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 41 example, when he is knocked down at the railway station Watt ignores the stimuli of the outer world by means of poetry (Holderlin, Farquhar). Thus he makes a transition from rational thought to aesthetic contemplation. Intellectual life is shown as debilitating in Watt as in Echo's Bones^ "Gnome", Arsene's comment based on Everyman.

5 Although Beckett's early fiction is based on frequent allusions and conventional settings and displays an interest in outer reality, an outer reality that contradicts his characters' desire to withdraw into themselves. In his novels completed after Murphy the chronology becomes indistinct

. When Watt wants to find out what the time is he gets no answer. The best example is perhaps the definition that is given to interest taken in time when we get to know that it was earlier than he hoped. Sam admits at the beginning of part four that the things in part four happened before the events presented in part three. Watt's inverted speech is another example of how Beckett employs clearly poetic strategies to express the chaotic character of time. Eabinovitz states in his conclusions to the analysis of Beckett's fiction in its development that the relationship between the conceptual and the existential seems to have a more or less identifiable regulative status. Beckett, [...], loathes 'the complacent scientific conceptualism that made contact with outer reality the index of mental well-being.' As the narrator of Murphy observes, the 'nature of outer reality remained obscure.

.. The definition of outer reality, or of reality short and simple, varied according to the sensibility of the definer.' (Rabinovitz, 182) Rabinovitz argues that Beckett's works should not be understood as unrealistic or absurd because they are concerned simply with the outer world as an illusion and as his perspective of the outer world deteriorates, one gains a clearer view of inner reality, and it is the inner reality that shapes and colours one's perception of the outer world. Rabinovitz's implied suggestion is that the prose thus obscured through word order, chaotic chronology, and interpolations of silences and voices approaches poetic diction and the generic title it should have is Commment c'est. How It Is is devoted to two subjects, how it is and how it began both contained in the title itself of one of Beckett's most exciting books: comment c'est and commencer sound very much alike. The tradition to which it alludes as Abbott

6 states it is the epic which is circular, an expression of endless torment, and fragmentary. In The Bible and 5 Knowledge: "Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy guide, / In thy most need to go by thy side." (Everyman

, II. 522-23). 6 See Abbott, Porter, H. 1994. "'Texts for Nothing' and 'How It Is.'" in Pilling, John ed. Beckett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 106-124.