E .M . CIORAN
285
Our beginnings count, that goes without saying, but we only take the
decisive step toward ourselves when we no longer have an
ongin,
and when
we offer just as little subject matter for a biography as God does. .. .
It
is
important, and at the same
time
it is not important at all, that
Beckett
is
Irish. What is certainly false is to claim that he is the "perfect example of an
Anglo-Saxon." At any rate, nothing displeases
him
more.
Is this because of
the unpleasant memories he still has of his prewar stay in London? I suspect
that he finds the English guilty of "commonness." That verdict-which he
has not expresed but which I am expressing in his place like a summary of his
reservations,
if
not his actual resentments-I cannot myself personally sub–
scribe to, and this all the
more
so because, doubtless due to a Balkan illu–
sion, the English seem to me
to
be the most devitalized and most menaced,
and therefore the most refined and civilized of peoples.
. And
yet, Beckett,
who curiously enough
feels
completely at home in
France, actually has no affinity whatever with a certain hardness that is
eminently French (Parisian, to be
more
precise) . Is it not significant that he
has put Chamfort into verse? (Not all of Chamfort,
true,
but a few maxims.)
The enterprise, remarkable in itself and almost inconceivable when one con–
siders the absence of lyric spirit that characterizes the skeletal prose of the
Moralists, signifies an avowal of the profoundly lyrical character of
Beckett's
mind: it is always in spite of themselves that restrained intelligences betray
the depth of their natures.
* * *
I believe him to be as deliberate as a fanatic. Even
if
the world were to
collapse, he would neither abandon work in progress nor change his subject.
As far as essentials are concerned, he certainly cannot be swayed. In evety–
thing
else,
in inessential matters, he is defenseless, probably weaker than
any of us, weaker even than his characters.
Before
writing these few notes, I
proposed to myself to reread what Meister Eckhardt and Nietzsche had writ–
ten, from different perspectives, about' 'the noble man." I did not carry out
my project, but I have not forgotten for a moment that I contemplated it.
* * *
Translated from the French by
RaymondFederman and
Jean M. Sommermeyer
