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Abstract
SPEAKING ABOUI Samuel Beckett and the problem of God is speaking about
an ambiguity For, on the one hand he uses Biblical and religious allusions, with
which he is familiar, and on the other he reduces God, the divine, and religion
in general to the level of the ludicrous This double attitude towards his
religious heritage has caused much confusion and debate among the critics who
attempt to analyse his stance towards the problem of God and many opposed
interpretations of his work have appeared Thus, there are critics who stress
Beckett's negative attitude towards religion and others who claim that Beckett
has a positive attitude towards God
However, any effort to read Beckett's work as totally negative towards
metaphysics or as anti-Christian is marked by (1) an over-rehance on Beckett's
satiric tone towards religion, (2) a tendency to read one's own philosophical
ideas into his works, (3) a tendency to criticize a piece of art from a religious
perspective without recognizing the autonomy of art, (4) a failure to recognize
that Beckett's intention may be to free people from any kind of metaphysical
discourse, either theistic or atheistic, and (5) a failure to recognize the tender,
lyrical and even mystical tone of some passages of his work
On the other hand, taking into consideration and overestimating the mystical
and optimistic passages as well as the Biblical allusions that can be found in
Beckett's work, some other critics argue for Beckett's positive attitude towards
Christian belief and religion in general Any attempt to read Beckett's works as
Chnstianly orthodox or as having a totally positive attitude towards metaphysics
is characterized by ([) an over-reliance on a prevalence of Christian imagery and
© Oxford Univeratv Press 2000
SPYMDOULA ATHANASOPOULOU-KYPRIOU 35
symbolism, (2) the making of unfounded assumptions, and (3) a failure to
recognize irony or, in some cases, a feeling of disgust
Given that, on the one hand, Beckett shows clearly his opposition to God and,
on the other, there are some mystical and optimistic moments in his work, it is
quite arbitrary to jump to the conclusion that he has either a totally positive or a
completely negative attitude towards the divine Thus, instead of considering
Beckett's work as either positive or negative towards God, some other critics try
to explain Beckett's double attitude towards the divine bv assigning to him the
active intention of coming up with a truer vision of deity Any such attempt,
theologically upbuilding though it may be, is marked by (1) a failure to recog-
nize that Beckett's main concern is with the human situation and not with the
BECKETT AS AN ANTI-THEIST
The rascal, he's getting humanised, he's going to lose if he doesn't watch out, if
he doesn't take care, and with what could he take care with what could he form
the faintest conception of the condition they are decoving him into, (7",363)
Beckett refuses to see God as part of the cosmic reality, as a being among other
beings who is knowable and is placed in a world, be it sensory or suprasensorv
In llic Urmamabtc he says clearly
The mistake they make of course is to speak of him as if he reall) existed, in <i
specific, place, whereas the whole thing is no more than a project for the moment
But let them blunder on to the end of their folly, then they can go into the
question again, taking care not to compromise themselves by the use of terms, if
not of notions, accessible to the understanding (7^,375)
A god, made in the image of people and according to their needs, is not a real
god but only a projection of a weak and scared human intellect The author
points out that everything including the concept of God, is human invention
and says ' I invented it all, in hope it would console me, help me to go on,
allow me to think of myself as somewhere on a road, All lies' (T,3 16)
Beckett's extensive use of negative language when speaking of the unknown
makes some critics assume that he rejects natural theology and, like the negative
theologians, argues for the otherness of God For instance, Buning explores the
SPYRIDOULA ATHANASOPOULOU-KYPRIOU 37
parallels between Beckett's works and the works of Pseudo-Dionysius the
Areopagite and Meister Eckhart and implies that there can be a significant
relation between the 'haunting emphasis on nothing and notness in the trilogy'
and the thirty-five negative attributes of God or Godhead, including the not
namable, found in the Mystical 'theology of Pseudo-Dionysius
However, trying to link Beckett's use of negative language with an active
intention to argue for apophatic theology and its understanding of the divine,
illuminating though as it may be, is arbitrary For not every apophatic discourse
can be considered theological It is only if it argues, in one way or another, in
favour of a transcendent deity that it can be characterized theological In other
words theology no matter how 'apophatic1 it may be, seems to reserve a
certain type of hyperessentiahtv, a being be\ond Being According to negative
it's the fault of the pronouns, there is no name for me, no pronoun for me, all
the trouble conies from that, that, it's a pronoun too, it isn't that either, I'm not
that cither, (T,4o8)
Feeling nothing, knowing nothing, he exists nevertheless but not for himself,
for others, others conceive him and say. Worm is, since we conceive him, as if
there could be no being but being conceived if only by the bee'r (7,349)
Beckett chooses also the supreme sacrament of the Christian faith, the Euchanst,
to ridicule it In Molloy, Moran is very m u c h c o n c e r n e d with the effectiveness
of t h e Euchanst if taken on top of beer, h o w e v e r light (7,97) In the follow-
ing pages of the novel, Beckett's parody of the Euchanst is even m o r e radical,
especially w h e n his h e r o takes the sacred feast but realizes n o benefit from doing
so As his hero confesses
The host, it is only fair to say, was lying heavy on my stomach And as I made
my way home I felt like one who, having swallowed a pain-killer, is first
astonished then indignant, on obtaining no relief (T,iO2)
SPYRIDOULA ATHANASOPOULOU-KYPRIOU 39
By companng the host with a pain-killer, Beckett implies that religion is
people's last resort Tired of a painful life, people find in religion a kind of
consolation Having tried everything, or at least that is what they think, they
pray to God for help and salvation People's piety grows 'warm in times of
crisis' (T,2io)
Nonetheless, although there is, undoubtedly, an abiding criticism and satire of
theism as well as of Christianity, Beckett is not an avowed anti-Chnstian who
tries to relieve himself of his anti-Chnstian feelings in his works If he uses the
Bible and the Christian imagery to ridicule religion, he does so because he is
perfectly familiar with Christianity and therefore he can use effective examples
taken from this tradition to criticize theism in general Besides, he opposes not
only theism and religion but also all those philosophies, be they sacred or secular,
The crisis started with the end of the seventeenth century, after Galileo The
eighteenth century has been called the century of reason, le siecle de la raison I've
never understood that, they're all mad, ils sont tous fous, lls deraisonnent1 They
give reason a responsibility which it simply can't bear, it's too weak The
Encyclopedists wanted to know everything But that direct relation between
the self and - as the Italians say - lo scibile, the knowable, was already broken
What 1 sought when I struggled out of my hole, then aloft through the stinging air
towards an inaccessible boon, was the rapture of vertigo, the letting go the fall
the gulf, the relapse to darkness, to nothingness, to earnestness, to home, to him
waiting for me always, who needed me and whom I needed, who took me in his
arms and told me to stay with htm always, who gave me his place and watched
over me, who suffered every time I left him, whom I have often made suffer and
seldom contented, whom I have never seen (7,195)
42 SAMUEL BECKETT BEYOND THE PROBLEM OF GOD
Similarly, in the French version of the play Waiting for Godot, Vladimir speaks
of Godot's arrival and says optimistically
Ce soir on couchera peut-etre chez lui, au chaud, au sec, le ventre plein, sur la
paille Qa vaut la peine qu'on attende N o n ' (EAG,2$)
These optimistic or even mystical passages, far from being evidence for Beckett's
positive attitude towards the transcendent, show people's constant search for
some meaning in a godless and purposeless universe W h e n Beckett adopts a
lyrical tone to speak of the unknown, he does so not because he wants to justify
any belief in it, as Baldwin implies in her book, but because he knows that
people still need the ineffable to be their horizon Beckett is quite sensitive to
Therefore, people are still waiting for some help to be offered by an external
force It there is nothing out there they create the goal for which the waiting
When I think, that is to say, no, let it stand, when I think of the time I've wasted
with these bran-dips, beginning with Murphy who wasn't even the first, when
I had me, on the premises, within easy reach, (7",394)
SPYRIDOULA ATHANASOPOULOU-KYPRIOU 43
Similarly, while waiting, people loose their moral consciousness Absorbed by
the act of waiting they forget their responsibilities for the rest of humankind
As Hamm puts it in Endgame
All those I might have helped (Pause ) Helped1 (Patae ) Saved (Pause ) Saved1
(Pause) The place was crawling with them1 Get out of here and love one
another' Lick your neighbour as yourself (£,44)
People wait In the meantime, they are trapped bv their hope for salvation and
they cannot change their situation In Waitin^for Godot, Estragon admits that
'they all change Only we can't * (WG^R) Waiting for a 'saviour' to arrive
In the second act it is Vladimir who suggests that they should go and receives
the same positive response However, in both cases the heroes do not move
Analogously, in Iutdqame Hamm suggests that they should go from there But
Clov reminds him that 'God forbid1' (k,2#) Thus, although people have started
realizing the vanity of any metaphysical quest and hope, and try to escape from
them, the powerful routine of waiting and the traditional metaphysical systems
plunge them back into the passivity of illusion and keep them from 'reaching the
painful but fruitful awareness of the full reality of being'
Given his negative presentation of the consequences of people's waiting and
the allusions to an escape from the routine of expecting, Beckett argues for
people's responsible decision to leave behind all certainties and move on with
their life without clinging to any metaphysical hope Unlike Combs who implies
that Beckett opposes people s impulse to go on and that in Waiting for Godot
the writer justifies people's waiting for something or someone to come and
save them, I suggest that Beckett is deeply concerned with and emphasizes
46 SAMUEL BECKETT BEYOND T H E PROBLEM OF G O D
people's potentiality for going o n While in his plays there are only allusions of
his concern with moving on, in The Unnamable Beckett is very clear when he
says ' you must go on, that's all I k n o w ' (7",4i8)
Although it is difficult to abandon the traditional metaphysical systems and
live without a point of reference,
In the final sentence of The Unnamable the narrator realizes the difficulty of
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 (7",4i8)
Since that's the way we're playing it (he unfolds handkerchief) let's play it that
way (he unfolds) and speak no more about it (he finishes unfolding) speak
no more (£.52)
Searching for rules and coherent principles in an absurd universe where there
may be no closed systems and no metaphysical truth, is not the sign of a superior
peace of mind but rather an indication of people's resignation and weakness
According to Beckett, it is by realizing that any metaphysical quest is doomed
to failure that peace of mind enters in the human soul As the narrator puts it
in Molby
For to know nothing is nothing, not to want to know anything likewise, but to
be beyond knowing anything, to know you are beyond knowing anything, that
is when peace enters in, to the soul of the incurious seeker (T/>4)
To sum up, in terms of the Irish writer, the dignity of human beings lies in their
ability to face reality in all its senselessness, to accept it freely, without fear,
without clinging to illusions, without waiting for anything, to laugh at it and
go on As the narrator says in The Unnamable
CONCLUSION
In the opening line of my paper I suggested that speaking about Samuel Beckett
and the problem of God is speaking about an ambiguity Yet what we con-
sider to be an ambiguity does not necessarily mean that it is one For Beckett's
double stance towards God and metaphysics in general can be reconsidered
and reinterpreted in such a way that his attitude will no longer be regarded
as double
that people cannot know whether life has a meaning or not and whether God
exists or not
Unlike the critics who argue for cither Beckett's positive or negative attitude
towards metaphysics, I suggest that he wants, in fact, to overcome this dilemma
In his works, he neither rejects nor justifies metaphysics Similarly, he neither
48 SAMUEL BECKETT BEYOND THE PROBLEM OF GOO
denies nor accepts the existence of God, for the problem of God's existence
simply exceeds the limits of human knowledge
In this respect, Beckett is not really interested in discussing the credibility of
the concept of God and of metaphysics, and therefore his active intention is not
to come up with a truer vision of the divine or a better understanding ot
metaphysics His abiding concern is rather with people's metaphysical anguish
and emptiness after God and traditional metaphysics have lost their effectiveness
In work after work, he dramatizes the human tragic condition after people have
lost their metaphysical horizon and suggests that no matter h o w hard they seek
eternal truths and values, their efforts are doomed to failure for the problem rests
in the nature of their quest In other words, in so far as people are searching for
truths and are waiting for an external force to help them, they do not face up to
REFERENCES
\EAG=kn Attendant Godot (Pans Les A Play in One Act Followed by -\ct Without
Editions de Minim 1952), C = Endgame Words -\ Mime for One Player (London Faber
SPYRIDOULA ATHANASOPOULOU-KYPR1OU 49
and Faber 1958), P4 = Prtmier Amour (Pans Samuel Beckett A Collection of Critical Essays
Les Editions de Minim, 1970), T— Trilogy (Englewood Cliffs New Jersey Prentice-
\lolloy, \lalone Dies, The Unnamable (London Hall 1965), p 145, Francis W Nichols,
Montreuil New York Calder Publications 'Samuel Beckett and Ecclesiastes on the
1994), WG — Waiting for Godot 4 borders of belief Encounters, 45 (1984)
Tragicotomedy in Two Aits (London Faber pp 14—1 (1
4
and Faber i9S>)] See Gabriel Vahaman, The Death oj God The
Beckett received a thorough grounding in Culture oj Our Post-Chnsttan Era (New York
the Biblt as a child and added to it a close George Braziller, 1961), p 120, Richard
knowledge of both Protestantism and N Coe Le Dieu de Samuel Beckett ,
Catholicism This double heritage Cahters Renaud-Banault, 44 (1963), p 27,
Christianity in two forms, constitute-, the Andre Manssel Samuel Bickett (Pans
mythology with which he has declared Editions Universitaires 1963), p 88, Louis
himself perfect!) familiar Lance St John Barjon, "Le Dieu de Beckett', Ftudes, 322
Butler, A mythologv with which I am (1965), p 656, Jean Onimus, Beckett Les