Interpreting Samuel Beckett's 'Worstward Ho' Hisgen, Ruud Citation Hisgen, R. (1998, December 9). Interpreting Samuel Beckett's 'Worstward Ho'. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/4924 Version: Corrected Publisher’s Version Licence agreement concerning inclusion of doctoral thesis License: in the Institutional Repository of the University of Leiden Downloaded from: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/4924 Note: To cite this publication please use the final published version (if applicable). The Silencing of the Sphinx Volume Interpreting Samuel Beckett’s Worstward Ho [Frontispiece ] Interpreting Samuel Beckett’s Worstward Ho Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden, op gezag van de Rector Magnificus, Dr W.A. Wagenaar, hoogleraar in de Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen, volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties te verdedigen op woensdag december te klokke . uur door Rudolf Guus Wim Hisgen geboren te ’s Gravenhage in Universiteit Leiden Promotor: Professor Dr. Th.L. D’haen Referent: Professor J. Pilling, University of Reading (G.B.) Promotiecommissie: Professor Dr. B. Westerweel Professor Dr. A.G.H. Anbeek van der Meyden Professor G. Lernout, Universiteit Antwerpen (België) CONTENTS Abbreviations Used . Introduction . Notes to the Introduction . Chapter , “Argument” . Notes to Chapter . Chapter , “Language” . Notes to Chapter . Chapter , “Roots” . Notes to Chapter . Chapter , “Reverberations” . Notes to Chapter . Conclusion . Notes to the Conclusion . Bibliography . Index . Keine Wahrheit ist also gewisser ... als diese, daß Alles, was für die Erkenntniß da ist, also die ganze Welt, nur Objekt in Beziehung auf das Subjekt ist, Anschauung des Anschauenden, mit Einem Wort, Vorstellung. (Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung) Nichts erschien ... thörichter als der letzte Versuch, mit Worten, die niemals einen Inhalt haben können, endlos von nichts zu sprechen als von der eigenen Unwissenheit. Gerade aber solche schwarze Stunden und Tage endeten häufig mit dem spornenden Gefühl: jawohl es ist der letzte Versuch, es ist das letzte Wort, und weil es nicht die Lösung des Sphinxrätsels sein kann, so ist es wenigstens die erlösende That, welche die Sphinx zum Schweigen zwingt, weil es die Sphinx vernichtet. (Fritz Mauthner, Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache) ABBREVIATIONS USED Bair Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett CC John Pilling, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Beckett CP Collected Poems, London, CSPlays Collected Shorter Plays, London, CSProse Collected Shorter Prose, London, “Dante ...” “Dante...Bruno.Vico..Joyce”, in Disjecta Disjecta Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment Dream Dream of Fair to Middling Women Essays Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms IMEC Institut Mémoires de l’Edition Contemporaine JOBS Journal of Beckett Studies Proust Proust and Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit RUL Reading University Library TfN Texts for Nothing INTRODUCTION Worstward Ho is the last and most hermetic of the three “longer” prose works Beckett published in the early s: Company (), Ill Seen Ill Said () and Worstward Ho (). Worstward Ho is hermetic in the very literal sense that it can only be properly understood from a thorough knowledge of Beckett’s entire oeuvre. Conversely, a thorough critical examination of Worstward Ho strongly affects one’s reading of the earlier work. Indeed, it is the thesis of the present study that Worstward Ho represents the tête morte, or essence, of Beckett’s oeuvre. Worstward Ho’s title, with its awkward coinage “worstward”, can itself be read as the tête morte of the book’s narrative. The ejaculation “ho” in “worstward ho” makes it the narrator’s exhortation to the reader, like that of the stagecoach driver to his prospective passengers, to join him on a journey to the worst possible state: the condition of “nohow on”. Throughout the text the narrator yearns for the end of his journey, the moment when words will go, when eternal silence and nothingness will finally set in, when the wordly self will relax its hold, when “nohow on” will have been said for the last time: the terminus both for the narrator and for the reader. The timeless and placeless quality of Worstward Ho suggests that the narrative takes place in an other-worldy setting. A characteristic of “the place” as it is intro- duced at the opening of the book is that it is beyondless (), which may well be because the peculiarly barren, virtually featureless void of Worstward Ho is itself the beyond. Beckett’s fear, despite his sceptical attitude to Christian religious beliefs, that the mind’s activity may not cease at death has been drawn attention to be- fore. Play dramatises how the mind after death keeps turning over its last thoughts in the moment before death; the indistinct setting of A Piece of Monologue may be that of the shadowy region between life and death: the speaker draws attention to the same ubiquitous and sourceless dim light as does the narrator of Worstward Ho. At the opening of the book the mind whose workings are being observed is minimal. In the course of paragraphs of dense elliptical language the narrator’s mental scope is to be gradually narrowed even further. The narrator proceeds through manipulating the dim images evoked at the beginning of the book, sys- VOLUME tematically reducing them until they are nothing but pinpoint-size specks literally almost vanishing in the surrounding void: “At bounds of boundless void. Whence no farther.” At the end of the book, the narrator’s mind is filled completely with a great all but void: the image of an almost featureless universe. Despite the bleakness of the vision the tone of the penultimate paragraph, her- alding the end, is one almost of satisfaction: “Best worse no farther” (). The last words of the paragraph dwindle away along with the last of the narrator’s intellect: Nohow less. Nohow worse. Nohow naught. Nohow on. () If there is at this last stage no evidence of any joy or bliss experienced (a sense of joy is anticipated earlier in the text, at ), it is because there are no words left to express this experience. Many familiar Beckett themes make their appearance in Worstward Ho: Descartes’ “cogito ergo sum” and the attempt to represent mental processes in language; the desire for mental silence; Berkeley’s dictum “esse est percipi”; the impossibility of talking about nothingness; the circularity of transmutations, in which the polarities always coincide; the incessant movement between the luring world of the self and the “unself” of the external world. But most poignant in Worstward Ho is Beckett’s favourite theme, “fallor, ergo sum”, demonstrated by the paradox that the great- est artistic achievement is ultimate failure. The repetition in Worstward Ho of phrases like “better worse” indicates the essential identification of success with failure: the maximum failure of the mental exercise is the greatest success. This recalls Beckett’s treatment of failure in his critical writings, in particular the way in which Bram van Velde in the Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit is ascribed failure as an artistic credo, which Beckett obviously regards as a desirable artistic objective: My case ... is that van Velde is the first to desist from this estheticised automa- tism [to escape from a sense of failure], ... the first to admit that to be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail, that failure is his world and the shrink from it desertion, art and craft, good housekeeping, living. (Proust, p. ) The most Beckett as a writer can hope to achieve is the state when further reduc- tion of words and their corresponding images is not possible (“nohow less”) and it INTRODUCTION is thus no longer possible to continue (“nohow on”). However hard the writer tries, the experience of absolute nothingness cannot be expressed in words—“nohow naught”, as the narrator expresses it in Worstward Ho. In Worstward Ho direct links with the real world are lacking. Indeed, there is so little information that it is extremely difficult to posit an intelligible world of any description within the work. The effect on the reader is a sense of bafflement, and even of uncertainty. Like all of Beckett’s oeuvre,Worstward Ho is presented as a work of fiction. But a case can be made for suggesting that it is both a great deal less and a great deal more. Is it an exploration of the workings of the human mind and its mental boundaries? Is Worstward Ho a meditation on death, like a sixteenth- century vanitas painting? Is it a prose-poem on a metaphysical theme? Is it a parody of modern literature as seen through the eyes of a post-modernist? Is Worstward Ho a philosophical treatise on the nature of reality disguised as fiction? By consistently thwarting the reader’s attempts at correlating the fictional with the phenomenal world Worstward Ho invites a plurality of readings. The main purpose of the present volume is to supply a number of possible approaches towards a reading of Worstward Ho. Though these are intended prima- rily to elucidate Worstward Ho, it is hoped that they will also be found useful for a reading of Beckett’s other works. In his efforts to make sense of Worstward Ho, the reader can make use of a number of strategies, on a variety of levels. On the level of the text itself, for example, the strategy could be to compare its linguistic usage with accepted linguistic norms in order to become more conscious of the text’s idiosyncratic use of language and so to begin to fathom its effects. On the level of the context of Beckett’s other writings, themes and verbal echoes may be recog- nised. And finally there are the clues that Beckett’s known interests, preoccupa- tions and reading may offer. In his biography of Beckett James Knowlson suggests that the efforts demanded of the reader match those of the author in composing the text: Beckett took seven months to write even the first draft of Worstward Ho.