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 43 continual originating power of the language, the volatility of its conceptual interchange are the sources of 'action' in How It Is. The verbal puns starting with tile pun of beginnings (the word of God), the cosmic project proclaimed "all balls" (with the implications of male organs of regeneration and the spheres of the universe) are all embedded in the "warmth of primeval mud" (.071, 12). The unsettled image of "mud in the mouth or the crawler's tongue" "lolling" in the mud, recycles both the mud out of which God made Adam, and the Word by which God gave life to the mud. And language remains in command when Beckett's word producer gives life to Pim: "who but for me would never Pim we're talking of Pim never be but for me anything but a dumb limp lump flat for ever in the mud but I'll quicken him you wait and see" (HII, 58). And the word-creator gives life even to himself claiming "I hear me again murmur me in the mud and am again" (HII

} 138). Language disposes of originating power, and can deprive or at least make volatile identity: "Pim to Bom to Bem, Pam to Prim, Kram to Krim, Skom to Skum". Following the tradition of normalization of criticism assessing How It Is, Abbott 'recycles' the design of the text of a strophe, providing it with, the adequate punctuation and suggests the following reading of it: And later, much later (these aeons, my God!), when it [the painting] stops again, [with] ten more, [or] fifteen more [words] in me, a murmur, scarce a breath; then, from mouth to mud [they go], [a] brief kiss, [a] brush of lips, [a] faint kiss. (Abbott, 120) Abbott points out that, read like this, the strophe can be understood as one variation on the interchange of mud and word out of which the texts arises. Normalizations are imposed by the very nature of the text. They are the dictates of the tyranny of the Beckett text. Beckett's play with sound and sense is turned into the form of the word under the leading principle "first the sound then the sense" (HII, 104). The interplay of meaning and sound lies in the answer to all the other questions. Beckett concentrates on the wonders of origination. The rhetorical strategies are multiplied, the counter-tropes of reduction, negation, cancellation and despair are all sources of productivity. Beckett's art is not