Beckett Remembering / Remembering Beckett

by James Knowlson

  We embraced. And I watched the door close behind him. My nose was running. My eyes were running, too. I wiped my face with the sleeve of my coat. I didn’t have a handkerchief. It was windy that day.

  Samuel Beckett in 1985.

  * The Vico Road, named because of Giambattista Vico and his different ‘cycles’, winds its way from the coastal village of Dalkey down the coast to Killiney. It is also alluded to by James Joyce in Episode 2, ‘Nestor’, of Ulysses. ‘Welloff people, proud that their eldest son was in the navy. Vico road, Dalkey’.

  * He suggested the French title to Edith Fournier, who translated the text. It published by Les Editions de Minuit in 1991.

  Appendix

  Beckett on Racine

  Beckett’s Professor at Trinity College, Dublin, Thomas Brown Rudmose-Brown, loved the theatre of Jean Racine (1639-99) and lectured onmostofRacine’s plays to the youngSamuel Beckett, who in turn became a firm devotee. So, when Beckett returned from the Ecole Normale to become Lecturer in French and assistant to Rudmose-Brown in 1930, it represented a tremendous gift of confidence for the professor to hand over his favourite lectures on Andromaque, Phèdre and Bérénice to his young protégé. This began an enduring and intimate relationship between Beckett and the seventeenth-century French dramatist’s theatre that, although pointed out by Vivian Mercier, has yet to be fully explored and assessed by scholars. For if the impact and the influence of Racine on Beckett began when he was a student and can be seen in allusions to all of the above plays on which he lectured in his first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women (written just after he quit his lectureship), it extended well into his middle period as a dramatist, when he reread the entire theatre of Racine in the early 1960s, relating them directly to ‘the chances of the theatre today’.

  It may be partly as a result of this total re-immersion in Racine’s drama that Beckett came to focus on inner worlds and adopt the monologue in his later plays as his dominant theatrical form, unlike Racine who integrated monologue and dialogue or played one off against the other. Beckett’s concern with light and dark contrasts in his late plays also seems to echo the psychological oppositions and their physical manifestations in the stage lighting that he saw in Phèdre, as well as his fascination with the tradition of spotlight painting in art. But, above all, as his comments on the second act of Andromaque below reveal (‘The precipitation of the mind towards a point where there is no longer more than one consideration, a precipitation towards a stasis. In this act the minds of all the characters make a leap towards this stasis’) he was impressed by how Racine could depict over-all mental as well as physical stasis, conditions that he himself was keen to explore in the wider terms of their relations with being. If Beckett’s views on Racine were then highly idiosyncratic, they are illuminating and revealing of how he himself approached the theatre in his late work seeking out its minima.

  The Unpublished Lecture Notes of Grace McKinley, 1931*

  Grace West (née McKinley), c. 1930.

  Racine: Andromaque Mr Beckett

  For the first time in the Fr[ench] theatre we have no heroic love. Sexuality is rep[resented] at last, and treated realistically. None of the fine Cornelian phrases. The word hate is more frequent than love. We have the cruelty of sexuality stated. There is the pagan tiger of Lawrence with a dreadful Christian awareness. It chases its own tail. This is the tragic position.

  Andromaque is the most terrible and cruel play of Racine. No gaiety as in Phèdre in the person of Hippolyte - with his youthful gaiety, the person of Theseus with his blustering. Every cruelty in Andromaque. There is the madness of desire: with one using the other as a lever. The play is an explicit statement of Sadism: and even the mother complex which occupies us so much to-day, (c.f. description] of Andromaque in Astyanax’s nursery.) There is the hate impulse applied to Andromaque and Hermione: There is every cruelty. What A = P. = P = H = H:0 = Astyanax: A The whole time there is a desperate attempt to impact, to impinge. We cannot take A at her face value. Her last speech reminds us very much of Athalie: (see speech of Oreste’s(?)).

  Self-consciousness in this play is not self-criticism.

  Here there is no possibility of the mind finding a solution. It is not Andromaque’s mind that finds her solution but a consultation of the Oracle of Hector.

  At what point of the self-consciousness does the play come to an end?

  When the mind has an integral awareness of the facts as opposed to a fragmentary awareness. To explain: - the dialogue is really a monologue. It is the exp[ression] of a fragmentary consciousness.

  Pylade etc. are the fragments of the divided minds of Orestes etc. Their function is to express the vision in the minds of their protagonists. It is when all these fragments are blended into a whole that the play comes to an end, e.g. when Hermione realises after Pyrrhus has been murdered that her love for him is the greatest thing, and not the soothing of her vanity - out she passes - suicide.

  In the mind of Pyrrhus, the two emotions are hint for vengeance and hint for possession. In Hermione, it is the conflict between fury at being spurned and her furious need for Pyrrhus.

  When these are merged into an integral cerebral state the catastrophe takes place.

  The only freedom of mind is the capability of the mind to modify from fragmentary to united state. (Tragedy of clairvoyance in the end. Racine lived at a time when an artist could be an artist, and he expressed his beliefs in art.)

  An interesting point is to note how far Racine is present to modern prose writers.

  Background in Racine

  Note the discretion with which Racine grades his background: provides reader with a depth of perspective, or plane; e.g. in Andromaque: we have: Troy, (smoke, blood, walls of Troy, Hector, Priam). Then the palace of Pyrrhus himself separated from Troy by the sea, all of which is given by the lines:-

  Je sais de ce palais tous les détours [I know every corner of this Palace]

  N.B. Three depths of perspective:

  1 Palace

  2 Sea

  3 Unextinguished flames of Troy.

  Racine’s background is for the artist, not for the psychologist. He does not want to explain Andromaque by Troy etc. as Balzac would have done. In Racine the work of background is to give substance to the characters - to give them overtones: it is worth more than its face-value.

  The description of Andromaque’s first encounter with Pyrrhus gives tone to all the others. Phyrrus covered with blood etc. - and this plays its part in future encounters.

  Racine does not want to explain it. Blood, fire etc. are there as so many accretions of character.

  Stress on background has nothing whatever to do with the phylogenesis of Balzac. This phylogenetic position of Balzac is to be distinguished from the ontogenetic position of Racine.

  The interesting part of the background is the suggestion of the place where the unknotting will take place. Prospective as opposed to perspective:

  All the light in Racine is on the front of the stage. The background is only a recurrent menace in the shadow behind. Quite the contrary in Balzac whose background was a devouring thing to his characters.

  We find that the great interest in Racine is the Etat[?] dialogue.

  When Céphise talks it is Andromaque’s thoughts being exposed. Each of Racine’s characters has two poles. It is only when these two poles become one that the dialogue will cease.

  With Andromaque the two poles are a very real affection for Astyanax on the one hand and on the other the necessity for keeping him alive (and therefore marrying Pyrrhus).

  With Hermione the poles are her vanity and her very real love for Pyrrhus.

  With Pyrrhus the poles are love for Andromaque and hate for Andromaque. N.B. that politics never provide a pole for his antagonism, although they provide the whole situation. Thus the play ends when the minds become depolarised, when it becomes a oneness of consciousness, an awareness. This is what the critics mean when they talk of the growth of lucidity in Racine’s
characters. A gradual invasion by one mental sphere of another.

  Act III, sc.2. Oreste’s speech gives us the key to his character. Andromaque herself is rather Cornelian: she is not the merely cerebral polarisation that we have in 0reste, who with Hermione is the most interesting character. We get the peculiar relations between Astyanax and Andromaque repeated in Britannicus and again in Athalie with Eliacin (Joas). The same might be said of Hippolyte (and Phèdre) though she is not his mother.

  N.B. Act II of Andromaque is the best bit of dramatic construction ever made. The precipitation of the mind towards a point where there is no longer more than one consideration, a precipitation towards a stasis. In this act the minds of all the characters make a leap towards this stasis.

  Andromaque is structurally perfect. Note the 5 scenes [acts?]. Not a word too much. Utility of everything.

  III 1675-77 Between Mithridate and Phèdre something happens to Racine. Phèdre is the first play of Racine to bring in the sense of sin. Hermione has none, Britannicus has none. The moral issue never arose in the plays before this. Perhaps there is none in Phèdre, but there appears to be.

  From 1675 on, Racine was losing his place in the court, so he may have gone back to Jansenism - faute de mieux - knowing the precarious faith of the King. Phèdre is the final statement of the Racinian invariable. Obsession of Phèdre.

  In Phèdre R[acine] states not a simple position but a false awareness. She thinks she has sinful relations with H[ippolyte] but she has not. She has this false awareness, and Racine deals with that.

  Phèdre is almost a pathological study - everything passes in her mind.

  We can reduce everything in Racine to a cerebral position. We cannot over-estimate the importance of this. Racine is only concerned with the passion that is refoulée, repressed. He only can see it when it has been forced underground. Not interested in any simple relations between a man and a woman. If the relations receive no interference they do not interest him.

  In Bajazet his interest is in the relations between Bajazet and Roxane.

  Up to the time of Racine in the théatre galant the objet had been easily obtained. In Racine, however, we have this great originality that the objet is not merely unobtainable but unaware.

  The importance of Aricie in Phèdre is merely, that without her Phèdre would not be jealous. Her only function is to clarify one aspect of Phèdre. Aricie and Hippolyte are quite without interest.

  In Athalie what undoes Athalie is pity. The veuve [widow] Scarron thought it such a nice play for jeunes filles [young ladies]. But she is quite wrong! The play is not at all for jeunes filles.

  Brittanicus is a study of the mutual relations between Julie and Britannicus. But Racine is only interested in the irretrievable position: i.e. Agrippine and Britannicus.

  State of mind cannot be concealed in Racine.

  In Britannicus we have the scene in which the hero is behind a curtain when he has advised Julie to be standoffish with Brit[annicus]. But she says what is the use since he will see everything in her face.

  We have the sense of the involuntary revelation in the features.

  We get the same in Andromaque between Pyrrhus and Hermione. By her speech she reveals that he is not even looking at her.

  Racine develops from chiaroscuro to chiaro.

  In Andromaque Racine accepts the inapproachability of the mind - the person of 0reste whose mind defies analysis. It is left as a complex, contrary to most of Racine’s characters.

  0reste is stated by Racine as indisponible, inaccessible.

  * * *

  ‘Influence of painting and sculpture on Racine. Andromaque. Notice in all Racine the way he can call up pictures. This is especially seen in Andromaque, Act I scene 2: a picture of Troy before and after the war - also note the description on page 112. ‘Songe, songe …’In Bérénice this is not so much [i.e. pronounced] - it is more statuary. Picture nevertheless of imperial grandeur. Phèdre standing in marble white gown in front of marble pictures -tall and slim with grey eyes with corn coloured hair twisted in ropes round her head - ‘all bathed in white light.’

  Bérénice: the most Cornelian play of Racine. Cornelian in the sense that Bérénice sacrifices what she thinks is her passion to what she also considers her duty and so leaves Titus. There is something far milder than in Athalie, Andromaque, or Phèdre. Racine is not an idealist - he is a psychologist. No writing is less humble than Racine’s - see irony at end of Preface to Bérénice. Phèdre and Hermione are stationary. Bérénice: conclusion of the play is an intensification not modification of the opening. Unbearable clarity. ‘Dark with excessive light’. Movement within a piétinement sur place [a marching on the spot]. Gradual conquest of character by light of her own character. Bérénice has denied herself - end of B. is negation of the beginning. Antiochus is a Racinian character who ends in grief and speaks the most beautiful lines in the play: ‘Hélas!’ Titus and Bérénice are non Racinian. Racine is treating a subject of duty and will, in which as a psychologist he could not have been interested. Yet Bérénice contains some of his finest writing … What bothered Racine was not the rules (unities etc.) of classical theatre, but the extraordinary exigencies of his own requirements. Racine did not waste anything - by pictorial beauty of his treatment he achieved something. Poetical beauty is not all. His mind recoils from what is remote to what is actual and present and we are involved in the crisis. Direct expression brutal with Racine. Invisible milieu in Phèdre - light in the play. Racine unlike Corneille was not interested in local colour, David’s temple as as historian and as dramatist. Racine interested in non-historical. All rules of theatre, bare stage etc. suited Racine.

  In the dialogues between the confid[a]nt and antagonist what is really taking place is a monologue. Last floundering of the character’s credulity and vulgarity. Racine as modern as any of the moderns. See treatment of subconscious - all his characters evolve beneath the conscious in the shadow of the ‘infraconscient’. Athalie is aware that confusion and darkness are in her own mind - same with Antiochus - but for this Antiochus would be ridiculous and comic. His dramatic function is to serve as a hyphen between Titus and Bérénice - to reveal the feelings of B. for T. and vice versa. Rather comic at the end - the whimper which is not Racinian. Racine’s plays do not end with a bang as a rule but with an adequate explosion and fatigue and weariness form the end of the play. If it is not Racinian neither is it Cornelian. The Cornelian triumph of victory. Bérénice shrugs her shoulders at the end - that is not the Cornelian gesture. The Cornelian gesture is the energetic affirmation of the human will - the will always works in Stendhal. The voluntary act is victorious but not necessary - no question of will in Racine - apprehension that is the subconscious is the only thing that has any validity in Racine. Racine endows B. and T. with a will. Yet the play collapses in fatigue and this is not Racinian. There is always a collapse at end of Rac. play but it is a collapse of inanition, when character has been consumed in ‘clairvoyance’.

  Again [in the fact that] Bérénice evolves and she moves[,] the play is not Racinian. Every dialogue a soliloquy and results in the elimination of so much shadow.

  * These notes are held in the Beckett International Foundation’s Archive in the Library of the University of Reading where they reside with other notes taken by Leslie Daiken on Beckett’s lectures on Racine. In Trinity College Library, Dublin, there are the notes of Rachel Burrows, some of which are on Racine and which are so far unpublished. We are most grateful to Mrs Grace West (née McKinley) for kindly giving us permission to use material from her notes in a letter to James Knowlson dated 1 September 1998 and to her son, Terence, for confirming that permission and for providing the photograph of his mother.

  A NOTE ON THE EDITORS

  James Knowlson is Emeritus Professor of French at the

  University of Reading where he founded the Beckett

  Archive (now the Beckett International Foundation). He

  was a friend of Samuel Beckett for twent
y years and is

  his authorised biographer, publishing Damned to Fame:

  The Life of Samuel Beckett with Bloomsbury in 1996.

  He has written and edited many other books and essays

  on Beckett and modern drama, including most recently

  Images of Beckett with theatre photographer

  John Haynes.

  Dr Elizabeth Knowlson lectured in French at the

  University of Glasgow and later worked in the Centre for

  Applied Language Studies at the University of Reading.

  She assisted her husband with his biography of

  Beckett and his later books and essays.

  A NOTE ON THE TYPE

  The text of this book is set in Linotype Sabon, named

  after the type founder, Jacques Sabon. It was designed by

  Jan Tschichold and jointly developed by Linotype,

  Monotype and Stempel, in response to a need for

  a typeface to be available in identical form for

  mechanical hot metal composition and hand

  composition using foundry type.

  Tschichold based his design for Sabon roman on a

  font engraved by Garamond, and Sabon italic on a font

  by Granjon. It was first used in 1966 and has proved

  an enduring modern classic.