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SAMUEL BECKETT AND POSTMODERNISM.
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Discusses the revolt of the modernist writer/artist against traditional literary forms and subjects.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Discusses the revolt of the modernist writer/artist against traditional literary forms and subjects. Examples and definitions of modernist fiction. Difference between modernism and postmodernism. Beckett's DREAM OF FAIR TO MIDDLING WOMEN. His attempt to develop a narrative style reflecting the incoherence of human existence. Beckett's writings on Proust, James Joyce, Surrealism. His postmodern artistic strategies.
Paper Introduction:
Modernism
In A Glossary of Literary Terms, Meyer Abrams defines modernism as the term used to identify distinctive features in the concepts, sensibility, form, and style of literature and art since World War I (1914-1918). He notes that while the specific features signified by modernism varied with the user, most critics agreed the concept involved a deliberate and radical break with the traditional bases of Western culture and Western art (Abrams 108). In essence, the modernist artist revolted against traditional literary forms and subjects, and this revolt manifested itself strongly after the total destruction of World War I shook men's faith in the foundations and continuity of Western civilization and culture (Abrams 108).
Abrams offers T. S. Eliot as an example of a modernist
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New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973.Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature. We can only wait forthe moment of revelation triggered by this involuntary memory (Robinson57). In Beckett's "A Wet Night" Belacqua sees Alba home from the party in ataxi and they go inside. Beckett's recognition of Proust's involuntary memory would seem toalign him securely with surrealist poets such as Breton who relied on"unconscious" activity like automatic writing to express reality in theirtexts. During this time, Nazitotalitarianism and mass extermination, the threat of total destruction bythe atomic bomb, and the progressive devastation of the natural environmentintensified the devastation of Western morale caused by World War I (Abrams1 9-11 ). Merriam Webster also notes that other characteristics of latermodernism are an increasing self-awareness, introspection, and openness tothe unconscious and to humanity's darker fears and instincts (Merriam 77 ). Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992.Balakian, Anna. Here, Belacqua falls underthe spell of Alba. In essence, Beckett is trying to determine how he can write fictionthat approximates life when life cannot be reduced to neat categories (Ben-Zvi 38). However, Beckett's belief in the fragmented time-bound individual and the "will-lessness" of true aesthetic experienceprohibited any belief in a coherent identity or vision that could beexpressed through art. Thus she argues, as does Merriam Webster, that modernist literatureis a literature of discontinuity, both historically and aesthetically.Historically, she argues, because the literature reflects discontinuity inits rejection of and adversarial stance toward the procedures and values ofthe immediate past. Hugh Kenner argues that Beckett chose to parody the "The Dead"because he wanted "to emphasize the relationship between tonal unity and aworld in which nothing unexpected can really happen" (Kenner 54). In later texts, Beckett will extrapolate these questions to arguethat no meaning whatsoever can be expressed in art. Part 1begins when Belacqua leaves his home in Dublin (Ben-Zvi 37). Belacqua(beautiful water) is from Dante's Purgatorio where, in canto 4, the pilgrimmeets the Florentine lutemaker who is condemned to Antepurgatory for hissin in life: sloth (Ben-Zvi 36). Breton noted notonly the added keenness of the mind but also the greater rapidity ofthought in the dream. He notes that postmodernism deliberately perpetratesillusions and adopts and exaggerates outmoded conventions in its attempt to"de-center" the individual (Attebery 37). However, these non-traditional literary styles and forms were not a passive, unconsciousreflection of those disturbing times but self-conscious attempts to expressthat disturbance through art. Thus, fragmentation in Dream's narrativestructure is mirrored by Belacqua's own fragmentation. Modernism In A Glossary of Literary Terms, Meyer Abrams defines modernism as theterm used to identify distinctive features in the concepts, sensibility,form, and style of literature and art since World War I (1914-1918). That is, thatthe individual was in fact a series of individuals over a period of time.Thus, Beckett states, the desire of an individual at time A cannot besatisfied at time B because the individual at time B is not the sameindividual (Wood 4). S. That is, there does not exist one absolute form ofmodernism or postmodernism. But, because we are notaware of this dimension we cannot call on it at will. Part 3 is the longest section of the novel. "Then everything went kaputt." Belacqua retreats from her advances, nolonger able to keep their relations "pewer and above bawd" (Ben-Zvi 37). However,whereas in "The Dead" the action is all stasis and expected, the action in"A Wet Night" is confusing and disconcerting, if not entirely unexpected.Kenner reads Joyce's use of the falling snow in "The Dead" as Joyce'sexpression of how nature's least purposive gesture--snow falling in Dublin--parallels the inevitability of human stasis as represented by Dublin life. Thus, these impressions are not purereflections of reality; rather they are filtered through the understandingand history of the individual. In explaininghis approach to his art, Joyce explained that his stories referred to "achloroformed world"; his own word was "paralysis" (Kenner 54). He believed that art as an aesthetic experience provided norealistic reference. He travels toVienna to meet his love, Smeraldina Rima (the little Emerald). ThusDream, though written in the later part of the modernist period,demonstrates Beckett's attraction even then to the issues that woulddominate the postmodernist period. However, Beckett further reads Proustian individuals as afflicted byhabit, which packages the individual's sensory impressions at any giventime as that individual's motives. Dublin,Joyce wrote, was "the centre of Irish paralysis," and he believed hisreaders sought "the special odour of corruption which floats over mystories" (Kenner 54). "An Endgame of Aesthetics: Beckett as Essayist," The Cambridge Companion to Beckett, John Pilling (Ed.). Abrams also notes that these new forms of lyric and narrativeconstruction spilled over into other periods. The questions that Beckett seeks to answer in Dream of Fair toMiddling Women are the questions he will seek to answer throughout hisliterary career and they tend to align him with later postmodern writersalthough Dream was written in what is considered the later modernistperiod. Beckett attempted to approximate the incoherence at the heart of humanexistence through his narrative style. Beckettargued that the Proustian individual was afflicted by time. Thus Abrams argues postmodernism was not merely a continuation ofthe counter-traditional experiments of modernism, but also an attempt tobreak away from modernist forms which had then become conventional.Postmodernist writings attempted to subvert the foundations of acceptedmodes of thought and experiences by revealing the meaninglessness of humanexistence and the underlying abyss or void or nothingness that suspends ourprecarious security (Abrams 11 ). Thus,voluntary memory is only an extension of habit (Robinson 57). Here "isstored the essence of ourselves, the best of our many selves...the bestbecause accumulated shyly and painfully under the nose of our vulgarity"(Robinson 57). A Glossary of Literary Terms (5th ed.). Thus, Joyce believed that his stories approximatedthe real world of Dublin and his readers sought an understanding of thatDublin. Although Dream was not published until 1993, Beckett culled from itten interlocked stories published in 1934 as More Pricks Than Kicks (Kenner49). For Schopenhauer, the only way of escaping this force wasthrough the aesthetic experience, the moment of "will-less" contemplationwhen the veil that disguises reality is removed (Robinson 57). Finally, the novel's title is a parody of the praise of goodwomen offered by Geoffrey Chaucer in "The Legend of Good Women" and byAlfred Lord Tennyson in "Dream of Fair Women (Ben-Zvi 36). However, this early noveldemonstrates Beckett's interest in such issues. Abrams includes among major works of modernist fiction Joyce's Ulysses(1922) and, what Abrams calls "his even more radical Finnegan's Wake"(1939). However, several surface elements of the noveldemonstrate Beckett's subversion of traditional and historical forms andcontent of literature. It is a style thatreflected the distrust of history and tradition wrought by World War I. He adds that they wereemulated and carried further by many poets and novelists, having obviousparallels in the violation of representational conventions in expressionismand surrealism (Abrams 1 9). He argued that the conscious mind is only in contact withthe practical world. Postmodernism Generally speaking, if modernism was an attempt to subverttraditional styles of literature, then postmodernism was an attempt tosubvert the traditional and modernist content of literature. Merriam Webster also maintains that postmodernism relates to severalartistic movements that challenged the philosophy and practices of modernarts or literature since about the 194 s (Merriam 899). Later inhis career, Beckett would attempt to create an art that did not express,among other things, the mind of the author. He settled temporarily in Paris,where he wrote the novel, before he returned again to Dublin (Ben-Zvi 36).Linda Ben-Zvi classifies the novel as a kind of bildungsroman, a youth'ssearch for adventure and maturity, which followed its hero Belacqua Shuahon an identical path. Breton believed that dreamlife should not be considered subservient tothe wakeful state but used instead to interpret and clarify consciousness(Balakian 133). Thus, instead of imagining some sort of authenticindependence for art, Beckett believed it was impossible to derive art fromlife and concluded that art can only be failure (Bersani 3 4).Consequently, Beckett's postmodern strategies subverted the modernity ofJoyce all the way through the surrealism of Breton based on his belief inthe basic incoherence and fragmentation of the individual self. Eliot as an example of a modernist poet. A Reader's Guide to Samuel Beckett. InPart 2, Belacqua has traveled to Paris to distance himself from Smerry.However, there he encounters the even more voracious Syra-Cusa and, whencalled back to Vienna to spend the New Year's holiday, he goes (Ben-Zvi37). The finalimage is of Belacqua slowly walking the Dublin streets on a wet, earlymorning after seeing Alba home from the literary party. Abrams definition of modernism includes the major elements mostcritical theorists apply to a definition of modernism. Beckett, on the other hand, had now come to reject any belief that artacted as a representation of reality. But, in 1932, when hewrote Dream he was primarily concerned with the incoherence of humanexistence. "Shuah" means to be abrasive, to be discouraged and indespair, and to bow down, bend, or sink. Surrealism: The Road to the Absolute. Beckett's analysis of Proust's aesthetics centers around Proust'saccount of the workings of habit upon memory and the individual's attemptto surmount memory toward an awareness of the Self (Robinson 55). Michael Robinson argues that Proust revealsmany of the ideas and themes that appear in Beckett's later novels andplays and it reveals as much about Beckett as it does about Proust. In the poetry of Breton, Paul Eluard, Pierre Reverdy, Louis Aragon andothers, surrealism manifested itself in a juxtaposition of words that wasstartling because it was determined not by logical but by psychological,i.e., unconscious, thought processes (Merriam 1 8 ). And writers such as Ezra Pound reflected anexuberance in the earlier part of the modernist period that would be absentlater (Merriam Webster 77 ). Abrams notes that Eliot experimented with new forms and styles that,like Joyce and Ezra Pound, often contrasted contemporary disorder to thelost order, which had been based on the religion and myths of the Westerncultural past (Abrams 1 8). Dream ends with a long description of their courtship,the Dublin environs, and the intellectual community that Belacqua joinsmost reluctantly. And in observing the effect of dreams on imagery, hefound the same type of displacement of objects and things and verbalcondensations in dream-thought as Freud had observed in his clinical casesas well as in his own dreams (Balakian 127). (Ed.) The Oxford Companion to English Literature (5th ed.). The longest story was titled "A Wet Night," which was a parody of thelongest story in Joyce's Dubliners, "The Dead" (Kenner 53). Anna Balakian argues that Breton maintained that the forcesof the mind that produced the dream-state should not be seen as an evasionof reality but rather as an enrichment of human existence. Because these "styles" were an attempt to breakaway from traditional, coherent forms and texts, they manifested themselvesin a variety of ways. Hethrows his boots away because they hurt him as he doubles up with "such abelly-ache as he had never known" and makes his way homeward "with his poortrunk parallel to the horizon." However, he collapses to the pavement andattempts to investigate his hand's movements in front of his face until apoliceman "enjoined him to move on, which, the pain being so much better,he was only too happy to do" (Kenner 55). Beckett'sparody of what he saw as Joyce's attempt to express meaning in Dubliners isa clear example of one of his earliest postmodern strategies, which will bediscussed later. However Beckett, although he may have looked to involuntary memoryfor a solution to the problem of the Self, did not accept Proust'sinvoluntary memory in its entirety (Robinson 57). Balakian arguesthat, basically, for the surrealists reality came through the study of thedream (Balakian 133). In literature thischallenge amounted to a reaction against an ordered view of the world andfixed ideas about the form and meaning of texts. It also includes a satire of a literary soiree thatincludes the many figures introduced in the section (Ben-Zvi 37). New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994: 1-16. According to Breton, Surrealism could reuniteconscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely that the worldof dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in "anabsolute reality, a surreality" (Merriam 1 8 ). Beckett and Surrealism Andre Breton's Manifesto on Surrealism (1924) launched surrealism as aconcerted movement in France. Finally, Margaret Drabble argues, as does Merriam Webster, thatmodernism reflected the impact upon literature of the psychology of SigmundFreud and the anthropology of Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough (189 -1915) (Drabble 658). Whenreviewing James Joyce's Ulysses in 1923, Eliot argued that the traditionaland inherited mode of arranging a literary work assumed a relativelycoherent and stable social order that could not harmonize with "the immensepanorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history" (Abrams1 8). Drabble maintains that a sense of cultural relativismpervaded modernist writing, as did an awareness of the irrational and theworkings of the unconscious mind. New York: Grove Press, 1969.Wood, Rupert. This part of the Self, which lies deeper than habit, is onlyunlocked through involuntary memory (Robinson 57). Belacqua acts as aninstructor pointing out Beckett's point of view: "The only unity in thestory is, please God, an involuntary unity," or "[T]he fact of the matteris we don't know where we are in the story," or after a long digression,"Perhaps the pen ran away, don't for a moment imagine that Belacqua is downthe drain" (Ben-Zvi 38-39). Finally, Brian Attebery notes that there are many versions ofpostmodernism, just as there are many manifestations of modernism (Attebery36). Even before he wrote Dream, Beckett wrote a short monograph on MarcelProust titled Proust (1931). New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.Kenner, Hugh. The latter part of the period, which MerriamWebster calls "postwar modernism" was far more sober, as seen in thefragmentation and disillusion of Eliot's The Wasteland (1922) (Merriam77 ). However, beneath this level of consciousness is "the ultimate andinaccessible dungeon" where time cannot enter (Robinson 57). Works CitedAbrams, M.H. The hero's name in Dream is a blend of Italian and Hebrew. The Long Sonata of the Dead: A Study of Samuel Beckett. Rather, Beckett argues that the only exitthe Proustian subject has from this habit-bound existence may come throughinvoluntary memory (Wood 5). This belief in a fragmented, incoherent Self wasrevealed in Dream. The challenge wasreflected in "eclectic styles of writing through the use of such devices aspastiche and parody as well as in the development of such concepts as theabsurd, the antihero and the antinovel, and magic realism" (Merriam 899).Merriam Webster's definition does not, perhaps, go far enough todistinguish postmodernism from modernism. Henotes that while the specific features signified by modernism varied withthe user, most critics agreed the concept involved a deliberate and radicalbreak with the traditional bases of Western culture and Western art (Abrams1 8). Beckett believed that the common anxiety to express, particularlythrough art, could only exist if the artist believed there were prioroccasions to be expressed. The visit is disastrous and Belacqua flees now to Dublin. New York: Oxford University Press, 197 .Drabble, Margaret. Constant stops and starts, narratorinterruptions, character shifts, and introductions to figures that seem toappear and disappear arbitrarily fragment the novel (Ben-Zvi 38). Attebery defines postmodernism as a reaction to modernism.Consequently, he notes that a postmodern writer will create different formsof postmodernist texts depending on which form of modernism he attempts tosubvert (Attebery 36). Beckett on James Joyce and Marcel Proust Beckett began his novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women in the springof 1932 after he left Dublin for Germany. However, subsequent discussionwill demonstrate that Beckett did not believe that even involuntary memorycould produce an art that reflected reality. The encyclopedia defines modernism as a chiefly European movementin the early-to-mid-2 th century that "represented a self-conscious breakwith traditional forms and subject matter and a search for a distinctlycontemporary mode of expression" (Merriam 77 ). In other words, no individual cantrust his or her conscious mind. Abrams argues these works subvert the basic conventions of earlierprose fiction in several ways. However, Merriam-Webster expands the definition by noting that itbegan with a radical and utopian spirit stimulated by new ideas inanthropology, psychology, philosophy, political theory, and psychoanalysisof the early 2 th century. Dutton & Co., 197 .Ben-Zvi, Linda. Ben-Zvi argues the name offers the attendant narcissistic and masturbatoryassociations of onanism but also provides other indications of Belacqua'spersonality. All these definitions fit Belacqua(Ben-Zvi 36). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1988.Attebery, Brian. In other words, art did not derive from life and awork of art did not depend upon or express anything that preceded it(Bersani 3 3). His parody of these traditional forms demonstratesone of Beckett's early postmodern strategies. As did Abrams, Drabble argues that despite thediversity of its manifestations, modernist literature was recognized asrepresenting an abrupt break with all tradition (Drabble 658). Dream of Fair to Middling Women is divided into three parts. Consequently, regardless of what terms a literary critic may use todescribe modernism, the period is generally established to have occurredbetween World War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1939-1945). In Three Dialogues (1949) Beckettrejected any assumption about the relation of art to the rest of life(Bersani 3 3). Inan attempt to subvert traditional modes, artists experimented with new andinnovative discursive styles to express their feelings of confusion andfragmentation. Samuel Beckett. Surrealism's aim was torebel against all restraints on free artistic creativity, including logicalreason, standard morality, social and artistic conventions and norms, andany control by forethought and intention (Abrams 183). Instead, Beckettidentified Proustian habit and memory with Arthur Schopenhauer's "will-to-live," which is a malignant egoist force that in fact hides reality(Robinson 57). Beckett excerptedthis last scene for a later collection of works titled More Pricks ThanKicks, and the excerpt operates as a parody of Joyce's Dubliners. The definition of modernism put forth by Merriam Webster'sEncyclopedia of Literature clarifies that modernism was a self-consciousmovement. Ben-Zvi notes it is an apt name forBeckett's slothful hero. Strategies of Fantasy. Such an existence is only the surface domain of time-bound voluntary memory where the "uniform memory of intelligence...can berelied on to produce for our gratified inspection those impressions of thatpast that were consciously and intelligently formed (Robinson 57). Instead, the work of art was its own reality, i.e., itcreated reality itself (Bersani 3 3). In essence, the modernist artist revolted against traditionalliterary forms and subjects, and this revolt manifested itself stronglyafter the total destruction of World War I shook men's faith in thefoundations and continuity of Western civilization and culture (Abrams1 8). It is aperiod in which the destruction and devastation wrought by theseunprecedented world wars was reflected in the fragmentation, disillusionand innovation of modernist literature's form. Balzac to Beckett: Center and Circumference in French Fiction. Nonetheless, Beckett agreedwith Proust's distinction between voluntary and involuntary memory(Robinson 57). However, alldefinitions of both periods must stress that there were varying styleswithin each period. Dream was not published until 1993. In Les VasesCommunicants, dedicated to Freud, Andre Breton conceived existence as acomposite of the dream and the state of wakefulness, constantly connectedand contributing to each other's intensity (Balakian 127). New York: E.P. However, sexfor Belacqua "was a bloody business" and he courts Smerry until she rapeshim. Mostsignificantly perhaps, Proust reveals the beginnings of Beckett's analysesthat will eventually lead to his rejection of the belief that theunconscious mind could express reality, a basic tenet of surrealism. (Springfield, MA: Merriam- Webster, 1995.Robinson, Michael. Outside it begins "to rain again upon the earth"--the reference to Joyce's falling snow--and deadened by drink and fatigueand constitutional psychic nausea, Belacqua creeps outside (Kenner 54). Abrams offers T. They break up the narrative continuity, theydepart from the standard ways of representing characters, and they violatethe traditional syntax and coherence of narrative language through the useof stream of consciousness and other innovative modes of narration (Abrams1 9). According to Beckett's analysis, voluntarymemory, direct perception, conception and even imagination only providefiltered facades of any given object. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986.Bersani, Leo. Technically, she states, modernism wasmarked by an experimentalism that rejected the traditional framework ofnarration, description, and rational exposition in poetry and prose.Instead, modernist writers favored stream of consciousness presentations ofpersonality and depended upon the poetic image as the essential vehicle ofaesthetic communication and myth as a characteristic structural principle(Drabble 658). Beckett's recognition of Proust's involuntary memory may indicate analignment with the tenets of surrealism. Shuah is from two biblical sources: Shuah, thegrandfather of Onan and in Hebrew, Shuach, son of Abraham and Ketura. Belacqua says in Dream that "the reality of the individual...is anincoherent reality [that] must be expressed incoherently." But Belacqua isspeaking for Beckett, who was consumed with the idea that literature couldnot take the reader to a place of unity but rather to the incoherence thatBeckett believed resided at the heart of human existence (Ben-Zvi 38). Kenner notes that Beckett'sending is not brilliant, but it does serve as a rejection of the "unifiedpolyphonic resolution" that gave meaning to the conclusion of Joyce's "TheDead" (Kenner 55). Abrams notes that the term 'postmodernism' is applied to theliterature and art after World War II (1939-45).
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