For Anyone Interested in Beckett-And-Religion Mary Bryden's Excellent Study, Samuel Beckett and the Idea of God (1998) Is an Indispensable Starting Point
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THE "VIA NEGATIV A" AND ITS FIRST STIRRINGS IN ELEUTHERIA Marius Buning In this article I present a state-of-the-art report on recent research regarding the 'via negativa' of negative theology as both a way of thinking and a manner of writing, and how it might relate to the Beckettian text. Predicated on systematic and even obsessive negation, it is a specific form of discourse that attempts to articulate the unsayable, that is, that which has been excluded from the sayable. In conclusion, I briefly discuss the first appearance of the 'via negativa' in Beckett's first full-length play Eleutheria, written in 1947 . .. I never thought other than That God is that great absence In our lives, the empty silence Within, the place where we go Seeking, not in hope to Arrive or find. (R. S. Thomas, "Via Negativa") For anyone interested in Beckett-and-religion Mary Bryden's excellent study, Samuel Beckett and the Idea of God (1998) is an indispensable starting point. It appeared at the right time, providing us with an excellent overview of this slippery, thorny subject. I am particularly interested in her last chapter, with its keywords of solitude, stillness, and silence, and in her "Conclusion", pointing up the potential links between Beckett and authors such as Pseudo-Dionysius, or Denys, the Areopagite - a 5th c. Syrian monk and the ur-father of what has come to be called 'negative or apophatic theology' or the via negativa, the 'negative path' - and Meister Eckhart, a l3th c. Dominican, theologian, preacher, and outstanding stylist of German meditative prose. In my view he is the toughest of medieval negative mystics, whose influence on modem philosophy (Heidegger and Derrida) and on modem theology (John Caputo, Mark C. Taylor, Jean-Luc Marion) is beyond doubt today. Some names should be added here: next to the anonymous The Cloud of Unknowing and the so-called Rhineland Mystics (John Tauler, Henry Suso, and Jan van Ruusbroec) there are Saint John of the Cross - a 16th c. 43 Carmelite contemplative, author of The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night - and less known but equally fascinating, the 17th c. physician, theologian, priest and poet, Angelus Silesius. The latter's Cherubinic Wanderer ("Cherubinischer Wandersmann", 1657) is a dazzling piece of baroque mystical writing that can be seen as a post-scriptum, a "writing after" (as Derrida has put it) of the via negativa tradition. Unquestionably, the ghost of negative theology has made a remarkable comeback, and haunts once again, after centuries of marginalizaton, the current worldwide postmodemist cultural debate and, no less so, my own reflections on Beckett today. In an exploratory article published in 1990, I proposed on the basis of the overriding presence of negation, that (among other valuable approaches) Beckett's work might be considered in the light of and analogous to the via negativa of classic negative or apophatic mysticism. Predicated on systematic and indeed obsessive negation on both sentence and word level, the via negativa (a term coined by Thomas Aquinas) emphasises dispossession, self-annihilation, solitude, silence - in short 'nothingness' or the void - as prerequisites for the mystical experience, that is, the union between immanence and transcendence. Beckett's late plays, I further suggested, can be seen as dramatic renderings of descents into the Dark Night ofthe Soul, as described by Saint John of the Cross, or - in Eckhartian terms - as metaphorical explorations of detachment or releasement ("Gelassenheit" or "Abgeschiedenheit"), which is the key concept in his bold 'theology of negation'. 1 Here are some random examples, taken from Walshe's translation: And if He [God] is neither goodness nor being nor truth, what is He then? He is nothing [nihtes niht]. He is neither this or that. Any thought you might still have of what He might be - He is not such at all. (German sermon, 23) Now pay attention to this. God is nameless for no one can either speak of Him or know Him. Therefore a pagan master says that what we can know or say of the First Cause reflects ourselves more than it does the First Cause, for this transcends all speech and all understanding. (German sermon, 28) God is a word, a word unspoken. God is a word that speaks itself [ ... ] Whether they [all creatures] like it or not, they all want to utter God, and yet He remains unuttered. [ ... ] God is both spoken and unspoken. (German sermon, 53) 44 .