Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2004. Vol. 4. Eger Journal of English Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 30)
TIBOR TÓTH Beckett and the Poetics of the Absurd
Beckett and the Poetics of the Absurd 35 all the livelong way this day of sweet showers from Porttrane on the seashore Donabate sad swans of Turvey Swords ponding along in three ratios like a sonata like a Ritter with pommelled scrotum atra crura on the step Botticelli from the fork down [...] (CP, 17. Versek, 34) The sonata form, the German knight, and Latin introduce the Shakespearean connotation through the "poor forked animal" taken from King Lear , to confer it the qualities envisaged by the Italian painter. The solutions adopted here take us closer to Beckett's essential manner. The poems written in French between 1937 and 1939 mark a change towards a less pompous mask. The intellectual challenge represented by the mastery of a foreign language seems to a large extent to have replaced in Beckett the urge to prove his deep sense of the world's intellectual patrimony. Extensive learning is present in these poems as well, but it is more lightly worn, and is largely restricted to general knowledge: the Greek myths, as in "jusque dans la caverne ciel et sol" (CP, 53), or Kant and the Lisbon earthquake in "ainsi a-t-on beau" (CP, 48). When Gabriel de Mortillet is evoked, he is, appropriately, no more than a stone statue in the "Arénes de Lutéce" (CP, 52). Knowledge petrifies —it is the hardest lesson to learn. In "musique de l'indéfference" (CP, 46) the general replaces the particular. The opening series of nouns through their apposition produce the uncertainty of their relationship, and because there is no punctuation this apposition and uncertainty persist in the poem. The core statement "du silence [...] / couvre leurs voix" is a paradox coordinated with the second one, which ends the poem: "que / je n'entende plus / me taire". The paradoxes remain unresolved, but tellingly explore identity and relationships through notions of sound and silence. The voices are heard again in "que ferrais-je sans ce monde sans visage sans questions" (CP, 60) where a "gouffre de murmures" is linked, again in apposition, with both silence and self, and it is again the lack of punctuation that allows for both interpretations. The narrator expresses his isolation as more fully shared by years of meditation as he ends "sans voix parmi les voix / enfermées avec moi", expressing the impossibility of adequate expression. The title of the 1947-9 poems is "Mori de A. D." (CP, 56) represents the universality of death, another basic theme that preoccupies Beckett. His statement that man prepares for death from the cradle or before is directed, in the novels and plays, into more sustained metaphors of the eternal triangle of Eros, Thanatos and Logos. The image of the solitary figure in the bare room desperately trying to reconcile himself to himself, to the Other, to
