Total Pageviews

Tuesday, June 4, 2019

'je la dis comme elle vient' - Invocation and the Appearance of the Homeric Muse in Comment c'est/How It Is by Samuel Beckett


I presented the first section of this essay at the Gare Saint Lazare Players How It Is Symposium at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris last year. It was a wonderful occasion to be able to participate with Conor and Judy who are just as obsessed as I am about this particular work. There is something really wonderful about that, both of them have dedicated three years of their lives to presenting the entire novel on stage for the very first time, and this is but the first chapter of a further nine which I intend to write on the very same novel...

So, what's it all about?

Well, there are as many readings on offer as their are people, I suppose. This is one of mine. By the way, I'd like to dedicate this text to Conor Lovett & Judy Hegarty Lovett for all their support with my endeavors in this ongoing project, it is much appreciated.

Love to you both.




https://www.centreculturelirlandais.com/en/agenda/how-it-is



‘je la dis comme elle vient’ – Invocation and the Appearance of the Homeric Muse in Comment c’est – How It Is[1]




Σίβυλλα δὲ μαινομένῳ στόματι καθ' Ἡράκλειτον ἀγέλαστα καὶ ἀκαλλώπιστα καὶ ἀμύριστα φθεγγομένη χιλίων ἐτῶν ἐξικνεῖται τῇ φονῇ διὰ τὸν θεόν

And the Sibyl, with raving lips uttering things mirthless, unbedizened, and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with her voice, thanks to the god in her.[2]

Heraclitus Fragment 92

The title of this essay may be misleading, as it suggests that the motif of the muse and the theme of invocation itself is the sole subject of this enquiry, and in many ways I wish it were only that simple. However, the nature of this investigation is, by necessity, threefold; involving my attempt to trace the nature of the correspondence between three books by three separate authors, using the muse then as the topic of this particular investigation, one of which I hope will be many[3], and as the mediator, or singular point of connection, with all three. The task is made even more complex by the fact that each book is written in a different language, each evoking a specific world unto itself. Yet, my idea, the one which I hope to singularly pursue in this text, is that all three share communality, springing from the same shared European heritage, though all three books and authors were also informed by external influences to Europe. The ancient Babylonian tradition, being one. The three books in question then are Giambattista Vico’s Scienza nuova  (1752), James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake ( 1939) and Samuel Beckett’s Comment c’est/How It Is ( 1961/64). Using the muse and the invocation which appears in the very first two fragments of Beckett’s French novel, this essay hopes to present a coherent reading narrative in which the invocation is but the first step in Beckett’s use of Vico’s Scienza nuova, a book which is widely known to be one of the main sources of inspiration for Joyce in Finnegans Wake, and so by implication Joyce’s book must also be explored in an attempt to trace what influences Joyce’s work had on Beckett’s, as distinct from those that were clearly taken from Vico. The task becomes further complex when one considers that each book is written in a different language; Italian, English (or at least in the case of Finnegans Wake, a version of English) and finally French, with the added complexity of having to also compare the French text to its English translation, as is the case with Comment c’est/How It Is. By making the muse the point of departure, in Comment c’est, this essay will explore the significance of the muse in Vico’s Scienza nouva, which will lead us onto Vico’s celebrated three ages of man theory, upon which both Finnegan’s Wake and Comment c’est use, at least in this particular reading. This particular aspect of my investigation into the importance of both Joyce and Vico on Beckett, and on his composition of Comment c’est, will also involve a short study of the cameo appearance of the pre-Platonic[4] philosopher Heraclitus, which will in itself invoke, albeit briefly, the nature of Viconean linguistics, particularly as explored by the young Beckett in his celebrated essay  Dante… Bruno. Vico .. Joyce , Baudelaire and the French symbolists poets of the 19th century, and particularly in the context of the origins of the prose poem. Such is some of the subject matter that I will be attempting to further explore here, yet all under the guise, initially, of the ‘blessed’ muse.
Beckett’s final attempt at a full- length novel in French Comment c’est was written between 1959 and 1961. Here is James Knowlson’s entry about it in his biography of the author Damned to Fame.
Comment c’est proved to be one of the most difficult texts that he had ever written. He found that he could face working on it for only three hours a day at the most; a dozen lines a day were an achievement; half a page almost a triumph.[5]

The first two paragraphs, or fragments as I will be referring to the particular arrangement of the texts in Comment c’est, is an invocation. It is particularly distinct in the sense that unlike an invocation in Homer, say, the muse herself is not actually invoked. As in The Illiad, for example.

Rage- Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving to its end.
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.[6]

Classical scholars, such as Elizabeth Minchin, make reference to ‘faded’ invocations when the muse is not actually invoked, or named, as she clearly is in the above extract. Typically, faded invocations, as they are called, appear before lists, such as in Book 11 of The Illiad.

Who was the first he slaughtered, who the last,
Hector the son of Priam, now Zeus gave him glory?
Asaeus first, Autonous next and then Opites,
Dolops, Clytius’s son, and Ophelitus, Aegelus,[7]

Minchin suggests that the muse for the storyteller, who was charged to recite the epic texts from memory, used the muse as a mnemonic device, particularly at the start of lists of names, which would have been quite difficult to commit to memory and then recall at will, deep in the middle of a recitation, and that the invocation itself was literally the teller asking for some aid to help him/her recall. [8]In relation to Comment c’est, what is very striking is the way in which Homer invokes the muse, ‘Tell me muse’, and she does through him. In other words, it is as if the muse is speaking through him the teller. Beckett seems to be alluding to this notion a lot in Comment c’est with the repeated expression ‘bribes d’une voix ancienne en moi pas le mienne’[9], ‘scraps of an ancient voice in me not mine’[10]. At least in the context of the muse, it becomes a highly plausible possibility. But, let us return to the invocation which appears two fragments before, opening on the very first page of the book.

comment c’etait je cite avant Pim avec Pim après
Pim comment c’est trois parties je le dit comme
                                     je l’entends[11]

‘I say it as I hear it’ [12]. Again, this idea of a voice other than ‘his’ own, the narrator’s that is, is introduced. Which, again, fits very well with the muse idea. But she is as yet unnamed.

voix d’abord quaqua de toutes parts puis en moi
quand ca cesse de haleter racontre- moi encore
finis de me raconter invocation[13]

voice once without quaqua on all sides than in me when the
speaking stops tell me again finish telling me invocation[14]

So, according to Minchin, the above invocation would be a kind of ‘faded’ invocation, in that the muse herself is not named, or invoked directly, but rather could be understood to be invoked through the use of the term ‘invocation’ itself. Of course, the fact that the ‘invocation’ appears at the very start of the book, as invocations usually do at the start of epic poems, such as in The Illiad by Homer, is also extremely pertinent. What is very interesting is how Beckett uses this very formal classical device in the context of his own novel and which is, rather like classic epic poetry itself, divided up into three parts ‘avant Pim avec Pim après Pim’ (p.9.)/’before Pim with Pim after Pim’ which is cited in the very first line of the book, just a few lines before the invocation itself.
 Epic poetry, Aristotle informs us in his Poetics, ‘should involve a single action, whole and complete in itself, having a beginning, a middle, and an end, so that like one whole living creature it may produce its appropriate pleasure’[15].  For Mickhail Bakhtin, epic poetry and the ancient novel, such as The Golden Ass by Lucius Apuleius, known also as an ‘adventure novel’, tells the story of Lucius before he was transformed into an ass, when he was an ass, and his life after he was retransformed back into a person after having been an ass. Beckett, in Comment c’est/How It Is tells the story of life ‘before Pim with Pim and after Pim’. Already, within the two first fragments, or paragraphs, on the very first page of Comment c’est/How It Is  the tripartite structure of the plot is announced, and an invocation takes place. 
For the German phenomenologist Wolfgang Iser, it is the mutually shared cultural heritage of both reader and writer, the so called ‘insertions’, as in the case of Beckett the invocation and the tri-partite structure forming the scaffold, as it were, which are common tropes found in typical western culture, that commonality is found. So that together, in a symbiotic act, the act of reading, the writer and reader combine to create meaning together. Such is tradition. Even in a work of clear subversion, which Comment c’est/How It Is clearly is, to satirise a tradition is to acknowledge a tradition in the first place. Comment c’est/How It Is being Beckett’s take on the classical epic poem, or ‘adventure’ novel in the style of Apuleius, and Homer.
We have to wait but a further 12 pages for the muse to make her second appearance, but this time she is named, designated as ‘elle’. But before making her appearance, Beckett makes many other insertions, with reference to classical times. Indeed, while doing so he very ingeniously makes use of a lexicon borrowed from Giambattista Vico.

  ‘l’ordre naturel’ (p.10.) & ‘abjects époques héroïques’ (p.13)

natural order ( p.3.)  & ‘abject ages each heroic’ ( p.6.)  

L’ordre naturel/natural order and époques héroiques/heroic age are collocations which Beckett refers continuously to in Comment c’est/How It Is. In Giambattista Vico’s Scienza nuova / New Science there are three ages of man which are governed by three laws.

Il primo diritto fu divino, per lo quale credevano e sé a le loro
cose essere tutte in ragion degli déi, sull’ oppenione che tutto
fussero o facessero i déi.[16]  

The first governments were divine, by which people believed
that there lives and affairs depended on the gods, whom they
regarded as responsible for all things.[17]

This first age has the utmost importance for part 1, avant Pim/before Pim, of Comment c’est/How It Is. As Beckett, like James Joyce before him in Finnegans Wake, uses Vico’s three ages of man theory to structure his novel. The first age corresponding to part 1 avant Pim/before Pim, and correspondingly part 2, avec Pim/with Pim, corresponding to the second age.

Il secondo fu eroico, ovvero della forza, ma però prevenuta
già dalle religione, che sola può tener in dovere la forza,
ove non sono, non vagliono, le umana leggi per raffrenala. ( p.441)

The second was heroic law, or the law of force. This law was tempered
by religion, for only can religion can keep within the bounds of duty,
even when there are no human laws or none strong enough to restrain it. ( p.400)

Hence, ‘époques héroïques’/ ‘heroic age’ in Comment c’est/How It Is and particularly in relation to part 2, avec Pim/with Pim. For while part 1, avant Pim is corresponding with the divine age, in which the muse appears, part 2, avec Pim, corresponds to the law of force.[18] 
   
Before I further elaborate on Vico, and the many correspondences which Beckett makes to his three ages of man theory, I should first like to treat some of the other classical references, or insertions to borrow Iser’s expression, which Beckett makes in order to create the impression of ‘des temps énormes’ ( p.10)/ ‘vast tracts of time’ ( p.3) passing.  The following fragment making reference to the ‘sac/sack’ is crucial, compounding as it does that part 1, avant Pim, does in fact correspond to Vico’s first age, which is divine.

le sac seul bien au toucher un petit à charbon
cinquante kilos jute humide je le serre il dégoutte
au present mais loin loin un temps énorme le debut
cette vie premier signe de vie ( p.11)

the sack sole good possession coal-sack to the feel small or
medium five stone six stone wet jute I clutch it it drips in the
present but long past long gone vast stretch of time the begin-
ning this life first sign very first of life ( p.4)

Ruby Cohen, a friend and confident of the author, and one of the first to review Comment c’est [19] (1962), makes reference to the ancient Roman punishment poena cullei when thieves were tied up in a sack, which was closed firmly with a cord, before being thrown into the Tiber, sometimes a serpent was put in with them for good measure.[20] But she failed to remark, curiously, that ‘the first sign very first of life’ is a reference to fire, the foremost Heraclitean element, and which we will be returning to, Heraclitus that is. For in the context of Vico and the first age, this is surely a sign of Prometheus who stole fire from the gods, giving it to man, and so was eternally punished for his crime. Once again, in Vico’s Scienza nuova when he describes the first age of man, he describes Prometheus as being one of the creatures found among the giants in an unforgettable passage. The giants being the cyclops, who again will have highly significant roles in part 2, avec Pim, in which the law of force is paramount. While Daniela Caselli, in Beckett’s Dantes (2005), sees the ‘faded’ figure of Belaqua (p.14) , Beckett’s chosen character in Dante’s Purgatorio and whose name he gives to his alter-ego in More Pricks than Kicks, and who eventually is named further on in Comment c’est on pages 36/37. [21] So, when the muse appears some pages later, in a full- blown appearance this time, not faded, once again evoking ancient Greece, why should we show any surprise?

je l’appelle elle ne vient pas il me la faut absolu-
ment je l’appelle de toutes mes forces ce n’est pas
assez fort je redeviens mortel (p.21)

I call it it doesn’t come I can’t live without it I call it again with all my
strength it’s not strong enough I grow mortal again ( p.10)

The reference to immortality and the muse being implicit, in the original. What is fascinating then is to explore the English translation, recalling what Beckett said himself of it, as he told his friend and publisher; ‘it could be’, he wrote to John Calder, ‘at the best, a most lamentable á peu prés (approximation).[22] But still, this is what Beckett says! But, if we look to the work itself and compare these two pronouns ‘elle’ and ‘it’, and what they apparently signify, muse and language respectfully, it gives us a twofold reading, one in which the muse, as in the ancient classical texts is being evoked, albeit subversively, while in the English translation we would be referring back then to Knowlson and Pillings reading, ‘it’ signifying language! Both readings offering very rich matter to consider, which brings us to the two books themselves. It is really in the next appearance of the mysterious ‘elle’, or muse, in this reading, that things really come to a climax, for it is in the next fragment, in which ‘elle’ makes her appearance again, that the Viconean elements are formulated properly, and for this reason I have come to refer to this fragment as the Viconean fragment. I say fragment when in fact I should say page (p.30. 1992). It starts immediately;

 cette voix quaqua puis en moi quand ça cesse de
haleter troisième partie après Pim pas avant pas
 avec j’ai vovagé trouvé Pim perdu Pim c’est fini

this voice once quaqua then in me then the panting stops part
three after Pim not before not with I have journeyed found Pim
lost Pim it is over[23]

This is the opening of the first fragment on the page, which is strictly given over to ‘cette voix’/’this voice’.

je l’apprends dans l’ordre à peu près avant Pim
avec Pim des temps énormes

I learn it natural order more or less before Pim with Pim vast
tracts of time

So continues the second paragraph, or fragment, repeating the collocation ‘des temps énormes’,’vast tracts of time’, which will be repeated again and again. This insistence of time passing. But, ‘vast tracts’. This is extremely important in the context of Vico, as we shall soon see. So, before I treat the third fragment, the Viconean, I wish to just touch on some further insertions which are pertinent to our present subject matter, and which appeared earlier on in the text. For example, there is a wonderful aphoristic phrase, ‘fin de joies éphémères et de peines d’empires qui meurent et naissent comme si de rien n’était’(p.18.), ‘end of fleeting joys and of sorrows of empires that are born and die as though nothing happened’ ( p.8). Further on, ‘j’ai le temps des siècles des siècles’ he repeats, as if to further hammer the point home ( p.26), ‘I’ve lashings of time centuries of time centuries (p.12). Previously, he refers to ‘abjectes époques héroïques vue des suivants’ (p.13), ‘abject ages each heroic seen from the next’ (p.6). All creating this great sense of time travel, of journeying through ‘vast tracts of time’, un temps énorme’(p.10). Now, here is the Viconean fragment, which in the present reading brings all of this into greater relief. Hopefully!

je la dis comme elle vient dans l’ordre mes lèvres
remuent je le sens elle sort dans la boue ma vie
ce qui’il en reste mal dite mal entendue mal retrou-
vée quand ça cesse de haleter mal murmurée à la
boue au present tout ca des choses si anciennes
l’ordre naturel le voyage le couple l’abandon tout
ça au present tout bas des bribes ( p.15)

So, again, the first thing that strikes one here is the use once more of the pronoun ‘elle’,’je la dit comme elle vient dans l’ordre mes lèvres’, ‘I say it when she comes in the order’. This is how it reads literally, but Beckett translates the ‘elle’ as it and inserts ‘my life’ ma vie, which doesn’t figure in the original. Why does he do this? A natural explanation, and so most plausible, would be that in French la vie or life is gendered in the feminine. But, there is an added interpretation, for a writer/poet the muse is everything, she embodying his very life. The two being synonymous. This admittedly is a very subjective reading, not very academic, but I am a poet, first and foremost, and as a practitioner, this meaning, to me, makes perfect sense.

je la dis comme elle viens dans l’ordre
I say it my life as it comes natural order
I say it when she comes in the order

So, in this reading I understand ‘elle’ to mean she signifying the muse, or language. ‘je la dis comme elle viens dans l’ordre’, I say it when she comes in the order. What order? Natural order.

des choses si anciennes l’ordre naturel le voyage le couple l’abandon  ( p.30)
things so ancient natural order the journey the couple the abandon (p.150

This is where Giambattista Vico comes in and the tri-partite structure is revealed, finally. Remembering that in the opening fragment, before the invocation, the narrator is going to speak about, ‘comment c’était avant Pim avec Pim après Pim’. This is ‘l’ordre naturel’, corresponding with ‘le voyage le couple l’abandon’- ‘the journey the couple the abandon’.

Part 1 avec Pim corresponding with the journey
Part 2 avec Pim corresponding with the couple
And finally, Part 3 apres Pim corresponding with the abandon

This is the natural order of the text Comment c’est/ How It Is. This order corresponds exactly with the three ages of man theory put forward in Vico’s Principi di una scienza nuova, or New Science, where Vico speaks of ‘tre spezie di diritti naturali[24], ‘three kinds of natural law’[25] which governed the course of nations, and which are; ‘diritto divino’, divine law, ‘eroico’, or heroic law, governed by force, and ‘umano’, or human law, ‘which is dictated by fully developed human reason.’(p.400). In this reading, I am proposing that each law, or age in Vico, corresponds exactly to the three parts of Comment c’est/How It Is.

Part 1 apres Pim/before Pim – le voyage/the journey- Divine age/divine law
Part 2 avec Pim- le couple/the couple – Heroic age/ the law of force
Part 3 apres Pim – l’abandon/the abandon- The Human age/governed by human reason 

It is well known that Joyce used Vico’s three ages of man theory to organise the structure of Finnegan’s Wake, a book, like Beckett’s Comment c’est/How It Is which is also a book that famously has a cyclical nature. Beckett was asked by Joyce, when he was a very young man in Paris, to write an essay to apparently prepare the reading public for his final great work. Beckett obliged and wrote the celebrated essay Dante…Bruno.Vico..Joyce and which, according to Ruby Cohen, ‘that, decades later, he is cited in Vico bibliographies.’[26] Here is the young Samuel Beckett himself writing about Vico’s three ages of man theory, which is actually numbered as four when one includes death, as it appears in Finnegan’s Wake and of course this is the first main difference between Beckett’s Comment c’est and Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, Joyce’s work being divided up into four parts while Beckett’s is divided up into three.

Part 1 is a mass of past shadow, corresponding
 therefore to Vico’s first human institution, Religion, or to his
Theocratic age, or simply to human abstraction -Birth. Part 2 is the
love game of children, corresponding to the social institution,
Marriage, or to the Heroic age, or to an abstraction – Maturity.
Part 3 is passed in sleep, corresponding to the third institution,
burial, or to the Human age, or to an abstraction – Corruption.
Part 4 is the day beginning again, and corresponds to Vico’s
Providence, or to an abstraction – Generation.[27] 

Beckett’s enthusiasm for Vico, over Dante and Bruno, in relation to Finnegan’s Wake in his essay Dante…Bruno.Vico..Joyce  is clear, as he spends ten pages out of thirteen treating Vico. ‘there are no two ways about considering him an innovator.’ he writes (p.20); ‘It is impossible to deny the originality with which he applied and developed its implications.’ he remarks on Vico’s treatment of Herodotus, whom he believes Vico inherited his theories of classification (p.20). ‘he evolved a theory of the origins of poetry and language, the significance of myth, and the nature of barbaric civilisation that must have appeared nothing less than an impertinent outrage against tradition.’ He goes on, clearly quite in awe at Vico’s accomplishments (p.20). Beckett was only 23 when he wrote Dante…Bruno.Vico..Joyce, so to think that he would return to Vico almost thirty years later, and use his ideas, as Joyce had done before him, might seem an incredible idea. But, Beckett’s engagement with thinkers like Vico was often life-long. Take, for example, the pre-Platonic thinker Heraclitus, who also figures in part 1, avant Pim.

sur le bas-ventre boueux j’ai vu un jour faste pace
Héraclite l’Obscur au plus haut de l’azur entre les
grandes aisles noires étendues immobiles vu sus-
pendu le corps de neige de je ne sais quel oiseau
voilier l’albatros hurler des mers australes l’his-
toire que j’avais mon Dieu la naturelle les bons
moments que j’avais (p.53)

Heraclitus first appears in Beckett’s first published novel More Pricks than Kicks, published only a few years after his Vico essay in 1934.

for Belacqua could not resist a lachrymose philosopher
and still less when , as was the case with Heraclitus, he
was obscure at the same time. He was in his element
in dingy tears and luxuriously so when these were
furnished by a pre-Socratic man of acknowledged distinction.
How often had he not exclaimed, skies being angry: ‘Another
Minute of this and I shall consecrate my life to Heraclitus of Ephesus,
I shall be that Delian diver who, after the third or fourth submersion,
returns no more to the surface.  [28]

A period of 27 years separate the two books, More Pricks than Kicks and Comment c’est ( 1961), and here is that very philosopher appearing again. As with Belacqua, his Dantean protagonist, who also reappears in both books. So, we can see a parallel here at work, with Beckett’s recurring obsessions. Vico, Heraclitus, Dante and Joyce! But what is the significance of the appearance of Heraclitus in part one of Comment C’est, if any? In the context of Vico it is a fascinating correspondence, and one which we can only really bring into relief in relation to the Viconean fragment, with the final appearance of the muse.

L'ordre naturel, in Comment c’est, is ‘le voyage le couple l’abandon’ (p.30), ‘the journey the couple the abandon’ (p.15). This natural order corresponds exactly to Vico’s divine, heroic and rational ages of man. In section 1 of the chapter titled Metafisica Poetica/Poetic (p.155) Metaphysics, Vico describes the first age as a time peopled by giants and it was a period of wandering. Prometheus is among them, these cave dwellers, brothers of the cyclops, renowned in Homer’s Odyssey. They were childlike creatures, Vico recounts, and who believed in divine law.

In tal guise i primi poeti teologi si finsero la prima favola
divina, la più grande di quante mai se ne finsero appresso,
cioè Giove, re e padre degli uomini e degli dèi, ed in atto
fulminante; (p.162)[29]


The theological poets, or divinari-diviners, interpreted the signs of Jupiter to men through the muse.

Ch’è la storia civile di quell motto:
A Iove principum musoe;

siccome da’ fulminic di Giove testé abbiam veduto incomminciare
la prima musa, che Omero ci diffinì “ scienza del bene e del male”; (p.169)[30]


The correspondences are so many. The invocation at the start of book one, avant Pim, with the topic of le voyage or the wandering period, corresponding so well with the divine period of man in Vico when the giants, such as Prometheus, wandered the earth, with the muse acting as intermediary between the gods and man, and whose signs are interpreted by the theological poets. Does not Heraclitus, the Sage of Ephesus, fit so well this description? Heraclitus, of course, was an incredibly inspiring figure for not only the young Beckett in the nineteen twenties in Europe. He was a major figure for Friedrich Nietzsche throughout his life, appearing in his early lectures on the Pre-Platonic Philosophers which he gave to his students at Basel University in 1872 to 1876. ‘We can only with difficulty imagine the feelings of loneliness that tore through him:’, Nietzsche writes[31], “ perhaps his style makes this most obvious, since he himself ( uses language that) resembles the oracular proverbs and the language of the Sibyls.’ Nietzsche then goes onto quote aphorism 92 which opens this essay, on the muse. Here he is again some ten years later in Beyond Good and Evil; ‘For one must admit how completely the whole species of a Heraclitus, a Plato, an Empedocles, and whatever else these royal and splendid hermits of the spirit were called, is lacking in the modern world.’[32]Interestingly, Martin Heidegger was to take up the baton, devoting two whole books to the study of the fragments of Heraclitus, one in 1943/44, while WWII raged,[33] and the second study, a series of lectures held in conjunction with Martin Fink in 1966/67[34]. Heraclitus is extremely important in terms of justice in Comment c’est, particularly in regard to fragment 53[35], but also as regards the muse when one considers fragment 64:

τὰ δὲ πάντα οἰακίζει κεραυνός

The thunderbolt that steers all things.[36]

We will look further at the importance of thunder in both the works of Vico and Joyce, interestingly Heidegger also mentions Zeus in connection with fragment 64 in the very first meditation in his seminars with Eugene Fink[37](p.5). However, it is the reference to the albatross, in Beckett’s Heraclitus fragment quoted above which I wish to treat here, as there is a very strong case to be made that it is a direct correspondence to the famous poem by Baudelaire, L’Albatros. Particularly in the context of the current reading I am presenting, in which poets, in the first age, are the mediators between the Gods and men. Those divinari, or diviners, which Vico invokes, who are responsible for interpreting the signs made by Zeus, so that mere mortals could understand. When you consider poems by Baudelaire such as L’Albatros, in which poets are compared to those great- winged birds in flight, and particularly Correspondences, in which the poet interprets ancient signs coming from the past:

La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L’homme y passe à travers des forêt de symbols
Qui l’observent avec des regards familiers.[38]

Nature is a temple where living pillars
Utter at times confused words;
Man passes through the forest of symbols
Which observe him with familiar eyes.[39]

It is not so hard to see the connections which Beckett would appear to be making. Deirdre Bair, despite coming in for a lot of criticism for her biography of Beckett, the very first of its kind, was perceptive enough to acknowledge the influence of 19th century French poets, such as Baudelaire, Aloysius Bertrand and Isidore Ducasse, or Comte De Lautréamont; all being the acknowledged fore-fathers of the prose poem, and whom Beckett was of course completely familiar with. Besides, there have been numerous essays written concerning the influence of Maldoror and other French books of this period on Comment c’est. However, what is pertinent to note here is the use of language which Beckett makes in Comment c’est/How It Is, as exemplified above with the Heraclitean fragment. But in order to do so, it may be opportune to reflect further on the contents of Beckett’s very own early study on Vico’s treatment of language in Scienza nuova. Referring, once again, to the first age in Vico’s account, Beckett goes onto write the following;

In its first dumb form, language was gesture. If a man wanted to
say ‘sea’, he pointed to the sea. With the spread of animism this
gesture was replaced with the word: ‘Neptune’. He ( Vico[40] )
directs our attention to the fact that every need of life, natural,
moral, and economic, has its verbal expression in one or other
of the 30,000 Greek divinities. This is Homer’s ‘language of the
Gods’.[41]

Beckett goes onto to enumerate how primitive peoples of these times, according to Vico, being unable to think abstractly, could only imagine in literal terms. So there could be no types, or metaphors, but everything springing from the first or the original. For example, Heraclitus being representative of the first theological poet, all theological poets so being Heraclitean! Thus he appears here, in relation to the muse to act as divinari, or diviner. This is Beckett’s idea, as distinct from Joyce. His utilisation of the invocation in the first two fragments, and incorporating its appearance with the Viconean idea of the three ages of man, upon which the whole book is accordingly broken down into the corresponding three parts, one for each age, and finally Heraclitus being representative of the theological poet, as employed here by Beckett, who is getting his ideas from Vico, but also via Joyce. So, we can see that in terms of thematic structure, Beckett is following Joyce, quite clearly, yet with the difference that he is leaving out a part, or age, unlike Joyce who opts for four parts/ages. He is also using Vicoean ideas on language, where words become, literally, the things themselves; a phrase which has deep resonances in twentieth century phenomenology. [42] 

As we have seen, Beckett’s interest in Giambattista Vico is quite clear, yet despite this fact there has never been a complete study devoted to his influence on Beckett, and particularly on his novel Comment c’est/How It Is.  Yet, when one is attempting to assess the influence of Giambattista Vico’s Scienza nuova on Comment c’est one must also try to determine the extnt of the influence of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake so that the issue becomes twofold, as one is working with two palimpsests, rather than one. Where to start? Apart from the major difference structurally, three parts in Comment c’est to four in Finnegans Wake, what other dissimilarities can we see? The muse for example, does Joyce treat the muse in part 1 of Finnegans Wake? And what other motifs and tropes, if any, appear in Book 1of Finnegans Wake and which also find their way into Comment c’est, and which of course are originating from Vico? Well, as we have seen, Beckett uses a pure classical invocation of the muse in the opening two fragments of Comment c’est. Where is this coming from? Is Beckett operating completely independently here, or is he following, in some way, direction from Finnegans Wake?

The first reference to the muse in Book 1 of Finnegans Wake  appears on the very second page, when Joyce writes ‘most high heaven the skysign of soft advertisement’[43], the reference to thunder, invoking the Homeric muse as we have already seen in Vico, appearing on the very next page, ‘What then agentlike brought about that tragedy thundersday this municipal sin business?’[44] Humphrey Chimpdem Earwhicker being a giant of a man,[45] thus completing the Viconean correspondence. Thunder will go on to be mentioned on numerous occasions right throughout all eight parts of Book 1 in Finnegans Wake.[46] So, we can clearly see that for Joyce, thunder evoking the muse in Vico, is a major motif running throughout Book 1 of Finnegans Wake. Though Joyce’s own invocation does not appear until part 7 of Book one of Finnegan’s Wake[47]. So, it is very interesting to see how Beckett inserts the classical invocation, as in standard classical texts, at the start of Comment c’est and then invoking her again, as we have seen by ingeniously using the pronoun elle; ‘je la dis comme elle vient’ (p.30). Why does Beckett do this, one might ask? Why does he go to all this trouble? One may find a highly plausible answer, which would be typical of Beckett and totally in keeping with the punning nature of Joyce’s book, and Comment c’est, further on in part 1, avant pim; ‘par ce que ca m’amuse’(p.49) and he continues the joke, ‘je le dis comme je l’entends’ so that we are under no mistake to what he is joking about. Of course, in the translated text into English, such punning is impossible, rendering the book, at least in the context of the muse insertions, due to the eradication of ‘elle’ to ‘it’ in the English version, less interesting perhaps; ‘because it amuses me I say it as I hear it’(p.25). But the correspondences between Beckett’s treatment of Vico and Joyce’s and the many interactions between them do not, of course, end here.

Part 1 of Finnegans Wake is made up of eight separate parts in which we are introduced to the major characters who appear in the novel. HCE ( Here Comes Everybody) Humphrey Chimpden Earwhicker, parts 1.1 and 1.2.; his wife ALP, Anna Livia Plurabelle,  parts 1.5 and 1.8; their two sons Shaun, part 1.6, and Shem, part 1.7. Their daughter Issy, ‘at first glance, the least featured member of the Earwicker/Porter quincux.’[48], very curiously, is not the subject of a chapter in Book 1. However, the ancient Babylonian Goddess Ishtar, ‘the prankquean’ [49] who appears in 1.1, 1.3 and 1.4 respectively, and in a highly significant role, as we shall soon see and particularly in relation to the muse, but whether Joyce is somehow alluding to Issy also, by evoking Ishtar, is perhaps the subject of a single study in itself. I single out in particular Ishtar in relation to the appearance of the Homeric muse in Comment c’est, as invoked by Vico in Scienza nuova, as the parallels are fascinating. For example, in the very first part of Book 1, at the end of the dialogue between Jute and Mutt, Jute says:

‘Oye am thonthorstrok, thing mud.
(Stoop if you are abcdeminded, to this claybook, what curios
of signs (please stoop), in this allaphbed! Can you rede (since
We and Thou had it out already) its world? It is the same told
of all. (p.18)

We have already discussed the importance of thunder in relation to Giambattista Vico as a sign of the muse signalling Jove/Jupiter, and its importance as regards Heraclitus in Beckett’s writing. So, what is of importance to further underline here is the reference to mud in the above text, and the reference to ‘this claybook’? The Epic of Gilgamesh is the first epic adventure recorded by man, at least that we are aware of, clay tablets of which have been passed down to us, thanks to the work done by the army of scribes working in the scriptorium of Nineveh, according to Andrew George in his introduction to his translation of the epic work, at the orders of the last king of Assyria Ashurbanipal (668-627 BC)[50].  In this epic Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of art, sex and war, appears to the hero in Tablet VI. Here is a summary of what happens.

Back in Uruk Gilgamesh’s beauty provokes the desire of the goddess Ishtar and
she proposes to him. Gilgamesh scorns her, reminding her of the fates suffered
by her many former conquests. Ishtar is enraged and rushes up to heaven. She
persuades Anu, her father, to give her the fiery Bull of Heaven (the constellation
Taurus) so that she can punish Gilgamesh with death. The Bull of Heaven causes
havoc in Uruk, but Gilgamesh and Enkidu discover its weak spot and kill it.
They insult Ishtar further and return to the palace in triumph to celebrate their
 victory. (p.47)

While reading over this passage, I was reminded of a page or two of notes taken by Beckett when he was in Trinity College Dublin on the Cattle Spoil of Cooley, and which are available to read on micro-film there[51]. Here is a short paragraph taken from his notes, written in Beckett’s own hand.

Maeve, Queen of Connaught, wanted the Donn Cuailnge
(Brown Bull of Cooley) to equal her husband’s bull
Finnbennach Ai ( a white horned bull of the Plain of
Ai); these two bulls fought and the latter won and returned
to Ulster to Druim Tairb ( Bull’s Ridge) and died there.

The first thing we can observe is the similarities between ancient Babylonian culture and ancient Irish, bulls figuring as major signs of privilege and power in both early agricultural societies, and the second thing is both Beckett’s and Joyce’s awareness and interest in ancient texts from such diverse societies and cultures, and this is what is so very striking about both works Comment c’est and Finnegans Wake, for despite the fact that they are representative of  the most avant- garde texts in twentieth century modernism, they are both also completely grounded in ancient and classical mythology and folklore. The characters Krim and Kram, to continue the Babylonian connection, are particularly pertinent. In Finnegans Wake, Joyce uses the term ‘A scribicide’ ( 1.1, p14.) while enumerating some of the major events in ‘the leaves of the living in the boke of the deeds, annals of themselves timing the cycles of events grand and national,’ (1.1, p.13). Beckett introduces the idea of the scribes very early on in Comment c’est in the form of the witness.

il vit penché sur moi voilà la vie qu’on lui a don-
née toute ma surface visible plongée dans la
lumière de ses lampes quand je m’en vais ilme suit
courbéen deux

il a une aide assis un peu à l’écart il lui annonce
brefs movemements du bas du visage l’aide l’inscrit
dans son registre[52]

These two figures will eventually reappear in part 2, avec Pim, as the pseudo-couple Krim and Kram. To further compound the importance of the Babylonian references, mud, or clay – (‘a claybook’, in Joyce remember) is the primal element through which the characters are submerged in Comment c’est. For Daniela Caselli, in her wonderful Beckett’s Dantes, the reference to mud is a sure sign of the bolgia in the eight canto of the Inferno, where ‘le unghie merdose’( shitty fingernails) scratch out their Roman capitals. But I would not discount the influence of Gilgamesh too, as the elements of exterior cultural forces to Europe on both works, as in Vico’s magnum opus, are, as we have seen also in clear evidence.

In this first foray into the world of Comment c’est/How It Is, I have tried to show, as clearly as I possibly can, that the apparent randomness of connections between the motifs of the muse, and the subsequent invocations, be they ‘full blown’ or ‘faded’, are part of a wonderfully elaborate interplay of correspondences, or connections, all very much grounded in Vico’s three ages of man theory, but also as introduced to Beckett via Joyce. So, a very elaborate cross-pollination of ideas is at work, in which Scienza nouva, Finnegans Wake and Comment c’est/How It Is conjoin; what Julia Kristeva might properly define as an underlined, or scored, complex system of intertextuality runs through all works, so that one must read all three in order to get a somewhat better idea of each one. This is, as already stated, but the first chapter into my whole exploration of this quite elaborate reading. In my next essay, I hope to take up the story, moving on from part 1, avant pim, and all of the ‘divine’ mystery of Vico’s first poetic age, and explore part 2, avec pim, which signals, at least in Viconean terms, the Heroic age, which is one of violence. Following on from this essay, I will of course be showing how Beckett uses Vico to come up with some truly startling innovations with form and language, invoking ancient Greek satyr play, and by further extension Euripides. But, also the motif of the cyclops, and Plato’s cave. And of course, I will be exploring Joyce’s treatment of Vico in Finnegans Wake, and how, curiously, Heraclitean notions on violence and comedy interplay in both works, with references to both Hitler and Charlie Chaplin. I shall even be making the point that Beckett acquired the title of his great novel from Finnegan’s Wake itself, such was his old master’s pervading influence on him, even at such a late time in his ‘career’. 



Bibliography

Agamben, Giorgio: Homo sacer,il potere sovrano e la nuda vita, Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi Filosofia, Torino, 2005.
Aristotle: Poetics, Translated, with an Introduction and Notes by James Hutton, Preface by Gordon M. Kirkwood, Norton & Company, New York, First Edition, 1982.
Barnes, Johnathan: Early Greek Philosophy, Penguin Classics, London, 2001.
Bakhtin, Mikhail: The Dialogic Imagination, Four Essays, Translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, University of Texas Press, 1982.
Baudelaire, Charles: Les fleurs du mal, Garnier Flammarion, Paris, 1992.
Beckett, Samuel: Comment c’est, Les Édition de Minuit, Paris, 1992.
Beckett, Samuel: Disjecta, New Grove Press, New York, First Edition, 1984.
Beckett, Samuel:  How It Is, Faber & Faber, London, 2009.
Beckett, Samuel: More Pricks than Kicks, Picador, London, 1974.
Caselli, Daniela: Beckett’s Dantes, Intertextuality in the fiction and criticism, Manchester University Press, First published 2005.
Iser, Wolfgang: The Implied Reader, Patterns of Communication from Bunyan to Beckett, The John Hopkins University Press, 1974.
George, Andrew: The Epic of Gilgamesh, Translated with an Introduction by Andrew George, Penguin Classics, London, 2000.
Heidegger M. & Fink. E.: Heraclitus Seminars, Translated by Charles H. Seibert, Northwest University, 1993.
Homer: The Illiad, Translated by Robert Fagles with an Introduction and Notes by Bernard Fox, Penguin Classics, London, 1991.
Joyce, James: Finnegans Wake, Wordsworth Classics, 2012.
Knowlson, James: Damned to Fame, Bloomsbury, London, 1996.
McKirahan, Richard D.: Philosophy Before Socrates, An Introduction with Texts and Commentary, Hackett, Indiana, 1994.
Minchin, Elizabeth: The Poet Appeals to his Muse: Homeric Invocations in the Context of Epic Performance, The Classical Journal, Vol 91, No. 1, Oct-Nov, 1995.
Nietzsche, Friedrich: The Pre-Platonic Philosophers, Translated from the German and Edited, with an Introduction and Commentary, by Greg Whitlock, University of Illinois Press, Urbana & Chicago, First paperback edition, 2006.
Vico, Giambattista: New Science, Translated by David Marsh with an Introduction by Anthony Grafton, Penguin Classics, London, 1999.





[1] This paper was first presented at the Centre Culturel Irlandais on the 23rd February, 2018, which organised by The Gare Saint Saint Lazare Players Ireland as part of the How It Is Symposium.
[3] This is essay is but the first chapter in a book of a further nine, all with the same subject; the importance of Giambattista Vico’s Scienza nuova and James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake on Samuel Beckett’s last full length novel in French Comment c’est/How It Is.
[4] I am using the Nietzschean appellation rather than the more typical term pre-Socratic, as I believe it is more in keeping with the philosophical register being explored here. 
[5] Knowlson, James: Damned to Fame, Bloomsbury, London, 1996, p.461.
[6] Homer: The Illiad, Translated by Robert Fagles with an Introduction and Notes by Bernard Fox, Penguin Classics, London, 1991, p.77.
[7] Ibid, p.306.
[8] Minchin, Elizabeth: The Poet Appeals to his Muse: Homeric Invocations in the Context of Epic Performance, The Classical Journal, Vol 91, No. 1, Oct-Nov, 1995, pp.25-33.
[9] Beckett, Samuel: Comment c’est, Les Éditions de Minuit, Paris, 1992, p.9.
From here on in I will be referring to this book as Cc, with the corresponding page number.
[10] Beckett, Samuel: How It Is, Edited by Édouard Magessa O’Reilly, Faber & Faber, London, p.3.
And from now on when referencing this work I will be referring to it as HII, followed by the corresponding page number. 
[11] Cc.p.9
[12] HII.p.9
[13] Cc.p9
[14] HII.p3
[15] Aristotle: Poetics, Translated with an Introduction and Notes by James Hutton, Norton, New York, 1982, p.71.
[16] http://www.letteraturaitaliana.net/pdf/Volume_7/t204.pdf
[17] Vico, Giambattista: New Science, Translated by David Marsh with an Introduction by Anthony Grafton, Penguin Classics, London, 2001, p.400.
[18] For a thorough examination of part 2, avec Pim, see ‘je grave mes majuscules romaines’Satyr Play in Comment c’est/How It Is. This essay will follow on from je la dit comme elle vient.
[19] Cohn, Ruby: Comment c’est: de quoi rire, The French Review, Vol 35, No. 6, May, 1962, pp. 565-567.
[20] Agamben, Giorgio: Homo sacer, il potere sovrano e la nuda vita, Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi Filosofia, Torino, 2005, p.90.
[21] Caselli identifies the figure in an ekphrastic moment seeing the description of Belacqua in foetal position, as described by Dante in the  Purgatorio in lines 106-108, in Canto 4:’ E un di lor, che mi sembiava lasso, sedeva e abbracciava le ginocchia, tenendo ‘l viso giù tra esse basso.’ – ‘genoux remontés dos en cerceau je serre le sac contre mon ventre là ‘
Caeslli, Daniela: Beckett’s Dantes, Intertextuality in the fiction and criticism, University of Manchester Press, 2005, p.150.
[22] Knowlson, James: Damned to Fame, The Life of Samuel Beckett, Bloomsbury, London, 1996, p.495.
[23] HII, p.14.
[25] Vico, Giambattista: New Science, Translated by David Marsh with an Introduction by Anthony Grafton, Penguin Classics, London, 1999.
[26] Beckett, Samuel: Disjecta, New Grove Press, New York, First Edition, 1984,p.8.
[27] Ibid. p.22.
[28] Beckett, Samuel: More Pricks than Kicks, Picador, London, 1974, p.149.

[29] Vico, Giambattista: New Science, London, 1999, p.147.
‘In this manner the first theological poets invented the first divine myth, which was the greatest divine myth ever invented: Jupiter, the king and the father of gods and men, in the act of hurling a thunderbolt.’

[30] Vico, Giambattista: New Science, London, Penguin Classics, London, 1999, p.153.
‘This is the civil and historical meaning of the poetic tag ‘From Jupiter the Muse began’, A Iove principium Musae. For, as we have seen, Jupiter’s lightning bolts were the origin of the first Muse, which Homer acknowledges as the knowledge of good and evil.’

[31] Nietzsche, Friedrich : The Pre-Platonic Philosophers, Translated from the German and Edited, with an Introduction and Commentary, by Greg Whitlock, University of Illinois Press, First paperback edition, 2006, p.55.
[32] Nietzsche, Friedrich: Beyond Good and Evil, Translated, with an Introduction and a Commentary, by R. J. Hollingdale, Penguin Classics, London, 1973, p.111.
[33] The first English translation of Heidegger’s first complete study of Heraclitus, volume 55 of the Martin Heidegger Gesantausgabe, is due out on the 15/11/ 2018.

[34] I refer to this study in a previous short essay entitled Embodying Be-ING: The Appearance of Heraclitus in Beckett in More Micks than Dicks, A Hybrid Beckettian Novella in 3 Genres, published by Famous Seamus, London, 2017.
[35]War is the father of all and king of all, and some he shows as gods, others as humans; some he makes slaves, others free.’
McKirahan, Richard D.: Philosophy Before Socrates, An Introduction with Texts and Commentary, Hackett Publishing Company, Indiana, 1994, p.124.
[38] Baudelaire, Charles: Les Fleurs du Mal, Garnier Flammarion, Paris, 2006, p.62.
[39] O’Neill, Peter: The Enemy, Transversions from Charles Baudelaire, Lapwing Press, Belfast, 2015, p.15.
[40] My insertion.
[41] Beckett, Samuel: Disjecta, Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment,  Edited by Ruby Cohen, Grove Press, New York, First paperback edition, 1984, p. 24.
[42] Edmund Husserl’s great rally call was ‘we must go back to the ‘things themselves’. Although, he was referring to imminent content of mind, thus a priori. While, alternatively, I would seemingly be applying a Heideggerian phenomenological approach to texts, focused as I am on the historic trace of all three authors ideas, as revealed in their works. I wish to point out here my indebtedness to the following work.
McDonnell, Cyril:  Heidegger’s Way Through Phenomenology To The Question of the Question of the Meaning of Being, A Study of Heidegger’s Philosophical Path of Thinking from 1909 to 1927, Orbis Phaenomenologicus, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg, 2015.

[43] Joyce, James: Finnegans Wake, Wordsworth Classics, London, 2012, p. 4.
[44] Ibid, p.5.
[45] Ibid,‘An imposing everybody.’ 1.2, line 19.
[46]Ibid.1.1, p.11, line 4,1.1, p.18, line 16, 1,3, p.52 , line 31, 1.4, p.78, line 5. 1.4, p.95, line 16, 1.6, p.152, line 1, 1.6, p.167, line 23, 1.8, p.209, line 13.
[47] Joyce’s invocation is in Latin, in a clear pastiche of Virgil, as Eneas is mentioned immediately afterward and ‘a no uncertain quantity of obscene matter not protected by copyright in the United Stars of Ourania’( 1.7 p.185, lines 31/32.) Urania was the mother of Astronomy and daughter of Mnemosyne, or memory, and interestingly is the muse quoted by Milton in Paradise Lost and which James Knowlson assures us is not the muse being referred to in Comment c’est/How It Is in his essay in Frescoes of the Skull. Joyce’s invocation, ‘( highly prosy, crap in his hand, sorry!)’ line 20, appears beneath a reference to Babylon which will come all the more to the fore.
quod appellavit deictiones suas, in vas olim honorabile tristitiae posuit, eodem sub invocation fratrorum geminorum Medardi et Godardi laete ac melliflue minxit psalmum qui incipit:

[48] McBride, Margaret: The Issue of Issy’s Schizophrenia, University of Texas Press, Joyce Studies Annual, Volume 7, Summer 1996.
[49] Joyce, James: Finnegans Wake, With an Introduction by Len Platt, Wordsworth Classics, London, 2012, p.23.
This is the edition I will be consistently referring to from here on in. 
[50]  The Epic of Gilgamesh, Translated by Andrew George with an Introduction by the author, Penguin Classics, London, 2000, p.xxi. 
[51] Beckett Film 14: MSS 10971/1-1110963a/1-2 10965a, Berkeley Library, Trinity College Dublin, Micro-Film Department.
[52] Cc p.27.
‘he lives bent over me that’s the life he has been given all my visible surface bathing in the light of his lamps when I go he follows me bent in two

his aid sits a little aloof he announces brief movements of the lower face the aid enters it in his ledger
HIS, p.13.

No comments:

Post a Comment