Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 4-22-2013 12:00 AM Beyond the Suffering of Being: Desire in Giacomo Leopardi and Samuel Beckett Roberta Cauchi-Santoro The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Jonathan Boulter The University of Western Ontario Joint Supervisor Luca Pocci The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Comparative Literature A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Roberta Cauchi-Santoro 2013 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, Italian Literature Commons, and the Modern Languages Commons Recommended Citation Cauchi-Santoro, Roberta, "Beyond the Suffering of Being: Desire in Giacomo Leopardi and Samuel Beckett" (2013). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 1247. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/1247 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BEYOND THE SUFFERING OF BEING: DESIRE IN GIACOMO LEOPARDI AND SAMUEL BECKETT (Thesis format: monograph) by Roberta Cauchi-Santoro Graduate Program in Comparative Literature A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © Roberta Cauchi-Santoro 2013 Abstract In this dissertation, I question critical approaches that argue for Giacomo Leopardi’s and Samuel Beckett’s pessimism and nihilism. Beckett quotes Leopardi when discussing the removal of desire in his monograph Proust, a context that has spurred pessimist and nihilist readings, whether the focus has been on one writer, the other, or both. I argue that the inappropriateness of the pessimist and nihilist label is, on the contrary, specifically exposed through the role of desire in the two thinkers. After tracing the notion of desire as it developed from Leopardi to key twentieth-century thinkers, I illustrate how, in contrast to the Greek concept of ataraxia as a form of ablation of desire, the desire of and for the Other is central in the two authors’ oeuvres. That is, while the two writers’ attempt to reach the respective existential cores of Beckettian “suffering of being” and Leopardian “souffrance” might seem to point towards the celebrated nothingness of their existential quest, closer examination reveals that the attempt to still desire common to both authors is frustrated and outdone by a combative desire that pervades their later work. Hence, while the desire to cease desiring is at the philosophical kernel of both authors’ oeuvre, it also draws attention to and exacerbates the inextinguishable quality of desire. Looking at Leopardi’s later poetry in the ciclo d’Aspasia, including the last poem “La Ginestra, o il fiore del deserto,” and examining Beckett’s plays Endgame, Happy Days, Krapp’s Last Tape and Not I, I argue that desire in Leopardi and Beckett could be read as lying at the cusp between Jacques Lacan’s and Emmanuel Levinas’ theories, a desire that both splits the subject (and is thus based on lack) as much as it moulds the subject when called to address the Other (inspiring what Levinas terms ‘infinity’ as opposed to ‘totality,’ an infinity pitted against the nothingness crucial to pessimist and nihilist readings). The centrality of desire in Leopardi and Beckett also comes close to the Lacanian desire-as-paradox, a desire that is lodged at the heart of Leopardi’s and Beckett’s dianoetic laugh and held to be expressive of their particularly dark, but elevating, humour. Keywords Suffering of Being, Desire, Pessimism, Nihilism, Laughter, Humour, Leopardi, Beckett ii Acknowledgments I am immensely grateful to a number of incredibly capable and professional people for their help and support. First of all, I must thank Prof. Jonathan Boulter and Prof. Luca Pocci for their judicious guidance throughout, from the thesis proposal to the researching and writing of the dissertation. In addition, I would like to thank both Professors for helping with the proofreading of research papers presented in a number of international conferences and which subsequently appeared in peer-reviewed scholarly journals. I am also indebted to Professors David Darby and Laurence de Looze who have also offered substantial help with the proofreading of scholarly articles. Furthermore, I would like to acknowledge the kind permission to publish given by editors Prof. Gianni Cicali of Quaderni d’Italianistica and Prof. Mario Mignone of Forum Italicum. Material published in these two peer-reviewed journals is appearing in the fourth chapter of this dissertation (see references) with their kind permission. Of course, the support of my wonderful family and friends was more than crucial in keeping this project moving forward. A heartfelt thankyou goes to my husband Domenico for his unflagging support and practical help, my parents, Frieda and Charles Cauchi, my sister Claudia and my brother Christopher. Above all, I would like to thank my daughter Federica, who teaches me the sheer joy of pursuing interests and discovering something new everyday. Thank you Federica! In you we see the future and it looks bright. iii Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................. iii Introduction ........................................................................................................................ vi Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................................. 1 1 On Desire ....................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 What Desire? ........................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Desire as Lack ......................................................................................................... 6 1.2.1 Leopardian Desire: “l’isperanza di esser quieto” ........................................ 7 1.2.2 From Leopardian Desire to Schopenhauerian Will .................................. 23 1.3 Freudian Desire ..................................................................................................... 26 1.4 Lacanian Desire .................................................................................................... 29 1.4.1 The Freudian Model in Lacan ................................................................... 30 1.4.2 Lacanian Demand and Desire: Anti-Desire and Desire ............................ 32 1.5 Levinas and the Desire of the Other ..................................................................... 34 1.5.1 Metaphysical Desire versus Need ............................................................. 35 1.5.2 Metaphysical Desire, Transcendence, Infinity and Height ....................... 36 1.5.3 Totality ...................................................................................................... 38 1.5.4 The Ethics of the face-to-face and The Rupture of Subjectivity: Alterity 38 1.5.5 The Ethicality of Discourse: The ‘Saying’ over the ‘Said’ ....................... 40 1.5.6 Time as the Postponement of Death and the Good beyond Being ........... 42 1.5.7 On Being Accused, Suffering and Substitution ........................................ 43 Chapter 2 ........................................................................................................................... 46 2 A Perennially Dull and Indistinct Pain: “Vain Longing that Vain Longing Go” ........ 46 2.1 “Souffrance” and “Suffering of being” ................................................................. 47 2.2 “My imagination provided equations for the unknown in this algebra of desire”: the Desire to cease desiring................................................................................... 51 2.2.1 The Stoic Ascendancy: “Souffrance” and “Suffering of being” .............. 52 2.3 “Souffrance” and “Suffering of being” in the pessimistic tradition ...................... 53 2.3.1 “Souffrance” and “Suffering of being” in the Quietist Tradition ............. 55 iv 2.3.2 Immediate heir of “Souffrance” and source of inspiration for the “Suffering of being”: Schopenhauer’s Negation of the Will .................... 58 2.4 Leopardi and Beckett within the nihilist tradition ................................................ 60 2.4.1 Leopardi the nihilist .................................................................................. 63 2.4.2 Beckett the nihilist: Ubi nihil vales, Ibi nihil velis.................................... 67 2.5 “Souffrance” and “Suffering of being” within the Heideggerian existential tradition and the Levinasian “Il y a”..................................................................... 70 Chapter 3 ........................................................................................................................... 74 3 Making Suffering Sufferable: Desire for the Other in Leopardi and Beckett .............. 74 3.1 Lacanian versus Levinasian