BECKETT
267
all
language is "an excess of language"
(((un ecart de langage");
the
best they can do is to remain attentive, behind the words, to the silence
they are breaking, and hope for "the real silence" in which self–
possession can, however, be simply the experience of nothingness.
Maurice Blanchot, himself interested in this silence at the source
of literature, has described
The Ul111amable
as "the pure approach to
the movement from which all books come, to that original point where
the work probably loses itself." I've tried to make such an approach
seem probable, something which could be discussed not simply as a
theory of literature, but with reference to specific novels in the history
of fiction. Nonetheless, it does seem to me tha t the impossibility by
which Beckett has been tempted, while it's understandable as a purely
literary temptation, reinforces, even sanctifies a certain type of per–
sonality which I spoke of earlier as perhaps making him more sensitive
to a logic of failure in art. A profound skepticism about the expressive
powers of language would seem to have strengthened the fuzzy notion
in
Murphy
of a self "improved out of all knowledge," of some inner
essence completely divorced from the life of personality in time. Fearful
of being identified with the selves his words exuberantly invent,
Beckett's hero retreats into an ontological miserliness all the more
extraordinary because his voice continues to be heard. The undifferenti–
ated, undissipated, unverbalized self is perhaps the generally ignored goal
of literature; it is certainly the end of literature; and it brings us back,
I'm afraid,
to
a much more physical "end," for this spiritual retentive–
ness and the dualism it implies (whatever I express-whatever "leaves"
me--is no longer me) also suggest the sluggish pleasures of a perversely
constipated child. But the trouble with sublimations is, of cou rse, that their
consequences tend to be more serious than a sore tummy. The fear of
losing the self in its roles is- as Beckett must have realized in his study
of Proust-a fear of losing the self in time. And the illusion of a self
outside of time is a retreat not only from life but also from literature, a
retreat, that is, from the uncertain futures to which time and language
subject both the self and books. Beckett's extreme attempt to render
literature autonomous is an ironic reminder of the ultimate dependence
of literature on life, a significantly more brutal reminder than the one
provided by novels which disarmingly appeal to a reality outside of them–
selves in order to enjoy more freely an impressive measure of autonomy.
