The Theme of Madness - Literature review Example

BMA-ANGD-CI9.166  Arafat Sulaiman Beckett’s prose Samuel Beckett, Language, and Madness Samuel Beckett, the great Irish poet, and playwright, said in his most famous play, Waiting for Godot, “We are all born mad. Some of us remain so.” Beckett might have been referring to the time in which he lived and worked, the mid-twentieth century, when it seemed all the world (and especially Europe) was going mad. Most of Beckett’s prose was written just before and after World War II, a time when madness, in the form of a war that gripped the entire world, under the direction of Hitler, a madman who masterminded the Holocaust. A war that came on the heels of an equally disastrous war, World War I, called “the war to end all wars,” which ended a mere thirty years earlier. Considering the times, it makes sense that much of Samuel Beckett’s works—his plays, poetry, and novels—focus on the theme of madness. This reaches back very early in Beckett’s career, even in his first novel, Murphy, published in 1938. It explains why many consider Beckett an existentialist, although as Ackerley and Gontarski state, Beckett’s views are far removed from Sartre’s existentialism (501). Much of Beckett’s works, especially his plays written after the war, have existential themes, although it is incorrect to pigeonhole him as an existentialist. It seems that as Beckett progressed in his career, he became both more existential and minimalist. Beckett is often mislabeled as an existentialist because of his connection with Theatre of the Absurd as described by Martin Esslin (n.p.), who coined the phrase and used Beckett and Waiting for Godot as his main examples. Plays in the Theatre of the Absurd genre have been strongly influenced by existentialism. Esslin saw them as the fulfillment of the existential thinker Albert Camus’ concept of “the absurd.” By placing Beckett’s plays within the genre and connecting them with Camus, Beckett was subsequently wrongly closely associated with the existentialists. It cannot be denied, however, that Beckett’s works, even his earlier ones like Murphy, have existential themes. Esslin describes these themes as “the sense of metaphysical anguish at the absurdity of the human condition” and the “sense of the senselessness of life, of the inevitable devaluation of ideals, purity, and purpose” (n.p.). Beckett’s works, including Murphy, can be placed squarely within this tradition of writing. Murphy is Beckett’s second work of prose, and his first novel. Unlike most of his works, which were composed in French, it was written in his native English. Many critics see Beckett’s preference to write in French rather than in English as a rejection of his Irish heritage, and by extension, of himself. Herbert Blau, the American director who put Waiting for Godot on film and wrote a series of essays about Beckett, suggested to Beckett himself during an interview that writing in French was a way to avoid the things he did not like about himself (20). There is much to support this position. Beckett’s transition from English to French occurred after Beckett had spent several years in France, and after the war years. He even stated that he preferred “Paris at war to Ireland at peace” (Cronin 310). He risked his life to participate in the French Resistance, to the point that the French government awarded him two medals. He was also forced to flee France due to his work against the Nazis in 1942. Insisting that Beckett wrote in French rather than in his native English, which Esslin calls “a curious phenomenon” (n.p.), was due to racial self-hatred, however, is missing the point and does not go far enough. Most writers choose to write in a language other than their natural tongue for a variety of reasons, like exile, a desire to break with one’s native country for political or ideological reasons, or a need to reach a larger audience. As Esslin states, however, none of these reasons explained Beckett’s choice of language. Instead, Beckett wrote primarily in French for artistic reasons. He believed that writing in a second language forced him to write more clearly and precisely. He told a student, “Parce quen francais cest plus facile decrire sans style (Esslin n.p.),” meaning that writing in French forced him to be disciplined and not depend upon certain stylistic aspects of English, like allusion and evocation. As Esslin put it, “...while in his own language a writer might be tempted to engage in virtuosity of style for its own sake, the use of another language may force him to divert the ingenuity that might be expended on mere embellishments of style in his own idiom to the utmost clarity and economy of expression” (n.p.). As a writer, and especially as a minimalist, Beckett considered the use of language very important. He sought to struggle with the words he used, as Esslin says, “a painful wrestling with the spirit of language itself” (n.p.). Beckett wanted to avoid being carried along by the logic of language, which is easier when one writes in his or her native tongue. He wanted to avoid the subconscious nature of writing in one’s native tongue, which often causes a writer to mindlessly accept the meanings and associations that accompany certain words and phrases. He was attempting to describe the unsayable, to fight against the natural tendency of words forcing a writer to say what he does not mean to say. In other words, Beckett wrote in French so that he could obtain mindfulness and awareness of his words, plot, and characters. Beckett, however, wrote Murphy in English, perhaps because it was the first novel in any language that he published. His next novel, Watt (1945), was also written in English; it was not until 1946, when he published Mercier and Camier that he attempted an extended work of prose in French, immediately before publishing the trilogy of novels he is most famous for, Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable, which were also written in French. Keith Ridgway of The Guardian calls the Beckett who wrote Murphy a “less interesting author,” but it is still an important work to consider in the Beckett canon, as a way to analyze his progression and maturity as a writer. Murphy also contains many hints of Beckett’s future transition to writing almost exclusively in French. Ridgway states that this transition occurred in 1945. The war was over, and Beckett was on the cusp of great fame. He reconciled with his mother and was visiting her in Dublin when he had a “revelation” on par with St. Paul’s conversion in the Book of Acts in the Bible. His biographer James Knowlson called it “a pivotal moment in [Beckett’s] entire career” (252-253). Beckett had grown despondent over the thought that he would never surpass James Joyce, who mentored him early in his writing career. Beckett realized that although he owed a great debt of gratitude to his mentor, Joyce’s work was about “knowing” and being in control of one’s work. Beckett rejected Joyce’s principle that, as Knowlson put it, “knowing more was a way of creatively understanding the world and controlling it” (253). Instead, Beckett decided that his work would be about, as Beckett told Knowlson, “impoverishment” of knowledge, and that he would focus on “poverty, failure, exile and loss...on man as a non-knower and as a non-can-er” (252). Perhaps it can be said that Beckett used French instead of English to help him achieve his goals of minimalism, of struggle, and of describing man in his existential crisis. Ridgway states it more dramatically: Put simplistically, he realised that his writing future lay not in the firm ground he knew over his shoulder, but in the darkness facing him, about which he knew nothing. It was time to write from the wordless inside. He would use his confusion and uncertainty where he had previously used his intellect and his wit. He would cease to describe and begin to create. Note the date. Note the bravery. He was 40 years old. Ridgway goes on to remark that after this revelation, Beckett returned to France and over the next four years, wrote some of the greatest prose of the twentieth century. Ridgway states, about these works (the short novels The Calmative, The End, First Love and The Expelled, as well his trilogy of Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable), “These remarkable first-person narratives read like clarifications of humanity. They deduct what we know from what we are, and give us a glimpse of ourselves that is deeply moving, sometimes frightening, but remains surprisingly funny and achingly familiar.” From prose, Beckett moved onto the stage, culminating in what many consider the pinnacle of post-modernist drama, Waiting for Godot. All these works changed the way we think of both the novel and the play. The ironic thing, however, was that Beckett was doing these things before his transition from English to French, in both of his earliest works, Murphy and Watt, which were written in English. Beckett’s themes of madness, for example, were issues he pursued throughout his career, even in English. As Richard Begam states, “Samuel Beckett’s novels are haunted by images of the madhouse” (40). Begam also states that Beckett’s treatment of madness in Murphy has been influenced by the Enlightenment, which sought to remove mental illness from society. As Michel Foucault has said in his important book about mental illness and art, Madness and Civilization, the mentally ill during the Middle Ages and Renaissance were stigmatized by society but still a member of it (Begam 41). During the Enlightenment, this changed, and the mentally ill were not only ostracized, but removed from society, often in the form of institutionalization, and it is this condition under which Beckett writes Murphy. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, madness was considered to be a result of a divine touch, but during the Enlightenment, philosophers considered it as the polar opposite of Reason. As Begam has stated, “Madness now became the negation of Reason, the antithetical Other, a condition associated with the ‘nonbeing’ that stood at the heart of the madman’s experience” (41). Even the schizophrenic’s delusions and hallucinations were associated with the nonbeingness of his or her insanity. According to Foucault, Descartes sought to eliminate madness from philosophy. Descartes equated madness with doubt. The condition of mental illness precludes one from knowing truth and insight into oneself. It forces the person to believe in things that are not true. Schizophrenics, for example, cannot have self-awareness, since if they did, they would not be mentally ill. This goes back to the old saying, “If you think you’re going crazy, you probably aren’t.” Foucault would insist that Descartes would say that the insane person contains the most extreme form of doubt, and by extension, does not exist because he or she is the antithesis of Descartes’ famous saying, “Cognito ergo sum.” The insane person’s entire experience goes against Reason. In Murphy, however, Beckett explores, at great length, the relationship between cognito and madness, the space that exists between them. Beckett goes against Cartesian dualism in his novel. His protagonist sees the insanity of the patients he works with at the Magdalen Mental Mercyseat mental institution an appealing alternative to his conscious existence. In other words, Murphy finds the catatonia, or “nothingness,” the patients experience more attractive than an existence of cognito and Reason, and as Begam states, Murphy spends the majority of the novel attempting to get there (42). Eventually, however, Murphy fails. He tries to will himself in a state of catatonia, but cannot. Eventually, he chooses a different kind of nothingness—death, and requests that his ashes are spread amidst the grime of a bar in London he often frequented with his girlfriend. Murphy’s attempt to descend into madness to achieve a state of nirvana, and his complete failure, is Beckett’s statement about the Cartesian dualism that has influenced philosophical thought about madness. Begam states, “For there is certainly a kind of madness at work in a dualism that radically dissevers mind from body, that schizophrenically splits experience into utterly disjunct realms” (42-43). Begam uses “schizophrenic” in the classical sense, meaning that the person suffering from it has been split off from reality. For Beckett, the schizophrenia of the mental patients in Murphy parallels the schizophrenia in Cartesian philosophy. Consequently, one of the major themes in Murphy is overcoming dualism, making it a very philosophical novel. Beckett used the concept of madness to pursue this theme because mental illness and mental health was a topic he was greatly interested in. Beckett’s biographer, James Knowlson, states that whole sections of the novel were influenced by Beckett’s readings in psychoanalysis, psychology, and philosophy (206). Beckett attended several of psychologist Carl Jung’s lectures, including Jung’s famous Tavistock lectures in London in the early 1930s. Beckett was in psychoanalysis for several years, and according to Knowlson, suffered greatly from anxiety attacks while writing Murphy (169). Beckett’s fascination with mental illness even expressed itself in Murphy in chess, another of Beckett’s interests. Murphy plays a game of chess with Mr. Endon, one of the patients in the hospital, and equates Mr. Endon’s skill with his madness. Murphy cannot replicate Mr. Endon’s plays, just as he cannot will himself into a state of catatonic bliss. This frustrates Murphy, and he resigns unnecessarily after the forty-third move. The game, which Beckett relates in full English notation (Red Hot Pawn) along with a humorous commentary, is as Knowlson says, “an exercise in total noncommunication” (199). Mr. Endon does not acknowledge Murphy’s presence, and finishes the game with his pieces symmetrically arranged much like he began it. Murphy sees Mr. Endon’s play as another example of blissful nothingness, and gives up when he realizes that he could never achieve that state by willing it to happen. Just as he is unable to play chess with bliss, Murphy is unable to achieve true happiness and freedom. Several years before Beckett’s revelation that his work would focus on the unknowable and the unsayable, he wrote Murphy, a novel that contains those themes. He wrote it before transitioning from writing his works in French rather than in English. He was able to focus on these themes without challenging himself to write in his second language, so that he could strip himself of the dependencies of his native language, English. It says much about Beckett’s commitment to the themes he wished to pursue that his greatest masterpieces were written in French. Beckett utilized subjects he was strongly interested in, such as philosophy, psychology, and even chess, to purse these themes as well. Murphy may not be part of what critics consider Beckett’s best works, the works that brought him fame and the Nobel Prize in Literature, but it is important to consider in the canon of his work. It is an important novel because it demonstrates Beckett’s growth and development as an artist, and his eventual commitment to minimalism, the avant-garde, the Theatre of the Absurb, and even to existentialism, or at least the themes, ideas, and concepts contained in them. Works Cited Ackerly, C.J. and S.E. Gontarski. The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett: A Readers Guide to His Works, Life, and Thought. New York: Grove Press, 2004. Print. Beckett, Samuel. Murphy. New York: Grove Press, 1957. Print. ---. Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts. New York: Grove Press, 1954. Print. Begam, Richard. Samuel Beckett and the End of Modernity. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996. Print. Blau, Howard. Sails of the Herring Fleet: Essays on Beckett. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Print. Cronin, A. Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist. New York: Da Capo Press, 1997. Print Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1969. Print. Knowlson, James. Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett. New York: Grove Press, 1997. Print. RedHotPawn.com. Red Hot Pawn. Chess Game ID 3007756 (White Murphy vs. Black Mr. Endon). n.d. 30 December 2010. Ridgway, Keith. “Knowing Me, Knowing You.” The Guardian. The Guardian Magazine. 19 July 2003. Web. 30 December 2010. Read More