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.
[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
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
‘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.
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