5 The dispeopled kingdom: the hidden self in Beckett’s short fiction Preceding chapters have examined the experience of primal dis- connection in several of Beckett’s works. Murphy’s failure to recognize emerging, loving feelings, Watt’s inability to connect to an enduring, whole internal presence, the disrupted, enmeshed relationships in Waiting for Godot, the images of primal maternal absence in … but the clouds …, Footfalls and so forth, all reflect a central feeling-state of non- recognition within narrative-self. This chapter focuses on first-person short fiction, exploring primal ruptures within the narrative-self in the direct fiction, as well as in the ‘created’ tales of the narrator. The first section examines ruptures of the primary nursing bond in the Nouvelles (‘The Expelled’, ‘The Calmative’, and ‘The End’) and in the Texts for Nothing. The next section examines central feeling-states within the Nouvelles; specifically how aspects of primary dis-connection weave themselves through this little trilogy in a manner parallelling the development of the story. The narrator’s own ‘recollections’ of child- hood experience are re-enacted in his own ‘current’ tale, as this re- working acts as self-containment. The following section examines the Texts for Nothing, how the narrator experiences aspects of the self as threatening, invasive, or even hostile. The narrator’s struggle to create fiction, and the struggle to be born psychically, are equated as mani- festations of a true self. The core self maintains its viability through hiding, splitting-off aspects of itself into fiction, struggling against powerful internal ‘voices’ (i.e. early internal objects felt to be alien). This is a version of Guntrip’s regressed ego, a self that is not entirely free or viable, residing in a place where it struggles to live, love and create. It relates to Winnicott’s ‘true self’, the authentic core of being that requires the mother to mirror in such a manner that the infant’s primary omnipotence is not prematurely ruptured (see Phillips, 1988: 127–37). The primary intention of this chapter is to elucidate the hidden, unfulfilled sense of the narrative-self, in relation to an absent other John Robert Keller - 9781526121189 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/29/2021 03:21:18PM via free access Keller_06_ch5+Epil 172 23/9/02, 11:03 am The dispeopled kingdom 173 within. The dominant experience remains that of a self that speaks without a sense of being heard, of being seen, in any authentic manner. When the primary, maternal auditor within the narrative-self is not simply absent, but malicious or controlling, the infantile, creative part actively hides within its own narratives. The final section of this chapter acts as an integrative conclusion to this study; it examines the use of projective identification, and the splitting of the narrative-self, in the late story ‘The Lost Ones’. This complex story illustrates the central arguments of this study: the struggle for cohesion within the Beckettian self, its fragmentation as a consequence of disruption in primary infant-self–mother connection, the reflection of the rupture in the imagery, associations and use of the text, the use of various defensive strategies, the blurring of self and other that is the hallmark of very early experience and, finally, the coalescence of psychological birth and the origins of fiction-making within the primal relationship. Time for Yum-Yum Aspects of early nurturing experience pervade the Nouvelles, often infil- trating the flow of a narrative. Occasionally, a fantasy/memory of ruptured early nurturing disrupts a story generated intentionally by the narrator to calm himself; this often occurs when there is a failure of self- soothing. The title of ‘The Calmative’ suggests not only the vial of sedative given by a stranger to the narrator, but the actual effect of the telling of the fantasy/fiction itself. In that story, the narrator tells a story to contain himself, since he is beset by disintegration anxieties pre- dicated on loneliness: ‘For I’m too frightened this evening to listen to myself rot, waiting for the great red lapses of the heart, the tearings at the caecal walls, and for the slow killings to finish in my skull, the assaults on the unshakable pillars’ (61). There is a defensive sense of sanctuary in the silences between heart beats, like the long lapses of Murphy’s mentor Neary; more fundamentally, these lapses suggest a terrifying disconnection that is elaborated in ‘The Lost Ones’. In ‘The Calmative’, the narrator appears as a debilitated, dispossessed old man, wandering alone in the city. He has escaped, for the moment, an internal ‘den’ of schizoid anxiety, with ‘assassins […] in this bed of terror’, but in ‘his distant refuge [i.e. an imagined past or a psychic retreat within the self, he is …] weak, breathless, calm, free’ (62). Walking through the world as an invisible, despised alien, he meets a small boy, ‘holding a John Robert Keller - 9781526121189 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/29/2021 03:21:18PM via free access Keller_06_ch5+Epil 173 23/9/02, 11:03 am 174 Samuel Beckett and the primacy of love goat by a horn’, who looks at him ‘without visible fear or revulsion’. The boy, he believes, has come to see him out of curiosity: this Watt- like ‘dark hulk […] abandoned on the quayside’ (66). This boy moves the narrator, and he tries contacting the child, but the only sound that comes is a sort of ‘rattle […] due to long silence’.1 Nonetheless, this boy shows affection for the narrator, and ‘without letting go of his goat he moved right up against me and offered me a sweet out of a twist of paper’ (66). There is a condensed quality to the exchange – the pre- verbal ‘rattle’ of communication, so death-like, is heard by the boy-as- auditor, and he provides maternal concern and early nurturing to the narrator-as-infantile-self, reminiscent of narrator-Sam’s holding of Watt after the latter has had a psychotic breakdown. In this condensed scene, the narrator also identifies with an aged, dying parental figure, and the boy acts as a caretaker. This reflects a confused, congealed internal experience; the internal mother feels alien, withdrawn, with the boy-as- infantile-self, witnessing, helpful, hopeful he can heal the rupture between them. The infantile-self also resides within the narrator-as-old- man, depressed, unseen, and wishing for a maternal concern projected into the child. The boy’s maternal acceptance seems primary, and it creates a natural, loving attachment essential to the formation of a coherent self. However, it is only through a split-off aspect of himself (i.e. the fictional character of the boy, created in his ‘tale’) that holding becomes possible for the narrator. This is demonstrated later, when, wandering alone, the narrator approaches a man: ‘Excuse me your honour, the Shepherds’ Gate for the love of God! […] I drew a few steps ahead, turned, cringed, touched my hat and said, The right time for mercy’s sake! I might as well not have existed. But what about the sweet?’ (71, italics mine). The non-recognition of the world/mother generates invisi- bility, the narrator sees himself as a pariah, begging for contact on the margins of the world. He moves from asking for an affirmation of his identity (i.e. his correct location, the time), to eventually begging for a ‘light’, feeling non-recognition tear at his sense of existence. He retrieves a sense of being by connecting to the maternal presence created by the boy’s feeding him the sweet in the earlier, primal, nurturing/recognizing moment. Failure in early nursing experiences often form a core around which feelings of depression and abandon- ment are built, something evident in patients suffering from eating disorders: John Robert Keller - 9781526121189 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/29/2021 03:21:18PM via free access Keller_06_ch5+Epil 174 23/9/02, 11:03 am The dispeopled kingdom 175 Ms E., a woman in her thirties, suffered from a binge eating-disorder. It became clear she would binge to defend against feelings of loneliness and abandonment. Her bingeing allowed her to reconnect to early maternal holding. She remembered being fed honey on a spoon by her mother at age two, to soothe her during a period when she suffered feelings of loss because of the birth of a sister. Exploring her feelings about herself just before a binge often led to fantasies/memories of primary abandonment. For example, on one occasion, a trigger was her feeling, while on a date with a man, that he preferred another woman. Underlying Oedipal feelings (that she could not compete sexually with other women) was a belief that this man, as mother, would not want to provide for her. In response to my interpretation that she had mistaken the penis for the breast, she sighed and agreed, stating that her greatest fear was that no man had enough to fulfil her insatiable love hunger. She feared she would end up starving on the street (like Watt’s ‘family’ she would be back ‘home to oblivion’ in a world without ‘buns’). What she enjoyed about bingeing was its aftermath, lying slobbering and groggy, feeling she was again an infant after a feed, sedated with her own ‘calmative’. This was a pleasant, calming experience of retreat, since like the narrator, she experienced the world as a hostile place in which she was an outcast. There was a vague hostility in this woman’s bingeing, related to a belief that her mother (like the character who gives the narrator the ‘calmative’ in the story) could not contain her depression, and would give her the honey to ‘calm her down’.