Ontological Journeys of Descent in Dramas of Selfhood: Descensus ad inferos and Individuation in Dante, Claudel, Beckett, Ionesco
By
Ioana Sion
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements
For the degree of PhD
Graduate Department of the Centre for Comparative Literature
University of Toronto
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I+I Canada Ontological Journeys of Descent in Dramas of Selfhood:
Descensus ad inferos and Individuation in Dante, Claudel, Beckett, Ionesco
By
Ioana Sion
PhD Degree, Graduate Department of the Centre for Comparative Literature
University of Toronto
2008
ABSTRACT
The influence of Dante on early Italian and English poetry and drama has been well documented, and there is a whole exegesis and bibliography on this matter. There is clearly very little on
Dante's impact on the modern and contemporary theater. In the attempt to fill a gap and address the issue of Dantesque influence and intertextuality within the spiritual quest of twentieth century drama - and with the declared objective of showcasing various post/modern reinterpretations of the Dantesque ontological journey - I have selected several plays by Paul
Claudel (from the turn of the century), Samuel Beckett (mid-century), and Eugene Ionesco
(towards the end of the century).
This project focuses on the modern drama's engagement with the ritual recovery of being and a re-evaluation of the Commedia's archetype of initiation. Dante's poem is as much about death as it is about life. It is a Summa mortis humanae as much as it is a Summa vitae humanae. The ii estranged soul embarks on a journey of self-knowledge (Inferno), self-renewal (Purgatorio), and self-recovery (Paradiso). It is a symbolic account of descent and ascent or, in other words, the way of individuation, as Carl Gustav Jung calls it. The process essentially consists of a union of consciousness with the contents of the unconscious. This concept of wholeness is later used by
Jung to describe the ultimate aim of all psychic activity. The self is an ideal centre, and the process of individuation follows the search for the true self, for the ideal inner core, the divine spark in man. Like Dante - Claudel, Beckett, and Ionesco emerge as shamans who bring the knowledge of the afterworld to the living. They attempt to expose the contents of the unconscious, to realize the absolute unity in duality, the final reconciliation of the opposites.
Twentieth century wholeness becomes the ekphrasis of "holeness", negativity is absorbed in positivity, and the "new wholeness" contains nothingness, Paradise includes Hell. The onto logical journey is, in the end, a return to w/holeness, to that coincidentia oppositorum, a quest for the identity of the self within its dissolution.
My exploration will essentially highlight a more subtle affiliation of twentieth century drama of selfhood to the Dantesque pursuit of fullness of being, in the form of an undercurrent of structural and thematic analogy, symbolism and subliminal allusion. This study of select dramatic texts, mainly focusing on En attendant Godot (Beckett), Le Repos du septieme jour
(Claudel), and L 'Homme aux valises and Voyages chez les morts (Ionesco), will be approached from a textual standpoint, as well as from philosophical and psychoanalytical perspectives. My interpretation takes the form of bricolage, having the anagogical Dante in the background, in order to create the framework for a meditation on twentieth century (im)possibility of salvation, the revelation of being, the artist's prophetic role within the minefield of artistic creation.
in TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION. Terminology and Method 1
1.1. Contexts and Intertexts. Themes and Theories 1
1.1.1. Dantean Intertext. "Descendit ad inferos...ascendit adcaelos." 1
1.1.2. Methods, Motifs and Perspectives 6
1.2. Paul Claudel's Drama of Salvation 15
1.3. Descent to the Zero Point of Soul in Bekett's Plays ...17
1.4. Ionesco's Journeys to the Afterworld 21
1.5. Modern Chronicles of the Inferno: Conclusions 24
2. CHAPTER 2. DANTE. Labyrinthine Circling to the Centre of the Divine Comedy. Descensus
ad inferos as Redemption in Inf. 8-9 and the Gospel of Nicodemus. Ascensus ad caelos
and Individuation 29
2.1. The Motif of Descent: Brief Overview 29
2.2. Origins and Adaptations of the Gospel of Nicodemus's Descent Motif 33
2.3. Dante's Comedy: Three Descents into the Inferno 36
2.4.The Sacra Rappresentazione before the City of Dis: Inferno 8 and 9 38
2.4.1. First Act 40
2.4.2. Second Act 42
2.4.3. Third Act 43
2.5. The City of Dis Confrontation from an Intertextual and Psychoanalytical Perspective
44
IV 2.6. A Labyrinthine Extravaganza: The Cretan Myth Transformed Into A Christian
Symbol 47
2.7. Dante's Crucial Arithmetic Sensibility and Medieval Numerology 56
2.8. Deus est sphaera cujus centrum ubique. The Soul's Journey to God. God as Circle
and Centre. The Sacred Formal-Theological Design: Threefold and Fourfold 59
3. CHAPTER 3. CLAUDEL. The Circular Self and Salvation on the Seventh Day. Dantesque
Intertext and Descensus ad inferos in Claudel's. Le Repos du septieme
jour 70
3.1. Claudel's Dante. Preliminary Discussion 70
3.1.1. Around "Introduction a un poeme sur Dante" (1921) 70
3.1.2 On Human and Divine Rest: Salvation on the Seventh Day 76
3.2. Le Repos du septieme jour (1901) 78
3.2.1. Structure and Symbolism 78
3.1.2. The First Act: The triple Descent of Christ, Dante and the Emperor 83
3.1.2.1. First Episode 83
3.1.2.2. Second Episode 84
3.1.2.3. Third Episode 86
3.1.3. The Second Act: The Dantesque Journey of Descent 88
3.1.4. The Third Act: Salvation and Self-Understanding 94
3.2. Textual Analysis : Septenary Man and the Union of Heaven and Earth 98
3.3. The "Wholly" Vision 103
3.4. The Centre and the Circle. "Tout etre semble en soi rond" 105
3.5. The Emperor's and Reader's Hermeneutic Circle 114
v 3.6. Conclusions: Homo Claudelianus and Wholeness 117
4. CHAPTER 4. BECKETT. The Zero Self: Descent to the Ground Zero of Being. Godot's
Waiting Selves in Dante's Waiting Rooms 125
4.1. Tout commence avec Dante... Beckett Between Dante's Hell and Purgatory.... 125
4.2. Waiting for Godot and Dante's Waiting Room 130
4.3. The Quaternary Self and Jung's Mandala 154
4.4. The Archetypal Shape of the Beckettian Self 160
4.5. Around Hell and Purgatory: Various Interpretations and Multiple Symbols Where
None Intended 163
4.6. Conclusions to the Shape of the Beckettian Self: The Zero of Wholeness 165
5. CHAPTER 5. IONESCO. Mythical Self and Infernal Labyrinth: The Dantesque
Dimension of Ionesco's Dreamscape 170
5.1. Myth and Archetype 170
5.2. Ionesco's Labyrinthine Realm of the Dead and Dantean Intertext 172
5.2.1. "Le Reve c'est le drame meme": Dream, Drama and Fundamental
Mysteries 172
5.2.2. L'Homme awe valises: First Man's Redemption 176
5.2.3. Voyages chez les morts: Jean's Harrowing of Hell 182
5.3. Melanie Klein and the Quest for the Lost Mother: Matricide and Restoration of the
Maternal Imago 190
5.4. Ionesco's Return to Myth and the Labyrinth 192
VI 6. CHAPTER 6. CONCLUSIONS 201
6.1. Postmodern Continuity or the Ontology of the Post/Modern Self ..201
6.2. Individuation between Sacred and Profane 208
6.3. The Soul's Voyage of Exile 211
6.4. Final Remarks 214
7. APPENDIX 220
8. BIBLIOGRAPHY 222
9. NOTES PER CHAPTER 251
vn Acknowledgements
My chief debt of gratitude is to the late professor Amilcare Iannucci, distinguished Dante scholar and vibrant mentor, whose insight, intellectual enthusiasm and rigorous scholarship have inspired and guided my work.
I am grateful to professors Roland Le Huenen, John Fleming, Angela Cozea and Jorg Bochow, for their invaluable advice and unfailing support.
vm SION Chapter 1: Introduction
1. Chapter 1: Introduction
Terminology and Method
1.1. Contexts and Intertexts. Themes and Theories.
1.1.1. Dantean Intertext. "Descendit ad inferos...ascendit ad caelos."1
According to the Epistle to Can Grande delta Scala, attributed to Dante, The
Divine Comedy deals with the state of souls after death (status animarum post mortem), in its literal sense. From an allegorical point of view, it focuses on "man according as by his merits or demerits in the exercise of his free will he is deserving of reward or punishment by justice."2 As emphasized by Alan Charity, among other critics, the eschatological space appears real, as it reflects various characteristics of the living world. The Commedia is the most developed fleshing out of the theatrum mundi, Francis Fergusson has noted in Dante's Drama of the Mind; it is very much about this life, about actions performed by the living souls that have decided their destiny in death, as Capaneo states in Inferno 15. 51: "As I was when alive, I am the same now, dead." We can therefore see the Comedy as a Summa mortis humanae as well as a Summa vitae humanae. What is most striking about it "is not the powerful summoning-up of the next life, but the disclosure of the tragedy and triumph of man's struggle to be, fully and intelligibly in this life."3
1 SION Chapter 1: Introduction
Dante writes about the human self, and his poem "can be legitimately interpreted as an exploration of the inner world, not only Dante's but also of the human psyche in general."4 The estranged soul embarks on a journey of self- knowledge {Inferno), self-renewal (Purgatorio) and self-recovery (Paradiso). It is a symbolic account of descent and ascent - the "way of individuation", as Carl Gustav
Jung calls this same journey. "This is the theme of the whole poem: the conscious return of a man (and through him of the City, of the Community) to the Centre, which is love made whole, by the hard road of individuation."5
The rising and falling pattern is recurrent throughout the Comedy; it marks for instance two of the most symmetrically counter-posed speeches in the poem: the eulogy of Saint Francis by Saint Thomas Aquinas in canto 9, and the eulogy of Saint
Dominic by Saint Bonaventure in canto 12 of Paradiso. In each case the speaker follows his words of praise for the founder of the other religious order with a denunciation of the present state of his own: Thomas laments the degeneracy of the
Dominicans while Bonaventure grieves for the loss of the original Franciscan fervor.
The same rhythm that sends the exile up and down "per l'altrui scale" (Paradiso
17.59) marks the cadences of the lives of popes, princes, and ordinary people. And the pattern can also be further found in the panoramic view of Roman history provided by the Emperor Justinian in canto 6 of Paradiso, and the story of the noble Florentine families and of Dante's own lineage recounted by Dante's great-great-grandfather,
Cacciaguida in canto 16. Both stories present public and personal narratives of rise and fall - ascent and descent - a two-way movement that is inherent to life and individuation, and which will be encountered later in Claudel's theology, Ionesco's anti-theater, and Beckett's thought.
2 SION Chapter 1: Introduction
Dante appears as a mystic, or a shaman who brings the knowledge of the afterworld to the living. He subsequently reiterates his voyage on paper "in pro del mondo che mal vive" (Purgatorio 32. 103), for the benefit of those who are lost in the selva oscura. Shamans and mystics leave the body behind and enter the world of the spirits in order to connect the invisible to the visible world. They have the role of guides to the afterworld or guides to salvation. This is the essential quality of Dante, to be a mystic-shaman: "Ecco la situazione fondamentale della vita di Dante: essere mistico-sciamano 'in pro del mondo che mal vive' ed aiutarlo a guarire col mezzo straordinariamente concesso dalla grazia, cioe il 'che tu scrive'."6
The debate as to whether the poem has a sacred or profane nature, whether it is a visio or afictio, and its creator a poetafabbro or vates - a poet or a prophet - leaves us, according to Amilcare Iannucci, with the conclusion that there is a fusion of the two, rather than a dichotomy. The poet and the prophet complement each other, vision supplements fiction. The key to this interpretation is Dante's profound respect for the truth: "A mia volta, e l'adozione da parte di Dante e il suo impegno totale rivolto verso la verita che, mi sembra, ci permete di attribuirgli il titolo di 'profeta' e di vedere la sua missione non come una dicotomia fra propheta e poeta, ma piutosto come una fusione dei due elementi."7 My study will mostly relate to this visionary quality of the poet-prophet and his poema sacro.
The four levels - or senses - of medieval theological allegory are the literal, the allegorical, the moral and the anagogical (sensus litteralis, allegoricus, moralis, anagogicus). The word anagogical comes from Greek and means "that which leads upward". My project will be informed by the anagogical interpretation of the spiritual progression: "the passing of the sanctified soul from the bondage of the corruption of this world to the liberty of everlasting glory"8 - the ontological voyage of the 3 SION Chapter 1: Introduction spirit. Anagogy appears as a central concept in the Comedy: this sense reveals to us the journey of the soul to its ultimate power and freedom. Dante, the poet of anagogical truth, retells an archetypal drama of self-loss and self-recovery. "All the journey metaphors are based on the analogy, which the human mind finds very natural, between physical movement and the non-spatial action of the soul."9 The ontological journey is a return to wholeness, a quest for the identity of spirit within its unity.
Dante remains "the master - for a poet writing to-day in any language," as T.S.
Eliot stated in his preface to Dante (1929), and the Divina Commedia, I would add, one of the most productive ontological archetypes. If the influence of Dante on early
Italian and English poetry and drama is well documented, his traces in the modern theatrical world are less known. In the need to address the issue of Dantesque intertextuality within the spiritual quest of twentieth century drama, and with the declared objective of showcasing various post/modern reinterpretations of the
Dantesque ontological journey, I have selected for analysis several plays by Paul
Claudel (from the turn of the century), Samuel Beckett (mid-century), and Eugene
Ionesco (towards the end of the century).
Critical studies have traditionally shown a predilection for plays based on
Dante's life and characters. So far, the primary space of discussion of Dante's echoes in drama has covered the account of Dante's notorious love for blissful Beatrice, the stories of several infernal protagonists, or even attempts to stage the whole of the
Comedy. My dissertation will not be dealing with plays closely based on Dante's life, works, or characters, such as Tommaso Salvini's Dante (1917)10, Orazio Costa's
Divina Commedia (1966) or Federico Tiezzi's production of the Commedia (1989-
91)u, Francis Marion Crawford's or Gabriele D'Annunzio's Francesca da Rimini 4 SION Chapter 1: Introduction
(1901)12. My study will deal extensively with structural and metaphorical appropriations of the Inferno (circles and gyres, circular plot, the use of numerologically significant numbers, tripartite or quadruple configurations), verbal presence (borrowed citations, words, concepts), thematic echoes (the theme of the labyrinthine journey, the struggle for individuation, descent and ascent, the poet as an unknowing prophet), and predilections for certain episodes from the Commedia, for instance the episode of the vestibule, of Ulysses, Ugolino, Belacqua. My exploration will essentially foreground a more subtle affiliation of twentieth-century drama of selfhood to the Dantesque search for identity and unity of Being, in the form of an undercurrent of structural and thematic analogy, symbolism and subliminal allusion.
What is characteristic for twentieth-century theatre is the centrality of an existential nostalgia, and, as Beckett once recalled a comment made by Joyce, "What runs through the whole of Dante is less the longing for Paradise than the nostalgia of being.
Everyone in the poem says: 'Io fui' -1 was, I was".
Julia Kristeva argued that any text is the absorption and transformation of other signifying systems. For Roland Barthes, intertextuality is the "souvenir circulaire" that allows the text to come into being. It is by and large agreed that any text is in fact a palimpsest: "a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation."14 Intertextuality is viewed as a centrifugal force, which attempts to open the text from within, through a widening of the field of signification.
Barthes warns us that the intertextual "is not to be confused with some origin of the text: to try to find the 'sources', the 'influences' of a work, is to fall into the myth of filiations; the citations which go to make a text are anonymous, untraceable, and yet already read: they are quotations without inverted commas."15 It is not my 5 SION Chapter 1: Introduction intention to reduce Dantesque intertextuality to a problem of sources or influences.
Affinity of theme and perspective does occur even when no overt influence exists
(this can be argued in the case of Ionesco). Furthermore, to ascertain influence is a delicate operation, unless an author specifically expresses his indebtedness to another.
In the case of Claudel and Beckett, connections with Dante can be readily established; in Ionesco's theatre, the Dantesque motifs are more diluted, as if, after having been absorbed into the collective unconscious, they resurfaced in the Romanian-French dramatist's dream plays. My exploration of the metamorphoses of Dantesque intertexts will be reinforced by the common central focus of these plays by such dissimilar authors: the inferno of the human condition, the impossibility of the self's search for wholeness or, simply, the struggle to be. An eschatological exploration is required in order to perceive the unity of the self. The netherworld appears on stage as a hypothetical counterpart of the mental hither-world, the unconscious is brought to the light of consciousness, and the self attempts to integrate its shadow in the
'possible worlds of the drama.'
1.1.2. Methods, Motifs and Perspectives.
My interpretation will take the form of bricolage, in the sense given this term by Jacques Derrida in his "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human
Sciences"16 (based on Levi-Strauss' and Gerard Genette's precedents). For Derrida, the literary critic becomes a bricoleur, a jack-of all-trades who uses various methods and theories in order to support his/her interpretation. As Franco Masciandaro states, the most illustrious bricoleur is Dante himself, who, by "reconciling and harmonizing in his vision a myriad of voices - of rationalists and mystics, of poets and 6 SION Chapter 1: Introduction philosophers from both the pagan and Christian world - is perhaps the greatest of bricoleurs."11 This comparative study of select dramatic texts, mainly focusing on En attendant Godot (Beckett), Le Repos du septieme jour (Claudel), and Voyages chez les morts (Ionesco), will be approached from a textual standpoint18, as well as from philosophical and psychoanalytical perspectives.
The philosophical perspective will mainly focus on various ontological aspects of the plays. The Oxford Dictionary defines ontology as a science or study of being:
"specifically, a branch of metaphysics relating to the nature and relations of being; a particular system according to which problems of the nature of being are investigated". My approach will explore the field of ontology in these terms.
Ontology will be tackled with regards to influential theories of the twentieth century: existentialism, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. Some concepts from the main philosophical writings of Jean-Paul Sartre19 will be instrumental in this respect.
Beckett's and Ionesco's views fluctuate between Hegel's celebrated quip, "pure being and nothingness are the same," and Sartre's "nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being, like a worm."20 Claudel's fascination with the unfathomable zero is well known. One of his favourite themes is the circle and the centre, the originating typology of all forms, finite or infinite (Paul Claudel and Andre Gide,
Correspondence: 91). Claudel considered the circle to be a totality, the archetype of all forms and coinciding principles, and hermeneutic circularity a way of reaching the essence of being.
One of the more significant contemporary definitions is Martin Heidegger's formulation of the circle. In Being and Time Heidegger suggests the following account of the hermeneutic circle of meaning and being: "In the circle of understanding... is hidden positive possibility of the most primordial kind of 7 SION Chapter 1: Introduction knowing" (Heidegger, 1978: 195). Any instance of understanding sheds light to the
Self and its primordial essence. Grounded in his ontological theory, Heidegger's hermeneutic circle emphasizes the anticipatory structure of understanding21 and the part/whole relation, which has become a classic formulation. The parts can only be understood in relation to the whole, and vice versa, for instance in the context of text interpretation. The reconstruction of the text as a whole, and not a mere sequence of sentences, has a circular character, in the sense that the anticipation of the whole is implied in the identification of the parts, and reciprocally22.
It is these two versions of the circle in particular - the whole/part relation and
Heidegger's presuppositional formulation - that serve as models for Paul Ricoeur's elaboration of circularity and reflexivity in his earlier as well as later writings on hermeneutics, in texts such as Interpretation Theory, The Conflict of Interpretations, and the essays collected in Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, as well as in Time and Narrative.
The hermeneutic circle is a dialectical and reflexive principle wherein two terms come into a mutual relationship with one another in a dynamic process. The sense of circularity comes from the continual deepening and developing of the relation in what is often described as a spiralling movement going downward and upward to the core of being. Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutic circle consists of two stages, the "descending analytics" and the "ascending dialectics", which combine to represent the phenomenological experience of interpretation. In "The Task of Hermeneutics," for example, Ricoeur invokes the basic form of the circle, as simple reflexivity, to describe the manner in which the subject and object are mutually involved: "The subject itself enters into the knowledge of the object; and in turn, the former is determined, in its most subjective character, by the hold which the object has upon 8 SION Chapter 1: Introduction it, even before the subject comes to know the object" (Ricceur, "The Task of
Hermeneutics," in Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, 57) .
Oriental philosophical theories and arts of spiritual enlightenment will be also mentioned, as they particularly influenced our playwrights: Claudel, who spent ten years in China, was influenced by Taoism24; Ionesco, who revered the Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Todol), integrated in his plays elements of Buddhism and
Shamanism.
Shamanism is the religious experience par excellence, wrote the historian of religions Mircea Eliade, and the shaman is the greatest master of ecstasy. "Shamanism is precisely one of the archaic techniques of ecstasy - at once mysticism, magic, and
'religion' in the broadest sense of the term."25 The word shaman originated from soman (xaman), derived from the Indo-European verbal root scha- "to know," so shaman means someone who knows, a wise person. Claude Levi-Strauss argued that shamans were more like psychoanalysts or explorers of the human mind.
Ionesco's Jean, and Claudel's Emperor, as well as the Necromant, without whose help the invocation of the dead and ensuing descent are not possible, are shamans and psychopomps. Eliade states in his Shamanism that the symbolism of descent via ladder, staircase, or tree is probably as old as our species, and it can - notably for us - be found in the Orphic initiation ceremonies. Going down into the maternal underworld and up into the paternal heavens is a ritual performed only by the initiated shaman. The candidate for initiation will attempt the same symbolic ascent and descent "in order to transmute his ontological status and to make himself like the archetype of Homo religiosus, the shaman"26.
The motif of katdbasis was originally attached to archaic religious structures, predating the Christian era and the descent of Christ, and most famously to the 9 SION Chapter 1: Introduction myth of Orpheus, celebrated hero of Greco-Roman antiquity. A mythological dictionary gives the following reference: "Le theme de la descente aux enfers apparaft des l'origine dans le mythe d'Orphee, remontant sans doute a des structures religieuses et sociales tres archai'ques."27 From Antiquity to the Renaissance and onwards, a wide range of writers and musicians have designated Orpheus as the patron of their art. As Walter Strauss has stated, "the history of the Orphic in the modern world is an abbreviated version of the history of modern poetry in general"28, from Virgil's Fourth Georgic, and Ovid's Metamorphoses to Calderon's El divin
Orfeo and Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus . The myth was generally used as a statement about death, love, and the regenerating power of artistic endeavor. Orpheus signals an inward movement, and the myth maps the journey of descent into, and return from the unconscious or the emotional inferno.
My psychological approach will use some categories of analytical psychology as defined by Jung in works such as The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious
(1947) and The Psychology of Religion: East and West (1958). Terms and categories such as archetype, self, shadow, animus and anima will be used. An archetype can be defined as a content of the collective unconscious, which is the psychological counterpart of instinct. It is also loosely used to designate a collective image or symbol. The collective unconscious encompasses the psychic contents common to many individuals. The animus and anima are the masculine and feminine images of one's self (anima is the unconscious feminine side of a man, while animus, the unconscious masculine side of a woman). Jung calls shadow the other side of ourselves, which is to be found in the personal unconscious. The shadow is the inferior being in ourselves, the one who wants to do all the things that we do not allow ourselves, the Mr. Hyde to our Dr. Jekyll. 10 SION Chapter 1: Introduction
The notion of descent into the underworld of the unconscious can be viewed as myth or archetype according to Eliade and Jung. Myth is born from a series of archetypal images, organized in a narrative, and the descensus ad inferos can be viewed as a mythic story of self-creation, construed as a sequence of archetypes: the archetype of descent, of falling, of the threshold, of ascent, of flying, of the psychopomp. Descent and ascent are symbolized, for instance, in the ritual of the
Christian baptism, in which the child is submerged in the purifying waters and rises anew. The archetypes' nature is sacred and repetitive; they come from the depth of the collective unconscious, and find expression in art and fiction. The primordial images surge from the unconscious and give birth to art. They re-shape the psyche, and the conscious mind creates concepts and fiction out of them through a hermeneutic process of symbol-making. The urge for transcendence is also inherent in the symbolic discourse of myth. Archetypes offer a radical intuition of the self, reveal the nature of artistic creation and the universal core of our collective unconscious. Myths generally tell a sacred story, they are verbal structures in which archetypes appear, they re-organize the symbolic images of the archetypes into a narrative. We notice a common association of the archetype with an image having a symbolic significance, and of myth with language and narrative, a verbal link between the sacred and the profane.
The primordial image, or archetype, is a figure - be it daemon, a human being or a process - that constantly recurs in the course of history and appears wherever creative fantasy is freely expressed. Essentially, therefore, it is a mythological figure. When we examine these images more closely, we find that they give form to countless typical experiences of our ancestors. They are, so to speak, the psychic residua of innumerable experiences of the same type. They present a 11 SION Chapter 1: Introduction
picture of psychic life in the average, divided up and projected into the manifold figures of the mythological pantheon. But the mythological figures are themselves products of creative fantasy and still have to be translated into conceptual language. Only the beginnings of such a language exist, but once the necessary concepts are created they could give us an abstract, scientific understanding of the unconscious processes that lie at the roots of the primordial images.30
In Concerning Mandala Symbolism (translation of "Uber Mandalasymbolik,"
Gestaltungen des Unbewussten. Zurich, 1950), Jung emphasizes again the existence of archetypes or primordial images. To him, the psyche is quaternary: it contains four archetypes - two pairs of opposites: the ego and the shadow, the Anima and the
Animus. The ideal self is an archetype, which represents harmonic neutrality through the transcendence of all opposites, so that every aspect of one's personality is expressed equally. The individual is then neither and both male and female, anima and animus, ego and shadow, neither and both good and bad, conscious and unconscious, neither and both an individual and the whole of creation, Man and God.
In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung introduces the archetype of wholeness and discusses the old medieval concept of squaring the circle - quadratura circuli - the way from earth to heaven, from chaos to unity. As in the old books of alchemy, the philosopher's stone - symbol of cosmic unity - can be obtained by enclosing man and woman in the circle of their microcosm, and further inscribing this circle in the square of their humanity, which is then inserted into the divine triangle, surrounded by the cosmic circle. Human microcosm and divine macrocosm mirror each other and coincide in a spiritual cosmic oneness. "The 'squaring of the circle' is one of the many archetypal motifs which form the basic patterns of our dreams and fantasies.
But it is distinguished by the fact that it is one of the most important of them from 12 SION Chapter 1: Introduction the functional point of view. Indeed, it could even be called the archetype of wholeness. Because of this significance, the 'quaternity of the One' is the schema for all images of God (...)" (Mandala Symbolism, 4).
According to Jung, the goal of life is to realize the totality of the self, to attain wholeness. Jung defines the self as the individual's highest state of fulfillment. In an interview from 1959 with Miguel Serrano, published in C.G. Jung and Hermann
Hesse31, Jung describes the self as follows:
I believe that the thing which I call the Self is an ideal centre, equidistant between the Ego and the Unconscious, and it is probably equivalent to the maximum natural expression of individuality, in a state of fulfillment or totality. As nature aspires to express itself, so does man, and the Self is that dream of totality. (65) The Self... is a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. (71)
The self is an ideal centre, and the process of individuation is the search for the true self, for the ideal inner core, the divine spark in man. In Memories, Dreams,
Reflections32, Jung confesses: "It became increasingly plain to me that the mandala is the centre. It is the exponent of all paths. It is the path to the centre, to individuation.
... I knew that in finding the mandala as an expression of the self I had attained what was for me the ultimate" (195). In one of his last works written when he was in his eighties, "Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky", Jung showed that the vision of the rotundum is psychologically associated with the archetype of wholeness, as expressed in the mandala form, which is the pre-eminent symbol for our times.
Like Dante, Jung attempted a synthesis between sciences and alchemy, astrology and theology. His link between psychology and religion is fundamental 13 SION Chapter 1: Introduction to my interpretation: God and the unconscious emerge as synonymous concepts.
Christ appears as the most complete archetype of self. The search for divinity is coterminous with the fundamental need of exploring the unconscious, of attaining the wholeness of being.
In spite of the overwhelming importance of Dante to Beckett, few critics have ventured beyond mere identification of references (and mainly in fiction and poetry):
John Fletcher, Ruby Cohn, Mary Bryden, Michael Robinson, Walter Strauss, Gabriele
Frasca, Lois Cuddy, Hugh Haughton, Neal Oxenhandler. A few theses and dissertations have researched the background of these intertexts: Anthony Cavell
(1979), Kevin O'Neill (1985), Francesca Del Mora (1996), Daniella Caselli (1999),
Rick McNeal (2005). More recently, Jean-Pierre Ferrini (2003, 2006), Dirk Van Hulle
(2004) and Daniella Caselli (2006) have focussed on Beckett's novels. In Claudel's case, a number of commentators have provided in-depth readings of some Dantesque intertexts (mainly doctrinal-thematic-structural studies dealing with the theme of
Beatrice, of descent, of the cross, of punishment, redemption and revelation): Odile
Vetoe, Jacques Houriez, Pierre Brunei, Jacques Petit, Georges Poulet, Ernst
Beaumont, Maria Bianca Festa, Dominique Millet-Gerard. A few others have episodically addressed the topic in shorter critical articles: Yves Reboul, Georges
Cattaui, Arthur Evans, Anthony Viscusi, Nancy Vickers. As for Eugene Ionesco, no research has been taken in this direction, to my knowledge.
This dissertation brings the attention of literary studies onto a series of uninvestigated Dantesque intertexts related to the myth of descent to the underworld as a journey of initiation and individuation, which inform the works of Ionesco, 14 SION Chapter 1: Introduction
Beckett, Claudel33. Careful comparative readings of significant dramatic texts by these playwrights will reveal how the dialectic between the Dantesque text and twentieth century plays functions. What follows are some sections, which further describe the relevant primary material and rationale for this study.
1.2. Paul Claudel's Drama of Salvation
At the age of 18 Claudel experienced a spiritual revelation: during a service on
Christmas Day in Notre Dame Cathedral, he was suddenly converted to Roman
Catholicism. In the following years, Claudel aimed at celebrating God's creation, thus bringing the key to universal harmony to his contemporaries. "The Divine Comedy is a poem about conversion,"34 geared to the conversion of the whole world, as Erich
Auerbach has claimed, about the fusion of Self and God. Similarly to Dante, in order to reveal divine design and the meaning of empirical reality, Claudel believed that
"the poet plays the role of a priest who mediates a believer's knowledge of God."35
His work attempted to recover the genesis of humankind in the image of the Divine
Creator. For Claudel all artistic creation is a mutual birth, a co-naissance of the writer and the reader/spectator. Claudel was a mystic who aimed at transcending the personal realm and voicing the divine order, eventually assuming the task of a
'prophet working under God's eye'.
In he Repos du septieme jour {The Rest on the Seventh Day), the dead invade the world of the living and the empire is in disarray when the Chinese Emperor retires in solitude. In order to restore the lost harmony, the Emperor has to travel to the
Underworld to find the remedy. The second act presents his descent to Hell. Instead of the three donne benedette (Maria, Lucia and Beatrice), he encounters "the Mother, 15 SION Chapter 1: Introduction the Demon and the Angel," and this is when his instruction begins. Through scholastic dialogues, the root of evil is revealed. The remedy is suggested by the
Angel: first recognize God, then work six days and rest on the seventh, consecrating it to God. The third act reveals the passage from ruin to restoration: the Emperor returns from the Inferno in order to re-establish order and equilibrium on earth.
Jean Cazeneuve defines the ritual as "une action conforme a un usage collectif et dont l'efficacite est, au moins en partie, d'ordre extra-empirique" (Article: "Rites" in the Encyclopaedia Universalis). The Necromant in the Rest on the Seventh Day beats a gong, spreads the blood of a black chicken and repeats mysterious incantations in order to invoke the spirit of Hoang Ti (807). Pierre Brunei names this type of ritual
"conjunctive" (32), since it is meant to make the dead come towards the living and abolish the distance between the two realms. The Emperor of China is the guardian of the "trois mille rites" (798), and the Chinese rituals, Brunei tells us, are essentially disjunctive. The paradox of the Emperor's actions is that his conjunctive ritual has a disjunctive value. In order to keep the dead at a safe distance, the Emperor decides to first get closer to them: to invoke them, meet them and descend to their underworld.
When the Emperor returns from his infernal voyage, he is bearer of the "rite interdictif' (845), he knows the remedy, the way to stop the invasion of the dead, he has moved to a new stage of spirituality.
The Inferno uncovered by the Emperor in Le Repos du septieme jour resembles that of Dante. Claude! even uses the terms "enceinte" and "cercle" (literal appropriations), and follows the structure of the Dantesque Hell (structural appropriation of space): there is an Antechamber, a Lower and Upper Hell divided in circles, and governed by Satan's invisible powers. The punishments occur in a similar order: shadows, fire, ice. 16 SION Chapter 1: Introduction
According to Zoel Saulnier and Eugene Roberto36, Claudel aims at a syncretism between Chinese and Christian orientations - Taoist37 beliefs and
Christian tradition. The hierarchy of the Y-King is comparable to that of Genesis.
Odile Vetoe, in her thesis Claudel et Dante insists on the common source of the two descents (Dante's and Claudel's), which is sin. At the beginning of his voyage, Dante the character abandoned the right path and lost himself in the selva oscura; Claudel's
Emperor (subject), as the representative of a humanity distanced from God, starts his journey in order to redeem humanity's sin, to find the antidote for evil (object). The motif of the descent (the trajectory of the subject's quest) is similar, as well as its goal, which is to seek peace and harmony, for the benefit of the world of sinners
(receiver). The sender is indirectly God, and both Dante and the Emperor have the privilege of a beatific vision and a personal purification at the end of their journey; on their return they have acquired a new vocation, they are now prophets who indicate the right path to others.
The very name of poet in the Latin world was that of prophet, vates. Gabriel
Marcel and Jacques Lacan, among others, have explored Claudel's poetic inspiration and its prophetic dimension. Marcel believes that Claudel's theatre represents a revolution without precedent in France, in opposition to the whole French dramatic tradition: neither psychological, nor social or critical, but cosmic or ontological.
1.3. Descent to the Zero Point of Soul in Beckett's Plays
Beckett once stated: "sub specie eternitatis, vision is the only excuse for staying alive."38 Oddly enough, the great demystifier of the human soul, as Ionesco named him, was entranced by Dante's visio. "Beckett's life work is composed 17 SION Chapter 1: Introduction under the shadow of the afterlife of Dante's God and his Commedia"39, underlined
Hugh Haughton. The influence of Dante on Beckett's novels and his use of
Purgatorio in his early work are well established. Some critics have noted that his works are impregnated with the dynamism of Ante-Purgatory, as Beckett frequently alludes to it, or that his protagonists travel a la derive, without a guide, the country roads of the Mount of Purgatory40. Belacqua, Dante's old friend, the Florentine slothful lute-maker, is the chosen protagonist for Dream of Fair to middling Women, and More Pricks than Kicks. The "sinfully indolent" become models for the contemporary attitudes and typologies "on this earth that is Purgatory"41. Beckett's imagination in theatre takes the form of various fragments of Dante's afterlife, without retaining the distinction among the three topographical spaces of Hell,
Purgatory, and Paradise.
Many mystifying allusions in his plays, and especially in Waiting for Godot acquire clarity when reviewed in a Dantesque "light". A "blaze of hellish light" also illuminates Winnie in Happy Days, while immobilized, half-buried in a mini-
Mountain of Purgatory. The protagonists agonize indeterminately under a "hellish half-light" or "hellish sun". The Beckettian characters suffer from the impossibility of dying, but also of living; like the sinners in Dante's Inferno they are forced to resign themselves to eternal torment.
Canto 3, the "waiting room" of the Inferno, provides the thematic undercurrent of Waiting for Godot. The third canto introduces the "Neutrals", those who never took part either in good or evil and remained unrepentant about their passivity. Vladimir and Estragon, symbols of non-existence, live outside historic time. They are forced to spend eternity in the Ante-Inferno, separated by the River Acheron from the tripartite construction of the afterworld, outside God's realm. Although presented as a 18 SION Chapter 1: Introduction manifestation of Nothingness, this locus dramaticus is a picture of human life in the world. Indolence, immobility and the inability to make choices specifically inform
Beckett's characters, who act like clowns that cannot distinguish between good and evil, reality and theatre. While appearing to be dehumanized, empty shells, they represent the ground zero of being which contains all possible identities. The artist receives the visio of the zero point of being and captures it in writing for the benefit of the reader. Beckett's art is prophetic, Paul Davies acknowledges, "in other words receptive and projective of the world of soul"42, which he finds in non-location. To the home location of the traditional ego there corresponds, in Beckett, its opposite image: that of the ego's non-existence, which is "located" in a no-place.
Beckett is not known to have practiced a system of Buddhist philosophy. As a
Western-educated explorer of consciousness, he does not use oriental or mystical language, but he has studied the mystics as part of his humanistic instruction. Similar to the Tibetan metaphysical tradition, his discourse of the non-existence of self develops alongside the discourse of the journey of the soul.
Beckett's contact with Jungian therapy started while attending the third of lung's Tavistok lectures in London on the inability of the ego to agree fully to the fact of having being born. Inspired by Jung43, Beckett explores the fundamental quality of unbornness, which, according to Tibetan esotericism, defines the primordial perfection of existence in the womb of the great mother nothingness. From the
"spermarium to the crematorium" (Beckett, Murphy, 48) it is only one stage of waiting to return to the primordial womb.
Ontological alienation is an overall theme in Waiting for Godot, Endgame,
Happy Days, Krapp's Last Tape. Serenity can only be achieved in the realm beyond, freedom is acquired only in the face of death, what Martin Heidegger called 19 SION Chapter 1: Introduction
Freiheit-zum-Tode. Beckett is indebted to Dante, underlines John Fletcher, "but he
has not molded his vision by him. In Beckett's world, the Danteian sublime is
replaced by the risus purus.44" Beckett parodies the mythical frame of the journey; the journey motifs are subverted while the physical movement of his characters is reduced
to a minimum. "He uses the quest motif as a frame for a different sort of journey, with
parallels not to physical action on stage but to psychological searches, metaphysical
struggles, and linguistic voyages."45
Patrick Boyde describes Dante as "one of the greatest dramatists never to have
written a play."46 It was noted by critics, for instance Cormac 6 Cuilleanain, that the
dramatic quality of the Commedia resides in the confrontation of souls and their brilliant exchanges of words: "The essence of drama in the Commedia is built on
interpersonal exchange. A whole battery of techniques is deployed to lure the reader
into a three dimensional illusion"47; similarly, the dramatic essence of Godot lies in the dialogue, which is the only reality that the characters experience. The technique of the dramatic exchange further links Dante to Beckett: their use of symmetry and rhetorical devices in colloquial language - especially repetition of one character's words by another, as underlined by Jennifer Petrie in "Dialogue in the Commedia!'.
Taking up each other's words and throwing the question back at the other becomes a favourite pastime for Didi and Gogo, reflecting, for instance, the dialogue between
Dante and Filippo Argenti in Inferno 8.
In Endgame, Hamm and Clov torment each other plunged in an infernal cell without an exit; from their dungeon in lower Hell, Clov has to step on a high ladder in order to have a peak outside, at a "decaying, depopulated planet." The archetypal motif of engulfment is dominant in both Beckettian and Ionescan works.
Symbolically, it represents a descent into the underworld, while psychologically, it 20 SION Chapter 1: Introduction is a submersion into the unconscious, an exploration of the shadow through the ego. It was said that Beckett's plays are acted out in a kind of mix of inferno and purgatorio, a "purgatory of infernal waiting," or a "purgatory without purification", which reflects fragments of Dante's depictions. Transcendence and salvation are suppressed, and the characters are excluded from the scheme of the world as they are excluded from the afterworld.
1.4. Ionesco's Journeys to the Afterworld
lonesco's protagonists evolve from soulless puppets in his early plays into shamanic characters especially in L'Homme aux valises (1975) and Voyages chez les morts (1980). He shaped these last plays into ritual enactments of the voyage of the shaman, which has the objective of recuperating each person's eros from the tentacles of thanatos. Eros underlies humanity's desire for the unattainable, for the unity of the spirit. Shamanism is a technique of ecstasy and initiation. According to Eliade, flight symbolizes ecstasy, the ability of the soul to transcend the flesh. While in an ecstatic trance, the shaman's soul visits the underworld and paradise, the past and the future.
He is a priest, a mystic, a poet and also a psychopomp: upon his return from the ecstatic journey, he recreates the spiritual itinerary of the trance and leads others through it. lonesco's protagonists, First Man and Jean, are surrogate shamans who guide the spectator on a metaphysical journey into the realms of light and weightlessness, darkness and heaviness.
According to Gnosticism, the origins of evil coincide with that of creation; in
Valentinian Gnosticism48, Primal Man can be redeemed and he will rise again.
Finding ideal love is tantamount to returning to a lost paradise, to Divinity. The 21 SION Chapter 1: Introduction
First Man from L'Homtne awe valises (1975) finally meets the blessed one who will bring divine grace upon him and will assist him in the rediscovery of the world, by penetrating the mystery of creation. Similarly to Dante, Ionesco's First Man has completed an ecstatic journey to the underworld and has returned to the real world reconciled with his mortal human nature and with Divinity.
The ideal woman is also the key to the lost paradise of memory. As Berenger, in A Stroll in the Air says, "you are unhappy without knowing it. Because human misery comes from that; from the inability to fly, from having forgotten how"49. In
The Killer, the memory of a "luminous moment" is the sole reason for existence of the main character, who sets out on a diligent search for the radiant city; the restoration of the "forgotten light" is his essential quest. In Amedee ou How to Get Rid of It the husband and wife have to resist "the ever greater and greater encroachment of death on our lives ". Exit the King was written because of the need to overcome death, by learning how to die: "I wrote that work that I might learn to die."51
Voyages chez les morts is the story of a renowned writer who, in his dreams, faces old conflicts with his departed relatives, and pursues the reunion with his anima, his dead mother. The main theme is the quest for wholeness and identity, for the image of the soul, the mother, who went to the station, purchased a ticket in a sleeping car, and disappeared in an unknown direction. The realistic events of his parents' separation are mixed with the mythical journey to the realm of the dead. We recognize various scenes from Ionesco's journals: meditations, dream images, confessional passages. Jean, Ionesco's protagonist from Voyages, must visit the underworld in order to encounter the image of the Great Mother or the Great Goddess of Complete Being, the feminine figure that will connect him with Divinity, with his true self. Just like "pious Aeneas", Jean will have to pass through the Gate of 22 SION Chapter 1: Introduction
Ivory, "les dents de la defense"52. But how can the individual achieve wholeness, if the reconciliation of the life of the spirit (Eastern Gnosticism) and the life of the mind
(Occidental Rationalism) has become impossible? "The defense of the Occident" can be carried out only by a mediator, one able to bridge the two cultures, the Occidental and the Oriental, only by a true shaman connecting the afterworld and the hither- world, the past and the future, the ego and the shadow. Ionesco appears as one of 'the last Knights of the Occident,' a chivalric order dedicated to the preservation of being.
Jean takes on various identities, and undergoes continuous metamorphoses.
Nothingness is the order of unlimited formless being, capable of every form and limited by none. Just like Beckett, Ionesco is concerned with the collapse of identity, with the ceaseless fragmentation of the self. Similarly to Dante, Ionesco fits in his play "real men," his contemporaries, his friends and enemies. The characters seem to endure eternal punishment forever reliving their recriminations, like Dante's fratricidal traitors. The judgment episode is not behind the scenes as in Godot (we only see Pozzo and Lucky upon their return from the Market of the Holy Saviour), but presented on stage, in all its cruelty.
We may draw attention to a possible Dantesque interpretation of Ionesco's two prevalent states of being, one associated with darkness, heaviness, and mud, the other one, with light, weightlessness and joy53. Ionesco defends life and the world of light, against the world of darkness, precisely by probing the darkness. Immobility
(stasis, death) is in constant struggle with Mobility (kinesis, life). Ionesco's theatre is one of the Inferno, with Death at its centre. We could argue that it is also a theatre of
Paradise, because God, symbolized by the eternal principle of life, is at the opposite - but coinciding - centre. Similarly to Beckett, Ionesco contributes significant developments to the new kind of dramatic text, which explores, in a temporality 23 SION Chapter 1: Introduction reminiscent of the verbal "imperfect" tense, the nature of existence in the wake of the imperfectly achieved disappearance of the subject. Just like Dante, he sought to bring the knowledge of life and death to his contemporaries.
1.5. Modern Chronicles of the Inferno: Conclusions
The modern age replaced Christian "eternity" with the myth of the death of
God. Official culture, as Matei Calinescu argues in Five Faces of Modernity, was replaced by an intellectual relativism of blurred distinctions, uncertainty, ambivalence, dissolution of being, fragmentation of the unity and an overall sense of living in a malignant, incoherent universe.
The modern age is separation... The modern age is a breaking away from Christian society. Faithful to its origins, it is a continuous breaking away, a ceaseless splitting apart... As if it were one of those tortured imagined by Dante (but which is for us a stroke of luck: our reward for living in history), we search for ourselves in otherness, find ourselves there, and as soon as we become one with this other whom we invent and who is our reflection, we cut ourselves from this phantom being, and run again in search of ourselves, chasing our own shadow.54
Modern theatre, Robert Brustein asserts in The Theatre of Revolt, can be defined in terms of its "disintegrating values". Like modern art, it attempts to name the unnamable and "present the unpresentable", as Jean Francois Lyotard has remarked. Absurdism, one of the most creative movements in modern theatre, is a term now applied to a specific genre, labeled "theatre of the absurd" by Martin Esslin in the 60's, and years later simply "new theatre" by Peter Norrish, "avant-garde theatre" by Leonard Pronko, "theatre of derision" by Emmanuel Jacquart and 24 SION Chapter 1: Introduction
"theatre of protest and paradox" by George Wellwarth. Ionesco, in Notes and
Counter-Notes, insisted on the linguistic debacle and referred to his theatre as a
"revised version of the Tower of Babel"55. What the "absurdists" of the 50's had in common was the total rejection of traditional moral values based on religion and politics, mainly through a critique of the bourgeois cliches and conventions, mental lethargy and family structure, the form of a redefined anti-play emerging as a perfect solution. They discarded causality and dialectical thinking, and persisted instead in presenting the co-existence of opposites without the possibility of a synthesis, views embraced by some non-classical scientists56 as well. The coincidentia oppositorum, though, need not be thought about within a structure whose only closure is the synthesis. Rather, the reconciliation of the opposites could be viewed as being in constant tension, as enacted complementarity or non-mutually destructive opposition.
The anti-play was the model for the experimental French theatre of the 50's.
Anti-theatre represented a fierce rebellion against both artistic tradition and established social order. According to Patrice Pavis, the anti-play rejected all values, all positive heroes and quests, therefore imitation, illusion, identification, while embracing randomness, illogical action, existential typology. Absolute negation consolidated the metaphysical, atemporal, archetypal, transhistorical and therefore the idealistic character of anti-theatre. Yet, there is more one ought to say about Pavis' hypothesis, which does not seem to be thought through. Beckett and Ionesco could not play out the Nietzschean tune of the "devaluation of all values" to its exclusive end; rather, their plays are inclusive of both the discarded values, which fall under the irony's pitiless thrust and the world at its absurd stage, in which the self-less, located in the non-place, journeys within the meaning-less.
25 SION Chapter 1: Introduction
The terminology "theater of the absurd"57 derives from the philosophical use
of the word absurd by such existentialist writers as Albert Camus and Jean Paul
Sartre. Camus, particularly, argued that humanity had to resign itself to recognizing that a fully satisfying rational explanation of the universe was beyond its reach; in that sense, the world must ultimately be seen as absurd. "According to Existentialist philosophy, the absurd is that which cannot be explained and denies man any philosophical or political rationale for his actions."58 To the absurd anti-hero, meaning is invariably, perpetually elusive.
The theatre of the absurd particularly refers to tendencies in dramatic literature that emerged in the plays of Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov,
Fernando Arrabal, Jean Genet, and Jean Tardieu, but its roots can be discovered in the farces59 of the Middle Ages and in 18th century fairground theatre. It was described by Emmanuel Jacquart as a theatre of derision that strives towards the unspeakable, while creating new metaphors for the modern inner landscape: "le theatre de derision et d'autoderision a perdure sans se renier, modifiant son visage au fil des annees, s'affinanf et s'approfondissant pour devenir, en fin de parcours, un theatre de
1'introspection et de l'excavation dans les profondeurs du moi."60 While Claudel is far from being labeled an absurdist, Ionesco and Beckett are still considered the main exponents of the so-called absurd theatre, although nowadays their absurd has started to "make sense", and their engagement with the self and the sacred has become more conspicuous. Ionesco denies ever writing absurd theatre61, but a theatre of derision
("Je puis dire que mon theatre est un theatre de la derision. Ce n'est pas une certaine societe qui me parait derisoire, c'est l'homme." Notes contre-notes, 190) and Beckett never agreed with this label ("Je n'ai jamais ete d'accord avec cette notion de theatre de l'absurde"62). Despite its imprecision and its rejection by the authors involved, 26 SION Chapter 1: Introduction the concept is still in use, since it is a comfortable label. In a way, the avant-gardiste theatre of the absurd of the 1950s has now become a twentieth-century classic.
The use of metaphors of Hell to describe the modern world is now literary commonplace, and the dissolution of - or progression from - religion and love to alienation, is largely manifest in modern drama. Within this framework of modernity, my project will follow in part Dante's anagogical and spiritual journey in connection to Claudel's and Ionesco's reenactments of this motif. While Claudel's search of wholeness could still be entertained as a valid critical hypothesis, Ionesco' search could be called one of "holeness," in which the positive aspects of the whole find their reversed image of a general emptiness. One may say that Ionesco's "hole" is the
"whole that once was" the object of Utopian desire. These two dramatists' reformulations of the artist's quest as a prophet or shaman journeying into the afterworld for the benefit of the reader/spectator, "in pro del mondo che mal vive," will be looked at closely. As for Beckett, he situates our post-modern reality at the limits of Dante's afterworld, while attempting to take us to the roots of Being and present existential reality as the ekphrasis of Nothingness. Within the parenthesis of
First Love and Not I, his writing comes across less as "aesthetic effect" than as something close to the "sacred", and conveys back to us "the now carnivalized destiny of a once flourishing Christianity", as Julia Kristeva put it in Desire in Language63.
This project focuses on the modern drama's engagement with the ritual recovery of
Being and a re-evaluation of the Commedia's archetype of initiation.
I intend to pursue a comparative study of selected European dramas, having the anagogical Dante in the background, in order to create the framework for a meditation on the twentieth century im/possibility of salvation, the revelation of being, the artist's prophetic role within the minefield of artistic creation. The plays 27 SION Chapter 1: Introduction to be analysed deal with fragmented representations of reality, reproductions of vaudeville-like or dream language, encounters with absolute nonsense, the infernal barrenness of internal and external landscapes. They are patterned by the suggestion that "man has been dumped for reasons unknown in a world designed, intentionally or not, to frustrate and hurt him."64 He subsequently embarks on a mechanical and self- defeating quest for meaning. The soul must undergo exile in order to find its home, even though the going up and down on unfamiliar steps proves to be a strenuous task, as Dante mentions: "Com'e duro calle/ lo scendere e il salir per l'altrui scale" (Par
17.59). Alterity begs for an overarching, mysterious sameness.
The course of history in the twentieth century has modified the reception of
Dante by alerting the European ear to the voice of exile, uncertainty, absurd and infernal damnation. Dante's complex exploration of the Self cum Selfless stimulated countless rewritings in subsequent times. Shelley, for instance, described the
Commedia as a bridge across time, joining the ancient and the modern worlds, and thus linking the phantasm of the Self with its opposite. This project will attempt to foreground the relevance of this bridge to the postmodern world as well. Inferno, the
"mythograph of Hell", as Paul Davies calls it, emerges as the central archetype, which informs my exploration. I do not intend to show Dante, Beckett, Ionesco or Claudel as
Buddhists, shamans or mystics, they simply speak of Self and its (non) existence in similar ways, as they open a dialogue among drama, philosophy, psychology and religion. Be it a direct or remote influence, conscious or emerging via the collective unconscious, the Divina Commedia's authority is discernible in these plays, and this study will endeavor to show how the archetype of descent has shaped the forms of
Dante's presence in twentieth-century drama.
28 SION Chapter 2: Dante
2. CHAPTER 2: Dante
Labyrinthine Circling to the Centre of the Divine Comedy
Descensus ad inferos as Redemption in Inf. 8-9 and the Gospel ofNicodemus
Ascensus ad caelos and Individuation
2.1. The Motif of Descent: Brief Overview
The Descent into Hell is typically viewed as a myth or an archetype. One difference that we will take into account is that, while the archetype is a pre-verbal image, myth is understood as a verbal narrative about a sacred beginning. If we consider the dramatic or poetic narratives of the descent (Christ's, Orpheus', or
Dante's) as a story having sacred roots and unfolding through several stages, then, I would argue, we are dealing with the myth of descent. If, though, we are referring to the instance of crossing a boundary as the symbol of a transgression, then I would name it an archetype. The descent can also be regarded as a moment of engulfment, free falling or entrapment. The ascent, on the other hand, can be viewed as catharsis, epiphany, cosmic integration or revelation of the nature of self and divinity. As an experience of darkness followed by light, it is an image not yet verbalized, and therefore it is treated as an archetype.
The descensus motif predates the Christian harrowing of Hell, in the forms of the mythical kaiabasis, or descent to Hades; well known instances of this motif are 29 SION Chapter 2: Dante found in the epic tale of Gilgamesh, the myth of Orpheus, and, later, in epic poems such as Homer's Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid and Dante's Divine Comedy.
The inquiry into what kind of life may follow death - the eschatological exploration - represents a constant in all the cultures we know. The push comes from the belief that the understanding of the ontological status of the dead could shed light on to the condition of the living and give them hope. The visit to the land of the dead is in fact a journey of the soul's initiation, not only into the mysteries of death, but also into one's own psyche.
Mircea Eliade considers myth to be a sacred story about origins, which establishes the link between the profane and the sacred, between Man and God. Any myth is an "ontophany" - a story about a new creation of divine origins and a new beginning for man. Any myth of creation is also a myth about the end of the world, for any ending is also a new beginning, and the myth of descent tells of crossing thresholds and being born again. The stage of incompleteness and unfulfillment is brought to an end by gaining knowledge about the true nature of the self, and thus reaching the maturity and plenitude of being. And no knowledge is superior to that acquired through the suffering of "dying" and "being born anew."
In order to explore the structure of literary myths, we may consider three essential elements: space, time and representative character. The latter is approached here under its traditional hypostases: the guide or psychopomp, and the figure undergoing transformation or initiation.
In terms of space, Hell (Jnferni or Enfers, in Latin and French) refers to the underground regions of the Land of the Dead: the Hebrew Sheol is an undetermined pit, the Homeric Hades or Nekya is an indefinite space of darkness, while the
Christian or Oriental Hell becomes a "den of punishment." 30 SION Chapter 2: Dante
The question of time, of its destructive essence, but also of its taming or abolition is inherent to the myths of the underworld. There are two basic models of time representation in human cultures, according to which time can be either cyclical or linear. In Brahmanism, for instance, the horror of circularity lies at the heart of the doctrine of reincarnation. Cyclical time is the infernal time of being stuck in a body and having to relive the sufferings with each reincarnation of the soul, over and over again, without being able to get out of the cycle of karma and to reach Nirvana. On the other hand, in elaborating upon the linear concept of historic time formulated in the Jewish Bible, Christianity devises a transcendent destiny for man. The Christian netherworld is binary, the souls being sent post mortem corporarum to either the land of the blessed (Heaven) or the one of the damned (Hell). The latter has been traditionally represented via dreadful images of souls punished in horrific ways.
Dante's Inferno is only the most elaborate and best known instances of such depictions.1 Dante's movement of time is an elaborate reworking of the two basic models, whereby the circle and the line are articulated in a spiral shape. The complexity of this spatio-temporal movement is intensified by the existence of two different regimes of temporality in Christian religion: the historical time of the living
(chronos, tempus) is the opposite of the changeless eternity of beings and things divine (aion, aeternitas).
The metaphoric use of the Descent into Hell came to refer to the moment of dying, of being dead or of being dead while still alive: the agony before death, the journey of the departed soul after death, the radical dehumanization effected in the gulag or the concentration camp. It can also suggest the fall into the depths of evil, the crossing of a boundary or the transgression of universal laws. The movement the descent can take can be vertical, circular and labyrinthine. Stricto sensu, the 31 SION Chapter 2: Dante descensus ad inferos is a visit to the land of the dead, which metaphorically relates to a journey of initiation and, to follow C.G. Jung, an exploration of the archetypes of the unconscious. In Book VI of the Aeneid, during his visit to the Elysian Fields,
Aeneas comes to terms with his past and receives revelations about the future. His ascent from Hell is linked to a new beginning for him and the Roman world, the crossing of an ontological threshold. As was the case with Odysseus' descent to
Hades, told in the eleventh book of the Odyssey, the trip to the netherworld represents both a revisiting of the shades of the dear or dreaded ones, and a search for clues that foretell the hero's future on earth.
The mystical descent, which is an experience of the night of the spirit, can come as a vision of Hell, as it happens, for instance, with the 16th-century Spanish Carmelite poets: San Juan de la Cruz (El cdntico espiritual) and Santa Teresa de Jesus (Book 32 of Libro de la Vida). William James suggested in his 1902 lecture, "The Varieties of
Religious Experience", that the occurrence of mysticism may be an extension of the ordinary fields of human consciousness into the unconscious. To get lost in the dark forest (la selva oscura) is the first necessary half of the process by which the self is touched by the divine. San Juan's bride claims that only by being lost was she found by divine love. It is through contemplation that the lost soul attains ecstasy and illumination, which come from a union with God. Henri Bergson considered intuition to be the finest way of acquiring human knowledge, and mysticism, the epitome of intuition. In Grammars of Creation (2001), George Steiner regards Dante as the greatest "logician of the intuitive," whose faith is "innervated by thought" (64).
Dante's eschatological journey to the underworld, previously visited by the risen
Christ, combines Eros and Logos, mystical intuition and rational knowledge. "Dante is our meridian" (64), he is the centre which gives the measure of our modern 32 SION Chapter 2: Dante artistic endeavors, and his Nekya shapes one of the most important myths and metaphors of modernism, the descent to Hell. There is "no greater poet, none in whom the summa of knowledge, of imagining, of formal construction is made to reveal itself in language more commensurate to its purpose" (Steiner 64).
2.2 Origins and Adaptations of the Gospel ofNicodemus's Descent Motif
One of the defining archetypes of descent which greatly influenced Dante is
Christ's harrowing of Hell, as presented in the apocryphal Gospel ofNicodemus. The
Gospel is composed of two parts, which are known as Acta Pilati (Ch. 1-17) and the
Descensus Christi ad Inferos (Ch. 18-27). According to William Hulme {Harrowing of Hell) and Jean Monnier {La descente aux enfers) as well as to Remi Gounelle and
Zbigniew Izydorczyk (in the introduction and notes to their most recent French translation of the Evangile de Nicodeme2, these two texts originated at different times, independently of each other. The Descensus is the older of the two, and it probably received its literary form as early as the third century. However, there is no known manuscript of any of the versions which can be dated earlier than the fifth century.
There are at least three major manuscript versions (two Latin texts referred to as A3 and B, and one Greek text.) In both Latin texts, the sons of Simeon are given the names Leucius and Karinus suggesting that the author of the Gospel could be Leukios
Karinos, the Gnostic author of the Acts of John.
Christ's descent into Hell is a common teaching in Christian theology. The essence of the doctrine is that, through Christ's descent, death and the Underworld have been made powerless, and many of the souls imprisoned there have been transferred to Paradise. The idea of God appearing as a conqueror of the infernal 33 SION Chapter 2: Dante realm antedates the Christian era, and it was familiar to the authors of Isaiah and
Hosea. Hulme notes that "it is, in fact, not improbable that the Hebrew and Christian conceptions of Yahweh and Christ visiting the kingdom of the dead and overcoming
Satan and his hosts are merely later developments from the Babylonian, Persian,
Egyptian and Grecian belief in the descent of the spirits of the dead into a region of darkness and gloom."4 The story on an Egyptian papyrus of the first century AD describes the descent of the priest of Memphis, Setne Khamuas (1250 BC) to the underworld, where he saw the judgment of souls and the labyrinthine corridors of
Hades. There are Greek stories about Ishtar's descent to Hades in order to save her dead husband. Jewish stories from the Book of Enoch describe visits to Sheol.
In Oriental belief systems the descent into Hell is connected to the immortality of the soul. There are Buddhist and Hinduist myths, such as those in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, telling of descents endeavored to free the damned. The legend of
Christ's descent was inspired by certain passages in the New Testament, mainly in the
First Epistle of Peter. Christ's Harrowing of Hell was accepted as an act of faith by early orthodox Christians, but controversy as to the purpose of the mission and its significance kept feeding into the Byzantine Synods.
The formal recognition of the concept as part of the Christian faith occurred in the fourth century (359 AD) when the sentence - "He descended to the underworld, and regulated things there, Whom the gatekeepers of Hell saw and shuddered"5 - was introduced in the Apostle's Creed. The Acta Pilati was written probably around that time and added to the Descensus. Cynewulf, the greatest Old English religious poet has many references to the descensus motif in his poems (especially in the one on
Christ). From the fifth century on the story became popular, as shown by the many references or allusions to it in medieval art and literature. It was represented in 34 SION Chapter 2: Dante every visual and literary art form of the period: 40 manuscript miniatures of
Harrowing from the 10lh and the 11th centuries have been preserved in the British
Museum, as well as in mosaics, ivory carvings, enamels, stained glass, various paintings6. The legend inspired beautiful works by Fra Angelico, Taddeo Gaddi,
Albrecht Diirer and other artists of the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. But nowhere was the influence of the Harrowing of Hell motif felt more powerfully than in medieval drama. The plays concerned with Easter - especially in the cyclical mysteries - always included the Harrowing of Hell among the scenes devoted to the representation of Christ's passion and resurrection. It became one of the most popular scenes of the Norman French, German and Middle English Easter plays. It is described by one of the plays in each of the four great cycles of English mysteries: it is no. 37 of the York Mystery Plays, no. 25 of the Towenely Plays, no. 33 of the
Coventry Mysteries, and no. 18 of the Chester Plays. The Gospel of Nicodemus reached its maximal popularity in the 13th and 14th centuries.
In medieval Italian literature there are several traces of the Harrowing motif, for instance in the lauda, a genre of religious poetry. These poems could take either a dramatic form (such as the devozioni and the sacre rappresentazioni), or could be non-dramatic, but still recited or sung throughout Italy, starting with the second half of the 13th century. A most complex adaptation of the descensus belongs to the 14th century Sienese poet, Niccolo Cicerchia, in his narrative poem, "La Risurrezione."
Dante knew the content of the descensus from various sources. He had probably read Vincent de Beauvais' summary of the work in his encyclopaedia, Speculum naturale and Speculum historiale. Evangelium Nicodemi appears with this name for the first time in Speculum historiale. Dante was also familiar with the theological
35 SION Chapter 2: Dante account of the text from Thomas Aquinas' Summa theologiae, and he may have also come across the original version.
2.3 Dante's Comedy: Three Descents into the Inferno
Inferno 4 describes Christ as "un possente con segno di vittoria coronato."9
"Segno di vittoria" echoes "signum victoriae" and refers to Christ's cross. The white garments of the elect in Paradiso 25 recall the white robes received after being baptized in the river Jordan by the souls harrowed by Christ from Hell. The description of Beelzebub as having three heads matches Lucifer's. The representation of Lucifer banished at the bottom of Hell may have been influenced by the Satan of the Descent, who, after his defeat, was chained and thrust into the abyss.
In Inferno 2, Beatrice signifies the fulfillment of the Christ-figure undertaken in the Vita Nuova. Many critics conclude that Beatrice is a figure of Christ in his First
Coming in the Vita Nuova, while in the Commedia she is a figure of Christ at the parousia. "Beatrice's descent into Limbo is delicately modeled on the harrowing of hell."10 In Inferno 4, the most expected place to stage the Descent, Dante shifts the emphasis from Harrowing to the "nobile castello." He is not interested in the limbus puerorum or the limbus patrum but instead he dramatizes the Adamic tragedy of the fall before Christ's time.
The poetic power of Dante's limbo lies precisely in the unexpected juxtaposition of the two images: the Harrowing of Hell and the nobile castello - one an image of release and fulfillment, the other of confinement and melancholy, one of comedy and the other of tragedy... In short, in Inferno 4 Dante downplays the imagery connected with the descent into
36 SION Chapter 2: Dante
Hell because he wants to depict not the fullness of time - plenitudo temporis - but the emptiness of time.n
In his Formulas of Repetition in the Commedia Lloyd Howard discusses the linguistic code that links the descents of Dante the pilgrim, Virgil and Christ, as well as the cantos 4, 9 and 12 of the Inferno. The code consists of the repetition of the noun color (colour) and the formula vo' che sappi (I want you to know). In two cases color has the connotation of pallor: "E io, che del color mi fui accorto..."12 {Inferno 4.16);
"Quel color che vilta di fuor mi pinse..."13 {Inferno 9.1.) There are three instances of the usage of vo' che sappi by Virgil: "Or vo' che sappi, innanzi che piu andi"14
{Inferno 4.33); "E vo' che sappi che, dinanzi ad essi"15 {Inferno 4.62); "Or vo' che sappi che l'altra fi'ata"16 {Inferno 12.34.) Howard underlines that, in all cases, these words are used when there is a discussion of either the descensus Christi or Virgil's descent. Vo' che sappi is undeniably a textual marker of the katabasis motif, which has its roots in the Limbo of the patriarchs.
Color, the first component of the code, first occurs in Inferno 4, when Dante fears that Virgil is ill-equipped to guide him. However, Virgil responds that his pallor is due to his compassion for his fellow dwellers of Limbo. Color guides us as far as
Inferno 9, while the second component leads us to Inferno 12. The linguistic link between Inferno 9 and 12 highlights the two occurrences in which Virgil refers to his prior descent as / 'altra fi'ata. Vo' che sappi first appears in Inferno 4, when Virgil wants to make sure that Dante knows that the inhabitants of the Limbo have no other sin than having lived without baptism. The second instance comes soon after the first.
Dante wants to ascertain that what he was taught by religion is correct, that Christ descended to Limbo and redeemed the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament.
37 SION Chapter 2: Dante
This occasion has great significance for Virgil, who, although witnessed Christ's descent, was not rescued from Limbo. On this occasion, the pre-Christians were judged, Virgil included, only that he was not among the ones liberated. The third occurrence emerges three cantos later, when Dante and Virgil proceed toward the seventh circle, after passing the Minotaur. Here another connection is made through the ruina: there is a causal link between the earthquake described in Inferno 4 and its result {ruina) described here:
Or vo' che sappi che l'altra fiata ch'i' discesi qua giu nel basso inferno, questa roccia non era ancor cascata. (Inferno 12. 34-6)
The linguistic code examined here underlines the parallelism of the three descents, and also their common goal: Dante descended and ascended for the benefit of the reader, in order to save both his soul and humankind. Virgil carried out his descent so that one soul might be saved from the ninth circle. On this occasion he also gained knowledge that made Dante's journey possible. Christ descended and saved a great number of souls from Hell "descendit ad inferos...ascendit ad caelos."17 Howard concludes: "The linguistic code highlights the fact that the extraordinary descents of
Virgil, Christ, and now Dante share one significant aspect: they all have to do with saving souls."18
2.4 The Sacra Rappresentazione before the City of Dis: Inferno 8 and 9
The City of Dis episode provides the descensus motif with a new context, while blending Christian and pagan elements. Virgil is unable to overcome the forces of evil and awaits the celestial messenger, who compares his mission to that of Hercules,
38 SION Chapter 2: Dante who defeated Cerberus in order to rescue Theseus from Hades. The messo celeste recalls the pagan archetype as well as that of Christ who had unlocked the "less secret door" 1266 years earlier19:
The whole episode is an original and powerful stylistic reworking of the Harrowing of Hell, governed by the laws of Dante's cultural syncretism. Nonetheless, the inner meaning of the episode remains the same as that of the Harrowing. This adaptation of the Descent, like the traditional version, celebrates the victory of the forces of good over the forces of evil, and man's release from the slavery of sin.20
In Book 6 of the Aeneid the Sybil warns Aeneas that "it is forbidden that any man who is pure in heart should set foot on the threshold of wrong" - and so Aeneas only visits the Elysian Fields. Because Virgil only described Tartarus, the Erichto episode of the descent into lower Hell depicted by Lucan in Pharsalia gains a symbolic function and reinforces Virgil's authority.
The battle before the City of Dis appears as a sacra rappresentazione and can be divided into acts, according to Iannucci, or into a sequence of actions or scenes, according to Bosco, who writes: "Ma tutto cio non e detto da Dante; e invece da lui rappresentato drammaticamente, con l'evidenza della vita."21 Bosco invites us to notice the naturalness of each scene: "osservate sempre la naturalezza della scena."22
In the following passages, based on Iannucci's "Dottrina e allegoria in Inferno VIII,
67 - IX, 105," I have juxtaposed the three main "acts" of the Descensus Christi from the Gospel of Nicodemus to the corresponding scenes from Inferno 8 and 9 in the attempt to prove how the tone, rhythm and style of the episode recall those of the descensus.
39 SION Chapter 2: Dante
2.4.1. First Act
The first act is characterized by a resistance and a provocation arising from the forces of evil. Satan orders his infernal troops to prepare for the battle and he urges
Hades: "Prepare yourself, that you may receive Christ, who has glorified himself, and is God's son and also man, and feared even by death."23 Hades is apprehensive as they engage in a tense conversation: "Go out if you can and withstand him," he says to Satan before casting him out. And to his demons he gives precise commands:
"Make fast, well and strongly the gates of brass and the bars of iron and hold my locks and stand up-right and watch every point."24 David, Isaiah and other prophets and patriarchs of the Old Testament ask Hades repeatedly to open the gates.
Canto 8: 67-130 is characterized by the same resistance and sfida of the countless number of demons: "io vidi piu di mille in su le porte..." (82). Virgil, "lo dolce padre," is invited to have a secret talk with them; the fallen angels, now demons, run back into the city, slamming the gates in Virgil's face, while Dante is seized by vilta. Virgil also has a moment of doubt, which Hollander describes as symptomatic of his lack of faith. "Nel dubbio momentaneo di Virgilio possiamo avvertire la percezione dantesca della mancanza di fede di Virgilio."25 We possibly witness here the reiteration of the sin that relegated Virgil to Limbo: "siamo forse testimoni di un ripetersi del peccato cha ha relegato Virgilio in inferno."26 The Roman poet's lack of faith is further discussed from a theological point of view by Kenelm
Foster in The Two Dantes and Other Studies. Virgil reminds us of the demons' insolence and their refusal to open the Gate of Hell upon Christ's arrival:
Questa lor tracotanza non e nova; che gia l'usaro a men segreta porta, 40 SION Chapter 2: Dante
la qual sanza serrame ancor si trova. Sovr'essa vedestu la scritta morta... {Inferno 8.124-7)
Giorgio Padoan also suggests that the repeated references to Descensus Christi made by Virgil could imply a "tacita polemica verso il maestro pagano" and his sin.
The descent motif reminds the reader of Virgil's shortcomings: "...quella discesa all'Inferno che i poeti pagani avevano in piu modi, ma inconsapevolmente e confusamente, anticipato nelle loro storie e di cui non avevano inteso, con loro danno, tutto il valore."27 The first act ends with the announcement of the expected visit of the messo celeste.
2.4.2. Second Act
A terrifying voice resonates three times: "Lift up your gates, ye princes; and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting gates; and the King of Glory shall come in!" The forefathers, having heard the voice begin to castigate Hades, the "all-devouring and insatiable" and pressure him to open his gates. The following moment is dominated by the excruciating waiting for the arrival of Christ. All those swallowed up by Hades from the beginning of the world are disquieted; the demons are in turmoil.
Canto 9:1-60 recounts the tormented waiting period before the arrival of the divine messenger. Dante asks whether anyone from the first circle ever descended to that "sad hollow." Through this we learn that Virgil, once under the spell of the
Thessalian witch, Erichtho, had previously descended to the circle of Judas to retrieve a damned soul. The Erichtho episode is described by Lucan in the sixth book of
Pharsalia and occupies the same position as Aeneas' underworld journey in the
Aeneid, as David Quint has pointed out. He further underlines that the episode 41 SION Chapter 2: Dante recalls the moment in Aeneid 6.564-5, where the Sybil claims a similar expertise. "But if the passage reasserts the Dante-Aeneas analogy, it simultaneously suggests its inversion. Erichtho is a structural opposite to Beatrice."29
However, if Lucan is the source for the Erichtho episode, there is no source for
Virgil's descent. Castelvetro and Venturi pointed out that the Battle of Pharsalia took place in 48 BC when Virgil was alive, therefore "Lucan's eyeball-piercing, body- snatching, necrophilic sorceress"30 could have hardly conjured up Dante's master and author. Boccaccio notes that he doesn't recall having ever read or heard this story, while Benvenuto da Imola seems to believe that the story was definitely made up. It is, as far as we know, Dante's licence poetique put forward for a narrative reason - namely to comfort the pilgrim and to justify Virgil's knowledge of lower hell. Robert
Hollander in // Virgilio dantesco presents Virgil as a failed poet and prophet (poeta- profetafallito), because in his Fourth Eclogue he fails to recognize the validity of his own prophecy. Hollander finally asserts Virgil's tragic dimension: "Anche se il poeta latino deve essere giudicato alia fin fine come un fallimento, si trata pur sempre per
Dante di un fallimento straordinariamente commovente.""l Iannucci emphasizes that
Dante both celebrates Virgil and highlights his tragic limits. He insists that "Virgil is not a 'failed' poet, but a source of nourishment even though his text is ideologically, if not stylistically incomplete, and that Dante dramatizes the incompleteness of
Virgil's text (and for that matter the pagan civilization he represents.)"32 Teodolinda
Barolini, in Dante's Poets, argues in Hollander's line of thought that the Erichtho episode is part of a strategy of slowly eroding Virgil's influence and authority; his
Erichthean descent is a tale of his weakness and passive participation. Yet David
Quint sees it as only a temporary weakness: "During the frightening impasse which halts the Virgilian descent outside the walls of the infernal city, the "other" 42 SION Chapter 2: Dante
tradition of Lucan and Statius is recognized as an inversion of Dante's poetics, a
literary alternative which must be confronted and discarded before the pilgrim-poet
may proceed."33 Virgil is again "powerless when confronted with the Medusa. On that
occasion, he appears to be deprived of any confidence. The second act ends with the
Furies, the handmaids of Persephone, threatening the pilgrims with the appearance of
Medusa's petrifying head34.
2.4.3. Third Act
In the final act Christ appears, the gates of brass are broken into pieces, the bars of iron are crushed and the dead freed from their chains. "And the King of Glory entered in like a man, and all the dark places of Hades were illuminated."35 Christ triumphantly enters into the house of darkness, capturing and imprisoning his archenemy Lucifer. "Then the King of Glory seized the chief ruler Satan by the head and handed him over to the angels, saying: Bind with iron fetters his hands and his feet and his neck and his mouth."36 He gives him to Hades who banishes him into his depths. Subsequently Christ liberates Adam and the holy fathers from Hell: "What was lost through the tree of knowledge was redeemed through the tree of the cross."37
When they arrive in Paradise, they are welcomed not only by Enoch and Elijah, but also by the good thief38 carrying his cross on his back.
Canto 9: 64-105 completes the sacra rappresentazione, which is an imitation of
Christ's gesture: only through Christ's action can the interdiction of the Sybil be cancelled, and only divine intervention can defeat Satan. The arrival of the messo celeste is the most significant moment of this final episode. He performs the much-
on awaited miracle of the opening of the gates with his wand, his verghetta , a sort of 43 SION Chapter 2: Dante mini-Virgil, associated with the virga. The City of Dis then opens its iron gates and grants free passage to Virgil and Dante. In the iconographic tradition, Christ is depicted as confronting the City of Dis. Satan is similarly represented in front of a civitas diaboli having the appearance of the fortified City of Dis with high iron towers and iron gates. The setting of the episode is Virgilian: Tartarus in the Aeneid has also an iron tower. The divine messenger appears as a post-figuration of Christ, and his actions, as demonstrated, can be interpreted according to the typology of the descensus.
2.5. The City of Dis Confrontation from an Intertextual and
Psychoanalytical Perspective
Helen Luke in Dark Wood to White Rose describes in Jungian terms the City of
Dis episode as a moment of transition on the journey towards self-knowledge, which punctuates the passage between the personal and the collective unconscious.
The Dantesque images leave us in no doubt of the terror of this threshold, of the great danger that we meet here and of the powerlessness of reason and noble virtue to open the door. To penetrate the darkness beyond is a thing no man could do without devastation, as long as he trusts his ego-strength alone. The danger of looking upon
Gorgon's head was terrible: he would have turned to stone, his humanity lost in insanity and despair. According to John Freccero, petrifaction can mean identification with the evil menzogna and subsequently the inability to ever see the light of truth. "It is because the pilgrim averted his eyes from the Medusa that there is a truth to be seen beneath the veil."40 Keeping an "intelletto sano"41, a non-petrified mind, implies the acknowledging of the shadow, the obscure part of the self, also 44 SION Chapter 2: Dante the definite departure from it, from malizia and ignorance. It is a "turning away from the false light of temporal things, seen with the eyes of the body, to the light of eternity seen with the eyes of the soul"42. The Gate of Dis can only be safely passed by those who have reached the faith and humility, which brought the angel-messenger to Dante's help. Upon meeting with the deep unconscious, when a person becomes aware of the darkness within, he may easily identify the ego with the devil himself,
Helen Luke further explains. Falling under the spell of the Furies is making true repentance impossible (as they symbolize deadly remorse). Macbeth, falling under the spell of the three witches was forced to live out the evil he contemplated. When we are faced with the dark side of reality and gaze upon evil itself, we must openly proclaim ourselves on the side of the light. Dante, by showing the right kind of anger in the circle of those possessed by anger (especially in the Filippo Argenti episode in
Inferno 8) proved he had the strength to let go of his belief in the adequacy of his human reason and personal strength, thus abandoning the ego's claim to supremacy in the psyche. "Having confronted the personal shadow, Dante is ready to accept the angel-messenger, the intuition from the journey's end," the divine intervention that opens the passage through Dis.
Mark Musa explains in Advent at the Gates that the First and Second Advents of
Christ are present in Inferno 9 as well as in Purgatorio 8. The two events appear in the eighth canto of each cantica, respectively (if we consider Inferno 1 as a preamble), and they both narrate similar thresholds in the pilgrim's journey: the entrance into
Hell proper and Purgatory proper. In both cantos the reader in invited to penetrate the doctrine hidden behind the veil of his words: "O voi ch'avete li'ntelletti sani / mirate la dottrina che s'asconde / sotto'l velame de li versi strani" {Inferno 9.61-3), and
"Aguzza qui, letter, ben li occhi al vero, / che'l velo e ora ben tanto sottile, / certo 45 SION Chapter 2: Dante che'l trapassar dentro e leggero" (Purgatorio 8.19-21). Based on the fact that these are the only two addresses inviting the reader to "interpret the literal sense of the narrative figuratively,"43 Musa discusses the two passages in "sharp parallel." The first passage, as we have seen, is followed by the appearance of an angel who opens the gate of Dis; the second, by the appearance of two angels in the Valley of the
Princes, sent to put the serpent on flight. Musa believes that the deep significance of the two angelic interventions reflects the First and Second Advents of Christ.
Although the City of Dis episode is shaped by ^various classical sources - Virgil,
Lucan, Statius, Ovid - the legend of the Harrowing of Hell dramatized in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus appears as the main intertext, since Dante blends both Christian and pagan sources. As discussed so far, the stirring impasse which halts the pilgrims' descent outside the walls of the infernal city emerges as a moment of confrontation from an intertextual (Virgil's authority is questioned), as well as a psychoanalytical point of view (the risky passage from the personal to the collective unconscious). In several canti of the Inferno and especially in the canti 8-9, the predominant imagery as well as the dramatic rhythm and form point to the Descensus
Christi ad Inferos story.
Christ's harrowing unlocks both Hell's and Heaven's Gates, making it possible for man to enter Paradise. The harrowing celebrates the victory of Christ over Satan, of light over darkness, of good over evil. Christ's triumph reverses the tragedy of the fall, as lannucci noted: "The Descensus marked the triumphant conclusion to the drama of the redemption, but through synecdoche it came to stand for redemption itself."44
It is not only on the surface of earth that the Christ came, it is in its profoundest centre, in the entrails of the centre and in the heart of the earth that He worked for our salvation; for after the crucifixion, his soul descended SION Chapter 2: Dante
into Hell and restored and voided celestial thrones. It is in this profound centre that salvation lies, for he who draws away from the centre of humility is lost.45
Saint Bonaventure writes that from the terrestrial centre of humility, the soul follows Christ's journey to the centre of Supreme Good, from temporal to eternal, from outside to within. Through descent and ascent, deformed by sin and reformed by grace, man progresses towards enlightenment.
2.6. A Labyrinthine Extravaganza:
The Cretan Myth Transformed Into a Christian Symbol
Christian conversion is fundamentally labyrinthine. After retracing their steps many times and correcting many errors and wrong paths, converts finally transcend the mundane and attune themselves to the divine order. The purpose of circling the labyrinth is to purge and straighten up weaknesses and moral deficiencies. Similar to
Dante the pilgrim's ascent on the Mountain of Purgatory, the convert aims at correcting the sins of the world inscribed on him: "salendo e rigirando la montagna / che drizza voi che'l mondo fece torti" (Purg. 23.125-6).
There are two ways in which a maze can be represented: first, as a multicursal, entangling structure, where the travelers easily lose their way; second, as a unicursal structure, where once you enter, your path is carefully directed to the goal. But though early verbal representations of labyrinths include both multicursal and unicursal models, visual representations of whatever kind are invariably unicursal: symmetrical and impossible to get lost in. And there is no sense of contradiction, even when a multicursal text is illustrated with a unicursal diagram. This state of affairs continues
47 SION Chapter 2: Dante until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when the renaissance humanists began introducing disorder and confusion to their diagrams and their actual mazes. Medieval authors and artists do not show any awareness of this distinction. The point is consonant with the fact that the medieval student of labyrinths was poised between seeing disorder in the world and order in God, and finally could not produce a real maze without letting divine order control its appearance.
The labyrinths46 portrayed on church floors were generally used as substitute pilgrimage routes, to be followed, perhaps on one's knees, as a surrogate for a real voyage to Jerusalem. According to Penelope Doob in The Idea of the Labyrinth, the church-floor mazes are there on one level as a sign of the architect's genius
(comparable to that of maze-making Daedalus), and on another for the way they evoked the myth of the inextricability of hell tamed by a Theseus-like Christ. As
Doob says "it is presumably not by chance that virtually all French labyrinths have twelve concentric circles, possibly alluding to the zodiac that occasionally accompanies the design and measures human time, within whose constraints the world only seems to be confusedly labyrinthine" (130). The resemblance is powerful and convincing: the labyrinth is in some sense a counter-image of the whole cosmos, a man-made parody of the divine creation, linking historic time, life and the universe.
Human existence and time coincide in the image of the labyrinth.
Doob discusses the Pythagorean hesitation at the bivium (mentioned at 46 and
239). In one passage (77) there is an explicit link to the liberal arts and to the claim of old Symmachus that it is "non uno itinere" that men approach the divine secrets. The point is excellent if we recall Boethius' neologism quadrivium and the Carolingian back-formation of trivium. The image at hand was not that of paths leading out from a point of origin into a wide and wonderful world of learning, but rather a plurality 48 SION Chapter 2: Dante of paths converging on a single goal of divine wisdom. Put walls around that image, and it too is a labyrinth: "sed dum ad istarum disciplinarum quibus excoluntur animi circulum revocare vos cupio, metuo, ne vobis labyrinthus fiat" (Augustine, Contra
Academicos 3AJ, qtd. in Doob 88). Augustine's text can be taken as recommending the liberal arts as a key that turns the multicursal labyrinth into the unicursal.
The labyrinth is central to the masterworks of Chaucer (House of Fame) as well as of Virgil, Boethius and Dante. Readings of Virgil, according to Doob, reveal that:
"the idea of the labyrinth constitutes a major if sometimes covert thread in the elaborate textus of the Aeneid, providing structural pattern and thematic leitmotif
(228). Dante was undisputedly influenced by Virgil's Aeneid and Boethius'
Consolation of Philosophy, and their reworkings of the theme of the labyrinth. The fundamental archetype of the labyrinth participates in the shaping of the text regardless of Dante's conscious or subconscious intentions, and the Divine Comedy appears like a labyrinthine poem of conversion. Both enigmatic and revealing, this wonderfully crafted labyrinth of words conveys the metaphorical quest for freedom from worldly labyrinths. For Virgil, earthly life was fashioned in the image of a multicursal, inextricable maze. The pagan Aeneas is doomed to follow interminably a series of labyrinths without the possibility of salvation. Unlike Virgil, who was refused entry into the city of God and was condemned to live perpetually in the nobile castello of pagan thought, Dante's labyrinth of human life becomes extricable: he is helped to transcend the circling Inferno and Purgatorio and acquire spiritual freedom.
Like Boethius, Dante knows that worldly labyrinths are extricable when the limitations of the flesh are transcended. "The Comedy deals only obliquely with the labyrinth of this life, the labyrinth Aeneas's and Boethius's narrator never really transcend, and it emphasizes instead the anagogical labyrinths that reward and 49 SION Chapter 2: Dante punish the choices made in the multicursal labyrinth of the living" (Doob 277).
Aeneas travels to a pagan Hades; he was, obviously, not instructed by Christ's harrowing. Furthermore, Boethius undertakes a philosophical journey, but Dante's quest is triple: theological, philosophical and poetic. George Steiner in Grammars of
Creation has shown that:
Dante's works can be experienced as an unbroken meditation on creation, seen poetically, metaphysically and theologically. Dante's concept of the created extends to the instauration of civil-political society, to that of language and of a new aesthetics. He is, in the image of the Psalmist, filled with, quickened by the wonder of the fact of coming into being. (85-6)
When facing the created world, Dante is ridden with a boundless bewilderment and the need for ascent, the Paradiso being "the summa of Dante's systematic wonder" (Steiner 86). The process of extrication from the labyrinth depends on the imitatio Christi, on striving to follow the example of the Saviour on the road to blessedness. Dante's creativity, bound by Christian doctrine, is an imitatio Dei, an imitation and a continuation of creation, shaped by divine love. As Steiner put it, "the grammars of creation are, in the final analysis, those of the erotic, of the shaping of intellect and psyche in a condition of Eros (the Logos in the arms of love...)" (73).
Under the spell of cosmic love, the concentric spheres of the theological, philosophical and the aesthetic make truth and fiction, divine design and human poiesis, coincide. "The long pilgrimage ends in Dante's home-coming to a poetic- revelatory achievement" (Steiner 88).
According to Plato's Timaeus, the universe consists of two circles - the "same" and the "other" - containing seven circles whose intersection forms a cross. The human soul also contains the circles of the same and the other, only these circles are
50 SION Chapter 2: Dante distorted and broken as soon as the soul enters the body. Incarnation plunges the soul into (labyrinthine) disorder, and only proper education (paideia) can rebalance the circles. In the case of the Dante, only faith and following Christ's model can keep the circles in harmony: "for a Christian the action of Christ is necessary: the distorted circles must be stamped with a cross. The Christ who harrows hell and redeems mankind, who converts the individual and leads him from the maze, is often figured as Christ-Theseus, who plays a major role in the Comedy" (Doob 279). The myth of the labyrinth, which often parallels the story of the Exodus as well as that of the harrowing of hell, is a story of redemption, which follows a circuitous passage towards freedom. In Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, Freccero underlines the dual nature of the Comedy, which displays both narrative linearity and formal circularity and fuses circular and linear progress. It is characterized by cyclical mythical time
(the departure and return coincide, the pilgrim returns back on earth from his otherworldly journey) and the linear Christian time (beginning and end are separated by a series of transformations, the pilgrim returns changed). Freccero determines that:
"Dante's poem could be characterized by neither figure because it partook of both....
Representing that synthesis of linearity and circularity is as out of reach, however, as is the squaring of the circle" (Freccero 150). According to Doob, the labyrinth, which is circular in design and linear in path, "offers precisely the synthesis Freccero is seeking" (281). The descending and ascending spiral of Dante's otherworldly journey combines linear progress and circular structure. Doob further suggests that, considering its composition of superimposed crosses and circles, "the labyrinth is as close as one comes to a squared circle" (281).
Three particular aspects of the Comedy will be further discussed: the structural correspondences between its labyrinthine topography and the maze, labyrinthine 51 SION Chapter 2: Dante transformations of character, and the literal and spiritual labyrinthine journey. Dante's otherworldly landscape, like most medieval labyrinths, is characterized by a pattern of concentric circles. Hell is a cone of nine circles, with the seventh circle containing three gironi, and the eighth one encompassing ten circles around a central pit and connected by radial bridges (the Malebolge appear as circles stamped with a cross).
The seven-walled castle of limbo, the City of Dis, the Malebolge, the selva oscura, the wood of the suicides, and the desert of the sodomites, none of these lack the labyrinthine aspects. The Dantesque Inferno with Satan at its centre is analogous to the Cretan maze with the monstrous Minotaur stuck in its equally monstrous center. It represents an inextricable and impenetrable arch-labyrinth, whose inhabitants harbor no hope of escape and no possibility of moving from one circle to another.
Purgatory also has the shape of a cone with ascending concentric circles and the earthly paradise as its apex and final destination. It resembles the unicursal, extricable labyrinth of the visual arts and has the spiritual goal of cleansing the soul of earthly sin and bringing it closer to God. Its circuitousness is clearly ordered and dictates an infallible path to transcendence.
Paradise, which displays its divine artistry in the shape of cosmic circles, can be equated to a celestial labyrinth of circling souls and spheres. The natural order of the universe is twice presented with earth at its centre (22.128-38; 27.77-87). The spiritual realm is the inverted image of the earthly order and has God as its focal point. The dominant structure of wheeling concentric circles is combined with the image of the amphitheater of the elect in Paradiso 30 and culminates with that of the
Candida rosa of Paradiso 31. The wheel-rose design of Paradiso emphasizes the synthesis of earthly fortune and celestial artistry in the image of the sublime labyrinth of divine art. The rota-rosa symbolism also appears in cathedral windows (the 52 SION Chapter 2: Dante window of San Zeno in Verona may have inspired the design of the Paradiso). The knot-like dance of the theological virtues (Purg. 29. 121-2, 133), the one of the cardinal virtues (Purg. 31.104), and the cosmic dances in Paradiso (Par. 7.7, 8.26,
10.79, 12.22, 13.1-20, 14.19-24, 18.135, 24.16-18, 25.99, 28.124) are labyrinthine and represent a natural expression of harmony and freedom. The labyrinth here acquires the "Christian" sense of reformed, inverted symbolism, with its extricability and redemption made possible for the just through the action of Christ-Theseus which further "ruined" hell's circles and made damnation eternal for its sinners. It symbolizes liberation from sin as opposed to confinement in the prison of pagan mazes, redemption as opposed to ruin. "Structurally, then, the Comedy offers three variations of the labyrinth: the inextricable prison-labyrinth of hell, the probative unicursal labyrinth of purgatory, and the circling spheres and souls of paradise, which enact divine artistry and liberating goodness in a dance" (Doob 285-6). The circular harmony of heaven corrects the broken gyres of hell, the imperfect circles of purgatory and earthly disorder. The celestial labyrinth reveals the perfection of circularity, which underlies all labyrinths of creation.
The topography of Dante's afterworld is paralleled by the pilgrim's labyrinthine journey from the maze of the selva oscura to the subsequent otherworldly mazes.
Human life can be defined as a voyage through a labyrinth and the way to salvation is necessarily labyrinthine. The "diritta via" (Inf. 1.3) leading to the light on top of the mountain is blocked by the three beasts and the pilgrim needs a guide to exit the multicursal maze of the dark forest. The circular path is the only way of reaching understanding and truth: "the circuitous process is epistemologically essential" (287).
The voyage on Geryon's back in canto 17 grants Dante the chance to have an overview of the descending and the circling of hell ["lo scendere eT girar per li 53 SION Chapter 2: Dante gran mali" (125)]. In the Inferno, the pilgrim generally travels leftward and downward, however, his trip includes wandering left and right, up and down, backward and forward, similar to the wavering movements of the one lost in the maze.
The purgatorial voyage involves rightward movement along the terraces and occasionally to the left and upward in order to ascend to the next level, and represents a spiritual labyrinth of moral purification, where Dante is not only observing but also sharing the fortune of the saved souls. The cleansing of a particular weakness or sinful tendency occurs after the circling of a terrace. The progress is less difficult, since
Beatrice and Lucy are there to help at crucial moments and this maze is extricable for everyone who enters. In Paradiso, the metaphors of flight are abundant, the upward and circular traveling is without effort, as the pilgrim is weightless. There are no impediments on the way and knowledgeable and graceful guides are always available.
The divine labyrinth remains impenetrable to the senses and rationality of the pilgrim.
The sacred circular design is unveiled only through mental vision and revelation, and before returning to mazy worldliness the pilgrim is granted a glimpse of the "forma universal di questo nodo" (Par. 33.91).
Dante provides the characters and plot of the Cretan myth with a Christian setting. While Ariadne appears as a function of Beatrice, and Theseus is given a
Christological role, Minos and the Minotaur are literal characters locked in Hell.
Minos is the chief supervisor of the Inferno, and has absolute power over the sinners in his role as judge and executor of God's justice. He is an arch-demon with a dual nature - a mixture of human and bestial traits - that dispenses the damned to the appropriate circle by winding his tail around his deformed body (canto 5). He is a
"connoisseur of sin" (Inf. 5.9), a dreadful emblem of the labyrinth of Hell, like the 54 SION Chapter 2: Dante
Minotaur, his half-human and half-beast son, a prototype himself of Hell's hybrid inhabitants and of Lower Hell's generic sins. In canto 12, Dante mentions the
"tremoto" and subsequent "ruina" produced by the harrowing of Christ-Theseus, which opens the passage toward the ravine of the seventh circle's first ring where lies
"the infamy of Crete" (Inf. 12.12) conceived by Pasiphae "ne la falsa vacca" (Inf.
12.13). The monstrous creature is filled with rage at the sight of Virgil and his companion, and fulfills the role of an angry warden, watching over the "ruina," which symbolizes his defeat47. "In any case, the mere fact that hell is a prison under Minos's control (which was not the case with Hades in the Aeneid), and that the Minotaur and other terrible hybrids stand guard within, convincingly define Dante's hell as a labyrinth" (Doob 296).
Daedalus appears as an equivocal mastermind, as if Dante could not decide whether to place him in heaven or hell. He (or more precisely the "bestial planks" of the "counterfeited cow," his most distasteful, despicable creation) is three times alluded to in the Commedia (Inf. 12.13, Purg. 26.41; 87). Although he is never described as the labyrinth's creator, he appears as a noble genius, a gifted wing-maker associated with flying and symbolized by a wax metaphor (Par. 8.126-8), or as the wise father of Icarus (Inf. 17.111). Flight is one of the traditional ways of escape from the labyrinth. Infernal flights are mad and tragic, and heavenly flights are enabled by divine grace. Icarus' flight, mentioned in Inf. 17.106-11, as well as Ulysses "folle volo" (Inf. 26.125) beyond the Pillars of Hercules, both end in death by drowning.
Dante's flight in Paradiso (canti 15, 25, 33) is made possible with the help of Beatrice and Mary, and leads to the final revelation.
Theseus and Ariadne have, through analogy to Christ and Beatrice, a greater role in the Comedy than in the Aeneid. Virgil's Theseus does not have b y himself the 55 SION Chapter 2: Dante power to escape Hades, which makes him need the help of Hercules; in the Comedy he is a feared narrower of Hell. The Furies regret that Theseus-Christ's attack on Hell was successful ("we should have punished Theseus' assault" Inf. 9.54), and Virgil plunges the Minotaur into torment just by referring to the "Duke of Athens" {Inf.
12.17).
The pagan Cretan princess is identified as the Minotaur's knowledgeable sister who "tutored" Theseus {Inf. 12.20) and guided him out of the maze. Similarly,
Beatrice offers a guiding thread which leads Dante out of the earthly labyrinth, appoints Virgil as the pilgrim's guide through hell and purgatory, helps at difficult thresholds and escorts his revelatory flight through paradise to the final destination
["she, compassionate, who was the guide / who led my feathered wings to such high flight" {Par. 25. 49-50)].
The mythological figures of Theseus and Ariadne are adapted by Dante to serve as redemptive figures with Christological overtones, saviors who make extrication from labyrinths possible. As with Ariadne and Beatrice, Dante the poet devises his poem as a spiritual thread that will guide the reader to salvation. Dante's fictional pilgrimage takes the form of a series of circular mazes which lead to purification and transcendence.
With Christ, the true Theseus, as guide, humankind can trace confusing ambages to discover that the mythically multicursal and unstable labyrinth - of life, of the world, of hell - is in fact unicursal, stable, and extricable, and that its baffling complexity is a necessary and beautiful part of the intelligible concentric-circular design superbly articulated by God... (Doob 133)
2.7. Dante's Crucial Arithmetic Sensibility and Medieval Numerology 56 SION Chapter 2: Dante
In the Commedia numerology is as important to Dante as it is in much of medieval and renaissance literature. Number is the principle of order and perfection and is intimately related to the interpretive process. Dante, following St. Augustine and the Pythagorean-Platonic tradition, makes use of numerological patterns with a secret significance, which, when discovered, can lead to revelation. According to
Aristotle, the Pythagoreans believed "the whole universe to be a proportion and a number"48. They postulated that the principles of mathematics govern the created and the divine worlds and everything can be reduced to numbers. The Platonic system associated numbers to the world of pure forms. Through numbers, the physical world can be transcended and essence can be attained. St. Augustine saw pure forms or ideas as divine essences in the mind of God. The truth of number is available to everyone and represents the means by which divine traces can be interpreted and harmony attained. Numbers are a means to return to unity with the Creator, and all artistic creation should observe the law of number and through its external form should lead to inner divine beauty. The Commedia, like all high art, was intended to imitate the divine macrocosm and to provide numeric clues, which, through correct interpretation, would lead the reader to spiritual revelation and redemption.
"Therefore, the use of symbolic numbers as signs to be interpreted within the narrative of the Commedia was not solely a means to bring the poet's readers to a spiritual intuition of truth, but also to produce a 'text of salvation' which, through its revelations, could lead the reader to the same goal achieved by the pilgrim"
(Guzzardo 9).
The Comedy has a tripartite structure, each cantica comprises 33 canti, with a prefacing canto as a 'plus-one' factor of completeness49. There are 14,233 lines in 57 SION Chapter 2: Dante the Comedy and 4,711 teniae. Guzzardo suggests that Dante has thus put his emphasis on line 142 (itself a seven) of canto 33 of Paradiso ("A l'alta fantasia qui mancd possa"), particularly on the temporal "qui" which marks the point of highest transcendence in the poem, the culmination of the pilgrim's beatific vision. Both the numbers of lines and of terzine in the Comedy, through mystical addition become 13, a number of transcendence to cosmic unity. 13 contains the one and the three (the unity of the triad, the three in one), the 10 + 3 (the Decalogue plus the Trinity), or the
12 + 1, number of Christ and of universality plus the monad (the earthly 4 times the spiritual 3 and the 'plus-one' factor of transcendence to unity). If we calculate the mystical addition of the numbers for all the 100 cantos, only three numbers are found:
7, 10 and 13. 7 and 10 appear only 33 times throughout the poem, while 13 occurs exactly 34 times.
The numbers three and four, both holding a special significance for Dante, form through addition the number seven of creation. Charles Singleton in his famous "The
Poet's Number at the Center" reveals the symmetrical pattern at the center of the
Divine Comedy, which surrounds canto 17 of Purgatory and the central verse which bears the number 70. Love is the fundamental principle at the heart of the Commedia, as well as of the human and divine realms. Along with Love, a concern with Free Will is also part of the central theme. The notion of libero arbitrio is mentioned in Purg.
16.71 and Purg. 18.74, and symmetrically frames the three central cantos and the chief argument. There are 25 terzine to either side of the centre, with the mystical addition number of seven. Three terraces have already been left behind and three are yet to be traversed. The length of the cantos, although it varies from 115 to 160, is always divisible by three (if the verse which exceeds the last terzina of each canto is subtracted from the total), and this, of course is following in miniature, the pattern 58 SION Chapter 2: Dante of the whole. Canto 17 contains 139 verses and is framed on either side by the sequence 145, 145, 151. The seven central cantos (Purg. 14 to 20), therefore, are framed by 151 (which gives us a seven through mystical addition)50. "Here, then, are framing canto numbers (151) whose sum is 7, here are framing terzine (25 to either side) the sum of whose number is 7, and here finally at the exact centre of the poem is a verse whose number is 70, the sum of which is 7!" (Singleton 6). The number three marks off the three central cantos containing the major argument of the poem (also marked by seven if we count the terzine), and the number seven marks off the seven pivotal cantos of Purgatorio which hold "the experience of a 'conversion' at the center, a great turning about, which is variously presented in explicit statement and in imagery" (Singleton 7). The created macrocosm is symbolized by seven, and the poetic microcosm is defined by the same number51. Seven becomes the poet's number, which accompanies the number three, God's number, and the literary work is a reflection of the divine creation, the only model worth imitating by the artist.
2.8. Deus est sphaera cujus centrum ubique52 The Soul's Journey to God: God as Circle and Centre The Sacred Formal-Theological Design: Threefold and Fourfold
In The Book of the Twenty-four Philosophers, a manuscript from the 12th century, we are given 24 definitions of God. The second one tells us that God is a sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere, a symbolic definition which has played an important role in the following centuries in the writings of theologians as well as poets and artists. For instance Alan of Lille writes in his Theological Rules, 7, PL 210, 627: "God is an intelligible sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere." The same definition is used by
59 SION Chapter 2: Dante
Saint Bonaventure in Itinerarium mentis in Deum (chapter V. 8) as well as by
Nicholas de Cusa and Meister Eckhart who also thinks that "In Divinis, quodlibet est in quolibet et maximo in minimo"53 ("In divine things, everything is in everything else and the maximum is in the minimum"). This recalls Samuel Beckett's favourite saying "the less is more." God is an absolute simplicity and an absolute simultaneity, every point and every moment of the divine sphere are identical.
According to Parmenides and Plotinus, the Divine Being is a sphere or a point in which all lines intersect and from which all lines diverge. For Boethius, "Eternity is a simultaneous possession of a limitless existence" (De Consolatione, Lib. V, Prosa
6). The main qualities of the divinity are ceaselessness and simultaneousness, and eternity is defined by circularity. The first one is associated with the infinite circumference and the second with the unique centre. As one includes all time and space, the other one excludes duration and distance, their coincidence is God.
According to Saint Bonaventure:
On the one hand, by the mode of interminability one must understand an intelligible circumference, without beginning and without end, on the other hand, by the mode of simultaneousness one must understand simplicity and indivisibility that are the modes of the centre; and these two things are affirmed concerning the Divine Being at one and the same time because He is at once simple and infinite; and so it is that one must understand the circularity in eternity. (Questiones Disputatae, De Mysterio Trinitatis, 5 art. 1, 7-8)
In order to understand this paradox, the mind has to go simultaneously towards the circumference and the centre. According to Georges Poulet, "it is this double movement of the mind that we see represented in Dante's Divine Comedy."
(xiii). In canto 14 of Paradiso, Dante explains the movement from the centre to the 60 SION Chapter 2: Dante circumference and vice-versa, as concentric waves in a round recipient: "From rim to center, center out to rim, / so does the water move in a round vessel, / as it is struck without, or struck within" {Par. 14. 1-3). Dante's God possesses the dual character of absolute centrality and absolute circularity, and one of the problematic patterns that puzzles the pilgrim and the reader involves the reconciliation of the concentric model of the universe and its ever-widening orbits around the fixed earth, with the center of the heavens in the Point of God on which all depends. In the first model the Primum
Mobile occupies the outermost circle and in the second version the Primum Mobile forms the innermost ring.
How can the universe possess two opposite centers? In canto 28 Beatrice explains that the contradiction is only apparent since the principles of both patterns is the same and the spheres accelerate in speed as they draw nearer to God: the Primum
Mobile is the fastest of both worlds. God as the center of the light-radiating heavens and as the circumference of the material Satan-centered cosmos manifests his omnipotence and omnipresence as both the immanent and transcendent One. In Georg
Lukacs' words, Dante makes the transcendent immanent5 .
The whole expanse is fashioned by the ray Reflected from the top of the first-moved Sphere from which it takes its might and motion. {Par. 30.106-8)
The poet turns the pilgrimage upside down and inside out, from a universe that has the centre of earth as its middle point, to a universe whose central point is the
Primum Mobile, outside space and time. Gravitation is inverted accordingly from the
Satanic pull of the Inferno to the divine attraction of Paradise. This metaphysical orientation takes place in the human consciousness - Dante's mystical vision intends to transform his readers, to move them to a higher level of spirituality in the course of
61 SION Chapter 2: Dante descent and ascent through the Comedy.
Like the Ineffable Point of Paul Claudel, the central Point that attracts the pilgrim is made of dynamic energy and light, and of converging forces that receive their motion and charge from its attraction. This point of archetypal simplicity and fullness is also the Seelengrund, the centre of the self: "thus the movement by which the soul approaches God is a centered motion that takes place in the interior of the soul itself (Poulet xix). Dante's mystical journey inward finally reaches an all- circling and centering dynamic still point, which describes the final stage in the process of individuation elaborated by Jung. The infinite circle within a centre also represents human consciousness, symbol of God and of man, concludes Georges
Poulet. The infinite sphericity attained by Dante's psyche at the end of his poem coincides with the manifestation of the divine Being.
God is the point where all times and all spaces are present: "il punto, a cui tutti li tempi son presenti" {Par. 30.18), "ove s'appunta ogni Ubi ed ogni Quando" {Par.
29. 12). In the Vita nuova, Love criticizes the "uncentered" Dante: "Ego tanquam centrum circuli, cui simili modo se habent circumferentie partes; tu autem non sic (I am like the center of a circle, equidistant from all points on the circumference; you, however are not)" (V.N. 12.4). Eternity is the centre of divine omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence, and Dante - only a point on the circumference. As in
Neo-Platonic thought, God is a radiating energy which spreads in circles "e si distende in circular figura" (Par. 30.103), particularly in the three circles of the
Trinity - like the rings formed in the water by a heavy stone, as explained by Paul
Claudel. This symbolism recalls Carl Jung's first mandala drawing from 1916. The diagram of the three concentric rings and a centre is also to be found twice in a
Beckett's manuscript in French from 1968 preserved at the University of Reading, 62 SION Chapter 2: Dante after the mention "elle n'est pas vraiment nee" ("she is not really bom"), which pointed to one of Carl Jung's Tavistok lectures in London in 1935, that greatly impressed Beckett.
Dante follows the Thomistic doctrine (Claudel will follow suite), and considers sin and Hell as part of the divine world and believes that there are transitional stages between the human and celestial worlds. To Saint Bonaventure,
Dante possibly owes the framework for his triadic epic poem, made up of 3 canticles, each containing 33 canti, and a Prologue. Like Bonaventure's Itinerarium Mentis ad
Deum (The Soul's Journey Into God), Dante's Comedy derives its inspiration from a mystical experience, and employs the number three and its combinations, for instance the famous 9 - the number of Beatrice, as the key to the spiritual pattern of descent and ascent. The threefold way according to Bonaventure begins with the physical, factual world of objects and events, then enters the modal, ontological sphere of the human psyche, and finally transcends it to attain the vision of the Trinity, of immanence and immutability.
These three ways conform to the triadic existence of things: matter, creative intelligence, and eternal art; to the three parts of the day: evening, morning, and noon; and to the triple substance of Christ, who is the ladder to God: the corporeal, spiritual, and divine. Lastly, the threefold way embodies the very nature of the person: body, spirit, and mind so that the whole being mounts up to God, loving him with all one's mind, with all one's heart, and with all one's soul (Mark 12:30). 55
Dante, who sees in his celebrated love for Beatrice the kernel of religious love, is "the first (poet) whose hero is redeemed through the intercession of a woman"
(Slochower 112). Similar to the Orpheus myth, where Eurydice is resurrected by 63 SION Chapter 2: Dante the power of word and song, Dante writes of his departed beloved, "that which has never been written of any other woman." According to Gabriele Rossetti and Charles
Singleton, Beatrice's death is at the centre of Dante's Vita nuova just as Christ's death is the focal point of the Christian universe. The Rossettian schema, which refers to the lyric poetry after stripping away the prose, famously demonstrates that the 3 canzoni divide the shorter poems into 4 groups. Like the central role of crucifixion, placed between the Old and the New Testament, the canzone "Donna pietosa" stands at the mid-point of Dante's Vita nuova. However, John Kleiner, among others has pointed out the problem of Beatrice's two deaths, one in the prophetic dream - the centre of the lyric poetry, and the other one in reality - the centre of the prose narrative: "While the lyric center is Beatrice's visionary death, the prose center is Beatrice's actual death" (Kleiner 280). The poet is "uncentered," Kleiner argues, unlike God who is a centre, equidistant from all the points of the circumference. He concludes that "Dante leaves his work, at its very center, unstable and unfinished (Kleiner 278). Two competing centres can be located, which makes Dante's work "an oddly modern- looking experiment in dissonance" (282), a departure from the symmetry-driven art of the Middle Ages, and, more a propos, perhaps closer to Claudel, Ionesco and Beckett than one would expect.
Dante's journey begins on Good Friday evening in the material world of the
Inferno, continues on Easter morning up the spiritual mountain of Purgatory, and reaches the divine realm on Wednesday at noon. It was indicated by commentators that Dante's three realms coexist in each other, and that elements of Paradise are foreshadowed in Hell and the celestial kingdom asserts the beauty of the human sphere. By unveiling the hidden symmetry of the poetic architecture of the Divine
Comedy, Singleton revealed the important ties between the like-numbered cantos 64 SION Chapter 2: Dante of Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise. Mazzotta in Dante, Poet of the Desert examined the similarities between Inferno 7, Purgatorio 7 and Paradiso 7. Each canticle has its own centre, for instance the celestial cross described in Paradiso 16 is, according to
Jeffrey Schnapp, the centre of Paradiso. The centre of the Comedy and of Purgatorio
(canto 17), can be exposed by counting the number of lines contained in each canto.
As explained by Singleton in "Pattern at the Centre," Elements of Structure (1954),
Beatrice's return in Purgatorio 30 - at the centre of the Comedy - mirrors her disappearance at the heart of the Vita nuova. In 1965 Singleton claimed that canto 17 was the obvious centre. Again, two competing centres can be located {Purgatorio 17 and 30), which adds more tension to the poem. The symmetrical numerological patterns of the Comedy have been largely discussed and interpreted, and one thing can be said, that order and disorder appear to complement each other. The Comedy is a perfectly crafted poem as well as a "mirabile visione," it resembles the perfection of the creation as well as the imperfection of humankind, after the fall.
Three visions of Christ occur in the journey through paradise: the cross seen in
Mars in canto 14, the triumph of the risen Christ in canto 23, and the vision of the human Jesus in the center of the circle of Godhead in canto 33. These experiences complete the initial sight of the divine and human natures of Christ shining in the eyes of Beatrice as she gazes on the half-eagle, half-lion griffin at the climax of Purgatory
31.
Three moments of vision make up the movement of the final canto, climaxing in the last face to face meeting with the Incarnate Son. In the first moment, Dante views the world as composed of numerous pages bound together in a single volume within the eternal light:
Nel suo profondo vidi che s'interna, 65 SION Chapter 2: Dante
Legato con amore in un volume, Cio che per l'universo si squader.. .(Par. 33. 85-87)56
The volume here is a sacred text, which has "la forma universal di questo nodo" (91) that makes the whole cohere in one: in the book of nature we are to read the word of
God. The book is a link between the natural world and the heavenly realm, and it also parallels Dante's poem, which also attempts to encompass the universe and to show the way from worldliness to divine grace.
The second moment of vision comes in the form of the three circles of Light having one dimension and three different colors, and the epitome of the poem is the divine experience of the third vision. Dante confesses that his words cannot describe his conception of the Trinity. The Three in One, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit appear as circle within circle within circle, the "Knower, Known, and Knowing" and the
"Lover, Loved, and Loving."
e Fun da l'altro come iri da iri parea reflesso, e'l terzo parea foco che quinci e quindi igualmente si spiri. (Par. 33. 118-20)
O luce eterna che sola in te sidi, sola t'intendi, e da te intelletta e intendente te ami e arridi! Quella circulazion che si concetta Pareva in te come lume reflesso.. .(Par. 33. 123-8)57
Dante's eyes and face are absorbed into the vision of the circle of Eternal Light. "And it is now, in the last twenty-one lines of the poem, comes Dante's supreme realization of the fourth and of the union of this fourth with the three in the final totality" (Luke
197). Dante's image of the fourth is the "human effigy" which he envisions as part of the circle, which appears painted "de la nostra effige" (131). 66 SION Chapter 2: Dante
Qual e '1 geometra che tutto s'affige per misurar lo cerchio, e non ritrova, pensando, quel principio ond' elli indige, tal era io a quella vista nova: veder voleva come si convenne l'imago al cerchio e come vi s'indova; ma non eran da cio le proprie penne...(Par. 33. 133-9)58
At the centre of the Godhead, Dante sees humanity - the fourth principle includes light as well as darkness. The image of Mary, as the human fourth in the quaternity of the Godhead, and Dante's insistence on the humanity of Christ, were pointed out by
Helen Luke, ampng many, who also draws our attention to this major shift from the trinity to the quaternity. "What is happening today is not the end of Christianity, but the discovery of that fourth, which has always been implicit in it, and which has been seen and experienced intuitively by individuals all through the centuries, as here, in his supreme moment by Dante himself (Luke 198).
Dante's deviation from the trinity can also be noticed in his four-fold interpretation: literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical, taken from the four levels of medieval theological allegory, which are sensus litteralis, allegoricus, moralis, anagogicus. He uses the allegorical in the poetical sense, we are told in Convivio II.
1, and in order to speak of things beyond human understanding and perception, he must use the "example," as explained in Paradiso. "In sum, Catholicism becomes mythopoesis in The Divine Comedy through Dante's deviation from orthodox theology and orthodox aesthetic doctrine" (Slochower 110). As in any mythopoesis, the hero has the task to discover who he really is, undergo a journey to his origins, in our case to uncover the divine spark inside, and to participate in God's love. The heroic journey follows the stages of individuation or fulfillment of the self, from the
67 SION Chapter 2: Dante poet's microcosm to the divine cosmos. Dante the poet appears as the prototype of mankind's fate which fluctuates between the "two suns," the state and the church, the terrestrial and the spiritual life.
Appearing against the blood-red glow of Mars, the white light of the cross within the circle, traced by the radiant spirits in the sky, forms Dante's quintessential symbolism uniting the human and divine in Christ. The spiritual three and the worldly four unite in seven, the number of creation and of Christ, whose two natures coincide in love, the central focus of the Commedia. It is the quaternity of the equal-armed cross, not the cross of the passion that appears to the pilgrim before meeting his ancestor Cacciaguida in Paradiso 14. This mandala of the "flaming" Christ embodies the unity of emotion and thought, active and contemplative life, ephemeral and eternal. It is the symbolic sacrifice of the material world (death of the ego, selflessness), and continuity of the spiritual world (permanence of humanity), which bring man closer to God, and give new insight to his development of the self.
si costellati facean nel profondo Marte quei raggi il venerabil segno che fan giunture di quadranti in tondo. Qui vince la memoria mia lo'ngegno; che quella croce lampeggiava Cristo, si ch'io non so trovare essempro degno; {Par. 14.100-105)59
The image of the cross within a circle, of the circle inscribed in a square or of a square in a circle, preoccupied medieval and modern minds alike, in the attempt to finally square the circle: equating the square of earth, (symbol of Man), to the circle of heaven (symbol of God), integrating temporality into eternity. At the end of his journey from Hell to Paradise, Dante's both terrestrial desire and will are absorbed
68 SION Chapter 2: Dante and moved by the heavenly love at the centre of creation, "the Love that moves the sun and the other stars" (Par. 33. 145).
69 SION Chapter 3: Claudel
3. CHAPTER 3: Claudel
The Circular Self and Salvation on the Seventh Day
Dantesque Intertext and Descensus ad inferos in Claudel's
he Repos du septieme jour
3.1. Claudel's Dante: Preliminary Discussion
3.1.1. Around "Introduction a un poeme sur Dante"1 (1921)
Claudel, in his "Introduction a un poeme sur Dante" (1921), assigns to Dante the titles "imperial" and "catholic". And by catholic he means universal, embracing both the visible and invisible worlds, using all the faculties of the human soul: imagination and sensitivity, as well as intelligence and the gift of criticism. Dante's writings exhibit the highest degree of inspiration, intelligence and taste. Reminding us of Jean Cocteau's ideas on inspiration and expiration, the visible and the invisible, Claudel affirms: "II n'y a pas de poete, en effet, qui ne doive inspirer avant de respirer, qui ne recoive d'ailleurs ce souffle mysterieux que les Anciens appelaient la Muse..." (PP, 11). The inspired poet aspires to become a prophet, a poeta theologus: "Cette inspiration n'est pas sans analogie avec l'esprit prophetique, que les Livres Saints ont bien soin de distinguer de la saintete" (PP, 162). The Self seeks to recover its eternal nature, to rise above the SION Chapter 3: Claudel duality of the divine and profane worlds, or the consanguinity of good and evil, attaining the plenitude, which contains all potentialities. "De la bouche de Dieu qui a cree chaque etre en le nommant, ne peut sortir rien que d'eternel. II n'y a pas une separation radicale entre ce monde et 1'autre, dont il est dit qu'ils ont ete crees en meme temps {Creavit cuncta simul)" (PP, 174). According to Mircea Eliade,
"the myths show that in the beginning, in Mo tempore, there was an intact totality
- and that this totality was divided or broken in order that the World of humanity could be born" (Mephistopheles and the Androgyne, 114).
The "Introduction a un poeme sur Dante" was considered among Claudel's most important theoretical texts on the nature of poetry and poetic language:
L'inspiration poetique se distingue par les dons d'image et de nombre. Par V image, le poete est comme un homme qui est monte en un lieu plus eleve et qui voit autour de lui un horizon plus vaste ou s'etablissent entre les choses des rapports nouveaux, rapports qui ne sont pas determines par la logique ou la loi de la causalite, mais par une association harmonique ou complementaire en vue d'un sens. Par le nombre, le langage est debarrasse de la circonstance et le hasard, le sens parvient a 1'intelligence par l'oreille avec une plenitude delicieuse qui satisfait a la fois Tame et le corps. (162) L'objet de la poesie, ce n'est done pas, comme on le dit souvent, les reves, les illusions ou les idees. C'est cette sainte realite, donnee une fois pour toutes, au centre de laquelle nous sommes places. C'est l'univers des choses visibles auquel la Foi ajoute celui des choses invisibles. C'est tout cela qui nous regarde et que nous regardons. Tout cela est l'oeuvre de Dieu, qui fait la matiere inepuisable des recits et des chants du plus grand poete comme du plus pauvre petit oiseau. Et de meme que la philosophia perennis n'invente pas, a la maniere des grands romans fabriques par les Spinoza ou les Leibnitz, des etres abstraits que nul n'avait vus avant leur auteur, mais qu'elle se contente 71 SION Chapter 3: Claudel
des termes fournis par la realite, qu'elle reprend le rudiment des ecoliers et tire de la definition du substantif, de l'adjectif et du verbe, la nomination de toutes les choses qui nous entourent, de meme il y a une poesis perennis qui n'invente pas ses themes, mais qui reprend eternellement ceux que la Creation lui fournit, a la maniere de notre liturgie, dont on ne se lasse pas plus que du spectacle des saisons. Le but de la poesie n'est pas, eomme dit Baudelaire, de plonger « au fond de l'lnfini pour trouver du nouveau », mais au fond du defini pour y trouver de l'inepuisable. C'est cette poesie qui est celle de Dante. (PP, 165-6)
Dante's poem perennis was not just the catalyst, but an incessant inspiration to Claudel. He often quotes verses from the Divine Comedy or uses Dantesque elements or episodes to establish a comparison or support an argument. In an unpublished letter to Louis Gillet from June 25th 1941, Claudel avows that, at the age of twenty, he discovers in Dante a brother in his metaphysical exile and quest for redemption, and that the reading of the Comedy made an everlasting impression on him. He does not mention any other dantesque work. "J'ai lu a vingt ans la Divine Comedie, helas dans une traduction! Et mon impression a ete si forte que je n'ai plus jamais voulu rouvrir le livre." In his "Discours de reception a l'Academie francaise" (12th of March 1947), Claudel returns to Dante, noting that his descriptions of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise could make theologians smile, nonetheless, the delightful poetic shape of the Commedia can open our hearts to the unthinkable Truth:
Le poeme de Dante est une ascension vers le paradis dont le chemin, a travers le purgatoire, passe par le plus profond de l'enfer. Le vrai enfer et le vrai paradis, dont la description pourra faire sourire les theologiens, sans que la piete profonde de 1'intention, sans que
72 SION Chapter 3: Claudel
l'authentique suavite du verbe cesse de ravir les coeurs jusqu'aux pieds de I'ineffable Verite.3
According to Dominique Millet-Gerard, Claudel was influenced to a certain degree by Schelling's typology from "Uber Dante in philosophischer Beziehung"
(Schelling 1802-3). Schelling qualifies the Inferno as "plastique", the Purgatory as
"pittoresque" and the Paradise as "lyrique". Dante's goal is not necessarily to teach us, but to provide the food of the soul, not only didactic instruction, but aesthetic delectation: "Or le but ici pour Dante n'etait pas avant tout de nous enseigner, mais de nous conduire, de nous prendre avec lui, de nous faire voir et toucher (...) Tel etait son dessein, non pas de missionnaire, mais de poete..." (PP,
111).
Dante's Inferno is criticized by Claudel for its material and naive vision of the physical punishments and the lack of mental punishments, of which, fundamental is "la peine du Dam", the deprivation of God. Claudel also despises the infernal circles, corresponding to a particular major sin, as if sins were not mixed and in different proportions in most of us, he argues. Sins are not isolated as in Dante's poem, clarifies Claudel, they are in an organic and subtle communication with one another.
Son Enfer est uniquement l'Enfer du Sens, il semble ignorer la peine du Dam ou de la privation a la fois et du besoin de Dieu, qui est la plus cruelle, puisque sa cause est infinie. Son Purgatoire presente (a ce point de vue) le meme defaut. La grande souffrance purgative devant etre moins le feu ou la faim que la lumiere, le supplice de se voir impur en face de l'lnnocence eternelle et d'avoir deplu au Pere et a l'Epoux. Enfin dans le Paradis on ne trouve que de courtes et assez vagues allusions a la theorie sublime de la Vision deifique... (PP, 176)
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Satan is "le grand Ver loge au centre du fruit terrestre" (178); In Paul
Claudel interroge Vapocalypse, we find the three-headed monster compared to a harmless retiree, far from the evil protagonist of modern times : "Le monstre tricephale de Dante n'est guere qu'un pensionnaire, au meme titre que tous les autres, du lieu penal, plutot qu'il n'en est le principe, et, si je puis dire, l'engin moteur" (Oeuvres Completes XXV, 340).
In his Memoires improvises (1954) Claudel defines his own drama, Le Repos du septieme jour, as a study drama of the Chinese and Christian theology more or less amalgamated in a "drame transitoire" whose ideas on the inferno are underdeveloped and rudimentary. He subsequently repudiates his own "idees bien grossieres et bien rudimentaires au sujet de Fenfer" (MI 150).
The concept which explains Dante's whole oeuvre is "love", "l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle" (Par. 33.145). "L'amour pour Dante, c'est l'amour integral, le desir du Bien absolu qui des l'enfance s'est allume dans son coeur a l'eclat innocent des yeux d'une vierge" (PP, 179). There is only one kind of love: the love of God and of all God's creatures, who are images of the same Creator.
"Sache que le Seigneur du Ciel t'a cree, te communiquant son image. (...) / La
Creature, / Voyant l'etre qui lui etait remis, s'en saisit, / Faisant d'elle-meme sa fin, et tel fut le premier rapt et le premier inceste. (...)/ Quelque chose de Dieu a ete vole, et qui restituera Dieu a lui-meme? (Th I, 754). The poet's task is to re- sacralise the human being, re-insert Man into God's Realm and re-plenish him with divine love and knowledge of the centre.
Dante's work entails a colossal effort of imagination and intelligence to reunite the visible and the invisible worlds, the two sides of Creation: "C'est une espece de gigantesque travail d'ingenieur pour rejoindre, pour unifier les deux SION Chapter 3: Claudel parties de la Creation, pour la fixer dans une espece d'enonciation indestructible..." (PP, 180). The poet is a co-creator and a co-ordinator of the world, and has the unifying and salvific power of the co-naissance de/dans
I'absolu. He balances the Good and the Evil and, like the Emperor of Le Repos, he represents a centre and a keeper of immutable harmony: "Et quelle est la fonction auguste de l'Empereur prepose a l'inviolable Milieu ? / Sinon qu'entre le Visible et l'lnvisible il maintienne l'eternelle harmonie" (Th I, 787). The Self "translates things" from the exterior language into the inner one and maintains the harmony between consciousness and the unconscious, between the same and the other. In the world, things are transformed into graspable objects and in imaginary space they are transmuted into non-graspable things. The poet is the "essential translator" and his task is the metamorphosis of the visible into the invisible and vice-versa.
Like Dante, Claudel attempts through his poems and plays to remove the frontier between the two parts of creation, life and death, real and unreal, actual and fictional, life and art, subject and object, between the world of poetic images and that of words. The underground words surface into the visible world of images, and the invisible visions of the unconscious become visible words and patterns of what Jung called the "symbolic life". Like the poet himself, Claudel's words and images follow the Christie, Orphic, Dantesque trajectory of descent and ascent, linking antiquity with the medieval and modern worlds. The poet's life is governed by the rhythm of ascent and descent into the meaning of words themselves, joining the terrestrial and the celestial, as Gaston Bachelard puts it:
"Monter et descendre, dans les mots memes, e'est la vie du poete. Monter trop haut, descendre trop bas, est permis au poete qui joint le terrestre avec Paerien."4 SION Chapter 3: Claudel
Poetic drama enacts and celebrates the synthesis of personal and transpersonal myth and poetry, accomplishes the writer's and the reader's Nekyia and Poesis.
3.1.2. On Human and Divine Rest: Salvation on the Seventh Day
The divine rest can be regarded as the moment taken by God to meditate and behold his creation. This contemplative glance is mainly focussed on man and entails aesthetic pleasure, generated by the beauty of what was accomplished, according for instance to Jean-Paul II's Dies Domini. God sanctified this seventh day by a special blessing, and made it his day par excellence. In all Romance languages, the name for Sunday5 reflects the name of God, Dominus: domenica, duminica, dimanche, domingo. In Portuguese, o domingo is the first day of the week, since Monday is the second, a segunda-feira6. This underlines the fact that the end is in the beginning, God's day is the centre of the week and also the moment when the circle of time starts and is complete.
Divine rest is an invitation for man also to rest. Man enters into dialogue with God during the spiritual rest on the seventh day, devoted to prayer and praise of the Creator. To stop daily work is to break the routine of everyday life, to extract the self from the contingent and devote oneself to the absolute. Since the beginning of creation, Man desires the perfect rest, which comes at the end of time, and the seventh day's rest is a prefiguration of the absolute to come, an experience and assurance of divine redemption. It is in God that man finds at the same time the essence of being and the place of rest. The human prototype is modelled on the divine. Man imitates God in his most profane work and carries
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out his vocation of "image of God" only if he engages in conversation with Him
during the spiritual rest on the seventh day.
The seventh day is the only day of the Genesis without an evening. The
godly rest has neither morning nor evening, since it has neither beginning nor end.
A symbol of the circle of eternity, the Sabbath makes visible the pact with the
Creator, the dialogue of God and Man, visible and invisible, divine and profane.
As Claudel tells us, the Divine Comedy like his own work, is a token of the final
union of humanity and divinity: "La Divine Comedie se resume finalement dans la rencontre de Dante et de Beatrice, dans 1'effort reciproque de deux ames separees par la mort (...) c'est cette rencontre essentielle que j'ai essaye a mon tour, apres beaucoup d'autres lecteurs, d'imaginer et de peindre, c'est ce dialogue de deux
ames et de deux mondes..." (PP, 181).
The rest on the seventh day marks the end of Creation, which is also the beginning of the Universe as we imagine it. It is a sacred milieu of contemplation, which can be symbolized by the hermeneutic circle of understanding and interpretation. The Sabbath is attained in the act of reading The Rest on the
Seventh Day. The act of reading becomes an act of contemplation and the play takes the reader to the point of sublime rest. The critical tradition established by
Erich Auerbach and Charles Singleton asserts that the Comedy must be taken to be literally and therefore historically true. Wiliam Franke argues that the most significant implications of the poem's claim to truth and historicity concern not the literal and historical senses of the narrative so much as the existential historicity of the reader. The locus of the making of history, and the discovery of the true nature of the Self, is not the plot of the poem or drama so much as the act of reading. As the repetition of the noun 'color' and of the formula 'vo' che sappi' joins together SION Chapter 3: Claudel the descents into Hell of Christ, Virgil and Dante, the act of deciphering and interpreting the linguistic code joins the reader to these previous underworld travellers. All the descents are concerned with saving souls: Virgil descended so that one soul might be saved from the pain of the ninth circle {Inf. 9). Christ descended to save a host of souls from the torments of Hell {Inf. 4). Dante descended to learn the path to God and show it to the reader. The Christian reader of Dante's poem or of Claudel's play may also be counted among those who will be saved from Hell. Salvation can be attained through the act of reading, which takes the reader through the journey of descent and ascent.
3.2. Le Repos du septiemejour (1901) and Dante
3.2.1. Structure and Symbolism
Le Repos du septieme jour {The Rest on the Seventh Day), most probably written in 1896, and first published in 1901 in a collective volume of L'Arbre, was first staged in France at the Theatre de L'Oeuvre in October 19657, and came to many as a revelation. The play illustrates the search for the cross, the passage from the centre of the world of the living, to the real centre of God's realm. In the beginning, the Chinese Emperor occupies "le centre et le milieu" (I, 727) of his
"Empire du Milieu" (I, 729) and governs his world according to the universal rules of music. Some of his titles are: "Fils du Ciel, Premier, Unique, le Un, Fondation,
Principe, Milieu" (I, 797). The Prime Minister remarks to the Emperor: "tu regies l'harmonie par qui le Ciel est joint a la terre" and "tu gouverne avec sagesse selon les regies de la Musique et le precepte de 1'Antiquite" {Th I, 728). Harmony moves vertically in depth, and melody unfolds horizontally in breadth, and both are SION Chapter 3: Claudel observed carefully by the emperor, who signifies their intersection, at the centre.
His role is to maintain the harmony between the visible and the invisible, to model the melody of the terrestrial world on the celestial one - on Dante's music of the spheres, "ecoutant d'une oreille et de l'autre afin qu'aucune note ne se fausse" (I,
787). But the musical rules and the precepts of Antiquity are not enough to keep him connected to divinity, so he retires into solitude and contemplation in order to find the ultimate revelation.
In Le Repos the dead create havoc when they invade the world of the living, and the empire collapses as soon as the Emperor abandons the "sacred center". The intrusion of the dead is the result of an unknown sin. In order to restore harmony, the Emperor has to travel to the Underworld to find the cause and the remedy. His voyage, like Dante's, is also willed from above. The Emperor wears his body like a cross (747), and fulfills a Christ-like function, as he acknowledges in act 3: "moi qui suis le Pasteur des hommes" (774). He aims at bringing the knowledge of salvation to his people and the revelation of the
.. .Par la volonte du Ciel splendide, Tout vivant et revetu de la croix de mon corps, je suis descendu vers toi, Pour te visiter dans ta loi et dans tes distributions, Afin que rapportant au peuple des hommes et des animaux la paix, Dissipant l'impiete de notre ignorance, Je regne sur le royaume, dans la possession de la Connaissance et du Milieu! (747).
The second act presents his descent into Hell, which I will attempt to prove as Dantesque. Through edifying dialogues between the Emperor and the three
79 SION Chapter 3: Claudel guides - the Mother, the Demon and the Angel of the Empire - the root of evil is revealed. The remedy is suggested by the Angel: the laborer should first recognize
God, then work six days and rest on the seventh, consecrating it to the Divine
Creator: "Mais le septieme jour qu'il se lave les mains et la tete, et qu'ayant mis un vetement neuf, se tenant dans le repos, il celebre la grande Attente" (770).
In his Dantesque search for the root of evil, the Emperor learns that the mystery lies in the way man looks at God. "Comme la creature sainte s'attache a
Dieu comme a sa fin, / C'est ainsi que Satan en jouit comme de sa cause" (Th I,
767). It seems that the dead cannot rest in peace, because the living have lost the path to divinity. The third act reveals the passage from ruin to restoration: the
Emperor returns from the Inferno in order to re-establish order and equilibrium among his people, peace and reconciliation between Heaven and Earth.
Odile Vetoe, in her thesis Claudel et Danto (1963), shows that the descent and exile of Dante, the poet-pilgrim, and Claudel, the poet-emperor, started with acknowledgement of their sinful life, and emphasizes the parallelism of their redemptive journeys. Briefly following the method of textual analysis developed by Patrice Pavis, Anne Ubersfeld, Andre Helbo in Theatre: Modes d'Approche
(1987)/ Approaching Theatre (1991), we can easily identify categories such as space, time, objects, characters and actantial structures: Subject-Object, Helper-
Blocker, Sender-Receiver, that foreground the similarities and oppositions to
Dante in the overall structure and detail. At the beginning of his voyage, Dante the character abandoned the right path and lost himself in the selva oscura. At this point, his blockers are una lonza, un leone and una lupa (a leopard, a lion and a she-wolf). Claudel's Emperor is blocked by his assistants and the Necromant, who at first take him on the path of black magic. The Emperor (subject), as the SION Chapter 3: Claudel representative of a humanity distanced from God, starts his journey in order to redeem humanity's sin, to find an antidote for the evil invasion of the dead
(object). The motif of the descent (the trajectory of the subject's quest) is similar, as well as its goal, which is to seek peace and harmony, for the benefit of the world of sinners (receiver). Dante's helpers are his guides, Virgil and Beatrice, who in the case of the Emperor correspond to the Demon and the Angel. The sender, indirectly, is God, while both Dante and the Emperor are privileged to tbe the recipients of a beatific vision and personal purification at the end of their journey. On their return they have acquired a new vocation; they are now prophets able to indicate the right path to others.
For Claudel and Dante, the whole creation is imbued with God's presence and has its own pre-established order. They both recognize the existence of design amid God's inexhaustible creation. Dante defines love as the impulse of a desire and makes all things move toward a cause or principle that attracts them.
According to Jacques Houriez, among others, Dante and Claudel have slightly different views on creation. For Dante, everything is created in God's image, and human beings, inspired by love are perpetually searching for God; man becomes a sinner only by mistake and deviates through weakness or corrupted free will.
Separated from his creator, man attaches himself by error to the perishable possessions of this world. Claudel's man sins not by error, but knowingly, in full conscience of his actions. "L'optique de Claudel est toute differente. Pour lui, la faute consiste a vouloir derobe a Dieu une partie de son etre, elle est vol fait au createur, revoke contre lui."8
The progression of the soul towards evil appears similar for Claudel, as for
Dante. In the first stage, the soul is attracted towards evil, or as Dante puts it, SION Chapter 3: Claudel smells the scent - "sente sapore." Claudel states: "Et d'abord, cedant a la douceur nouvelle / De faire mal, il (l'homme) succombe: tel est le premier degre" (753). In a second stage, for Dante, the soul "s'inganna". Believing they recognized what is good for them, the souls deliberately abandon themselves to evil. And Claudel recounts: "L'habitude se forme, et par le second degre, etabli dans sa connaissance et dans sa volonte, / II peche, sachant ce qu'il fait, et ce degre est appele l'lnclination" (753). In a third stage, the soul runs - "corre", hurriedly seeking evil for the sake of it. "Mais cet homme", underlines Claudel's Demon, "fait le mal par amour, et, le connaissant, il l'a choisi, joignant son coeur au notre" (753).
Satan is identified with the Demon, for instance by Espiau de La Maestre.
"Esprit de Blaspheme" (752), "Esprit-fossoyeur" (753): "A la face de Dieu j'ai dit
Nonl Au jour du schisme, retournant mon coeur sur lui-meme, j'ai refuse 1'aveu! /
Et c'est pourquoi le chatiment est continuel comme la faute. / Car, ayant peche hors du temps, nous avons peche sans avenir" (757). I would argue that the Demon does not embody absolute evil and only guides the Emperor in the first two circles, he cannot enter the third, as he fears Satan. Before disappearing he expresses his hideous anxiety in the presence of his superior: "Je...je...La...a a...Satan.../ le crains! Je tremble! Comme un homme qu'un vent dur repousse, moi-meme, / Mon esprit s'embrasse et flechit, il refuse et tourne court! / Lui! Je ne puis te conduire plus loin (764). The Demon cannot face the very principle of evil, only God's representative, the Angel can. Unlike Dante's Lucifer who is described in detail,
Claudel's Satan remains invisible: absolute evil, like divinity, cannot be expressed in words. It is an abstract principle, which can only take shape in the reader's mind.
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3.2.2. The First Act: The Triple Descent of Christ, Dante and the
Emperor
The principal moments of the first act of Le Repos du septieme jour can be juxtaposed with the three episodes of the Descensus Christi from the Gospel of
Nicodemus9 and the corresponding scenes from Inferno 8 and 9 (Inf. 8. 67-9. 105), in an attempt to show how the plot, rhythm and style of the play recall that of the descensus. The history of salvation is the story of God's intrusion into human time and life, to liberate His people from physical bondage and from the spiritual captivity of death (I Cor. 15:54-56). To accomplish this redemptive mission Christ came into this world "to proclaim release to the captives... to set at liberty those who are oppressed" (Luke 4:18). Dante's and Claudel's mandate is to show how
God has liberated humanity from darkness and death, and led them into light.
3.2.2.1. First Episode
The first moments of the descent in The Gospel of Nicodemus are characterized by a resistance and a provocation arising from the forces of evil.
Satan orders his infernal troops to prepare for the battle and he urges Hades:
"prepare yourself to get him firmly into your power when he comes" (GN Ch.
20.1).
Canto 8: 67-130 of the Inferno is marked by the same sfida and resistance to the countless number of demons: "io vidi piu di mille in su le porte..." (82).
Virgil, "lo dolce padre," is invited to have a secret talk with them; the fallen angels, now demons, run back into the city, slamming the gates in Virgil's face, SION Chapter 3: Claudel while Dante is seized by vilta. Virgil reminds us of the demons' insolence and their refusal to open the Gate of Hell upon Christ's arrival:
Questa lor tracotanza non e nova; che gia l'usaro a men segreta porta, la qual sanza serrame ancor si trova. Sovr'essa vedestu la scritta morta... {Inf. 8.124-7)
The first Dantesque episode ends with the announcement of the expected visit of the messo celeste.
The first episode of Le Repos displays similar characteristics. The provocation caused by the forces of evil and darkness occurs through the audacious sfida of the insolent dead, who invade and harass the living: "Mais ils errent la nuit dans les champs, ou sur les fleuves dans le brouillard, et comme des rats ils fourmillent dans les maisons (...). Les froids se pressent autours de nous, et, silencieusement, ils assistent aii repas, ecoutant ce qu Ton dit, et quand la lampe est eteinte, ils nous touchent" {Th I, 730). The dead do not follow the terrestrial laws and no physical or moral barriers can stop them from plaguing the living. "Mais voici que les Morts ne nous laissent point en repos, et, tels que des gens sans loi, / Ni les murrailles ne les arretent, ni l'Edit Imperial ne les terrifie"
{Th I, 732).
3.2.2.2. Second Episode
In the second part of the Descensus Christi, a terrifying voice resonates three times: "Lift up your gates, ye princes; and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting gates; and the King of Glory shall come in!"10 The forefathers, having heard the SION Chapter 3: Claudel voice, begin to castigate Hades, the "all-devouring and insatiable" and pressure him to open his gates. The following moment is dominated by the excruciating waiting for the arrival of Christ. All those swallowed up by Hades from the beginning of the world are disquieted, the demons are in turmoil.
Canto 9: 1-60 recounts the tormented waiting period before the arrival of the divine messenger. Dante asks whether anyone from the first circle has ever descended to that "sad hollow." Through this we learn that Virgil, while under the spell of Erichtho, a Thessalian witch, had previously descended to the circle of
Judas to retrieve a damned soul (as described by Lucan in the sixth book of
Pharsalia). Virgil is again powerless to deal with Medusa and appears to be deprived of every confidence. The second act ends with the Furies, the handmaids of Persephone, threatening the pilgrims with the appearance of Medusa's petrifying head11.
The Great Hoang-Ti, conjured up by the Necromant through the power of the magic square, announces bluntly that the way to salvation can only be revealed by the one who follows Christ's descent and return from Hell. "L'Empereur: Qui done nous expliquera le salut? / Hoang-Ti: Lui-meme, celui qui descendant chez les morts on est revenu" (Th I, 741).
This second moment is also marked by the anguished waiting for the arrival of Christ's follower. The Prime Minister, The Great Examiner and the First
Prince and their assistants anxiously await the Saviour or the messo celeste.
"Quels recours invoquerons-nous? vers quels dieux joindrons-nous les mains?"
(Th I, 743). The Emperor then takes the decision to follow Christ, Aeneas and
Dante's example and cross the threshold of the Underworld while alive. In the style of the Gospel of Nicodemus, the Emperor addresses the Inferno directly: "je SION Chapter 3: Claudel demanderai a l'Enfer meme son grief (Th I, 743). The First Prince even uses the word "gate" when questioning his father: "Franchirez-vous la Porte tout vivant?"
(743).
Imitating Christ's thundering voice, which resonates three times while asking the Inferno to open up, the Emperor also urges three times the earth to let him in, after receiving his "Baton Imperial": "Ouvre-toi, 6 Terre! Ouvre-toi! 6
Terre!" (745); "Ouvre-toi, fais-moi passage!" (745); "Ouvre-toi, livre-moi passage!" (746).
3.2.2.3. Third Episode
In the final act of this sacra rappresentazione, Christ appears, the gates of brass are broken into pieces, the bars of iron are crushed and the dead freed from their chains. "And the King of Glory entered in like a man, and all the dark places of Hades were illuminated" (GN Ch.21.3). Christ triumphantly enters into the house of darkness, capturing and imprisoning his archenemy Lucifer. "Then the
King of Glory seized the chief ruler Satan by the head and handed him over to the angels, saying: Bind with iron fetters his hands and his feet and his neck and his mouth" (GN Ch.22.2). He gives him to Hades who banishes him into his depths.
Subsequently Christ liberates Adam and the holy fathers from Hell: "What was lost through the tree of knowledge was redeemed through the tree of the cross."12
When they arrive in Paradise, they are welcomed by Enoch and Elijah, also by the good thief carrying his cross on his back.
Canto 9: 64-105 completes the sacra rappresentazione, which is an imitation of Christ's gesture: only through Christ's intervention can the SION Chapter 3: Claudel interdiction of the Sybil be cancelled, and only divine intervention can defeat
Satan. The arrival of the messo celeste is the most significant moment of this final episode. He performs the much-awaited miracle of the opening of the gates of the civitas diaboli with his wand, his verghettd3, a sort of mini-Virgil, associated with the virga. The City of Dis then opens its iron gates and grants free passage to
Dante and Virgil.
The Emperor, who substitutes himself for the messo celeste and continues as Christ's imitator, uses his "Baton Imperial" instead of the messenger's verghetta. The earth quakes and opens up. The Emperor starts his descent in act 2.
He does not fight or imprison Satan, but, even without facing him, snatches his secret of the absolute, which will bring him closer to the divine presence.
Deciphering the enigma of the Anti-Christ, "le Saint de l'Enfer", will help understand the path to Heaven. Like Dante, the Emperor does not attempt to save the dead, but the living. Like the good thief who was saved, the Emperor shows himself carrying the cross at the Gate of Paradise and Hell: "Je reparais a la porte fatale! Sur le seuil qui est entre la Mort et la Vie, je me tiens debout avec le signe de la Croix" (774). Upon his return, he reveals the path to Paradise to his people, who, like Beckett's tramps, wait for salvation in the antechamber of the Inferno:
"sacre vestibule! temple du monde ou l'homme erre, comme un pretre frappe d'oubli" (Th I, 777). The Emperor, like Dante's divine messenger, appears as a post-figuration of Christ, and his actions, as demonstrated, can be interpreted according to the typology of the descensus.
Christ's harrowing unlocks both Hell's and Heaven's Gates, making it possible for man to enter Paradise. God, through the mediation of Christ, Dante and the
Emperor, has wondrously delivered humanity from the bondage of darkness and SION Chapter 3: Claudel death and led them into his light and life (1 Pet. 2:9). The Sabbath or rest on the seventh day provides the key to experience God's redemption in one's personal life and is inextricably linked to the harrowing. Both celebrate the victory of Christ over Satan, of light over darkness, of good over evil. Christ's victory reverses the tragedy of the fall, the Descensus marks the triumphant conclusion to the drama of the redemption, and through synecdoche it stands for redemption and human liberation from physical, psychological and metaphorical bondage.
3.2.3. The Second Act: The Dantesque Journey of Descent
The Inferno discovered by the Emperor in the second act of Le Repos du septieme jour resembles that of Dante in all four dimensions of space and time, as well as in architecture. Time has lost its meaning: "Le temps n'est plus!" (746) and the "tenebres irremediables" (749) have obliterated the light. Claudel appropriates the terms "enceinte": "Et voici la seconde enceinte ou le Feu fait connaitre sa vertu" (755) and "cercle": "Ce premier cercle de Feu est appele l'Ebullition" (756) and follows the structure of the Dantesque Hell: there is an
Antechamber, a Lower and Upper Hell divided in circles and dominated by Satan.
However, the subdivisions are blurred, and there is no trace of the "bolge".
Claudel's usage of the "cercle" and "enceinte" is a very eloquent tribute to Dante, as the two words seem otherwise improper in this Underworld devoid of physical barriers. His inferno is a space without space, immaterial and endless. Like in
Beckett's Waiting for Godot, space is again defined and becomes undoubtedly
Dantesque through the description of the character's sins and ways of punishment.
88 SION Chapter 3: Claudel
Claudel's first circle is that of ignorance: the Mother is lost in the absolute darkness, "plus noir que la noirceur" (746). The eternal blindness could be approximated to that of the Ante-Inferno, the vestibule of the Neutrals with "blind vision." It is a realm of "sighs, lamentations and loud cries" {Inf. 3.22):
"gemissements", "sanglots" and "cris" (747). In Le Repos we find the souls of those who never did anything right or wrong, and never knew true light. The
Mother confesses: "Aveugle je suis allee au lieu aveugle, et mon sejour est l'aveuglement" (750). Although no apparent crime was committed - "Je n'ai commis aucun crime!" - her docility and neutrality have brought her damnation.
Because she refused to see the true light, she is now condemned to eternal darkness.
Claudel's second circle is that of anger and incontinence. The violent are
"cooking" in the black fire while they attack each other. They are mixed with the avaricious, the gluttonous devastated by perpetual hunger "les gourmands ont faim" (760), and the envious drained by thirst and crying with tears of vinegar:
"Les envieux desseches ont soif et versent des larmes de vinaigre" (760), the proud and the fornicators. Claudel's treatment of envy does not seem to have any connection to Dante's imagery, in Purgatory. The avaricious keep their finger nails stuck into their palms: "Les avares Strangles; / Serres a la gorge par l'esquinancie, les ongles enfonces dans les paumes, les dents entrees les unes dans les autres, / lis se tordent, ne pouvant expulser de leur ventre l'oeuf d'or" (755). The image of the clenched fist is also the symbolism used by Dante to describe his avaricious. They are first shown pushing weights in circles, with their chests, for eternity "voltando pesi per forza di poppa" (Inf. 7. 27). The tight fists are associated later with the
89 SION Chapter 3: Claudel avaricious: "Questi resurgeranno del sepulcro / col pugno chiuso..." {Inf. 7. 56-7).
Most correspondence is to be found in the handling of the carnal sinners:
Les foraicateurs sont joints les uns aux autres, meles ensemble comme des cadavres qui mollissent, comme le suif qui fond et colle, Par deux, par trois, Par dix, par trente, en grappes tel qu'un farcin de crapaud, lis culbutent dans la nuit qui bout, dissout dans un spasme atroce. (760)
This imagery recalls the "hellish hurricane" of Dante's second circle, that of the Lustful, punished for the sins of the flesh: "La bufera infernal que mai non resta, / mena li spiriti con la sua rapina: voltando e percotendo li molesta" {Inf. 5.
31-3). Like Francesca and Paolo, "quei due che'nsieme vanno" {Inf. 5. 74),
Claudel's fornicators will never be parted from each other. As in Claudel's interpretation, Francesca designates her lover: "Questo, che mai da me non fia diviso" {Inf. 5. 135).
In Dante's five circles of Upper Hell are punished the sins of incontinence;
Dante's pagans (corresponding to the mother), followed by the Lustful,
Gluttonous, Avaricious, Prodigal, Wrathful and Sullen, all correspond closely to
Claudel's sinners of the second circle. Claudel's third circle is that of the scientists, disciples of matter, joined to the rock, juncti petrae: "Entasses et replies sur eux-memes ils cuisent", permeated by the icy fire and the frozen light they sought. They correspond to the inhabitants of Dante's Lower Hell, who have been punished for their malice, especially the Heretics and the Epicureans of the sixth circle; Dante's other three circles of Lower Hell, those of the Violent, the
Fraudulent and the Treacherous, are less discernable in the drama. Claudel's SION Chapter 3: Claudel demon mentions at the start of his expose a mixture of Lower and Upper Hell sins:
"L'esprit de meurtre et de brutalite, l'esprit de fraude et de vol, l'esprit de luxure et l'esprit avide, l'esprit de cruaute, l'esprit de demence et de frenesie! (752).
Regardless, the punishments emerge in the same order: shadows, fire, ice. A number of common elements as well as differences have been established between
Claudel and Dante's eternal spaces. Nevertheless, "Dante's and Claudel's endless peregrinations through the realms of existence symbolize their search for truth and reflect their hope of receiving illumination from the outside."14
In Claudel's Hell we have the following succession of sins: avarice, lust, greed, envy, idleness, pride. The order is not exactly that of Dante, who prefers the
Aristotelian classification of incontinence, bestiality and deceit. Pride seems to be the worst sin, in Claudel's system. Yves Reboul has remarked that anger is absent in the drama, and Claudel's capital sins are only six. Similarly, in Dante's first seven cantos of the Inferno only six sins are presented, according to several commentators, which follow the traditional biblical order; the Aristotelian system is used after canto 7.
Reboul argues that, although it is envy which is totally missing from the
Inferno (it will be treated in cantos 13 and 14 of Purgatory), Dante distributes anger (wrath) in the same category as idleness (sloth): accidia of canto 7. Here I will argue that sloth is encountered by Dante on the fourth terrace of Purgatory as well, and envy is arguably a facet of the accidioso fummo. The sullen and the wrathful are assimilated to one another in canto 7, which might have influenced
Claudel, who does not explicitly describe anger in his version of Inferno. Bad temper and anger seem to be a consequence of idleness, and so they are all punished in the muddy Styx. The furious are condemned to become the naked SION Chapter 3: Claudel muddied people physically fighting with each other, with fists and teeth; the sluggish are submersed in the dark slime and their sorry sighs make the water bubble. I would argue that in canto 7, in the swamps of the Styx, in the fifth
Region of Hell, we find the spirits of those who were condemned for deeds of rude rage, for selfishness, moodiness, sluggishness and envy: "Tristi fummo / ne l'aere dolce che dal sol s'allegra, portando dentro accidioso fummo: / or ci attristiam ne la belletta negra" {Inf. 7.121-4). The meaning of "accidiosi" is controversial.
According to Petrarch (see Memoires de Petrarque, tome.II.109) by accidiosi is meant the selfish or misanthropes, as well as the envious, as appears from the
Purgatory, where, when the Poet describes the purgation of this very vice, accidia, he contrasts it with benevolence. In Claudel's drama, the treatment of sloth is very similar to Dante's, only the punishment is more abstract: "Les paresseux dorment dans le cauchemar et ne peuvent se reveiller" (760). The sinners are absorbed by a nightmarish sleep and the Stygian marshes are transformed into muddy dreams.
The proud do not have their own circle in the Inferno, but Dante gives us a thorough description of the supreme specimen - Satan, in the ninth circle. The giant emperor of the dark kingdom of pain is half buried in the ice of Cocytus, in the centre of the earth: "Lo'mperador del doloroso regno/ Da mezzo il petto uscia fuor de la ghiaccia... (Inf. 34. 28-9). As commentators have noted, the crucifixion of Lucifer at the bottom of Hell is a sarcastic reference to Christ's cross, just as the three faces of Satan are an oblique, inverted reference to the Holy Trinity. Pride has a special place in Claudel's Hell, the supreme refuse of God is unique. He refers to all his sinners in the plural, only the "orgueilleux" is alone, fixed in eternal solitude, like Dante's Satan, the principal of all evil and embodiment of
92 SION Chapter 3: Claudel pride par exellence. The proud shadow described by Claudel is stuck into the ground in an isolated crucifixion:
Mais l'orgueilleux rigide est fiche tout seul dans la terre comme un pal; l'aveuglement et la solitude eternelle sont sa part; Ses genoux sont retournes, ses articulations font noeud; Et, ou bien, ecarte comme une croix, il supporte la lourdeur de ses bras, Ou en silence il travaille a relever sa tete sur la vertebre cassee. Mais la plante des pieds vit et une pointe subtile la ronge et la disseque. (760)
According to Reboul, the last verse recalls the punishment of the Simonists in Inferno 19. They are stuck head down in equally sized holes cut into the rock of the eighth circle, third pouch, feet up, their soles consumed by fire. Dante's fire can thus be compared with Claudel's "pointe subtile", which also accounts for the
"peine du Dam", along with the physical torture. At its essence, fire is God's fundamental principle.
Mais pourquoi employer ces vaines images, quand le Feu suffit a tout expliquer? Car de meme qu'en vous la souffrance avec exactitude decouvre et suit la lesion du nerf le plus delie, C'est ainsi que le Damne est examine par le Feu indefectible." (760)
For Claudel, as for Dante, the Inferno is part of the divine design. Espiau de La Maestre notes in his article on Satan that: "l'Enfer eternel fait partie integrante du programme transcendent divin, de l'equilibre providentiel, historique et apocalyptique" (8). Odile Vetoe in her thesis on Claudel and Dante also underlines this aspect: "Claudel presente un Dieu qui a besoin de tout 1'univers
93 SION Chapter 3: Claudel pour son plan de salut: des etres et des choses, du bien et du mal. C'est le Dieu contenant de toutes choses de Dante: de l'enfer - du mal - aussi bien que du paradis" (Vetoe 309). Claudel does not give us more specific details of the torments of Hell, since the essence of the infernal punishment is the same as that of divine redemption: the fire that illuminates or tortures. The same fire nourishes the saints and burns the sinners, the emperor is told by the Demon. The method of damnation is the one of salvation, which is love. Hellish fire is at the antipode of divine light, but at the same time they constitute a fundamental coincidentia oppositorum.
Et c'est ce qui est ecrit dans les livres: "un raeme feu brule dans une triple demeure." Ce meme feu qui nourrit en vous la vie Dans le Ciel est des etres bienheureux la splendeur et la fusion Qui de l'Enfer est la passion et la brulure. (757)
The eternal fire illuminates the sinner, provoking in some cases thirst and hunger, as we have seen, both of which are physical manifestations of the peine du
Dam, and in other cases more abstract torments such as the pointe subtile afflicting the proud, and the spasme atroce of the fornicators. "Et telle est la faim et la soif, le vide que rien ne peut rassasier" (757). The appetite of the senses and the attachment to matter are punished in a more abstract manner than in Dante, who in most cases bestows physical pain on his sinners.
3.2.4. The Third Act: Salvation and Self-Understanding
The first episode of the third act shows the Court Council, the First Prince, and the Heir to the Throne brought together in the middle of the night by the latest SION Chapter 3: Claudel events of the revolution. They took refuge in the last surviving city, but even this last barricade in the face of madness was about to fall. The Emperor makes his appearance, wearing the imperial apparel and sceptre. A golden mask is covering his face scorched by the infernal fire and eroded by leprosy. "La bouche seule est restee intacte" (775). The mouth, which explains the remedy that will bring peace and reconcilliation, is his only body part that does not burn in Hell since it is a sign of the sacred. "Telle est l'exigence de Dieu et la bouche qu'il applique sur sa creature (757). "La bouche ronde" was applied on the Emperor by the Creator himself, and it embodies the communion with divinity.
In the middle part of the third act, the Emperor makes a public appearance on the Great Wall, in order to impart to his people the secret brought from the depths of Hell. When the way to salvation is revealed, God himself participates, in the form of the round sun normally fixed in the middle of the firmament. He now descends to earth and empowers his messenger with divine grace: "Maintenant voici le moment ou le soleil qui, tout a l'heure, immobile dans le centre du del, frappait l'eau des puits d'un trait vertical, / a commence de descendre vers la terre au travers de 1'immense apres-midi" (776). The salvific announcement magically stops the revolutions, convulsions and chaos that have devastated the country during the absence of the Emperor.
Finally, following his descent into Hell, the Emperor brings to his people the cross, the symbol of resurrection to the eternal life, of sublime intersection, the true centre of conversion:
.. .je tiens entre mes mains le signe royal et salutaire! Voici la sublime intersection en qui le ciel est joint a la terre par l'homme. SION Chapter 3: Claudel
Voici le jugement entre la droite et la gauche, la separation du haut et du bas. Voici 1'oblation et le sacrifice! Voici le tres saint Milieu, le centre d'ou s'ecartent egalement les quatre lignes, voici 1'ineffable point. (Th I, 774)
The drama ends with the triumph of the main symbol of Claudelian thought, as well as that of Beckettian, Jungian and Heideggerian thought: the fourfold or the quaternity, which designates the ontological totality of the world. It constitutes the essence of being, the experiential space of existence. In his essay "Bauen, wohnnen, denken" (1954), Heidegger describes this oneness of the four in which earth and sky, divinities and mortals belong together. According to Heidegger, it is the simple dwelling or presence of nature and being under the sky that guards the fourfold: "In saving the earth, in receiving the sky, in awaiting the divinities, in initiating mortals, dwelling occurs as the fourfold preservation of the fourfold"
(53). Claudel's empire can be saved by finding and preserving the fourfold, by bringing God into dwelling. Claudel's cross - when at the centre of being - brings salvation and guards the mortals' dwelling on earth.
In the last episode of his drama, Claudel creates a sacred place of meditation and mediation between earth and sky in the "grande Montagne" (Th I,
784), where only the initiated in search of the invariable truth are accepted. This is where the New Emperor, "L'Empereur nouveau" (Th I, 788) finds refuge at the end of his voyage. His son, left in the contingent world, inherits his glorious role of being the milieu of the world of the living: 'Trends ma place avec toute puissance, assume avec magnificence le Milieu!" (Th I, 782). The hors du temps moment of beatitude takes place "entre le soleil et la lune" (786). The former
Emperor now becomes the mediator between the sacred and the profane, a crosser SION Chapter 3: Claudel of boundaries, a psychopomp. In him the two realms coincide. He is the archetype of self and of wholeness, the coincidentia oppositorum of the universal being and the individual "I". Immersed in God, the Emperor is now the sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. According to Venanzio
Amoroso he is "le Mediateur par excellence" and at the same time "l'Homme
Universel" (103).
Through ecstatic contemplation, the interpreter of the invisible realm can listen to the primordial sound and receive the divine emanation. "Dessus, devant, derriere, a droite, a gauche, dessous, / Tu est partout, et cependant tu n'as ni haut ni bas, / ni mesure ni etendue, ni apparence. / Je suis devant le Vide!" (Th I, 786).
The final encounter with Divinity seems elusive and cannot be described, it can only be experienced. On the verge of wholeness, there is always the danger of the void. "Contemplation of God's being and God's oneness elevates the perceptive soul into the heights of mystical paradox and divine wonder... God is at once perceived by the grace-filled soul, and still beyond the grasp of the limited mind"
(Talbot 25). Like Dante and Saint Bonaventure, Claudel does not admit a direct vision of divine Truth, even in the final mystical union between Man and God. "O luce etterna che sola in te sidi, / sola t'intendi, e da te intelletta / e intendente te ami e arridi!" (Eternal Light, You only dwell within / Yourself, and only You know You; Self-knowing / Self-known, you love and smile upon Yourself!) (Par.
33, 124-6). God is unknowable, invisible, and transcendent as well as immanent.
Like Christ, placed at. the centre of intersection between two worlds and having a double nature, the Emperor's transient presence becomes one with the immanent essence, mediating between the human and the divine. On the seventh day, penetrated by the fire of the Holy Spirit, the Son passes over into the Father in a SION Chapter 3: Claudel transport of contemplation (Bonaventure 38). And so, the New Emperor ascends from the depths of Hell to the top of the Mountain of Purgatory, and into the
Divine sphere.
All drama is a descent to the inner core of our being, an exploration of our underworld. It is a "directed dream" (OC XVIII, 17). With drama, Claudel explains in his article "La Poesie est un art", we penetrate a subterranean region of the human mind, the domain of dreams. The Claudelian dreamscape, like that of
Ionesco, is mapped by the intersection of the vertical "vortex" and the horizontal
"elevated stage", the different dramatic elements unite from above and below, from left to right: "D'en haut et d'en bas, de gauche a droite, les divers elements s'en reunissent pour aspirer les acteurs et le drame" (II, 1306). And further: "Le drame ne fait que detacher, dessiner, completer, illustrer, imposer, installer dans le domaine du general et du paradigme l'evenement, la peripetie, le conflit essentiel et central qui fait le fond de toute vie humaine" (Th II, 1306). Drama takes the concrete event to the level of paradigm. At the same time it transforms in concrete presence a certain potentiality of opposing forces, which forms the essential conflict of human life: the individual's search for happiness and aspiration towards
God, and his struggle with the exterior contradictory forces.
3.3. Textual Analysis: Septenary Man and the Union of Heaven and
Earth
According to ancient religions, the symbol of septenary Man is formed by a trinity and a quaternity, a triangle and a square. These sacred numbers - three, four and seven - represent Light (3), Life (4), and Union (7) or Celestial (3), SION Chapter 3: Claudel
Terrestrial (4) and Man (7)15. But first came the number three or the triangle.
Claudel's play is divided in three acts like Dante's comedy in three canticles. The
Emperor has three guides: the Mother, the Demon and the Angel of the Empire. At the end of act 1, the Emperor, after receiving the "Baton Imperial", urges three times the earth to open up (745, 746). The progression of the soul towards evil has three stages or three degrees (753); the Inferno has three gyres or circles (act 2), the fire lives in a "triple demeure" (757); and the punishment is triple - "la triple division de la peine inexpiatoire" (767), according to the three categories of sin -
Ignorance, Anti-force and Anti-science. The number three is further recurrent throughout the text: the Emperor is the "Maitre des Ceremonies, les trois cents ceremonies et les trois mille rites" (728); the Necromant makes "les trois expirations par les narines, expulsant de son coeur les trois maux" (735); the mouth has "trois portes" (737); Fou-hi, an equivalent of Noah, has "trois fils" and
"trois brus" (741); the Emperor desires a triple peace and certainty: "la triple paix et la benediction de la triple certitude" (769).
The number four or the quaternity is well represented in the play starting with the "carre magique" of the Necromant (735, 737, 738, 743) to the final symbolism of the cross (747, 773, 774, 776). The magic square is designed as a trap to catch the dead souls, and inside it sacrifices are offered to the gods, demons and guardians of the "quatre plages du Monde" (738). The empire or "la terre du milieu" has " quatre horizons" (766), the farmer guards his "quatre oliviers" (787), the Emperor sits "sur le trone carre" (764), the antique Dynasty has governed the country for "quatre siecles" (772), the fortune of the Dynasty is linked to the
"antique baton" or "bois royal", which acquires the shape of a cross. The imperial scepter is the "Croix humaine" or "caractere Dix" (773). It is the most important SION Chapter 3: Claudel object in the play, without which the Emperor is powerless. The "signe de la
Croix" which is a "signe salutaire, de la joie, et de la douleur" (774), represents the sacred milieu "d'ou s'ecartent les quatre lignes" (774). The Emperor descends into
Hell "revetu de la croix de son corps" (747) and holding the "baton imperial"
(745), which grants him free access into the Inferno. The proud Satan is crucified at the bottom of Hell, "l'orgueilleux" has his arms "ecarte comme une croix"
(760). Upon the Emperor's return, "le "baton imperial a la forme d'une croix"
(773) and will be given to the Prince Heritier (784). In the holy place on the mountain of act 3, the usual images of "trois colosses d'or" and "les Quatre
Gardiens" (785) are no longer present, the three and the four have been united into the invariable, absolute oneness. "Le septieme jour" (769, 770, 779), wise men are familiar with "les Sept Notes" (777)
The symbolism of the circle is very much present in the form of the
"enceinte" (755, 790), cercle (756, 766), "roue" (787, 788), "trou" (748, 781),
"oeil" (763, 766, 768, 777, 780, 782, 785) and "yeux" (748, 750, 769, 777),
"coupe" (729), "circonference" (732), "circonscription" (778), "disque" (737,
782), "rond" (729, 763), "bouche" (734, 737, 738, 741, 755, 757, 766, 770, 774,
775, 776, 778). The mouth is mostly recurrent as the celestial seal applied upon the human body by God, the only human part not burnt by the hellish fire or eroded by leprosy: "ma bouche est fraiche (755); "la bouche qu'il (Dieu) applique sur sa creature" (757); "bouche miserable" (774); "la bouche seule est restee intacte" (775); "la bouche, annonce le salut, profere la certitude" (776). When all senses are extinct, only the taste of God survives: "la Sagesse par qui la bouche et l'ame s'emplissent de miel et d'eau (778). SION Chapter 3: Claudel
The centre (727, 763, 774, 776) or the "milieu" (727, 733, 735, 744, 747,
749, 751, 756, 760, 764, 766, 771, 772, 774, 781, 782, 784, 785) is a permanent guidepost, a beacon irresistibly attracting the Emperor on the path to wholeness.
"Midi" and "apres-midi" (757, 764, 776, 785) are the preferred times of the day.
After leaving the terrestrial "milieu indissoluble" (733) of act 1, the Emperor proceeds towards "le milieu du lieu noir" (749) in act 2, and ultimately ascends to the divine "inviolable milieu" (787) of act 3, which represents the eternal harmony and primordial source.
The notion of gate ("porte": 728, 731, 743, 749, 769, 776, 778, 783, 788,
789) is unquestionably meaningful to Claudel whether it leads to Heaven or Hell:
"la Porte noire du Ciel" (728) or "la porte de la Terre" (731, 789). "Franchir la
Porte tout vivant" (743) is a first act of transgression attempted by the Emperor.
Gate also signifies salvation and hope (749) or damnation "la porte fatale" (769,
774). The gate to Hell or to Paradise signals the threshold between two realms, the in-between life and death.
The antonymic semantic fields of darkness and light are amply developed:
"Nuit et Jour" (746, 747, 748, 750, 760, 782), "tenebres et lumiere" (750),
"obscurite et lumiere" (775), "Visible et Invisible" (787), "la Mort et la Vie"
(774), "vivant et mort" (755, 773). Darkness encompasses emptiness, cold shadows, blindness: "le vide" (730, 747, 743, 747, 748, 751, 757, 786, 787, 789),
"le froid" (751, 752), Tombre" (746, 748, 774, 785, 790), "Fobscurite" (737, 748,
765, 775), "le noir" (743, 755, 788), "rayon noir" (789), "parole noire" (733)
"porte noire" (728), "poule noire" (743), 'Tart noir" (736), "le Dieu noir" (740),
"les voiles noires" (742), "le lieu noir" (749), "la Noirceur noire" (746, 752), "les mysteres plus noirs" (753), "les tenebres" (736, 749, 750), "temple tenebreux" SION Chapter 3: Claudel
(743), "le neant" (749, 765), "la region aveugle" (731), la cecite (752), l'aveuglement/aveugle (748, 749, 750, 755, 756, 760, 777).
Hellish Darkness is also analogous with death, sin, sorrow, infernal tortures: "mort" (747, 751, 752, 753, 754, 755, 764, 771, 772, 773, 774, 781, 783),
"le mal" (753, 754, 755, 769, 771, 772, 778), "la peine" (755, 767, 768), "la peine inexpiatoire" (767), "la torture" (751), "la terreur" (752), "la solitude" (729, 782),
"le cauchemar" (760), "le chaos" (771), l'angoisse (739), le tourment (740), "feu"
(730, 738, 745, 746, 755, 757, 760, 763, 775, 781, 789), "feu penal" (756), "Feu indefectible" (760), "chatiment" (757), "peche" (757, 761, 767), "Blaspheme"
(752,757,765,782).
Divine Light is associated with: "astre" (729, 741), "fruit" (729, 740),
"amour" (740, 753, 768), "lumiere" (733, 745, 748, 749, 750, 756, 763, 766, 768,
775, 782, 785, 787, 790), verite (746, 756, 765, 769, 778, 785), "revelation" (774),
"beatitude" (785, 786, 788), "plenitude" (786), "connaissance" (747, 753, 763,
778, 788), "la paix" (747, 750, 765, 769, 770, 777, 788, 789, 790), "le salut" (741,
744, 745, 749, 768, 775, 776, 778, 784), "la liberte" (768, 778), "le remede" (742,
744, 754, 769, 778, 780, 781), "la Justice" (756, 768, 772, 774, 778), "l'equilibre"
(768, 777, 788), "la reconciliation" (770), "l'harmonie" (783, 787), la purification
(775, 778), "la certitude" (776), "l'extase" (774, 777), "la contemplation" (777),
TEternite" (776, 788), "l'Absolu" (763, 785).
The dichotomy heaven-hell is obsessively referred to throughout the play.
"Ciel et Terre" (728, 729, 731, 732, 733, 741, 743, 745, 746, 749, 756, 757, 763,
766, 769, 770, 772, 774, 776, 779, 783, 790), "Ciel et Enfer" (744, 754, 757),
"Paradis et Enfer" (763), "Dieu et Satan" (768), "Soleil et Lune" (728, 730, 769),
"soleil et terre" (788), "Yang et Yin" (778) are significant pairs. The Emperor is SION Chapter 3: Claudel associated with the Moon and God with the Sun (728). He feels like an unwanted guest in the Inferno: "Hote" (747), "Hote importun" (751), and aspires, like the tree, to have the roots deep into the earth and the branches high into the sky. The tree ("arbre": 756, 773, 777, 781) signifies a link between the sky and the earth, and is associated with the wood of the cross and the imperial scepter. And finally,
Septenary Man brings together the Sky and the Earth, and attains the coincidentia oppositorum.
3.4. The "Wholly" Vision
The Claudelian inferno centred in Satan presents itself as a parallel and opposing universe to heaven, with its centre in God. The mother in the first circle even names it "le ciel d'en bas" (Th I, 748). Both the celestial and the infernal universes are formed by a series of concentric circles obeying the centre. The first circle or circumference, farthest from Satan, is limbo (etymologically meaning the periphery of a circle) which contains the blind neutrals and ignorants, immersed in darkness and passivity. The second circle of desire comprises the sins of the emotions, where the lustful, gluttonous, wrathful, etc. are chaotically moving between the centre and the periphery, in a disordered, excruciating vibration. The third circle with its central black sun is that of Anti-science where the sinners of the intellect are punished by being joined to the rock in total stillness. The satanical centre is an inverse image of the Godhead, the void opposing the plenitude of being, the nothingness as counterpart to wholeness. It is called the black sun and the paradise of hate: "soleil noir", "Paradis de la Haine" (Th I, 763).
Lucifer is the black god or the infernal saint: "Dieu noir" (740), "Saint de l'Enfer" SION Chapter 3: Claudel
(763). God is the sun at the centre of the celestial kingdom, "immobile dans le centre du ciel" (776), while Emperor is associated with the moon, he is "pareille a la lumiere de la Lime" (728), and the centre of the terrestrial empire. He is "le Roi des Vivants", while Satan is "l'Empereur des Morts" (731). The element of fire is the link uniting the two universes, the principle of divine retribution, the "Feu divin" becoming "Feu penal" in Hell (Th I, 756). An insightful and concise image of the Claudelian universe is given by Josee van de Ghinste in the following:
La structure de l'Univers claudelien semble maintenant fort precise: c'est celle d'un immense disque dont l'endroit represente l'Univers du Bien, forme d'enceintes concentriques autour d'un Centre/Dieu (Etre, Soleil, etc.) et dont l'envers represente l'Univers du Mai, forme de facon symmetrique d'enceintes concentriques autour d'un Centre /Satan (Neant, Lucifer, soleil noir, etc.). Les deux Centres sont face a face comme deux adversaires, et le moyeu qui traverse cette roue est le glaive de la Justice, ce feu qui extase dans l'Univers du Bien, et le feu penal dans l'Univers du Mai. (116)
The Claudelian world mirrors the image of the Creative essence, the three circles of the Holy Trinity that Dante encounters at the end of Paradiso. The
Father reflects the Son and the Son reflects the Father and their reciprocal love is the Holy Spirit, the third element of the Trinity. "In the deep and bright / essence of that exalted Light, three circles/ appeared to me; they had three different colours, / but all of them were of the same dimension;/ one circle seemed reflected by the second, / as rainbow is by rainbow and the third / seemed fire breathed equally by those two circles" (Par. 33. 118-20). SION Chapter 3: Claudel
3.5. The Centre and the Circle.
Jedes Dasein scheint in sich rund. Tout etre semble en soi rond. (Karl Jaspers, Von der Wahrheit, 50)
The common source of Dante's and Claudel's descents is sin and sorrow. It is the error and distress of one man, and through extension, of humanity as a whole, lost in the selva oscura. The motif of the descent is similar, as well as the purpose, which is to find peace and harmony, to restore symbolically the unity of earth and sky, and facilitate the communication between man and God. Both writers are poets and theologians. They are, like Ionesco or Beckett, shamans who attempt to unite all contrary principles, to realize the absolute unity in duality, the coincidentia oppositorum, as developed by Nicholas de Cusa. This concept of totality is later used by Carl Gustav Jung to describe the ultimate aim of all psychic activity. The process of individuation essentially consists of a kind of coincidentia oppositorum, the union of consciousness with the contents of the unconscious. Expressions such as mysterium conjunctionis, the union of opposites, or complexio oppositorum are frequently used by Jung in his Psychology of
Transference (1946) or Mysterium Conjuntionis (1955) to account for the rose at the heart of the mandala, the mystic centre of the world.
Claudel's fascination with the circle, the sphere and its mysterious centre is well known. One of his favourite themes is the infinite zero, "le cercle qui est le type de toutes formes, fini et cependant infini, oeuf, semence, bouche ouverte, zero" (Paul Claudel et Andre Gide, Correspondance, 91). He considered the circle to be a totality, the archetype of all forms and coinciding principles. What he SION Chapter 3: Claudel admires in his heroes is their faith in the perfect circle: "si Christophe Colomb etait parti avec le desir de trouver un monde nouveau, ce n'aurait ete qu'un aventurier de genie. Ce qui fait sa grandeur incomparable, c'est sa foi dans le cercle parfait."16 He envisioned humankind displayed in the shape of a circle around a common centre, according to C.N. Rigolot, in the image of a vast mandala or wheel of life. Being projects itself in concentric circles like waves starting from a "point unique" until the final fulfilment: "L'etre... remplit continuellement ce territoire circulaire... par une vibration qui va du centre a la peripherie" {MI 195). "L'etre rond" has a concentric organisation and its development and universal expansion is always circular and cyclical and always limited by some sort of circumference. "Tout §tre vivant est un cercle plus ou moins modifie, mais toujours limite par un contour" (Correspondance avec
Jacques Riviere, 61). Every being is a variation of the circle.
The soul is a genetic centre that gives birth to the corporeal sphere or the spherical body, "le corps-sphere" that Leo Brodeur analyses in his study with the same name. The prototype of the corporeal sphere first appears in an adolescence manuscript from 1883 of L'Endormie, published in 1947. The intuition of the spherical body starts with an onirical process of interiorisation of the spherical space, followed by a rational conceptualisation. The Self undergoes a parallel analytical and dialectical process of internal spherisation, which is sometimes accomplished unconsciously and onirically through an intuitive process, and other times consciously through a dialectical, rational one. The round world embraces the spherical Self. The Chinese Empire has the same shape: "II est rond comme une coupe, et l'astre du jour y est pose comme un fruit, / Et le grand Dragon s'y enroule, dont on ne sait ou est sa fin ni sa tete" (729). In Le Renos du septieme SION Chapter 3: Claudel jour, the Self has from inception a round shape; "l'enfant rond dans le ventre de sa mere" (763) acquires the purity and inflexibility of a "disque de pur metal" (782) placed in the magnificent milieu. At the end, the earth appears as a peaceful temple where the people dance blissfully around the wheel of life flooded with the beatific light of sunset: "Hommes, femmes, enfants, par deux, par trois, / dansent sur la roue ruisselante" (788). In the morning, the sun rises over the uncircumscribed sea, infinite and intangible, "la mer incirconscrite" (789).
Claudelian imagination is haunted by the symbolism of the circle/sphere, which is undoubtedly the unifying principle of his oeuvre. The poetic alchemy of his plays is generated through cyclical interpretation, circular language and geometric vocabulary.
"Quel est dans un pur esprit le ressort personnel, le centre d'energie, l'esprit d'unite, d'autonomie, d'individuation, et la forme particuliere en sa possession de la delegation creatrice, cet atome qui fait la vie? Chez l'homme, cela se concoit. Aristote, en cela formellement approuve par le Pape Pie XI, nous dit que l'ame est la forme du corps" (PP 219). The body is a physical sign of the Self.
The idea of a Universal Cause appears in our mind as a conceptual image of a centre surrounded by a circle. Milieu in French signifies both middle and surroundings, centre and circumference. Along with Pierre de Craon in L'annonce faite a Marie, the reader learns how "tout enfin s'ouvre par le milieu" (Th II, 15).
This alludes to the double creation of Man by God and of God by Man. Miguel
Serrano, in a letter to Carl Jung defines the Self as a circle which carries man to the limits of existence and into the essence, where he is both creator and created.
"In a way, that mysterious centre is our son, but at the same time it is our father.
The Son who is the Father, the Self (Serrano 83). In the milieu, Man tends to SION Chapter 3: Claudel coincide with God, existence with essence, the circle becomes the centre. God is also envisaged as an hote, both host and guest: "II faut admettre l'hote...
Quelqu'un qui soit en moi plus moi que moi" {OP, 18). Creation can never escape revolving in circles around the divine centre; the whole universe is attracted toward this central reality situated at the point of intersection of the two diameters that form the circle and the cross. God has to be followed and respected as the circle obeys its centre: "II faut obeir comme le cercle au centre" {OP, 14). The ineffable circle, which is only the dilation of absolute unity, is undeniably dependent on its centre. "Le cercle (...) qui n'est que la dilatation de l'unite, ne depend que d'un rapport homogene avec ce point a l'interieur de lui-meme qui est le centre {Emmaus, 1947, 394).
Claudel stated in his Art poetique that the essence of the act of creation is the generation of circles around a centre, like the concentric ripples, which emanate from a pebble tossed in the water. A literary work is created from nothingness. It all starts with a blank page, with an empty hole subsequently encircled by words: "Pour faire un poeme, on prend un trou et on met queque chose autour"17. The goal of Anne Vercors' pilgrimage in L'annonce faite a
Marie, is to find the hole made by the cross - "un trou" (II, 152). All creative energy is a vibration from a centre, and the search for the centre is the author's as well as the reader's quest. "O grammairien, dans mes vers ne cherche pas le chemin, cherche le centre" {OP, 227).
The centre, as envisioned by Claudel, is the eternal present, intersection of past and future, God or Christ, the feminine principle or the rose, rhythm and harmony, silence or music. The role of a poet is to express the inexpressible, to translate in words the invisible, to convey the silence at the centre: "Que ma parole SION Chapter 3: Claudel soit equivalente a mon silence" (OP, 251). Man is urged to be in harmony with his self and the world, to listen to the music of the spheres and in himself. As the
Scriptures say, non impedias musicam. Claudel, like Dante, often associated the universe with a symphony, with God as the perpetual musician, and the celestial harmony mirrored by the earthly rhythm: "II est au ciel un mouvement pur dont le detail terrestre est la transcription innombrable."18
Like Dante's Beatrice, Claudel's woman is the image of eternal beauty, as
Pierre de Craon calls Violaine, and has the sacred role of a priestess, as the princess in Tete d'or, and, like the rose, stands for the mystery of God's creation:
"Seule la rose est assez fragile pour exprimer 1'Eternite" (OP, 698). In his parable of Animus and Anima, Claudel defined Anima as a centre. Thus we can say that
Animus is the circle, and so, circle and centre can also symbolize the myth of the androgyne, the perfect union of the feminine and masculine principles of yin and yang.
According to Georges Poulet, Leo Brodeur and C.N. Rigolot, Claudel's world vision was dominated by the structure of the circle or the sphere, signifying the author's desire for unity and harmony. At the end of his famous essay on
Claudel from Les Metamorphoses du cercle, Poulet concludes that Claudel attempts to make the finite circumference of the human world coincide with the infinite circumference of God, but God cannot be seized, although the whole creation points at him. He is the unique point of convergence as well as of divergence, the departure and the arrival. But Claudel feels that God often withdraws into a central inaccessible unity, and that human beings are always outside God, no matter how close to the centre they think they are: "La creature, ou qu'elle soit, si pres du centre qu'elle soit, meme posee sur la source, n'est pas a SION Chapter 3: Claudel la source; elle est toujours exterieure a Dieu. 'Principe exclu, origine forclose'"
("Art Poetique" 146), "rhomme en cette vie, est toujours maintenu a distance du centre" (Poulet 469). Nevertheless, no matter how elusive or unreachable the centre might seem, its presence is always felt and the search for the Self's mysterious centre, the pursuit of the wholeness of being continues.
The circle is a sign of the universal, of eternity, complete and yet infinite, as opposed to the four-sided square, which is the sign of man. In the beginning there was the myth of creation and tragedy of the fall. After the initial split of the finite from the infinite, man perpetually pursued his dramatic journey toward an impenetrable centre, retracing his steps back to Genesis yet ending in Apocalypse.
As Hamm asserts in Endgame, "the end is in the beginning and yet you go on."
Finding the centre is synonymous with completing the circle, returning to origins.
Like Dante's, Claudel's vocation is that of a psychopomp: a shaman who communicates with the mystic centre of the world, a guide who would show humanity the path to the centre after completing the circle, and in so doing bring the world back to its point of departure, which he believed to be paradise.
Just as milieu is the privileged place on Claudel's map, midi is a mysterious moment outside time in Claudel's days. Lechy Elbernon clarifies this idea in L'Echange: "II est midi et la journee est partagee en deux...(c'est) l'heure qui n'est point l'heure" (I, 754). At midday, the characters of Partage de midi find themselves on a ship in the middle of the sea, in the middle of their lives, transcending time and space. Just as midi is the special moment of the day, so
Easter is the privileged moment of the year. The essential moment in Christian liturgy is not the beginning or the end, but the centre. Although not placed in an
110 SION Chapter 3: Claudel obvious middle, the centre of the week is the seventh day, day of grace and of prayer.
Noon, the middle of the week, of the year, or of one's life signify an ecstatic hors-du-temps. Philippe Sollers in his discussions with Benoit Chantre in
La Divine Comedie (2000), maintains that milieu - mezzo - so important to Dante and to Claudel, is the place where we can lose ourselves but also save ourselves, a threshold where we can be surprised by inferno or by paradise. It is a moment of perception, intuition or decision, when man experiences perfect totality or absolute emptiness. The middle of our lives has to be re-approached and re-experienced every moment, and the rest on the seventh day should be perpetually observed so that grace and salvation may come.
We know from Genesis that the tree of life stands in the middle of the
Garden of Eden. Mircea Eliade has stated that the garden was the heavenly prototype of the earthly temple, a sacred space having God in its midst. The centre of the garden, which is the centre of fullness, is the "tres saint Milieu" (774) in Le
Repos du septieme jour, the ineffable point of the cross, the intersection of the four seasons, also the central figure of Heideggerian thought. The oneness of the four - the fourfold - is the symbol of life and death, earth and sky, the mortal and the divine, the axis of the physical cycle of generation and the metaphysical cycle of resurrection. It is the privileged place where one can experience the absolute, in an eternal present, which encompasses both future and past. Man can experience fullness when positioned on the axis mundi or the tree of life, another symbol of the cross. The mystic centre of the Christian world is also the core of the Great
Vacuity or Great Harmony of Oriental philosophy, according to which emptiness equates with fullness. SION Chapter 3: Claudel
Mircea Eliade, in Le Mythe de Veternel retour, defines rite as the celebration in which primordial time is integrated into the present, Mo tempore becomes hodie (43). During rituals of theatre, historical time merges with mythical time. The theatre can also be a centre where all the members of the audience become one. According to Claudel, the theatre is the place which is no place (as defined by Louis Laine in L'Echange), and where through ritual and ceremony akin to liturgical rite one can attain transfiguration. The world in general is a dramatic spectacle in which man takes part unknowingly. He is at the same time a part and apart, while making his way towards the centre of light: "Le centre le plus lumineux."19
The Claudelian dolce stil nuovo manifests itself in many of his plays, for instance in scene 8 of the Soulier de satin, in the conversation between Prouheze and the Guardian Angel, on the anticipation of Purgatory, a fusion of Hell and
Paradise, fire and water, place of sufferance and of hope. Dominique Millet
Gerard sees Claudel's writings as a Dantesque comedy:
Ainsi, l'oeuvre entiere de Claudel peut se definir comme une comedie au sens ou Dante l'entend dans FEpitre a Cangrande della Scala: dynamique conduisant d'un point de depart malheureux a un terme prospere, melange de styles, haut et bas: le peche de Partage de Midi est transcende dans le sacrifice du Soulier, passage de la nature a la surnature... au regard horizontal se substitue 1'apprehension verticale..." (Millet-Gerard 237)
According to Dante's Epistle XIII to Cangrande della Scala, from an
allegorical point of view, The Divine Comedy deals with man's exercise of free
will and the ensuing reward or punishment. We can see the Comedy and
Claudel's plays as a theatrum mundi, a Summa of human life revealing the agony SION Chapter 3: Claudel
of descent and the triumph of man's struggle to make the right choices and
ascend from the depths of despair to the heights of spiritual fullness, from nature
to divinity. They are poetic dramas or dramatic poems representing a vertical
experience whose "grammar" can be examined, for instance, in connection to the
linguistic model developed by Roman Jakobson. The syntagmatic axis would
correspond to linear combinations of words, metonymy and prose, while the
vertical paradigmatic axis of language, which involves word substitutions,
metaphor and poetry, would correspond to our two authors' linguistic
preferences.
Millet-Gerard concludes that Claudel synthesizes theological objectivity
and symbolist subjectivity, Mallarme and Rimbaud, Dante and the Bible,
allegory and metaphysics. The idealism of the symbolist movement is subdued to
the rigors of theology, the taste for etymology mixed with the search for the
vertical essence of poetry: "C'est la que Claudel se separe radicalement de
Dante: par l'insertion d'une oeuvre theologique dans une ere qui ne Test plus,
qui porte le poids de toute une pensee lai'que sur laquelle Claudel prend appui
pour la spiritualiser" (Millet-Gerard 239).
Nancy Vickers20 maintains that Paul Claudel's profound interest in Dante's poetry stemmed, according to evidence in his Journal not from the didactic substance, but primarily from the aesthetic delectation in the effect he sought to achieve in his own work of visibile parlare, of speech made visible which affects the paradis interieur of the reader. Dante takes much delight in witnessing the speech of the sculpted figures in the white marble wall of the first terrace of
Purgatory, as per canto 10 of Purgatory, where visibile parlare and dilettare are textually associated (Purg. 10.94-99). Dante the pilgrim's delectation in God's SION Chapter 3: Claudel ekphrastic creation -just like Claudel's delectation in Dante or our delectation in
Claudel and Dante - brings about a moment of aesthetic ecstasy, a religious experience with an anagogical function of opening the way to paradise. The usage of esto visibile parlare is at the heart of Claudel's poetic theology. It is his expression-emblem according to Millet-Gerard and Vickers, a metaphor for the language of literature, which connects formal seduction to semantic precision and designates the ideal state of poetry indicating metamorphosis, transfiguration, transubstantiation of the real. Claudel's delectation in Dante is revealing:
Claudel read Dante with immense pleasure, a pleasure he cryptically tells us advanced his journey, opened "une des portes du paradis." Be the journey in question that of the poet or the convert, the process remain the same: the inspired text ("visibile parlare") is read; reading affects the soul, creates a sensation of delectation; and while delectating, the reader is miraculously transported beyond the realm of the material, "par-dessus tous les obstacles." (Vickers 38- 9)
3.6. The Emperor's and Reader's Hermeneutic Circle
The act of witnessing the speech of the three infernal moving figures - the
Mother, the Demon and the Angel - does not produce the pleasure of aesthetic delectation, but has a quite different effect on the Emperor as on the reader, that of self-understanding and correctly interpreting the way to salvation. Karl Jaspers and Paul Ricoeur, among others, identify the circle as representing the natural shape of man's being-in-the-world. As David Hoy writes, "the circle becomes a fundamental principle of man's understanding of his own nature and situation. SION Chapter 3: Claudel
Understanding, and with it the hermeneutic circle, becomes a condition for the possibility of human experience and inquiry."21 One can establish a parallel between the circular representation of this interpretative process and that depicted in Purgatorio XII's "VOM" passage (vedea-O-mostrava-discerne)22 and in
Claudel's Le Repos, which reveals Dante and Claudel's ability to represent the hermeneutical situation of man's self-understanding. This new correlation between the two writers becomes more evident when viewing Dante and Claudel's art in terms of Ricoeur's "descending analytics" and "ascending dialectics."23 The latter's theory of textual interpretation fully develops these two concepts within the events of "explanation": the initiating descent involves empirical and analytic interpretation of experience, followed by an ascending shift towards a discernment of meaning, appropriation and self-understanding.
In Claudel's play, if we consider the World by way of the Underworld - or the Self by way of the Unconscious - as the text to be deciphered by the Emperor and the reader, we notice that the main character undergoes the same circular process of understanding/individuation. The Emperor first saw the dead and experienced the effects of the underworld invasion (vedea). Through "descending analytics" he became aware that there is a meaning to be found in the actions of the dead, which is related to the development of the self and universal redemption.
Then he distanced himself from the events and images in front of him and started moving downwards through an analytic followed by a dialectical discourse through the "O" and "mostrava" phases of the process. Through "ascending dialectics", the Emperor, although now physically blind, finally attained the "true sight" granted by his discernment of meaning. The circle of understanding begins with sight through the senses and ends with spiritual insight. One can view Claudel SION Chapter 3: Claudel and Dante's progression as circular, starting with the experience of the senses
(yedere), then the stage of contemplating Hell in "awe" and descending to its very source, the downward "O" phase, then the upward moment of discernment after the source of evil has been revealed - "shown" by the representatives of the
Otherworld (mostrare). The Emperor understands the way of salvation
(discernere) and ascends back to the world of the living. What is "shown" by the
Inferno's delegates is different from what is simply "seen" by the Emperor at the beginning of his journey. Finally, the remedy for the evil invasion of darkness is
"shown" to other people (mostrare), so that their own circle of understanding can take place.
The dynamic two-fold process of explanation and understanding underlines the entire interpretative process for Ricoeur: "Then the term interpretation may be applied, not to a particular case of understanding, that of the written expressions of life, but to the whole process that encompasses explanation and understanding."24
What is important in this drama is not what you can see on stage or read on the page at a given moment, but "how it is becoming" in the reader or spectator's mind through understanding and interpreting. Claudel's drama, like poetry and dance, deals with cadence and rhythm, and in Bergsonian terms with "becoming".
Experience and intuition are inextricably linked ways of grasping the becoming of a play. Meaning emerges from the form of the indivisible whole transcending the sum of the parts. "O richesse de ma possession! Je suis aveugle et je vois! / Mais qu'ai-je dit, je vois? Car tous mes sens ne sont plus qu'un, et, confondu avec
I'entendement, / Ceci est l'organe multiple de la contemplation dans l'extase"
(Th I, 777). SION Chapter 3: Claudel
3.7. Conclusions: Homo Claudelianus and Wholeness
In this chapter on Le Repos du septieme jour, I have discussed the fable, the actantial structures, space and temporality, objects and characters, Dantesque intertextuality and the symbolism of the circle in psychological and hermeneutical terms. When the Chinese Emperor retires into solitude, the dead invade the world of the living and the empire is in disarray. In order to restore the lost harmony, the
Emperor has to descend to Hell and find the remedy. The second act presents his voyage through the Underworld. Instead of the three donne benedette, he encounters "the Mother, the Demon and the Angel" who begin his instruction. The cause of the evil is revealed through penetrating dialogues. The remedy is suggested by the Angel: first recognize God, then work six days and rest on the seventh, consecrating it to God. The passage from ruin to restoration takes place in the third act: the Emperor ascends from the subterranean world in order to re establish the terrestrial order.
According to Zoel Saulnier and Eugene Roberto25, Claudel aims at a syncretism between Chinese and Christian orientations, Taoist beliefs and the
Christian tradition. The hierarchy of the Y-King is comparable to that of Genesis.
Gilbert Gadoffre demonstrates that the drama is set in a conventional China, a
"Chine de convention", as L'Annonce faite a Marie takes place in a "Moyen Age de convention" (256); the only authentically Chinese component is the aggressive omnipresence of the dead. In essence, "l'Enfer moral et methaphysique du Repos du septieme jour appartient a l'univers judeo-chretien et a lui seul" (257).
At first glance, the author's sentiments towards his sinful characters set him apart from the creator of the Divine Comedy. "La presentation des damnes ne SION Chapter 3: Claudel comporte nullement de sa part cette pitie et cette sympathie qu'eprouve si souvent
Dante durant son voyage en Enfer: d'ou la tonalite bien differente des deux textes et le sens bien precis dans lequel vont les images creees par Claudel" (Reboul 76).
Claudel is too great a poet to imitate Dante literally, but, argues Yves Reboul, the many "coincidences" that bring together the two texts are more than just reminiscences, and Claudel's drama is in fact "une veritable transposition" of the master's text in modern clothing. Although we cannot speak of a master-disciple relationship, according to Odile Vetoe, we can definitely argue that the Divine
Comedy is a perpetual object of meditation and inspiration for Claudel, as the poet confesses in his unpublished letter to Louis Gillet from June 25th 1941:
Mais c'est une de ces oeuvres dont le souvenir ne s'efface pas et qui, une fois accueillie, continuent en nous une espece de travail latent, elles restent en etat de permanence, de reference continuelle, de reponse diverse aux questions que notre propre cours vient leur proposer.26
The Inferno discovered by the Emperor in Le Repos du septieme jour resembles that of Dante on multiple levels. Claudel even uses the terms "enceinte" and "cercle" (literal appropriations), and follows the structure of the Dantesque
Hell (structural appropriation of space): there is an Antechamber, a Lower and
Upper Hell divided in circles and dominated by Satan. The punishments appear in the same order: shadows, fire, ice. Most similarities are to be found in the handling of the sins of the flesh, as we have already noted. The fornicators of the second circle are relentlessly molested by the bufera infernal - the spasme atroce of
Claudel's drama, which appears to be the result of a spiritual punishment, the fundamental "peine du Dam". SION Chapter 3: Claudel
The structure of the play is informed by the trinity, as is Dante's poem. The division in three acts echoes the three Dantean canticles, and each act has three main episodes - act 1: the descensus has three moments; act 2: the Emperor travels along the three rings of Hell escorted by the three guides; act 3: the return of the
Emperor; his public appearance; his retirement on the sacred mountain. The
Emperor ascends from the three enceintes of the Inferno and enters the enceinte colossale of the mountains circumscribing the sky and containing the City of God with its peuple d'or (790).
Odile Vetoe insists on the common source of Dante and Claudel's descents: sin. Before starting his voyage, Dante the character had abandoned the right path and lost himself in the dark forest. The universal darkness and agony of
Claudel's first act is similar to the selva oscura of canto 1, the second act highlights several of Dante's infernal punishments and the third one conveys an experience of enlightenment, of Paradise Claudel's Emperor (subject), as the representative of a humanity distanced from God, starts his journey in order to redeem humanity's sin, to find the antidote for evil (object). The motif of the descent (the trajectory of the subject's quest) is similar, as well as its goal, which is to seek peace and harmony, for the benefit of the world of sinners (receiver).
The sender is indirectly God, and both Dante and the Emperor have the privilege of a beatific vision and a personal purification at the end of their journey; on their return they have acquired a new vocation, they are now prophets that indicate the right path to the rest of humanity.
The name for poet in the Latin world was that of prophet, vates. Gabriel
Marcel and Jacques Lacan, among others, have explored Claudel's poetic inspiration and prophetic dimension. Lacan is persuaded that Claudel is one of the SION Chapter 3: Claudel world's greatest poets and playwrights who goes beyond the pity and fear of the ancients, and his entire theatre is an exemplar of modern tragedy - the tragedy of desire. The desire for rational mastery is examined in relation to the desire for divine inspiration. Claudelian mythology contains a series of oppositions, according to Jacques Lacan, for instance in the myth of Oedipus - the father-son relationship- that he scrupulously analyzes in the Coufontaine Trilogy (L'Otage,
Le Pain dur, Le Pere humilie). The notion of conflict is best expressed by Claudel himself in his famous saying about conflict being necessary in any composition:
"Sans opposition, pas de composition" (Theatre II 1307). No artistic creation is possible without the tension between opposing elements. Life contains death, the profane comprises the sacred, poetic creation embodies divine inspiration, and
God's realm embraces both Heaven and Hell, the principles of good and evil.
According to Gabriel Marcel, wisdom can only be tragic, and Claudel's portrayal of the human condition makes him the father of French existentialism. In his theory of cognition, the famous co-naissance, he elaborates upon the idea that knowledge is contained in the realm of being. Marcel acknowledged his debt to
Claudel, who anticipated in his Art poetique the connection between the philosophy of existence and that of sensation, the groundwork for the phenomenology of perception further developed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
Fascinated by the dramatic power of La Ville, the matrix for all of Claudel's theatre, Marcel notes that the oracular function of the ancient vates is first incarnated in the poet Coeuvre.
Like Marcel's, Claudel's plays can be defined as metaphysical openings towards the invisible. A true work of art makes a gift of transcendence to its audience. The function of theatre is to awaken in the spectator the consciousness of SION Chapter 3: Claudel the eternal and infinite - the universal law concealed in the particular. Like God who created humanity in his own image, the playwright creates living characters on stage. The power of incarnation is realized through the actor, who mediates the union of the creator and the audience, and the sense of communion and transcendence in the spectators. According to Ann Bugliani, Marcel believes that
Claudel's theatre represents a revolution without precedent in France, in opposition to the whole French dramatic tradition: neither psychological, nor social or critical, but cosmic or ontological.
Claudel's mission, according to Jacques Bastien, is to better know and better love God, and also make him better known and loved: "Telle est bien son intention generate, mais si certains de ses drames ont une portee plus precise, Le
Repos du septieme jour, lui, constitue tres certainement celui de 1'evangelisation"
(Bastien 64). In the years following his conversion, Claudel aimed at revealing
God through His creation, finally bringing the key to universal harmony to his contemporaries. "The Divine Comedy is a poem about conversion,"27 geared to the conversion of the whole world, as Erich Auerbach has put it, about the unification of the Self into God. Like Dante, in order to reveal the divine design and meaning of empirical reality, Claudel believed that "the poet plays the role of a priest who mediates a believer's knowledge of God."28 His work attempts to recover the genesis of humankind in the image of the Divine Creator, to discover the divine spark in man. And as Odile Vetoe argues in her thesis, the pursuit of the divine within the human is what Claudel will never tire of examining in order to penetrate to our true centre of divine universality, our ideal Self: "L'oeuvre qu'il ne cessera de poursuivre toute sa vie sera de decouvrir dans l'homme cette image de Dieu SION Chapter 3: Claudel enfouie en lui, de lui rendre son etre purifie, de lui donner son nom vrai" (Vetoe
18).
The spherical Self of Claudel's Emperor, as of all living beings, is created and delineated by an undulating energy that emanates from the centre and whose final wave forms the circumference. The search for the innermost, ideal "I" is realized through a circular, cyclical descent and ascent. It is the emperor poet who initiates and creates his journey, but it is also the journey that defines and creates the traveler. As Enrico Garzilli puts it, echoing Carl Jung: "The journey and the pilgrim, the dream and the dreamer become one as man explores a circle whose circumference seems to be everywhere and whose centre seems to be nowhere.
This circle is himself (Garzilli 8).
The ultimate salvation comes from the two intersecting diametres forming the cross, which unites the circumference to the centre. As in the case of the
Beckettian self, the symbolism of the cross inscribed in a circle is associated with the individuation of the Claudelian self. The squaring of the circle, Carl Jung's archetype of wholeness, is what Claudel's Emperor seeks, as well as Beckett's tramps and Dante's pilgrim. Finally, "Tout vient se mesurer a ce double diametre d'un cercle invisible qui discerne la droite et la gauche et le haut et le bas" (EM
192). Time is like a turning space, believes Claudel, and the double diameter fixes and gives the real measure and genuine coordinates of the self. The circle or the zero, true image of the finite as of the infinite - when combined with the cross - grants supreme harmonic roundness to the self.
For Claudel all artistic creation is a mutual birth, a co-naissance of the writer and the reader/spectator. Knowledge is attained through the circular unfolding of our vibrating being as well as the convergence of the universe in the SION Chapter 3: Claudel self, the ebb and flow of con-centric and ex-centric movement from and towards
- the centre. Man is in his turn a centre of universal convergence. Human space is homogeneously distributed around the poet, like a circular village around a crossroad. The object of poetry is the sacred reality of the universe, "at whose centre we are placed" (PP 165). Like inspiration and expiration, there is a movement toward the exterior world followed by a reflux towards the sources.
"Nous ne cessons pas de co-naftre au monde, c'est a dire que notre connaissance c'est l'oeuvre de l'epanouissement circulaire de notre etre constamment en etat de vibration, sur lequel viennent de s'inserer les touches diverses qui sont les objets de cette co-naissance speciale" (MI 195).
Claudel was a mystic who aimed at transcending the personal realm and voicing the divine order, eventually assuming the task of a "prophet working under God's eye" (Raymond 205). This drama, like all of Claudel's theatre, is an attempted act of conversion, as for him Christian doctrine is the only way to salvation. "Le salut de la Chine (...) n'est pas ailleurs que dans le Christianisme" noted Claudel in a letter to Agnes Meyer of 1929. The message of Claudel and
Dante, as well as that of Ionesco, Beckett, Cocteau, might as well be: "Au dela de la vie est la revelation" (Th I, 774). In the "Ode jubilaire" for the 600th anniversary of Dante's death, Claudel glorifies the final reunion of Dante and Beatrice, the ultimate junction of the two worlds, the fundamental unity of the visible and the invisible.
Comme la musique avec i'orgue, comme l'huile avec le feu Tu vois bien que nous nous servons d'une seule ame pour etre deux. ("L'Ode jubilaire" 245-6)
Claudel's work, as well as Dante's, reveals a gigantic effort to reunite the SION Chapter 3: Claudel two sides of Creation, to re-establish the wholeness of the universe and of man.
The two poets tenaciously attempt to find the way back to the centre, reinstate order and peace and achieve "centering" through a mythic descent to Hell. They seek to abolish the separation between the unconscious and the conscious mind, and achieve individuation through the integration of the invisible into the visible.
The recognition and investigation of Hell will show the way to redemption and wholeness of being. Yet another modern mandala play within a Dantesque frame,
Claudel's drama of metaphysical exile and homecoming brings along regeneration. Like Becket's Godot, it conveys spiritual rebirth while performing a cyclical ritual of inner descent and ascent to the central point of being. SION Chapter 4: Beckett
4. CHAPTER 4: Beckett
The Zero Self: Descent to the Ground Zero of Being
Godot's Waiting Selves in Dante's Waiting Rooms
4.1 Tout commence avec Dante... Beckett Between Dante's Hell and
Purgatory
Dante is a frequent point of reference throughout Beckett's career, as a brief chronological survey of his work will demonstrate. I will briefly review some of the
Dantesque quotations or allusions in his work. In Dante...Bruno. Vico...Joyce (1929),
Beckett places Joyce's spherical purgatory in opposition to that of Dante, which is conical and implies culmination and consummation, and follows the ascent from real to ideal vegetation. The lifelessness of Hell is contrasted to the vitality and movement of Purgatory. The significance of the number 4 in Joyce's work is discussed in relation to the importance of number 3 in the divine poem, written in terza rima, which is itself divided into 3 cantiche of 33 canti each.
In Whoroscope (1930), Beckett refers to Dante's "great high bright rose", a direct allusion to the rosa sempiterna of the thirtieth canto of Paradiso. In his contribution of the same year From the Only Poet to a Shining Whore for the collection Henry-Music, the "only poet" is Dante, and the shining whore is Rahab
{Par. 9. 116). In Echo's Bones (1935) he mentions "Dante and the Logos and all strata
125 SION Chapter 4: Beckett and mysteries" (Alba), "lo Alighieri" and "Dante and blissful Beatrice" (Sanies II).
The poem Malacoda provides a re-interpretation of Dante's demon from Inferno 21, now the undertaker Nick Malacoda, who also haunts the last tale of More Pricks Than
Kicks (1934).
Belacqua, the slothful lute-maker first surfaces in Dream of Fair to middling
Women (1932) with the surname Shuah, and appears to be immersed in a state of bliss while meditating on the Aristotelian dictum: "sedendo et quiescendo anima efficitur sapiens". In More Pricks Than Kicks, Beckett places Dante's ante-purgatorial character in Dublin and presents the chronicle of his life of idle discourse steeped in
Dantesque motifs and quotations. In one of the ten short stories of the volume, "Dante and the Lobster" (first published in 1932), the protagonist Belacqua is "stuck in the first of the canti in the moon" (7) and speaks about making up "Dante's rare movements of compassion in Hell" (17). Company (1980) shows again a narrator meditating on Belacqua's fate and mesmerised by Dante's first quarter smile.
comment c'est (How It Is, 1961) is the most Dantesque of Beckett's works, according to Neal Oxenhandler: "divided into three parts, it is written in short prose passages which typographically recall Dante's terza rima. Beckett's narrator too insists on the veracity of his vision."1 The protagonists of comment c'est live in the
"primeval mud" and "impenetrable dark" of the third or fifth circle of the Inferno. At some point, Bom, the narrator, kneels on a muckheap, clad in a sack and holding a vast banner ("une vaste vexille") between his teeth; "vexilla regis prodeunt inferni"
("the banners of hell go forth") was used by Dante as the opening line of Inferno 34.
On the banner, further familiar intertexts can be read: "in thy clemency now and then let the great damned sleep here something illegible in the folds then dream perhaps of the good time their naughtiness procured them what time the demons may rest ten 126 SION Chapter 4: Beckett
seconds fifteen seconds."2 Further on Bom dreams of moving like Dante's pilgrim
between hell and heaven: "dream come of a sky an earth an under-earth where I am
inconceivable aah no sound in the rectum a redhot spike that day we prayed no
further" (537). The final line juxtaposing sodomy and fornication echoes Francesca's
words to Dante in Inferno 5 ("That day we read no more"), and further suggests that reading is praying, poetry is prayer. This inference of a sacral function to poetry
places it within the great tradition of Dante, according to Neal Oxenhandler. Deirde
Bair attributed to Beckett in Samuel Beckett: A Biography, some very similar words:
"All poetry, as discriminated from the various paradigms of prosody, is prayer" (181).
According to John Fletcher, Murphy (1938) shows a preoccupation with
Purgatory, the zodiac, dates and numbers, in imitation of Dante, and The Unnamable
(1953) is steeped in infernal visions: "In L'Innommable, in fact, Beckett has reconstructed for the twentieth century Dante's horrific vision."3 Kevin O'Neill believes that Molloy (1951), with its emphasis on physical torment, can be easily associated with the Inferno, while the emphasis on waiting in Malone Dies (1951) comes directly from Purgatory. The Unnamable approaches the spiritual domain, therefore depicts Beckett's vision of the "unrelieved immaculation"4 of Paradise.
O'Neill further argues that the speakers of Molloy, like Dante's sinners, are always concerned with the past. In Malone meurt, as in Purgatorio, the text alternates between a nostalgic look back and one into the future, whereas the Paradiso of
L'Innommable incorporates past and future into the "eternal present of God" (172).
Time and space become both centre and circumference as the protagonist ascends to the spiritual sphere, and Paradiso, like Beckett's text, moves in the direction of speechless communication and silence.
127 SION Chapter 4: Beckett
Rubin Rabinovitz has pointed out that Molloy's many settings echo several locales in the Inferno. The gloomy forest is reminiscent of Dante's dark wood, and other landscape elements such as roads, mud, ditches, caves, lakes, deserts, plains, towers acquire similar metaphorical connotations in both Beckett and Dante.
Futhermore, Molloy presents Dantesque images of ruins {Inferno 23.137 / Molloy 52), rain {Inferno 6.7-8 / Molloy 37), and bogs {Inferno 11.70 / Molloy 14). Like Dante,
Beckett goes beyond the physical world and expresses spiritual processes, the otherworld within, the "inner space one never sees, the brain and heart and other caverns where thought and feeling dance their sabbath" {Molloy 11). The immaterial self is conjured up by images of the physical self such as the skull, the brain, the head, the eyes, and by different degrees of light and darkness. The outside world is associated with a repugnant bright light, while mental activities are accompanied by a mesmerising subdued light. The dim light within is usually fading into darkness, and the Beckettian works generally deal with "the inner man, its hunger, darkness and silence" {Dream of Fair to middling Women 35). The prevalent darkness and silence of the inner world's remote strata constitute the most desired refuge for his protagonists, and the journey to those inaccessible places configures the heroic quest of the Beckettian hero. It is the labyrinthine movement between the two poles of viciousness and immaculation, hell and heaven, outside and inside that summarises both Dante and Beckett's works. The truth of this unresolved dialectic would have to be found in the fusion of the circumference with its centre. Mary Bryden, among others, believes that it is Purgatory and the notion of voyage and transition that fundamentally inform Beckett's oeuvre, which appears as a Divine Comedy without
Virgil, a voyage without a guide.
128 SION Chapter 4: Beckett
Beckett's drama is also conceived under the sign of Dante. Krap from
Eleutheria (1995, published posthumously) believes he is in the ninth circle of Hell.
Dan Rooney in All That Fall (1957) suggests to Maddy that they should walk like
Dante's sorcerers from Inferno 20, with their faces "arsy-versy." Katharine Worth speaks of the nominal connection between the dismembered Orphic mouth from Not I
(1973) and Dante's Bocca. Waiting for Godot's characters often mention Hell and are marked by bodily disfunctions, neutrality and indolence. In Happy Days (1961),
Winnie is entombed in a minute mountain of Purgatory scorched by "hellish sun". It has been said that Endgame (1957) represents "an extension and reduction of Godot"
(Richard Cavell, 126). It presents the image of three generations in different stages of restricted movement, imprisoned perhaps in an infernal skull. Clov confesses: "I can't be punished any more" (1), and Hamm acknowledges that they are "down in a hole"
(9) and there is no way out. The awaited release through judgement never comes, and there is no end to their present ante-infernal punishment. The inner hell is doubled by the bombed out landscape outside, they are surrounded by hell: "beyond is the...other hell" (26). Hellish circularity, monotony and spiritual torment are enacted in most
Beckett plays, for instance in Act Without Words (1957), Words and Music (1962),
Come and Go (1966), Catastrophe (1982) and What Where (1984). Play (1964) with its three talking heads in urns was considered by many critics to be a metaphor for
Hell. The blind and paralysed Hamm, his very name evoking heat and darkness and signifying the Chaotic principle5, his parents imprisoned in dustbins, Winnie's immobilised body, the suspended Mouth, the heads in urns - all echo the agony and fixity of Dante's infernal sinners.
The "sinfully indolent" are models for contemporary attitudes and typologies, while Beckett's most cherished "Belacqua fantasy" becomes his "first landscape of 129 SION Chapter 4: Beckett freedom" (Murphy, 1957, 78). Beckett's works engage in multiple dialogues with the
Dantesque Purgatory and Inferno, but only one, I will argue in the next section, accomplishes the ascension into Paradise, from the conjunction of Hell and Purgatory.
4.2. Waiting for Godot and Dante's Waiting Room
For I am obliged to assign a beginning to my residence here, if only for the sake of clarity! Hell itself, dates from the revolt of Lucifer. It is therefore permissible, in the light of this distant analogy, to think of myself as being here forever, but not as having been here forever.6
Waiting for Godot was first performed in Paris in 1953; it soon became the most popular play of the twentieth century and achieved an international success that established Beckett as a major figure of modern drama. Many commentators viewed the play in existentialist terms, resorting, for instance, to Heidegger's notion of
Dasein, which resulted in Beckett's characters frequently being seen as 'grounded' in the state of Being, the so called 'Being-in-the-world'. Connexions, too, were made to
Jean-Paul Sartre's humanist existentialist concept of existence that precedes essence, and Alain Robbe-Grillet's objectification of the subjective mind. Others, meanwhile, hailed it as a break from existentialism. Michel Foucault insisted in two interviews,
"Archaeology of a passion" (1983) and "Le Style de l'histoire" (1994)7, that Godot represented a separation from Existentialism, Marxism, and Phenomenology, which were the constituent background of a whole generation after the war. For this play, I would further posit, Beckett found once more his inspiration in the Divine Comedy.
Dante's concept of neutrality is a compelling metaphor for Beckett's infernal drama. "As the pagan Virgil was recruited as guide by the Christian Dante, so Beckett
130 SION Chapter 4: Beckett recruits the Christian Dante as his guide to the post-theological universe he inhabits."8
In Waiting for Godot, a tissue of Dantesque intertextualities reveals Beckett's intricate appropriation of the Inferno in terras of space, time, setting and characters. An early, uncollected poem, "Text", engages in an intense dialogue with canto 3, as Beckett was frequently preoccupied with the fate of those excluded from Dante's tripartite system and assigned to its grim vestibule, an austere territory which is neither Hell nor Void. Naturally enough, the poet identifies himself with its inhabitants, the lukewarm, those "scorned by the black ferry / despairing of death / who shall not scour with swift joy / the bright hill's girdle / nor tremble with the dark pride of torture / and the bitter dignity of an ingenious damnation.. ."9
My analysis scrutinizes the correspondences between Godot and canto 3, the
"waiting room" of the Inferno, explores the ontological function of the four characters in connection with Dante and analytical psychology, and finally focuses on the emerging model of the immanent, universal soul of contemporary man proposed by the playwright. I will start by clarifying the spatial and thematic connection between canto 3 and Beckett's drama, a correlation which has been overlooked by scholars10.
In the third canto, between the Gate of Hell and the river Acheron, the pilgrim encounters the neutrals, "the wretched ones, who never were alive" ("Questi sciaurati, che mai non fur vivi," Inf. 3.64). Commentators usually speak of vili (vile souls), cattivi (wicked souls), miseri and tristi (wretched souls), and most agree they are ignavi (cowards). Michele Barbi calls them pusillanimi (pusillanimous souls11), while
Charles Singleton defines them as "lukewarm" . They are "the miserable people, those who have lost the good of their intellect" ("le genti dolorose / c'hanno perduto il ben de l'intelletto"; Inf. 3.17-8). Instead of using their "intellect" in making their own choices in life, they did nothing but followed whoever promised to provide 131 SION Chapter 4: Beckett security. Estragon admits in act 1: "Don't let's do anything. It's safer" (12B), and later on Vladimir concludes: "We're in no danger of ever thinking any more" (41B).
Their sin was cowardice and passivity: they never thought for themselves, they never had a conscience and never made choices. As Maria Picchio Simonelli underlines:
"There is no doubt that the sin punished in the Ante-Inferno is cowardice" which
"represents a degeneration of the human condition itself."13 Because they never took part in either good or evil, they cannot go to Hell, Purgatory or Paradise. In order to awaken their dead conscience, in the afterlife they are stung by horseflies and wasps.
Because they remained unrepentant about their passivity, they are forced to spend eternity outside the Hell of active punishment. All this indicates the location and the thematic context of Godot.
Beckett's version of Dante's third canto is as ingenious as his portrayal of
Belacqua in his early work, Dream of Fair to middling Women (1932) and the collection of short stories More Pricks than Kicks (1934). Through Belacqua Shuah, the alter-ego of the Florentine lute-maker, he depicted a state of indolence that did not exclude free will. The figure of Belacqua, idly resting in the boulder's shadow will recur as a leitmotif throughout the Beckettian oeuvre. Walter A. Strauss argues that in
Godot, "the Dantean figure has been metamorphosed into two tramps, Gogo and Didi
- clochards in the true sense of the word."14 Belacqua's favourite position appears episodically in Godot's act 2, where Estragon's posture is reminiscent of Dante's apathetic hero: "He resumes his foetal posture, his head between his legs" (45). Being in the womb visualises the Utopian state of the atom in the void. The image of the unborn foetus is suggestive of the serene security fervently sought by the Beckettian protagonist caught in the agonising cycle of life and death. While Dante's neutrals foolishly pursue anything that would bring meaning or salvation, Beckett's heroes 132 SION Chapter 4: Beckett endlessly wait for the moment of epiphany, for supreme liberation. While Dante's sinners are invariably stung by insects, Beckett1 has envisioned miscellaneous alternative punishments: occasional beatings, bladder problems, neck and head sores, festering wounds, aching feet. Steven Carter recognises here the Homeric archetype of the homeless man. He subsequently traces Estragon's wound to Achilles' and
Odysseus' scar, as well as Tristan's (Tristan and Iseult) and Captain Ahab's (Moby
Dick)15.
Unlike Dante who distantly observes his ante-infernal sinners and at this point does not distinguish particular individuals, Beckett deals with specific protagonists and perplexing onomastic techniques. The names of his characters have an international, although mostly Eurocentric, echo, suggesting that they represent not just individuals but humanity in general: Estragon (French), Vladimir (Russian),
Pozzo (Italian), Lucky (English). Beckett will follow a similar procedure in Endgame, as pointed out by several critics, where one character is the "hammer" and the other three the "nails": Hamm (hammer, English), Clov (clou, French), Nell (nello, Italian),
Nagg (Nagel, German). To confirm the assumption that we are dealing with a sample of universal humanity, Vladimir pronounces a heavy, and perhaps damning verdict in act 2: "But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not" (51).
In the first act, when asked by Pozzo what his name is, Estragon answers:
"Adam" (25). In the second act, Estragon calls Pozzo by the names of Abel and Cain
(53B). Having in mind Erich Auerbach's famous study "Figura," the use of biblical names suggests that the characters are a figura of the first men on earth, foreshadowing the celestial people yet to be. Eden and Golgotha point to each other.
Estragon is a figura of Adam, who in turn is a figura of Christ. Estragon confesses 133 SION Chapter 4: Beckett in act 1: "All my life I've compared myself to him" (34B). Vladimir and Estragon can also appear as afiguratio of the two-thieves principle, while Pozzo and Lucky are a figuratio of the fratricidal pair Abel and Cain, of the master and slave principle.
The nicknames Gogo and Didi are possibly formed by the repetition of the verbs go and dire in the imperative, as indicated by Ruby Cohn, therefore proposing the dichotomy go-say, movement-speech, action-utterance. One prefers to move and the other chooses to just utter words, one is fascinated with his boots, which suggests a terrestrial association, the other one with his hat, alluding to a celestial link. The inability to commit themselves to any cause beyond their own self interest leads to inaction and nonsensical speech. It is an ironic inversion, as the two are neither active nor eloquent. Moreover, action is dissimulated in speech.
There are many literal connections between canto 3 and Godot. Estragon invites his companion: "Tell me about the worms!" (39B). This seemingly casual request functions as an instant reminder of the repellent worms covering the ground of
Ante-Inferno which feed on the blood and tears of the sinners: "The insects streaked their faces with their blood, / which, mingled with their tears, fell at their feet, / where it was gathered up by sickening worms" {Inf. 3.67-70). Like Dante's neutrals who are familiar with the infernal "bloodred light" ("una luce vermiglia"; Inf. 3.134) across the Acheron, Didi is also aware of Hell's colour, while Gogo pretends not to notice it:
"VLADIMIR: But down there everything is red! ESTRAGON (exasperated): I didn't notice anything, I tell you!" (40).
Many further references allude to damnation and the Inferno, as the characters relive the ambivalence of neutrality. Estragon bellows: "I'm in Hell" (47B) and later
Vladimir shouts: "Go to Hell" (52B). The universe is infernal, the sinners suffer "for reasons unknown" like those who "are plunged in torment plunged in fire" (28B). 134 SION Chapter 4: Beckett
Estragon, like Dante the pilgrim in the first canto, walks with a limp {Inf. 1.30) and, like his predecessor, is lost in the dark wood of unknowing. "Whereas Dante sought to express the all of all, Beckett seeks to express the all of nothing" (R. Cavell, 141-2).
For Vladimir, the only certainty is "nothing" as "nothing is certain" (10B) or, in the words of Democritus: "Nothing is more real that nothing." As Beckett put it in "Three
Dialogues" with Georges Duthuit, only nothing is -worth expressing: "The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with no obligation to express."16
In this infernal realm where even laughter is prohibited they have lost all their
"rights" as human beings.
ESTRAGON: We've no rights any more? Laugh of Vladimir, stifled as before, less the smile. VLADIMIR: You'd make me laugh if it wasn't prohibited. ESTRAGON: We've lost our rights? VLADIMIR: (distinctly). We got rid of them. (13B)
Gogo and Didi are, and are not, in Hell, their physical location being ambiguous: "VLADIMIR: And where were you yesterday? ESTRAGON: How should I know? In another compartment. There's no lack of void" (42B). The spatial boundaries appear to be blurred, unlike the ones of the Ante-Inferno. "The sorry souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise" ("L'anime triste di coloro che visser sanza 'nfamia e sanza lodo"; Inf. 3.35-6) are assigned a specific location for their eternal punishment and can never move to another compartment in proper Hell or Purgatory. For our heroes too, the possibility of inhabiting another subdivision is doubtful and illusory. The only certain definition of their place of residence is
'nothing': "It's indescribable. It's like nothing" (55B), it is a land of "sighs, 135 SION Chapter 4: Beckett lamentations and loud cries" (Inf. 3.22). Lamentations are recurrent throughout the play, as all the characters keep complaining and lamenting. Vladimir is exasperated:
"Will you stop whining? I've had about my bellyful of your lamentations!" (46). They have been in this place an indefinite length of time: "fifty years maybe" (35) or "a million years" (7B) as "time has stopped" (24B), and all their life experiences have elapsed, they are "all dead and buried" (35). As in Dante's eternal realm, time has no significance and the sinner can only have a "retrospective vision upon his earthly self."17 Estragon too refers to his life in the past:
VLADIMIR: You should have been a poet. ESTRAGON: I was. Isn't that obvious? (9)
For Dante's damned also, memory is the only link to earthly life. In the realm of timeless being, the protagonists can only recall essential fragments of their past; they are blind to the present but can see into the future, as revealed in the Farinata-
Cavalcante episode of canto 10. Didi and Gogo, because they are denied entry into
Hell, are also denied the capacity to foretell the future, and their memory plays endless tricks on them. When Pozzo declares "I am blind" - Estragon sarcastically infers: "Perhaps he can see into the future" (54B). However, none of Beckett's protagonists has acquired this capacity yet, their blindness appears to be total. "Those who are here can place no hope in death, / and their blind life is so abject that they are envious of every other fate" (Inf. 3.46-8).
As A. C. Charity has shown, in the Divine Comedy "the analogy between sin and punishment is direct and often so vivid that the latter is seen to consist in the perpetual continuance of the sin itself, now transformed to torment through the disintegration of man's proper personality"18, as free will and "il ben deU'intelletto"
(Inf. 3.18) are completely lost. 136 SION Chapter 4: Beckett
ESTRAGON: Use your intelligence, can't you? Vladimir uses his intelligence. VLADIMIR: (finally). I remain in the dark. (12B)
The law of the contrappasso allows the sins to perpetuate themselves with a
"monotonous intensity". Like Dante's infernal dwellers, Didi and Gogo are "fixed forever in a single context." Erich Auerbach clarifies that: "it is precisely the absolute realisation of a particular earthly personality in the place definitively assigned to it, which constitutes the Divine Judgement." Didi and Gogo are now beyond the choices that might alter their existence in the afterworld. We now "behold an intensified image of the essence of their being," which is the state of neutrality, of passivity, of in-between life and death. They always try to find a way to perpetuate the illusion of existence (44B), while isolating themselves from the "corpses" and
"skeletons" (41B) around them, the other dead who make noises like "feathers",
"leaves", "sand", "ashes" (40B), echoing the "strange utterances, horrible pronouncements, /accents of anger, words of suffering, / and voices shrill and faint, and beating hands- / all went to make a tumult that will whirl / forever through that turbid, timeless air, like sand that eddies when a whirlwind swirls" {Inf. 3.25-30):
ESTRAGON: All the dead voices. VLADIMIR: They make a noise like wings. ESTRAGON: Like leaves. VLADIMIR: Like sand. ESTRAGON: Like leaves. Silence. VLADIMIR: They all speak at once. ESTRAGON: Each one to itself. Silence. VLADIMIR: Rather they whisper. ESTRAGON: They rustle. VLADIMIR: They murmur. ESTRAGON: They rustle. Silence. 137 SION Chapter 4: Beckett
VLADIMIR: What do they say? ESTRAGON: They talk about their lives. VLADIMIR: To have lived is not enough for them. ESTRAGON: They have to talk about it. VLADIMIR: To be dead is not enough for them. ESTRAGON: It is not sufficient. Silence. (40)
Only dialogue provides the impression of existence. Discussing their lives is the only possible activity. Vladimir's invitation to spring into action highlights again the dichotomy speech-action: "Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! (Pause.
Vehemently.) Let us do something while we have the chance!" (51) But, as they are waiting for Godot to come, words will be the only surrogate for action. Vladimir acknowledges: "What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come" (5IB.) Like Dante's neutrals, who waited for direction from others, Didi and Gogo wait for Godot to show them the way and to pronounce the verdict for eternity. They are "tied to Godot" (14B), to their desire for certainty, to their hope of salvation or damnation. He can either take the form of Christ, the "Holy Saviour", or that of "Caron dimonio", Charon, the demon with eyes like embers and white hair (Inf. 3.83) recalling Godot's white beard (59).
Charon, by accepting the souls in his boat across the Acheron pronounces a judgement avant la lettre: that of acceptance into Hell proper; the dreadful Minos, later on, in the second circle, will assign the soul's level of punishment by wrapping his tail around himself. Didi and Gogo are confused about their identities, and they struggle to distinguish between themselves and the sinners around them. They expect to be saved or taken across the river Acheron, like the damned souls surrounding them, the "dead voices". After Pozzo and Lucky leave on their journey to the 138 SION Chapter 4: Beckett market, Didi and Gogo find themselves alone again: "In an instant all will vanish and will be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness" (52). The centre of nothingness is the "tres saint Milieu" (844) in Claudel's Le Repos du septieme jour, the ineffable point of the cross, the intersection of the four seasons, of Animus and Anima, Shadow and Persona. It is the privileged place where one can experience the absolute, in an eternal present, which encompasses both future and past. In the middle of their lives, in the midst of emptiness, hors-du-temps, all confusion vanishes and, for a moment, they have the sensation of transcending time and space. In Claudel, midday or the middle of the year signifies an ecstatic hors-du-temps. In Genesis 2:9 it is written that the tree of life stands in the middle of the garden. Didi and Gogo experience fullness next to their axis mundi, their tree of the cross, symbol of intersection, the mystic centre of the world and Christ, of the Great Vacuity of Oriental philosophy, according to which to be empty is to be full.
Stillness and nothingness are Beckett's favourite concepts, along with the obsessive 'zero'. In Endgame, Clov gets up on a ladder and inspects the "corpsed" world through a telescope. "Clov: Zero... (he looks)... zero... (he looks)... and zero.
/ Hamm: Nothing stirs. All is-" (29). Clov also comments that the time is always the same - "zero" (13) - their shelter is a place where time stands still. Jung's Septem
Sermones ad Mortuos {Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1916) express analogous concepts. The eternal and infinite have no qualities and "nothingness is the same as fullness". As in Jung's pleroma, in the shelter there is nothing and everything: "the pleroma is both beginning and end of created beings"21. The beginning represents the end, and vice-versa, there is nowhere to go, and "nothing to be done"; one must
"remain" still as Hamm and Clov do contemplating the "dying light," or, like
Vladimir and Estragon, who finally "do not move" (60B). 139 SION Chapter 4: Beckett
Beginning and end also coincide in Pozzo's famous speech in act 2. Like
Seneca and Lucilius, Beckett believed that the best way to avoid the fear of death was never to stop thinking about it. And indeed, he creates one of the most striking images of death as birth: "One day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? (Calmer.) They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more" (57B). Birth and death are felt as simultaneous events, and the moment of generation is often identified with the moment of birth. As Hamm announces in Endgame, "the end is in the beginning and yet you go on." As in Yeats's Purgatory, Beckett's protagonists seem to implore their mother's ghost not to conceive them. Being enters time at the moment of birth, which is the beginning of death: "the grave sheets serve as swaddling-clothes."22
Beckett now seems to believe in this process of "macabre transubstantiation" which was rejected in the earlier work Proust (1931). Pozzo's articulate vision was seen by
Katherine H. Burkman as the true epiphany of the play, a glimpse into the sacred void.
Like Pozzo, Vladimir has a visionary moment. He too recognises that the individual is a transitory link in the universal chain of life and death, of birth into this world and death into the other realm. Life and historical time are ephemeral while mythical time is eternal. Beckett's novels and plays repeatedly reveal his disgust both at the process of generation, which results in being imprisoned in a decaying body, and at time. This disgust is rooted in the philosophical conviction that creating new life in an evil world means generating more evil - and therefore forcing eternity into historical time is sinful. The unnecessary pain of growing old in a world "full of our cries" and deadened by our habits should not be inflicted on anyone.
140 SION Chapter 4: Beckett
Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the gravedigger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. {He listens.) But habit is a great deadener. (He looks again at Estragon.) At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, he is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on. (Pause.) I can't go on! (58-58B)
"On" occurs as a key word in Godot as well as in later writings: "On. Say on. Be said on. Somehow on. Till nohow on. Said nohow on." So begins Worstward Ho
(1983), for instance, with the reaffirmation of the regenerative power of "on."
Lucky is similarly preoccupied with serious concerns, hidden under carnavalesque motifs and an increasingly deteriorating syntax. "Beckett is dealing not simply in words and sounds, but in words and sounds whose real impact is subliminal or preconscious. He is striving to create, through the medium and limitations of language, an art that can use those limitations to suggest that which lies beyond language."23 Lucky's discourse has no paragraphs, sentences or punctuation marks, and only contains a flow of permuted phrases and repeated words that expose the arbitrariness of language, attempting to prohibit the restoration of meaning and logical associations. Everything happens ."for reasons unknown but time will tell" (28B-29B) we are told about ten times; our personal God with white beard, outside time and away from the world, is pictured like a deus otiosus: a distant and uninvolved God, lazy and inactive, indifferent to the plight of humankind, as the "divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia" suggest (28B), but who sometimes suffers with those plunged in torment and fire whose flames will "fire the firmament" and "blast hell to heaven."
(28B) He then speaks repeatedly of the labours of men left unfinished and lost - namely concurrently simultaneously approximately by and large more or less no matter what -, alimentation, defecation and sports of all sorts (29). Four elements are 141 SION Chapter 4: Beckett recurrent: the fire, the earth, the air, the sea, mixed with the flames, the tears, the stones, and finally and insistently the skull. Deity, man and the natural elements are permuted in various ways, giving an impression of suffering, sadness and alienation of cataclysmic proportions.
Beckett toys with the disturbing idea of a random discourse ordered by chance, breaking free from linguistic constraints. In spite of his attempt at total randomness, the reader can still discern patterns from which meaning can be derived. Far from being dissociated from any meaning, the tirade gains a plurality of meanings in the process of decomposition effected by the reader/spectator. According to Wofgang Iser, meaning is mostly produced by the reader, guided by clues embedded in the text. This technique which inspires fresh ways of producing meaning will be perfected in Lessness, a piece that finally fulfils Samuel Beckett's ideal of 'accommodating the mess' of consciousness by yielding his authorial control to the laws of probability and permutation. In Lessness, more obviously than in Lucky's discourse, "component parts are arranged according to combinatorial mathematical rules."24
Starting with the monograph on Proust, Beckett's focus is on the delicate relationship between the writer and his objects, between subject and object, and above all between the language-based self as subject and the non-linguistic self as its object, as pointed out by Hugh Culik. Beckett emphasises the division of the self into two components, one dependent on language and the other on an extra-linguistic mode of being. Beckett insists that Proustian involuntary memory establishes the connection between the two and "frees the essential reality that is denied to the contemplative as to the active life."25 Pozzo, the ego, cannot exist outside language, whereas Lucky, his shadow, represents the non-linguistic part of the self that uses a trans-linguistic mode of expression, triggered by involuntary memory. He invents a "language" that tries 142 SION Chapter 4: Beckett to "unspeak itself," as pointed out by J. E. Dearlove. The farcical speech gives the impression of a circular movement of words that undresses the self of its linguistic apparel and comically attempts to recapture its lost 'true' voice beyond reason, language and mathematics. In his disjointed tirade in a coq-a-l'ane format, "Lucky turns traditional patterns of reasoned discourse and theological debate into farce."26 It could be that he "derives his name from his having acquired the ability to think as
Beckett thought, to have the will to face the consequences of that thought... Lucky is free in his mind: that for a philosopher, is luck enough"27. The biggest challenge for a writer, for the word-based self, is to express freedom of thought at the wordless core of his self. Lucky, like Beckett, uses philosophical thought and involuntary memory as a personal therapy, a way of healing, of bringing about salvation. Preoccupation with salvation or damnation also pervades the following dialogue:
VLADIMIR: ...Two thieves, crucified at the same time as our Saviour. One- ESTRAGON: Our what? VLADIMIR: Our Saviour. Two thieves. One is supposed to have been saved and the other . . . (he searches for the contrary of saved) ... damned. ESTRAGON: Saved from what? VLADIMIR: Hell. ESTRAGON: I'm going. He does not move. (9)
When asked about the theme of Godot, Beckett referred to St. Augustine's comment on the crucifixions of the two thieves from the Gospel of Luke: "Do not despair: one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume: one of the thieves was damned."28 Beckett acknowledged on several occasions the beauty of this thought and its linguistic form29: "I am interested in the shape of ideas even when I do not believe in them... that sentence has a wonderful shape. It is the shape that matters." 143 SION Chapter 4: Beckett
According to Bert States, Godot primarily deals with the idea posed by the parable of the two thieves, "with the odds or 'percentages' of salvation versus damnation for the race"31, which is the theme of Dante's Divine Comedy. By mentioning the saved thief,
Beckett also makes a direct reference to Christ's harrowing of Hell. After being rescued from Hades, Adam and the holy fathers are welcomed into Paradise by Enoch and Elijah, and the good thief who is still carrying his cross on his back.
Their refusal to face reality in life has put off repentance and deferred salvation. Vladimir partially remembers Solomon's words: "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick, but when the desire cometh it is a tree of life." Interestingly enough, the word "heart" is replaced by "something" (8). Their present punishment concerns the whole of humankind who committed "the original and eternal sin... the sin of having been born."32 Beckett restates the Dantesque paradigm of retribution in its essential form. Salvation can be attained only by stepping out of the cycle of life and death.
The fact of being in our contemporary world condemns us to mortality, to an endless cycle of infernal punishments. The Inferno frames the condition of terrestrial life in general, and particularly of modern existence, with its disintegration of memory and intellect, and man's resulting incapacity to make choices.
VLADIMIR: Suppose we repented. ESTRAGON: Repented what? VLADIMIR: Oh ... (He reflects.) We wouldn't have to go into the details. ESTRAGON: Our being born? (8B)
The dialogue and structure of the play "becomes circular, like the topography of the Inferno,"33 as the play is marked by the principle of repetition. The impression that there is no way out of eternal hell is reinforced by the circular song of the dog who stole an egg, at the start of the second act, that can be repeated endlessly: "A dog
144 SION Chapter 4: Beckett came in the kitchen and stole a crust of bread..."34 (37, 37B). The ending of the two acts is similar, with the only difference that the two speakers, Vladimir and Estragon, interchange lines: "Well? Shall we go? / Yes, let's go. They do not move" (35B,
60B). The self reaches a still point, outside history, space and time through concentric and repetitive speech. Binary oppositions are neutralised. The circular structure of the play epitomises the soul's aspiration towards a state of immanence and wholeness.
Circular movement can ultimately have the power of transforming hell into wholeness of being.
The play's constant repetition-with-a-difference recalls Gilles Deleuze's second type of "affirmative" repetition described in his influential Difference et repetition (1968). According to Deleuze, the first type, is "naked" repetition, which imitates the original, and opposes the "clothed" repetition, which adds something to the original: "the second repetition comprehends difference, and comprehends itself as the alterity of the idea, in the heterogeneity of an 'appresentation'. The first is negation, in the absence of the concept, the second is affirmation, due to its excess over the idea."35 Non-identicality of repetition is a prominent issue in Beckett: words and ideas endlessly fail to coincide. "The danger is in the neatness of identifications"
Beckett warns us in Dante...Bruno. Vico...Joyce. This recalls the widespread post-
Freudian perception that a passion for order is a sign of death, while disorder and alterity represent a longing for life. Sameness points to death, difference to life.
Naked, negative repetition, as conceived by Deleuze, is nowhere to be found in the play. Beckett celebrates the difference by making use of the affirmative recurrence, which provides the structure of the play.
In 1962 Beckett confessed to Charles Marowitz that, in the revival of Godot in
Paris, he tried to get at a "sense of form in movement", to achieve a "stylized 145 SION Chapter 4: Beckett movement". Similarly, James Knowlson stated that the 1975 Schiller Theater production had underlined "the sense of form in movement, shaping speech, gestures and movements into a precisely organised, musically balanced and aesthetically satisfying work." The positive repetition is not only structural, but can be detected in the realm of gesture and motion, in the counterpoint of silence and sound, action and stillness. Walter Asmus, Beckett's assistant in the 1975 Berlin production, gives in the programme the following account of Beckett's approach at the rehearsals:
To give confusion shape, he says, a shape through repetition, repetition of themes. Not only themes in the script, but also themes of the body. When at the beginning Estragon is asleep leaning on the stone, that is a theme that repeats itself a few times. There are fixed points of writing, where everything stands completely still, where silence threatens to swallow everything up. Then the action starts again.
The repetition of themes, postures, movement and comic routines is paralleled by the language rhythms. The protagonists' circular conversational patterns and ludic dialogue echo the medieval French farces. In Edith Kern's view, these circular verbal games taking the form of semi-playful, semi-serious insults may be termed as medieval flyting. According to the Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga, this flyting has its source in ancient "slanging matches" that may go back to the very origin of theatre. Walter A. Strauss sees here homo ludens in its purest and most theatrical form: waiting for Godot becomes the equivalent of playing, the representation of the ludic impulse in Antepurgatory, suspended between the tragic and the comic. The exchange of insults may also echo the exchanges among the wrathful of the fifth circle. The mud through which Estragon metaphorically crawls,
"all my lousy life I've crawled about in the mud" (39B), recalls once more the fifth 146 SION Chapter 4: Beckett circle, where Dante met the mad, the "muddy people in that bog, all naked and with looks of rage" {Inf. 7.109-11). As Estragon concludes: "We are all born mad. Some remain so" (51B). While mentioning the mud, the worms and the colour red "down there", Gogo and Didi are trying to identify the place where they now belong, the infernal Cackon country, but recognition doesn't come easy. It is so different, we are told by Vladimir, from the Macon country where they supposedly lived and picked grapes in a distant past.
VLADIMIR: You can't tell me that this (gesture) bears any resemblance to... (he hesitates)...to the Macon country for example. You can't deny there's a big difference. ESTRAGON: The Macon country! Who's talking to you about the Macon country? VLADIMIR: But you were there yourself, in the Macon country. ESTRAGON: No I was never in the Macon country! I've puked my puke of life away here, I tell you! Here! In the Cackon country! VLADIMIR: But we were there together, I could swear to it! Picking grapes for a man called... (he snaps his fingers)...can't think of the name of the place, do you not remember? (39B-40)
The comparison of the muddy, mucky, excremental present to the good old times brings to mind the heaven-hell dissociation and the idea of life after the fall.
"Maqom" is in fact the Rabbinical symbol for God and it literally means space or high place. It is used as an euphemism for God or harmony. In opposition to the uncertain, remote and possibly sacred space of Macon country, the present Cackon country appears as the very image of Hell. In the French version, the rhyming words for the pair Macon-Cackon are Vaucluse-Merdecluse, which become in German Breisgau-
Scheissgau. "Pourtant nous avons ete ensemble dans le Vaucluse, j'en mettrais ma main au feu. Nous avons fait les vendanges, tiens, chez un nomme Bonnely a 147 SION . Chapter 4: Beckett
Roussillon."36 The French Vaucluse being the place where Beckett's grape-picking for the farmer Bonnely actually happened during his resistance years in Roussillon
(1942-45), we are brought immediately into the realm of the real, which makes it more difficult to interpret. The negative reference to the excremental present is apparent in all versions (Cackon, Merdecluse, Scheissgau), but the essence of the other realm is less clear. The red mentioned in all versions is, according to James
Knowlson, a reference to the famously red soil of Roussillon. However, since the play was first written in French in 1948 and subsequently "re-worked" by the author into
English, we can assume that Beckett wanted to get away from the war reference and place his characters in a more general context, therefore the connection of Macon-
Cackon to heaven-hell, visible-invisible could work. The influence of the Roussillon years, while hiding from the Gestapo in the Provence mountains, was particularly emphasised by James Knowlson, a good friend of Beckett, in his authorised biography, Damned to Fame. In an article written for London's Sunday Times,
Knowlson outlined the importance of this period as follows: "To those who are still baffled by his work, the story of Roussillon is one of the keys to understanding...
Roussillon was both his salvation and his inspiration."37 We can therefore finally agree that Macon-Vaucluse can be associated with salvation, and the present Cackon-
Merdecluse with damnation.
Godot, an inhabitant of the Macon country, appears to many commentators as a lesser God, a trivial subversion of the omnipotent divinity. The name juxtaposes the sacred and the profane, "as it links the Anglo-Saxon word God with the French suffix
-ot that abases and makes laughable any name it is attached to."38 For Shimon Ixvy,
Godot is the "personification of offstage", a "gap" in the written text, a theatrical
"sponge" or a "literary black hole" that every interpreter aims to fill in39. John 148 SION Chapter 4: Beckett
Robert Keller's Godot represents the primal maternal object that is the source of inner goodness and security for an emerging self, without which the self cannot engage on the path to individuation. Godot-as-absent-mother becomes the symbol of a failed psychic birth and the play revolves around the absence of love. Frederick Busi sees the four main characters as the embodiment of the arrived Godot. Esslin points out that Godeau was a character with a similar function in Balzac's play Le faiseur, also known as Mercadet. As noted by Ruby Cohn, Beckett himself told Roger Blin that the name Godot derived from French slang words for boot - godillot, godasse - possibly emphasising the link with the earthly realm, while playing on the ambiguity of
Godot's earthly/heavenly nature. Colin Duckworth, in "Godot: Genesis and
Composition" (vii-x), stated that Godot could be Satan himself, since, if he kept his appointment with the tramps, he would have to cross a swamp ("that bog" 10B), the equivalent of the Marshes of Styx, and only Satan could come from that direction. But
Godot, I would argue, can be ultimately conceived as the epitome of the equivocal, unrecognizable Other.
The Boy, supposed to be a divine messenger sent to help the protagonists cross a difficult threshold, functions, on the contrary, as a catalyst in the process of waiting on that very threshold. On his first visit, Estragon emphasizes his appearance of messo celeste by describing him as pale from the weariness of "climbing heaven and gazing on the likes of us" (34B). The arrival of the messo celeste recalls the last part of the
City of Dis episode in Inferno 9. Other elements further support this interpretation.
Vladimir scans repeatedly the horizon, there are references to a distant city, to the fear of being surrounded by multitudes of enemies40: "They're coming! / Who? / I don't know. / How many? / I don't know (...) They're coming there too! / We're surrounded!" (47B). Meanwhile Estragon exclaims in horror: "I'm accursed!" (47) 149 SION Chapter 4: Beckett and "I'm in Hell!" (47B). If Godot is envisaged as a demon or even as Satan, as noted by Duckworth, the messo would then have the role of keeping the two tramps away from Godot, and vice-versa (keep the demons at bay). By periodically rekindling their hope, he would help the two "travellers" continue their journey of waiting, and not pass through the Gate of Dis, since their voyage willed from above takes place only in waiting. Similarly to Aeneas, who only visits the Elysian Fields because he is "pure at heart" and therefore he is forbidden to "set foot on the threshold of wrong" and enter the City of Dis, our neutral protagonists, uncontaminated by evil, inhabit some remote
Elysian Fields and are not allowed into the contemporary lower hell. The waiting for
Godot would then be an interminable siege of Dis, a modern sacra rappresentazione outside a civitas diaboli.
Richard Cavell associates the Boy with the angels of Purgatory, who lead the penitents to the next terrace, once a sin has been purged. "The implication in Godot is that this process will take place ad infinitum, the tramps never reaching that ultimate state of transcendence to which they have given the name 'Godot'" (124). The Boy is linked to the notion of infinite repetition41, and whether he recalls a divine messenger in the Inferno or an angel in Purgatory, he ironically functions, in a sense, as a blocker and does not alleviate the characters' current state by showing the passage forward.
However, through perpetuating their futile hope, the Boy helps them to remain on the threshold.
Being on the threshold becomes the heroic, fundamental achievement of the protagonists. It grows into a journey of self-discovery, their rest on the seventh day.
Recalling a fragment of a Claudelian dialogue between the Emperor and the Angel of the Empire ["(...) il celebre la grande Attente. / - Quelle attente?" (Rest on the
Seventh Day, 770)], the process of waiting becomes "la grande Attente", 150 SION Chapter 4: Beckett celebrated on the seventh day, and the play is yet another version of he Repos du septiemejour.
In Blanchot's Awaiting Oblivion (L'Attente I'oubli, 1962), waiting appears as a temporal paradox: the temporality of waiting involves both the deprivation of time and the gift of time, a lack and a surplus.
Waiting gives time, takes time, but it is not the same time that is given and that is taken. As if, waiting, he lacked only the time to wait. This overabundance of time that is lacking, this overabundant lack of time. "Is this going to last much longer? - "Forever, if you experience it as a length of time." Waiting does not leave him the time to wait.42
Waiting on the threshold offers the only link between time and lack of time, space and no space, between the womb and the tomb. As Beckett puts it in one of his poems, peace will come when the treading of thresholds will stop, and the protagonists will be able to "live the space of a door / that opens and shuts"43.
In his trilogy, Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, Beckett attempts to submit wholly to the "incoercible absence of relation"44 between langue and parole, signified and signifier. Form does not have to express content. As in an opera aperta, the reader/ spectator is responsible for whatever meaning the text entails. A later work, Compagnie, will mark "the culmination of Beckett's efforts to avoid relational art through the dual processes of fragmentation and tessellation."45 In Godot, the Boy attempts to connect two non-relational realms: the characters on stage signifying nothing, juxtaposed against the off-stage meaning of their existence, the self and the other, the form and the content, the signifier and the signified. The young shepherd who minds the goats, and his double and brother who minds the sheep personify 151 SION Chapter 4: Beckett the universal desire for relation, the double articulation linking the divine and the profane. They allude to Christ's function, the good shepherd working to annihilate the disjunction between the celestial and the earthly realms, or at least to bring the two closer, to make the threshold visible.
According to Marshall McLuhan, Jesus is the only case in which the medium corresponds fully to the message. In a conversation recorded by his wife, Corinne, he said: "Christ came to demonstrate God's love for man and to call all men to Him through himself as Mediator, as Medium. And in so doing he became the proclamation of his Church, the message of God to man. God's medium became
God's message."46 Likewise, the Boy, Godot's messenger, becomes Godot's message to the tramps. They believe in the message, in the essential encounter of the self and the other, which translates as endless waiting on the threshold. The need for relation, for identification with the Boy Jesus as mediator and message, is made clear in
Estragon's imitation of Christ walking barefoot followed by the statement: "all my life I've compared myself to him" (34B), just after the Boy leaves.
Pozzo and Lucky could pertain to the second category of inhabitants of the antechamber of the Inferno, the "coward angels" who "were not rebels nor faithful to their God47, but stood apart" ("il cattivo coro / de li angeli che non furon ribelli / ne fur fedeli a Dio, ma per se fuoro" {Inf. 3.37-9). Didi admonishes Pozzo for the same deficiency of being self-centered: "He can think of nothing but himself (53). Pozzo sobs, discussing Lucky's transformation from angel into demon: "He used to be so kind...so helpful...and entertaining...my good angel...and now...he's killing me"
(23). Angelic choirs are traditionally associated with delicate clouds. Estragon invites his companion to perceive the "little cloud" in the zenith in connection to Pozzo and
Lucky: ESTRAGON: "He's all humanity. (Silence.) Look at the little cloud" (54). 152 SION Chapter 4: Beckett
As usual, the former sentence affirms what the latter contradicts, Pozzo's human quality has an angelic dimension. Pozzo's laughter reinforces the ambiguity about his human nature, when he comments: "You are human beings none the less... Of the same species as myself. (He bursts into an enormous laugh.) Of the same species as
Pozzo! Made in God's image!" (15B). The uncertainty and ambivalence of their divine/profane nature remains consistent.
Pozzo and Lucky's deterioration in act 2 can be interpreted as an accentuation, a highlighting of their essential selves, of their fundamental characteristics in the earthly life: Pozzo's blind, controlling vision and Lucky's dumb, vacuous talk. "It is not really a change but rather a becoming manifest of what was there before."48 Pozzo and Lucky are associated with the notion of "fallen"49, they have fallen from grace.
Didi underlines that: "The two of you slipped. (Pause.) And fell" (56). They could very well be the coward angels relegated to Ante-Inferno for witnessing the battle between Lucifer and God without taking sides. "The heavens, that their beauty not be lessened, / have cast them out, nor will deep Hell receive them- / even the wicked cannot glory in them" (Inf. 3.40-2).
This interpretation however does not take into consideration a detail in the
French version of Godot, where it is indicated that Pozzo takes Lucky to the Market of the Holy Saviour50 ("le marche du Saint-Sauveur"). This detail forces us to see that judgement was performed on Pozzo and Lucky, and necessitates an explanation as to why their fate was different from the one shared by the other inhabitants of the Ante-
Inferno. When Pozzo and Lucky return from the place of judgement, the former is blind, the latter dumb, as one appears to be punished for deformed vision, the other one for chaotic logos. Pozzo's statement: "I woke up one fine day as blind as
Fortune" (55B) is another reference to Dante. We can feebly argue that their 153 SION Chapter 4: Beckett physical punishment reflects their earthly sins, prior to becoming angels.
Nevertheless, the changeless mode seems to have broken, as the physical state of the two alters considerably from their first to second encounter with the lukewarm Didi
and Gogo, henceforth placing Pozzo and Lucky in the transforming flux of
Purgatorio. In Dante's second cantica we also come across whips and bridles. The
"scourging lash" presented to the penitents (Purg. 13.39) is associated with virtue and its cords "are plied by love". The bridles {Purg. 13.40) represent "punished envy". In the case of Pozzo and Lucky, it is an ironic reference to Dante's symbolism, since the two are not interested in purging vices and attaining virtue. At this point we leave for a while the Dantesque grounds.
4.3. The Quaternary Self and Jung's Mandala
In order to determine the identity of Pozzo and Lucky, I will rely on Jungian theories of the self. According to Eva Metman, "Beckett leads us into a deep regression from all civilised tradition, in.which consciousness sinks back into an earlier state of its development,"51 to its ground zero, to the dissolution of the conscious personality into its functional components. Jung compares this inward regression to a descent into Hell. Godot's infernal characters appear as the four archetypal components of contemporary man, a dismembered human image of the modern world.
Martin Esslin and other commentators have pointed out that Didi (the practical one) and Gogo (the poet), as well as Pozzo (master) and Lucky (slave), on a more primitive level, have complementary personalities. I would argue that the two pairs reflect the two possible ways of living life: the active (Pozzo and Lucky) and the 154 SION Chapter 4: Beckett contemplative (Estragon and Vladimir), one awake and one in a state of twilight, one anchored in reality (extrovert), the other removed from reality (introvert). Pozzo is supposedly able to decipher the twilight for the benefit of his companions: "I have talked to them about this and that, I have explained the twilight, admittedly" (26).
Waiting for Godot, according to John Calder, gives us a "realistic portrait of love as companionship, a bonding that will last as long as the protagonists survive."52
Most of Beckett's protagonists can only function in pairs: Hamm and Clov, Nagg and
Nell of Endgame, Winnie and Willie of Happy Days, Bom and Pirn of How it is,
Mercier and Camier, again echoing Dante's famous couples: Paolo and Francesca,
Ulysses and Diomedes, Count Ugolino and Archbishop Ruggieri. The Beckettian protagonists are "glued two by two together,"53 and take turns in acting as tormentor and tormented. In the case of Didi and Gogo the roles are interchangeable. As for
Pozzo and Lucky, their roles seem to be fixed, only to be partly reversed in act 2, where Lucky is actually guiding Pozzo. Their progress from one role to another is reminiscent of the semicircular movement of the avaricious and the prodigal in the fourth circle of the Inferno, who clash together when they meet.
In Dante...Bruno. Vico... Joyce (1929), Beckett insists on the symbolism of the number three in Dante's Comedy. Beckett himself had a similar preoccupation, according to James Knowl son's Light and Darkness in the Theatre of Samuel Beckett.
Knowlson argues that, for instance, Murphy pictures his mind in terms of three zones: hellish light, half-light, and darkness. The three talking heads of Play (1964) and the three spinsters from Come and Go (1966) experience a constant engulfment in insidious triangulated relashionships. In a later text, Lessness (1969), the number
"four" appears twice or even four times on each page in the following combinations:
"four square", "four walls", "in four split asunder" ("four square all light sheer 155 SION Chapter 4: Beckett white blank planes all gone from mind"54). The television play Ghost Trio (1976) returns to the obsessive number three as is structured on triadic patterns of voice, music and space. There are three main camera positions and the play is divided into pre-action, action and re-action.
With Godot, we witness for the first time the abandonment of the trinity in favour of a quaternity, shaped by the two couples. Moreover, the four Beckettian characters form a quaternity inscribed in a circle, a quadratura circuit or mandala.
According to Carl Jung, the quaternity is an archetype of universal occurrence, and is also a valid pattern in analytic psychology. As Jung explains in Psychology and
Religion, the mandala is the ultimate reconciling symbol, it expresses completeness and union of the four elements or archetypes of the psyche, it unites the wholeness of the celestial circle and the squareness of the earth - God and man. Jung clarifies as follows the concept of quadratura circuli - the way from chaos to unity:
The squaring of the circle was a problem that greatly fascinated medieval minds. It is a symbol of the opus alchymicum, since it breaks down the original chaotic unity into the four elements and then combines them again in a higher unity. Unity is represented by a circle, and the four elements by a square. The production of the one from four is the result of a process of distillation and sublimation, which takes the so-called 'circular' form: the distillate is subjected to sundry distillations so that the 'soul' or 'spirit' shall be extracted in its purest state. {Psychology and Alchemy, 124)
Mandalas are unconsciously conjured up in periods of crisis and have the therapeutic effect of re-establishing balance and order, of producing a new centre of personality. As Susan D. Brienza indicated, in a later mime, Quad {Quadrat, parts I and II, 1981-2) the four dancers rhythmically draw mandala pictures that reveal
156 SION Chapter 4: Beckett concentric circles and include four quadrants. We can risk another definition and say that Quad is the epitome of Waiting for Godot, its essence expressed in purified lines, swirls and geometrical ritual movements. The four characters can be distinguished by the colour of their robe and the percussion instrument, which accompanies their motion. Instruments and colours are interchangeable, they hold no symbolic meaning, as emphasized by Beckett in his Quad production notebook held at the Beckett
Archive in Reading (MS2100)55. However, as Deleuze points out, "ils ne sont, en eux- memes determines que spatialement" (80) and they also provide some kind of musical canon. "They are the incarnation par excellence of Deleuze's concept of the ritoumelle or refrain" (Bryden, 2002: 88), as well as the perfect exemplification of his notion of epuisement (exhaustion) of all percussive combinations and all possible permutations of movements which are governed by the avoidance of the central point of the square. The middle point is a place of danger as well as one of maximum potentiality, of growth and becoming (the flowering tree in Godot placed centre stage is another famous example). "Le milieu n'est pas une moyenne, mais au contraire, un exces. C'est par le milieu que les choses poussent" (Deleuze, 1992: 95). The dancers counter-clockwise pacing around the centre evokes Jung's patient's leftward movement, as well as Dante and Virgil's descent into Hell (characterised by walking toward the left), which is equivalent to a progress towards the unconscious. They desperately attempt to achieve "centering" and to reinstate order and peace, to abolish the separation between the unconscious and the conscious mind. Jung regards the archetypal image of the mandala as depicting the centralizing process of individuation. The ritual diagram is not only used in Buddhism and Hinduism as an aid to contemplation but is also one of the oldest religious symbols of humanity.
157 SION Chapter 4: Beckett
In 1956, Jackson Pollock made three attempts to watch the play in New York.
On his second approach, he told Ruth Kligman, his companion: "Waiting for Godot is the most important play I've seen. It's abstract." During Lucky's speech "he started to cry, really cry, and then the crying turned to sobs and then it went into heartbreaking moans."56 The extra-linguistic, unconscious element had triggered the artist's 'sudden visual grasp', followed by a therapeutic, necessary heart-breaking cry of purification.
His eyes were closed and he seemed lost in a transcendental trance, not realizing where he was. Nothing could make him stop, and so they had to leave the theatre because "his crying was so loud, it was as though his heart was breaking." In my opinion, this is the perfect example of a reaction manifested by somebody who has grasped the vision of Beckett's mandala play.
The mental image that I had when first reading the play was of a cross inscribed in a circle. It was this 'sudden grasp' that prompted me to explore Jung's mandalas in connection to Godot. The author's drawings of stage movements from various productions he directed, contained in his rehearsal notebooks preserved at the
University of Reading Beckett Archives, display the very geometrical signs that I imagined. Interestingly enough, there is an abundance of crosses and circles scattered throughout his Green Notebook and Schiller-Theater Regiebuch, as if he had been haunted by the same image (see Green Notebook, pp. 23, 26, 32, 50, 58, 61;
Regiebuch: pp. 8, 30, 32, 36, 40). According to Dougald McMillan, a series of circular and linear approaches to the tree and the stone forms Beckett's subliminal stage imagery. John Calder also emphasises that:
Cruciform designs abound, both in the wakes of the characters and the crossed heaps of bodies when Pozzo falls in the second act and is unable to rise. Besides crosses there are many circles to describe how 158 SION Chapter 4: Beckett
the characters should move around the stage, and the origin of these is Dante's concentric circles of hell. (Calder 2001, 90-1)
Peggy Phelan, in an article in the PMLA (October 2004), describes her explorations in finding the 'real painting' behind Beckett's play - the one that she conjured up when first reading the play, which would possibly coincide with the one
Beckett had as inspiration for the play. Caspar David Friedrich's romantic paintings
Two Men Contemplating the Moon (1819) and Man and Woman Observing the Moon
(1820) are according to Ruby Cohn the source for the play. Knowlson maintains that
Jack Butler Yeats's The Two Travellers (1942) is the one, and Marilyn Gaddis Rose proposes Yeats's Men of the Plain (1947). Phelan is convinced that Yeats's The
Graveyard Wall (1945) is the true source of inspiration and that Beckett most likely saw the painting in the artist's studio that year. The spiritual kinship between Yeats and Beckett is indisputable. However, in my opinion, the play is entirely abstract (as much as it is quite the opposite, a realistic representation of the essence of humanity), and thus, in a sense, totally detached from the figurative (or an essentialization of the natural order). Concentric, geometrical images are more in keeping with Beckett's philosophical-mathematical mind and his visual discourse inspired by Vesprit de geometrie.
Phelan insists on Beckett's "biocularity" and his continuous translation between visual and textual: "He was both bilingual and biocular, as it were: he saw the visual as worded and he understood that the act of speaking inevitably created a pictorial image.57 According to Beckett, understanding comes through a "sudden visual grasp, a sudden shot of the eye."58 One way of gaining instant access to the non-lingustic self is through vision. In the radio plays, for instance in Cascando and
Words and Music, he will explore another access channel - sound, the ultimate 159 SION Chapter 4: Beckett imageless language of emotion. Sight and sound will occasionally grant sudden apprehensions of the wholeness of being. For Beckett, writing is a way of seeing, it is a visual art that aspires, like all art, to the ideal status of music: "music is the idea itself, unaware of the world of phenomena" (Proust, 92). In Godot, a new dramatic vocabulary arises from the combination of spoken and visual language, as Beckett dramatizes the vision of the self.
4.4. The Archetypal Shape of the Beckettian Self.
The four archetypal personalities or the four aspects of the soul are grouped in two pairs: the ego and the shadow, the persona and the soul's image (animus or anima). Through integration, the anima becomes the Eros of consciousness, while the animus becomes the Logos. The shadow is the container of all our despised emotions repressed by the ego. Lucky, the shadow, serves as the polar opposite of the egocentric Pozzo, prototype of prosperous mediocrity, who incessantly controls and persecutes his subordinate, thus symbolising the oppression of the unconscious shadow by the despotic ego. Lucky's monologue in act 1 appears as a manifestation of a stream of repressed unconsciousness, as he is allowed to "think" for his master.
Estragon's name has another connotation, besides that of the aromatic herb, tarragon:
"estragon" is a cognate of estrogen, the female hormone59. This prompts us to identify him with the anima, the feminine image of Vladimir's soul, the Eros. It explains
Estragon's propensity for poetry, his sensitivity and dreams, his irrational moods.
Vladimir appears as the complementary masculine principle, or perhaps the rational persona of the contemplative type, the animus of Estragon's soul, the Logos. "The animus/anima relationship is always full of 'animosity'" (The Essential Jung, 112), 160 SION Chapter 4: Beckett just like the Vladimir/Estragon tandem: they represent the necessary polarity inherent in every self-regulating system. Vladimir is a mediator between the outside and the inside world, who endows Estragon with a capacity for reflection and self-knowledge.
"Thus, the animus is a psychopomp, a mediator between the conscious and the unconscious, and a personification of the latter" (The Essential Jung, 113).
A possible interpretation emerges: the Pozzo-Lucky couple parodies the average, collective ego (Pozzo), and its shadow (Lucky), representatives of an invalid normality. The other couple, the persona and image of the contemplative soul of the poet (the animus-anima couple) reflects that which is above the average: Vladimir
(persona; animus) and his feminine counterpart, Estragon (anima). The four archetypes of the psyche re-establish a traditional prototype for the modern consciousness as a mix between the active and contemplative types, between the
Western and Eastern models, between the "historical vision of humanity seen as the perpetuation of Cain and Abel," and the timeless, "non-historical humanity of the two tramps,"60 associated with the highly developed spirit of the meditative poet and with
Jesus, the most accomplished archetype of the self.
"Everything is dead, but the tree..." (59B). The tree by which Vladimir and
Estragon are supposed to encounter Godot recalls the Edenic tree of life or the cross - the only symbol that comes alive in the midst of the deserted landscape of this Ante-
Inferno61. It is the only visible emblem of our four characters, itself a quaternity, the central point around which all four gravitate, the symbol of the self placed at the centre of the mandala. As Jung acknowledges, "the central Christian symbol, the
Cross, is unmistakably a quaternity."62 In the Gospel of Nicodemus, the tree of knowledge is a pre-figuration of the cross: "What was lost through the tree of knowledge was redeemed through the tree of the cross."63 The tree and the cross 161 SION Chapter 4: Beckett are synonymous in ancient as well as in modern symbolism. In act 2, Didi and Gogo
"do the tree" which can be defined as "doing the cross". Ruby Cohn suggested that this was a version of a yoga exercise.
VLADIMIR: You're right. (Pause.) Let's just do the tree, for the balance. ESTRAGON: The tree? Vladimir does the tree, staggering about on one leg. VLADIMIR: (stopping). Your turn. Estragon does the tree, staggers. ESTRAGON: Do you think God sees me? VLADIMIR: You must close your eyes. Estragon closes his eyes, staggers worse. ESTRAGON: (stopping, brandishing his fists, at the top of his voice.) God have pity on me! VLADIMIR: (vexed). And me? ESTRAGON: On me! On me! Pity! On me! (49-49B)
The two tramps re-enact the crucifixion scene, in the attempt of attracting the final divine judgement that would sentence them to proper Hell or possibly, would grant salvation. Their supplication to God echoes the thief's appeal to Christ for mercy. According to St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, the cross symbolises a judgement place: "Nevertheless even the cross itself, if thou considerest it well, was a judgement seat; for the Judge being set up in the middle, one thief who believed was delivered, the other who reviled was condemned."64 Vladimir and Estragon, the contemplative archetypes (focussing on the speculative mode of knowing) envision the judgement place where they are, while Pozzo and Lucky, the more primitive, active archetypes (pursuing the experiential mode of knowing) embark on a journey in space to meet their judgement. While judgement occurs in the second case, it will be deferred endlessly for the first pair. 162 SION Chapter 4: Beckett
4.5. Around Hell and Purgatory:
Various Interpretations and Multiple Symbols Where None Intended
Pozzo and Lucky are tied to their journey in time and space, to movement, to
Purgatory, while the other two to the stasis of the Inferno. Unlike Didi and Gogo,
Pozzo consults his watch repeatedly and seems to follow a schedule (24B, 25). The opposition stasis-movement emerges as central to Beckett's definition of the two realms: "In the absolute absence of the Absolute, Hell is the static lifelessness of unrelieved viciousness. Paradise the static lifelessness of unrelieved immaculation.
Purgatory a flood of movement and vitality released by the conjunction of these two elements."65 Belacqua (impersonated by Didi and Gogo) is reported - by Benvenuto da Imola (ca. 1375) and Anonimo Fiorentino (ca. 1400) - to have replied to Dante's reproaches with Aristotle's dictum: "Sedendo et quiescendo, anima efficitur sapiens."
Aristotle's words "are in praise of the contemplative life, which throughout the
Middle Ages was the highest goal, the life closest to God."66 If, during the Middle
Ages, contemplative life was an acceptable excuse for indolence, in Beckett's era it is punished with Ante-Inferno. Paradoxically, the primitive, average life of the other couple is punished with Ante-Purgatory. The two vestibules coincide for a brief moment.
"The multiplicity of references to the Divina Commedia frequently provokes the desire to identify individual works with one realm or the other. And yet, because reference to both may coexist in a single work, no direct and consistent parallel can be maintained,"67 and all sources are blended in the integral consistency of Beckett's oeuvre. "Must we wring the neck of a certain system in order to stuff it into a 163 SION Chapter 4: Beckett contemporary pigeon-hole for the satisfaction of the analogymongers? Literary criticism is not book-keeping." However, our disposition to devise theories and detect symbols incessantly produces an array of analogies. Although the ones presented here might appear to some extent vulnerable, there is enough textual evidence that Dante is unequivocally present in the Beckettian play as well as the unique sub/version of his concept of neutrality - once again revealing Beckett's lifetime dialogue with the Florentine poet. As the Dantesque model shapes Joyce's entire oeuvre, according to Joseph Campbell, Dante provides once more the inevitable background for Beckett's writing. Christopher Ricks, among many, acknowledges that "from first to last, Dante was crucial to the author whose final days at the end of
1989 were spent with a copy of The Divine Comedy."69
The Dantesque intertextuality reasserts that Beckett's text, lacking in defined boundaries, is open to a plurality of interpretations.'There is no ultimate key to the play, as the Beckettian text refuses to fit any patterns or systems. "The forms are many in which the unchanging seeks relief from its formlessness" (Malone Dies 197), and so are the interpretations of these forms. After reduction and fragmentation, the universal displays an even more accentuated excess of shapes and meanings. The unchanging, when forced back into non-form, rebels itself- formlessness explodes into infinite forms. Critics all agree that "the more the narrator fragments and eliminates traditional associations, the more he expands the implications and potential interpretations of his works."70 J. E. Dearlove further explains: "Zero (meaning) never will be attained because, in addition to producing an infinite series of diminishing fractions, the narrator inevitably evokes a converse progression of accreting explanations."71 The narrator of Beckett's novels finally accepts that speech is incapable of saying nothing and that zero meaning will never be achieved. 164 SION Chapter 4: Beckett
Beckett's works are not devoid of meaning, on the contrary they present an
"agonizing surplus of possible meanings."72
The play contains a multitude of possible symbols and lends itself to a great
number of interpretations concomitantly valid and invalid. For instance, two
controversial ones come to mind, one based on a quaternity, the other on a trinity.
According to Guy Christian Barnard, Beckett's four characters can be associated with
William Blake's four Zoas or functions of the psyche, outlined in his Prophetic
Books: Imagination (Estragon), Thought (Lucky), Feeling (Vladimir), Sensation
(Pozzo). Man's fall arose because these functions could not maintain a harmonious balance and warred against each other. Barnard maintains that Beckett provides a
different version of the same conflict within the psyche.
In a quite different vein, Bernard Dukore develops a triadic theory in "Didi,
Gogo and the absent Godot," based on Freud's trinitarian description of the psyche in
"The Ego and the Id" (1923) and the use of onomastic techniques. Dukore defines the characters by what they lack: the rational Go-go embodies the incomplete ego, the missing pleasure principle: (e)go-(e)go. Di-di (id-id) - who is more instinctual and irrational - is seen as the backward id or subversion of the rational principle. Godot fulfils the function of the superego or moral standards. Pozzo and Lucky are just re iterations of the main protagonists. Finally, Dukore sees Beckett's play as a metaphor for the futility of man's existence when salvation is expected from an external entity, and the self is denied introspection. Subsequently, the critic proposes the same type of analysis for Endgame: Clov is identified with the ego, Hamm with the id and Nagg and Nell, the parental authority, with the superego.
4.6. Conclusions to the Shape of the Beckettian Self: 165 SION Chapter 4: Beckett
The Zero of Wholeness
Up until now we have rightly sought the positive movement of our imagination and our emotions, but now we must give all these things up for a time to learn the contemplative way of simply 'being' in the sacred presence of God. (Acts 27:28)
In an interview with Tom F. Driver, Samuel Beckett stated: "The form and the chaos remain separate. The latter is not reduced to the former. That is why the form itself becomes a preoccupation, because it exists as a problem separate from the material it accommodates. To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now."73 It is the form that endures, as Andre Bazin would argue, after the content details are no longer certain. In my view, it is the shape of the quaternity that sticks in the mind, after the forming elements become indistinct, and individual explanations are blurred. After witnessing the play, we are pursued by images of the circling or encircled tetrad, the pain of squaring the circle or vice-versa, of perceiving line and arc as identical, "...in other words the ratio four to one I always loved arithmetic it has paid me back in full" as Beckett's narrator confesses in
How It Is (531).
Jung described the psyche as a rhythm of negative and positive, light and darkness, animus and anima, striving to achieve integration and harmony. The quaternity is reducible to binary structures: two pairs of characters with interchangeable roles inside each unit. Besides the two couples on stage, the play displays further binary constructions: the two parts of the self - linguistic and extra- linguistic, the two repetitive acts of the play, the boy and his double, the two thieves, the self - a multiple of two - and its Doppelganger, Godot, representing the other -
166 SION Chapter 4: Beckett the unique counterpoint of the quadruple self. The Boy, or the pair of boys - the one who minds the sheep and the other that minds the goats - is the link between the self and the other, the connecting or disconnecting element between the four characters onstage and the offstage world of the whole other. It is Martin Buber's known thesis
(7 and Thou) that through a "Thou", man becomes an "I". In order to define our self, we need the experience of an other of opposing nature. Ultimately, each character or element has a double "other" that cancels the first component of the pair. The play aspires to be a metaphor for neutrality, for the coincidentia oppositorum, just as the four characters merge into the figure of Beckett's favourite immovable Belacqua, symbol of peaceful contemplation. The total stasis of the body followed by the diminishing kinesis of the mind creates a moment of epiphany, of acute awareness.
The Doppelganger motif structures the play as much as the dual quaternity defines the self, but only to evoke a fading antagonism, a correspondence of opposites.
Beckett's text works indefatigably against our need for distinct meaning and logical interpretation. The play is a fusion of opposites, or a subversion of one by the other, it merges tragedy and comedy, anguish and exhilaration, doom and salvation, division and synthesis of the four partitions of the circle. It oscillates between two poles, or juxtaposes them: self and other, memory and oblivion, motion and stasis, progress and regress, presence and absence, zero and wholeness, totality and nothingness. The zero encapsulates a totality, it is symbolised by a circle and represents the completion of the cycle of life. Beckett dramatises the impossibility of unity while celebrating the existence of the one as the other side of the zero, of Godot, as the 'whole' equivalent of the partitioned self. The four parts of the self are reshaped "into a collage/montage which is itself the 'degree zero' of psychic unity and semantic plurality."74 Beckett's neutrals aspire to the point zero where all 167 SION Chapter 4: Beckett difference is neutralised and wholeness is attained. Just as Dante uses Satan's fall from heaven, which created the Mountain of Purgatory on the other side of earth, as the means by which humankind can return to heaven, Beckett uses the parable of the zero self as a means by which the reader/spectator can retrace the path to wholeness.
Beckett inverts the Sartrian notion that: "modern man's inability, or refusal, to make choices defines his Hell,"75 by suggesting that precisely the refusal to make choices can lead to ultimate transcendence. The annihilation of the evil will and the purging of desire can be beneficent. Neutrality is a punishable sin as well as a first step outside the cycle of life. Being unrepentant about one's passivity acquires a heroic quality. Understanding and knowledge of the other world and this one, of the self and other, which comes from the descent into oneself through meditation, is reached "alchemically" and intuitively. Non-action, losing the "good of the intellect", neutralising the will power, getting rid of all social rights and constraints instils a sense of calm, of integration of the self within the cosmos.
Beckett's drama emerges as a ritual preparation for the journey beyond life and death. At a second glance, Gogo and Didi's Ante-Inferno appears as a reward and not a punishment, an elevated mental space of waiting for spiritual rebirth. Their
"sin" stimulates ritual regeneration and not the degeneration of their human condition.
The lukewarm, scorned by life and death have the chance to exit the endless cycle of incarnation and excarnation. Pozzo and Lucky's Ante-Purgatory emerges as the real damnation within the inescapable cycle - disintegration followed by physical rebirth.
Dante's concept of neutrality is inverted, the grim waiting room becomes a necessary stage in the process of individuation and renewal.
Beckett's modern mandala play within a Dantesque frame conjures up spiritual regeneration while performing a ritual of inner descent to the central point 168 SION Chapter 4: Beckett of being. As usual, Beckett's audience is faced with a paradox: as they behold four clownish tramps, dissociated and neutralised fragments of humanity on the verge of disintegration, they are magically placed within a protective circle. Instead of leaving the spectator or reader vulnerable and depressed, the playwright's stern, agonising vision often provokes quite the opposite response. The zero of extreme despair equals the one of extreme hope. The pacifying vision of Godot's mandala fulfils a harmonising function, and Beckett, like a twentieth century psychopomp, guides us resolutely to the centre of our self, the zero-degree or wholeness of being.
169 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco
5. Chapter 5: Ionesco
Mythical Self and Infernal Labyrinth:
The Dantesque Dimension of Ionesco's Dreamscape
5.1. Myth and Archetype
Today, homo religiosus is on the brink of extinction. For the unreligious man of our time, adrift in a mute and opaque Cosmos, transcendence has become problematical, shows Mircea Eliade, the historian of religions. The process of desacralization of nature, of the world, of myth, began long ago, and although it seems to have reached a climax in the twentieth century, we may say it is not finished yet. The "cry for myth"1, to use Rollo May's words, sounds even more compelling nowadays, in the desacralized world of the twenty-first century, which fervently dreams of its sacred beginnings.
"A great work of art is like a dream; for all its apparent obviousness it does not explain itself and is always ambiguous,"2 Carl Jung emphasises. In order to understand the nature of the primordial image or experience shaped by the text, the interpreter has to plunge into "the healing and redeeming depths of the collective psyche", where the individual can communicate to the whole of mankind. The literary critic can explore the nature of the artistic creation by re-immersing himself in a 170 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco participation mystique that both writer and reader experience at the moment of creation or reception/interpretation. By operating a descent into the collective unconscious, and by having its roots in our psyche's core of universality, the great work of art, in Jung's view, becomes from highly subjective quite the opposite: impersonal and objective. Both myth and art seem to be born from archetypal images, and Ionesco's last plays, although subjective and autobiographical in appearance, and presenting the personal quest of one hero, extend to man's universal quest for the absolute, empowered by the impersonal supremacy of the archetype.
Myths and archetypes are essentially instrumental in helping us remember our infinite humanity - they catalyze the process of anamnesis. We are constantly faced with the problem of the unrecognizability of the miracle which derives from the fact that the intervention of the sacred into the world is always camouflaged in a series of
'historical forms' - manifestations apparently banal and not different from other cosmic or historic manifestations. As Ionesco acknowledges in his conversations with
Claude Bonnefoy: "Theatre is the revelation of something that was hidden."3
The universe of Ionesco's drama reflects his preoccupation with the spiritual life, with mystical revelation and the experience of light and darkness. His theatrical space is confronted with the same issues as those of the historian of religions: sacred- profane qualities of time and space; the transposition of space, the transformation of time and the transgression of boundaries; the 'camouflage of myth' and the
'unrecognizability of miracle'.
Once considered the alpha and omega of 'the absurd', in a quite different vein
Ionesco operates towards the end of his life a de- and re-sacralization of everyday life.
His stories aim at creating fissures in our normal representation of the world, aspire to unveil the sacred, disentangle it from the profane, start the process of anamnesis, 171 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco
confront us with paradoxes, oxymorons and various contradictory elements from parallel worlds that disturb our rational thinking.
The invading, disruptive presence of a paradoxical element, represents the emergence of the sacred through the profane - manifestations of the sacred that defy
and disturb the profane, ways used by Divinity in order to reveal itself and show the way out of the inextricable labyrinth. Often, a common element in Ionesco's work is the need to discover or uncover the meaning of the disruption, to precipitate its occurrence. He fights very effectively against desacralization by bringing either bald
sopranos, rhinoceroses or colossal corpses into the quotidian, or by confronting us with ambiguous events, by effacing the boundaries between the world of the dead and our world, by creating a crack in historical time, by giving us a glimpse of the eternal time of beginnings.
The otherworldly journey reveals a tapestry of interwoven myths: the myth of the eternal return, the cosmological myth, the Biblical myth starting with the incestuous pair in the Garden of Eden. The myths of judgement day, of the apocalypse and of human temporality - the finite duration of man's individual and collective existence - also find their way in Ionesco's later dramas. Mircea Eliade considers the mythical beginning to be homologous to the apocalyptic end, eschatology becoming one with cosmology.4 The end and the beginning are one and our myth of descent into the darkness and confinement of the inferno marks the new beginning of the ascent into
Paradise.
5.2. Ionesco's Labyrinthine Realm of the Dead and Dantean Intertext
5.2.1. "Le Reve c'est le drame meme": Dream, Drama and
Fundamental Mysteries 172 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco
For me the theatre - my own drama - is usually a confession; (...) I try to project onto the stage an inner drama (incomprehensible to myself) and tell myself that in any case, the microcosm being a small-scale reproduction of the macrocosm, it may happen that this tattered and disjointed inner world is in some way a reflection or a symbol of universal disruption. So there is no plot, no architectural construction, no puzzles to be solved, only the inscrutable enigma of the unknown; no real character, just people without identity (at any moment they may contradict their own nature or perhaps one will change places with another), simply a sequence of events without sequence, a series of fortuitous incidents unlinked by cause and effect, inexplicable adventures, emotional states, an indescribable tangle, but alive with intentions, impulses and discordant passions, steeped in contradiction. This may appear tragic or comic or both at the same time, but I am incapable of distinguishing one from the other. I want only to render my own strange and improbable universe.5
A genuinely infernal voyage between the land of the father and that of the mother, outside the sacred and within the profane, or vice-versa, takes place in
Eugene Ionesco's last plays, particularly in L'Homme aux valises (1975) and Voyages chez les morts (1980), two plays which could be qualified as autobiographical and oniric, mythic and metaphysical. "La dimension profondement autobiographique de la piece ne dissimule pas le desir de l'auteur de fonder le theatre sur le mythe."6
L'Homme aux valises (HV) was staged in December 1975 at the Theatre de 1'Atelier in Paris, with the mise en scene by Jacques Mauclair and Jacques Noel, and the first production of Voyages chez les morts (VCM) goes back to September 22nd, 1980 at the Guggenheim Theatre in New York. It was further staged in Basel in November
173 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco
1982, in London, January 1987 and in Los Angeles, January-March 1999.
Voyages chez les morts was first published in instalments in La Nouvelle
Revue Frangaise (January to March 1980), and in volume form in the last and seventh tome of Ionesco's theatre (1981). His drama attains its "perfection", that is its core of authenticity and truthfulness, on the seventh day of grace and prayer, so much praised by Claudel's Emperor7. The seventh volume of his dramatic creation is to be taken as his literary testament, it represents his ars escrivendi as well as his ars moriendi, the acceptance of his past life and future death, his coming to terms with his self and approaching the threshold of the Otherworld.
Praying for the spiritual cleansing and peace of the dead is very important in the Byzantine-Romanian tradition, in which Ionesco was raised. Because of his belonging to both Catholic and Orthodox churches, Ionesco was well aware of the different aspects of Christian eschatology which surface in his later dramas, so often equated to "subterranean" or "dreamed autobiographies".
Ionesco's theatre involves the making manifest of his dream world, what he calls an independent universe, of the mysteries of being and identity, of loss and otherness. Theatre is a masking and unmasking of another world, the realm of the eternal present moment, a place where forgotten archetypes can be discovered. Man is not simply a social animal, but an enduring essence. As Ionesco confesses: "I am concerned with the fundamental mysteries which haunt human consciousness."8 In order to perceive the hidden primordial core, the writer must perform the annihilation of the Cartesian universe seen as a logical system that distorts reality. Time, space, age and sex become capricious, vague and subjective. The plot acquires a circling, repetitive structure and the plays make use of an unsettling combination of humour and anguish. 174 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco
Identity is uncertain, characters are grotesque and "derisively tragic". As in a dream, they drift through incoherence, anxiety, remorse, and haunting events of their past lives. They are sometimes interchangeable, cliche-bound ghosts, since mechanical repetition denies individuality. Names shift and characters merge.
Especially in the case of Jean, the author operates a total depersonalization by means of repetition and proliferation.
As we know from The Bald Soprano (1950) and The Lesson (1951),
"philology leads to calamity." Similarly, the playwright conceives the final breakdown, the utter deterioration of language and grammatical construction, mocking the sterility and tragedy of clicheed communication, through abrupt linguistic dislocations and non-sequiturs. Ionesco stresses banality, repetition, incongruity, absence of objectivity in order to force the eruption of the sacred.
Contradiction follows contradiction and paradox rules. Language is worn and tired, separated from life, apparently exhausted but still remaining the ultimate weapon against death, expressing the inexpressible, having a murderous energy inside its confining conventional shell. Entire scenes are constructed from alternating disconnected cliches and successions of platitudes, words are reduced to empty sounds. "The words had turned into sounding shells devoid of meaning; the characters too, of course, had been emptied of psychology and the world appeared to me in an unearthly, perhaps its true light, beyond understanding and governed by arbitrary laws."9
A departure from, as well as a continuation of the anti-plays he was writing in the 50's, which were the model for the experimental French theatre, Ionesco's last plays are still holding a mirror up to the spectators, and the playwright is gloriously keeping his early promises of freeing theatre of convention and habit, "the great 175 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco deadener", to paraphrase Beckett, by exposing his dream world in creating "a pure drama, anti-thematic, anti-ideological, anti-social-realist, anti-philosophical, anti- boulevard psychology, anti-bourgeois, the rediscovery of a new free theatre."10
The two plays, both spatially and psychologically, unfold an infernal labyrinthine dreamscape; the main character - Jean (VCM) or Le Premier Homme
(HV), displays many common traits with the playwright on a fundamental identity quest. He searches for his own name (patronymic) and the sacred origin connected to his mother tongue and motherland, while simultaneously wandering across his profane fatherland.
5.2.2. L'Homme aux valises: First Man's Redemption
Dante is obsessively preoccupied by the revolting details of fourteenth century
Italian political history, and Ionesco, in his early plays, is vehemently engaged in twentieth century politics (against totalitarianism and fascism in Rhinoceros, Tueur sans gages etc) or private family politics in his later plays {L'Homme aux valises,
Voyages chez les morts). The First Man is a perpetual wanderer who can never be freed from the anxieties and phantasms of the past, the frustrations of his adolescence and the negative charge resulting from the endless feud between his maternal and paternal relatives. Ionesco explains in Entre la vie et le reve the main character's
"congenital exile", his illusory escape from his father's country and failed arrival in his mother's land. Finally, without home, passport or nationality, not belonging anywhere, he becomes nobody, unidentifiable and stateless:
L'histoire de L'Homme aux valises est celle d'un homme qui ne veut pas 176 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco
retourner dans son pays, mais qui n'est pas sur, en reve, de lui avoir echappe vraiment, qui est toujours hante par sa jeunesse et les problemes qu'il a vecus. D'ou ce personnage qui est chez lui tout en n'etant pas chez lui: quand il veut etre chez lui, dans son pays, 1'administration, le pouvoir lui refusent l'appartenance a ce pays ; quand il veut partir, au contraire, on lui reconnait cette appartenance et on 1'oblige a rester. Finalement il ne sait plus quelle est son appartenance, quelle est sa nationality. II cherche une ambassade etrangere pour obtenir un passeport, mais ce passeport ne lui est donne nulle part. En realite ce personnage n'appartient a aucun groupe determine et se sent partout comme congenitalement etranger. (Entre la vie et le reve: 182)
UHomme aux valises can be divided into dramatic units or what Greimas calls narrative sequences, which correspond to memories, nightmares, dreams experienced by the author which appear in a video-clip-like format. Ionesco confesses he wrote the play "par bribes", following the structure and language of dreams by putting together fragmentary recollections, snatches of conversations, beads of memories. Images surface from his personal unconscious and are fitted together like pieces of a puzzle by an absent-minded player. The various bits form a hallucinatory collage marked by a labyrinthine structure, revelatory and characteristic of Ionesco's imaginary world, and which confers on the play an infernal dimension linked to the paternal world, the infinite linearity of time and horizontality of space, as Ionesco indicates in his confabulations with Claude Bonnefoy:
Le labyrinthe c'est l'enfer, c'est le temps, c'est l'espace, c'est l'infini, alors que le paradis au contraire est un monde spherique entier ou tout est la, ni finitude, ni infini, ou le probleme fini - infini ne se pose pas. C'est ce que me semblait etre La Chapelle-Anthenaise: un lieu desangoissant. Des que nous sommes dans la dimension ou la duree, c'est l'enfer. (Entre la vie et le reve: 41) SION Chapter 5: Ionesco
The village La Chapelle-Anthenaise of his childhood, a sheltered spherical world outside terrestrial space and time, is linked to the paradise of the mother, to the absolute and immaculate fit between heaven and earth and the primordial time of the beginning (the Mud tempus of myth as discussed by lonesco's friend, Mircea Eliade).
His youthful years are under the spell of his father's inferno, the totalitarian and authoritarian country of origin, of hellish constraint and confinement.
lonesco's Underworld has a veiled resemblance to Dante's Christian Inferno, it is a land of shifting concepts, of the relativity of aging, of the unforeseen. lonesco's infernal space vaguely echoes Dante's realm, through some objects, phrases, episodes and characters. Generally, the structure of Dante's Inferno is no longer preserved, although Man With Bags11 opens with the barren bank of the Seine (the Acheron) where the First Man awaits for Charon's barge to take him to the other side, in order to join the other lamenting souls. Like Virgil's triple repetition of "vo' che sappi" in canti 4 and 12 of the Inferno, the First Man repeats three times "I want you to know"
(10, 28, 115) throughout his infernal journey into the dark land where "even the falling rain was black" (131). A montage of contemporary sounds: "screams, gunshots, jet engines, babies crying, human sobs" (121) replace Dante's sinners'
"sighs, lamentations and loud cries" (Inf. 3.22).
The boat or the oar appears three times in the play and makes us think of
Charon's boat or the Egyptian boat of the dead. It suggests the crossing of three thresholds, the three passages in Dante's Hell over the rivers Acheron, Styx and
Phlegethon. The crossing of the Styx takes the traveler to the Gate of Dis. With humility and faith, like Dante the pilgrim, after a short threshold preparation for the entry to lower Hell, First Man plunges into his unconscious and becomes aware of 178 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco the darkness within. Boat and oar are also symbols of Ulysses' or Dante's stamina and determination, they evoke their triumph, their ample mastery of the voyage willed from above, as well as of their psychic life. First Man desperately tries to be in control of his journey, but without succeeding, his boat always travels a la derive. He would then, with similar mythological material, be an inverted figure of Ulysses or Dante the pilgrim.
Invariably, thresholds take the form of a border control, an exam, an interrogatory. We can discern three essential passages - First Man's three landings: the first disembarkment in the country of exile and the symbolical loss of his third bag
(seemingly his identity), the second landing in the country of origin, the land of the father, and the police control at the border, the third landing in front of the Woman, mimicking the final reunion of Ulysses and Penelope, of Dante and Beatrice, after pursuing a chaotic itinerary. The country of origin or of the father can be equated to the Inferno, the land of the Woman or of the mother can be associated to the pure love of Paradiso. They are both outside time and space and inside First Man's mind. The country of exile, where the protagonist alias author lives - after being expelled from the mother's world and escaping the fatherland - represents the purgatorial present, symbolic of the quotidian wanderings in the dimension of time, torn by the tension between the opposites and struggling toward individuation. The real world where the soul is exiled constitutes the daily ordeal of the anti-hero's initiation. There are no dreams in Heaven or Hell, in the maternal and paternal worlds, for these two realms are timeless, all the recounted dreams and nightmares emerge from the Purgatory of exile, swept by the anguish of growing old, of being immersed in the historical time.
The three and then two bags carried around by the First Man contain all his past guilt and complexes in regards to paternal authority, his overloaded collective 179 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco and personal unconscious. They vary considerably vary in weight, going from light to heavy and back according to his perception of the sacred, getting closer or distancing himself from the paradisiacal spark, the degree of lucidity in regards to his obsessive hallucinations and need for transcendence. As in a hot air balloon, the three bags, when gaining weight, keep him closer to profane earth, to the prosaic paternal world, to verbal delirium; when they become weightless, the First Man is close to taking off into the silence of the light. Acknowledging Jungian analysis and the fundamental bipolarity of his writing, torn between coexisting hell and paradise, Ionesco underlines his state of mind in the following passage:
Je ne sais pas ce qu'un psychanalyste pourrait en penser. Nous avons deja parle de Jung, je crois. Un jungien dirait que ce que j'ecris est nevrotique parce que ma litterature exprime la separation entre la terre et le ciel. Tantot, en effet, c'est la lourdeur, l'epaisseur, la terre, l'eau, la boue, tantot c'est le ciel, la legerete, Fevanescence. Ce que j'ecris serait done 1'expression d'un desequilibre entre terre et ciel, un defaut de synthese, d'integration, l'expression d'une maniere de nevrose. (Entre la vie et le reve: 38)
Descent and ascent, sinking and climbing or flying, Ionesco's obsessive movements in Victimes du devoir and Tueur sans gages, La Vase and Jacques ou la
Soumission, are also present in L'Homme aux valises, although he is a prisoner of horizontally, verticality is only attained in the words and the mind of the First Man.
He never considers parting from them mostly because he is incapable of dissociating from his personal as well as collective past, which might contain seeds of the sacred primordial time, glimpses of paradise among the junk and the clutter of negative emotions and memories. He feels helpless when facing the profanity of the desacralised present and hangs onto the residual past. "Le quotidien est une 180 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco couverture grise sous laquelle on cache la virginite du monde" (EVER: 33), Ionesco tells Claude Bonnefoy. The sacred heavenly essence of Jean's being is obliterated by the everyday greyness, but somehow still concealed in his bags. This most obvious triple stage object, dragged along from the first to the last scene could stand for the convict's ball and chain, Sisyphus' rock and his eternal hellish punishment, as some critics have remarked. The two bags that are always with him could symbolize the paternal and maternal inheritance, the father and the holy ghost, and the one that gets lost - the son's identity. The bag emerges as a metaphor for his personal mythology, the shackles of Dasein and the inseparable inferno of his mind as well as a symbol of the trinity, of the sacred camouflaged in the profane.
The circles and thresholds that mark the journey of initiation have various mythological echoes related to the myth of the descent to hell. Ionesco retains the outline and values of the traditional myth's symbolism while stylizing and re- chiseling the mythical patterns in order to find their original freshness and metaphysical significance both universal and contemporary.
Multiple dreams are embedded into nightmares of the author's country of exile and that of origin, of a society contaminated by totalitarian practices, and of the entire human condition perverted and dejected. The inner labyrinth of the first and second parts of the play extends progressively to the social inferno of the last part. Mircea
Eliade sees in the labyrinth a model of existence, a progression toward the soul's centre: "qui, a travers nombre d'epreuves, s'avance vers son propre centre, vers soi- meme, l'Atman, pour employer le terme indien." The labyrinthine structure recalls the circles of the Dantesque hell. It can be associated with a world of perpetual wandering and to themes of imprisonment and asphyxiation that allow for a process of osmosis between the inner and outer worlds. The labyrinthine passage, twisted 181 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco and tortuous becomes an existential experience, a spiritual journey towards the inner self. The labyrinth includes the monstrous fatherland of origin, the purgatorial country of exile and becomes an initiatory path toward the diaphanous world of the mother.
5.2.3. Voyages chez les morts: Jean's Harrowing of Hell
Voyages chez les morts appears like a fine embroidery of dreams assembled according to a subtle labyrinthine configuration, and having an episodic structure, "en miettes", to quote the title of Journal en miettes. Jean does not go from one point to another like the man with bags, who follows a unicursal labyrinth. He repeatedly and frantically comes and goes between the maternal and paternal extended families
(travelling along a seemingly inextricable and impenetrable multicursal labyrinth13); he delivers himself up to interminable settlings of scores, which only end with the last judgement scene followed by the final monologue. The search for the transfigured world of the mother, the cite radieuse of Tueur sans gages, is First Man's as well as
Jean's crucial mission.
In his conversations with Marie-Claude Hubert, Ionesco underlines: "Le theme du labyrinthe est encore plus visible dans Voyages chez les morts. C'est un labyrinthe au niveau de l'espace, au niveau du temps , au niveau du langage et de la psychologie des personnages. Le monologue final, on peut l'appeler aussi un labyrinthe" {Eugene
Ionesco : 258-9). Jean's labyrinthine progression is both mythical and emotional. In the first part, the quest for the mother alternates with repeated confrontations of Jean with his father which mimic the movement through the circuitous maze of memory and end with his first collapse. In the second part, art, literature, memory, mysticism are openings towards the other world and represent the milestones of his quest for 182 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco the mother. In the third part we witness the unfolding of various recollections of the couple's experiences and friends. The last two parts correspond to the Last
Judgement, to Jean's or Ionesco's Testament or deployment of Anti-Knowledge, the final "je ne sais pas".
Ionesco's last theatrical work echoes his emotional and rational frustrations like a loud cry of disenchanted humanity; his religious aspirations are marking his soul's itinerary. The protagonist goes a long way to encounter past loves and lost friends, not through an infernal underground but along the contorted labyrinthine circuits of memory. Along the way, he comes across recollections and dreams associated with the stark reality and frenzy of the modern world, which constitute the confining and stifling universe of man severed from transcendence.
Voyages chez les morts is the story of a renowned writer, Jean, who must face his ghosts, and be reunited with his dead mother. One of the obvious themes is the quest for the mother, who, we are told, went to the station, purchased a ticket in a sleeping car, and disappeared towards an unknown destination - the mother goddess who travelled to eternity or was taken away by Charon's boat. The realistic details of his parents' conflict and subsequent separation are mixed with the mythical journey of the soul to the realm of the dead. It is a journey of discovery and a peace mission, of search for lost particles of his self and settling accounts with people who formed his human universe. Like Dante's infernal souls who are hardly interested in or aware of their present situation, and are only obsessed and resentful of their past, Jean is floating in the world of his dreams and remains mired in his past. Jean's journey of initiation is triggered by his memories of past events involving his departed loved ones, and probably the imminence of his own death. Dreams and memories take our
"hero" to the other world, and memory is what connects the ghosts to their past 183 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco lives, and also perpetuates the conflict among them. As with Dante's sinners, they are connected by memory to the world of the living; they are not forgiving and they are never forgiven. Like Dante, who in the Afterlife meets some of his friends and enemies, his beloved Beatrice and even his great-grandfather Cacciaguida, Jean also encounters the people he was close to in life, his friends and relatives, and tries to come to terms with his one-time literary rivals, Adamov (Alexandre) and Beckett
(Constantin).
In the Comedy, Dante sees the renewal of the church in the reconciliation of the Dominicans and the Franciscans. Canto 11 of the Paradiso presents St. Thomas, a
Dominican, praising the life of St. Francis, while canto 12 shows a Franciscan, St.
Bonaventure giving praise to St. Dominic. Like Dante, Claudel and Beckett, Ionesco is preoccupied with the reconciliation of opposites, the coincidentia oppositorum.
The central quest of his play appears to be the individual pursuit of wholeness through descent and ascent in order to achieve the reconciliation of the antagonistic parts of his self, of his father and mother, and the two different cultures and religions they represent. "The defense of the Occident" can be carried out only by one able to bridge the two cultures, the Occidental and the Oriental, by virtue of having been born in the Balkans, at the crossroads of civilizations, at the centre of the "Empire du milieu"14. Similarly to Kundera, Ionesco believes in the spiritual and intellectual unity of Eastern Europe and its mediating role between "Orient" and "Occident". The playwright identifies openly with the spirit and mission of his "Empire du milieu":
Everything must be re-examined, done over again. But I will go on fighting to protect the Occident, to champion the venerability of the Greek Cosmos, the liberty conferred upon us by the planets, Existentialism, Gnosticism, the right to infer, the Valentinian speculation, the song of the pearl. The defense of the Occident, the defense SION Chapter 5: Ionesco
of the Occident, the jig of the departing, the Italian campaign, the march on Rome, the defense of the Occident, the Occident of the defense, dental defense, the defense of the Occident, the defense of the occiput, and my political itinerary. The status of man, of culture, of Oriental cults, the defense of the Occident, dental defense, the fens of the dent.15
As with Claudel and Beckett, Ionesco believes that the origins of evil coincide with that of creation. According to Valentinian Gnosticism, the First Man can be redeemed and he will rise again. So Jean must visit the underworld, in order to encounter the spirit of the Great Mother and Father, to explore the sacramental relationship of the divine marriage, and of the possibility of neutralizing the opposites into the simplicity of the One. Like "pious Aeneas", Jean will have to pass through the Gate of Ivory, "les dents de la defense"16 in order be able to see into the future, like Dante's infernal inhabitants, who, although confined to darkness have the capacity to foresee future truth.
Boganda, a former French colony in China, is described as a harmonious "cite radieuse", populated by great riders, known as the Last Knights of the Occident, although they live in the Far East. Its capital, Bocal (bocal, variation of pocal: in
Romanian vessel, receptacle, chalice), evokes the vessel of the alchemists where matter undergoes transubstantiation. Bocal appears as a New Jerusalem where East and West merge and opposites are reconciled.
Jean, like the First Man, encounters a multitude of shadows defined through the memories of their earthly lives: "des ombres avec de la memoire" (324. 14). But unlike Dante's sinners, which have a fixed place and an inalterable essential self,
Ionesco's damned undergo a violent process of ageing and display variable identities.
"J'ai vielli en attendant" (325.47) confesses the mother, who still has a strong
185 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco connection to the world above. The condition of waiting can have dire consequences in the Beyond, and extreme ageing is one of them, until the accounts with the living are settled. But otherworldly time can also work in the opposite direction, and those who are at peace and have finished their earthly business become young and luminous: "Quand on est bien la-bas, le temps est compte a rebours. C'est faux quand elle dit qu'on vieillit dans l'au-dela (324. 18). In lonesco's dream play, the mother becomes the sister and the wife, the father changes into the grand-father, and in the judgement scene, the grand-mother becomes the mother: "L'eternite nivelle tout"
(324.24). Finally, in the third section, Jean realizes that the psyche is ageless and unchangeable, the personal blends into the collective unconscious and acquires immortality: "la psyche n'a pas d'age!" and "l'inconscient ne vieillit pas" (326.37).
Consequently, "on peut changer de peau", however, "on ne peut pas changer d'etre"
(326. 47), the essential being is preserved eternally throughout an indefinite number of rebirths.
When Jean is reproached by the shadow of his dead wife for having forgotten modern Romanian, Jean replies: "Je sais lire encore, je reconnais le mot 'ange'"
(324.16). The word "angel" is the only recognizable sign of a long forgotten belief in
God. When he is invited to read religious books, Jean confesses: "Pour moi, ils sont a peu pres incomprehensibles. Avant je les comprenais, j'ai oublie, je me suis separe de la religion" (325.66). The protagonist's separation from God is the cause of his eternal wandering in a selva oscura where uncertainty rules. Jean displays an unquenched thirst and a persistent hunger, "une sorte de boulimie", and he complains repeatedly:
"J'ai faim tout le temps!" (325.66). As in the case of Claudel's damned, the incessant hunger for spiritual light is Jean's perpetual torment.
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Jean is often engulfed by eternal Nothingness, "l'eternite du rien", where time is a void: "depuis des annees le temps est vide, distendu", and where everything is in vain, except for love, which, as in Dante, is the driving principle of the universe, of life and death, "tout est vain, c'est de l'amour que Ton devrait mourir" (346.43).
As in Claudel's play, Dante's "cercle" and "enceinte" make their episodic appearance, this time in the third section of Voyages: "Helas, qui peut garantir que nous n'en sommes qu'au premier cercle. Le deuxieme sera peut-etre pire" (326.41).
Jean is uncertain of his exact location, because space has lost its meaning: "Je cherche
Fespace perdu" (326.49). He can only perceive, like his long lost friend, Alexandre
(an alter-ego of Arthur Adamov) the pressure of the confined space: "j'ai l'impression de vivre dans une cage" (326. 47). The final break through would be to evade the surrounding wall: "II faudrait aller au-dela de Venceinte, sauter le mur" (326.46).
In Dante and the descents into hell of the previous centuries, the presence of
God and of Satan, of various gods or of a certain pre-established destiny precipitate divine retribution in the afterworld. In the final judgment episode, the accusations of the grandmother against the father's second wife echo the prophetic tone of the Divine
Comedy. Like Dante, who subjects his sinners to the implacable law of the contrapasso, the old woman, as a representative of a just but vengeful God, ensures that all family members receive a punishment fitted to their crime: "Dieu est juste mais il est feroce aussi" (326. 54); "je suis la Justice. Non, plus que cela, je suis la
Vengeance" (326. 55). The second wife, the Witch, is accused of being part of a dishonest family, of having a brother who is a thief and a murderer, through abuse of his official position as a military magistrate. The episode of the harpy picking the brain of the Capitan recalls the story of canto 33 of The Inferno, with count Ugolino and archbishop Ruggieri. Dante encounters the two infamous traitors, gnawing at 187 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco each other's head, in Antenora of the Ninth Circle, Second Ring, where the traitors to their homeland are punished. By becoming the regime's executioner, the Capitan betrayed his country and deserves a similar sentence. The characters are frozen, and
"like the fratricidal traitors of Dante's Inferno, remain entangled in the icy-web of their ever-repeated, relived, insoluble recriminations."17 According to Rosette
Lamont, Dante's traitors further share with Ionesco's ghosts the frosty climate of the
Danubian winters, evoked in canto 32 of the Inferno: "The Danube where it flows in
Austria, / the Don beneath the frozen, sky, have never / made for their course so thick a veil in winter / as there was here" (Inf. 32. 25-8). The frozen lake of Cai'na, where traitors to their kin are immersed, in the Ninth Circle, First Ring, seems of glass and reminds the Florentine poet of the thick ice of the frozen Danube18. Finally, the
Witch is forced to drop her youthful mask and show the real image of her hideous soul, while the old woman becomes a young and beautiful creature. The
Machiavellian Father is strangled by his last concubine, in just retribution for being unfaithful to both his wives.
In the case of Jean, essentially through his sensitivity to Buddhism, Ionesco retains only penitentiary elements that underline his obsessive feeling of guilt. Around
Jean gravitate the traditional figures of the Ferryman and of the Woman. The
Ferryman assures the crossing but does not guide; the Woman awaits him but does not lead him anywhere. The oriental mirage appears in the person of a Japanese woman in traditional kimono, who crosses his path but does not speak. The cryptic sacred books remain silent because Jean has lost the code that would have allowed him, from a linguistic as well as religious viewpoint, to decipher them. He is disconnected from transcendence and the sacramental relationship with God is temporarily severed.
Resigned and disillusioned, Jean paradoxically reaches his experience of light 188 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco through one of nothingness, of disintegrated, neutralized subjectivity, of dissolved individuality. His final monologue attests to the total nullification of his ego and complete cosmic integration.
The last scene can be read against the background of The Tibetan Book of the
Dead and recalls Lucky's famous monologue in Beckett's En attendant Godot.
Seemingly ruined, exhausted, crushed, Jean breaks free into a stream of disconnected words and ideas. He is experiencing his own descent to hell or crossing into the other world and delivers live his experience of mental dissolution. The realization of the void, the unbinding of the soul, is the goal of most Tibetan religions. It allows the self to attain Nirvana, the primordial blissful state of the unborn, after breaking free from the wheel of Samsara, in our case from the broken circles of the infernal labyrinth of
Jean's wanderings in the world of the living. Allusions to the lack of knowledge, to ignorance and the sacred myth mark the stages of a slow descent to the underworld, into the origins of the self. Words are transformed, unintelligible, they indicate his gradual departure from the world of the living, the sinking of the character into the bardo, the world of in-between life and death. They suggest the experience "en direct" of the descent to the afterworld or ascent to paradise, towards the unnamable and the indivisible, the primordial oneness, at the centre of being. It anticipates destruction and shattering, a total collapse of the self or enlightenment, or both,
Ionesco's favourite paradox, the final coincidentia oppositorum. This monologue can very well be seen as Ionesco's farewell to theatre:
Jamais, jamais, jamais, tout ceci me vient soudain a la tete, dans la tete rongee par les mites de l'ignorance, et bien les mites de l'ignorance, les mites de l'ignorance, les mites mythiques de l'ignorance concernent, deconcertent. (...) Mesdames et messieurs qui n'existez pas, et toi public, qui es un trou noir, mon expose contient plusieurs SION Chapter 5: Ionesco
arguments d'importance d'ou il suit que le sauveur sauve sauvera. (...) Tout en causant je m'apergois que les mots disent de choses. Les choses disent-elles des mots ? (...) Je ne sais pas. Je sais seulement que j'ai garde sur moi les bribes et les miettes des cellules. / Je ne sais pas. (VCM: 133-4)
5.3. Melanie Klein and the Quest for the Lost Mother: Matricide and
Restoration of the Maternal Imago
Theatre provides an occasion in which we can deal with the ghosts that haunt us in safe and creative ways. Ionesco was attracted to theatre because it has always celebrated the contradictions of doubleness, dealing with anxieties provoked by childhood confrontations, separations, loss, strangeness. Several critics have noted that Journeys to the Land of the Dead and Man With Bags have a pronounced Oedipal character, pursuing the ideas of incest, patricide, loss and restoration of the maternal imago. Ionesco reveals a tormented yearning to return to the lost Eden of his childhood. As Martin Esslin remarks, "Ionesco's characters are the every child that resides in Everyman."
According to Freud and Lacan, we begin with the awareness that something has been lost. All attempts to make up for this loss, precisely intensify the sense of loss. So the search continues as a quest to replace an unsatisfactory substitute with one more satisfying. Beyond the Pleasure Principle can be perceived as a kind of paradigm for the imaginary bond linking mother and child in the 'ebb and flow of sally and return'.
For Melanie Klein, psychic life starts with the vehement destruction of the maternal body, the chaotic ruin of what ought to have been a nurturing environment.
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Out of a sadistic ordeal emerges the melancholic child fully aware of its responsibility for destroying the parental world and bound by feelings of loss and guilt. In "Infantile
Anxiety-Situations Reflected in a Work of Art and in the Creative Impulse" (1929),
Klein describes the drive to produce an artistic creation as deriving from the impulse to restore and repair the destroyed maternal imago.
The desire to make reparation, to achieve symbolization of the lost object, not only demands a capacity for tolerating destructive impulses, but also a willingness to return to the most fearful environment imaginable, the anguished core of the pre-self.
Symbolic substitution may be necessary but it is certainly not sufficient, for to make reparation, to move forward into an ethical state one must learn to move backwards into the state that produced the ruin in the first place. One must learn to rediscover the terrifying first months of life, to re-enter the state of the neo-natal infant.
In her 1940 paper, "Mourning and Its Relation to Manic Depressive States",
Klein defines the depressive position as a process of early "reality testing" and argues that this is a prototypical form of what will later become the process of mourning.
She writes: "The object which is being mourned is the mother's breast and all that the breast and milk have come to stand for in the infant's mind: namely, love, goodness and security. All these are felt by the baby to be lost, and lost as a result of his uncontrollable greedy and destructive fantasies and impulses against his mother's breasts."19 So for Klein, the earliest active relation to reality, to the outside, begins with an awareness of one's own unmanageable greed and desolate sorrow produced by a 'plenitude' one feels one has destroyed.
Object-relations psychology, particularly Melanie Klein's discussions of anxiety, reparation, melancholy, mania, and mourning, could provide vocabulary and a theoretical framework, more appropriate than Freud's, for a discussion of the 191 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco
Journey to the Realm of the Dead as a work of reparation and mourning. According to
Klein, all symbol formation, including art, is an act of reparation. Hanna Segal has succinctly summarized Klein's analysis: "... symbol formation is the outcome of a loss, it is a creative work involving the pain and the whole work of mourning."20
Ionesco's hero, Jean, seeks a state of wholeness and his creator has attempted the same, along with him. Recuperating and repairing the maternal imago leads to regenerating the self of the artist. The dramatist has undertaken an act of mourning and reparation, proving once more that reparation is a significant root in all creative activity.
5.4. Ionesco's Return to Myth and the Labyrinth
The double plot of search and avoidance, the unreliability of the senses and of rational thought, the regressus ad absurdum and the obsession with memory as a trap prove the two dramas to be a labyrinth of time and space.
The labyrinth has only one function: to reveal, by completing his presence, the existential authenticity of the Theseus who seeks to undo it. It is the very inextricability or interdependency between Theseus and his labyrinth, between hero and plot, between text and context, between ourselves and our world that constitutes the subject of discovery during the confrontation at the centre.21 -
The labyrinthine voyage creates the traveler, as the hero devises his journey.
Theseus is part of the labyrinth, and the labyrinth is conceived for him alone. Finding the way to the centre is his initiation and his trial. First Man and Jean are recreated
192 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco through successive experiences of terror and light, until the final cosmic death, followed by spiritual epiphany and rebirth.
Jean, like Orpheus, incurs the wrath of the maenads. Symbolic death is always followed by a "resurrection" or a "rebirth", Eliade stated in his lecture "Waiting for the Dawn". The Orphic journey ultimately reaffirms the force of the art transcending death. Walter Strauss22 gives an outline of the stages of the traditional Greek myth:
There are three major "moments" in this myth: 1) Orpheus as a singer- prophet (shaman) capable of establishing harmony in the cosmos (his apocryphal participation in the journey of the Argo elaborates this motif); 2) The descent into Hades (katdbasis): the loss of Eurydice, the subsequent subterranean quest, and the second loss (here all accounts are in agreement except for the problem of motivation, and this is certainly the best known and most popular portion of the myth); 3) The dismemberment theme (sparagmos), which suggests a possible deviation from Dionysus or a friction between bacchantic Dionysus-worship and Orphic practices. (Strauss 6)
The shaman-writer Jean was once in harmony with nature, capable of showing his peers the way to the Otherworld. This episode precedes the drama, and is only inferred by the protagonist who once was a successful writer. After the loss of his mother, Jean roams the realm of the dead in her pursuit. Most of the play addresses the katdbasis motif and exposes Jean's wanderings in the infernal labyrinth. The third episode, sparagmos, can be symbolically conceived as the dismemberment of Jean through the disintegration of language, the only "material" at hand, the protagonist's only "reality". As in the case of Orpheus, the symbolic dismemberment is also suggestive of a transmutation to an ideal artistic plenitude.
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Modern Orpheus, like his predecessor from antiquity, is a "fraternal poet", a humanist participating in the sufferings of humankind, a shaman or healer of souls, beginning with his own. Like the Dante of the Vita nuova, who experiences his renewal through the love and death of Beatrice, or Dante of the Divine Comedy who accedes to Christian redemption through descent and ascent, Ionesco also conceives regeneration in terms of descent into hell and creates his own universe of redemption.
According to Ovid, after Orpheus's dismemberment, instead of his corpse, the nymphs discover a flower with a circle of white petals around a yellow centre. The flower symbolism recalls Dante's most inspired pattern, the rosa sempiterna, the white rose with its yellow center, formed by the souls of the Empyrean. The rose is like a immense amphitheatre, divided vertically and equally between the Old and New
Testaments, with the upper rows on one half formed by souls who believed in Christ to come, and on the other half those who believed in Christ when he came. The circle and centre motif points at Orpheus' transformation into God after his death, the
Christie sacrifice of the poet.
"If the poem could become a poet, Orpheus would be the poem: he is the ideal and the emblem of poetic plenitude" (Blanchot 143). He is the origin of artistic creation, the infinite trace of absence concealing the secret affinity between writing and dying, the transmutation of the invisible into the visible. Rainer Maria Rilke believes that the interior space or the poem "translates things" from the exterior language into the inner one. In the world, things are transformed into graspable objects and in the imaginary space they are transmuted into non-graspable things. The writer is the "essential translator" and his task is the metamorphosis of the invisible into the visible, and vice-versa. This transmutation into visibility, into free subjectivity, allows the artist to grasp afresh its singular verbal and visual weave, 194 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco and is followed by a certain "objectification" of inner fantasies. The fictive language of the unreal is exposed, turned into image and given an objective body.
The otherworldly journey can also be read as a conte philosophique. Its central theme is the nature and forms of interpretation of the past, deeply rooted in an irreducible truth. Story-telling - recounting personal myths - is the cognitive activity par excellence. Such a view leads to a "hermeneutics of trust". The opposite view belongs to what Paul Ricoeur has named as a "hermeneutics of suspicion".
Every real existence reproduces the Odyssey... The chance to become a new Ulysses is given to any exile whatsoever ... but to realize this, the exile must be capable of penetrating the hidden meanings of his wanderings, and of understanding them as a long series of initiation trials (willed by gods) and so many obstacles on the path which brings him back to the hearth (toward the centre). That means: seeing signs, hidden messages, symbols in the sufferings, the depressions, the dry periods of everyday life. Seeing them and reading them even if they aren't there; if one sees them, one can build a structure and read a message in the formless flow of things and the monotonous flux of historical facts.23
In "Pierre Menard, Author of The Quixote" (1939), Jorge Luis Borges demonstrates with infinite irony how an early seventeenth century text means something totally different against the backdrop of the twentieth century. Menard is the fictitious twentieth century author who recreates a masterpiece identical to
Cervantes' Don Quixote. The same words convey different meanings when placed in different contexts, and the dynamics of the Borgesian short story reveals the metamorphosis of myth itself. When recontextualized, any myth becomes a new myth. In Ionesco's drama, the evocations of the Ariadne-Theseus myth of the
195 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco labyrinth, or the myth of Orpheus or Ulysses, attempt, in fact, a transformation and renewal of these myths. The journey of the First Man retells the story of a contemporary Orpheus in search of inspiration, an amnesiac Theseus lost in a labyrinthine dreamscape, or "a new Oedipus, confronted with the enigma of his birth"24. Concomitantly, the main character is suggestive of Adam awaiting the final reunion with his bare-breasted Eve. The constant inversions and metamorphoses of the biblical or classical Greek myths lead to a re-creation of the myth itself, as a comprehensive story about the origins of humankind.
Along with the mythification of these characters and details, which are scattered throughout the earlier work, along with discovering the possibilities of childhood and the uses of images in literature, with discovering how to enlarge and perhaps even to relativize time and space, gradually arises the only point of view - the mythical perspective - which can melt everything into a unified whole.25
The cosmic images of eternity, of primordial Mud tempus, of the endless creative imagination are expressions of Ionesco's "dreaming large". His mythical images come from the collective unconscious, which is the realm of myth. Ionesco considers himself a dreamer of stories, his initial dreaming small mutates into dreaming large: "Writers do not become mythical if they do not dare, as Bachelard might say, to 'dream large'. 'Dreaming large' is dreaming on the mythical level of mankind in general; 'dreaming small' is dreaming on the psychological level of the individual self."26
The story of Jean's family is essentially mythical, it is the story of the personal reality itself becoming collective myth. The biblical patterns of creation, decadence, catastrophe, renovation, rebirth are projected on the past, present and future of the
196 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco writer-traveller. Jean, as well as the First Man, is a prophet and a psychopomp who leads his people to the Final Judgement and the Promised Land of individuation. With its contorted trajectory, which involves genesis and apocalypse, the story comes from the writer's personal memory and enters the collective memory of the readers.
Together, they show how "mythical metamorphosis" works in creating the intertextuality of Ionesco's text. In these plays, the apocalyptic atmosphere is personal but also political. The prolonged diabolical dictatorship of a totalitarian regime pertaining to the land of the father, its authoritative and controlling methods and the moral and social degeneration provoked are suggestive of the reign of the Beast, the last days of the Antichrist, signalling the end of time.
The theme of the descent to hell expresses a desperate will to return to the origin, to regain the world of the mother, the paradisiacal Chapelle-Anthenaise of
Ionesco's childhood, in an attempt that draws on a cultural Franco-Romanian
Christian background, on Buddhism and psychoanalysis as well. The evocation of the dead in the mind of the First Man or Jean shows that the world of the dead lives in him, the dead are locked in his mind, they seek revenge and disturb his consciousness.
Like Claudel's revengeful dead27, Ionesco's dead also invade the world of the living, only not spatially but within consciousness - they do not emerge from under the ground, but from the unconscious. The protagonist embarks on an inner journey to the underworld and does not perform an actual descent like Claudel's Emperor. Ionesco resourcefully transposes the myth of the descent to the underworld by separating it from the world below, which traditionally represents a transcendental beyond outside man's control. His ghosts mix with the living and inhabit his memory, migrating from his unconscious into his consciousness, the inferno is contained within, the personal
197 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco reality is transformed into collective mythology, and to quote the writer again: "le reel est devenu mythologique" (EVER: 183).
Ionesco abandons the traditional style of the descent to hell in order to apply a deeper metaphysical significance to his journey of initiation. The protagonist forgets his name, his native language and finally sinks into utter oblivion. The quest of qui suis-je is always connected to the issue of names and words, so as to make it hard to separate metaphysics from linguistics. The playwright retains the universal symbols of the boat, the oar, the bags, the repeated falls, the mental movements of descent- ascent, which typify his inner dream-like journey. This is where his originality resides, in the raw labyrinthine display of an unfolding infernal - soon to become paradisiacal - mystical experience. Ionesco confesses in Antidotes:
En fait, je suis a la recherche d'un monde redevenu vierge, de la lumiere paradisiaque de l'enfance, de la gloire du premier jour, gloire non ternie, univers intact qui doit m'apparaitre comme s'il venait de naitre. (...) Enfance et lumiere se rejoignent, s'identifie dans mon esprit. Tout ce qui n'est pas lumiere est angoisse, tenebres. J'ecris pour retrouver cette lumiere et pour essayer de la communiquer. {Antidotes: 316)
There is no happy ending to the descent to hell without sacrifice. The self is purged, identity is obliterated, the impoverished language reaches its degree zero of expression. The dream will eventually lead from the sombre country of the father to the evanescent world of the mother, to lucidity and truth, to the radiant experience of ecstasy. Finally, when reaching paradise and mythical time, the personal reality of the main character alias author becomes mythological, the commonplace ignites a glorious epiphany. The poet is left perpetually descending and ascending in the sphere of words and dreams, so that he might join earth and sky and accomplish the
198 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco coincidentia oppositorum, or as Gaston Bachelard puts it:
Les mots - je Fimagine souvent - sont de petites maisons, avec cave et grenier. Le sens commun sejourne au rez-de-chaussee, toujours pret au "commerce exterieur", de plain-pied avec autrui, ce passant qui n'est jamais un reveur. Monter 1'escalier dans la maison du mot c'est, de degre en degre, abstraire. Descendre a la cave, c'est rever, c'est se perdre dans les lointains couloirs d'une etymologie incertaine, c'est chercher dans les mots des tresors introuvables. Monter et descendre, dans les mots memes, c'est la vie du poete. Monter trop haut, descendre trop bas, est permis au poete qui joint le terrestre avec 1'aerien. (Gaston Bachelard, 139)
In A Vision (1925), John Butler Yeats follows Dante and creates his own system of ordered visionary images in terms of lunar phases; Dante, Shelley and
Yeats himself belong to the phase seventeen of the moon. Like Dante and Yeats,
Ionesco put in his visions his family, friends and enemies, only his "system" lacks the traditional order. As Dante had distributed the people he knew along an intricate network of circles and gyres in the tripartite division of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, so Ionesco has assigned to each of them a place in his labyrinthine Afterworld.
The Divine Comedy, points out Mazzota, "carves a metaphoric space of dispersion where exiles seek and work" (Dante, Poet of the Desert: 274). Like the
Comedy, Ionesco's plays are spiritual food for exiles, they are visions of another realm, of alterity, which is embedded into sameness. The sorrowful exile is inside us, it is a calamitous part of us waiting to be mastered. Operating within these parameters, descending and ascending in the other's world is the agonizing task of the poet. As
Dante famously puts it: "Com'e duro calle/ lo scendere e il salir per l'altrui scale"
(Par. 17.59). The experience of alterity painfully reveals insight on the sameness. The
199 SION Chapter 5: Ionesco soul must undergo the journey of exile in order to find its home. And the readers must also follow the experience of descent and ascent of the writer so that they may learn their own way of salvation.
The entering of the labyrinth or the descent into the unconscious is an initiation rite known to the mystics, which can lead to cosmic death and the epiphany of Being. From the profane world of personal consciousness, the subject is projected into the sacred universe of a transpersonal unconscious. Out of the darkness of the inner labyrinth, an experience of beatific light and immortality emerges, common to shamans, Buddhists, Christian monks or contemplative atheists alike. The revelation of an ontological centre, home of the coincidentia oppositorum, is an essentially spiritual occurrence, a crack in the linearity of historical time, which enables the perception of divine love and peaceful integration into the eternity of Creation. "La rencontre avec la lumiere produit une rupture dans l'existence du sujet, qu'elle lui revele, ou lui devoile plus clairement qu'auparavant, le monde de Fesprit, du sacre, de la liberie, en un mot: l'existence en tant qu'oeuvre divine, ou le monde sanctifie par la presence de Dieu." This experience of mystical light unlocks the creative imagination and connects the subject to the fundamental principle of the Cosmos, which is love, "l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle" {Par. 33. 145).
"Beckett nous reapprend que rhomme est un animal metaphysique ou religieux"29, affirms Ionesco in Antidotes. In his praise of Dante30, Claudel underlines that great artists do not invent their themes and receive inspiration directly from God.
There is a poesis perennis of sacred essence, which resumes eternally the themes furnished by Creation. Similarly, Ionesco himself, like-Beckett and Claudel, develops a new metaphysics of the sacred, which comes from the core of the collective unconscious. 200 SION Chapter 6: Conclusions 201
6. Chapter 6: Conclusions
6.1. Postmodern Continuity or the Ontology of the Post/Modern Self
The creative process, according to Jung, "consists in the unconscious activation of an archetypal image, and in elaborating and shaping this image into the finished work. By giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of the present, and so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life."1 The necessity of uttering one's self through artistic creations translates the need to perpetuate life and being, and so archetypes underlie the entire history of art and literature. New literary creations appear at first to be very different from the ones that precede them, but later, as the dust settles and the similarities with the
"classics" emerge, they often point to archetypal commonalities. Thus, it comes as no surprise that a medieval writer like Dante is so present in the commedic twentieth century of Claudel, Ionesco and Beckett. Or, in Ionesco's words,
Ce qui ressort done des ceuvres nouvelles, e'est la constatation, tout d'abord, qu'elles se differencient nettement des ceuvres precedentes (s'il y a eu recherche de la part des auteurs, evidemment, et non pas imitation, stagnation). Plus tard, les differences s'attenueront, et alors, ce seront les ressemblances avec les ceuvres anciennes, la constatation d'une certaine identite et d'une identite certaine qui pourront prevaloir, tout le monde s'y reconnaitra et tout finira par s'integrer dans... Phistoire de Part et de la litterature. (Notes et Contre Notes. Paris: Gallimard, 1966. 326) SION Chapter 6: Conclusions
Continuity remains essential to modernism and postmodernism, although they are originally conceived as reactions to tradition. The Dante-Beckett relationship was considered, by Neal Oxenhandler2 for instance, as a "paradigm for postmodern continuity", the most visible case of intertextual continuity (216). Dante's poem is powerfully visual: he travels through the Afterworld as spectator of the fate of others, and repeatedly vouches for the truth of his discourse about the things seen. There is no epistemological hesitancy in the Commedia: Dante sees the world in one comprehensive gaze. Similarly to the Commedia, modernist works are dominated by the search for knowledge, beauty and truth. Modernism differs from this "classical" aesthetic, however, in its degree of experimentation and its focus on such principles as indeterminacy, incoherence, epistemological skepticism. Postmodernism introduces self-referentiality, metafiction, circularity, a new ontological use of narrative perspectivism, a multiplication of beginnings, endings and narrated actions, equal treatment of truth and fiction, myth and reality, copy and original (Calinescu, Five
Faces of Modernity, 1987, 303-4), intertextual parodic double coding (Hutcheon, A
Theory of Parody, 1985). According to Brian McHale3, modernism can be associated with an "epistemological dominant" (knowledge related), and postmodernism with an
"ontological dominant" (existential mode of the world, of a text). When pushed to an extreme, epistemological questioning can "tip over" into postmodern ontological questioning, the progression being reversible and circular. "The crossover from
Modernist to Postmodernist poetics is not irreversible, not a gate that swings one way only... It is possible to 'retreat' from Postmodernism to Modernism, or indeed to vacillate between the two" (McHale, 74).
Matei Calinescu4 has pointed out that "modern" is no longer synonymous with
202 SION Chapter 6: Conclusions
"contemporary" in the arts, whereas postmodern can still relate to the present. Claudel is indisputably a modernist, whereas Beckett and Ionesco are positioned at the intersection between the two "periods"5, or able to switch freely between the two, although most critics label them as postmodernists, especially in regards to their later works. According to Calinescu, the insistent use of the rhetoric of palinode or retraction (explicit withdrawal of a statement) is inherent to postmodern writing. What was just said is immediately contradicted and then stated again, with ceaseless revisions6, and this stylistic device defines the Beckettian and Ionescan technique of creating ontological puzzles. Modernism never wholly breaks with the classic, traditional aesthetic, as postmodernism never wholly parts from modernism, even though it starts off as a reaction against the classical-modern canon. Postmodernism is not a trend chronologically defined, but rather a way of operating (Eco7, 16). The link with the works of the past is never fully broken, although the coherent vision of medieval metaphysics, for instance, blatantly opposes the disjunction of the post/modern period with its valuation of the part over the whole, and of fragmentation over the whole's cohesion.
In La Condition postmoderne (1979) and Le Postmoderne explique aux enfants
(1986), Jean-Francois Lyotard specifies that there are two kinds of metanarratives
(metarecits), one mythical-traditional and the other projective-modern, the former legitimizing knowledge in terms of the past, and the latter in terms of the future.
Christianity is therefore inherently modern and the major stories of modernity can be perceived as "secularized variations on the Christian paradigm" (Calinescu, 274), such as, I would venture to say, the dramas of descent discussed here. The Divine Comedy is a symbolic account of the way to individuation, just as Claudel's, Ionesco's and
Beckett's dramas reflect secular ontologies of the self. 203 SION Chapter 6: Conclusions
The difference between Dante's "noumenal" realism and Beckett's ontological
"phenomenalism" lies in the degree of faith in the apprehension of the noumenal as well as perception of the phenomenal world8, and in the reliability of knowledge.
Dante is the exponent of absolute faith, which gives him the key to both noumenal and phenomenal understanding. Although he writes allegorically, he is a realist whose perception involves a sine-qua-non framework of belief. Perceiving and believing, the phenomenal and the noumenal, re-enforce each other and ultimately coincide with each other in Dante's Comedy, whereas in Beckett and Ionesco they both split from each other and deceive the enthusiastic reader. The noumenal is unreachable and the phenomenal is unreliable. Beckett has little faith in perception and knowledge, he constantly tests the limits of rationality and rejects intuition. He develops, according to
Neal Oxenhandler, a kind of suspended formalist phenomenalism, an immanent style of writing (222), which dematerializes the world and turns it into a gnostic fantasy
(Hassan9 196).
The subject and object are locked together in Dante's Thomism, where we find a unified concept of the self-as-subject and self-as-object. Beckett and Ionesco's characters suffer from a split self disorder and have abolished neither object nor subject, despite the acute dematerialization of the terrestrial sphere and the weakening of the self-world connection. Descartes inflicted upon modernity the notion of the splitting of self from the world, and of the mind from the body. The perceiving self needs an other in order to account for its own existence, or at least this is what
Berkeley's extremely baroque and idealistic "to be is to be perceived" (esse est percipi) left us with. However, as "to be is to be guilty"10, self-perception and self- voicing signify an act of self-division, whereby the "perceiving" half of the self becomes the other half's judge. The most desirable position in a guilt-ridden world 204 SION Chapter 6: Conclusions is that of the judge, whose phantasmatic freedom is non-negotiable. The Commedia mediates a hierarchical view of reality guaranteed by its own internal cohesion.
Dante's poetic world is related to Being, both as metaphor and metonymy, his characters belong to the experiential order. Beckett and Ionesco have an inner focus on the ontological and non-verbal, although Beckett tends toward a lessening and
Ionesco toward a proliferation of the verbal. As Bachelard put it, "Monter et descendre, dans les mots memes, c'est la vie du poete. Monter trop haut, descendre trop bas, est permis au poete qui joint le terrestre avec l'aerien. Seul le philosophe sera-t-il condamne a vivre toujours au rez-de-chaussee?"11. Ionesco, the mystic, endeavors a constant descent and ascent in words, while Beckett, the philosopher12, after several ascents and descents finds his place on the ground floor, the zero degree of being and language, where all movement ceases and stillness is reached. A proliferation of paradoxical words creates a humdrum, a constant buzzing of words and sounds in Ionesco's plays. Beckett works towards paring down - "de-collecting" - to quote Walter Asmus13 quoting Beckett, towards no words at all, complete silence.
"The dramatic effectiveness of his plays results from his poetic sense of economy (not
Ionesco's strong point), harmony and structure, rhythm and cadence, composed as much of silence as of words."14 According to the Polish poet Cyprian Norwid (1821-
1883), the structural function of silence is that of a part of speech. Silences are an undercurrent of every dramatic situation, they sometimes become a pattern of visible gaps inside meaning15. In the later plays, like Comment c'est for instance, Beckett makes a purposeful attempt to reconstruct the pre-linguistic experience. Not I faces the audience with an unintelligible outpouring of words from the Mouth. Ionesco's agglomeration of words also points toward the annihilation of language. In the Order of Things, Michel Foucault drastically concludes: "The only thing that we know at 205 SION Chapter 6: Conclusions the moment, in all certainty, is that in Western culture the being of man and the being of language have never, at any time, been able to coexist and to articulate themselves one upon the other. Their incompatibility has been one of the fundamental features of our thought"16. Although a recurrent difficulty of coexistence is certainly present and our writers constantly struggle to go beyond words, I would also argue that the "being of man" can mostly be shaped by the "being of language" and that there is a compulsive, structuring connection between the two. Maurice Blanchot writes: "To speak is to bind oneself, without ties, to the unknown." It is "a relation in which the unknown would be affirmed, made manifest, even exhibited: disclosed."17 The unknown and the self can only be made manifest through language, even though, paradoxically, this language is based on the refusal of language.
The self is the ultimate revelation experienced through linguistic journeys and artistic creation. According to Heidegger, "Language is the primal dimension within which man's essence is first able to correspond at all to Being and its claim, and, in corresponding, to belong to Being. This primal corresponding, expressly carried out, is thinking."18 The search for identity and the attempt at self-definition through thought, language and outside language reveals the need for a witness to existence that the other provides. The author is this witness and his characters are his
"permanent proof." Pirandello19, in his preface to Six Characters in Search of an
Author vividly underlines the permanence of literary characters, their endless coming alive with every reader revisiting the text:
So it is that we open the book, we find Francesca alive and confessing her gentle sin to Dante; and if we go back and read that passage a hundred thousand times, Francesca will speak her lines a hundred thousand times in a row, never with mechanical repetition, but saying them every time as though it were the first time, and with such vivid and 206 SION Chapter 6: Conclusions
spontaneous passion, that once again, as for the first time, Dante will faint away. (22)
Dante and Claudel worked in the rhetorical tradition of the assent to the sacred, where the suspicion of the sacred dispelled the suspicion of its absence, thus fathoming the unquestionable character of the former.
Ionesco and Beckett, on the other hand, appear to be governed by conscious free will: they do not channel divinity, but try to reach the life-detached, independent entity called the sacred, outside the conscious self. Beckett's heroes, who flee from identity, seek the prenatal unconsciousness of the unborn. Ionesco's protagonists are on a quest for identity which ends in self-annihilation, the "paradisal unknowing" to use D. H. Lawrence's phrase. They both yearn for self-destruction, Dante and Claudel for self-creation in God's image. Their heroes travel in geometric or labyrinthine vicious circles back to where they started as they retreat into the inner recesses of the mind where death and birth are one. Dante and Claudel's circles are perfectly displayed in a spiral "on this earth that is Purgatory", to quote Beckett, leading to the perfect circling of the heavenly spheres. Disorder in the world and in the psyche opposes order in God. Mystics such as Dante wanted to communicate their experience of God through their writing, Beckett needs to show his revolt at the absence of God. Art and self are detached from God for Ionesco and Beckett, while, in the case of Dante and Claudel, art channels and intensifies faith. The recognizability of the miracle, of the sacred essence, in the case of the latter two poets, opposes confinement to the profane. Post/modern literature attempts to express the unnamable, the unsayable, "I'indicible", the displacement of the sacred, and, most importantly, it tries to reach an untouchable core of truthfulness, which translates as sheer immanence - or honesty - not given to escapist versions of 207 SION Chapter 6: Conclusions transcendentalism. As Beckett confessed to Lawrence Held20 in the mid-1980s, all this time "I have been trying to squeeze the last few honest drops out of my skull".
6.2. Individuation in between Sacred and Profane
After discussing these three 20th-century authors in relation to Dante and the post/modem, after involving in the discussion such core concepts as ontology and epistemology, descent and ascent, self and God, language and silence, I will attempt to conclusively evaluate relevant symbols and notions - such as trinity and quaternity, circle and centre, heaven and earth, extricable versus inextricable labyrinths, movement and time, absolutism and relativism, bilingualism and duplicity - with respect to the authors under focus.
Ionesco speaks of the absence of the sacred in modern languages and literatures. The trinity is formulated in an altered configuration, the quaternity is not entirely viable and the perfect marriage of heaven and earth, man and God, seems like an insult to rational thought. The centre which is reached in Dante and Claudel, is perpetually avoided by the de-centred Beckett and Ionesco. There is no finality and no culmination, as opposed to Dante and Claudel, whose final destination is known in advance. The vertical progression in the latter case is counterbalanced by the horizontal labyrinth of Ionesco, and the meandering of Beckett, the static to-and-fro movement between self and unself, or self and the other. The ideology of the Roman
Catholic Church, pervasive as it is in the case of the two unwavering believers, is marginalized at best, and, really, present-through-its-absence in Beckett and Ionesco.
For the latter authors, the general impasse'lies in the disintegrated belief resulting in an utter lack of transcendence. For Dante and Claudel, the church mediates 208 SION Chapter 6: Conclusions between the earthly and celestial spheres, transforming violence into peace and giving a coherent vision of both universal and personal history. Truth can be known through
Christian love and the centre of the celestial rose is reachable. Beckett and Ionesco have no direct association with the church and have lost faith in its ability to lead individuals towards the fullness of being and the coincidentia oppositorum. Truth is unknowable in the world of contingency and the elusive centre of the self remains inaccessible.
The negative teleology of the post/modern subject opposes the canonic theology of the medieval pilgrim and the turn-of-the-century emperor. Dante believes in the epistemological possibilities of a realized eschatology, and the view from the end is necessary to complete any hermeneutical interpretation, to help recognize and interpret the signs along the way and make possible the journey to heaven. In modern times, apotheosis and apocatastasis21 are rejected by the "flatness" and "nihilism" of
Ionesco and Beckett's "absurd" protagonists, stuck in hofizontality and failed transcendence. Design and purpose flatly lack in the disenchanted modern world. The unicursal, extricable labyrinth of Ionesco's Homme aux valises pairs with the multicursal, debatably inextricable one of Voyages chez les morts. Here I would argue that the individual's quest leads to inextricability, and that the labyrinthine journey can lead to a detachable, meaningful end only via the loss of individuality. A disillusioned man without qualities and personality, the post/modern subject suffers from a scattered consciousness and a deep-seated lack of identity. Both Ionescan plays give a paradoxical feeling of a disintegrating finale, although they both work their way towards survival in a different form. Waiting for Godot emphasizes survival on earth by all means, through ceaseless circling and the repetitive to-and-fro movement desperately re-affirming life and offering the self its final residence in 209 SION Chapter 6: Conclusions the impossible yet decided movement: "I can't go on, I'll go on" (The Unnamable:
414). lonesco and Beckett are caught in a spiritual ritual of ebb and flow, indefinitely vacillating between consciousness and the unconscious. Not dissimilarly, movement carries on after the Dantesque poema sacro finishes, in this instance, however, emphasizing psychic integrity and integration within the celestial harmony of the heavens: "ma gia volgeva il mio disio e '1 velle, / si come rota ch'igualmente e mossa,
/ l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle" (Paradiso 33.143-5). Movement, one sees, is independent from what is moving.
The systemic absolutism of the ardent believers conflicts with the
(post)subjectivism, relativism and individualism of lonesco and Beckett, which in fact are their only potential redemption ("ce qui peut nous sauver c'est Findividualisme," stated lonesco in several interviews). Time, ordered as a historic or sacred system in the first case, in the second becomes personal, subjective, and unsystematic. This second system struggles along the opposition between the diachronic and synchronic, and of the one between pre- and post-subjective temporalities. The extreme precision of the systematic hierarchy of the first two contrasts with the chaotic quest and non- traditional language of the latter's katabasis. "La quete de l'absolu" is understandable and describable, almost palpable in the first case, and undisclosed, faceless and intangible in the second case.
Although not always obvious, Beckett is an artist in full control of his canvas, to use Rick Cluchey's words22, whose subconscious, if one accepts the oxymoron, is seemingly mastered, exposed and put to work. On the contrary, lonesco's control is eroded by a whirlwind of words that do not come from God but from the depth of his unconscious and which seem to take over his consciousness and the written page in a
Babel-like performance. The bilingualism and multiplicity of the Beckettian and 210 SION Chapter 6: Conclusions
Ionescan dual selves counteract the unique use of the medieval Italian vernacular in the Commedia and of modern French in Claudel's drama, and contrast Dante and
Claudel's accomplished singular selves. For Dante, the Babel episode marked the culmination of man's fall from grace and the loss of the original language of Adam.
In De Vulgari Eloquentia, Dante deplores at length the weakening of post-Babelian vernaculars and imagines the "vulgare illustre", an ideal Italian language which transcends regionalism and can be understood by everyone (in Italy, that is). "In a sense, the Commedia portrays the quest for the initial word of which God is the embodiment: the pilgrim's voyage becomes the poet's"23. Dante's goal is to recapture the first "EL" uttered by Adam, expression of joy and name of God, while Beckett seems to be searching for the primordial Sanskrit sound "OM"24. As Beckett confesses: "My work is a matter of fundamental sounds (no joke intended) made as fully as possible, and I accept responsibility for nothing else {Disjecta, 109)". In both cases, the interminable voyage toward an ever-elusive word, name of divinity and answer to all questions, combines their linguistic, ontological, and epistemological quests.
6.3. The Soul's Voyage of Exile
Modern writers generally regard "the real" as a suspect model. They are inward wayfarers whose linguistic and ontological quests are pushed in circular or labyrinthine movements beyond the limits of the possible. Traditionally, the voyage has served as a metaphor for the acquiring of wisdom and self-discovery. The inner journey is the pattern most suited for words: the inner voyage parallels the literary one in the form of a regression and progression. Dante's encyclopedic journey 211 SION Chapter 6: Conclusions towards the Word of God is a movement of descent and ascent reflecting a spiritual progress and covering all of the material and numinous worlds. Beckett and Ionesco, searching for the fundamental sounds of language and for the pre-linguistic chaos, face both ontological impasse and linguistic paradox. While they try to bring speech to an end, they are also compelled to perpetuate being through words. Perpetual movement in words has the effect of delaying the stillness of death while preparing for it. But a paralyzing impotence keeps growing during the journey, in contrast to
Dante's pilgrim's access to supreme love and integration of the self within God.
While in Dante and Claudel the voyage closes with the quintessential accomplishment, in Beckett and Ionesco the open-ending journey reflects a debilitating lack, a fundamental ontological deficiency.
Exile is the defining existential constraint for all four writers, if we only think of Dante's political dislocation from Florence, Ionesco's from Romania, Claudel's from France, and Beckett's from Ireland. Exile is the very condition of Dante's text, its most profound metaphor, as noted by Giuseppe Mazzotta. The circumstance of exile drives the traveler on his way and compels the writer to pursue indefatigably his linguistic quest. This truth inherent to writing and existence reflects the very compulsion to write in the hope of recovering from the temporary disintegration of the self which so often occurs in the pursuit of individuation. Naming and expressing the self calls it into being, reverses this absence and can give it new life. Writing entails a stepping out of the self in order to recapture it through language and self- expression.
Claudel knew exile in his widespread travels as a diplomat to China, Europe,
North and South America. Ionesco was twice forced into exile from his country of origin, the land of the father, because of social and political constraints, and 212 SION Chapter 6: Conclusions
Beckett auto-exiled himself early in his mature life from his country of birth. Dante's quest for home-coming was three-fold: to regain access to Florence in the physical world, and spiritually, to reach God and individuation. And all this was possible through language, the poet's unique means of overcoming an ontological impasse by reversing the exilic condition.
The Beckettian or Ionescan journeys outline maps of the mental regions where the wandering hero can escape from the social fiasco and find his freedom. Mental space is like a sanctuary, it is "the dark of absolute freedom", where the self retracts after the banishment from the outside world, the exile from society (Murphy, 113).
The regression from light (a reflection of the outside world) to darkness (the mental region), from being to non-being, in the case of Beckett and Ionesco, is contrasted by the progression from darkness into light in the case of Dante and Claudel. The plunge within of the first two is counter-balanced by the reaching out of the latter.
Mesmerized by the down-there and loathing the up-there, being reduced to the condition of crawling in the primeval mud, Ionesco's "la vase", of being caught in- between "no longer" and "not yet", of being a prisoner of the inner world, the down- there "where everything is red", the postmodern "hero", unlike Dante's and
Claudel's, has no hope for any redemption up-there, in the Afterworld. The current degradation of the external world cannot be reconciled with the notion of redemption.
The dark-light reversed symbolism after World War II indicates the yearning for a release from a hellish external reality and individual consciousness. In order to escape the burden of selfhood, one has to induce a deadening of the body and a retreat to the mind. The flight from self is mixed with an obsession with self. With Beckett and
Ionesco we notice this omnipresent dilemma, whereby the lessening of consciousness paradoxically triggers the heightening of self-awareness. In Voyages chez les 213 SION Chapter 6: Conclusions morts, Jean suffers from a severe loss of memory and identity, and his obliterated consciousness and disintegrating speech seemingly propel the protagonist toward an experience of ecstasy and fullness. As inhabitants of a contemporary limbo, Godot's characters are numbed by neutrality: they were not being born properly and they can neither die nor live. Separately, they cannot undertake self-creation, and only the four of them together can give birth to the self. Like Beckett's Molloy and Moran, our writers are compelled to write reports of their journeys, to long for death as a reversal of life. The womb-tomb symbolism outlines the trajectory of being in this world and the poet finds his peace only in this condensed in-out movement: "my peace is there in the receding mist / when I may cease from treading these long shifting thresholds / and live the space of a door / that opens and shuts"25. Malone's concept of death as a
"birth into death" (283) is symptomatic for Beckett and Ionesco, as it is the "birth into life" in the case of Dante and Claudel.
6.4. Final Remarks
In 1962 Martin Esslin remarked that the Theatre of the Absurd achieves the
"alienation effect" postulated by Bertolt Brecht, very much better that Brecht ever managed to put it in practice, because "with such characters it is almost impossible to identify". Recent surveys of audience reaction indicate that such a view is no longer justified. In California, the prisoners in San Quentin identified with the Godot characters, and, as Rick Cluchey acknowledged in 1973, their lives were radically changed by Beckett's drama. Although the postmodern drama of the "unknowing" appears divided from God and the created world, and seems to have fallen out of grace and harmony with the universe, it can still provide clues through which the 214 SION Chapter 6: Conclusions
reader/spectator can be led back to unity with God. Like Dante's Comedy, it
preserved a redemptive quality.
My analysis has attempted to highlight various correlations between Godot
and canto 3, the "waiting room" of the Inferno, between Claudel's underworld and
the structure of the Dantesque Hell: the Antechamber, Lower and Upper Hell.
Through construction of character and dialogue, the minimalist setting of Beckett's,
Claudel's and Ionesco's drama has acquired some of the properties of the Dantesque
underworld journey. In all the plays discussed here, the Inferno mostly frames the
condition of modern existence, with its disintegration of intellect and man's
incapacity to make choices. Familiar Dantesque intertexts appear in shifting
relationships in all the French dramas discussed here. As Osip Mandelstam noted in
his "Conversations about Dante", the cantos of the Divine Comedy were aimed at the
present day, "they were made for that. They are missiles for capturing the future."26
In spite of their different degrees of faith (Dante and Claudel, "foi
inebranlable", Beckett and Ionesco, "doute incoercible"), the selected playwrights have felt the joys and torments of illumination. Their exploration of the in/finite
modern self is triggered by the "identity crisis". My study has extensively investigated the symbolism of the circle and centre, quaternity and trinity, word and image. The myth of descent to the underworld was analyzed with the help of the
Dantesque archetype and of Jungian theory. Claudel is fascinated with the different associations of circle and centre, circle and cross, and the cross inscribed in a circle.
Beckett's use of four characters indicates an expressed concern with such symbols as that of quaternity, quadratura circuli and the cross inscribed in a circle. The two interlocking circles of Dante's universe are both symbols of the infinite and of the labyrinth. Ionesco's dramatic journey maps an encircled and encircling 215 SION Chapter 6: Conclusions subconscious maze, which prevents their protagonist's escape into the light of consciousness. The myth of Orpheus and of the Labyrinth both deal with explorations of the unconscious in the pursuit of individuation. Throughout literary history,
Abraham, Ulysses, Theseus, Aeneas, Orpheus or Dante the pilgrim have undertaken mythical journeys and faced multiple challenges in the hope of transcendence and final illumination, and our modern protagonists have followed in their steps. Dante represents a model present explicitly or implicitly in everything Beckett has ever written. His relation to Dante in the early works is metaphoric, in the later works it is more ironic, Claudel's involvement with Dante is ideological and theological, and
Ionesco's is unconscious and archetypal.
The numerical domination of the poema sacro reveals the author's control over the pilgrim's progress. Dante uses numerologically significant numbers such as
3, 7, 13, 30, 33, which will consolidate the link with the divine. The number is also believed to be a part of what leads the reader to an interpretive revelation. Dante's poetic microcosm strives to reflect and reveal the divine macrocosm and supply the reader with the appropriate clues. Claudel successfully uses the numbers 3 and 7 with all their mystical-theological charge, and forges his writing according to divine inspiration, while Ionesco perhaps unconsciously uses the symbolism of the trinity.
Instead of reinforcing the providential design, Beckett's use of mathematics and geometry tries to destroy any intuition of the unknowable God. The modern poetic universe no longer consciously imitates the created one, but whether intended or not, it still provides clues which can lead the reader/spectator back to divinity. Similar to
Heraclitus' remark about sacred speech, modern drama also "neither exposes nor conceals, but gives a sign". The modern poetics of failure and unknowing embodies a restless quest for the divine consciousness and the wholeness of being, a novel way 216 SION Chapter 6: Conclusions of showing the way to God while negating his existence, and our modern heroes are
Christ-like martyrs wandering at the edge of language, in between up-there and down-there, on the threshold of no-longer and not-yet.
God and the unconscious emerge as synonymous concepts. The search for divinity is perpetuated in the exploration of the unconscious, and the fundamental need of the absolute is fulfilled in the realization of the wholeness of self, whose most complete archetype can be found in the figure of Christ. The late medieval German mystic Thomas a Kempis reveals in his Imitation of Christ27 the spiritual way of life to be pursued by any Christian, and his method of achieving wholeness having Christ as the divine model was widely followed in subsequent centuries. His description of the mystic way of life is not dissimilar to the way Claudel, Beckett and Ionesco's characters act in their pursuit of truth and intangible reality. Like the shamans and the mystics, they leave the phenomenal body behind and enter the world of the spirit, of the noumenal, of pure ideas and thought, in order to connect the invisible to the visible world, the essence to the appearance. Even though redemption may seem unreachable, new ways are yet to be discovered - the modern networks of labyrinths are yet to be made extricable. As companions in the afterworld, unreliable as they may be, or guides to salvation, as hypothetical as that may appear, spiritual guidance seems to be the essential role of our modern "mystic" writers, who, like Dante, relentlessly pursue the harrowing of Hell, while aiming for the stars.
The Imitatio Christi engenders, nearly without our noticing it, that comfort, that serenity, that peace, that joy, which we are always looking for and which not always our lives reserve for us. This happens because the Imitatio reveals to ourselves our soul with our passions and our weaknesses, with our deficiencies and our limits, with our uncertainties and our indecision, with our wishes and our hopes, our joys and our pains, 217 SION Chapter 6: Conclusions
with our enthusiasms and our depressions, and shows that we, as Dante writes in Inferno 26, 119-20: "fatti non foste a viver come bruti, ma per seguire virtute e canoscenza". (16)
Beckett, Claudel and Ionesco's search for the unknowable engenders a similar response in the reader/spectator. Like Meister Eckhart, they conclude that, when finally faced with divinity or the unknowable, only silence is proper.
Through the re-enactment on stage of modern Weltanschauungen steeped in
Dantesque archetypes, the plays discussed here provide not just metaphors for our existence, but they also acquire the metaphysical qualities of transformation and regeneration. They conjure up spiritual rebirth while performing a ritual of inner descent to the central point zero or (w)holeness of being. In times of crisis, the selected writers attempt the healing of the modern soul by summoning up old archetypes, which have the therapeutic effect of re-establishing balance and order.
The audience is confronted with a paradox: the zero of extreme despair coincides with the one of extreme hope in a final attempt at making coincidentia oppositorum happen. Wholeness becomes the ekphrasis of "holeness", negativity is absorbed in positivity, and the "new wholeness" contains nothingness and dissolution, Paradise includes Hell. The reconciling vision of our mandala plays provides a feeling of harmony, and Claudel, Beckett and Ionesco, as twentieth-century psychopomps, guide us inwards and downwards to both the ultimate centre of our selves and to its maddening unavailability.
218 SION Appendix 219
Appendix
Bibliography
Notes
219 SION Appendix
7. APPENDIX: Three Descents into Hell: Dante, Virgil, Christ
Inferno 4.16 "color" (1) «Or discendiam qua giu nel cieco mondo», comincio il poeta tutto smorto. «Io sard primo, e tu sarai secondo». E io, che del color mi fui accorto, dissi: «Come verro, se tu paventi che suoli al mio dubbiare esser conforto?." Ed elli a me: «L'angoscia de le genti che son qua giu, nel viso mi dipigne quella pieta che tu per tema senti. Andiam, che la via lunga ne sospigne." Cosi si mise e cosi mi fe intrare nel primo cerchio che l'abisso eigne.
Inferno 9.1 "color" (2) Quel color che vilta di fuor mi pinse veggendo il duca mio tornare in volta, piu tosto dentro il suo novo ristrinse. (...) Ver e ch'altra fiata qua giu fui, congiurato da quella Eriton cruda che richiamava l'ombre a' corpi sui. Di poco era di me la carne nuda, ch'ella mi fece intrar dentr'a quel muro, per trarne un spirto del cerchio di Giuda. Quell'e '1 piu basso loco e '1 piu oscuro, e '1 piu lontan dal ciel che tutto gira: ben so '1 cammin; pero ti fa sicuro.
Inferno 4.33 "vo' che sappi" (1) Lo buon maestro a me: «Tu non dimandi che spiriti son questi che tu vedi? Or vo' che sappi, innanzi che piu andi, ch'ei non peccaro; e s'elli hanno mercedi, non basta, perche non ebber battesmo, ch'e porta de la fede che tu credi; e s'e' furon dinanzi al cristianesmo, non adorar debitamente a Dio: e di questi cotai son io medesmo. Per tai difetti, non per altro rio, semo perduti, e sol di tanto offesi, che sanza speme vivemo in disio."
Inferno 4.62 "vo' che sappi" (2) «Io era nuovo in questo stato, quando ci vidi venire un possente, con segno di vittoria coronato. SION Appendix
Trasseci l'ombra del primo parente, d'Abel suo figlio e quella di Noe, di Moise legista e ubidente; Abraam patriarca e David re, Israel con lo padre e co' suoi nati e con Rachele, per cui tanto fe; e altri molti, e feceli beati. E vo' che sappi che, dinanzi ad essi, spiriti umani non eran salvati».
Inferno 12.34 "vo' che sappi" (3) lo gia pensando; e quei disse: «Tu pensi forse a questa ruina ch'e guardata da quell'ira bestial ch'i' ora spensi. Or vo' che sappi che l'altra fiata ch'i' discesi qua giu nel basso inferno, questa roccia non era ancor cascata. Ma certo poco pria, se ben discerno, che venisse colui che la gran preda levo a Dite del cerchio superno, da tutte parti l'alta valle feda tremo si, ch'i' pensai che l'universo sentisse amor, per lo qual e chi creda piu volte il mondo in caosso converso; e in quel punto questa vecchia roccia qui e altrove, tal fece riverso.
Inferno 8.124-7 Questa lor tracotanza non e nova; che gia l'usaro a men segreta porta, la qual sanza serrame ancor si trova.
Sovr'essa vedestu la scritta morta...
Inferno 21.106-114 Poi disse a noi: «Piu oltre andar per questo iscoglio non si puo, pero che giace tutto spezzato al fondo l'arco sesto. E se l'andare avante pur vi piace, andatevene su per questa grotta; presso e un altro scoglio che via face. Ier, piu oltre cinqu'ore che quest'otta, mille dugento con sessanta sei anni compie che qui la via fu rotta.
221 SION Bibliography
8. BIBLIOGRAPHY
8.1. Primary Sources: Dante, Beckett, Claudel, lonesco
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*
Beckett, Samuel. En Attendant Godot. Paris: Les Editions du Minuit, 1952.
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*
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250 SION Endnotes
9. Notes per Chapter
Notes to Chapter 1: Introduction
1 Cf. The Apostle's Creed.
2 Dante Alighieri. Epistle XIII to Cangrande della Scala: § 8. The Letters of Dante. Paget Toynbee, Ed.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920. 200.
John Took. "The Drama of Salvation." Words and Drama in Dante. Essays on the Divina Commedia
John C. Barnes and Jennifer Petrie, Eds. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993. 88.
John Saly. Dante's Paradiso. The Flowering of the Self: An Interpretation of the Anagogical
Meaning. New York: Pace UP, 1989. 8.
Helen Luke. Dark Wood to White Rose: Journey and Transformation in Dante's Divine Comedy.
New York: Parabola Books, 1989. 18.
Vittorio Cozzoli. // viaggio anagogico. Dante tra viaggio sciamanico e viaggio carismatico. Trieste:
Battelllo stampatore, 1997. 19.
7 Amilcare Iannucci. "Dante: poeta o profeta?" Estratto da "Per correr miglior aque..." Atti del
Convegno di Verona-RavennaTomo 1. Roma: Salerno Editrice, 2001. 111.
8 Dante Alighieri. Epistle XIII to Cangrande della Scala: § 7. The Letters of Dante. Paget Toynbee Ed.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920. 199.
9 Francis Fergusson. Dante's Drama of the Mind. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1953. 4.
10 This is a play based on Dante's life. Other notable nineteen-century plays based on his life: Dante
Alighieri (1855) by Pompeo di Campello, Paolo Ferrari's Dante a Verona (1875). See Amilcare
Iannucci, "Dante and the Dramatic Arts." The Dante Encyclopaedia. Richard Lansing, Ed. New York:
Garland Publishing, 2000. See also Giovanni Fallani, "La Divina Commedia come esperienza teatrale" „ in Dante Moderno. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1979. 105-124.
251 SION Endnotes
11 These are theatrical productions based on Dante's works. In the second case, the three cantiche were adapted by prominent writers: inferno by Edoardo Sanguinetti (1989), Purgatorio by Mario Luzi
(1990), Paradiso by Giovanni Giudici (1991). They were performed by Teatro Metastasio di Prato.
12 These are notable examples of plays based on Dante's characters, along with Silvio Pellico's
Francesco da Rimini from 1815 and George Henry Boker's version of 1855. D'Annunzio's play was written for the "divine" Eleonora Duse, Crawford's drama for the famous Sarah Bernhardt.
13 Hugh Haughton. "Purgatory Regained? Dante and Late Beckett". Dante's Modern Afterlife.
Reception and Response from Blake to Heaney. Nick Havely, Ed. New York: St Martin's Press, 1998.
142.
14 Roland Barthes. "La Mort de l'auteur" in Image - Music - Text. London: Fontana, 1977. 148.
15 Roland Barthes. "La Mort de l'auteur" in Image - Music - Text. London: Fontana, 1977. 160.
16 Robert Con Davies, Ed. Contemporary Literary Criticism. New York and London: Longman, 1986.
486.
1 Franco Masciandaro. Dante as Dramatist. The Myth of the Earthly Paradise and Tragic Vision in the
Divine Comedy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. 23
18 My method of textual analysis will occasionally make use of poststructuralist and semiotic methodology, as developed by Patrice Pavis, Anne Ubersfeld, and Andre Helbo in Theatre: Modes d'Approche (1987)/ Approaching Theatre (1991). Categories such as fable, actantial structures
(Subject-Object, Helper-Blocker, Sender-Receiver), space, temporality, objects, characters, and discourse will mentioned, especially in the case of Claudel, in order to foreground the similarities with and the oppositions to Dante in overall structure or detail, and to direct our attention to the relationship between the constitutive elements as well as the entirety of Claudel and Dante's representations of
Hell.
19 Being and Nothingness. A Phenomenological Essay in Ontology (1943), an ontological analysis of human existence, and. Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946), an essay which sets out the main themes of
Existentialism.
20 J-P Sartre. "The Phenomenological Concept of Nothingness." Being and Nothingness. A
Phenomenological. Essay on Ontology. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New York, London and Toronto:
Washington Square Press, 1956. 65.
252 SION Endnotes
21 Heidegger conceives understanding as Vorverstdndnis: presuppositional understanding, where the projecting is mediated by elements of the past and what is sought for. Understanding is projected toward future possibilities, inquiry is guided by the final goal.
22 For example, a particular drama can only be understood in the context of the writer's other dramatic creations, or larger oeuvre, the dramatic genre as such, as well as part of the tradition of the poetic, psychological or ontological drama. Correspondingly, the whole which is the genre can only be grasped in relation to the individual plays that constitute the dramatic genre.
23 In another context, Ricceur formulates this idea in a circular way: "You must understand in order to believe, but you must believe in order to understand" (Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations: 389).
24 Classical Taoist philosophy, as formulated by Lao Tzu (6th century B.C.), was a reinterpretation of an ancient tradition of nature worship. The initiated Taoist priest sees the many spirits pervading nature as manifestations of the Dao or Tao24 (the origin of all creation). In his meditations, he ritually directs them into their unity with the one Dao. Taoists saw in Dao and nature the basis of a spiritual approach to living. The early Taoists taught the art of living by conforming to the natural way of things; they called their approach to action wuwei (wu-wei - lit. no-action), action modeled on nature.
25 Mircea Eliade Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1964 /1972
/1999.xix.
26 Mircea Eliade. Birth and Rebirth: the Religious Meanings of Initiation in Human Culture. Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask. New York: Harper and Row, 1958. 77-8.
27 Martin, Rene, Ed. Dictionnaire culturel de la mythologie greco-romaine. Paris: Nathan, 1992. 181.
28 Walter A Strauss. Descent and Return. The Orphic Theme in Modern Literature. Cambridge:
Harvard UP, 1971.219.
29 It also outlines the history of the opera, evolving from the tradition of fifteenth century Florentine intermedi to the true classical tradition of opera starting with Monteverdi's passionate La favola d'Orfeo (1607), to duck's neo-classical Orfeo ed Euridice (1762), to Philip Glass's post-modern chamber opera, Orphee (1993), which uses as its libretto the actual screenplay in French of Jean
Cocteau's film Orphee.
30 Carl Gustav Jung. The Collected Works of Carl Jung 15. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1969. Bollingen
Series XXX. 81.
253 SION Endnotes
31 Miguel Serrano. C.G. Jung and Hermann Hesse: A Record of Two Friendships. Trans. Frank
MacShane. Einsiedeln: Daimon Verlag, 1997.
32 C.G. Jung. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Ed. Aniela Jaffe. Trans. Richard and Clara Winston.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1963.
33 A number of critical references connecting the theatre of Beckett and Claudel to Dante are listed in the bibliography.
34 A. C. Charity. Events and Their Afterlife. The Dialectics of Christian Typology in the Bible and
Dante. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1966.167.
Adrianna Paliyenko. "Revealing Divine Order", Misreading the Creative Impulse. Southern Illinois
UP, 1997. 117.
Zoel Saulnier and Eugene Roberto, he Repos du septieme jour. Sources et orientations. Ottawa:
Editions de l'Universite d'Ottawa, 1973.
37 Taoists believed that spirits pervaded nature (both the natural and the inner world). Theologically, they were many manifestations of the one Dao, which could not be represented as an image or a particular thing. The Taoist pantheon mirrored the imperial bureaucracy in heaven and hell: the jade
Emperor ruled over the heavenly spirits assigned to supervise the administration of moral justice in the natural world. The gods in heaven acted like the officials in the world of men. The demons and ghosts of hell were treated like the outlaws of the real world: they were bribed by the people and were ritually arrested. By worshipping spirits, people sought to keep troubles at bay and ensure the blessings of health, wealth, and longevity.
38 Beckett as quoted by James Knowlson in Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett. London:
Bloomsbury, 1996. 219.
39 Hugh Haughton "Purgatory Regained? Dante and Late Beckett", Dante's Modern Afterlife.
Reception and Response from Blake to Heaney. Nick Havely, Ed. New York: St Martin's Press, 1998.
141.
40 Mary Bryden. "No stars without stripes: Beckett et Dante" in Lectures de Beckett, textes reunis par
Michele Touret. Rennes : Presse Universitaires de Rennes, 1998. 173.
41 Richard W. Searver, Ed. Dante, Bruno, Vico, Joyce, A Samuel Beckett Reader. New York: Grove
Press, 1992. 105.
42 Paul Davies. Beckett and Eros. Death of Humanism. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. 18. ^CA SION Endnotes
' Beckett never underwent analysis with C.G. Jung. However, he went through a period of psychoanalysis with Wilfred Ruprecht Bion in London during 1934-35. W.R. Bion (1897-1979) was born in India, came to England at the age of 8, studied medicine at University College, London and underwent training with Melanie Klein. Author of the influential Experiences in Groups, London:
Tavistock, 1961; in the 60s he was president of the British Psychoanalytical Society; he spent his last
10 years in LA. Bion too had a lasting influence on Beckett. For instance Bion's "I cannot promise communication of pure non-sense without the contamination by sense" underlines some of the worries and preoccupations of Beckett's tramps in Godot and Endgame.
44 John Fletcher. "Beckett's Debt to Dante." Nottingham French Studies, vol. 4, no 1, 1965. 51.
45 Susan D. Brienza. "Perilous Journeys on Beckett's Stages. Travelling Through Words." Myth and
Ritual, in the Plays of Samuel Beckett. Kathrine Burkman, Ed. London and Toronto: Associated
University Presses, 1987. 28.
46 K. Foster & P. Boyde Eds. Cambridge Readings in Dante's Comedy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1981.21.
Cormac O Cuilleanain. "Dramatic exchange in the Commedia." Word and Drama in Dante. John C.
Barnes and Jennifer Petrie, Eds. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993. 48.
48 Like Dante, Ionesco was also fascinated by the Gnostic myth preserved by Valentinus of man's creation by angels, the subsequent penetration of the seed of the spirit resulting in the faculty of speech.
49 Eugene Ionesco. A Stroll in the Air. Frenzy for Two, or More. New York: Grove Press, 1965. 102.
50 George Wellwarth. The Theatre of Protest and Paradox. New York: New York University Press,
1964. 63.
' Eugene Ionesco. Journal en miettes. Paris: Mercure de France, 1967. 167.
52 Penelope describes to Odysseus the mysterious gates of the world of Dreams: one made of horn - forecasting the truth of days to come ('true shades' can pass through it, according to Virgil), one of polished elephant's tooth - full of untruth ('false dreams' in Virgil's terms).
' Cf. Colin Duckworth, Angels of Darkness, 89.
54 Octavio Paz. Children of the Mire. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1974. 27-28.
55 "Nous experimentons en ce moment, il me semble, l'aventure renouvelee de la Tour de Babel."
Notes et contre-notes. Paris: Gallimard, 1966. 328.
255 SION Endnotes
According to Niels Bohr, for instance, opposites are only complementary, they co-exist, they do not
contradict or exclude each other (contraria non contradictoria, sed complementa sunt).
57 There is a distinction to be made between absurdist elements used for a comical effect (often
burlesque and farcical, that are out of context within their dramaturgical, ideological rationale: i.e. in
the plays of Plautus and Aristophanes, in commedia dell'arte, 18th century farce and parade, Jarry,
Apollinaire), and the theatre of the absurd of the 50's (plays without a plot and clearly defined
characters where chance and invention prevail, with illogical dialogue and often an ahistorical, non-
dialectical structure or a circular fabula guided by wordplay, centered around the problem of
communication and alienation).
58 Patrice Pavis. Dictionary of the Theatre. Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 1998. 26-7.
Farce is generally defined as a light, comic theatrical piece in which the characters and events are
greatly exaggerated to produce absurd humor. Early examples of farce can be found in the comedies of
Aristophanes, Plautus, and Terence. The farce emerged as a separate genre in 15th-century France with
such plays as the anonymous "La farce de Maitre Pierre Pathelin" (c.1470). Instances of farcical
elements, such as ribald humor, physical buffoonery, and absurd situations can be found in many plays
that are not termed farces, such as the comedies of Moliere, and most of the 18th century fairground
plays. In the 20th century, farce found new expression in the "tragical farces" of Ionesco, Beckett and
Adamov.
60 Emmanuel Jacquart. Le Theatre de derision. Beckett, Ionesco, Adamov. Paris: Gallimard, 1998. 259.
61 "On a dit que j'etais un ecrivain de l'absurde; il y a des mots comme ca qui courent les rues, c'est un
mot a la mode qui ne le sera plus. En tout cas, il est des maintenant assez vague pour ne plus rien vouloir dire et pour tout definir facilement." Notes contre-notes. Paris: Gallimard, 1966. 293.
62 "[...] les valeurs morales ne sont pas accessibles. Et on ne peut pas les definir. Pour les definir, il faudrait prononcer un jugement de valeur, ce qui ne se peut. C'est pourquoi je n'ai jamais ete d'accord avec cette notion de theatre de l'absurde, car il y a la un jugement de valeur. On ne peut meme pas parler du vrai." Samuel Beckett. In Charles Juliet. Rencontre avec Samuel Beckett. Paris: Fata
Morgana, 1986. 27-8.
63 Julia Kristeva. Desire in Language. A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. New York:
Columbia UP, 1980. 148.
64 Samuel Beckett. New York Times, 26 February 1984. 5. ? Notes to Chapter 2: Dante I The apocatastasis, or doctrine of universal redemption, was introduced by Origen and the Greek Church Fathers in the Orthodox East, as a tamer of the terror of a discriminating Last Judgment. This doctrine was never adopted in the Latin West. * Gounelle, Remi and Zbigniew Izydorczyk, Eds. Evangile de Nicodeme. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1997. 3 The text used in this study is a translation of the Latin version A. Evangile de Nicodeme Transl. Remi Gounelle and Zbigniew Izydorczyk. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1997. William Henry Hulme. The Middle English Harrowing of Hell and Gospel of Nicodemus. London, New York, Toronto: Oxford UP, 1961. 62. 5 Mentioned in the Fourth Formula of Sirmium. 6 Cf. J. E. Wells. Manual of the Writing in Middle English. New Haven, 1926. 326. Quoted by Amilcare lannucci in "Beatrice in Limbo: A Metaphoric Harrowing of Hell." Dante Studies 97, 1979. 27. 7 For instance: "Lamentatio beate Marie de filio" or the Perugian devozione, "Pianto per la Passione di Cristo." The text was previously known under a few other names: Gesta Salvatoris, Acts of Pilate, Acts of Pontius Pilate. 9 Io era nuovo in questo stato, quando ci vidi venire un possente, con segno di vittoria coronato. (Inferno 4.52-4) 10 Amilcare lannucci. "Beatrice in Limbo: A Metaphoric Harrowing of Hell." Dante Studies 97, 1979. 25. II Amilcare lannucci "The Gospel of Nicodemus in Medieval Italian Literature: A Preliminary Assessment." The Medieval Gospel, of Nicodemus. Texts, Intertexts, and Contexts in Western Europe. Ed. Zbiniew Izydorczyk. Tempe: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1997. 203. 12 "And I, noting his pallor..." (Inferno 4.16.); 13 "That pallor which cowardice painted outwardly on me..." (Inferno 9.1) 257 SION Endnotes 14 "Now I want you to know before you go further..." (Inferno 4.33) 15 "And I want you to know that before these..." {Inferno 4.62) 16 "Now I want you to know that the other time..." (Inferno 12.34) 17 Cf. The Apostle's Creed. Lloyd Howard. Formulas of Repetition in the Commedia: signposted journeys across textual space. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001. 50. 19 Ier, piu oltre cinqu'ore che quest'otta, mille dugento con sessanta sei anni compie che qui la via fu rotta. (Inferno 21.112-4) Amilcare lannucci "The Gospel of Nicodemus in Medieval Italian Literature: A Preliminary Assessment." 204. 21 Umberto Bosco. Dante Aligheri: Inferno. Torino: Edizioni RAI, 1962. 65. 22 Umberto Bosco. Dante Aligheri: Inferno. Torino: Edizioni RAI, 1962. 68. 23 Gospel of Nicodemus. Chapter 20.1. 24 Chapter. 21.1. There are slight variations of the text in the different manuscripts, for instance: "Retire-toi de moi! Sors hors de mon sejour, si tu est un guerrier puissant, pour combattre le Roi de Gloire!" (...) "Fermez les portes de bronze, etres inhumains! Placez-y les verrous de fer et resister avec courage..." (Gounelle 192). "Depart from me quickly and go out of my dwelling; and if you are as mighty as you have said before, then fight now against the King of Glory, and let it be between you and Him." (...) "Close the cruel gates of bronze, and shut the iron bars in front, and withstand him firmly, and hold fast the captives, so that we are not captured" (J.E. Cross 215). 25 Robert Hollander. II Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella "Commedia." Firenze: Leo Olschki Editore, 1983. 128. 26 Ibidem. 27 Giorgio Padoan. Ilpio Enea, I'empio Ulisse : tradizione classica e intendimento medievale in Dante. Ravenna: Longo, 1977. 150. 28 Gospel of Nicodemus. Chapter 21.1. Also Ps. xxiv. 7. 29 David Quint. "Epic Tradition and Inferno IX." Dante Studies XCIB, 1975. 202. 30 Jeffrey T. Schnapp "Lucanian Estimations." Seminario dantesco internazionale. Ed. Zygmunt Baranski. Florence: Casa editrice de lettere, 1997. 122. ryco SION Endnotes 31 Robert Hollander. // Virgilio dantesco: tragedia nella "Commedia." Firenze: Leo Olschki Editore, 1983. 153. 32 Amilcare Iannucci. "Virgil's Erichlhian Descent and the Crisis of Textuality." Forum Italicum 33.1, 1999. 17. 33 David Quint. "Epic Tradition and Inferno IX" Dante Studies XCIII, 1975. 207. 34 Dante borrows his account of Medusa's ability to petrify from Ovid: Metamorphoses 4. 793-803. 35 Gospel of Nicodemus. Chapter 21.3. 36 Gospel of Nicodemus. Chapter 22.1. 37 Hades tells Satan: "All that thou hast gained through the tree of knowledge, all hast thou lost through the tree of the cross: and all thy joy has been turned into grief; and wishing to put to death the King of Glory, thou hast put thyself to death." Gospel of Nicodemus. Chapter 23.1. 38 According to the Gospel of Nicodemus, Christ was crucified together with two thieves: the one who believed in Christ was received in Heaven after death, the other one was damned. See also Waiting for Godot (9). 39 Benvenuto da Imola and Pietro di Dante assimilate the verghetta with the caduceus of the god Mercury. They further identify Mercury with Eloquence and the angel of mediation. 40 John Freccero The Poetics of Conversion. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986. 121. "Voi ch'avete li'ntelletti sani / mirate la dottrina che s'asconde / sotto'l velame de li versi strani." Inferno 9.61-3. 42 John Freccero The Poetics of Conversion. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986. 124. 43 Mark Musa. Advent at the Gates: Dante's Comedy. Bloomington and London: Indiana UP, 1974. 66. 44 Amilcare Iannucci. "Beatrice in Limbo: A Metaphoric Harrowing of Hell." Dante Studies 97, 1979. 26. Saint Bonaventure. The Journey of the Mind into God. Itinerarium Mentis in Deum. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993. 24. 46 See, inter alia, William Henry Matthews, Mazes and Labyrinths: Their History and Development. New York: Dover Publications, 1970; Paolo Santarcangeli, // libro dei labirinti: storia di un mito e di un simbolo. Firenze: Vallecchi, 1967; Hermann Kern, Through the Labyrinth: Designs and Meanings over 5,000 years. Munich: Prestel, 2000. 259 SION Endnotes 47 The infernal ruins are reminders of hell's/labyrinth's historical extricability through the harrowing of Christ-Theseus. 48 Aristotle. Metaphysics. Trans. Hugh Tredennick. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1933. 33. 49 In the Middle Ages, the addition of the number one to any number signified added unity. It had a transcendental effect of bringing wholeness to the number. For instance, the number of the Holy Spirit is 50: 7 x 7 + 1. 50 "And that pattern is so clearly terminated by 151 at equal distance on either side that no one can fail to see it so." Charles Singleton. "The Poet's Number at the Center." MLN 80.1 (1965) 4. "' The crucial role of the framing number seven in the Commedia can be further demonstrated. Singleton also shows that Dante sets off a seven-canto area at the beginning of the Inferno and at the end of Paradiso. Cf. The Divine Comedy, vol. 3. Trans, and commented by C.S. Singleton. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1970. 576-7. The invocation to the muses, at the beginning of the Inferno and Purgatorio, starts on the seventh line of canto 1. In Inferno 4, the Noble Castle has seven walls and seven gates, signifying the seven liberal arts or the seven virtues. According to John Guzzardo, the emphasis on number seven can also be noticed in Paradiso 22. 133-4, where Dante is asked to look back at the seven spheres that he had just passed; in Paradiso 28. 31-33 the only heavenly sphere that has a whole terzina dedicated to itself is the seventh one; when the poet lists the angelic orders, special attention is given to the angels occupying the seventh sphere - Paradiso 28. 103-5; in regards to the seating arrangement of the Celestial Rose, only seven names are mentioned up to the seventh rank: Mary, Rachel, Beatrice, Sarah, Rebecca, Judith, Ruth - Par. 32.4-16 (if we disregard Eve, seated at Mary's feet). 52 God is a sphere whose center is everywhere. 53 Archivfur Literatur und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters,t. II, 1886. 571. 54 Theory of the Novel, 63. 55 www.italianstudies.org/comedv/Paradiso int.htm 56 Cf. Trans. Allen Mandelbaum: In its profundity I saw - ingathered and bound by love into a single volume, what in the universe, seems separate, scattered...(Par. 33. 85-87) 57 Trans. Allen Mandelbaum: 260 SION Endnotes one circle seemed reflected by the second, as rainbow is by rainbow and the third seemed fire breathed equally by those two circles. {Par. 33. 118-20) Eternal Light, You only dwell within Yourself, and only You know You; Self-knowing, Self-known, you love and smile upon Yourself! That circle which begotten so, appeared in You as light reflected... (Par. 33. 123-8) 58 Trans. Allen Mandelbaum: As the geometer intently seeks To square the circle but he cannot reach Through thought on thought the principle he needs, So I searched that strange sight: I wished to see The way in which our human effigy Suited the circle and found place in it- And my own wings were far too weak for that. (Par. 33. 133-9) 59 Trans. Allen Mandelbaum: so, constellated in the depth of Mars, those rays described the venerable sign a circle's quadrants form where they are joined. And here my memory defeats my wit: Christ flaming from that cross was such that I can find no fit similitude for it. (Par. 14. 100-105) Notes to Chapter 3: Claudel 1 "Introduction a un poeme sur Dante." Positions et propositions. Paris: Gallimard, 1938. 11-186. 261 SION Endnotes 2 Paul Claudel. "Lettre inedite a Louis Gillet". 25 June 1941. Quoted by Odile Vetoe in her unpublished doctoral thesis Dante et Claudel. Bibliotheque de la Sorbonne, 1963. 7. 3 Paul Claude], "Discours de reception a l'Academie francaise" (12 mars 1947). Oeuvres en prose, ed. Ch. Galperine et Jean Petit, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade. Paris: Gallimard, 1973. 648. 4 Gaston Bachelard, La Poetique de I'espace. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967. 139. " According to St. Augustine, Sunday is the eighth day of the week and the day Christ was resurrected. He speaks about".. .the resurrection of the Lord after the Sabbath, the day which is certainly the eighth, and at the same time the first day" (St. Augustine. Our Lord's Sermon on the Mount. Trans. Rev. William Findlay. New York: 1903. 7) The symbolism of the eighth day is linked to baptism, circumcision, spiritual rebirth, resurrection. Before Baptism, circumcision was the means by which man wss incorporated in Christ. St. Thomas explains: "The eighth day was fixed for circumcision: first, because of the mystery; since, Christ, by taking away from the elect, not only guilt, but also penalties, will perfect the spiritual circumcision, in the eighth age (which is the age of those that rise again), as it were, on the eighth day" (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, pt. Ill, q. 70, art. 3, r.o.3) 6 The days of the week are: a segunda-feira, a terca-feira, a quarta feira, a quinta-feira, a sexta-feira, o sabado, o domingo. 7 Mise en scene by Pierre Franck; the demon was played by the famous Maria Casares, Mme Jandeline appeared in the role of the Mother, and Fernand Ledoux as the Emperor. The third act was reduced considerably, and the play was a success. 8 Jacques Houriez. Le Repos du septieme jour de Paul Claudel. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1987. 37. 9 For a detailed discussion of the descent motif, see Amilcare Iannucci's "The Gospel of Nicodemus in Medieval Italian Literature: A Preliminary Assessment." The Medieval Gospel of Nicodemus. Texts, Intertexts, and Contexts in Western Europe. Ed. Zbiniew Izydorczyk. Tempe: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1997. 10 Gospel of Nicodemus. Chapter 21. Also see Ps. XXIV. 7. 11 Dante borrows his account of Medusa's ability to petrify from Ovid: Metamorphoses 4. 793-803. 12 Hades tells Satan: "All that thou hast gained through the tree of knowledge, all hast thou lost through the tree of the cross: and all thy joy has been turned into grief; and wishing to put to death the King of glory, thou hast put thyself to death." Gospel of Nicodemus. Chapter 23. SION Endnotes 13 Benvenuto da Imola and Pietro di Dante assimilate the verghetta with the caduceus of the god Mercury. They further identify Mercury with Eloquence and the angel of mediation. 14 Antony Viscusi "Order and Passion in Claudel and Dante" French Review. No. 30, 1957. 449. 15 Seven, as a compound of three and four, is the number par excellence, the factor number in every ancient religion and in nature. 16 Paul Claudel et Andre Gide, Correspondence 1899-1926. Paris: Gallimard, 1949. 91. 17 Quoted by Claudine Chonez, Introduction a Paul Claudel. Paris: Albin Michel, 1947. 166. 18 Quoted by C.N. Rigolot in "The Symbol of the Circle and the Centre in the Works of Claudel," Claudel Studies I, No. 2, 1973: 53. 19 Paul Claudel, Memoires improvises, Jean Amrouche, ed. Paris: Gallimard, 1954. 132. 20 Nancy J. Vickers, "Claudel's Delectation in Dante." Claudel Studies VIII, No. 1, 1981: 28-41. * Hoy, David. The Critical Circle: literature, history, and philosophical hermeneutics. California: University of California Press, 1978. 24. 22 This refers to the lines 25-63, as suggested by my colleague Jenna Sunkenberg. She further makes valuable comments on the process of interpretation in "Purgatorio XXI's Hermeneutic Circle", Transverse 6 (2006): 86-95. According to her, Purgatorio XII employs a quadruple anaphora in a three-part sequence to represent the process by which one interprets and comes to an understanding. Again, we have to notice here the variation between the threefold and the fourfold, divine and human. The sequence begins with the poet's recalling his experience of having "seen" the artwork engraved on the walls and floor of Purgatory's first terrace. The first anaphora "vedea" ("I saw") occurs four times followed by the repeated exclamation "O;" the sequence concludes with the four-fold repetition of the verb "mostrava" ("It showed"). Dante expresses the achievement of completing a cycle of interpretation in the verse that immediately follows the last anaphora of the three-part series: "Vedeva Troia in cenere e in caverne; / o Ilion, come te basso e vile / mostrava il segno che li si discernel" (I saw Troy turned to caverns and to ashes; / O Ilium, your effigy in stone- / it showed you there so squalid, so cast down) (61-3). Here Dante repeats the progression of words previously given in the extensive anaphora: "vedeva," "o," and "mostrava," only now it is completed with the word "discerne" which concludes the interpretive act. The acrostic VOM also signifies man In Italian. Thus, the passage, a fictional representation of the process of interpretation, is specifically described as a function of the human condition encoded in - SION Endnotes the divine circle. Interpretation is a gift bestowed upon the human species through divine grace, hence the threefold structure within which each letter of the acrostic is repeated four times; therefore, to interpret properly the ways of salvation is one of man's goals in life. As Dante's Commedia demonstrates, proper interpretation places one on the right path towards God. 23 According to Jenna Sunkenberg, Ricoeur's "descending analytics" would incorporate the "vedere" phase and the "O" phase, when applied to Dante's interpretation theory. The "ascending dialectics" would begin with the oscillation at the end of the "O" state which marks an ascending movement along the circle as it passes through the "mostrare" phase performed by the artwork and culminates in the individual's discernment. The point at which Dante's interpreter shifts towards an upward movement of understanding can be portrayed by Ricoeur's description of the moment of extracting the truthful meaning from the polisemy of the text. This moment of transition "is also the moment of the hermeneutic circle between understanding initiated by the reader and the proposals of meaning offered by the text" (Ricoeur 108). 24 Ricoeur, Paul. Interpretation Theory. Texas: Texas University Press, 1976. 75. 25 Zoel Saulnier and Eugene Roberto, Le Repos du septieme jour. Sources et orientations. Ottawa: Editions del'Universite d'Ottawa, 1973. 25. 26 Paul Claudel. "Lettre inedite a Louis Gillet". 25 June 1941. Quoted by Odile Vetoe in her unpublished doctoral thesis Dante et Claudel. Bibliotheque de la Sorbonne, 1963. 10. 27 A. C. Charity, Events and Their Afterlife. The Dialectics of Christian Typology in the Bible and Dante. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1966. 167. 28 Adrianna Paliyenko, "Revealing Divine Order" in Misreading the Creative Impulse. Southern Illinois UP, 1997. 117. 29 Claudel quoted by Zoel Saulnier, Le Repos du septieme jour. Sources et orientations. 116. Notes to Chapter 4: Beckett 1 Neal Oxenhandler. "Seeing and Believing in Dante and Beckett." Dante Among the Moderns. Chapel Hill and London: U of North Carolina Press, 1985. 218. SION Endnotes ' Samuel Beckett. How It Is in A Samuel Beckett Reader. Ed. Richard W. Seaver. New York: Grove Press, 1992. 536-7. 3 John Fletcher. "Beckett's Debt to Dante", Nottingham. French Studies IV.l (1965): 49. 4 Dante...Bruno. Vico...Joyce. A Samuel Beckett Reader. Ed. Richard W. Seaver. New York: Grove Press, 1992.126. 5 In the Bible, Ham is one of the three sons of Noah from whom a great majority of the southern nations could trace their descent (Genesis 10); ham (Hebrew) [from ham hot, warm]. Some scholars consider ham as equivalent to khem (black), the native name of Egypt, for Chem is the name of Egypt in the Qabbalah {Encyclopedic Theosophical Glossary. Theosophical University Press, 1999). Noah and his sons cosmically represent the collective symbol of the lower quaternary, "Ham being the Chaotic principle." (Secret Doctrine by Helena Blavatsky, vol. 2:597) 6 Samuel Beckett. The Unnamable, in Molloy, Malone Dies. The Unnamable. London: Calder, 1959. 293. 7 Michel Foucault. Dits et ecrits, tome I a IV. Paris: Gallimard, 1994. Tome I: 608 and 650. 8 Hugh Haughton. "Purgatory Regained? Dante and Late Beckett." Dante's Modern Afterlife. Reception and Response from Blake to Heaney. Ed. Nick Havely. New York: Macmillan Press, 1998. 142. 9 Samuel Beckett, "Text", quoted by Lawrence E. Harvey, Samuel Beckett; poet and critic (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1970) 287. ,0 However, this correlation was once mentioned and developed in existentialist terms by Lois A. • Cuddy in an article from 1982. " In Problemi di critica dantesca: Seconda serie, 1930-1937, Michele Barbi indicates that at the root of vilta (cowardice) lies pusillanimity. The latter constitutes the cause, while the former is only the effect. 12 The Divine Comedy, translated with a commentary by Charles S. Singleton, vol. 1. Inferno, part 2: Commentary. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1970. 13 Maria Picchio Simonelli. Inferno III. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania Press, 1993. 5. 14 Walter A. Strauss. "Dante's Belacqua and Beckett's Tramps," Comparative Literature 11 (1959): 255. 265 SION Endnotes 15 Steven Carter. "Estragon's Ancient Wound: A Note on Waiting for Godot." Journal of Beckett Studies 6.1 (1997): 125-33. 16 Samuel Beckett. "Three Dialogues" with Georges Duthuit, quoted in Samuel Beckett: A Collection of Critical Essays. Martin Esslin, Ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1965. 17. 17 Thomas M. Greene, "Dramas of Selfhood in the Comedy," From Time to Eternity, ed. Thomas G. Bergin. New Haven: Yale UP, 1967. 104. 1 A. C. Charity, Events and Their Afterlife. The Dialectics of Christian Typology in the Bible and Dante. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1966. 190. 19 Erich Auerbach, Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1968. 193. 20 Erich Auerbach, Mimesis, 192. 21 Quoted in C.G. Jung, Word and Image, Aniela Jaffe, Ed. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1979. 74. 22 Samuel Beckett. Proust. London: Calder: 1965. 60. J.E. Dearlove. Accommodating the Chaos. Samuel Beckett's Nonrelational Art. Durham NC: Duke U.P., 1982. 118. J.M. Coetzee. "Samuel Beckett's Lessness: An Exercise in Decomposition." Computers and the Humanities 1, no. 4 (March 1973): 195-98. 25 Samuel Beckett. Proust. 55. 26 Edith Kern, "Beckett's Modernity and Medieval Affinities," Critical Essays on Samuel Beckett. Patrick A. McCarthy, Ed. Boston: G. K. Hall & co., 1986. 149. 27 John Calder. Beckett and Philosophy. London: Calder Publications, 2001. 94. 28 Mentioned in an interview with Harold Hobson: "Samuel Beckett: Dramatist of the Year." International Theatre Annual 1. London: John Calder, 1956. 153-5; also discussed by Ruby Cohn in "Waiting." Critical Essays on Samuel Beckett, Patrick A. McCarthy, Ed. Boston: G. K. Hall & co., 1986. 155. 29 See David Green, "A Note on Augustine's Thieves." Journal of Beckett Studies 3.2 (1994): 77-8. Green suggests that "a conflation of the judgement of the thieves and the admonition of tractate XLEX occurred sometimes after Augustine," as Augustine's comment has a different shape from that recalled by Beckett. SION Endnotes 30 Samuel Beckett, quoted by Martin Esslin in "The Search for the Self." Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Harold Bloom, Ed. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. 33. 31 Bert O. States, "The Language of Myth," Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Harold Bloom, Ed. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. 79. 32 Samuel Beckett. Proust. London: Calder, 1965. 67. 33 Michael Robinson. "From Purgatory to Inferno: Beckett and Dante Revisited." Journal of Beckett Studies 5 {1919): 1%. 34 It is similar to a song that appears in Brecht's Drums in the Night (1923). Also see Hans Mayer "Brecht, Beckett und ein Hund," TH 13.6 (1972): 25-7. 35 Gilles Deleuze. Difference and Repetition. Mansell: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2001. 36-7. 36 Samuel Beckett. En Attendant Godot. Paris: Editions du Minuit, 1952. 86. 37 Beckett and Roussillon. http://www.luberon-news.com/samuel-beckett/index2.htm 38 Edith Kern. "Beckett's Modernity and Medieval Affinities." 151. 39 Shimon Levy. Samuel Beckett's Self-Referential Drama. The Sensitive Chaos. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2002. 117. 40 "io vidi piu di mille in su le porte..." {Inf. 8.82). 41 Ihab Hassan, among many, points out that the two acts - the two arrivals of the messenger - are enough to suggest a sequence stretching to infinity. 42 Maurice Blanchot. Awaiting Oblivion. Trans. John Gregg. Lincoln: U of Nebraska Press, 1997. 49- 50. 43 Samuel Beckett. "Four Poems: Dieppe", The New Oxford Book of Irish Verse, ed. and trans. Thomas Kinsela. New York: Oxford UP, 1989. 338. 44 Samuel Beckett, "Three Dialogues" with Georges Duthuit, quoted in Samuel Beckett: A Collection of Critical Essays, Martin Esslin, Ed. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1965. 21. 45 J.E. Dearlove. Accomodating the Chaos. Samuel Beckett's Nonrelational Art. Durham NC: Duke U.P., 1982. 61. 46 Quoted by William Bole, "Marshall McLuhan: The 'Medium' is the Message." Our Sunday Visitor April 25, 2001. Online: http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/media/me0023.html SION Endnotes 47 Beckett explicitly talks about "those nor for God nor for his enemies" in For to end yet again and other fizzles. London: Calder, 1976, 12. 4 Eva Metman. "Reflections on Samuel Beckett's Plays." Samuel Beckett. A Collection of Critical Essays. Martin Esslin, Ed. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1965. 123. 49 Lois Cuddy suggests that originally, Lucky and Pozzo would have been terrestrial beings, and then, through repentance eventually become angels in the Afterworld. They subsequently fell from grace, as they remained neutral and stood apart. 50 Martin Esslin. Theatre of the Absurd. New York: Anchor Books, 1961. 21. 51 Eva Metman, "Reflections on Samuel Beckett's Plays," 129. John Calder. The Philosophy of Samuel Beckett. 59. 53 Samuel Beckett. How it is. London: Calder, 1964. 121. 54 Samuel Beckett. Lessness, in A Samuel Beckett Reader. Richard Seaver, Ed. New York: Grove Press, 1992. 557. 55 Beckett stipulates under the heading colours: "No symbolic link colour-percussion." As always, the playwright tries to avoid the unwanted hermeneutics. Ruth Kligman. Love Affair: A Memoir of Jackson Pollock. New York: Morrow, 1974. 69. 57 Peggy Phelan. "Lessons in Blindness from Samuel Beckett." PMLA. 119. 5 (October 2004): 1285. 58 Samuel Beckett. "La peinture des Van Velde." Disjecta. Ruby Cohn, Ed. New York: Grove Press, 1984. 125. 59 Pointed out by Steven Carter in "Estragon's Ancient Wound." 130. 60 Walter A. Strauss. "Dante's Belacqua and Beckett's Tramps." 257. 61 Richard Anthony Cavell considers the flowering tree as a clear sign of Purgatory: "This is perhaps the clearest allusion to the Purgatorio, where, in the Earthly Paradise, the Tree of Knowledge bursts into blossom when touched by the pole of the Chariot of the Church. Allegorically, this signifies that when Christ, the second Adam (the chariot pole) is united with the first Adam (the tree), man's dead nature (the barren tree) is given new life" (124-5). 62 "The Problem of the Fourth." C.G. Jung on Evil. Murray Stein, Ed. London: Routledge, 1995. 53. 63 Gospel ofNicodemus. Remi Gounelle and Zbigniew Izydorczyk, Eds. Turnhout: Brepols, 1997. 199. 268 SION Endnotes 64 The Latin may be found in Tractate XXXI, Section II. Cursus Completus Patrologiae Latinae Tomus XXXV, S. Aurelius Augustinus. Parisiis: Apud Gamier fratres editores, 1902. English: Saint Augustin. Homilies on the Gospel according to St. John and his first Epistle. Oxford: J.H. Parker, 1848-9. 65 Samuel Beckett. "Dante...Bruno. Vico...Joyce." A Samuel Beckett Reader. Richard W. Seaver, Ed. New York: Grove Press, 1992. 125-6. For a detailed discussion of Beckett's three realms see Katharine Worth: "Heaven, Hell and the Space Between." Samuel Beckett's Theatre. Life Journeys. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. 48-65. 66 Daniella Caselli. "Looking It Up in My Big Dante: A Note on "Sedendo et Quiescendo." Journal of Beckett Studies 6. 2 (1997): 88. 67 Michael Robinson. "From Purgatory to Inferno: Beckett and Dante Revisited." 70. 68 Samuel Beckett. "Dante...Bruno. Vico...Joyce."107. 69 Christopher Ricks. Beckett's Dying Words. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. 27. 70 J.E. Dearlove. Accomodating the Chaos. Samuel Beckett's Nonrelational Art, 62. 71 Ibidem. 72 V.A. Kolve. "Religious Language in Waiting for Godot." The Centennial Review 11, no. 1 (Winter 1967): 12. 73 Samuel Beckett in an interview with Tom F. Driver: "Beckett by the Madeleine." Columbia University Forum 4 (Summer 1961): 23. 74 Didier Anzieu. "Beckett and the Psychoanalyst." Journal of Beckett Studies 4.1 (1994): 32. 75 Quoted by Lois A. Cuddy in "Beckett's 'Dead Voices' in Waiting for Godot": New Inhabitants of Dante's Inferno." Modern Language Studies 12. 2 (1982): 49. Notes to Chapter 5: Ionesco 1 Rollo May. The Cry for Myth. New York: W. W. Norton & Comp, 1991. 2 Carl Gustav Jung. The Collected Works of Carl Jung. Bollingen Series XXX. 15. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1969. 104. 3 Claude Bonnefoy. Conversations with Eugene Ionesco, trans. Jan Dawson. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1966. 143. 269 SION Endnotes 4 Eliade Mircea. Le Mythe de I'eternel retour. Paris: Gallimard, 1949. 73. 5 Eugene lonesco Notes and Counter Notes, trans. Donald Watson. New York: Grove Press, 1964. 158- 159. 6 Emmanuel Jacquart. Le Theatre de derision. Beckett, lonesco, Adamov. Paris: Gallimard, 1998. 258. 7 This is in reference to Paul Claudel's Le Repos du septieme jour. Theatre I. Paris: Gallimard, 1947. 725-790. 8 Eugene lonesco. Present Past, Past Present, trans. Helen Lane. New York: Grove Press, 1971. 90. 9 Eugene lonesco. Notes and Counter Notes, trans. Donald Watson. New York: Grove Press, 1964. 179. 10 Eugene lonesco. Notes and Counter Notes. 181. 11 Eugene lonesco. Man With Bags. New York: Grove Press, 1977. '" Mircea Eliade. Le Mythe de I'eternel retour. Paris: Gallimard, 1949. 23. 13 For a detailed examination of labyrinths, see Penelope Doob. The Idea of the Labyrinth. From Classical Antiquity Through the Middle Ages. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press: 1990. 14 Quoted by Marie-Claude Hubert in Eugene lonesco. Paris: Seuil, 1990. 235. lonesco calls Eastern Europe "Empire du milieu", recalling Paul Claudel's use of the term in the context of Le Repos du septieme jour. See also Claudel's notion of "milieu". 15 Eugene lonesco. Themes et variations ou Voyage chez lei marts. La Nouvelle Revue Francaise, No. 324, 325, 326 (ler Janvier - fevrier - mars 1980). 16 Penelope describes to Odysseus the mysterious gates of the world of Dreams/Sleep: one made of horn - forecasting the truth of days to come, one of polished elephant's tooth - full of untruth. 17 Rosette Lamont. The Dream and the Play, lonesco's Theatrical Quest. Malibu: Undena Publications, 1982. 105. 18 lonesco was born in Slatina, a town not far from the Danube, where his father's family lived. He often ironically says about himself: "I'm only a peasant from the Danube". 19 Melanie Klein. "Mourning and Its Relations to Manic-Depressive States" (1940) in Love, Guilt and Reparation. London: Virago Press, 1988. 345. 20 Hanna Segal. Introduction to the Work of Melanie Klein, New York: Basic Books, 1974. 76. 2J Edward Nolan. "The Forbidden Forest: Mircea Eliade as Artist and Shaman" in Mircea Eliade in Perspective. 115. 270 SION Endnotes Walter Strauss. Descent and Return. The Orphic Theme in Modern Literature. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1971. 23 Eliade Mircea. No Souvenirs- Journal: 1957-1969. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. 84-85. 24 Marie-Claude Hubert. Eugene lonesco. Paris: Seuil, 1990. 211. 25 Michael Palencia-Roth. Myth and the Modern Novel. London: Garland Publishing, 1987. 49. 26 Michael Palencia-Roth. Myth and the Modern Novel. 30. 27 Reference to Paul Claudel's he Repos du septieme jour. Theatre I. Paris: Gallimard, 1947. 725-790. 28 Mircea Eliade. "Lumiere et transcendance dans l'oeuvre d'Eugene lonesco". lonesco: Situation et perspectives. Paris: Pierre Belfond, 1980. 126. 29 Eugene lonesco. "A propos de Beckett". Antidotes. Paris: Gallimard, 1977. 209. 30 Paul Claudel. "Introduction a un poeme sur Dante." Positions et propositions. Paris: Gallimard, 1938.11-186. 1 Carl Gustav Jung. The Collected Works of Carl Jung 15. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1969. Bollingen Series XXX. 82. ' Neil Oxenhandler. "Seeing and Believing in Dante and Beckett". Dante Among the Moderns. Stuart Y. McDougal, ed. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina Press. 1985. 216. 3 Brian McHale. "Change of Dominant from Modernist to Postmodernist Writing" in Approaching Postmodernism, ed. Douwe W. Fokkema and Hans Bertens (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1986. 58- 60. 4 Matei Calinescu. Five Faces of Modernity. Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. Durham: Duke UP, 1987. 87. 5 Breon Mitchell in "Samuel Beckett and the Postmodernism Controversy" labels Beckett as well as Joyce as a modernists (118) and claims that Beckett's "quest for a minimal verbal consciousness (...) represents the culmination of Modernism itself (117). In Exploring Postmodernism. Eds. Calinescu & Fokkema. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1987. 109-21. 6 Cf. Brian Fitch. Dimensions, structures, textualite dans la trilogie de Beckett. Paris: Minard, 1977. 92. 7 Umberto Eco. "Reflections on The Name of the Rose". Encounter 64 (1985): 7-19. 271 SION Endnotes Cf. Immanuel Kant. Noumenon (Ding an sich / The Thing-in-Itself) is distinguished from phenomenon (Erscheinung / Appearance), The noumenal is unknowable, whereas the laws of the phenomenal world can be apprehended. 9 Ihab Hassan. "Joyce, Beckett, and the Postmodern Imagination". TriQuaterly 34 (1975): 179-200. 10 Beckett, Texts for Nothing, Text 5, 95. 11 Gaston Bachelard. La Poetique de Vespace. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967. 139. 12 This does not exclude Beckett's mystical penchant. According to several commentators, for instance Lawrence Held, Beckett had all the hallmarks of an Eastern mystic. 13 Walter Asmus is a distinguished theatre director and professor of drama (currently head of drama at the Hochschule fur Musik und Drama in Hannover) who worked with Beckett as his assistant in the famous 1974-5 Schiller Theater production of Waiting for Godot in Berlin. The quotation given here was mentioned several times at recent conferences during the Beckett Centenary celebrations in Reading, UK, Dublin, Ireland and Sydney, Australia, 2006. 14 Colin Duckworth Angels of Darkness. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1972. 52. 15 Jerzy Peterkiewicz. The Other Side of Silence, 1970. 16 Michel Foucault. The Order of Things. New York: Vintage Books, 1973. 339. 17 Maurice Blanchot. The Infinite Conversation. Trans. Susan Hanson. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 1993. 300. L'Entretien infini. Paris: Gallimard, 1969. 442. 18 Martin Heidegger. On the Way to Language. (Unterwegs zur Sprache, 1959) Trans. P. Hertz and J. Stambaugh. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. 7. 19 Luigi Pirandello. Prefazione: Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore. Maschere nude 1. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1952. 22. 20 Lawrence Held is a prominent actor who was directed by Beckett in several productions of Endgame and Waiting for Godot, and worked with Beckett on and off from the mid-1970s to 1988. Quoted by L. Held, "Myths Behind the Masks", The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday December 21, 1996. -1 The Apokatastasis is the theory of universal redemption, which is the final purpose and overall design of the created world. (Cf. Greek philosopher Origen). Even though nature and history go through cycles of waxing and waning, the world is implacably turning back to its creator. 22 Rick Cluchey is the founder of the famous San Quentin Drama Workshop in 1957 while serving a life sentence in the Californian prison. The words I am referring to are quoted from a 1982 programme 272 SION Endnotes of the "Beckett Directs Beckett" Australian tour. Further details on the Beckett-Cluchey collaboration can be found in James Knowlson, Theatre Workbook I. Samuel Beckett: Krapp's Last Tape. London: Brutus Books Limited, 1980. 120-146. 23 Kevin Charles O'Neill. The Voyage from Dante to Beckett. Doctoral Thesis. Berkeley: U of California, 1985. 17. 24 Beckett's cryptic work can be read in an esoteric-mystical way, for instance, the insistent presence of the letters M and W (Molloy, Moran, Malone, Murphy, Mercier, Watt) recalls the Sanskrit OM. 25 Samuel Beckett. "Four Poems: Dieppe", The New Oxford Book of Irish Verse, ed. and trans. Thomas Kinsela. New York: Oxford UP, 1989. 337-338. 26 Osip Mandelstam. "Conversations about Dante". In The Complete Critical Prose and Letters. Trans. Jane Gary Harris and Constance Link. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1979. 420. 27 Imitatio Christi. was published anonymously in AD 1418 and attributed to Thomas a Kempis. Its purpose is to instruct the soul in Christian perfection. It consists of a series of counsels of perfection written in Latin in a familiar style, and is divided into four parts or books. 28 Silvano Simoni. "Introduzione all'lmitazione di Cristo". Mistici del XIV secolo. Torino: Editrice Torinese, 1972. 9-31. In Inferno 26: 118-20, Ulysses urges his companions: "Considerate la vostra semenza: / fatti non foste a viver come bruti, / ma per seguire virtute e canoscenza" (Consider well the seed that gave you birth: / you were not made to live your lives as brutes, / but to be followers of worth and knowledge.") 273