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
42 Tibor Tóth in epics following the biblical tradition (Paradise Lost , The Divine Comedy ) the ordering of things is shown as being just. In How It Is is distilled to a final Newtonian essence as the perfection of order. The final object of "our justice" is to show that we are regulated on the basis of symmetry. The presence of evil is resolved in the symmetry of 'an eye for an eye' suggesting that every victim is a victimizer. The idea of symmetry leads to the drama of mathematics as the author is trying to work out the arithmetical terms for the order he postulated. But the author realizes that "something is wrong there" and the creator packs up and abandons the epic. The failure of his authorship brings about the failure of the poet's authority. It is in the very tradition of the epic that the epic poet is chosen. Beckett's formula is to draw our attention to the constructedness of the epic instead of focusing on the creator of the epic who should be the prophet, the person formulating the absolute truth of which he has been chosen vehicle. Beckett's epic does not end in a song of triumph of the unity of a universe dominated by God who animates Man. Justice and authority are abolished by the very narrative of How It Is. Beckett's How It Is is of course a travesty of the epic. The function of his narrative is not to enlighten but to stupefy. The fact that we are constantly reminded of the structure rather than the idea we axe searching for, and the bravado of the voice packing to abandon his creation defines another implication clearly contained. The order to which the voice aspired, is also the exclusive, oppressive tyrant's structure but tyranny is rejected as well. One has to look for poetic visions that transcend the text as they illuminate the 'life above in the light' and act against the voice governing the epic: "I see a crocus in a pot in an area in a basement a saffron the sun creeps up the wall a hand keeps in the sun this yellow flower with a string" (HIT\ 22). The vision could be appropriated with Eliot's vision of the pool filled up with sunshine, but while for Eliot the governing force, the cause of all causes is love of God, Beckett seems to refuse the idea of any kind of authority. When in part two the hand craves its words in the back of its victim surrender to command and design of a superior power is forcibly rejected. That the epic does not eliminate everything is demonstrated by the mud, the voice, the rush of words, the non-defined being: "[...] only me in any case yes alone yes in the mud [...] with my voice yes my murmur" (HII, 159). The epic winds up where it began, because we hear the words of departure "how it was I quote before Pim with Pim after Pim how it is three parts I say it" (HII , 7). Or these are echoes of the last words of the Texts for Nothing: [. ..] as soon now, when all will be ended, all said, it says, it murmurs (CSP, 115). As H. Potter Abbott in his already mentioned essay states, the
