffens badly which complicates his journey. Nevertheless, he goes to the seaside, then he lives in a cave, and finally he meets a lonely man who offers him his hut. The offer is rejected, however, and Molloy kills the man. The rest of the way to his mother`s house is covered by crawling and with the help of unknown people.
Moran, unlike Molloy, is a practical, worldly man. Demanding of himself and others, he pays attention to every detail. His garden is kept in perfect order and his son is firmly controlled. He goes to church regularly and with a great celebration. His suspicious nature and the inclination to take care of appearances make him ridiculous in the eyes of others. He does not trust anybody, even Father Ambrose. After the interview with him, he suspects the priest “of having fobbed him off with unconsecrated bread.”
One Sunday, while sitting in his garden, Moran receives the order to see about Molloy. The order annoys him but he consents. For Youdi, his employer, Moran is the most confident agent. Together with his reluctant son, late at night, they set off for their search. But the journey becomes a trail of calamities. First, one of Moran`s legs starts to ail, which makes walking trammeled. He has no option but to send his rebellious son to the nearest town to buy a bike. Although he comes back after three days, soon he escapes from his father taking the bike with him. The sick man is left in the lurch. Then, however, he gets another order to go back home. He is astonished and demands to be told the reasons for this decision. He also wants to know whether Youdi is not disappointed with his mission. The answer is even more surprising. Not only is he not disappointed but he said to his messenger: “Life is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.” Moran does not believe these words and asks: “Do you think he meant human life? Perhaps he didn`t mean human life.” The question remains unanswered, as the messenger meantime disappears. Moran sets out for home, which takes him the whole winter. He finds his house deserted and the garden devastated, but he does not think of restoring his property.
Frederick J.Hoffman, who wrote several books connected with psychology and the twentieth century literature, noticed that “the trilogy is a portrayal of the loss of self.” Moran is looking for Molloy and finally he changes himself into him. During his journey, he gradually loses his attachment to ego. His strict character is replaced with Molloy`s carelessness. Even their physical and mental ailments are similar. They suffer from leg injury, whose origin is unknown. In the course of time Moran`s power of mind and memory likens to his counterpart`s absent-mindedness. Both of them have no scruples to kill a defenseless man.
Beckett in Molloy presents a labyrinth of different characters. Apart from the main characters, there are others like mysterious wayfarers A and C, who like a shadow, draggle after Molloy and Moran. At first, they are seen by Molloy wandering across the nearby area. Their appearances are different. One is a bare-headed gentleman who wears sand-shoes and smokes a cigar. He moves “with a kind of loitering indolence.” The other person has uncertain step and uses “a stout stick to thrust himself onward, or as a defense, when the time comes, against dogs and marauders.” The short description of them shows that they correspond to Moran and Molloy. The existence of A and C, however, is not certain. Molloy has doubts whether they do not come out of his imagination: “Perhaps I`m inventing a little.” Moran, also wonders if he did not invent Molloy. The situation resembles Chuang Tsu`s riddle with the butterfly.
The confusion with the identification who is who, is partly explained by Beckett`s characters themselves. Moran says: “The fact was there were three, no, four Molloys. He that inhabited me, my caricature of same, Garber`s and the man of flesh and blood somewhere awaiting me.” Malone, the main character of Beckett`s novel, Molone Dies, also notices the existence of many, haunting selves: “But let us leave these morbid matters and get on with that of my demise, in two or three days if I remember rightly. Then will be all over with the Murphys, Merciers, Molloys, Morans and Malones.” Then he adds “unless it goes beyond the grave” as if he had doubts whether the death may get him freedom from the anguish of existence.
Malone realizes that the world is ephemeral and our perception unreliable. Nearing his death, all the existential question are laid aside: “But what matter whether I was born or not, have lived or not, am dead or merely dying, I shall go on doing as I always done, not knowing what it is I do, or who I am, nor where I am, nor if I am..”
Beckett`s characters do not avoid existential questions concerning their identity. Most of them consider mind as the main instrument to discover the truth. Murphy is ready to sacrifice his love for Celia in order to find favourable environment for his meditations. The book presents a clash of two opposite mentalities; philosophical and mercantile. Celia is a simpleminded prostitute who dreams of a normal, family life. She wants Murphy to find a job so that she could give up her disreputable profession and take care of the house. But Murphy is disinclined to this prospect. Although he is seriously infatuated with the street woman and his affection is requited, he does not see any reason to change his lifestyle. Earning money seems to him rather superfluous. When Celia expresses her doubt that they cannot live without money he says: “Providence will provide.”
Murphy`s philosophical approach to life is strongly supported by Neary, a Hindu master who, by the way, is also immensely susceptible to women`s charm. He represents a typical Eastern mentality. The external, sensual world is a “system of faces, against the big blooming confusion.” Except for love “all is dross.” It is then pointless trying to understand life, which is too complex and incomprehensible for a common man. Instead, we should search for love, the only reality worth our efforts.
Murphy is a dedicated follower of Neary. He wants to incorporate all his master`s ideas in his life. Such attitude does not go with Celia`s vision of their future. What is especially discouraging for her is the disgraceful job. She identifies herself with it saying: “I am what I do”. Murphy, however, does not subscribe to this opinion: ”No, you do what you are, you do a friction of what you are, you suffer a dreary ooze of your being into doing.” This short passage shows how differently they approach the question of identity. Celia finds it difficult to come to terms with her fate, whereas Murphy does see anything unusual or ignoble in her being a prostitute. Being is more important for him. It determines our actions and the world is the result of our activities.
This disagreement about finding a job is not the only obstacle in the relation between Murphy and Celia. Merphy`s feelings are hugely discrepant. He loves pleasure of undisturbed sitting in his rock chair, he loves inactivity and he loves making love with Celia, but at the same time he finds these inclinations utterly disgusting: “My God, how I hate the charVenus and her sausage and mash sex.” He knows that his real vocation is not an easy, ordinary life. His main interest is focused on the split between body and mind. As long as the split exists it is not possible to live in harmony. Murphy also realizes that finding solution to his problem requires great subtlety and determination and his involvement in social and family life may fetter his spiritual development.
Long meditations and minute self-analysis leads Murphy to the conclusion that his mind is a complex phenomenon consisting of three zones. The first zone is directly connected to the physical experiences: “Here the kick that the physical Murphy received, the mental Murphy gave”. In the second zone the “pleasure was contemplation.” He feels great freedom in this zone as he was not constrained by the external world. The third zone is the most abstract, obscure and dark. He does not feel free here. It is described as “a flux of forms, a perpetual coming together and falling asunder of forms.” In this area the distinction between body and mind disappears. Frederick J. Hoffman commented on these zones saying that the first zone “may involve the risk of body (corruption, growing weakness, the move towards death); the second is a state of obscurity but relaxation from danger; the third is an absolute condition, in which the responsibilities of body are totally surrendered, and an absolute freedom reigns of unobstructed forms.” It is the zone Murphy struggles to reach, where “the identification of the subject with the object of his desire is attained.” This passage refers to Beckett`s essay Proust, in which he describes the possibility of a direct contact between the subject and the perceived object provided that there were no “I”. It is the ultimate state, where there is no time and death.
In London, Murphy meets his friend, Ticklepenny. Thanks to his help he starts working in an asylum, a place which seems to offer an ideal shelter from the bustling world. In the asylum his attention is drawn to one of the patients, Mr Endon. He hopes to develop an intimate friendship with the patient, which could contribute to his recovery, and, at the same time, to conclude his own search for identity. He spends a lot of time playing chess with him but soon he realizes that his affection is misplaced: “Mr Endon`s finery persisted for a little in an after-image scarcely inferior to the original.” Even this image gradually vanishes: “Murphy began to see nothing, that colourlessness which is such a rare postnatal treat, being the absence not of percipere but of percipi. His other senses also found themselves at peace, an unexpected pleasure. Not the numb peace of their own suspension, but the positive peace that comes when somethings give way, or perhaps simply add up, to the Nothing, than which in the guffaw of the Abderite naught is more real.”
Mr Endon seems to be the key to Murphy`s search. He knows that the truth of human nature lies not without but within oneself. When he finds Endon, which in Greek means `within`, he thinks that at last his spiritual adventure is coming to an end. But he is wrong. Mr Endon turns out to be completely unapproachable. The mystery of our identity stays unsolved.
Mr Knott, one of Beckett`s characters of his second novel Watt, is an equally arcane figure. The prototype of Mr Godot lives on the second floor of his house and to some extent participates in the everyday life. Nevertheless, due to some undefined features, none of the inhabitants of the house is able to adumbrate his master.
Watt`s arrival to Mr Knott`s house is accompanied by obstacles. The house is hidden in darkness and both, front and back doors are locked. Watt is undaunted, however, by these difficulties and after several attempts the front door unexpectedly gives way. He also notices that there is light in the kitchen. At first, he serves on the ground floor which gives him very few opportunities to see his master. Although Mr Knott eats in the dinning room and passes through the ground floor on his way to the garden, he does it in such a way that is barely discernible by the servants.
Initially, Watt`s attention is almost entirely preoccupied with Mr Knott whose “rare appearances” provide him with a “strange impression.” When he is about to leave the house his attitude towards his master changes. His fascination gradually subsides and finally takes a form of complete indifference: “Watt suffered neither from the presence of Mr Knot, nor from his absence. When he was with him, he was content to be with him, and when he was away from him, he was content to be away from him.”
The question arises why Watt has to leave the master`s house and why his fascination for him becomes so badly impaired. Before Watt moves on to the Mr Knot`s house he lives in a ditch. The filthy place does not suit him. In a metaphorical sense the ditch may mean darkness of heart: ”But by this time Watt was tired of the ditch, which he had been thinking of leaving, when the voices detained him. And one of the reasons why he was tired of the ditch was perhaps this, that the earth, whose contours and peculiar smell the vegetation at first had masked, now he felt it, and smelt it, the bare hard dark stinking earth.”
Mr Knott`s house gives Watt not only the opportunity to improve his living standard, but, most of all, to learn something about the mysterious man. The man may represent the highest truth, which makes our life meaningful. But Watt`s quest is not successful. His numerous, futile attempts to approach Mr Knott disabuses him to the fact that he will never be able to understand the nature of our existence: “little by little Watt abandoned all hope, all fear, of ever seeing Mr Knott face to face.” Throughout the whole book, Mr Knott does not revail his identity. Watt remains in the dark. He feels miserable:
“What had he learnt? Nothing.
What did he know of Mr Knott? Nothing.
Of his anxiety to improve, of his anxiety to understand, of his anxiety to get well, what remained? Nothing.
But was not that something?
He saw himself then, so little, so poor. And now, littler, poorer. Was not that something?
So sick, so alone.
And now
Sicker, alone.
Was not that something?”
Watt looks for something, but what he receives is nothing. For rationally thinking man nothing has no practical value. The situation resembles the coming of Jesus Christ who was not recognized by most people at that time. The people expected him to come with something extraordinary but except for teaching, in their opinion, he did not offer anything. Similar situation takes place in Watt and in already mentioned Beckett`s play, Waiting for Godot. In the play, two tramps are waiting for a mysterious man but without any positive result. Both books present an archetypical situation; waiting for something better, something which gives us more satisfaction and happiness. `Tomorrow` also provides us with the sense of existence and removes the absurdity of nothingness of `present`. Oddly enough, the characters of both books compare themselves with Christ. Estragon claims that all his life he compared himself to Him. Watt`s spiritual peregrination is described in the following way:
“His face was bloody, his hands also, and thorns were in his scalp. (His resemblance, at that moment, to the Christ believed by Bosch, then hanging in Trafalgar square, was so striking, that I remembered it.) And at the same instant suddenly I felt as though I were standing before a great mirror, in which my garden was reflected, and my fence, and I, and the very birds tossing in the wind, so that I looked at my hands, and felt my face, and glossy scull, with an anxiety as real as unfounded. (For if anyone, at that time, could be truly said not to resemble the Christ supposed by Bosch, then hanging in Trafalgar Square, I flatter myself it was I.).”
The world is so confusing for Watt that he is not able to comprehend it. Not only does he have problems with approaching Mr Knott, but he also cannot say anything definite about himself. Is he Christ, a man, or perhaps a box? The traditional logical thinking does not work here. “ So he continued to think of himself as a man, as his mother had taught him, when he said, There`s a good little man, or, There`s a bonny little man, or, There`s a clever little man. But for all the relief that this afforded him, he might just as well have thought of himself as a box, or an urn.”
The promotion to the second floor does not bring about any positive changes in his life. On the contrary, his mental condition further deteriorates and soon he has to leave the house. He goes to an asylum where he completely loses the ability to speak in a coherent way. Finally, we meet Watt at the railway station. He wants to go somewhere but he does not know where. He cannot define his destination.
The Unnamable completes Beckett`s trilogy and the spiritual peregrination of the writer`s protagonists. Because of the lack of consistency in the main character`s narration, we cannot give a clear and precise picture of him. He describes himself as “a great talking ball”. The form and appearance of the ball is quite peculiar: “ it is a great smooth ball I carry on my shoulders, featureless, but for the eyes, of which only the sockets remain. […] I would gladly give myself the shape, if not the consistency, of an egg, with two holes no matter where to prevent it from bursting, for the consistency is more like that of mucilage.”
The description does not add up with the following one, which casts doubt on the “talking ball`s” truthfulness and proves that his knowledge of himself does not rest on a firm foundation. In fact, he is completely in the dark as regards his appearance:
“And after all why a ball, rather than something else, and why big? Why not a cylinder, a small cylinder? An egg, a medium egg? No no, that`s the old nonsense, I always knew I was round, solid and round, without daring to say so, no asperities, no apertures, invisible perhaps, or as vast as Sirius in the Great Dog, these expressions mean nothing. All that matters is that I am round and hard, there must be reason for that, for my being round and hard rather than of some irregular shape…”
Reason is the only tool which helps him to perceive and understand the outside world. His head occupies a central position in his life: “And sometimes I say to myself I am in a head.” With the absence of sense organs and the concentration entirely on mind, he does not feel anything: “Has my head lost all feeling?” He is entirely engrossed in telling stories, but unlike Malone, he does not provide any. His unceasing narration is reduced to disconnected recollections from his vast memory.
He is not sure as to his identity: “I, of whom I know nothing, I know my eyes are open…” But the problem of identity, however, bothers him because he asks himself: “I. Who might that be?” The reason for his ignorance on this subject he explains in the following way: “it must have been I, but I never saw myself, so it can`t have been I, I don`t know, how can I recognize myself who never made my acuqaitance, it stops there, that`s all I know, I don`t see him any more, I`ll never see him again, yes I will, now he`s there with the others… “
He confuses himself with `the others`. In the process of meditation or daydreaming, he recalls most Beckett`s characters; Malone (although he is not sure: “Sometimes I wonder if it not Molloy. Perhaps it is Molloy, wearing Malone`s hat”), Mercier and Camier (who are called “pseudocouples”), Watt, (who was taken for Warm) and piano-tuners. He also mentions his missing leg (Molloy and Moran?), although later he denies having any limbs: “To have lost one`s limbs and preserved one`s dentition, what a mockery!,” and pain-killers (Hamm?). Apart from them, he invents a new character, Mahood, who is later renamed Worm. Mahood is not only a passive character, but he also participate in the narration. He tells stories about his creator: “it was he told me stories about me, lived in my stead, issued forth from me, come back to me, heaped stories on my head. I don`t know how it was done.” The confusion over the relationship with Mahood is also expressed in his question: “what if Mahood is my master?”
The frequency and obstinacy the “talking ball” evokes other Beckett`s characters may suggest that he is one of them after death (as it is commonly understood by critics), but he himself strongly denies this assumption saying: “I am neither, I needn`t say, Murphy, nor Watt, nor Mercier, nor - no, I can`t even bring myself to name them, nor any of the others whose very names I forget, who told me I was they, who I must have tried to be, under duress, or through fear, or to avoid acknowledging me, not the slightest connection.”
The amount of discrepancies in the Unnamable`s narration prevents us from determining who he really is. Beckett`s books are sometimes called a study of human mind. Like a professional psychoanalyst, he was interested in penetrating different layers of human psyche, especially the darkest ones which refer to the subconscious. His books are replete with dreams, fantasy, destructive wishes, filthy language and shocking scenes. His characters are in the grip of sexual or maniacal obsessions, they bitterly hate themselves, their lives, and the world. At the same time, they are persons of exceptional erudition and mental capacity.
Beckett named the third part of his trilogy, The Unnamable. Despite the fact that many names appear in the text, the meanings of the names are so enigmatic and confusing that it is by no means possible to ascribe them to the particular characters. The reason for this may lie in the writer`s new approach to human psyche and its structural and dynamic character. Beckett was also inspired by phenomenology, a new school of philosophy which put stress not on logical or empirical methods of viewing the world, but on intuition. The philosophy corresponds to Beckett`s world in many aspects, especially to the relative character of our perception, which is influenced by different historical and cultural factors. Being, according to Beckett and the phenomenological thinkers, is not stable, but it is constant involvement in different activities and our comprehension of things is obstructed by the fact that the things also exist on their own.
*
* *
Beckett`s prose shows many phenomena typical for postmodernist writing and is compatible with the modern, holistic psychology. In his Trilogy, Beckett saw man as a structure, who possesses not one but many selves. They exist in different layers of the consciousness. In Molloy, the first part of The Trilogy, the author describes not one, but two people, Molloy and Moran. Both characters seem to be complementary and the one may be the alter ego of the other. What they have in common is the constant search. Molloy moves towards his home to his mother looking for the roots of his identity. Moran pursues his other self, which may be Molloy himself. In Unnamable the main character seems to possess all features of Beckett`s characters mixed together. The form of narration, teeming with ideas opposite to each other, leads us to believe that it is not one person talking, but different selves of a person speak at the same time.
However hard they tried, Beckett`s protagonists failed to find their true identity. They could not do this because the task was impossible to complete. Human mind, the main tool they used in their search, proved to be ineffective. Instead of finding freedom, they imprisoned themselves in the small world of their egos. Strongly attached to the world, they gradually became unable to exist among normal, ordinary people. Having found no way out from their predicament, they withdrew into themselves only to find unendurable emptiness and suffering, which even death could not ease.
II
ESCAPE INTO MADNESS
2.1 Madness in literature
Modernism is generally perceived as a great breakthrough in philosophy, religion and in many other aspects of life. Unlike puritan, Victorian morality, based on orthodox, Christian teaching, social norms of behaviour and a nuclear family which, to some extent, guaranteed stability and peaceful coexistence of people, Modernism proposed completely different modus operandi with the reality. The family was grossly belittled and instead, the Movement took interest in individuals and society as a whole. Because the authority of the Church had greatly eroded, the traditional assessment of what is good and what is bad lost its objectivity and relevance. In philosophy, the 19th century idealism, which is associated with optimism and faith in better future, was phased out by gloomy and pessimistic nihilism of the 20th century. Among the changes that Modernism brought about, the ones which are concerned with man seem to be the most important.
The image of man in Modernism is devoid of any prudery. It was thought that in order to learn the truth, one cannot try to evade taboo subjects, but boldly acknowledge his real feelings. Not only mere sexuality was being exposed, but also a kind of behaviour that traditionally was considered as perverse. One of the most conspicuous feature of Modernism is concentration on irrationality and madness. The modernist protagonists are usually alienated losers unable to live in society.
Although madness has always been present in literature, it is not until the 20th century when it received an enormous attention. A lot of books have been written describing the illness from different angles. Apart from professional psychoanalysts who wrote their books on the basis of the years they had spent examining their patients, there were fiction writers and essayists, like for example, William Styron (born 1925) or Michael Foucault (1926 - 1984), who concentrated either on their own harrowing experiences with the illness or on historical evidence, which they afterwards used in their books. William Styron, went through deep depression which he described in a book Darkness Visible. Not only his own case was scrutinized but also several other examples of his contemporaries who faced similar affliction were introduced. Michael Foucault, in his famous book Madness and Civilization, analyzed this mental malady from the historical point of view illustrating the vast dissimilarity in the way the illness was dealt with now and centuries ago. Paul Sayer, who had worked as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital before switching over to writing novels, wrote a book The Comforts of Madness in which he tries to impersonate Peter, one of his schizophrenic, catatonic patients. The incoherent, very peculiarly indifferent Peter`s narration, obstinate reference to his mother, to his frail physical and mental construction and to death makes the book similar to some of Beckett`s novels. Madness also appeared in great abundance in the Theatre of the Absurd. The dreadful atrocities of the wars, lack of sensitivity in the relations among people, make artists look on the world as if it was a grotesque. Beckett, Ionesco and Pinter, who were the most prominent figures in this genre, tried to enter the world of irrationality to uncover and expose the darker side of human psyche.
The amount of literature concerning madness may suggest that the illness has already been worked out and to a significant extent understood, but the supposition is not true. Mental asylums and psychological clinics are still full of patients and the doctors still argue over what causes the illness and how to cure the patients. No less interesting problem arises when we ask about the nature of madness: who is mad and where is the borderline between healthy and ill people.
Madness was one of the most important subjects that fascinated a peculiar American woman, “the New England mystic”, Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886). She lived like a recluse in a small town near Boston. What was particularly strange about her was not allowing anyone, even close relatives, to enter her room. Perhaps contacts with other people were, for some reasons, too painful for her, or perhaps she was put off by the mercantile way of life she saw around her. It is also possible that her stern and demanding parents made her shy with other people. Like Beckett, she was sceptical about the traditional religion and despite the pressure from the relatives and her profound religious feelings, she did not attend the church. She wrote nearly 2000 poems on different subjects. One of them, written in 1862, gives some insight on madness:
“Much Madness is divinest Sense-
To a discerning Eye-
Much Sense - the starkest Madness-
`Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail-
Assent - and you are sane-
Demur - you are straightway dangerous-
And handled with a Chain-“
The poet distinguishes two kinds of madness. One is divine, the other common. Most people choose the latter. They are like the villagers who drank water from the well of madness. Being interested only in basic, materialistic needs, they believe in an easy, trouble-free life and all their shrewdness is devoted to achieve this. The madness in the divine sense is for a few. It is a way off the beaten track where you cannot be yourself. Ironically, such thoughtful and deeply religious individuals are considered dangerous and insane by other members of the community.
Like Dickinson, Beckett saw madness as a social phenomenon. People behave irrationally because the environment they live in is unfavourable for a natural and spontaneous growth. The stiff rules which are established by family and society thwart spontaneity and happiness and produce ugliness and decrepitude. It is also believed that grim and strenuous childhood brings about schizophrenic behaviour. Beckett, who noticed several flaws in his own upbringing was especially sensitive to this issue. The odd, grotesque characters resembling travesty of human beings, which he created in his books, illustrate the problem
One of the odd characters is Mr Madden, Mercier and Camier`s companion on a ticket free train journey. The vagabond with a “hideous face” said that his father had beaten him severely and that, as he thought, explained his “unconfiding character and general surliness.” After his parents “providential,” tragic death, he was brought up by his neighbours. He did not enjoy the time with his foster parents, either. The amount of labour he was given was far beyond his strength and at the age of 19 or 20 he decided to run away. Mr Madden finds living in the foster family too strenuous and unacceptable. He refuses to yield to the norms which are imposed by society and becomes a bum.
The same lot of being an outcast is shared by other Beckett`s characters. Although we know very little of their childhood, we can speculate that it was similar to Mr Madden`s. Molloy, for example, treats his mother in a totally indifferent manner. He compares her to “a poor old uniparous whore.” Not only the uncommon, ignoble way of communicating with her, robbing her of her money and ridiculing her show that the relationship between them left a lot to be desired, but also the feeling of being unwanted in his own home implies some family animosities in the past. “I know she did all she could not to have me.” Moran`s son, Jacques, also chooses to be a vagabond rather than live with his ruthless and uncompromising father. Being incessantly abused and humiliated by him, described as “clumsy, stupid, slow, dirty, untruthful, deceitful, prodigal and unfilial,” the lad robs his father of his money takes the bicycle and escapes from him. Malone, due to his faulty memory, is not able to say much about his childhood: “My young days were more varied, such as they come back to me, in fits and starts. I did not know my way about so well then. I have lived in a kind of coma.” But the maledictions he ejaculates on his deathbed shows that his life was rather lugubrious: “I forgive nobody. I wish them all an atrocious life and then the fires and ice of hell and in the execrable generations to come an honored name.”
Like Dickinson and Beckett, Laing points out at the social aspect of madness and the disparity in perceiving it by different people. The distinction between ill and `normal` people is not clear and often misleading. The difficulty stems from the fact that the judgment about others is formed without proper knowledge of them. The scanty picture we are able to discern observing the patients prompted the Scottish psychoanalyst to come up with the thesis that we live in an invisible world. It is a world of appearances and misjudgments in which nothing is sure and reliable.
Laing spent twenty years interviewing not only his patients but also all the patients` family members. Contrary to popular belief which blamed genetic and biochemical defects as the main cause of mental collapses, he advocated the thesis that it is the family that played the vital role in the process of the emotional, psychological and social development, and the family members, by showing no affection, warmth and sympathy to each other, were responsible for the clinical cases of madness which occurred among them. Madness was the only rational and obvious way, a “special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation.” Apart from this, Laing jeopardized another common belief as to who can be classified as a mad person. On the basis of his interviews, he arrived at the conclusion that in most cases the patients were more intelligible and truthful than the `healthy` members of the families, who spared no effort to hide embarrassing facts and to evade personal questions. He gives an example of such a mechanism comparing Maya`s (one of his patients`) utterances with her parents`. In the eyes of Maya`s parents, their daughter was a loving and sociable child up to the age of fourteen. Since that time she changed completely. She refused to accept any affection from their side and wanted to do everything by herself. They described her as “apathetic, withdrawn, lacking in affect, isolated, hostile, emotionally impoverished.” All these symptoms they attributed to the illness alone, not to the process of upbringing. Maya did not subscribed to her parents` opinions claiming that she is not ill at all and her peculiar conduct was caused by the fact that she was of severely constrained to do anything at home for fear of being laughed off. She also claimed that she had no autonomy: “Mother is always picking on me. She`s always getting at me. She`s always teaching me how to use my mind. You can`t tell a person how to use their mind against their will. It has always been like that with Mother. I resent that.”
Even in the presence of the therapists the parents tried to save face by concealing facts or refusing to accept them. For example, when Maya was fourteen, she started to have sexual thoughts and to masturbate: “She tried to tell her parents about this, but they told her she did not have any thoughts of that kind. She told them she masturbated and they told her that she did not. During the interview the interviewer could not clarify the discrepancies. When the girl acknowledged “that she still masturbated, her parents simply told her that she did not!”
The case of Maya is interesting in the context of Beckett`s childhood. Although Beckett`s relationship with his parents will be analyzed in the penultimate chapter, I would like to take notice of the similar psychological mechanism that both of them had to experience. They underwent a gradual process of withdrawing from the outer world to the inner one. They did not accept the kind of reality that was offered and chose an emotional standstill and a quiet rebellion. Beckett ultimately left Ireland with a view of finding peace and harmony abroad, whereas less philosophically inclined Maya buried herself in books and tried to live her own life.
Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972), the most prominent Polish psychiatrist who, like Laing, endorsed a holistic approach to his patients, points out that, strangely enough, the world of schizophrenics is much less egocentric than the world of ordinary, `healthy` people. The patients are apparently more compassionate, readier to help others and there is no competition between them. It is a puzzling singularity for psychiatrists who have not found any reasonable explanation to this phenomenon. It is also worth mentioning that many saints were schizophrenics (for example Rafał Kalinowski).
The role of emotional ties with the family members was also analyzed by Kępiński. He writes about a `schizophrenic family`, a phrase coined by T. Litz in a book The Family Environment of Schizophrenic Patients. They claim that a schizophrenic family is a considerable potential force for creating pathological offsprings. Especially despotic mothers who are not able to bestow on their children warm feelings and too submissive fathers are blamed for this situation. He also notices that the children who start to behave pugnaciously with their parents are very likely to suffer from schizophrenia in the future. The strained relationship with their mothers becomes crucial to their psychological development. On the one hand they feel uncomfortable while living with them, but on the other hand they are unable to get rid of their dominance. Beckett seems to be an example of the man who did not feel free at home. Disaffected with the absence of genuine feelings at home, the philistinism of his countrymen and also driven by the delusive idea of freedom, he chose to be an exile rather than share his life with theirs.
2.2 Beckettian characters in the light of psychology
Beckett created mentally and emotionally decrepit characters. In this part of the paper, I am going to analyze different types of abnormal behaviour that appear in his novels and try to classify them according to Kraepelin`s system of mental illnesses. The most common one is schizophrenia.
Kraepelin distinguishes four types of schizophrenia: the paranoid and the simple (they will be discussed later), hebephrenic, characterized by foolish, outlandish behaviour, and the catatonic, where immobility and complete lack of will is interrupted by the state of intense excitement. Molloy and Moran illustrate the first two types of schizophrenia in almost a pure form. In reality, schizophrenics very often manifest a mixture of different schizophrenic symptoms which makes them difficult to classify. Despite of this, there are some common symptoms which occur in all types of the illness. The most conspicuous are:
Ambivalent attitude towards parents. Hostility is mixed with the longing for the return to the mother`s womb. Schizophrenics tend to regress in their behaviour to that typical to foetus or very young children.
Ambivalent attitude towards sexuality, especially towards autoeroticism. It is not uncommon among schizophrenics to masturbate more often than ten times a day. On the other hand, it is quite common among them to cut off their virile member as a desperate attempt to get free of the embarrassing enslavement.
Utter disgust for any untruthfulness and social norms.
Altruism and exceptional complacency in life. They do not care for their career, social position, friendship, clothes, outward appearance, etc.
Unlike Molloy, for whom his mother is a pivotal figure in his investigation, Murphy does not display much interest in his procreator. Due to the frugality of information, it is hardly possible to draw any definite conclusions regarding his relationship with her, however, we can guess that she did not leave a vivid and indelible impression of her with him. This can be stated on the grounds of his inability to recall her face: “When he was naked he lay down in a tuft of soaking tuffets and tried to get a picture of Celia. In vain. Of his mother. In vain. Of his father (for he was not illegitimate). In vain. It was usual for him to fail with his mother.” Even though the picture of his parents is obliterate, however, it is his home that occupies a central position in his life; his home is his final destination. In the dialogue with his mentor, Neary, Murphy says that life is “a wandering to find home.” Furthermore, the solipsistic philosopher clearly evinces regressive behaviour. His assiduous efforts to withdraw from everyday, mundane life and his obstinate searching for silence through inaction makes him look very much alike to immobile catatonic patients.
Murphy stands astride between two possibilities: either to marry a prostitute, Celia, or to follow his and Neary`s philosophical course. He has no illusions that the two ways of life are mutually exclusive. Marrying Celia would mean necessity for physical love, different duties to accomplish and lack of time. All these seem to have a ruinous effect to the ecology of mind he is fond of so much. He decides to leave his beloved prostitute and go to London in the hope that he will forget her. But his pleasure-seeking nature and the failure at the Magdalen Mental Mercyseat makes him, unfortunately belatedly, aware that he will never be free from the emotional attachment for the woman.
Murphy pursuits his metaphysical ideas in dogged determination. He does not allow anybody to thwart his efforts. The main threat comes from Celia who does her utmost to attract his attention to more worldly affairs. She exclaims: “How you can be such a fool and brute.” But Murphy is convinced that the truth cannot be found without, in the world of puppets: “But you wouldn`t have me go against the diagram, surely to God.”
Indubitably, Murphy is an altruistic and benevolent man. At the mental hospital he strongly believes that his stay there will be beneficial for the patients. From the very beginning he is so adored by the patients that some of them refuse to behave properly unless treated by him: “One patient, a litigious case of doubtful category, refused to exercise unless accompanied by Murphy. Another, a melancholic with highly developed delusions of guilt, would not get out of his bed unless on Murphy`s invitation. Another melancholic, convinced that his intestines had turned to twine and blotting-paper, would only eat when Murphy held the spoon. Otherwise he had to be force-fed.”
Notwithstanding the readiness for helping others, Murphy is not a gregarious man. His reclusive trait is reviled by Celia who expressed her reproof that he has no friends. He does not work either and his small expenses are covered by charity. Even Celia`s persistent nagging that he should find a job does not appeal to him. But the situation upsets and disheartens him. “He was consequently aggrieved when Celia suggested that he might try his hand at something more remunerative than apperceiving himself into a glorious grave and checking the starry concave”. Despite the embarrassing situation, he sticks to his point of view and tries to convince her that he cannot work. He offers a sound argument: “He begged her to believe that he was a chronic emeritus.” It is not until she threatens to leave him when he applies at a chandlery in Gray`s Inn Road as a smart boy. When the other chandlers congregated to see the new applicant, they were greatly perturbed by his comportment, rather vintage age (for this post) and nonhuman appearance:
“ `E ain`t smart,“ said the chandler, “not by a long chork `e ain`t.”
“Nor `e ain`t a boy, ”said the chandler`s semiprivate convenience, not to my mind `e ain`t.”
“ `E don`t look rightly human to me,” said the chandlers` eldest waste product, “not rightly.”
Watt is an equally bizarre individual as Murphy. His forlorn and freakish appearance perplexes bystanders who watch him get off a tram. The “frequent traveller” who “has no fixed address” probably tries to dodge paying his fare and therefore is asked to leave the electric vehicle.
“On the far side of the street, opposite to where they sat, a tram stopped. It reminded stationery for some little time and they heard the voice of the conductor, raised in anger. Then it moved on, disclosing, on the pavement, motionless a solitary figure, lit less and less by the receding lights, until it was scarcely to be distinguished from he dim wall behind it. Tetty was not sure whether it was a man or a woman. Mr Hackett was not sure that it was not a parcel, a carpet, for example, or a roll of tarpaulin, wrapped up in dark paper and tied about the middle with a cord.”
Watt has to leave hastily the tram, but the theory that he may be a dodge farer and someone capable of any dishonesty is vehemently objected by another passerby: “No no, said Mr Nixon, he is a most truthful man, really incapable, I believe, of telling an untruth.” The strange situation, ensued by Mr Nixon statement enhancing Watt`s nebulous conduct, sparks a long discussion among the interlocutors, but since the time of Mr Nixon`s support, Watt`s truthfulness is taken for granted.
Murphy`s wardrobe was extravagant but not extensive. Watt`s outfit is much less sophisticated. He has baggy trousers, which ensconce imperfection of his legs. His long and cumbersome greatcoat serves partly the same function as his trousers. It is buttoned with “nine buttons, various in shape and colour.” The age of the coat, bought cheaply at second hand by his father, is impossible to determine. The garment has never undergone a proper cleaning, which is perhaps the reason of its longevity: “This coat had not, since then [since it was bought], at any time been washed, except imperfectly by the rain, and the snow, and the sleet, and of course occasional fleeting immersion in canal water, nor dry-cleaned, nor turned, nor brushed, and it was no doubt to these precaution that its preservation, as a unit, was due.”
Watt wears one shoe and one boot. The boot, which was slightly too big, was bought at a bargain price from a man who had lost one of his legs in an accident. The shoe was found on the sea-shore. It was nearly the same colour but the size was by one number too small. The inventive tramp, tries to ease the discomfort, however with little success: “By wearing, on the foot that was too small, not one sock of his pair of socks, but both, and on the foot that was too large, not the other, but none, Watt strove in vain to correct this asymmetry.”
For Molloy and for Malone life is only a meaningless game. They have lost all hope for happier future. The enjoyment they experienced when they were young has gone for ever. Although Molloy`s reckless life has been replete with suffering, he comes to terms with his lot: “My life, my life, now I speak of it as of something over, now as of a joke which still goes on, and it is neither, for at the same time it is over and it goes on, and is there any tense for that?” The tramp shows complete lack of respect for authorities and social norms. When a policeman wants his papers to check his identification, he tries to fob him off with toilet paper. Innocuous Lousse, who like Celia, wants to change the tramp`s detrimental mentality becomes a victim of his ingratitude. Instead of being glad that he can sate his hunger, dress properly, wash and shave regularly, he chooses his rags, squalidness and stink. The tramp, permeated with the passion for truth, has no scruples to tell Lousse of his desire to live on his own: “I made no bones about telling her I needed neither her nor anybody else, which was perhaps a slight exaggeration, for I must have needed my mother, otherwise why this frenzy of wanting to get to her?”
Abject and forlorn Malone counts days before his demise. To while away the time, he entertains himself with different games. The absence of other players does not put him in any inconvenience: “Perhaps as hitherto I shall find myself abandoned, in the dark, without anything to play with. Then I shall play with myself.” Besides telling stories, he carries out a detailed examination of his conscience, which, due to some imprudency in his life, does not go well: “I so longed to love, to the sky all astir with little white clouds as white and light as snowflakes, to the life I could never manage, through my own fault perhaps, through pride, or pettiness…”
The “talking ball”, the decrepit, main character of The Unnamable, being almost completely immobilized, amuses himself with telling stories. He also ruminates excessively on his indecent past. The enjoyment, which once constituted the essence of his life, has lost its validity now: “No more obscenities either. Why should I have a sex, who have no longer a nose?” The temptation to stimulate his wretched existence clashes with the feeling of sobriety: “The tumefaction of the penis! The penis, well now, that`s a nice surprise, I`d forgotten I had one. What a pity I have no arms, there might still be something to be wrung from it. No, tis better now. At my age, to start masturbating again, it would be indecent. And fruitless.”
2.3 Moran and Molloy - from integration to disintegration
The denial of bare facts and replacing them with imagination is characteristic to paranoid type of schizophrenia. In psychiatry this phenomena are called delusions and hallucinations. There are different types of delusions. Two of them, however, are the most common and the most relevant to Beckett`s protagonists:
Delusions of grandeur or megalomania, which are characterized by the false conviction that one is an exceptional person of great importance.
Delusions of being persecuted in which the person thinks that he is the target of another person`s hostility.
Although delusions appear in everyday life among normal people, obstinate delusions are considered as abnormal in society. Furthermore, some paranoid people create a whole, elaborate systems of delusions, a kind of mental environments in which they think they are safer, but the systems, being detached from reality, may drive them even to complete insanity. According to Kępiński, people who suffer from delusions can be characterized in the following way:
They are mistrustful and afraid of people. They constantly suspect people of conspiring against them.
They had sorrowful childhood. A proper upbringing, which has a key importance in human life, has been neglected.
They are narrow-minded people, who strongly hold to dogmas and to a certain route of life. The departure from this route causes fear, which they try to avoid.
The feelings of paranoid people are strong and dynamic but confusing at the same time.
They are generally unhappy, lonely and predestined to fall. The calculating world seems to be too strong and clever for them to conquer it.
They are unapproachable. People are divided by them into two categories: friends and enemies. But even if you are a friend of theirs, you can cease to be one any moment, due to their mercurialness.
They have sado-masochistic tendencies.
They have different complexes, such as the onanistic complex in which they have a feeling of guilt and that everyone is looking at them unfavorably.
Even a cursory examination of the description of paranoid people by Kępiński shows that it is a perfect psychological portrait of Moran. Although other Beckett`s characters also betray strong proclivity to paranoid behaviour, it is only Moran who fulfils all the paranoid criteria.
Moran is pathologically mistrustful of all the people he meets. Especially Jacques, his son, suffers from his father`s constant suspicions. The relationship between them during their journey becomes so tense that Moran decides to confiscate the boy`s pocket knife for fear of being stubbed. When his son is suspected of not attending Sunday mass, he asks him “a few pertinent questions concerning the march of the ceremony.” Even though the responses are quite convincing, he goes to Father Ambrose to dispel any doubts. Only the priest reassuring that he not only saw his son but he also talked to him after the mass, does bring about some peace in Moran`s mind. Father Ambrose is also under a cloud of suspicion of a false play as Moran thinks he has been “fobbed off” with “unconsecrated bread” which tasted like “a pain killer.” Gaber and Martha are not trustworthy, either. Moran thinks that Youdi`s messenger is deliberately “searching for the phrase most apt to wound him” and Martha, his servant, turns out not to be a proper person to share information with. When Moran leaves his home to search for Molloy, he decides to keep his decision to himself: “It was important to leave her in the dark.” She is also believed to cheat while cooking: “The stew was a great disappointment. Where are the onions? I cried. Gone to nothing, replied Martha. I rushed into the kitchen, to look for the onions I suspected her of having removed from the pot, because she knew how much I liked them. I even rummaged the bin. Nothing. She watched me mockingly.”
Moran is a strong believer and a regular churchgoer. The untimely Gaber`s Sunday visit gives him serious worries of not being able to attend the last mass: “I who never missed mass, to have missed it on that Sunday of all Sundays! When I so needed it! To buck me up.” To make up for the loss, he pays a private visit to Father Ambrose and takes communion. As an agent, he is enormously meticulous and conscientious. Although the purpose of his mission, is unclear (“What was I looking for exactly? It is hard to say. […] I felt he [Gaber] have told me what to do with Molloy once he was found”), he prepares to the search minute carefulness.
For paranoid people, like Moran, the world around them shows itself as an incessant chain of machinations and sinister manipulations. In such a world it is little space for such feelings as love or affection. The dynamism of their feelings, which are often misplaced and exaggerated, makes them objects of mockery. Moran is feared of, but at the same time laughed at. He treats his son harshly and has constant fights with him. When he wants to wake him he has to use force:
“ I began to shake him and help him out of bed pulling him first by the arms, then by the hair, he turned away from me in fury, to the wall, and dug his nails into the mattress. I had to muster all my strength to overcome his resistance. But I had hardly freed him from the bed when he broke from my hold, threw himself down on the floor and rolled about, screaming with anger and defiance. The fun was beginning already. This disgusting exhibition left me no choice but to use my umbrella, […]”
The heroic resistance of the young lad infuriates Moran so intensely that he runs to his shed, takes an axe and starts “hacking madly at an old chopping-block.” The physical effort helps him to vent his frustration and it gives him a certain relief. When he returns home he finds his son dressing and crying. In fact, “everybody was crying.”
At times Moran is quite funny or even sentimental. While sitting in his garden, he is full of admiration for vegetation around him: “Personally, I just liked plants in all innocence and simplicity.” When he talks to Father Ambrose, he allows himself to tell him a jocose story of his unproductive hen which does nothing during the day but sits “with her arse in the dust.” Sometimes, on very rare occasions, Moran tries to prank with Martha or Jacques, but due to the heavy atmosphere he creates around him, his efforts fall flat.
Not only Jacques and Martha feel intimidated at home. Moran is not at ease either. He says: “There is something in this house tying my hands.” He is also unhappy. Youdi`s remark that “life is a thing of beauty and a joy forever” he received with an utter disbelief. “Do you think he meant human life? “ Apart from psychical impairment, he also suffers from physical ailments. Especially his cripple leg makes his life miserable. To alleviate the pain, he uses morphine, his “favourite sedative.”
The feeling of intimidation and the tendency for keeping aloof from other people make Moran`s emotional and sexual life rather colourless. Having no female partners and thus any opportunities for sociosexual activity, he finds satisfaction in self-manipulation with his genital organ. The unfortunate habit highly embarrasses him, however, and he tries his utmost to keep it secret: “I abhor, it is someone coming into my room, without knocking. I might just happen to be masturbating, before my cheval glass.” The tendency to behave in a conspirative way is one of the reasons of his eschewing people. Being afraid of mockery and damaging his authority criticism, he looks forward to the right moment when he is alone and thus free to do whatever he likes. He also suspects his son of similar play. “I took advantage of being alone at last, with no other witnesses than God, to masturbate. My son must have had the same idea, he must have stopped on the way to masturbate.”
It was assumed in the previous chapter that Moran and Molloy refer to the same person. They are as if two selves existed on different layers of consciousness. They see the world differently and their behaviour varies to a great extent. Moran, who is `almost` convinced that he know Molloy, first, describes him, and then offers some comparison between them:
“He had very little room. His time was also limited. He hastened incessantly on, as if in despair, towards extremely close objectives. Now, a prisoner, he hurled himself at I know not what narrow confines, and now, hunted, he saw refuge near the center. […] Even in the open country he seemed to be crashing through jungle. He did not so much walk as charge. In spite of this he advanced but slowly. He swayed, to and fro, like a bear.
He rolled his head, uttering incomprehensible words.
He was forever on the move. I had never seen him rest. Occasionally he stopped and glared furiously about him.
This was how he came to me, at long intervals. Then I was nothing but uproar, bulk, rage, suffocation, effort unceasing, frenzied and vain. Just opposite of myself, in fact.”
The paranoid Moran claims that he is opposite to Molloy. A question may be posed what is the opposite, in psychological terms, to paranoia and whether Molloy fulfils the criteria of this term. Kępiński writes that human life is tending to find an equipoise between integration and disintegration. Integration, or hyper-integration, is a very typical feature of paranoid people who, being afraid of the environment in which they live, they entirely concentrate and go towards one, fixed and sometimes absurd goal. Such subterfuge gives them not only the feeling they somehow exist. What they really want to achieve is to avoid the disintegration of their mental system. The extreme form of such disintegration is called a simple type of schizophrenia.
The simple type of schizophrenic, according to Kępiński, manifests in the following way:
He becomes gradually aloof and indifferent to the external world. Even traumatic events are received unemotionally by them.
He shuns people and social life. At parties, he sits in a corner and is taciturn most of the time. Although the conversations and the atmosphere at the party bore him, he always stays to the very end.
Despite his indifference, he is sometimes extremely peevish and reacts violently to unpleasant situations.
He is often engaged in absurd activities such as drawing doodles or writing incoherent sentences.
A very conspicuous trait of his character is an immense verve for philosophy. His mind is frequently occupied with abstract issues, especially concerned the attempt to answer some ontological questions.
He is interested in his body and its ailments.
Molloy`s aloofness and the indifference has already been partly tackled while discussing his relation with his mother. Although the tramp seems to be in possession of great wit and intelligence, there is something wrong with his emotions. He feels no affection for his mother, who is perceived not as a human being, but rather as an ugly, inanimate object. Well-disposed towards him Lousse, who is greatly concerned about his wretched life, is also badly assessed by the tramp. Despite the fact that she gives him a room, new clothes and food, he is not only dissatisfied with her offer, but he highly undervalues her stance and appearance. What he sees in her is only her physical, non-attractive body, which outlook is not on par with his expectation: “Lousse was a woman of an extraordinary flatness, physically speaking of course, to such a point that I am still wondering this evening, in the comparative silence of my last abode, if she was not a man rather or at least an androgyne.” The relationship with Ruth or Edith (Molloy is not certain what was her name because of bad memory) was equally unsuccessful. He met her long time before Lousse and it was she who paid for making love. Her physical condition and appearance was also uninviting. She suffered from rheumatism and lumbago and like Lousse, she was so flat that he was doubtful whether she was really a woman. But her ugliness and infirmity were by no means a disqualifying feature for Molloy who “would have made love with a goat to know what love was.” The salient discrepancy in understanding sexual intercourse resembles Murphy and Celia and the opposition of commerce and loving tenderness. Molloy belittles making love saying: “A mug`s game in my opinion and tiring on top of that, in the long run. But I lent myself to it with a good enough grace, knowing it was love, for she had told me so.”
Molloy is unable to get along with people. He wears dirty clothes and his body gives off obnoxious odor. The tramp uses filthy language and he is disrespectful for any formality and law. He does not believe in people`s benevolence. Even the charity workers are criticized for their lack of genuineness in their actions. Molloy has no respect for etiquette and decorum either, but in his opinion, it is not him to blame for this:
“And if I have always behaved like a pig, the fault lies not with me but with my superiors, who corrected me only on points of detail instead of showing me the essence of the system, after the manner of the great English schools, and he guiding principles of good manners, and how to proceed, without going wrong, from the former to the later, and how to trace back to its ultimate source a given comportment. For that would have allowed me, before parading in public certain habits such as the finger in the nose, the scratching of the balls, digital emunction and the peripatetic piss, to refer them to the first rules of the reasoned theory. On this subject I had only negative and empirical notions, which means I was in the dark.”
Molloy has no respect for people`s feelings, either. His reactions to some incidents are sometimes weird and unpredictable. When the social workers offer him a mug of tea and some food, infuriated, he throws it violently away: “I flung it all from me. I did not let it fall, no, but with a convulsive thrust of both my hands I threw it to the ground, where it smashed to smithereens, or against the wall, far from me, with all my strength.” Molloy is not a nice man. He has no scruples to kill a man who, by accident, accosted him in the forest. After the initial blow on the poor man`s head, he leaves the place for a moment but then he returns to finish him off. He does it with extreme brutality and with no qualms.
Molloy has nothing to do, except for going to his mother. He is not sure why he wants to visit her and even whether it is a right thing to go to hers. It is only his “inner velleity” that drives him to this eternal journey: “And of myself, all my life, I think I had been going to my mother, with the purpose of establishing our relations on a less precarious footing.” But he is not in a hurry. Meantime, he is involved in numerous episodic events, which hampers his efforts to reach the destination. To kill the time and the boredom during the journey, he invents different, mainly absurd activities like counting and replacing from pocket to pocket pebbles. The game consists of creating new permutations of sixteen pebbles which he has collected when he was at the seaside. They are numbered, grouped and put either in one of his four pockets, or in his mouth where they are sucked. At his mother`s home, he writes something, which is later collected by people Molloy does not know. He is then provided with fresh pages to fill. Although he is paid for this job, his writings seem not to be read by anyone.
There is no denying the fact that Molloy demonstrates a great liking for philosophy. Although the fondness is perhaps not as fervid as Murphy`s, he is still greatly preoccupied with existential and ontological dilemmas. Although enmeshed in terrestrial life, he thinks of the highest goal: “For I always say either too much or too little, which is a terrible thing for a man with a passion for truth like mine.” His spiritual aspirations are highly supported by his extensive education, about which, however, he speaks with a touch of irony. He has some biblical knowledge, as he mentions two prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah, he also remarks on philosophers, like Geulinex, and he talks about his previous `scientific` education: “I once took interest in astronomy, I don`t deny it. Then it was geology that killed a few years for me. The next pain in the balls was anthropology and the other disciplines, such as psychiatry, that are connected with it, disconnected, then connected again, according to the latest discoveries.”
Molloy, like a typical hypochondriac, thinks and talks about his body almost all the time. At first, his lame leg is in the center of his interest. The lack of soundness in one leg complicates to some extent his life. He cannot help Lousse to dig a hole and bury the dog Molloy has run over. Like most schizophrenics, he speaks obsessively about sex and sexual organs:
”Now my sick leg, I forget which, it`s immaterial here, was in a condition neither to dig, because it was rigid, nor alone to support me, because it would have collapsed. I had so to speak only one leg at my disposal, I was virtually onelegged, and I would have been happier, livelier, amputated at the groin. And if they had removed a few testicles into the bargain I wouldn`t have objected. For from such testicles as mine, dangling at mid-thigh at the end of a meager cord, there was nothing more to be squeezed, not a drop.“
Molloy constantly monitors his gradually eroding physical and mental condition. At Lousse`s he feels as weak as “a lump of melting wax” and his mind is unable to think clearly (due to the fact that his beer has allegedly been poisoned). But on leaving this place, his conjecture as to his overall condition is not bad. Although his health is not in fine fettle, it has not deteriorated much: “But I must say that with Lousse my health got no worse, or scarcely. By which I mean that what was already wrong with me got worse and worse, little by little, as was only to be expected. But there was kindled no new seat of suffering or infection, except of course those arising from the spread of existing plethoras and deficiences. But I may very well be wrong.”
In the course of time, however, Molloy`s health collapses in so rapid pace that he contemplates putting an end to his life. Most of all, he complains about asthma, the disease that thwarts the process of breathing and makes his lungs bleeding. It is one of the factors that pushes him into the state of acute depression. Despite the hopeless decrepitude of his health, there is one thing he is content of - being alone. “Not a word, not a word against the crises that seized me, wrung me, and finally threw me away, mercifully, safe from help.” Finally, he describes his ability to move as being limited to slow crawling “like a reptile.”
On the grounds of this brief, psychological analysis of Moran and Molloy`s behaviour we can draw a conclusion that the two solipsistic tramps illustrate two aspects of mental dysfunctions: paranoid delusion with its frenetic efforts to keep the man`s personality integrated, and a simple form of schizophrenia, which means splitting of the personality, dissociation and emotional deterioration. The analysis also shows the interconnection between these two forms of the illness and what happen when the balance between them is disturbed.
2.4 Three stages of schizophrenia
Beckett`s protagonists fall into pieces. Their lives are a gradual progression from the state in which they have a relatively good command over their senses to madness. Kępiński distinguishes three stages of schizophrenia. In the first stage, the patient is overwhelmed by a new way of looking at himself and the outside world. Depending on the type of the illness the symptoms can be different. He can withdraw into himself (simple type), behave foolishly and in defiance of the ugly world (hebephrenic type), be lethargic (catatonic type) or he can be suspicious and feel he has a special mission of great importance to accomplish (paranoid type).
The second stage of schizophrenia is adaptation. In this stage the patient gets used to the new situation. He lives on the borderline between two worlds; real and unreal. Depending on which world the patient chooses, he can either recover from the illness or enter the third stage, degradation.
Degradation is characterized by stupor, disintegration and break-up of personality, incoherence in every aspect of life, emptiness and tendency to do the same thing over and over again; for example, drawing similar pictures or masturbating. Time and space is irrelevant to the patient. He is never bored and never in a hurry. Nothing happens to him, and he expects nothing from others. Present, past and future merge into eternity.
The histories of Moran and Molloy brought together are a good illustration of all the schizophrenic stages. Moran suffers from paranoia, the illness that is often considered to be the initial stage of the future collapse. In order to avoid the collapse, he escapes into unreal world created by his imagination. He thinks that he has a very important mission to accomplish, but in fact, nobody really cares for the result of the mission. Because he is unable to share his feelings with others, he tries to make people subordinate to him and manipulate them to achieve his goal. But in the course of time, his world commences to erode. People, who do not accept being treated instrumentally, and who do not feel any warmth in the mutual contacts, start to keep away from him. The departure of his son and the loss of keys seem to be the initial moment of his gradual disintegration and change to Molloy.
Molloy is unable to live in society as a common citizen. Driven by a murky idea of seeing his mother, he loiters aimlessly to and fro. His mere appearance fills people with disgust. He brags about his broad scientific education and about his passion for truth, but actually he descends slowly into the catatonic state of complete inertia: “Yes, my progress reduced me to stopping more and more often, it was the only way to progress, to stop.”
The most characteristic sign of the third stage of schizophrenia is emotional stupefaction. Out of many Beckett`s characters, only Murphy and Moran seem to show strong positive or negative feelings. Fearful Molloy, in a psychological sense, petrifies even his mother. Although Malone bears malice towards the world and curses it ( “Let me say before I go any further that I forgive nobody. I wish them all an atrocious life and then the fires and ice of hell and in execrable generations to come an honoured name.”), it is the feeling of indifference that dominates in his conduct.
Like the pair Moran-Molloy, Watt goes through all three stages of schizophrenia. In his case, the schizis in the last stage is so severe that he is placed in a mental asylum. At first, apart from his absent-mindedness which brings about a collision with a milkman, his mental soundness is reasonably good. Then he goes to live in Mr Knott`s house. The turning point as regards his mental health is the visit of piano tuners. Since that time his speech loses coherence and the reality seems to fly away from him: “Add to this the notorious difficulty in recapturing, at will, modes of feeling peculiar to certain time, and to a certain place, and perhaps to a certain state of the health, when the time is past, and the place left, and the body struggling with quite a new situation. Add to this the obscurity of Watt`s communications, the rapidity of his utterance and the eccentricities of his syntax, as elsewhere recorded.”
Despite the fact that Mr Knott`s house offers Watt generous hospitality, he does not feel well there. His mental health worsens. The reality and fantasy mingle together: “But Watt was very subject to fancies, toward the end of his stay under Mr Knott`s roof.” His mind is dominated by neurotic monomania for discovering different, very often, imaginary puzzles. First, his searching effort is directed towards Mr Knott himself. But Mr Knot turns out to be too abstract and ephemeral to comprehend and eventually he loses interest in him. To make up for the failure, and perhaps to pass the time, he commences his interest in other occupants of the house. He tries obsessively to answer absolutely trivial questions: “The question of who pressed the bell that sounded in Erskine`s room, in the night, was a great source of worry to Watt.” Instead of asking Erskine for solving the mystery, the monomaniac spends a great deal of time to contrive a plan and tries to find the answer by himself.
In the end, Watt has to leave Mr Knott`s house. His mental condition has undergone a rapid disintegration. He suffers from hallucination. “Watt seemed to regard, for some obscure reason, this particular hallucination as possessing exceptional interest.” At the railway station, his mere appearance disturbs the railwaymen so much that they think of calling the police. He is not able to define precisely his destination. Ultimately, he lands in a mental asylum. The degree of his disintegration shows the gibberish, incoherent talk: “Ot bro, lap rulp, krad klub. Ot murd, wol fup, wol, fup. Ot niks, sorg sam, sorg sam. Ot lems, lats lems, lats lems. Ot gnut, trat stews, trat stews.”
Beckett shares his passion for truth with his protagonists. He left his parental home for fear that the family bonds may dilute his determination to find the truth. He lost interest in religious faith and maintained distance from his friends. Like his protagonists Murphy and Molloy, he tended to be independent in every respect but the independence cost him dearly. Instead of the freedom, he started to feel a rapidly growing sense of alienation which led him to a serious mental crises. He suffered from depression during almost all his life, but the severest attacks took place in Roussillon, where he hid himself from Nazis. Laing claimed that Beckett “in Roussillon suffered his most serious schizoid break.” The overwhelming boredom of this place, deep anxiety for his mother, uncertain future and the writer`s solipsism deranged his mental strength so much that Bair wrote in his biography:
“His health began to decay. At first he simply stayed in bed for several days. Then coughs and colds and boils, manifestations of the psychosomatic illnesses that had plagued him all his life, lingered long after they should have been cured. Finally, he could not ignore the familiar symptoms of anxiety and depression. He still had enough self-control to realize that giving way to these fears was senseless, but nevertheless sleeplessness led to hallucinations and he was unable to ward off the feeling of imminent collapse.”
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Beckett, who modeled his protagonists on his own experiences, placed them in a schizophrenic world. Their pernicious family upbringing, being bereft of emotional intimacy, left its unmistakable stamp on their psyche. Robbed of the most precious gift, which is the profound feeling of affection, they set off to search for the lost treasure. But their journey, stimulated by unrealistic delusions, is sentenced to failure.
Laing notices that although some symptoms of schizophrenia may be soothed pharmacologically, creation of a friendly environment around the patients, based on mutual trust, give better therapeutic results. Kępiński gives examples of schizophrenics who recovered from the illness by the mere change of the environment (e.g. by army enrollment). For them, the illness was a form of escaping from the too demanding, intolerant world. It was only after changing the environment when the subdued feelings could freely appear and their thoughts had no check. Beckett`s protagonists are unable to find or discover such a beneficial world. Their life is wrapped in untold misery with no way out of their predicament.
III
SEARCH FOR HIEROPHANY
3.1 The origin of morality
The basic problems which appear in the context of moral philosophy are the questions what is the origin of morality, what is morally right and wrong and why we should follow good conduct rather than more tempting immoral one. We will have a glimpse at the history of the church, the main provider of moral inspirations, and its slow loss of influence. It would be also interesting to examine the nature of sex, as most Beckett`s protagonists show irresistible proclivity to it.
The origin of morality is unknown, however, some clues regarding human behaviour principles are included in ancient myths and beliefs. In the book The Sacred and the Profane, for example, Mircea Eliade, a noted historian of religion, depicts the nature of myths, the substantial impact myths have on human life and the discrepancies between the way religious and nonreligious man sees and feels the world. For religious man the cosmic reality does not consist of mere material objects, but it exists as a spiritually edifying hierophany; while nonreligious man perceives the world only in one “profane” dimension. Yet, even though he is unable to enjoy numinous experiences, due to ignorance or negligence, non-religious man is still underpinned by archetypical forces, which endow him with some religious potential.
In the Western tradition Plato was the most influential philosopher who laid foundation of moral philosophy. He realized that pleasure was not the highest good for people as it does not go fully with nature. Plato divided human self into three parts: reason (the rational element), emotions (pride, anger, courage, etc.) and bodily appetites (needs, desires, etc.). In Plato`s hierarchy, reason was the most important and powerful element capable of reaching the truth. The bodily appetites were the lowest in the hierarchy and by following only them we missed the other elements of our self and therefore the inner harmony. In order to be in peace with oneself, all three elements are necessary and they must cooperate properly.
The early Christian Church was a great force shaping new forms of morality. It advocated more austere and purer life detached from the flesh. The devotees were expected to abandon any lewdness and debauchery and the ones who did not obey the rules were removed from the society. One of the Apostles, Peter, advised his people to give up life driven by human passions but follow the will of God. He wrote in his letter to the dispersed followers of Christ: “Let the time that is past suffice for doing what the Gentiles like to do, living in licentiousness, passions, drunkenness, revels, carousing, and lawless idolatry.” In the course of time the Church lost its vigour and the sense of morality. The first sign of its future collapse, was the Great, East-West Schism, which took place in the 11th century. The controversies over the interpretation of the Bible, the perception of God and some doctrinal enforcements imposed by the Pope and bishops, estranged some fractions in the Christian hierarchy, which resulted in the deep division within the Church.
A few centuries later, due to abortive attempts to dominate in the political life and as a consequence of corruption of the clergy and their tendencies towards accumulating material wealth (very often by dishonest practices such as selling indulgences), the spiritual authority of the Church became even more jeopardized. The widespread opposition mounted against these practices resulted in another split and emergence of Protestant churches. One of the points of protestants` philosophy which changed the whole attitude towards religion was that the institution of church was not necessary for a believer to be saved. Only God, through His Grace and His Messenger, Jesus Christ, had the power to redeem people. The positive fruit of the Reformation was the appearance of so called Puritan ethos, a kind of behaviour based on modesty, restraining from any form of debauchery, community life and hard labour sometimes without gratification.
In the course of time, when the puritans` enthusiasm abated and the church misled much of its influence, a new cultural transformation, the Renaissance, took place. The Renaissance emphasized the dignity of man and his unlimited abilities. Man`s medieval imperfection seemed to be ignored and replaced by the vision of new man who is able to transform and subordinate the nature. He expressed his own critical thoughts paying little attention to the orthodox teaching of the clergy.
The age of Modernism was marked by a further, much more profound shift in the paradigm of how people perceived religion and the role of church in human life. The most influential harbinger of Modernism was Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher who noticed the general disrespect and misunderstanding of true moral virtues among Christians and who pointed at the hypocrisy of the church and its inability to reinforce genuine faith in God. Taking this into consideration, he pronounced a curious statement that “God is dead”. Despite the illogicality of the statement (God is an eternal being), the expression made a tremendous carrier and became a source of inspiration for next generations of philosophers and artists, including postmodernist writers like Samuel Beckett, who used to “contemplate the futility, sterility and boredom of his life” while reading the German philosopher. Nietzsche foresaw that the traditional religion will be replaced by either the philosophy of nihilism or by the illusory search for surrogate gods. Having regarded childlike surrender to God as a rather unachievable task for people of so undermined faith, he suggested the necessity of finding courage in oneself and become as strong and independent as God himself. But, as he predicted, even the creation of such a superman would not prevent humanity from forthcoming, acute crisis of value.
Nietzsche strongly believed in infinite potentiality of human psyche, which, profoundly penetrated and aptly handled, was able to transform human behaviour. The idea of undiscovered areas and the limitless potentiality of human mind found also a fertile ground for psychoanalysts who started to examine the matter. Indubitably, the lack of religious foundation was one of the major causes which brought about a rapid increase in demand for psychological assistance at that time. Beckett himself attended psychoanalytical sessions to cure his depressive moods. The development of education and spread of secular learning, urban culture focused on comfort and wealth estranged people from the Church and leaned them towards nonreligious institutions. Psychoanalysts seemed to be a viable alternative.
Another consequence which ensued the growing unpopularity of traditional church was a keen interest in Oriental culture and religion. For self-centred Europeans, the appreciation of completely new style and mentality, typical for Eastern people, was quite unusual. Not only utilitarian goods were imported from China or India but also works of art and holy books, which were then translated into European languages. The influence of these books was virtually ubiquitous in Modernist culture.
3.2 Samuel Beckett and his religious and philosophical background
Most Samuel Beckett`s biographers describe him as an interesting mixture of two extreme tendencies. On the one hand, he craved for physical excitement in order to find solace in his not easy life, and on the other hand, he was intensely interested in studying moral philosophy and religion. The dichotomy was the source of innumerable worries for him and it was also one of the main subject analyzed in his novels. His protagonists realize that there is something missing in their lives, something that deprives them from happiness and peace. The feeling of being incomplete and unfulfilled made them embark on a spiritual quest for truth and a better life. The obstacles they encountered during their quest, however, turned out to be not only insurmountable but also utterly devastating.
Samuel Beckett was brought up in a Protestant family. His father not only attended the services on a regular basis but also was a generous benefactor to the church. He even used to pray privately at home. Unlike her husband, Mary Beckett was not involved in the church matters so closely and intimately but she still was very stern for her children as regards their religious upbringing. Beckett once mentioned that he was “raised almost as a Quaker.” It was the shallowness of his mother`s belief limited to phony repetition of the Sunday`s rituals that made Samuel think over the essence of religion, which, in consequence, led him to the announcement that he had lost his faith. He explained that he considered religion as “irksome and of no comfort in times of sorrow.” The perfect example of church impracticality and its doubtful moral rectitude seems to be well illustrated by one of his character, the editor of Catholic monthly, Thomist, Mr Spiro. The illuminated penman tries to demonstrate to Watt how intricate issues he has to deal with: “What do you know of adjuration, excommunication, malediction and fulminating anathematisation of the eels of Como, the hurebers of Beaune, the rats of Lyon, the slugs of Macon, the worms of Como, the leeches of Laosanne and the caterpillars of Valence?” Mr Spiro says augustly that he is also called Dum which is the anagram of mud and some critics suggest that the name Spiro refers to syphilis, an illness caused by viral-shaped viruses.
The ludicrous dichotomy of his mother`s Victorian religiousness and her conduct in everyday life made Beckett peculiarly interested in the concept of freedom. The essay Proust was the most trenchant expression of his philosophical search in this area and the play Waiting for Godot the most graphic exposure of his theoretical ideas concerning the problem of time and its enslaving properties. Vladimir and Estragon was meant to symbolize Beckett`s childhood; a kind of life based on routine and habit.
Beckett was disenchanted with the Victorian, monotonous, unyielding lifestyle and literature. English literature, in his opinion, was based on “banality, typification and simplification which amounted to nothing more than a mere listening of the vices and virtues.” He loved unorthodoxy in behaviour and writing. Among many friends he made in his life there were a lot of bohemian artists. One of them was his chess partner, a French painter, Marcel Duchamp. The eccentric and provocative Frenchman, who, like Beckett, saw no virtue in traditional approach to art, was associated with the Surrealist and Dadaist groups. His ready-made entitled Fountain, although refused at the first exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, provided Dadaists with fresh, artistic inspiration and today many critics consider the “masterpiece” presenting an ugly urinal, as the most influential piece of art in the 20th century.
Beckett`s proclivity to using crude language and the tendency to be plain and guileless in describing bodily experiences stem, to a significant extent, from his interest in French literature. He was particularly influenced by one book; Jules Renard`s Journal. Although the French writer lived a very decent, tranquil life in his small town, keeping away from avant-garde groups, his language, replete with ordinary expressions and referring to natural functions, departed from Victorian standards. Beckett was struck with wonder by the new rhetoric and once said: “He always speaks so well about chewing and pissing and that kind of thing.”
Divine Comedy by Dante is another book which played a decisive role in shaping Beckett`s interest in the philosophical quest and in the creation of his fatalistic protagonists. The jinxed stories of people overwhelmed by passions and “the never ending fight of those who sinned in the flesh, the carnal and lusty who betrayed reason to their appetite” is clearly visible in his life and novels. Beckett, who was considered as a slightly cranky person, was not successful with women. Deirdre Bair writes that his “relationships with women parallel the euphemisms for masturbation and the brief therapeutic encounters with prostitutes or willing acquaintances.”
For a long time, Beckett fought with his depressive moods. The destructive fight and the instability of his mind considerably thwarted the progress of his writing. It was not until he realized that keeping darker part of his mind repressed was a mistake, when he could ultimately overcome his incapacity.
Beckett, in the early stage of his life, being highly dissatisfied with his uneasy and tense life, was fervidly devoted to philosophy and religion, in which he tried to find the solution for his predicament. In the course of time, however, his excitement for these subjects rapidly eroded. He started to convince people that he was not a philosopher and that he expressed only his own experiences and ideas. Despite of this camouflagic statement, he was still considered as one who demonstrated “the highest values of moral commitment.” The characters of his novels also demonstrate these values.
3.3 Beckett`s protagonists on the way to enlightenment
Beckett`s protagonists, whose stories were modeled on the Author`s life, attempt to find the solution to their predicament sagaciously. They generally have grown up in a religious atmosphere and their education was impeccable. In the following part of the paper I am going to analyze their efforts towards enlightenment and the reasons of their failure.
Murphy`s spiritual growth is guided by an Indian guru, Neary. In order to understand the kind of impact Neary has on Murphy, it is worth mentioning that he is a direct equivalent of Wilfred Bion, also a an Indian-born man, a psychoanalyst who treated Beckett in the 30s. Apart from medicine, Bion was interested in philosophy and one of his friends is H.J. Paton, an expert on Kant. Bion, during his sessions, wanted his patients to reach the point of “onement”, which could be accomplished by gradual progression from fragmented self to total integration with the universal spirit. He thought that “onement” could not be achieved by “cure or improvement” but it is rather a “self-revelatory process”, a religious journey to the “ineffable, absolute reality and unity of fragmented self.” The critics and biographers point out his affinity to Indian terminology he used in his texts and extensive knowledge of Indian philosophy.
Neary was once a skillful yoga aficionado. After years of practice he could “stop his heart more or less whenever he liked and keep it stopped, within reasonable limits, for as long as he liked.” He practices meditation and he believes in beneficial assistance of Providence. Providence, in his opinion, is expected to furnish a committed devotee with all daily necessities. Despite the fact that Murphy is greatly distracted by carnal feelings for Celia, he tries to focus his attention on the noblest values. He says, that his “highest attribute is silence.” The narrator of the book, while contrasting him with other characters, eulogizes his efforts and his disobedience to the inconsequential mercantilism saying: “All the puppets in this book whinge sooner or later, except Murphy, who is not a puppet.” The principal source of Murphy`s worries is the awareness that his body and mind are not mutually sympathetic. In order to get rid of the incompatibility he realizes that only a secluded place and the absence of the feminine company can facilitate his efforts towards enlightenment.
Murphy finds an out-of-the-way place in the loft of the mental hospital, where he is employed. But the proper place is not enough because he still holds the image of his beloved Celia in his mind. Despite the physical separation from the woman, he still lives in the world of imagination, kindled by the pleasant experiences in Ireland.
Watt is a novel the most literally modeled upon Beckett`s life. Written in unoccupied by the Germans Roussillon, the place where Beckett experienced hardship of inactivity and boredom which almost drove him into insanity. Writing this hardly coherent novel was “only a game, a means of staying sane, a way to keep his hand in.” The book reflects the sense of powerlessness in the face of physical oppression, ontological insecurity and spiritual infertility.
The most striking feature of Beckett`s novel Watt are the names of the characters. Watt, the main character, phonetically corresponds with the inquiring word `what`, which means that the vagabond does not come to terms with an easy, routine life of ordinary people. The onlookers who see Watt getting off the tram are not sure that he is a human at all, taking him for various lifeless objects, such as a parcel or a sewer-pipe. Only one of them, Mr Nixon, can declare some credible knowledge of the strange man. “I seem to have known this man all my life, but there must be a period when I did not.” The remarks may suggest that Watt is not perceived like a man but like human conscience alone, which constantly asks questions concerning the essence of life and which is permanently in conflict with the carnal nature of man. Furthermore, Mr Nixon not only admits that he knows Watt, but he also can see him in his interlocutors, as if he constitutes the inner part of them: “The curious thing is, my dear fellow, I tell you quite frankly, that when I see him, I think of you, and that when I see you, or think of you, I think of him. I have no idea why this is so.”
Mr Knott may be understood as a phonetic equivalent of either `knot` or `not`. Both these words refer to a creature that appears to exist in the world but whose identity is impossible to determine. He may only appear to be a man but, in fact, represent the divine and uncontaminated side of human existence. He may also be compared to the image of Buddhist “god”, who dwells in human heart. The god, that has intangible nature, cannot be found anywhere and is understood as emptiness. According to Encyclopedia Britannica: “Emptiness, also called Nothingness, or Void, in mysticism and religion, is a state of “pure consciousness” in which the mind has been emptied of all particular objects and images; also, the undifferentiated reality (a world without distinctions and multiplicity) or quality of reality that the emptied mind reflects or manifests.” Although the term appears most frequently in Buddhist holy texts, there are a lot of examples of the term in European literature. In the 20th century, for example, the Existentialists were particularly interested in this concept.
Beckett himself, who did not believe in personal god, was also greatly attracted to the idea of emptiness. Emptiness became the starting point for his creative writing and the main subject of the spiritual quest. He realized that it would not be possible to be authentic and successful unless he dropped his extensive academic knowledge and arcane, linguistic skills. In order to achieve this he switched from English to French language and returned to `Socratic` ignorance as the way of perceiving the world. Before beginning his work on Molloy, he said to his friend: “I realized that I knew nothing. I sat down in my mother`s little house in Ireland and began to write Molloy.” Because it is difficult to write about something that is beyond human apprehension, the narrator of Watt assumes that “the only way one can speak of nothing is to speak of it as though it were something, just as the only way one can speak of God is to speak of him as though he were a man.” Molloy is also unwilling to state the meaning of God and man, despite of his anthropological education: “What I liked in anthropology was the inexhaustible faculty of negation, its relentless definition of man, as though he was not better than God, in terms of what he is not. But my ideas on this subject were always horribly confused, for my knowledge of men was scant and the meaning of being beyond me.”
Watt has just discovered that life in the stinking ditch does not suit him any more. Like religious devotees, he goes to Mr Knott`s house not only with a view to learning something about his master but most of all, to identifying himself with his god-like nature and to “eternally turning about Mr Knott in tireless love.” He “comes to understand that he is working not merely for Mr Knott in person, and for Mr Knott`s establishment, but also, and indeed chiefly, for himself.” The whole frame of his mind changes. Now, he imagines himself like a meditating Buddhist Zen monk who `sits quietly, doing nothing`. He hopes that the new environment will be highly beneficial for his spiritual growth: “For there is work to do. That is what is so exquisite. Having oscillated all his life between the torments of a superficial loitering and the horrors of disinterested endeavour, he finds himself at last in a situation where to do nothing exclusively would be an act of the highest value, and significance.”
It soon turns out that the new place does not work for Watt. Although he is promoted from the ground floor to the first one, he sees no progress in his education. His short-lived enthusiasm for new experiences wears off rapidly. Then he loses interest in Mr Knott and ultimately descends to lunacy.
Watt appears also in the ensuing Beckett`s books. In Mercier and Camier, “squalidly clad” and stinking with “the double stink of the old and the unwashed”, he tries to get into conversation with the astringent couple. The oppressive odour he gives off is so overwhelming (“Camier inhaled it connoisseurishly”), that the two vagabonds want to get rid of him instantly. Watt`s pushiness leads to a little scuffle between them and then to an acrimonious exchange of views with a constable, who objects to their promenading in the town in such an uncivilized manner. Despite of these difficulties, they go to a bar together. In the bar, Watt has a very important message to communicate. He says that it is highly advantageous to be dispossessed or rather to possess nothing. He remarks: “one is born of us, who having nothing will wish for nothing, except to be left the nothing he hath.” Then, having spotted lack of communication with the interlocutors, who “paid scant heed for these sayings,” he offers a wish that their life should be changed. He cannot specify what sort of change he means: “May you feel one day what I feel. That won`t prevent your having lived in vain, but it will, how shall I say - ?” Mercier and Camier are not interested in Watt`s talking and they soon depart. They feel complete disregard for their lives and God. Their conversation in a bar explains their views on this matter: “Contrary to a prevalent opinion, there are places in nature from which God would appear to be absent” and their description of soul as “another four letter word.”
It is no wonder that Mercier and Camier can hardly find any place permeated by divine atmosphere. The two seedy vagabonds spend most of their time in bars, inns and brothels. At first glance, their carefree, facetious behaviour may appear funny, but a closer look at their lives indicates the vulnerability and cruelty of their existence. Under the shell of joyfulness they suffer unquenchable anguish.
3.4 The obstacles to enlightenment
There are many books that deal with the problem of what causes predicamental situations and what are the conditions that must be fulfilled in order to overcome them. For the purpose of this paper, as the basis to the analyses, I choose Patajali`s great Hindu classic, Yoga-sūtras. It is because the book describes succinctly, scientifically and objectively the way to liberation through physical and mental discipline.
Patanjali says that anguish and despair appear when the mind is distracted. He mentions the following obstructing distractions:
Disease, which refers more to non-rhythmic way of life and the inability to be at one`s ease. Health means whole or holy, the state of being not split.
Mental laziness, which weakens the will and energy to practice. A man who suffers from mental laziness is always talking about God and philosophy, never doing anything. The problem occurs because of the leakage of energy.
Doubts, which are persistent among inexperienced followers
Lack of enthusiasm and carelessness.
Lethargy.
Clinging to sense-enjoyments.
False perception. Delusion is like dreaming with open eyes.
Non-attaining concentration and falling away from the state when obtained.
The lover of the Cartesian philosopher, Geulinex, well educated and passionate seeker of truth, Molloy, is unable to find a way to spiritual development. Instead of truth, he finds disappointment and hopelessness. His efforts are thwarted by all obstacles mentioned by Patanjali. He is infested with numerous illnesses, his mental capacity is extremely deficient and his inactivity drags him into the state of lethargy. He suffers from delusions and the purpose of his life is not clearly specified, which makes his life meaningless. The chief obstacle is also indecisiveness coming from his carefree style of life: “I have never been particularly resolute, I mean given to resolution, but rather inclined to plunged headlong into the shit, without knowing who was hitting against whom and on which side I had the better chance of skulking with success.”
Unlike Molloy, Moran appears to be a practical and responsible man. From the outside, he looks like an exemplary citizen of the country. He takes care of his house, the members if his household and the garden. He is attached to the traditional church and he goes there regularly. His conscientious approach to work is praised by his employer who entrusts him with the most demanding missions. He loves order and discipline, which is the basis to his communication with the others. Closer look at him, however, reveals extreme superficiality of his behaviour and, strangely enough, his obvious similarity to Molloy`s carefree nature. Although he is obedient to his chief, he does it reluctantly. The appearance of Gaber is a nuisance for him and an occasion for maledictive remarks: “he had journeyed from afar, on purpose to disturb me. So I was disposed to receive him frostily enough, all the more so as he had the impertinence to come straight to where I was sitting, under my Beauty of Bath.” Moran is a busy man, but this results from his morbid desire for domination and for a demonstration of his superiority, rather than for any spiritual need to create something positive and useful. In fact, he admits that, like Molloy, he has “always loved doing nothing.” He is meticulous about his work, but at the same time he loses his contact with reality. He does not remember what to do with Molloy when he is found and he doubts whether the whole effort to find Molloy is not a mere illusion. Not soon after he set off on the mission, he remarks: “And these last words, assuming Gaber had not invented them especially to annoy me, had perhaps been uttered by the chief with the sole purpose of fostering our illusion, if it was one. All this is not clear. […] And to keep nothing from you, this lucidity was so acute at times that I came even to doubt the existence of Garber himself.”
Apparently, Moran`s approach to religion does not resemble Molloy`s libertarian views on this subject, but it is rather an derisive illustration of Beckett`s mother with her emphasis on form and the effort to keep up appearances. In passing, we should remind ourselves that Beckett strongly detested and disapproved such conformist behaviour. Moran devotes a special attention to religion. Going to church is an indispensable point in his weekly curriculum. He also examines his son whether he was attentive enough to say what was the subject of the sermon and he himself thinks about God frequently. Despite these signs of devotion, we cannot say that his piety is genuine. He is interested in theological questions, but from practical point of view, the answers to these questions (if there are any) are insignificant. For example, he wonders whether it is true that “the devils do not feel the pains of hell”, or “what God was doing with himself before the creation.” Moran thinks of himself as a religious man, but religious practices can be productive only when they are carried out in full consciousness. Otherwise, they become a form of hypnosis. It has already been proved that Moran`s grasp of reality is very poor. He goes to church and thinks about church, but his mind is constantly preoccupied with details of minor importance. For example, he is irritated seeing Gaber in a nice dress, which allegedly shows his perfunctory interest in religion: “He was dressed in his heavy, somber, Sunday best, and at this my displeasure knew no bounds. This gross external observance, while the soul exults in the rags, has always appeared to me an abomination.” Moran`s frail faith collapses in the end when he meets Father Ambrose only to tell him about his departure from the church.
Lastly, it should be mentioned that Moran is also a suffering man. Apart from mental problems, we learn that even before he felt the acute pain in his knee, which happened during his mission, he took tablets of morphine to ease the discomfort. In the course of time his overall condition gets worse. What is more, like Molloy and Moran, he harbours a grudge against the people he has met: “I had to suffer other molestations than this, other offences, but I shall not record them.”
Although Malone goes through a lot of suffering, it is not physical pain that concerns him most but mental and spiritual: “The pain is almost unbearable, upon my soul it is.” The bed-ridden valetudinarian lies in his room with the feeling that his life has been wasted. He waits for his death, which is expected to come very soon. The closeness of his final departure makes the examination of his conscience more genuine, as he has no scruples to reveal some facts, that are kept secret in other circumstances. Being immobilized, he tells stories, which are ( “I wonder if I am not talking yet again about myself”) partly autobiographical. In the intervals between his story-telling, he gives some reflections on his life and the life in general.
Despite his decrepitude, like his predecessors, Malone seems to be interested in religious matters. Like them, with the exception of Moran, he does not see any help in traditional church. He is also slightly disillusioned with the magical state of nothingness known in Buddhism as nirvana. The state can be obtained when all individual passion, hatred, and delusion disappear and he realizes that obtaining this state is beyond his reach. Talking about it is also depressing for him. Nonetheless, the importance of this concept, which haunted him over his whole life, is emphasized by printing it in italic: “I know those little phrases that seem so innocuous and, once you let them in, pollute the whole of speech. Nothing is more real than nothing. They rise up out of the pit and know no rest until they drag you down into dark.”
As it was mentioned in the last part of the trilogy, The Unnamable, the narrator describes himself as a “talking ball”. Having lost his physical body, he is “reduced to reason” and like Molloy, Moran and Malone, he is entirely occupied with the process of thinking and especially with his past experiences. He realizes that the periods of intensive search for God were gone many years ago: “Similarly the belief in God, in all modesty be it said, is sometimes lost following a period of intensified zeal and observance, it appears.” He also realizes that his life was rather bumpy and full of temptations, which formed his present, miserable existence: “How often did I fall during these final stages, while the storms raged without?” The storms must have been ferocious because now, his position is desperate. It resembles a stalemate, a situation where any progress is impossible. His life is extremely grim, without any hope for redemption. The language he uses points at his complete resignation and despair: “all lies, God and man, nature and the light of day, the heart`s outpourings and the means of understanding, all invented, basely, by me alone, with the help of no one, since there is no one, to put off the hour when I must speak of me.”
3.5 Clinging to self-enjoyment as the crucial obstacle
It is frequently said by clerics and spiritual leaders, that contemporary man lost the feeling of sin and the sense of guilt. He does not know any more what is good and what is bad for him and others. Because clinging to sense-enjoyment seems to be one of the most striking symptoms of the spiritual confusion, which brings about the appearance of other distractions mentioned by Patanjali, it is important to discuss this point more thoroughly. The fact that all Beckett`s protagonists show strong proclivity to sensuous pleasures, mainly in the form of intensive sexual activity, is another factor that makes it necessary to devote a special attention to sex-related problems, especially to the questions: what is wrong with sex (if there is anything wrong with it), and how losing sperm affects human life.
There are mutually contradictory views concerning the influence that sex has on human life. The general opinion on this subject, supported by colour magazines and newspapers, suggests that sex is completely harmless and even beneficial in many ways. It is believed to be the best remedy for migraine, sleeplessness and many other malfunctions. In one of the articles in the most popular Polish tabloid, Fakt [Fact], it was reported that according to the latest discoveries sex is not only the source of pleasure but also a way of improving your intelligence. Polish scientists claim that sexual activity makes glands produce more adrenaline, which stimulate gray cells to better work. It is also proved that, during orgasm, the hormones, produced by pituitary and pineal glands, “build up self-confidence and strengthen human psyche”. The article ends with encouragement not to waste time, but be the most intelligent man in the world.
Not all journalists of tabloids and colour magazines are so optimistic about the advantages of sex. Denise Winn, for example, in the article Going, going, gone: The great sperm drought expresses her concern over a dramatic decrease of sperm quality and quantity in the recent years. Different surveys show that the speed of the sperm concentration decline is so fast, that by the year 2050 human race will be completely wiped out from the Globe. Although environmental chemicals and alcohol are, in the first place, to blame for the drop, not abstaining from sex is believed to be one of the important factors.
The thesis that sex makes us more intelligent does not tally with earlier researches. Michel Foucault, a French philosopher and historian who examined madness from the historical point of view, came across some documents proving that it is just the opposite; losing humors during an intercourse may drag people even to insanity. “Menuret repeats an observation of Forestier`s that clearly shows how an excessive loss of humor, by drying out the vessels and fibress, may provoke a state mania; this was the case of a young man who “having married his wife in the summer time, became maniacal as a result of the excessive intercourse he had with her.”
In the opulent book, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, a lot of space is devoted to excessive masturbation and its effect on human existence. It is impossible to present here all scientific opinions which are included in the book, but some of them are undoubtedly worth mentioning. Kraepelin, one of the most influential German psychiatrist, believed that “some decrease of psychic capacity, an inability to grasp and coordinate external impressions, weakness of memory, deadening of emotions, or else the general phenomena of increased irritability, leading on to neurasthenia” may be caused by excessive masturbation. Freud also had no doubts that masturbation had bad influence on health. He said that “neurasthenia can nearly always be traced to excessive masturbation, or to spontaneous pollution.” According to Bechterew, a very characteristic feature of a masturbator is his “morbid heightening of self consciousness without any coordinated heightening of self-esteem.” The situation creates fear of people and consequently the tendency to avoid them. All in all, over forty diseases are mentioned by the Author caused directly or indirectly by persistent masturbation. Among them are insanity, epilepsy, various eye diseases and headaches, asthma, cardiac murmurs or hallucinations.
The most extreme views concerning sex are presented in sacred texts. All great religions stress the crucial importance of chastity. Christian books offer traditionally very general explanations to the problem of promiscuity and masturbation. Catechism of the Catholic Church says only that looking for sexual pleasures without expecting a child is morally wrong. Much more exhaustive explanations can be found in Eastern sacred books. Taoists, for example, think that sexual energy is the most precious and irreplaceable “elixir” in the process of meditation. Lack of it makes one “less intelligent, old, sick, and his memory poor.” That is why young persons, who can produce more sexual energy, are more intelligent and vigourous than old ones. It is reported that meditating monks stayed awake even at night for fear of losing their precious sexual energy. They developed a detailed list of precautions which should be observed in order to avoid the leakage.
Even a very brief glance at the above-mentioned opinions about different sexual behaviours sheds some light on Beckett`s protagonists. Their promiscuity leaves indelible traces on their lives and characters. The most common ones, referring to Kreapelin, is solipsism and atrophy of compassionate feelings. It can be observed in Molloy`s bad treatment of his mother, Moran`s cruelty towards his son or Malone`s feelings of vengeance. Even Belacqua, who seemed to be happy with his crippled wife, Lucy, to his friends surprise and disgust, experiences no emotions after her premature death.
“Her death came therefore as a timely release and the widower, to the unutterable disgust of the deceased`s acquaintance, wore none of the proper appearances of grief. He could produce no tears on his own account, having as a young man exhausted that source of solace through overindulgence; nor was he sensible of the least need or inclination to do so on hers, his small stock of pity being devoted entirely to the living, by which is not meant this or that particular unfortunate, but the nameless multitude of the current quick, life, we dare almost say, in the abstract.”
Another significant element of Beckett`s protagonists life is their physical and mental exhaustion. It is not clearly visible in the case of Belacqua, who is very young, but other characters look like “spent batteries”. Watt, in the later stage of his stay at Mr Knatt`s is so enfeebled in mind and body that he can hardly receive and process the oncoming information. The reason for this is “on the one hand the exiguity of the material propounded to his senses and on the other the decay of these.” His insensibility prevents him from clear perception of the world. The narrator adds: “What little there was to see, to hear, to smell, to taste, to touch, like a man in a stupor he saw it, heard it, smelt it, tasted it, touched it.” Mercier and Camier, the frequent visitors to the brothel, are not in a good form either. Especially Camier is deprived of any vigour. Unwilling to travel with his friend, he says: “I feel all sucked off.” Molloy and Malone seem to be the most tired of them. Malone says: “My body is what is called, unadvisedly perhaps, impotent.”
Belacqua Shue, the first Beckett`s antihero, is an oversensitive student, often engrossed in serious books-reading of such works as Divine Comedy by Dante. His last name is derived from the Bible and refers to Onan`s grandfather. The association with the biblical abuser tellingly shows us some features of Belacqua`s character. He is a literary scholar and a philanderer who has a “big pallid garb,” a visible sign of his vivid interest in debauchery and self enjoyment.
The set of stories More Pricks Than Kicks (1934) shows Belacqua in different situations. In the first story, Dante and Lobster, we find him very sluggish and dispirited. Instead of concentrating his attention on study, he relishes the thought of being in a bar: “He was so bogged that he could move neither backward nor forward […] Bored also, impatient to get to Piccarda.” In the third story, Ding-Dong, even more detailed description is offered. His pleasure-seeking nature is compared to that of the daughters of Darkness, Furies: “Being by nature however sinfully indolent, bogged in indolence, asking nothing better than to stay put at the good pleasure of what he called the Furies, he was at times tempted to wonder whether the remedy were not rather more disagreeable than the complaint.”
Unlike Murphy and Watt, Camier, Mercier and Molloy are less motivated to search for truth. The reason for this is that they see the purpose of their search more vaguely. Mercier and Camier are constantly on the move, but they do it for the sake of avoiding boredom. One of the points they discussed in a bar was the question: “what they were looking for” and “if what they were looking for existed.” Molloy knows that he wants to visit his mother in order to establish their “relations on a less precarious footing.” What he does not know is how to get there. His innate velleity and clinging to self-enjoyment do not help, either.
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Most Beckett`s protagonists live in the ditch both, literally and metaphorically. Although they enjoy this kind of life, on the margin of society, they also can discern the reverse, more sublime side of human existence. They want to change their life, but at the same time they feel comfortable in the place they live. The dichotomy between these approaches constitutes the biggest problem for them. Murphy leaves his courtesan and goes to London in order to find a peaceful place for meditation. Watt lies his hope for spiritual upliftment in Mr Knott and even Molloy, with his “passion for truth” also tries to follow his predecessors, but more hesitantly: “But now I shall have to get myself out of this ditch. How joyfully I would vanish there, sinking deeper under the rains.” The inner voice, however, persuades him to do something more than to think about self-annihilation. ”But when I was on my way to my mother only one road was right, the one that led to her, or one of those that led to her, for all did not lead to her. I did not know if I was on one of those right roads and that disturbed me, like all recall to life.”
Beckett created in his novels several unorthodox and unordinary characters. They can think independently, feeling disgust for any forms of conformity or attempts to follow the line of least resistance. Their affinity to religious thought, especially to the idea of “nothingness”, bestows their lives with some colour and eccentricity, On the other hand, however, the improper handling of religion becomes the principal cause of their failure. Molloy`s confession: “I never really had much love to spare” gives a sufficient explanation for the unfortunate calamities they ultimately met. Neither love nor any ontological questions can be understood in the process of logical thinking, because they belong to the realm of feelings, and feelings are the sensations Beckett`s protagonists have particularly in a huge deficit.
IV
AGGRESSION AND SEARCH FOR DEATH
4.1 Suicide as a solution to the problem of existence
Deirdre Bair mentioned that susceptive to depressive moods Beckett not only talked about death, but also seriously meditated on advancing the time of departure from the earth. His feelings of not “fitting into the world of his family and their friends” greatly unnerved him and it is due to his family advice that he was convinced to the psychoanalytical therapy. Beckett`s attitude towards suffering and death was well expressed in his novels. Unhappy, dejected and discarded from the society, his characters live virtually on the verge of life and death. They show great proclivity for harmful, sometimes sadomasochistic behaviour and therefore they are unable to establish any healthy relationships with other members of the society. The main purpose of this chapter is to examine Beckett`s characters, their despondency, overwhelming urge for aggression and their interest in death as a form of relief or salvation.
There are different reasons why people commit suicide. In the literary and artistic world, it may be assumed that it is the heightened sensitivity and the sense of helplessness in the attempts to find the truth that may explain this gruesome phenomenon. Although everyone in the world is exposed to similar stimuli, there are people unable to accept the conditions imposed by the society.
In 1941, before stepping into the river and ending her earthly pilgrimage, Virginia Woolf explained to her husband and to the world that she could no longer put up with the terrible times and in order not to go mad she decided to take her life. She was not the only one who faced the dramatic choice between death and madness. Apart from Virginia Woolf, for whom suicide was the reaction to the family problems and to the disgusting, bloody war, there are other well known writers who chose similar solution to unravel the mystery of life. John Berryman jumped from a Minneapolis bridge because he could not cope with his alcoholism, mental distress and failures in his family life. Ernest Hemingway, plagued by illnesses and declining mental faculties, shot himself. Sylvia Plath, the most distinguished confessional poet, who often suffered from deep depressions, was obsessed with death and finally decided to follow her susceptibility. Tension of life made Hart Crane jump from the ship into the Caribbean Sea and Tadeusz Borowski died by his own hand because he grew disillusioned with the new socialist reality.
The problem of suicide was thoroughly discussed in the book The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. The French writer raised the most crucial philosophical question regarding the purpose of human existence “whether life is or is not worth living.” The novelty of his approach consists in the fact that he was not interested in people whose life was undermined by a deep crisis, but rather in “healthy” people for whom life is too absurd to take it seriously. As a literary example of a man who committed a spiritual offence, Camus chose Ivan Karamazov, one of three brothers from the book The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky. Ivan defends his nihilistic view that you can do and say whatever you like because there is no punishing God and therefore no morality. This view is confronted with Zosima`s claim that everyone is responsible for everyone and that you should be careful with your conduct. The responsibility for Fyodor`s death falls not only on the murderer but also on everyone that created favourable conditions for the crime. In the end, life plays trick on Ivan`s carelessness and his nihilistic views. After the death of his father and after Dmitry`s condemnation, Ivan is consumed with dreadful guilt over the whole situation and even his belated confession at court is of no help.
Beckett resembles Dostoyevsky`s Ivan to a great extent. His search for freedom led him to the rejection of church and God. This way of handling things deeply estranged him to his family and friends which brought about quarrels and hostility. Especially his ambiguous feelings towards his mother deeply troubled him. He wrote on many occasions that he had guilty conscience because he was not with her. On the one hand, he thought that she meant a lot to him, and on the other hand, he did not accept her domineering treatment of him. The sense of guilt is also one of the most conspicuous element in his books. Religious Moran, who is greatly attached to church procedures and ceremonies, feels an acute embarrassment over his licentious conduct. The Unnamable, whose entire life is reduced to the examination of his conscience, realizes that because of his negligence, he committed many mistakes which led him to the present, miserable state.
The subject of death was frequently discussed in the literary circles where Beckett used to move in. Bair writes on many occasions in her biography that the Irish writer was interested in death and suicide. For examples, she mentions dr Thompson`s remark on Beckett`s habit to martyr his interlocutors with this subject:
“Suicide as an intellectual exercise had first intrigued Beckett at Trinity, when he eagerly cornered anyone who came to his rooms for long, rambling, gloomy discussions of all aspects of the subject - from the great men who had committed suicide in strange ways to the infinite variety and multiplicity of reason of wanting to do so. He himself, given to protracted periods of depression, wondered aloud for hours on end about the value of ending life. These conversations were boring to some of his friends, but others found them so disturbing that they actively sought ways to avoid going to Beckett`s rooms.”
Beckett`s friend, Richard Aldington, after meeting the Irish writer for the first time pointed out not only his interest in death, but also his melancholic fits, which were most felt while his nocturnal habit of playing dirges on his flute: “the splendidly mad Irishman … who wanted to commit suicide, a fate nearly imposed on half the faculty of the Ecole by playing the flute - an instrument of which he was far from being a master - every night in his room from midnight to dawn.”
The somber mood, susceptibility to melancholy and to the idea of suicide which Beckett experienced at that time was expressed later in his books many times. His characters have also a strong urge to talk about depressive things and they are confused about seeing no other relevant subjects to discuss. Furthermore, they have problems to find anybody interested in reading their texts or listening to them. One of the examples is Molloy whose job is writing: “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 don`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.”
4.2 Freud and his theory on death instinct
The discussions on suicide were partly instigated by Freud`s new theories on life and death instincts. It was difficult even for the German psychoanalyst to scrutinize the psychological nature of this phenomenon. In most of his books, he compared human existence to an everlasting conflict between pleasure principle and social norms. When social norms impose some restraints on human propensity for a folly, it brings about the feeling of frustration and tendency for aggression. Especially the lack of sexual satisfaction precipitates the crisis: “Psycho-analytic work has shown us that it is precisely these frustrations of sexual life which people known as neurotics cannot tolerate. The neurotic creates substitutive satisfactions for himself in his symptoms, and these either cause him suffering in themselves or become sources of suffering for him by raising difficulties in his relations with his environment and his society he belongs to.”
Although human life is driven by various kinds of instincts, Freud paid special attention and decided to analyze in detail two of them. The first one, Eros, is based on pleasure principle and it is connected with the ego and its self-preservative qualities. It is interested in creating social ties and feelings of mutual trust. Thanatos, the instinct of destruction counterbalances the previous instinct. Unlike Eros, Thanatos tries to destroy any interpersonal ties between people and all vitality in human life. In order to release tension, it tries to turn people into inorganic objects, or to reduce them to the form of non-existence or stasis. Freud says that our life is an unending play of the opposing instincts and that we should harmonize them. With “the. emergence of life would thus be the cause of continuance of life and also at the same time of the striving towards death; and life itself would be a conflict and compromise between these two trends.” The destructive instinct can be either deflected outside in the form of aggression towards others or repressed as a result of sublimational influence of the superego. Nevertheless, people have no choice but harm either others, making themselves unpopular with other members of the society, or themselves, exposing themselves to the risk of neurosis.
The inclination to aggression, which brings about a lot of hostility in human relationships, is a great concern for psychoanalysts. Despite the omnipresence of this phenomenon, it is extremely difficult to eradicate it from our life. Freud defined inclination to aggression and its impact on society as “an original, self-subsisting instinctual disposition of man […] that constitutes the greatest impediment to civilization.” Freud thought that civilization went towards unity of all people, societies and races and if not the destruction instinct the aim would be fulfilled.
Beckett`s vagabonds serve as a graphic illustration of Freud`s theories of life and death instincts. They are in constant struggle between two tendencies. On the one hand they crave for affection and understanding from other people, but on the other hand they are afraid of their own feelings and of the danger of losing their freedom. Loving other people gives them the sense of security but it also poses threat to their independence. Therefore, their contacts with people are scanty and short-lived. Closed to the external world and thoroughly engrossed in the recollection of, usually unsettling, past experiences, they prefer their own company.
Molloy`s emotional life, for example, is simple and extremely shallow. His childhood shows that there was strenuous atmosphere at home. Filled with the acrimonious feelings, he is unable to share his “little love” with others. Even though he meets a few women who seem to like him, he belittles and despises the feelings. In the end, he is completely alone, ill and vulnerable to destructive thoughts. It seems incredible to him, that he lived so long, despite so many adversities. “But the thought of suicide had little hold on me, I don`t know why, I thought I did, but I see I don`t. The idea of strangulation in particular, however tempting, I always overcome, after a short struggle. […] Ah yes, my asthma, how often I was tempted to put an end to it, by cutting my throat.”
In the novel Mercier and Camier, Beckett`s “pseudocouples” are not tender people, either. We find them wandering aimlessly around the country and constantly quarreling. Accosted by a policeman, they club him to death and go to a brothel. Like Molloy, they prefer drinking to eating and they choose brothels as the most suitable accommodation for them. Despite their free-and-easy life, they do not feel happy. Under the shell of joyfulness they suffer unquenchable anguish, which is best characterized by Mercier himself who aired his grievances while walking along a canal and pondering about ending his life in the water. “Mercier, alone in the lee of the bank, wavered between his two familiar leanings, not knowing which way to fall. Was not the outcome the same? In the end he said, I am Mercier, alone, ill, in the cold, the wet, old, half mad, no way on, no way back. He eyed briefly, with nostalgia, the ghastly sky, the hideous earth. At your age, he said. Another act. Immaterial.”
Although Moran seems to be a much more lively and energetic person than his alter-ego Molloy, he does not enjoy living in this world, either. Constant activities and the conviction that his endeavors to fulfill the mission are extremely important give him the feeling that he exists. The situation changes fundamentally when Gaber mentions Youdi`s comment on life as a “thing of beauty and joy for ever” and announces that his mission is over. Since that time his enthusiasm abates dramatically and he starts thinking about death. It is only his attachment to religion that keeps him from killing himself. He expresses this pessimistic view in one of the theological and personal questions after his last meeting with Gaber: “What would I do until my death? Was there no means of hastening this, without falling into a state of sin?”
Moran finds a lot of pleasure in showing off his alleged intelligence and importance. He pays scant regard for other people`s virtues and aspirations. He is especially sadistic towards his son. Not only does he abuse him physically but also psychically by showing his domineering position: “I showed my son how to make a shelter out of branches. He was in the scouts, but he knew nothing. Yes, he knew how to make a camp fire. At every halt he implored me to let him exercise this talent. I saw no point in doing so.”
4.3 Other theories
The two tendencies of finding pleasure in deliberate inflicting harm on someone (or himself) and the feelings of dejection and alienation very often go together. Why are people cruel to each other knowing that this brings about disastrous results? Unlike Freud, who pointed at the death instinct as the cause of the problem, Beckett believed that the only sin people commit is the sin of being born. He mentioned this idea in some of his essays and interviews. This idea also appears in his famous play Waiting for Godot:
VLADIMIR: Suppose we repented.
ESTRAGON: Repented what?
VLADIMIR: Oh . . . (He reflects.) We wouldn`t have to go into the details.
ESTRAGON: Our being born?
It is the debasing effect of the original sin that is blamed for evil in the world. Ill will and taking pleasure in abusing others is a normal behaviour only for human beings. Evil is in everyone, but there are people who can, more or less successfully, resist the temptation. There are many books that illustrate the nature of evil and its consequences. The basic questions that troubles writers is whether it is possible to conquer sin and live peacefully in the world. Steinbeck, for example, describes this phenomenon in his book East of Eden. He analyses the ambiguous part of the Bible in which God instructs Cain what to do to please Him. `Why are you angry and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is couching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must muster it`.” The biblical text does not say clearly, however, if the complete cleansing from sin is achievable.
The problem of aggressive behaviour was studied by Kępiński. The Polish psychiatrist considered the problem of aggression as truly bizarre and illogical. He attributed it to the disturbance of the system of values. The disturbance makes people confused about their pleasant and unpleasant feelings. The confusion is further augmented by the social norms which try to curb any antisocial extravagance. It is emphasized that the source of aggression is loss of love and emotional relation with parents and close friends. The emotional emptiness kindles the feelings of displeasure and the tendency to blame others for this situation. Furthermore, losing grips with the society is a favourable condition to create defense mechanism. The person loses his expansiveness and withdraws onto himself, concentrating his attention almost entirely on his `I`. The feelings of self-esteem is consequently lowered, pushing the person into depressing moods and neurosis.
Insufficient exchange of feelings between parents and children and some inborn tendencies to passiveness give birth to mutual mistrust, fear of other people and hostility. It is believed that fear not only disturbs the clarity of perception but also it is responsible for most pathologies. Kępiński claims that by elimination of fear, one could almost always restore his well-being and mental soundness.
One of the form of fear is a phenomenon called `ontological insecurity`. The term was coined by Laing and it refers to the intricate defense mechanism that can be observed in fearful people. For example, in order to avoid distressful situation, they develop different forms of responses to external stimuli. Unwilling and afraid of losing their intimacy, they hold conversations and contacts with people on purely superficial level. One of Laing`s patients ejaculated a sentence which could be expressed by each of Beckett`s late characters: “I am only a response to other people.” It means that his conversations do not lead to a better knowledge of each other but they serve as a shield protecting them from outside intrusion.
Suicide can be committed not only in the physical sense but also in the psychological one. Ontological insecurity brings about a certain behaviour called petrification. Laing explains this term and phenomenon as turning someone or himself into stone. The turning is caused by deep, irrational fear. Petrification takes place when, because of fear, “one negates the other person`s autonomy, ignores his feelings, regards him as a thing, kills the life in him.” The phenomenon of petrification is best visible in Molloy`s ruthless treatment of his mother. Fear and insecurity make Molloy`s relationship with her and other people distorted and inauthentic. He admits that people pose a threat to his body and his ego: “Í am full of fear, I have gone in fear all my life, in fear of blows. Insults, abuse, these I can easily bear, but I could never get used to blows.” The constant feeling of intimidation reinforced by extreme egoism and mistrust are the principal factors that prevent him from making friends and it also stimulate his violent disposition.
Sexual behaviour has a very important impact on other aspects of human life. Unfulfilled urge for sex inevitably leads to frustration. In the book Connection Between Sexuality and Aggression, Dolf Zillmann analyzes different mechanisms of sexual activities among various exotic tribes. He notices the general rule (which was also noticed by Freud) that aggressive behaviour is usually preceded by sexual frustration. This thesis can easily be noticed while observing pugnacious Beckett`s protagonists.
Kępiński noticed that aggression is closely related to sex. Sex, apart from sexual pleasure, releases a great deal of negative feelings which come from the sense of embarrassment and self-disgust. This theory can be noticed in Moran`s sexual life and his constant feeling of guilt. He is angry when somebody enters his room without knocking for fear of being caught masturbating and he looks for excuses for his licentious behaviour claiming that other people do the same things.
The passionate but very short love affair that Macmann has with his nurse is even better example that proves Kępiński`s theory to be right. Macmann, one of the main characters appearing in Malone`s narration, is intensely interested in women. Although he is octogenarian like the author of the stories, he puts a lot of effort to wooing a patient, who takes care of him. Their meetings rapidly gain warmth and end up in bed. “There sprang up gradually between them a kind of intimacy which, at a given moment, led them to lie together and copulate as best they could.” At first they enjoy their company very much regretting only that their encounter did not take place earlier: “Ah would we had met but seventy years ago”. The sudden, unexpected encounter engenders the woman`s religious feelings of gratitude: “Sweetheart, Not one day goes by that I don`t give thanks to God, on my bended knees, for having found you, before I die.” Interestingly enough, she also mentions the possibility of suicide sensing dire consequences of their extravagance: “For we shall soon die, you and I, that is obvious. That it may be at the same moment exactly what I ask. In any case I have the key of the medicine cupboard.” After a few meetings combined with sexual elations, the couple faces a severe crisis. Their eyes cannot help disclosing numerous imperfections in their partners` appearances. The deterioration of their relationship and the interest in death is another proof supporting the theory pronounced by Kępiński that sex liberates a great deal of negative feelings. “Inauspicious beginnings indeed, during which his feelings for Moll was frankly one of repugnance. Her lips in particular repelled him, those selfsame lips, or so little changed as to make no matter, that some months later he was to suck with grunts of pleasure, so that at the very sight of them he not only closed his eyes, but covered them with his hands for greater safety.”
Malone does not speak much about himself and his childhood. He is more eloquent describing his characters, who presumably resemble his own pesky life. Apart from Macmann, he talks about Sapo, Macmann`s alter ego. Sapo is a phlegmatic and absentminded boy, who does not feel well either at school or at home. His teachers are angry with him because they cannot find any way to approach the indifferent, rude and resistant to knowledge lad and his callous parents see only a cheap labour in him. The hostile environment permeates him so thoroughly that he starts to escape from home and to play truancy. Many people think that his pensive mood can be attributed to his thinking about girls, but, in fact, he is entirely interested in himself.
4.4 Malone in the face of death
Absorbed with past experiences, confined to bed, most probably octogenarian and a killer of at least five people Malone also shows a lot of repressed aggression. Like Molloy and Moran, he does not believe in people`s unselfish concern of others and despite of his decrepitude and closeness of death, he still thinks of wreaking vengeance on the whole world. The system of values that he cherishes is highly perverted. There are numerous cases that could illustrate his callous treatment of other people. For example, a woman who takes care of him is handled in most ungraceful manner, without any gratitude for her work. Her altruistic behaviour seems strange to him. He thinks that there must be something wrong with the woman. “I don`t know why she is good to me”. He is also surprised why the people who take care of him do not kill him. “Are they depriving me of soup on purpose to help me die? One judges people too hastily. But in that case why feed me during my sleep? But there is no proof they have. But if they wished to help me would it not be more intelligent to give me poisoned soup, large quantities of poisoned soup? Perhaps they fear of autopsy.”
Malone is expecting death, which is slowly approaching. “I shall soon be dead at last in spite of all. Perhaps next month.” He thinks of earlier death but he has doubts: “I could die today, if I wished, merely by making a little effort.” For him, death is not only a relief from the tedious life and importunate thoughts, but also a matter of some regret. Life gives him both, the feelings of attraction and repulsion. Brooding in his mind in order to refresh old experiences and the habit of making up new stories still provide him with some air of excitement. He is also afraid of losing the touch with the nature and the living: “My time is limited. It is thence that one fine day, when all nature smiles and shines, the rack lets loose its black unforgettable cohorts and sweeps away the blue for ever. My situation is truly delicate. What fine things, what momentous things, I am going to miss through fear of falling back into the old error, fear of not finishing in time, fear of reveling, for the last time, in a last outpouring of misery, impotence and hate.”
Malone`s mind is constantly preoccupied with Camusian question whether life is worth living. The existential dilemma affects him so profoundly that he loses the sense of reality. He does not know if he is still among the living: “But have I not perhaps just passed away”. Although he realizes that his life is no more than vegetation, he decides to wait to the very end. ”It is vague, life and death. I must have had my little private idea on the subject when I began, otherwise I would not have begun, I would have held my peace, I would have gone on peacefully being bored to howls, having my little fun and games with the cones and cylinders, the millet grains beloved of birds and other panics, until someone was kind enough to come to coffin me.”
Although Malone`s mind is completely engrossed in the thoughts of death, he decides not to “rush things”. It is not only the habitual clinging to life and the fear of being dispossessed of his scanty belongings and carnal pleasures that thwarts him from any drastic actions. What bothers him most is the premonition that death is not the last stage of human life and that his efforts and expectations of finding a relief is futile:
“There is naturally another possibility that does not escape me, though it would be a great disappointment to have it confirmed, and that is that I am dead already and that all continues more or less as when I was not. Perhaps I expired in the forest, or even earlier. In which case all the trouble I have been taking for some time past, for what purpose I do not really recall except that it was in some way connected with the feeling that my troubles were nearly over, has been to no purpose whatsoever.”
4.5 The Unnamable - the unfinished story
The last part of Beckett`s trilogy dispels doubts as to the existence of the soul after death. Malone`s high hopes that his demise will bring about eternal peace and freedom from his predicament turn out to be vain. His new position surprises and stupefies him. He seems to be disorientated in the unfamiliar environment. “What am I to do, what shall I do, what should I do, in my situation, how proceed?” The basic question whether silence is possible arises with double force.
The Unnamable may be considered as Beckett`s vision of infernal anguish. This vision is very similar to Camus` presented in the set of essays, The Myth of Sisyphus. Man, like Sisyphus in Hades, is eternally sentenced to toil and he cannot change the situation merely by swallowing too many pain killers. In fact, nobody, except for God, is able to release him from the burden.
The idea of inferno was popular not only in the medieval times. The period after WW II also focused writers` attention to this phenomenon to a great extent. Beckett himself returned to this idea in the play Endgame. The play shows four people who have to live together but they hate and avoid each other. Their situation is hopeless and resembles chess` stalemate. Similar situation occurs with Mercier and Camier. The two vagabonds are called a “pseudocouple” because they are unable either to live together or to part. They feel inner compulsion to share their miserable lives despite the strong animosities between them. Much the same vision of hell was presented by Sartre in the play No Exit. It shows a few people enclosed in a drawing room furnished in Second Empire style and the main source of anguish is boredom. Their situation is hopeless. One of the inhabitants, Garcin, worries if he can withstand his own presence asking “how shall I endure my own company? Later he complains that “anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough.” They have to live together and share tedious, Malone-like stories of their sinful lives. Lack of affectionate feelings makes people arid and indifferent even to their own death. They cannot fully enjoy their life. Camus` book The Stranger portrays such a man. Like Beckett`s protagonists, Meursault badly treats his mother. He kills a man and this event does not produce any prick in his conscience. Egoism, negligence and lax morals brings him disastrous results.
On several occasions did Beckett mention his great affinity to the great medieval poem Divine Comedy by Dante. There are many similarities in the vision of life and death between these two writers. The introduction of Belacqua as a leading character in most Beckett`s books is the most conspicuous borrowing from Dante. The lazy and complacent antihero, like Beckett`s protagonists, does not believe in any action. He waits passively in purgatory with little hope that somebody may influence heavenly guards so as they change their minds and let him enter heaven. Unlike Dante, Beckett narrowed his existential outlook and concentrated only on people heading for perdition with no prospect for future salvation, whereas the Italian poet was much more optimistic and encouraging portraying the universe as governed by God who reveals his will progressively until the pilgrim can reach salvation. Dante also discerns closer link between the quality of personal life and the post-mortem existence. Beckett`s protagonists, on the other hand, usually hold grudge against the whole world and regard it as entirely responsible for their fall.
Using Dante`s imagery, we can make an assumption that Beckett`s protagonists last stage of life ended in limbo. According to the Italian poet, limbo occupies the upper part of inferno and accommodates basically souls of pagan poets, philosophers and rulers. By virtue of being not baptized, these noble people, whose lives were established on high moral and ethical principles, could not enter heaven and experience the joy of seeing God face to face. Being suspended between heaven and hell, they wait for somebody who could show them a way out of the impasse. Nobody comes, however, and nobody will come, which is the principal source of their psychical anguish.
Eugene Webb, in his critical book on Beckett, suggested that Malone and the Unnamable ended their life in a womb, expecting to be reborn. “Yes, an old foetus, that`s what I am now…” This, inconsistent with Christian orthodoxy, view is supported especially by Malone for whom death is only a necessary component of human life. Our existence moves in an endless circular fashion, which means that our experiences are repeated all the time. Although Malone talks about death and the possibility of being reborn on several occasions, he is not completely congruent in his suppositions. On another occasion, he voices his doubt whether death and life after death exist at all: “But why this sudden heat, has anything happened, anything changed? No, the answer is no, I shall never get born and therefore never get dead…” Similarly, the Unnamable claims that time does not exist. It is our imagination, or the illusion that `they` “induce in him,” that fosters its reality and tangibility. With the absence of time, death and hell cannot exist either. Therefore, the question arises where the suffering comes from.
Since the death did not help to find relief from the mental noise and suffering, the Unnamable asks if there is anything else that can be done in this matter and if he “ever be able to go silent.” On the basis of some general knowledge, he supposes silence to be obtainable but the way to achieve it seems to him obscure.” This silence they are talking to, from which supposedly he came, to which he will return when his act is over, he does not know what it is, nor what he is meant to do, in order to deserve it.” He does not blame himself for his misfortune, but he thinks that it is `they` that are responsible for his lot: “Why don`t they wash their hands of me and set me free? That might do me good. I don`t know. Perhaps then I could go silent, for good and all.” Although he realizes that his religious peregrination is not over yet and there are still many hurdles on his road, he cannot understand why the cleansing lasts so long and who delays his progress. “All I reproach them with is their insistence. For beyond them is that other who will not give me quittance until they have abandoned me as inutilizable and restored me to myself. Then at last I can set about saying what I was, and where, during all this long lost time. But who is he, if my guess is right, who is waiting for that, from me? And who these others whose designs are so different?”
In the course of time, the Unnamable realizes that his situation is more serious that he previously thought. In the last section of his story he speaks obsessively about silence and he reproaches himself about his sins. Now, he understands clearly that he may stay in his infernal position for ever: “it is my parlour, it`s a parlour, where I wait for nothing…” His initial confusion as to what to do next in his new situation after death does not change. He still remains in total ignorance. His desperate attempts to do something are counterweighted by his inability to asses his true situation. He loses his head and his narration loses its coherence. “…where I am, I don`t know, I will never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can`t go on, I will go on.”
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For the characters of Beckett`s novels, especially of the trilogy, the idea of death is an attractive way of ending existential problems. They cherish this idea hoping to stop the endless chain of obtrusive thoughts. Their life is also far from satisfactory. The absence of intimate contacts with other people, mental anguish and egoism estrange them to the society, impede their expansiveness to the world and weaken their will of life. Although they live on the verge of life and death, the degree of their anguish is not high enough to cross the critical threshold. The remnants of almost forgotten faith and the feeling that death may deprive them of some pleasurable sensations even in the last part of earthly life further contribute to their reluctance to leave this world. They decide not to “rush things” and wait to see what will happen.
Basho, On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho, trans. Lucien Stryk (London: Penguin Books, 1985), p. 72.
The Dhammapada, trans. J. A. (London: The Buddhist Society, 1947), p. 51.
Edward Conze, Buddhist Wisdom Books (London; Unwin Paperbacks, 1988), p. 118.
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharishi (Tiruvannamalai: T.N.Venkataraman, 1989), p. 94.
Talks with Sri Ramana Maharishi, p. 233.
R.D.Laing, Ja i inni (Poznań: Dom Wydawniczy Rebis, 1999), pp. 100-104.
Laing, Ja i inni, p. 108.
Oscar Wilde, “De Profundis,” in: Robert Ross, Oscar Wilde (New York: G.P. Puntam`s Sons, 1905), p. 34.
Wilde, De Profundis, p. 52.
Wilde, De Profundis, p. 47.
Wilde, De Profundis, p. 87.
Cf. N.F.Cantor, Twentieth-Century Culture Modernism to Deconstruction (New York, Berne and Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1988), p. 176.
Stephan T.Deberry, Quantum Psychology-Steps to Postmodern Ecology of Being (Westport, Connecticut and London: Praeger Publishers, 1993), p. 32.
Deberry, Quantum Psychology, p. 62.
Deberry, Quantum Psychology, p. 67.
Beckett is sometimes considered as a harbinger of a new way of writing. Obviously, it is not possible to trace all the ubiquitous Beckett`s contribution to contemporary literature. Generally, he is remembered as an author of his leading play, Waiting for Godot, and the founder of the ensuing career of the Theatre of the Absurd. The Irish playwright has had many followers, among which this year`s Nobel Prize winner and Beckett`s disciple, Harold Pinter, is the most renowned example. Beckett was also highly praised by postmodernist and poststructuralist writers. Foucault and Derrida did not deny that it was not until they started to read him that they could free themselves from the influence of the ideological philosophies of Marxism, phenomenology and existentialism, the philosophies they were exposed to during their early years of education. Beckett, who broke with the realistic, Cartesian thinking, deprived religion from its dogmatism and created the world of `unnamable`, discovered a new area for literary penetration (cf. Richard Begam, Samuel Beckett and the End of Modernity, Stanford: Stanford University, 1996, pp., 184-187). Beckett concentration on verbal expressions rather than the logical narration and the contents of his books also contributed to the anthropological discussion concerning the adequateness of spoken and written language in interpersonal communication. Can language reflect the nature of human psyche and convey the true feelings in human relationships was one of the major questions for postmodernist thinkers and researchers. A French anthropologist and therapist, Claude Levi-Strauss, examined uncivilized tribes in different parts of the Globe to find out the link between language and behaviour and whether our modern civilization had not devalued the role of verbal expression as the carrier of truth. Another therapist, psychoanalyst and Beckett`s acquaintance, Laing wondered whether verbal responses are not merely a form of a self-defensive reaction to the intrusion into one`s intimacy. Beckett also became popular on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Paul Auster`s books seem to be a commercial version of Beckett`s novels. Auster was Beckett`s friend and an ardent admirer of his “new form of writing”. Although stylistically the American novelist , essayist and poet found Beckett`s prose of little utility, he has taken over most of his concepts included in the essay on Proust. In the interview with Joseph Mallia, Auster said: “He [Beckett] had tremendous hold over me. In the same sense, the influence of Beckett was so strong that I couldn`t see my way beyond it”. In the same interview, he explained his understanding of the problem of identity. Like Beckett, he adopted the process of reduction as the best way to find the truth of who we are. He said: “The question of who is who and whether or nor we are who we think we are. The whole process that Quinn undergoes in that book - and the characters in the other two, as well - is one of stripping away to some bare condition in which we have to face up to who we are. Or who we aren`t.” (Paul Auster, The Art of Hunger, New York: Faber and Faber, 1997, pp. 274-286.) The New York Trilogy tackles with the identity problem, but the narration is constructed in a form of a captivating mystery. Auster`s book Timbuktu is a grotesque reminiscence of Molloy. Like Beckett`s novel, it describes a vagabond in his unsuccessful and absurd journey back to the origin of his true nature; to his high school English teacher, the only person in the world who offered him some genuine sympathy and whom he had not seen since he was a lad. He hopes that meeting her again is his only chance to change his miserable life. The memoir Invention of Solitude, the most postmodern in character book, explores the importance of silence and secluded life, virtues that Beckett mostly praised. The book was written after the death of Auster`s elusive and emotionally aloof father. The first chapter `Portrait of an Invisible Man` resembles Watt`s effort to scrutinize Mr Knott and like Watt the Author says that he does not know his father at all. The second part of the book gives philosophical analyses of the problems that concern human identity and personal meaning.
Cf. Samuel Beckett, Proust, trans. A. Libera and E. Jasińska, Dialog. No. 4-5, 1983.
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (New York: Grove Press, 1978), pp. 10-11.
Samuel Beckett, Molloy in: Three Novels - Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, trans. Patrick Bowles in collaboration with the author (New York: Grove Press, 1958), p. 22.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 31.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 32.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 31.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 17.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 102.
Beckett, Molloy, pp. 164-165.
Frederick J. Hoffman, Samuel Beckett - The Language of the Self (Soutern Illinois University Press, 1962), p. 112.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 11.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 10.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 8.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 115.
Beckett, Malone Dies in Three Novels, p. 236.
Beckett, Malone Dies, p. 226.
Samuel Beckett, Murphy (New York: Grove Press, 1957), p. 21.
Beckett, Murphy, p. 4.
Beckett, Murphy, p. 5.
Beckett, Murphy, p. 37.
Beckett, Murphy, p. 37.
Beckett, Murphy, pp. 111-112.
Hoffman, Samuel Beckett - The Language of the Self, p. 112.
Michael Robinson, The Long Sonata of the Dead (New York: Grove Press, 1969), p. 93.
Beckett, Proust, p. 78.
Beckett, Murphy, p. 246.
Samuel Beckett, Watt (New York: Grove Press, 1959), p. 68.
Beckett, Watt, p. 207.
Beckett, Watt, pp. 35-36.
Beckett, Watt, p. 146.
Beckett, Watt, p. 148.
Beckett, Watt, p. 159.
Beckett, Watt, p. 88.
Beckett, The Unnamable in: Three Novels, p. 305.
Beckett, The Unnamable, pp. 305-306.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 350.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 345.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 304.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 336.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 398.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 393.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 297.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 339.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 373.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 318.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 332.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 320.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 309.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 311.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 326.
Cf. Teresa Pyzik, „Teatr Absurdu - opinie angielskie i amerykańskie,” in Prace Historycznoliterackie, Vol. 6, (Katowice: Prace Naukowe Uniwersytetu Sląskiego, 1977), pp. 40-59. The author describes the phenomenon of the Theatre of the Absurd, its initial popularity after the World War II followed by strong criticism in the late 60`s and 70`s for lack of objectivity and pessimism.
The College Anthology of American Literature, ed. Z. Mazur (Kraków: TAiWPN Universitas, 1998). p. 503.
Beckett, Mercier and Camier, p. 38.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 19.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 18.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 158.
Beckett, Malone Dies, p. 183.
Beckett, Malone Dies, p. 180.
Ronald.D.Laing, The Politics of Experience (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967), p. 115.
Ronald.D.Laing and Aaron Esterton, Sanity Madness and the Family, (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1991), p. 36.
Laing and Esterton, Sanity Madness and the Family, p. 44.
Laing and Esterton, Sanity Madness and the Family, p. 42.
Antoni Kępiński, Schizofrenia (Warszawa: Państwowy Zakład Wydawnictw Lekarskich, 1979), pp. 157-158.
Kępiński, Schizofrenia, pp. 137-138.
Cf. Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), pp. 13-36.
Kępiński, Schizofrenia, pp. 137-187.
Beckett, Murphy, p. 251.
Beckett, Murphy, p. 4.
Beckett, Murphy, p. 34.
Beckett, Murphy, p. 182.
Beckett, Murphy, p. 21.
Beckett, Murphy, p. 77.
Beckett, Watt, p. 16.
Beckett, Watt, p. 18.
Beckett, Watt, p. 218.
Beckett, Watt, p. 220.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 36.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 34.
Beckett, Malone Dies, p. 180.
Beckett, Malone Dies, p. 199.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 305.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 332.
Cf. The New Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 9, (Chicago, 1995), p. 146.
Antoni Kępiński, Psychopatie (Warszawa: Państwowy Zakład Wydawnictw Lekarskich, 1988), pp. 108-128.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 98.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 102.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 163.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 104.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 102.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 95.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 136.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 126.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 127.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 99.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 101.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 123.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 164.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 126.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 102.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 145.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 113.
Kępiński, Psychopatie, p. 113.
Kępiński, Schizofrenia, pp. 29-31.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 56.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 57.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 56.
Beckett, Molloy, p 25.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 24.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 87.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 34.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 39.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 35.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 47.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 55.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 79.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 90.
Kępiński, Schizofrenia, pp. 46-62.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 78.
Beckett, Malone Dies, p. 180.
Beckett, Watt , p. 75.
Beckett, Watt , p. 78.
Beckett, Watt , p. 120.
Beckett, Watt , p. 230
Beckett, Watt , p. 163.
Lois Gordon, The World of Samuel Beckett 1906-1946 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 142.
Bair, Samuel Beckett, p. 345.
Cf. Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane - the Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask (San Diego: A Harvest/HBJ Book & Harcourt Brace Jonanovich, 1959), pp. 20-29.
Cf. T.Z.Lavine, From Socrates to Sartre (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1984), pp. 43-53 and The New Columbia Encyclopedia, William H. Harris and Judith S. Levey eds. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), pp. 2165-2166.
The Bible, 1 Pet 4.3, (Great Britain: The British and Foreign Bible Society, 1971), p. 1018.
Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett, p. 204.
Lois Gordon, The World of Samuel Beckett 1906-1946 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 9.
Gordon, The World of Samuel Beckett, p. 207.
Beckett, Watt, p. 85.
Bair, Samuel Beckett, p. 210.
Bair, Samuel Beckett, 125.
Bair, Samuel Beckett, p. 54.
Bair, Samuel Beckett, p. 55.
In the interview with Gabriel D`Aubarede in 1961, Beckett denied that contemporary philosophers had any influence on him. He said that he never read philosophers explaining that he never understood anything they wrote (Samuel Beckett - the Critical Heritage, L. Graves, R. Frederman eds, London: Routlege & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1979, p. 217.).
Gordon, The World of Samuel Beckett, p. 185.
Wilfred Bion, Second Thoughts: Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis, in Gordon, The World of Samuel Beckett, p. 114.
Beckett, Murphy, p. 3.
Beckett, Murphy, p. 39.
Beckett, Murphy, p. 122.
Bair, Samuel Beckett, p. 346.
Beckett, Watt, p. 19.
Encyclopedia Britannica, Deluxe Edition, on CD, 2004.
Paul Foster, The Beckettian Impasse: A Zen Study of Ontological Dilemma in the Novels of Samuel Beckett (Leicester, 1980), p. 156.
Beckett, Watt, p. 76.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 39.
Beckett, Watt, p. 66
Beckett, Watt, p. 41.
Beckett, Mercier and Camier, p. 110.
Beckett, Mercier and Camier, p. 114.
Beckett, Mercier and Camier, p. 72.
Patanjali, Yoga Sutras in Swami Vivekananda, The Complete Works of Swami Vivecananda (Swami Swananda, 1989), vol. 1, p. 221.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 32.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 93.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 92.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 107.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 167.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 93.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 172.
Beckett, Malone Dies, p. 274.
Beckett, Malone Dies, p. 189.
Beckett, Malone Dies, p. 192.
Beckett, Malone Dies, p. 338.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 343.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 324.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 304.
Marta Balko, „Seks zwiększa inteligencję”, Fakt, No. 156, (2005), p. 14.
Cf. Denise Winn, “Going, Going, Gone: The Great Sperm Drought,” She, No. 9, (1995), pp. 8-12.
Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization. A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 127-128.
Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, 1927, Vol. 1, p. 185: 2 July 2004 <www.gutemberg.org/browse/authors/e>
Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex p. 183.
Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex p. 185.
Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex p. 178.
Katechizm Kościoła Katolickiego (Poznań: Pallotinum, 1994), p. 530.
Da Liu, T`ai Chi Ch`uan and Meditation (London: Arcana, 1990), p. 136.
Da Liu, T`ai Chi Ch`uan and Meditation, pp. 138-140.
Beckett, More Pricks than Kicks, p. 114.
Beckett, Watt, p. 201.
Beckett, Mercier and Camier, p. 12.
Beckett, Three Novels, p. 186.
Cf. The Bible, Gen 38.1-8, p. 33.
Beckett, More Pricks than Kicks, p. 91.
Beckett, More Pricks than Kicks, p. 9.
Beckett, More Pricks than Kicks, pp. 36-37.
Beckett, Mercier and Camier, p. 23.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 87.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 27.
Beckett, Molloy, pp. 30-31.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 83.
Bair, Samurel Beckett, p. 188.
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. Justine O`Brian (London: Penguin Books, 2000). p. 11.
Bair, Samuel Beckett, p. 69.
Bair, Samuel Beckett, p. 69.
Samuel Beckett, Molloy, p. 7.
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. James Strachey (W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1961), p. 55.
Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id, trans. Joan Riviere, ed. James Strachey (New York: The Norton Library, 1962), pp. 30-31.
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, p. 69.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 79.
Beckett, Mercier and Camier, p. 62.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 168.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 135.
Beckett., Waiting for Godot, p. 9.
The Bible, Gen 4. 6-7, p. 4.
Antoni Kępiński, Lęk (Warszawa: Państwowy Zakład Wydawnictw Lekarskich, 1987), p. 13.
Ronald David Laing, The Divided Self, (London: Penguin Books, 1990), p. 47.
Laing, The Divided Self, p. 46.
Beckett, Molloy, p. 22.
Dolf Zillmann, Connection Between Sexuality and Aggression (Mahwah, New Jersey and London: Lea Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1998), p. 9.
Kępiński, Psychopatie, pp. 129-134.
Beckett, Malone Dies, p. 260.
Beckett, Malone Dies, p. 261.
Beckett, Malone Dies, pp. 260-261.
Beckett, Malone Dies, p. 261.
Beckett, Malone Dies, p. 263.
Beckett, Malone Dies, p. 185.
Beckett, Malone Dies, p. 255.
Beckett, Malone Dies, p. 179.
Beckett, Malone Dies, p. 197.
Beckett, Malone Dies, p. 251.
Beckett, Malone Dies, p. 255.
Beckett, Malone Dies, p. 219.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 291.
Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit and Three Other Plays, trans. Lionel Abel (New York: Vintage Books, 1949), p. 6.
Sartre, No Exit and Three Other Plays, p. 42.
Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies in Eugene Webb, Samuel Beckett. A Study of His Novels, (Seattle: University of Washington, 1970), p. 125.
Beckett, Malone Dies, p. 225.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 330.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 303.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 376.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 314.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 331.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 410.
Beckett, The Unnamable, p. 414.
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