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Thursday, May 6, 2021

INTO THE WOOD OF THE SELF - MOLLOY BY SAMUEL BECKETT


 


Into the Wood of the Self

 

Molloy as a Retelling of the Cain & Abel Myth

 

 

Samuel Beckett’s querulous relationship with his native Ireland is legendary, born into the upper- class echelons of Foxrock, south county Dublin, his was a background of Protestant privilege, just like his contemporary Francis Bacon, born on Baggot Street to British parents. Both men would see the world that they grew up in, due to the civil war, utterly change all around them, and with the arrival of the new Republic their relationship with the new order was not a good one. Both were to leave Ireland, Bacon, like Beckett, after much wandering in Europe eventually took up permanent residence in London, while Beckett famously went on to live out his life after the war in Paris like his old master James Joyce before him. As a writer myself, my own relationship with all three of these artists has been life enduring. I discovered them all in my late teens, and I am still as fascinated as ever.

Again, like all three, I have a rather mercurial relationship with Ireland. Despite having returned here to live indefinitely in the late nineties, after having spent almost a decade travelling to and from France, I still have a very love and hate relationship with my country, or cuntry as I sometimes prefer to spell it. This, I must admit, is one of the real reasons why I like in particular Molloy out of all Beckett’s novels, as it is laced with acidic quips, perhaps more so than any other, relating to Ireland. I suppose, as the years wore on, and his exile from that land became more of a permanent fixture, so the place diminished like an old lover in his mind, and he was able to breath a bit easier on that particular matter. Until of course a correspondence from an old friend, or some story typically relating to one of the productions of one of his plays there resurrected then for him all of the old pain, and no doubt fury.

There is a lot of spleen in Molloy. I use this particular word with well- chosen care, as it is a word that one would typically relate to Baudelaire, and in a sense this brings me very naturally to the real subject of this essay. For, according to my reading, at least this particular reading of Molloy that I am going to offer here, Baudelaire, or rather a particular poem by Baudelaire touching on a very famous story in the Bible Cane & Abel is the real subject of the book, and it is now my task to put as adequately as I can my reasons for this forward. My ducks in a row, so to speak! But, in order to first do so, let me first reproduce the poem by Baudelaire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CXIX. – ABEL ET CAIN

 

I

 

Race d’Abel, dors, bois et mange ;

Dieu te sourit complaisamment .

 

Race de Caïn , dans la fange

Rampe et meurs misérablement.

 

Race de Caïn, ton supplice

Aura-t-il jamais une fin?

 

Race d’Abel, vois tes entrailles

Hurlent la faim comme un vieux chien.

 

Race de Caïn, tes entrailles

Hurlent la faim comme un vieux chien.

 

Race d’Abel, chauffe ton ventre

A ton foyer patriarchal ;

 

Race de Caïn, dans ton antre

Tremble de froid, pauvre chacal !

 

Race d’Abel, aime et pullule !

Ton or fait aussi des petits.

 

 

Race de Caïn, Coeur qui brûle,

Prends garde à ces grands appétits.

 

Race d’Abel, tu croîs et broutes

Comme les punaises des bois !

 

Race de Caïn, sur les routes

Traîne ta famille aux abois.

 

 

II

 

 

Ah ! race d’Abel, ta charogne

Engraissera le sol fumant !

 

Race de Caïn, ta besogne

N’est pas faite suffisament ;

 

Race d’Abel, voici ta honte :

Le fer est vaincu par l’épieu !

 

Race de Caïn, au ciel monte,

Et sur la terre jette Dieu ![1]

 

 

 

 

 

 CXIX. – Cain and Abel

 

 

Race of Abel, sleep, drink, and eat;

For God smiles down upon you benignly.

 

Race of Cain, always in the shit,

Scale new heights miserably.

 

Race of Abel, your only sacrifice

Is to flatter the noses of the seraphim.

 

Race of Cain, as for your penance

When is it ever to end?

 

Race of Abel, warm your belly

By your patriarch’s hearth.

 

Race of Cain, in your cave

Tremble with the cold you Jackal.

 

Race of Abel, love and propagate,

As your loved ones too will do.

 

Race of Cain, fear heartburn;

Best to temper those appetites!

 

Race of Abel, you breed and truly believe,

Like woodlice upon a tree.

 

Race of Cain, born only for the open road,

Dragging your family up through penury.

 

II

 

Ah! Race of Abel, your exquisite cadaver lies

Fattening the smoking land.

 

Race of Cain, your labours will never

Bear you any fruit.

 

Race of Abel, your only shame being

That the sword is always beaten by the pike.

 

Race of Cain, storm the heavens

And throw God from his thrown.[2]

 

 

 

As one reads the poem one becomes acutely aware at the similarity of the circumstances between the twin protagonists of Molloy; the damned Moran a shoe in for the role of Cain who very much like his Biblical counterpart apparently murders a man in part 2 of the novel. while the vagabond Molloy that of Abel, the shepherd, or dispossessed condemned to roam the countryside with his flock. In Genesis 4.  one is reminded;

 

 

And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain,

And said, I have gotten a man from the Lord.

2. And she again bare his brother Abel.

And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

 

 

This is where all the fun begins! So, in the Bible, Cain is the first born and yet it is Abel whom the Lord favours. Why? Let us again remind ourselves.

 

 

3. And in the process of time it came to pass, that Cain

Brought of the fruit of the ground and offering unto the Lord.

4. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and

Of the fat thereof. And the Lord hath respect unto Abel and

to his offering:

5. But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.[3]

 

 

We know the rest, Cain murders Abel in a fit of rage and is marked by the Lord and condemned to forever wander the earth ‘fugitive and vagabond’. All of which conforms to the status of both Abel and Cain in Baudelaire’s version, although the notion of patriarchy which Baudelaire introduces is questionable, as the Lord in the Bible does not follow the typical lines of patriarchy, by not granting to his firstborn his correct ‘inheritance’ as is traditionally the case, rather favouring the second born Abel who pleases him more by his diligence and hard work. Work being a key idea in salvation, though not for Cain nor his sons who are condemned to forever wander ‘in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.’ Thus the Christian ideal is very clear here, those who work and observe the word of the Lord will be the chosen people, while those who do not please the Lord, no matter what their position in heritage, by not working hard and observing his laws, will suffer eternal strife and will be cursed. Baudelaire, interestingly, places his poem in the Révolte section of Les Fleurs Du Mal and would clearly be siding, rather like Milton in Paradise Lost, with the injured party Cain, or at least would appear to be making a case for his revolt. What is then fascinating to compare, at least to this reader, is Beckett’s apparent treatment of the mythic pair, as I believe that there is a very strong case to make for such a comparison.

 

Molloy, for example, is peppered with curious symbols and signs that would appear to be alluding to the biblical myth of Cain and Abel. What could be seen as Beckett’s rewriting, such is my take in this particular reading. Moran assumes the role of Cain, as he is the one who is settled and so would be the one in possession, while the vagabond tramp Molloy, the dispossessed, being then cast in the role of Abel, itinerant in his ramblings, at first, like any shepherd. The shepherd is indicated very early on in the novel when Molloy spots one by the canal when he awakens after leaving his mother’s house, having spent the night in a ditch.

 

 

 

Mais le matin, un matin, je le retrouve, le matin deja avancé,

et le petit somme que je fis alors, suivant mon habitude, et

l’espace redevenu sonore, et le berger qui me regardait dormir

et sous les yeux de ce qui j’ouvris les yeux. A côté de lui un chien haletant,

qui me regardait aussi, mais moin fixement que son maître,

car de temps en temps il s’arrêtaiat de me regarder pour se mordiller furieusement

les chairs, aux endroits probablement où les tiques le mettaient

à contribution. Me prenait-il pour un mouton noir empêtré dans

les ronces et attendait-il l’ordre de son maître pour me sortir

de lè? Je ne crois pas. Je ne sens pas le mouton, j’aimerais bien

sentir le mouton, ou le bouc.[4]

 

 

This passage of the shepherd is extremely significant for our present purposes as it goes on for over two pages. The term treason is inserted just before the passage above which introduces the shepherd, ‘Trahisons, trahisons, la traîte pensée.’ The treachery of Cain and his act of fratricide signalled then very clearly. I would argue that this is a key theme of Beckett’s in his entire oeuvre, the theme of fratricide, an act, in a nutshell, which is symbolically, at least, the most violent expression of man’s violence towards his fellow man, in that the myth shows that if man holds his own brother in such contempt, any possible ideas on fraternity with his fellow man are merely a travesty. Fraternity being one of the three key ideas, of course, born from out of the French revolution which would have such resonance for a nineteenth century French poet, such as Baudelaire. Indeed, only Baudelaire, it could be said, matches Beckett’s fundamentally pessimistic view on man’s overall condition. Baudelaire, we know, inherited his views from Edgar Allan Poe and ‘the theoretician of Catholic counter-revolution’[5] Joseph de Maistre. Baudelaire was to review de Maistre’s Unpublished Letters and Opuscules a book which was published as early as 1851, the following year Baudelaire was to categorically state his debt to the two men who in his own words had ‘taught me to think.’

 

De Maistre is almost singlehandedly credited with convincing Baudelaire of man’s profoundly dire nature, in direct contrast to Rousseau. Rousseau of course being a key figure in the Enlightenment which had so marked the 17th and 18th centuries, eventually leading to the French revolution with its ideas of equality. De Maistre, in direct contrast to figures like Rousseau, who believed that man was inherently good, was that, rather like the Old Testament view, man was inherently bad, due to Original sin. Original Sin originating with his original disobedience of God’s sole commandment to Not eat of the fruit of the tree. Eve’s role in Adam’s downfall is of course, in Biblical terms, the origin of the ‘Fall’ of Man. But one must look to the language of the Bible, again, in order to remind oneself of the ‘original sin’, and, of course, the consequences in order to more fully appreciate the Copernican shift in perspective which Baudelaire, due to his readings of De Maistre and Poe, would now look upon the world, as it is this pessimistic vision which was to inform his most canonical work Les Fleurs Du Mal which is the purpose of this essay to remind readers of Beckett how fundamentally his worldview was to be so radically altered by late 19th century writers, but in particular, Charles Baudelaire.

 

17 And unto Adam he said, Because

Thou hast harkened unto the voice of thy wife,

And has eaten of the tree, of which I

Commanded thee, saying, Thou

Shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy

Sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all thy days

Of thy life;

 

This idea of the one accursed is so pertinent to Baudelaire who  was to write of Poe ( 1852 ) in his first major study of the American writer that some men were ‘marked by fate’, and he uses the term guignon. Now guignon in French derives from guigne which literally translates into jinx, or one who is jinxed or plagued by rotten luck. Guignol is a derivative which in popular French culture is a clown or an idiot, again fated, or damned, to an appalling destiny. Beckett’s authorised biography, in a curious inversion, by James Knowlson is called Damned to Fame ( 1996 ). Guignol theatre typically involved hand held puppets or marionettes, and featured ‘melodramatic tension, horror and shock’( Merriam-Webster), all of which have been equally applied to Beckett’s theatrical productions over the years. Baudelaire, in an even greater extension of this ‘damned’ myth, is typically regarded as the poète maudit par excellence. The ‘accursed’ poet living outside the conventions of society, the term was popularised by Paul Verlaine in a collection of essays he published under this title on three poets Tristan Corbiére, Arthur Rimbaud and Stephen Mallarmé ( 1884 ), all profoundly influenced by their undisputed King – Baudelaire! Rimbaud, in his much -quoted letter to Paul Demeny – 15th May 1871- states unambiguously; ‘Baudelaire est le premier voyant, roi des poètes, un vrai Dieu.’[6]

 

But, not only was man cursed, so too were the other two protagonists, first the serpent.

 

 

13 And the Lord God said unto the woman,

What is this that thou hast done? And the

Woman said, The serpent beguiled me,

And I did eat.

14 And the Lord God said unto the serpent,

Because thou has done this, thou art cursed

Above all the cattle, and above every beast

Of the field; upon thy belly thou shalt go,

And dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

 

Snakes to this very day have become symbolically assigned to the company of the damned, the diabolical, just as in the same way sheep and lambs have in the Christian world, because of the Bible, synonymous with Christ in the New Testament, but also, as we have seen with Abel in relation to his work. Abel was a shepherd, thus consigned to wander in the wilds with his flock, unlike his brother Cain, the first born, who was a tiller of the field. So, in this one pairing you have the possessor and the dispossessed.

In Molloy, Beckett very quickly dispels with any bucolic ideal.

 

Voila qui est important. Je sus donc aussitôt que c’était un berger

et son chien que j’avais devant moi, au-dessous de moi plutôt, car

ils n’avaient pas quittéle chemin. Et le bélement du

troupeau aussi, inquite de ne plus se sentir talonné,

je l’identifiai sans peine. C’est à ce moment aussi que

le sens des paroles m’est le moins obscure, de sorte

que je dis, avec une tranquille assurance, Où les

amenez-vous, aux champs ou à l’abattoir? ( p.37)

 

The reference to the abattoir a timely reminder of the fate of the sheep, the faithful flock being led by their master, the shepherd, to the place where they will be slaughtered for the procurement of their meat, wool and vital organs, in order for their master(s) to survive. It is all highly symbolic.

 

Je me mis à genoux, non, ça ne vas pas, je me mis debout et

je regardait s’éloigner la petite caravane. Je l’entendis

siffler, le berger, et je le vis qui s’affairait autour du

troupeau, qui sans lui serait sans doute tombé dans le

canal. Tout cela à travers une poussière étincelante

et bientôt à travers cette bruine aussi qui chaque jour

me livre à moi et me voile le reste et me voile à moi. ( p.37)

 

Dust covers everything, vision obscured the beasts go on their way, and Molloy listens as their bleating fades.

 

Et voilà comment débuta cette seconde journée, a

moins que ce ne fût la troisième ou la quatrième, et

ce fut un mauvais début, car il fit entre ren moi une

perplexité de long haleine, rapport à la destination de

ces moutons, parmi lesquels il y avait des agneaux, et

je me demandais souvent s’ils étaient bien arrives dans

quelque vaine pâture ou tombés, le crane fracases,

dans un froissement des maigres pattes, d’abord à

genoux, puis sur le flanc laineux, sous le merlin. Mais

ells ont du bon aussi, les petites perplexités. Quel

pays rural, mon Dieu, on voit des quadrupeds partout. ( p.38)

 

In the lexical field of signs, it appears to be a bad beginning for Molloy, the vison of the sheep. No doubt an omen of his state of being, a biblical vagabond, destined, like the sheep, for his own eventual slaughter, as it could also be his possible fate, considering the very random nature of the murder of the as yet unidentified man by Moran in part 2 of  the book. Indeed, through such associations, one is reminded of another poem by Baudelaire, his correspondences. 

 

La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers

Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles,

L’homme y passe à travers des forèts de symbols

Qui l’observent avec des regards familiers.[7]

 

In Molloy , it is as if Beckett takes this poem as his cue, moving the vagabond Molloy through the lexical fields, biblical in their retinue. [8] Of course, chief among the signs, for the purpose of our current examination, is the re-emergence of the sheep just after the murder of the stranger in the wood by Moran in part two, just after his contact with Molloy which apparently helps to speed a crisis of identity on the part of Moran.

 

Moran, we must remember, has been tasked to find Molloy by his employer, the agent Gaber having delivered the order appearing in Moran’s garden one particular Sunday morning. Historically, the whole idea of Agents is all to reminiscent of Beckett’s war time activities with the resistance cell Gloria of which Knowlson has the following to say which is of some significance to the character of Gaber in Molloy.

 

‘Gloria’ was one of several specialised cells which was centred on the

Parisian region but which gathered information widely over the whole

area of the occupied zone. The cell grew until it had eighty members. It

was also more or less autonomous. For although, in the early days of

the movement, members of some cells who knew each other well used

to meet quite openly, it was soon recognised that it was better if members

of one cell, or small groups within each cell, knew as little as possible

about the others. In that way, if uncovered, or betrayed, the damage

could, in principle at least, be limited to a more restricted circle. Agents

could not reveal under torture what they did know.[9] 

 

If one compares this passage from Knowlson with the following from Molloy the parallels are quite striking.

 

Et quand je parle d’agents et des messagers au pluriel,

c’est sans garantie. Car je n’avais vu d’autre messager

que Gaber ni d’autre agent que moi. Mais je supposais

que nous n’etions pas le seuls et Gaber devait supposer la

même chose. Car nous sentir uniques nos genres respectifs,

nous n’aurions pu le supporter je crois. Et il devait nous

paraître naturel, à moi qu’a chaque agent fût affecté un seul

messager et à Gaber qu’à chaque messager fût affecté un

seul agent. ( p.146)

 

There have been many commentaries made about Beckett’s war time experience and its resurfacing in his work, Hugh Kenner’s analysis on Waiting for Godot immediately springs to mind, so my point is not to linger too long here, but merely to remind the reader, and no doubt myself, about some of the historic context behind the work, as it is very indicative in terms of brooding mood and atmosphere, particularly concerning the murder which we must treat and which takes place at the end of the novel, that is to say at the end of part 2.

 

Je venais d’allumer mon feu et le regardais prendre

lorsque je m’entendis interpeller. La voix, si proche

déjà que je susautai, était celle  d’un homme. Mais

ayant sursauté je me repris et continuai à m’occuper

de mon feu comme si de rien n’était, en le remuant

avec un branche que j’avais arrachée à cette effet peu

de temps avant et don’t j’avais enlevé le tiges et les

feuilles et même une partie de l’écorcher, avec mes

seuls ongles.  ( p. 203 )

 

The nervousness on display typical for strangers one might expect in wartime, in respect to Moran’s behaviour to the stranger. But the encounter with this stranger, the one curiously whom he meets just after his encounter with Molloy, in terms of symbiology is what I wish to treat first here, as Moran is tending a fire. This is when the stranger arrives in the wood, the man Moran is to eventually kill, so just as the shepherd and his flock is symbolic in the present reading at the start of the novel, so too is the tableaux of Moran before the fire in the wood before he murders the man who very tellingly Moran says whose face ‘qui ressemblait vaguement, j’ai le regret de la dire, au mien’ ( p.205), and who in a few paragraphs previous describes also as ‘le genre d’emmerdeur que j’avais entrevu ( p.204 ). These details are very interesting in relation of the Cain and Abel myth which I am attempting to point to as a possible template for the author, without having, aside from all the circumstantial evidence of my reading, a shred of forensic evidence, I must confess. A veritable crime in today’s radically empiricist approach to reading texts chez Beckett, a practice I find rather tiresome, I must confess, for the sole reason that a lot of the time the great majority of the references which academics tend to use today in the field of Beckett Studies seem to come almost exclusively from the hand of Beckett himself, which to my mind is a very narrow field indeed, as it rather conveniently sets Beckett up as the final authority on how his work should be interpreted.

 

Whereas, the theory that I am proposing, or rather, the theory which the text suggests to me upon reading the signs is that this stranger whom Moran murders is, as Moran says himself, someone who physically ressembles him and is a bit of a shit, like him! In other words, a son of Cain, as opposed to Abel. In other words, another potential murderer! Why do I propose this version of the events? Well, before I do, let us return to the tableaux of the fire. The Heraclitean fire. Why Heraclitean? Because it is his primal element and it is there, I believe, because it is coherent in the field of references which are embedded in the text, as opposed to Beckett’s private notebooks! Why, when we are analysing a particular work, should we refer constantly, as is the standard practice today, to the notebooks of the author in question, almost unquestioningly when we know that the said authors will be aware that there notebooks, as Beckett assuredly was, would be scrutinized to death in order to substantiate any theories? This is what I meant earlier by ‘radical empiricism’, as such practices would appear to be all too delimiting, as we are, in this way, constantly merely reflecting back the vision of how the author wishes to be seen, or to have his/her work seen, and so who is further imposing an authority into the interpretation of the work in question, thus begging the case, in a way, for some form of special exemption. I do not, I must say without going any further, subscribe to this point of view as I have seen, from attending numerous conferences, how subsequent readings turn out following a specific pattern, or narrative, that is all too familiar, and all too cosily working into an overriding narrative of Beckett the author, and his high priests who form the enchanted Circle, which simply impede, at least in my view, a more inclusive interpretation of the works. For, as we are all aware, there are no definitive readings, particularly those imposed by the ‘Author’.

 

I have written already on the appearance of Heraclitus[10]in the writings of Beckett, tracing his lifelong fascination with the presocratic thinker from his very first published novel More Pricks than Kicks which appeared in the early 1930s to Comment C’est How It Is published almost thirty years later in the early 1960s, and which continued, apparently, up until his death. What I would like to underline here is that Beckett was not, of course, alone in taking an interest in Heraclitus. Nietzsche, for example, had directly singled the thinker out as an exceptionally perceptive thinker, even praising him above Plato and Aristotle. Indeed, so important did Nietzsche consider the thinker that he placed him alongside Parmenides and Empedocles whom he classified as Pre-Socratic thinkers, as opposed to Pre-Platonic, in order to strictly demarcate a very radical difference in their thinking and which Nietzsche believed was instigated by Socrates with his emphasis on rational thinking above all else. Heidegger was to take up the baton from Nietzsche, and indeed it was only last year that the first English language publication of Heidegger’s Heraclitus – and the Inception of Western Thought. So, Heidegger, singled out by Alan Badiou in Being and Event as the most formidable thinker in twentieth century philosophy, locates categorically as the place to look, if one were looking for another way to think outside of mere reasoning. Beckett’s oeuvre, rather similarly to Heidegger’s, one could suggest, is really all about teasing out other ways of enquiry apart from the rational, so called reasoning being the constant resource for humour, to the point of farce, in a lot of Beckett’s writing.

 

I have made reference to the war in relation to Molloy having mentioned Beckett’s wartime activities and how, in the case of Gaber particularly, the Author’s experience in the resistance informs the novel, as indeed have many other commentators. I should like to further the Hercaclitean nature of the allusions or signs now, so as to further claim that this, Beckett’s vision or stance, is not merely historic but can be seen to be much more all – encompassing in its overall vision of things, what one might call of a cosmological nature. This is where Heraclitus comes in. Let us return to the text for some evidence of such signs. As we are now focused on Moran and part 2 of the novel, let us recall the very first paragraph as the idea of war is clearly mentioned there.

 

Il est minuit. La pluie fouetté les vitres. Je suis calme.

Tout dort. Je me lève cependant et vais à mon bureau.

Je n’ai pas sommeil. Ma lampe m’écliare d’une

lumière ferme et douce. Je l’ai réglée. Elle me

durera jusqu’au jour. J’entends le grand-duc. Quel

terrible cri de guerre!

 

And there it is, the reference to war as part of the natural phenomenon of life, not as something distinct to a particular time and place in history, but as a fundamental aspect of life in general, and of course this particular world-view is uniquely Heraclitean. Hence fire, the most destructive and creative of all the elements, the most dynamic. Beckett is insistent on this point, and throughout his work. ‘When will you have done with your accursed notions of time?” the character of Hamm asks/screams in act two of Waiting for Godot when questioned by Estragon on when he went blind, having no clear visual impairment in act 1.

 

J’ai toujours aimé écorher les branches

et mettre à nu la jolie stèle claire et lisse. Mais

d’obscurs sentiments d’amour et de pitié vis-à- vis

de l’arbre m’en empêchaient le plus souvent. Et je

comptais parmi mes intimes le dragonnier de Ténériffe

qui périt à l’âge de cinq mille ans, frappé par la foudre. ( p. 204)

 

So, Moran thinks to himself as he stokes the fire in the forest just after his encounter with the vagabond Molloy, and his subsequent crisis of identity, and then his encounter with the stranger whom he eventually kills. Fragment number 64 in the constellation of aphorisms that we have which are remaining of Heraclitus is the one that immediately springs to mind with reference to the above text by Beckett. ‘Lightning steers the universe.’ which is incidentally the opening fragment in Heidegger’s discussion with Martin Fink in The Seminars of Heraclitus[11]. The thunderbolt being a violent action which can lead to destruction brought about by fire, as in the case of the example cited by Moran above. The metaphor is once of violence in relation to the world and life which is in keeping with the whole atmosphere of the novel. This fragment also is paraphrased in fragment 80, again by Heraclitus which states ‘War is the father of all things. He established some as gods and the others as humans; some he made slaves and others free.’[12]  Such is one side to the tale, as we must also insist that if Heraclitus is a constant store house of reference to Beckett, Democritus must also be made reference too, as while the former represents the tears, or suffering of the world, the latter represents the laughter. Again, we must resort to More Pricks than Kicks here, and particularly the chapter entitled Yellow in which the pair are mentioned, and at some length[13]. Of course, for a dramatist the pair are symbolically entwined to represent the theatre, in the form of both the comic and tragic muses respectively. One could say that again they are the unending pseudo-couple which govern the many marionettes, or characters, which Beckett peoples his work, as their influence is unending throughout his collected works. Comedy is  the therapeutic medicine for dealing with the ills of this world, it is reflexive in Beckett constantly counter-balancing the very often appalling conditions his characters find themselves in. It is why we, the readers, or theatre-goers, constantly return to his work for the medicinal laughter in the face of the brutal facts. His whole humour is based on suffering, ‘Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that.[14]   Beckett learned this from Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy, it is the essence of his work. It is what sets him apart from most writers of his time, those who, like he, had also endured the war years.

 

For example, here is an extract from a text by Rene Char the French poet who, like Beckett, also served with the resistance during the war and was also fascinated by Heraclitus, there are many texts written about the poet in connection with the pre-Socratic thinker. The text I am taking is from Fureur et Mystère which was written during the war years between 1938-1944.

 

La laterne s’allumait. Aussitot

un cour de prsion l’étreignait. Des

pêcheurs d’anguilles venaient là fouiller

de leur fer les rares herbes dans l’espoir

d’en extraire de quoi amorcer leurs lignes.

Toute la pégre des écumes se mettait a l’abri

du besoin dans ce lieu. Et chaque nuit la même

manège se répétait don’t jétais le témoin sans

nom et la victime. J’optais pour l’obscurité et

la reclusion.[15]

 

If you compare it to the opening paragraph of part 2 of Molloy, which I have quoted above, there are similarities with the lamp, but the tone or register is so different. Beckett’s is simple, direct, matter of fact. This is how it is, you get on with it. Tough love is the expression we use today. Whereas, Char’s tone is very different, he speaks about victims, for example. There is a pleading. Never in Beckett. But, this is all tedious, as these are the kind of banal ideas which you will find in a half a dozen or so documents. So, let us return, for God’s sake, to the text.

 

I should like now to treat a very important passage which is placed between Moran’s meeting with Molloy in part 2 just before he lights the fire in the wood and kills the stranger,  as what takes place in Moran would appear to be  nothing less than an identity crisis provoked possibly by his contact with Molloy and so which is extremely relevant, I believe, in the context of the present reading, and which I am trying, rather meanderingly, to pin down. You’ll have to forgive me, reader, I came rather late to academic composition and so have a tendency to wander. Before I treat the particular passage in question, it is perhaps best if I first treat Moran’s encounter with Molloy, so Cain then with Abel, as just like Baudelaire plays with his version of the events, siding with Cain, as it were, thus making of Cain a kind of rebel figure, so too I believe Beckett plays with the Biblical myth, but with an altogether different idea.

 

As I said, Moran first encounters Molloy in the wood, just after his son abandons him to go and look for a bicycle in the town of Hole, leaving him literally in the Shit. After first masturbating and enjoying, in general his first taste of privacy since he set off on his journey in the company of his son, Molloy appears out of the blue before Moran who appears to be totally unaware that it is his quarry.

 

Mais un peu plus tard, sorti dans je ne sais quell but,

je vis un homme a quelque pas de moi, debout et immobile.

Il me tournait le dos. Il portait un manteau lourd pour le

saison et s’appuyait sur un bâton tellement massif, et

tellement plus gros vers le bas que vers le haut, qu’on

aurait dit un massue. Il se retourna et nous regardâmes

assez longuement en silence. ( p. 198 )

 

 

The two men then continue to stare at one another, Moran, as he explains in order to show the other, as he usually does with strangers, to show him that he does not fear him, while Molloy throws Moran rapid looks from time to time, before looking down as if in reflection upon what he has seen, Moran explains. After some time looking upon one another like this, Molloy eventually doffs his hat, which Moran is very impressed with, so much so that he goes into a big description of it. So, unknown to Moran he is describing Molloy’s hat to to the reader who is in the know that it is Molloy that is standing before Moran who appears to be completely unaware of this fact. Moran then goes on to describe Molloy’s physical features a little more, his face and eventually his bizarre movements, so that if the reader had any doubt about the man’s identity, they could be sure now. Molloy eventually asks Moran for a bit of bread to eat, and it is after hearing Molloy speaking that he concludes that the man is a stranger to the region which seems to endear him to him. He offers Molloy some sardines.

 

Il me demandait du pain et je lui proposais du poisson.

Tout mon caratère et la. ( p.199)

 

This is classic Beckett, it is the kind of vaudeville banter that theatre goers around the world have come to appreciate in the Author’s plays. Waiting for Godot is full of such moments. Eventually Moran goes to his things and offers Molloy, a complete stranger, the piece of bread which he had been saving for his own son. Molloy breaks it in two and places the pieces in the pockets of his coat and before going on his way he lets Moran feel his stick which has made such an impression on him. All in all, the encounter between the two men is quite pleasant, after the initial doubts they might have had about one another, they have in two clear and distinct signs shown a form of brotherhood together; Moran by giving Molloy some bread, after it has been requested, and Molloy by letting Moran hold his stick. In these two significant acts trust among both men has been established. Now, let us move onto the next event of significance which happens in the novel.

 

After Molloy leaves him, Moran begins to get extremely restless. He tries to sleep, but in time he gets up and lights a fire in order to keep warm. He thinks about his son, and falls asleep. In the morning he wakes up, it is the second day that his son has been away from him now. As the day progresses and as he waits on his son to return, looking out at a particular point on the horizon, Moran starts to become troubled.

 

J’allais dans les bosquet pour me taille rune branche à mon

convenance, je me rappelai que je n’avais pas de couteau.

Je rentrai dans l’abri, espérant y trouver le couteau de mon

fils parmi les objets qu’il avait poses par terre et omis de

ramasser. Il n’y était pas. ( p. 201 )

 

While his son has left him, Moran has tried to build himself a home away from home in the clearing of the wood, a place where he get recreate some order, what he is usually used to. At the start of part 2, when we are introduced to Moran for the very first time we find him comporting himself as he would on a typical Sunday morning. The image that Beckett presents of Moran is revealed in the language he uses, the register is all telling. Someone once said, a friend of Beckett’s I believe, that Beckett was trying to take the piss out of the French when he wrote in their language, and reading the first few pages of part 2 in Molloy 

 one can well believe it.

 

Je me rappelle le jour où je recu l’ordre de

m’occuper de Molloy. C’était un dimanche d’été.

J’étais assis dans mon petit jardin, dans un fauteuil

de rotin, un livre noire fermé sur mes genoux. Il devait

être vers les onze heures, trop tôt encore pour aller à

l’église. Je goûtais le repos dominical, tout en déplorant

l’importance qu’on y attache, dans certaine paroissses.

Travailler, voire jouer le dimanche, cela n’était pas

forcément réprénsible, à mon avis. Tout dépendait de

l’état d’esprit de celui qui travaillait, ou qui jouait,

et la nature de ses travaux, de ces jeux, à mon avis. ( p.126 )

 

Here we have, in just the third paragraph of this particular section which is given over to Moran, the whole tone or register of all that is to come. A self-satisfied little prig, is probably how Moran could be best described. Pompous and conceited that he is. Thanks to the wonderful work of Dr Eoin O’Brien, we know that Beckett was largely inspired by his own upbringing in his familie’s home in Cooldrignagh in Foxrock in some of the passages that describe Moran’s house and environs. Moran’s is a social milieu which Beckett knows very well. It is strictly upper middle class, and it is a social background which he himself turned his back on when he made the very conscious decision to give up an academic career as a lecturer in Trinity College and which his family, particularly his mother, had put such great store by. There are, of course, similarities here again with Baudelaire who also turned his back on a life of privilege in order to pursue his art, and indeed it takes no leap of imagination to guess what might have possibly attracted both writers to the myth of Cain and Able two men whose destinies were apparently mapped out from day one. One, who being consigned to a life of wandering, flourished, while the one who stayed at home came to be damned!

 

Il faisait beau. Je regardait mes ruches, les sorties

et les rentrée des abeilles. J’entendais sur le gravier

les pas précipités de mon fils, ravi dans je ne sais

quelle fantasie de fuites et de poursuites. Je

lui criai de ne pas salir. Il ne repondait pas. ( p.126 )

 

The inclusion of a son and the relationship which Moran has with his son, ( I have always found part 2, I must confess, far more interesting than part 1 ) I have always found to be a fascinating aspect of the novel, and consider it to be worthy of some attention. Particularly in showing more light on the character of Moran. Considering that Beckett himself never had any children, I think that the relationship that he establishes between both characters is very believable, at times. Once again, it also reveals Moran’s very controlling nature. Everything that his son does must pass through Moran’s almost forensic examination. He is a control freak, in the language of today. An asshole, too, no doubt! A classic case of this being exhibited is the story of the stamps when his son wants to take his stamp albums with him, after being suddenly told that he must accompany his father on some mysterious trip into the country in order to find some stranger.

 

Je lui demandai ce qu’il attendait pour faire ce que je lui avait dit.

A la place de mon fils il y avait belle lurette que je me serais quitté.

Il ne me valait pas, ce n’était pas le même étoffe. Je ne pouvais échapper

à cette conclusion. Piètre satisfaction en effet que celle de se sentir

supérieur à son fils et insuffisante à calmer le remords de l’avoir appelé

à la vie. ( p.141)

 

This is brutal stuff, Moran is clearly an asshole, but at least he’s direct. There is no ambiguity. In fact, it is the apparent brutality of his reasoning which underscores a lot of the humour in the book, as it has been the case in the previous section with the vagabond Molloy. Indeed, this is a trait both of the characters share, perhaps it is what united them in the first place, which brings us back to the crisis which Moran has just after his encounter with Molloy. Moran, remember, has been waiting for his son to return on the second day of his departure for the bicycle which they both need so that Moran can be transported more easily after his accident, and Moran clearly is having problems adjusting to his new environment living out in the woods, far from his methodically organised life which he had been enjoying in the comfort of his own home and which he ruled at least up this point pretty much to his own very exacting standards, there is a lot of humour with the maid in this respect who clearly can’t stand his guts and delights in foiling Moran’s plans. Now, he finds himself alone and injured in the wild, being placed in a situation in which he is clearly not in control. Curiously, his encounter with Molloy, whom he doesn’t recognise, is the only thing which seems to calm him, a little. Both men, in fact, find a kind of sympatico. Moran even gives Molloy the bread which he has been holding for his son whom he clearly holds a little in contempt.

 

Et il me semblait me

voir viellir à une vitesse d’ephémère. Mais l’idée de

vieillissement n’était pas exactement celle qui se pré-

sentait alors à moi. Et ce que je voyais ressemblait

plutôt à un émiettement, a un effondrement rageur

de tout ce que depuis toujours me protégeait de ce

que depuis toujours j’étais condamné à être. Ou

j’assistais à un sorte de forage de plus en plus rapide

vers je ne sais quell jour et quell visage, connus et

reniés.  ( p. 202 )

 

 

Something is provoked in Moran and which deeply troubles him, and it affects him to the very core of his being. Suddenly, this massively conceited and ordered man, a kind Cartesian man, in a sense, who so prides himself on the fineness of his reasoning, compared to his son, for example, and who looks down on Martha his servant with whom he enjoys outwitting, just as much as he does his son. Suddenly, he is beginning, for perhaps the very first time in years, to have doubts as to his own identity. It is an extraordinary passage in the novel, and points the way very certainly ahead to the subject matter of further novels, such as L’innommable which makes of the subject of the enquiry into the nature of human identity its whole area of unique focus which is unique in the history of the novel. But here, in this whole passage, we can find the nucleus of what is to be the increasingly common nature of all of Beckett’s unique probing into self and notions of selfhood. The idea of duality is of course touched on in the respective characters of Moran and Molloy, but only in the Heraclitean notion of it which is in unison; opposites being but two halves of the same equation. This is why I think the Cain and Abel myth is so appropriate, as there is something else going on, and it continues to be developed by Beckett throughout the extent of his whole life work, and that is his obsession with man’s inhumanity to his fellow man of which Comment C’est/ How It Is treats the most extensively.

 

Mais comment décrire cette sensation qui de

sombre et massive, de grinçante et pierreuse, se fai-

sait soudain liquide. Et je voyais alors une petite

boule montant lentement des profondeurs, à travers

des eaux calmes, unie d’abord, à peine plus claire

que les remous qui l’escortent, puis peu à peu visage,

avec les trous des yeux et de la bouche et les autres

stigmates, sans qu’on puisse savoir si c’est un visage

d’homme ou de femme, jeune ou vieux, ni si son

calme aussi n’est pas un effet de l’eau qui le sépare

du jour. ( p. 202 )

 

 

Moran is having a complete meltdown, in terms of identity. Gone is the Cartesian notion of self, and of course one could resort to the whole symbolism of the wood equating it with man’s unconscious a la Freud, or Lacan, with its infernal cogito; as poor Moran is truly lost in the dark wood of the soul. Of course, Dante too springs to mind and the celebrated first three lines of l’Inferno – Nel mezzo del cammin de nostro vita, mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la dirrita via era smaritta. This is Moran’s dark wood, and he can’t handle it.[16]

 

What is interesting to note in the passage when Moran confronts the stranger, eventually apparently killing him, is the very different way in which he interacted with Molloy, and this I believe brings us back to the Cain and Abel myth. As one can clearly see that the stranger’s attitude is what one could only describe as territorial, whereas with Molloy, being a vagabond by nature, there can be no such claims to territory. For instance, what clearly upsets Moran is the tone the man takes up with Moran. After launching into a series of questions, in a demanding tone, all to which Moran does not respond, the man eventually gets frustrated with Moran’s attitude and advises him to answer him, as if he had some kind of authority over Moran to which Moran clearly rejects.

 

Je vous conseille de me reponde, dit il. Je ne vous

connait pas, dit je. Elle était bonne, en effet. Monsieur

desire -t-il voire ma carte? dit il. Elle ne m’apprendrait

rien, dit je. Il vient plus prés de moi. Otez-vous de là, dit- je.

Ce fut alors lui qui rit. Vous refusez de repondre? dit-il.

Je fit un grand effort. Que voulez- vous savoir? dit- je. ( p.205)

 

This is the discourse of the sons of Cain. It is laborious, heavy, and tedious, and inevitably it is going to end badly. As it does! The constant one upmanship. The constant struggle for authority. The smart quips. We have all witnessed it, at some stage or other, and it is in very marked contrast to the discourse with Molloy which was based on mutual respect, such is the governing of the tongue with the sons of Abel. In the end Moran dispatches with the stranger, and the Author refuses to even describe the violence. In fact, Moran seems unaware himself as to how he killed the man. But with a violent blow, or two or three, obviously. It is as if the whole event is so tedious that it does not merit recording. Such, at least is Beckett’s treatment of it which would be in direct contradiction to the state of current entertainment today, when one thinks that the majority of films, and Netflix series are all centred around the violence of such encounters Molloy in this respect is the anti-novel par excellence. Indeed, this is the singular genius of the novels in question, yet Molloy most particularly as it is in Molloy that Beckett explores for the first time the theme that will obsess him until at least the completion of Comment C’est How It Is and it can be perfectly embodied in the myth of Cain and Abel; in short man’s fellow inhumanity to his fellow man.

 

In a kind of irony, when Moran makes to get rid of the corpse, taking hold of the dead man’s ankles, he notices that the man is wearing a pair of socks with a design of goats, a kind of travesty of the mark of Cain and in a continuing series of signs, all adding to the mystical configuration, after placing the body next to the fire, Moran sits down to relax and he listens to the owls. ‘Ce n’étaient pas des ducs, ça faisait un cri comme un siflet de locomotive.’ ( p.206/07) The war ended, he watches the fire die. Sure enough, his son arrives with the bicycle and they are on their way to Ballybaa. Now at the start of this essay, I mentioned Beckett’s longstanding hatred of the Republic, due to the censorship laws which his books had come up against. One can only guess at the number of reasons why Samuel Beckett took the prefix Bally, which is the anglicised form of the Irish Baile, meaning town, and why he affixed the suffix baa, which of course is the sound that sheep make. The term sheeple, springs to mind. The idea that Irish people in the republic are sheep like in their slavish devotion to doing what the government and the church tell them to do, at the time of the composition of Molloy Éamon de Valera was the dominant personage in Irish politics overseeing one of the most repressive regimes in the history of the state. He was Taoiseach for three periods, 1937-1948, 1951 – 1954 and 1957-1959. This was the period of Irish history that my own parents grew up in where the proximity between church and state was practically joined at the hip, the repression of that era can still be felt in contemporary Ireland despite all its claims of progress. I offer myself as proof of this last statement, as I have yet to have a book published in the Republic, after having had three published in Belfast, three in France, three in the UK and one in New Zealand. In fact, my latest book is to be once again published in France as I could not find a publisher in the Republic of Ireland, I had to ask a French poet to translate my book, as I knew that a French publisher would have no qualms about publishing it. The book in question is inspired by Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin.

 

After arriving in Ballbaa, Moran and his son are surrounded by black sheep. The irony is marvellous; a black sheep being metaphoric for someone who doesn’t fit in! Then, a moment of almost perfect symmetry, the shepherd appears, just as he did in part 1 when Molloy awoke beside the canal.

 

Le berger me ragardait venir, sans se lever. Le chien aussi,

sans aboyer. Les moutons aussi. Oui, peu à peu, me faisaient

face, me regardaient venir. Seuls quelque brefs mouvements

de recul, une maigre patte frappant le sol, trahaissaient

leur trouble. ( p.215 )   

 

And the idea of treason is, of course, reiterated. It is an astonishing moment of revelation when you clear through the thicket, and the signs appear as they are resplendent to themselves. It is an act of calculated revelation which Beckett, the Author, creates painstakingly. I have mentioned the term tableaux, in relation to Moran and the campfire and it is an image worthy of Rembrandt. Eoin O’ Brien in The Beckett Country singles out Rest on the Flight into Egypt by the Dutch artist in connection with a piece of text taken from Beckett’s first stab at a novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women [17] it is an image that Beckett would have been familiar with from his visits to the National Gallery in Dublin, and when one sees this image, and the great darkness surrounding the figures in the clearing in the wood, illuminated by the fire one cannot but be reminded of the Heraclitus fragment on lightening, here is Heidegger again.

 

But lightning steers beings as a whole.

 

 

Fire, as lighting, ‘steers,’ surveys, and shines over the whole of

beings in advance and permeates this whole pre-luminously in

such a way that, at the blink of an eye, the whole joins itself,

kindles itself, and excites itself each time into its conjoinedness.[18]

 

Heidegger use the term Lichtung as an essential idea in his thinking, it means clearing in English, and Heidegger, a great walker in the mountains, takes the idea of a clearing in a wood using the idea of light which penetrates the clearing. Heidegger uses this analogy for his kind of thinking, and it is exactly this kind of thinking that I am reminded of when I read Beckett’s passage about Moran in the wood where he has his crisis of identity and where he eventually commits murder. Is this the point in his life when Moran ceases to be like Cain, the figure he once was, and accepts his other nature, that of Abel belonging then to one of the dispossessed? It is a question I pose. Of course Beckett uses silence, as he promised he would in that early attempt at a novel, just as Rembrandt and Caravaggio before him used the darkness to illuminate, and to help clarify things. This was something he learned from another old master, but from another discipline. I am referring to Beethoven. Molloy the novel seen as a literary counterpart to Beethoven’s Pastoral. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

 

Baudelaire, Charles: Les Fleurs Du Mal, Garnier Flammarion, Paris, 1991.

Beckett, Samuel: Molloy, Éditions de Minuit, Collection “double”, Paris, 2002.

Char, René : Fureur et Mystére, NRF, Nouvelle Edition, Gallimard, Paris, 2007.

Fink & Heidegger: Heraclitus Seminars, Translated by Charles H. Seibert, Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois, 1993.

Heidegger, Martin: Heraclitus – The Inception of Occidental Thinking and Logic: Heraclitus’s Doctrine of the Logos, Translated by Julia Goesser Assainte and S. Montgomery Ewegen, Bloomsbury Academic, London, First Published, 2018.

Fowlie, Wallace: Rimbaud – Complete Works, Selected Letters, Translation and Notes by Wallace Fowlie with the French on Facing pages, University of Chicago Press, 1966.

King James Bible, Collins Bible, Harper & Collins, no date of publication given. 

Knowlson, James: Damned to Fame – The Life of Samuel Beckett , Bloomsbury, London, First Paperback Edition 1997.

O’Brien, Eoin: The Beckett Country, The Black Cat Press in association with Faber and Faber, Monkstown, Co. Dublin, First Edition, 1986

O’Neill, Peter: More Micks than Dicks – a Hybrid Beckettian Novella in 3 Genres, Famous Seamus, London, 2017. 

Pichois & Ziegler: Baudelaire , Translated by Graham Robb, Vintage Lives, London, 2002.

 

 

  

 

 

 



[1] Baudelaire, Charles: Les Fleurs Du Mal, Garnier Flammarion, Paris, 1991, pp.172/3.

[2] This translation was first published in Levure Littèraire issue 10.

[3] King James Bible, CollinsBible, Harper & Collins, no date of publication given. 

[4] Beckett, Samuel: Molloy, Éditions de Minuit, Collection “double”, Paris, 2002, p.36. 

[5] Pichois & Ziegler: Baudelaire , Translated by Graham Robb, Vintage Lives, London, 2002, pp. 182,183.

[6] Fowlie, Wallace: Rimbaud – Complete Works, Selected Letters, Translation and Notes by Wallace Fowlie with the French on Facing pages, University of Chicago Press, 1966, p.310.

[7] Baudelaire, Charles: Les Fleurs Du Mal, Garnier-Flammarion, Paris, 1991, p. 62.

[8] There have been many studies referencing the Bible in relation to Molloy, among them being –  Allegories of Clarified Obscurity: Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress” and Beckett’s “Molloy” by Julie Campbell, Samuel Beckett Today/ Aujourd’hui, Vol. 24. Early Modern Beckett / Beckett et le début de l’ère modern: Beckett Between/ Beckett entre deux ( 2012 ) pp.89-103.

 

[9] Knowlson, James: Damned to Fame – The Life of Samuel Beckett , Bloomsbury, London, First Paperback Edition 1997, p. 305.

[12] Ibid. p.23.

[13] Now among our wise men, I doubt many would laugh at Heraclitus weeping, none which would weep at Democritus laughing.’

Beckett, Samuel: More Pricks than Kicks, Picador, London, 1974, p. 148 – further reference to Heraclitus and Democritus made on p.149.

[14] Beckett, Samuel: Endgame, Faber and Faber, London, 1976, p.20.

[15] Char, René : Fureur et Mystére, NRF, Nouvelle Edition, Gallimard, Paris, 2007,p.15.

[16] For a perspective on Dante in relation to Molloy see –

Caselli, Daniela: Beckett’s Dantes – Intertextulaity in the fiction and criticism, Manchester University Press, First Published 2005. 

For a psychoanalytical analysis of Molloy see –

Rose, G. J. (1973-1974). On the shores of self: Samuel Beckett's "Molloy"-irredentism and the creative impulse. Psychoanalytic Review, 60(4), 587–604.

[17] O’Brien, Eoin: The Beckett Country, The Black Cat Press in association with Faber and Faber, Monkstown, Co. Dublin, First Edition, 1986, p.146.

[18] Heidegger, Martin: Heraclitus – The Inception of Occidental Thinking and Logic: Heraclitus’s Doctrine of the Logos, Translated by Julia Goesser Assainte and S. Montgomery Ewegen, Bloomsbury Academic, London, First Published, 2018, p.123.


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