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Rapture and Typos in Dante and Beckett

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Rapture and Typos in Dante and Beckett CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE DARK PARADISE: RAPTURE AND TYPOS IN DANTE AND BECKETT A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Master of Art in Theatre By Robert Lynn Newton December 2012 The thesis of Robert Lynn Newton is approved: __________________________________ __________________ Dr. Ron Popenhagen Date __________________________________ __________________ Dr. Dorothy G. Clark Date __________________________________ __________________ Dr. Ah-Jeong Kim, Chair Date California State University, Northridge ii For Janet Pearson What thoughts, who knows. Thoughts, no, not thoughts. Profounds of mind. Buried in who knows what profounds of mind. Of mindlessness. Whither no light can reach. Samuel Beckett iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page ii Dedication iii Abstract v Introduction 1 Chapter One 5 Belacqua Real and Imagined Chapter Two 23 Rapture: The Balcony of the Soul Chapter Three 39 Typos: The Footprint of the Creator Chapter Four 56 Rapture II: The Treacherous Moon Chapter Five 70 Dark Paradise Works Cited 82 Works Consulted 85 iv ABSTRACT DARK PARADISE: RAPTURE AND TYPOS IN DANTE AND BECKETT By Robert Lynn Newton Master of Arts in Theatre The intertextuality of Dante and Beckett is examined through the use of dramatic contrasts of light and dark. Rapture represents sentient light, derived from Dante’s study of Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Avicenna. Its opposite Typos is a material form that cancels the light, casts a shadow, or leaves a signature of the creator on the face of creation. Characters in Beckett’s Happy Days, and the stories “Ding-Dong” and “Dante and the Lobster” present manifestations of Dante’s Beatrice figure centered in the attributes of facial expressions as a sign of Rapture. The Typos found in Dante’s poetic imagery is traced in Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, Molloy, Footfalls, and Rough for Radio II. In the works of Beckett’s late period, Not I, and Ill Seen Ill Said, he offers us an inversion of Dante’s symbolism, in which darkness is no longer infernal but divine. v The brilliant light of God’s presence that pervades Dante’s Paradiso is so overpowering to modern eyes that Beckett can only do it justice by representing it with its opposite: the Dark Paradise in which the darkness is no longer a threat but a sacred space. vi INTRODUCTION Samuel Beckett’s allusions to Dante have been of scholarly concern for several decades now. The early studies focused mainly on reference-hunting after the prominence of Waiting for Godot stimulated a renewed interest in Beckett’s early fiction. There was a tendency to assign Beckett’s texts as examples of a purgatorial or infernal vision, and “describe Beckett’s anti-theological use of Dante as parodic and subversive” (Caselli 2). But the process has become more refined in recent years, as exemplified by critics such as Hugh Haughton and Daniela Caselli. The latter in particular writes of how her predecessors in the Dante/Beckett field “oversimplify and ultimately stabilize Dante as an authoritative predetermined meaning, reading him for instance, as ‘symboliz[ing] the cultural heritage of Western civilization’ or as a ‘devout Christian’ whose values and theology are subverted by Beckett” (Caselli 1). Haughton sees in Beckett a Dante who represents not the accumulation of a cultural tradition but a dispersal, a mis-remembering (Haughton 142). It turns out that there is a plurality of Dantes in Beckett meaning different things at different phases of Beckett’s career. Beckett’s versions of Dante are personal and idiosyncratic constructions, reflecting as much on Beckett’s character as they do on the historical Dante. Intertextual studies are exactly what they say they are: studies of texts, but in terms which do not always transfer to the three-dimensional world of theatre. Beckett’s use of Dante in his plays, and in his later plays especially, hinges on his absorption of 1 Dante’s metaphysics and the meanings that attach to vivid contrasts of light and dark. The starting point of this investigation begins, in a sense, with the Biblical creation of the world itself, which has its beginning with the separation of darkness and light. Dante’s use of these contrasts is cosmic in scope, dealing as he does with the pitch dark of Hell and the brilliance of Heaven. Beckett’s universe is more intimately scaled, and crafted for a minimalist stage. And in his final years, Beckett offers us an inversion of Dante’s symbolism, in which darkness is no longer infernal but divine. The brilliant light of God’s presence that pervades the final cantos of Dante’s Paradiso is so overpowering to modern eyes that Beckett can only do it justice by representing it with its opposite: the Dark Paradise in which the void is no longer a threat but a sacred space. In works such as Not I and Ill Seen Ill Said, the paradisal vision, although suffused in darkness, might not present us with an afterlife as sharply defined as that in Dante’s Paradise, but it is still a revelation, a destination, and a “consummation devoutly to be wished.” The two major tropes Dante and Beckett utilize will be known here as Rapture and Typos, rough equivalents of light and dark, or sun and shadow. They are not simply properties, but actual powers. Rapture is not only brilliant light, but inspired light, created by a spark of the Divine. It can blind a person, or dazzle the mind, or change one’s life in mid-stream. Typos (which is italicized because this Greek root for ‘type’ and many other related words has no English equivalent that conveys its full meaning in this thesis), is the opposing force, a material form that cancels the light, or intrudes upon it, or casts a shadow, or leaves a signature. Rapture is always ethereal, but Typos can either strike from above or below, and many of its expressions are man-made. The act 2 of writing itself is a result of Typos, because it is comprised of one solid substance impacting on another. This thesis will include both prose and plays by Beckett because, in the final analysis they form a continuum. Genre distinctions eventually wear down in the course of his career, and many of his later works in prose, such as The Lost Ones, Company, and Worstward Ho, have been adapted for the stage, usually with Beckett’s approval and consultation. Chapter One, concerning as it does mostly prose and poetry, is primarily textual in analysis. Belacqua, a minor figure who appears briefly in Dante’s Purgatorio, is so central to Beckett’s canon that he needs to be confronted head-on, in the beginning. The critical method applied here derives from the semiotic theories of Julia Kristeva, and in particular her essay, “Word, Dialogue and Novel.” Here Kristeva cites the influence of the Russian Formalist Mikhail Bahktin, who was: [ . ] one of the first to replace the static hewing out of texts with a model where literary structure does not simply exist but is generated in relation to another structure. What allows a dynamic dimension to structuralism is his conception of the ‘literary word’ as an intersection of textual surfaces rather than a point (a fixed meaning), as a dialogue among several writings [ . ]. (Kristeva 35-36) Belacqua is shaped by an “intersection of textual surfaces” that overlap one another, some of them with Beckett’s words, some with Dante’s, and some with other sources. 3 Chapter Two explores Rapture as a philosophy of light derived from Dante’s study of Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Avicenna, and how this philosophy translates into the divine love that lights Beckett’s Happy Days. Chapter Three examines the importance of Typos and again utilizes semiotic analysis to define the “foot print” of the creator present in Dante and Beckett, with attention to Dante’s poetic imagery, and Beckett’s How It Is and Rough for Radio II. Chapter Four revisits Rapture in a variant form, that of lunar instead of solar light, in which a different range of properties and powers come into play, with less happy results. This examination will deal with Canto 2 of Paradiso, and Beckett’s play, Footfalls, and his short story, “Dante and the Lobster.” Chapter Five concerns Dante’s Paradiso alongside Beckett’s Not I and Ill Seen Ill Said, as both writers strive to articulate the inexpressible and illuminate the invisible, each pursuing a subject matter that calls into question subject and matter. 4 CHAPTER ONE: BELACQUA REAL AND IMAGINED The formulation of Becket’s personal Dante begins with Beckett’s re- appropriation of a minor character from Purgatorio into an alter-ego for himself, a fictionalization embracing his least-admired traits, who then becomes the anti-hero is his early fiction. The unpublished notes from Beckett’s reading of Purgatorio make it possible for us to read its opening cantos through his own eyes, as it were. He is struck particularly by the sensuality of the verse. In Mary Bryden’s words: From Canto 1, line 117, Beckett jots down the phrase “il tremolar della marina” (the rippling of the sea), and underlines it. This vision of the sea at dawn, glimpsed by the Pilgrim under a sky suffused with “the tender tint of orient sapphire” (line 13), constitutes one of those sensuous descriptions of the landscape that serve to distinguish the opening Purgatory experience from the preceding transit through the terrain of Inferno. (Bryden 30) The contrast between Hell and Purgatory are certainly remarkable. The final cantos of Inferno are horrifying and phantasmagorical, climaxing with the discovery of Satan, a gigantic three-faced monster, frozen in ice in the lowest point of Hell, and perpetually gnawing on the bodies of Judas, Cassius, and Brutus.
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