Writing Sous Rature: The Metaphysics of Nothingness in Samuel Beckett's Later Prose Texts A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor ofPhilosophy in the University of Canterbury by Timothy Callin University of Canterbury 2001 11 CONTENTS Acknowledgements ... iv Abstract. .. vi Chapter One Writing Sous Rature and the Metaphysics ofNothingness 1 Chapter Two The Limits of Language: The Blanc Spaces of Texts for Nothing 21 Chapter Three Towards Sous Rature: Beckett, Bakhtin and the Dialogics of How It Is 47 Chapter Four The Writing of the Blanc: All Strange Away and Being Beyond Words 75 Chapter Five The "Little Stonns" of Convection and Turbulence in the Rotunda of Imagination Dead Imagine 101 Chapter Six The Vanquished and the Mystical Experience ofNothing in The Lost Ones 131 Chapter Seven Filling in the Blanc of Nothingness in Ping 159 Chapter Eight Writing Sous Rature: Reading the Blanc Spaces ofNothingness inLessness 187 Chapter Nine Conclusion: Residua 217 ii iii Chronology Publication of First Editions in French and English 225 Bibliography 229 111 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to thank my supervisor Dr James Acheson. Over the last few years Dr Acheson has given freely of his time, read countless drafts of each chapter, provided valuable insights into these complex texts, been critical but always fair, and above all has always seen the positive no matter the (mis)shape of the idea in the work I brought to him. Further, Dr Acheson has not taken his role as supervisor as supplemental to his other responsibilities in the department. There was never a time when he was too busy to either offer an idea or read a draft, and moreover he was always willing to make time when necessary, or simply listen when morale was low. His approach to supervision alone has made the writing of this thesis a totally positive experience, and is something to which others could aspire. I would also like to thank Dr Denis Walker who read a number of the early drafts of chapters that would eventually make their way into this thesis. Dr Walker provided invaluable insights, most importantly in tenns of Bakhtin's dialogics in the chapter on How It Is. Dr Walker also read a draft of the entire thesis and made a number of important points concerning the idea of sous rature and the production of nothingness, each of which contributed positively and significantly to binding this project together. v Others have also been very supportive and helpful along the way. Most specifically, Dr Patrick Evans for providing laughter as cure, and always being willing to listen and provide sage advice, and Dr Philip Armstrong, who read an early version of the chapter on The Lost Ones and provided a detailed report that helped to clarifY a number of the difficulties I was experiencing with that text. Most importantly, I would like to thank: my wife Amanda who moved all the way arOtmd the world with me to take on this challenge, and who has always been there to provide support and encouragement. And I would like to thank my daughter Victoria, who has spent the first two years of her life growing up in New Zealand, far from family and home, and who has come to know me as "Daddy-work." Amanda and Victoria, this thesis is dedicated to you both. vi ABSTRACT Writing Sous Rature: The Metaphysics of Nothingness in Samuel Beckett's Later Prose Texts The object of this thesis is to argue that a selection of Samuel Beckett's later prose texts represent an examination of the plight of being, through writing, in Jacques Derrida's terms, sous rature. By writing sous rature - representing, and then putting specific images of representation "under erasure" - Beckett establishes his own "technique" by which to give form to the "timeless" self and world, not as an "absolute" negation or no thing, but as a positive nothingness (the presence of an absence, as Derrida has it). While writing sous rature does echo Jacques Derrida's use of the phrase, and Heidegger's earlier inquiry into the metaphysics of being in Being and Time, the theoretical aspect of this study, while certainly present, is slight. Instead, sous rature is employed as the definition of Beckett's own process of writing in these later texts which allows him to develop a new "syntax of weakness" and "literature of the unword." By using language to represent the experience of being, and then putting that language sous rature, Beckett draws attention to the inadequacies of language as a means of representing the "timeless" self, and for explaining the experience of being in the world. By extension, this inability "to express" the "essential" "timeless" self through language becomes the means by which to express the experience of nothingness as the metaphysical plight of being. Although manufactured through a number of techniques, nothingness, in each instance, is all that which language fails to signify - the residua produced by the failure of language that encapsulates within its virtual form the unknown aspects of the "timeless" that remains outside the traditional "zone" of representation. vii The texts dealt with in this thesis, which are organized according to the order in which they were written, are: Texts for Nothing, How It Is, All Strange Away, Imagination Dead Imagine, The Lost Ones, Ping and Lessness. The introductory first chapter of this study seeks to define the origin of Beckett's writing sous rature as the Three Dialogues, to develop the implications of Beckett's writing sous rature, and to provide a brief overview of a number of the past critical approaches that have been undertaken with these texts. The second chapter, concerning Textsfor Nothing, is designed as a reconsideration of this set of thirteen Texts, not as an expression of Beckett's creative disintegration, but instead as a positive move towards establishing the need to reveal and then exceed the limits of language through the inaugural experimentation of representing the blanc spaces of nothing. Chapter three, concerning How It Is, reveals how identifying Beckett's writing sous rature produces the radical reevaluation of this text as thoroughly dialogic, while also drawing an important parallel between Beckett and the metalinguistics of Mikhail Bakhtin. Chapter four focuses on All Strange Away and the metaphysical plight of being as a further development to Beckett's writing the image of being so us rature. In this text, Beckett seeks to express the image of the "timeless" as a blanc space waiting to be inscribed with a new language. Chapter five seeks to reveal the means by which Beckett employs writing sous rature in order to represent the underlying "timeless" nothingness of the macrocosmic rotunda in Imagination Dead Imagine. By giving fonn to the underlying nothingness, Beckett not only produces a space that admits (but in no way itemizes) the infinite complexities of the world, but is also the optimum forum in which viii to accommodate the underlying chaos that evades the limits of perception. Chapter six on The Lost Ones examines the representation of the vanquished as mystics who perceive the mystical experience of ''Nothing" in the cylinder world. It is their ability to perceive "Nothing" that puts them sous rature (represented and then crossed out), and which further contributes to the image of being as the presence of an absence - a positive image of the "timeless" nothing. Ping, the subject of chapter seven, returns to the importance of the Three Dialogues and considers the impossibility of representing being and the world in "absolute" tenus through representational art. This chapter draws upon the "original" title "Blanc" as a further indication of the means by which Beckett gives shape to the "timeless" as a blanc nothing by writing sous rature. Chapter eight, the final chapter on the "residua" texts, argues that Beckett employs his own role as author in Lessness as a metaphor for God, and through his strange construction of the text, represents God as the presence of an absence and the image of nothing. In doing so, Beckett is able to represent being as a ~'refugee," abandoned by God, and as such, the "timeless" as the new metaphysical centre of inquiry. 1 CHAPTER ONE Writing Sous Rature and the Metaphysics ofNothingness I realized that Joyce had gone as far as one could in the direction of knowing more, [and of being] in control of one's material. He was always adding to it; you only have to look at his proofs to see that. I realized that my own way was in impoverishment, in lack of knowledge and in taking away, in subtracting rather than adding. 1 Back unsay better worse by no stretch more. If more dim less light then better worse more dim. Unsaid then better worse by no stretch more. Better worse may no less than less be more. Better worse what? They say? The said. Same thing. Same nothing. Same all but nothing. 2 His book takes fonn in his mind. He is aware of the many concessions required of the literary artist by the shortcomings of the literary convention. 3 In the first of the Three Dialogues (1949) with Georges Duthuit, Beckett gives voice to a new aesthetic - one that more than any other would shape his approach to fiction throughout the 1960s. There Beckett says that the modern artist has, ... nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express. 4 In the past, critics have interpreted this statement in various ways.