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Desire in Giacomo Leopardi and Samuel Beckett Roberta Cauchi-Santoro

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Desire in Giacomo Leopardi and Samuel Beckett Roberta Cauchi-Santoro STUDI E SAGGI – 157 – STUDI DI ITALIANISTICA MODERNA E CONTEMPORANEA NEL MONDO ANGLOFONO STUDIES IN MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ITALIANISTICA IN THE ANGLOPHONE WORLD Comitato scientifico / Editorial Board Joseph Francese, Direttore / Editor-in-chief (Michigan State University) Zygmunt G. Barański (University of Cambridge) Laura Benedetti (Georgetown University) Joseph A. Buttigieg (University of Notre Dame) Michael Caesar (University of Birmingham) Fabio Camilletti (University of Warwick) Derek Duncan (University of Bristol) Stephen Gundle (University of Warwick) Charles Klopp (The Ohio State University) Marcia Landy (University of Pittsburgh) Silvestra Mariniello (Université de Montréal) Annamaria Pagliaro (Monash University) Lucia Re (University of California at Los Angeles) Silvia Ross (University College Cork) Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg (Brown University) Titoli pubblicati / Published Titles Francese J., Leonardo Sciascia e la funzione sociale degli intellettuali Rosengarten F., Through Partisan Eyes. My Friendships, Literary Education, and Political Encounters in Italy (1956-2013). With Sidelights on My Experiences in the United States, France, and the Soviet Union Ferrara M.E., Il realismo teatrale nella narrativa del Novecento: Vittorini, Pasolini, Calvino Francese J., Vincenzo Consolo: gli anni de «l’Unità» (1992-2012), ovvero la poetica della colpa-espiazione Bilenchi R., The Conservatory of Santa Teresa Ross S. and Honess C. (edited by), Identity and Conflict in Tuscany Colucci D., L’Eleganza è frigida e L’Empire des signes. Un sogno fatto in Giappone Cauchi-Santoro R., Beyond the Suffering of Being: Desire in Giacomo Leopardi and Samuel Beckett Roberta Cauchi-Santoro Beyond the Suffering of Being: Desire in Giacomo Leopardi and Samuel Beckett FIRENZE UNIVERSITY PRESS 2016 Beyond the Suffering of Being: Desire in Giacomo Leopardi and Samuel Beckett / Roberta Cauchi-Santoro. – Firenze : Firenze University Press, 2016. (Studi e saggi; 157) http://digital.casalini.it/9788864534060 ISBN 978-88-6453-405-3 (print) ISBN 978-88-6453-406-0 (online PDF) ISBN 978-88-6453-407-7 (online EPUB) Graphic design Alberto Pizarro Fernández, Pagina Maestra snc Peer Review Process All publications are submitted to an external refereeing process under the responsibility of the FUP Editorial Board and the Scientific Committees of the individual series. The works published in the FUP catalogue are evaluated and approved by the Editorial Board of the publishing house. For a more detailed description of the refereeing process we refer to the official documents published on the website and in the online catalogue of the FUP (www.fupress.com). Firenze University Press Editorial Board A. Dolfi (Editor-in-Chief), M. Boddi, A. Bucelli, R. Casalbuoni, M. Garzaniti, M.C. Grisolia, P. Guarnieri, R. Lanfredini, A. Lenzi, P. Lo Nostro, G. Mari, A. Mariani, P.M. Mariano, S. Marinai, R. Minuti, P. Nanni, G. Nigro, A. Perulli, M.C. Torricelli. This book is printed on acid-free paper. © 2016 Firenze University Press Università degli Studi di Firenze Firenze University Press via Cittadella, 7, 50144 www.fupress.com Printed in Italy TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE VII INTRODUCTION IX CHAPTER ONE ON DESIRE 1 1.1 What Desire? 1 1.2 Desire as Lack 6 1.3 Freudian Desire 25 1.4 Lacanian Desire 27 1.5 Levinas and the Desire of the Other 32 CHAPTER TWO A PERENNIALLY DULL AND INDISTINCT PAIN: “VAIN LONGING THAT VAIN LONGING GO” 43 2.1 “Souffrance” and “Suffering of being” 44 2.2 “Souffrance” and “Suffering of being” in the pessimistic tradition 49 2.3 Leopardi and Beckett within the nihilist tradition 55 2.4 “Souffrance” and “Suffering of being” within the Heideggerian existential tradition and the Levinasian “Il y a” 64 CHAPTER THREE MAKING SUFFERING SUFFERABLE: DESIRE FOR THE OTHER IN LEOPARDI AND BECKETT 69 3.1 Lacanian versus Levinasian Desire 73 3.2 Compassion as Pietas to overcome Ataraxia: Desire for the O/other in Leopardi 82 3.3 Lacanian and Levinasian Desire for the Other in Endgame 100 3.4 Lacanian and Levinasian Desire for the Other in Happy Days 123 CONCLUSION 135 REFERENCES 139 INDEX OF NAMES 153 Roberta Cauchi-Santoro, Beyond the Suffering of Being: Desire in Giacomo Leopardi and Samuel Beckett, ISBN 978-88-6453-405-3 (print) ISBN 978-88-6453-406-0 (online PDF) ISBN 978-88-6453-407-7 (online EPUB) © 2016 Firenze University Press PREFACE In this monograph, I question critical approaches that argue for Gia- como Leopardi’s and Samuel Beckett’s pessimism and nihilism. Such ap- proaches, whether the focus has been on one writer or the other or both, stem from Beckett’s quotation of Leopardi in his monograph Proust, dur- ing a discussion of the removal of desire. And yet the role of desire in both writers’ work, I argue, actually exposes the inappropriateness of the pes- simist and nihilist labels. After tracing the notion of desire as it developed from Leopardi to key twentieth-century thinkers, I illustrate how, in con- trast to the Greek concept of ataraxia as a form of ablation of desire, the desire of and for the Other is central in the two authors’ oeuvres. That is, while the two writers’ attempts to reach the respective existential cores of Beckettian “suffering of being” and Leopardian souffrance“ ” might seem to point towards the presumed nothingness of their existential quest, clos- er examination reveals that their shared aim to still desire is outdone by a persistent and combative desire that pervades their later work. Looking at Leopardi’s later poetry in the ciclo di Aspasia, including one of the last poems, “La ginestra, o il fiore del deserto,” and examining Beckett’s plays Endgame and Happy Days, I argue that desire in Leopardi and Beckett could be read as lying at the cusp between Jacques Lacan’s and Emmanu- el Levinas’s theories, a desire that splits the subject (and is thus based on lack) as much as it moulds the subject when called to address the Other (inspiring what Levinas terms ‘infinity’ as opposed to ‘totality,’ an infinity pitted against the nothingness crucial to pessimist and nihilist readings). This monograph began as a PhD dissertation. I am thus immensely grateful to my dissertation supervisors, Prof. Jonathan Stuart Boulter and Prof. Luca Pocci for their judicious guidance throughout. In addition, I would like to thank my wonderful family and friends. A heartfelt thank- you goes to my husband Domenico for his unflagging support, my parents, Frieda and Carmelo Cauchi, my sister Claudia and my brother Christopher. Above all, I would like to thank my daughter Federica, who teaches me the sheer joy of pursuing interests and discovering something new every day. London (ON), Canada, 11th October 2016 Roberta Cauchi-Santoro, Beyond the Suffering of Being: Desire in Giacomo Leopardi and Samuel Beckett, ISBN 978-88-6453-405-3 (print) ISBN 978-88-6453-406-0 (online PDF) ISBN 978-88-6453-407-7 (online EPUB) © 2016 Firenze University Press INTRODUCTION In noi di cari inganni | non che la speme, il desiderio è spento1 When Samuel Beckett meditated on desire in works such as Proust, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, and Molloy, he returned often to the lines quoted above from Giacomo Leopardi’s poem “A se stesso.” Just be- fore quoting this poem in Proust, Beckett catalogues Leopardi as one of the sages who proposed the only (im)possible solution to living: the re- moval of desire. The question of the “ablation of desire” Proust( 18), upon which Beckett reflects, is the same one that puzzled Leopardi, and later Arthur Schopenhauer (whose philosophy bridges Leopardian and Beck- ettian thought), when they pondered humans’ insistence on allowing de- sire to consume their lives. The centrality of the “ablation of desire” for Leopardi and Beckett, where the desired experience itself is imagined as the homeland of delu- sion, has spurred pessimist and nihilist readings. I argue that the pessi- mist and nihilist labels attributed to Leopardi and Beckett are inadequate because of the role desire plays in the two thinkers’ work, especially in re- lation to another central theme in both of their oeuvres: compassion. Al- though the sage who aspires to a desire-free life is central for both writers, the sage-ideal Beckett proposes through Leopardi – particularly in Proust, that monograph so inspired by Schopenhauer – is a failed sage.2 Leopar- di’s and Beckett’s later work emphatically corrects the ideal of stoic ata- raxic bliss they upheld in their early work. Hence, my contention is that, despite being brought together in their similar aspiration for a desire-free existence, it is specifically desire that remains central for Leopardi and Beckett, particularly as it intertwines with compassion. The centrality of a surprisingly similar notion of human compassion for both Leopardi and Beckett defies pessimist and nihilist readings of both authors. The sage-ideal Beckett refered to in Proust by citing Leopardi is also ultimately not upheld in relation to the aesthetically productive desire-free moment. Schopenhauer proposes that to be snatched away from desire can 1 “Not only our hope | but our desire for dear illusions is gone” (Proust 18). 2 The invisible chord of sympathy between Beckett and Schopenhauer has long been recognized by criticism: “Beckett had a ‘sensed affinity’ with Schopenhauer; consequently [he] emphasized the latter’s pessimism, artistic views and the role of the will” (Feldman, “Samuel Beckett’s Early Development” 190). Roberta Cauchi-Santoro, Beyond the Suffering of Being: Desire in Giacomo Leopardi and Samuel Beckett, ISBN 978-88-6453-405-3 (print) ISBN 978-88-6453-406-0 (online PDF) ISBN 978-88-6453-407-7 (online EPUB) © 2016 Firenze University Press X BEYOND THE SUFFERING OF BEING transport the individual into a state of pure cognition, where aesthetic ap- preciation is possible. The individual in a desire-less moment becomes “the one eye of the world that gazes out from all cognizing creatures” (World as Will and Representation 1: 221).
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