284
PARTISAN REVIEW
after
the end of some cosmic epoch. The sensation of entering a posthumous
universe, a geography dreamed up by a demon, stripped of everything, even
of his curse!
Beings who do not know whether they are alive or not, and who are
prey to an immense fatigue, to a fatigue that
is not of this world
(to use a
language that runs counter
to
Beckett's taste), all conceived by a man whom
one senses is vulnerable, who wears ; for the sake of decency, a mask of in–
vulnerability . Not long ago I had, in a flash , a vision of the bonds that unite
them with their author, with their accomplice.... What I saw, or rather
what I felt, in that instant, cannot be translated into an intelligible formula .
Nevertheless, since then the slightest remark from a hero of his reminds me
of the inflections of a certain voice.... But I hasten
to
add that a revelation
can be as fragile and as deceptive as a theory.
• • •
Right from our fIrst meeting, I realized that he had reached the ex–
treme limit, that perhaps he had started there, at the impossible, the extra–
ordinary, at an impasse. And what is admirable is that he has
stood fast.
Having arrived at the outset up against a wall, he perseveres as gallantly as
he always has: extremity as a
point ofdeparture.
the end as advent! Hence
the feeling that this world of his, this transfIxed, dying world, could go on
indefInitely, even
if
ours were to disappear.
• • •
I am not particularly attracted to Wittgenstein's philosophy, but I have
a passion for the man. Everything I read about him has the power to move
me. More than once I have found common traits between him and Beckett.
Two mysterious apparitions, two phenomena pleasing in their inscrutability.
In both, the same distance from beings and things, the same inflexibility,
the same temptation to silence, to a fInal repudiation ofwords, the same im–
pulse to move up against boundaries never sensed before. In another time,
they would have been drawn to the desert. We now know that Wittgen–
stein had, at one time, considered entering a monastery. As for Beckett, one
can very easily imagine him, a few centuries back, in a bare cell unsullied by
any decoration , not even by a crucifIX. If you think I am going too far, re–
member the faraway , enigmatic, "inhuman" look he has in certain photo–
graphs.
• • •
