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Even to state the problem is to violate logic, for how can one
prefer "The expression that there is nothing to express...' ? That
cannot be expressed.
deal, but it is not only the shape that matters. Even if he pretends
otherwise, Mr Beckett is very concerned with the sense too:
One must not forget, however, that this view itself is paradoxical,
and that therefore it is not a question of whether it is right or
wrong, whether or not we can accept it as the final truth, any more
than we can sensibly give a straight Yes or No to the question
'Aren't we all mad really?' We are like a judge listening to evidence
from prosecution and defence, only here there can be no judgment,
for to decide in favour of one is to rule out the truths of the other.
And on this other side the intricate and subtle analyses of a Freud
or Proust, certainly not chimerical, should serve to remind Mr
Beckett that there is more to the personality than its erotogenic
zones, more to conversation than Molloy's code of bangs on his
mother's head, or Bom's scratches on the back of Pirn. We feel that
254 THE CAMBRIDGE QUARTERLY
one side or the other must be right, that there either are depths to
the personality or there are not, that we either meaningfully com-
municate or we don't. But this attitude is quite incorrect, and is due
to the unconscious influence of the logical axiom that a thing
cannot be both p and not-p. In logic it can't, but in life it can. A
man can be both humble and proud, stupid and intelligent. And
For it (the old bad leg) was shortening, don't forget, whereas
the other, though stiffening, was not yet shortening, or so far
behind its fellow that to all intents and purposes, intents and
purposes, I'm lost, no matter.
And one should notice the connection between the stiffening of the
She had a hole between her legs, oh not the bunghole I had
always imagined, but a slit, and in this I put, or rather she put,
my so-called virile member, not without difficulty, and I
toiled and moiled until I discharged or gave up trying or was
begged by her to stop. A mug's game in my opinion and tiring
on top of that, in the long run. But I lent myself to it with a
good enough grace, knowing it was love, for she had told me
so. {Molloy)
258 THE CAMBRIDGE QUARTERLY
But why write with such obvious concern for style? Can it be
excused, for a man in his position ? Mr Harvey comments : 'What
are these pretty decorations doing here?' Just as one can logically
argue that, although life is meaningless, nonetheless one may as well
make the best of it, so one can logically argue that, although literary
Here present is the style, die wit and the despair. On almost every
page of Beckett these three make their appearance. They are
present on the last page of How It Is :
She sat on till it was nearly dark and all the flyers, except the
child, had gone. At last he also began to wind in and Celia
watched for the kites to appear. When diey did dieir contor-
tions surprised her, she could hardly believe it was the same
pair that had ridden so serenely on a full line. The child was
260 THE CAMBRIDOE QUARTERLY
being the main emotion of the seriously schizoid patient, his outlook
on life and on himself is one he finds terrifying. Guntrip has pointed
out that we all prefer to think of ourselves as Bad Somebodies (the
depressive position) rather than the truth, that we are Weak Non-
entities (the schizoid position). Indeed, we adopt the former as a
defence against the latter. To take the patient back to where he
I say it as I hear it
prose pieces are about as near as you can get to nothing, to the
silence that precedes birth, at least on paper. But there is also a
progression, for while the language of the characters is dying by
being taken back to a preverbal past, bodies are also progressing
towards a real physical death. In other words, the Beckett char-
acters are going both ways to the silence. The mind/body split is
derided, and rightly; not so often the intellect, the pride of Western
man, and rarely by an intellect as powerful as Mr Beckett's. But it
is right that the intellect should be mocked, for that too is as
pathetic as the rest Nothing is funnier than astrophysics. Our
pretensions of love, intellect, emotion, conversation, the trivial
deeds and duties with which we cloak the futility of our every day
I can't go on, you must go on, I'll go on, you must say words,
as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me,
strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it's done
already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have
carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that
opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will
be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll
never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on,
I can't go on, I'll go on.
C. J. Bradbury Robinson
An Apology
IN HIS ARTICLE ON LEAVIS AND WINTERS in our Spring/Summer
1970 number (Volume V, Number 1, p. 41) Mr John Fraser wrote