To justify our title, we must move North, “Sovra’l bel fiume d’Arno alia gran villa” . . . Between “colui per lo cui verso—il meonio cantor non è più solo” and the “still to-day insufficiently malestimated notesnatcher, Shem the Penman,” there exists considerable circumstantial similarity. They both saw how worn out and threadbare was the conventional language of cunning literary artificers, both rejected an approximation to a universal language. If English is not yet so definitely a polite necessity as Latin was in the Middle Ages, at least one is justified in declaring that its position in relation to other European languages is to a great extent that of mediaeval Latin to the Italian dialects. Dante did not adopt the vulgar out of any kind of local jingoism nor out of any determination to assert the superiority to Tuscan to all its rivals as a form of spoken Italian. On reading his De Vulgari Eloquentia we are struck by his complete freedom from civic intolerance. He attacks the world’s Portadownians: “Nam quicumque tam obscenae rationis est, ut locum suae nationis delitosissimm credat esse sub sole, huic etiam prœ cunctis propriam volgare licetur, idest maternam locutionem. Nos autem, cui mundus est patria . . . etc.” When he comes to examine the dialects he finds Tuscan: “turpissimum . . . fere omnes Tusci in suo turpiloquio obtusi . . . non restat in dubio quin aliud sit vulgare quod quaerimus quam quod attingit populus Tuscanorum.” His conclusion is that the corruption common to all the dialects makes it impossible to select one rather than another as an adequate literary form, and that he who would write in the vulgar must assemble the purest elements from each dialect and construct a synthetic language that would at least possess more than a circumscribed local interest: which is precisely what he did. He did not write in Florentine any more than in Neapolitan. He wrote a vulgar that could have been spoken by an ideal Italian who had assimilated what was best in all the dialects of his country, but which in fact was certainly not spoken nor ever had been. Which disposes of the capital objection that might be made against this attractive parallel between Dante and Mr. Joyce in the question of language, i.e. that at least Dante wrote what was being spoken in the streets of his own town, whereas no creature in heaven or earth ever spoke the language of Work in Progress. It is reasonable to admit that an international phenomenon might be capable of speaking it, just as in 1300 none but an inter-regional phenomenon could have spoken the language of the Divine Comedy. We are inclined to forget that Dante’s literary public was Latin, that the form of his Poem was to be judged by Latin eyes and ears, by a Latin Esthetic intolerant of innovation, and which could hardly fail to be irritated by the substitution of “Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita” with its “barbarous” directness for the suave elegance of: “Ultima regna canam, fluido contermina mundo” just as English eyes and ears prefer: “Smoking his favourite pipe in the sacred presence of ladies” to: “Rauking his flavourite turfco in the smukking precincts of lydias.” Boccaccio did not jeer at the “piedi sozzi” of the peacock that Signora Alighieri dreamed about.
I find two well made caps in the “Convivio,” one to fit the collective noodle of the monodialectical arcadians whose fury is precipitated by a failure to discover “innoce-free” in the concise Oxford Dictionary and who qualify as the “ravings of a Bedlamite” the formal structure raised by Mr. Joyce after years of patient and inspired labour: “Questi sono da chiamare pecote e non uomini; che se una pecora si gittasse da una ripa di mille passi, tutte l’altre le adrebbono dietro; e se una pecore a per alcuna cagione al passare d’una strada salta, tutte le altre saltano, eziando nulla veggendo da saltare. E io ne vidi già molte in un pozzo saltare, per una che dentro vi salto, forse credendo di saltare un muro.” And the other for Mr. Joyce, biologist in words: “Questo (formal innovation) sarà luce nuova, sole nuovo, il quale sorger à ore l’usato tramonter à e dará luce a coloro che sono in tenebre e in oscurit à per lo usato sole che a loro non luce.” And, lest he should pull it down over his eyes and laugh behind the peak, I translate “in tenebre e in oscurità” by “bored to extinction.” (Dante makes a curious mistake speaking of the origin of language, when he rejects the authority of Genesis that Eve was the first to speak, when she addressed the Serpent. His incredulity is amusing: “inconvenienter putatur tam egregium humani generis actum, vel prius quam a viro, foemina profluisse.” But before Eve was born, “the animals were given names by Adam, the man who “first said goo to a goose.” Moreover it is explicitly stated that the choice of names was left entirely to Adam, so that there is not the slightest Biblical authority for the conception of language as a direct gift of God, any more than there is any intellectual authority for conceiving that we are indebted for the “Concert” to the individual who used to buy paint for Giorgione.)
We know very little about the immediate reception accorded to Dante’s mighty vindication of the “vulgar,” but we can form our own opinions when, two centuries later, we find Castiglione splitting more than a few hairs concerning the respective advantages of Latin and Italian, and Poliziano writing the dullest of dull Latin Elegies to justify his existence as the author of “Orfeo” and the “Stanze.” We may also compare, if we think it worth while, the storm of ecclesiastical abuse raised by Mr. Joyce’s work, and the treatment that the Divine Comedy must certainly have received from the same source. His Contemporary Holiness might have swallowed the crucifixion of “lo sommo Giove,” and all it stood for, but he could scarcely have looked with favour on the spectacle of three of his immediate predecessors plunged head-foremost in the fiery stone of Malebolge, nor yet the identification of the Papacy in the mystical procession of Terrestial Paradise with a “puttana sciolta” The “De Monarshia” was burnt publicly under Pope Giovanni XXII at the instigation of Cardinal Beltrando and the bones of its author would have suffered the same fate but for the interference of an influential man of letters, Pino della Tosa. Another point of comparison is the preoccupation with the significance of numbers. The death of Beatrice inspired nothing less than a highly complicated poem dealing with the importance of the number 3 in her life. Dante never ceased to be obsessed by this number. Thus the poem is divided into three Cantiche, each composed of 33 Canti, and written in terza rima. Why, Mr. Joyce seems to say, should there be four legs to a table, and four to a horse, and four seasons and four Gospels and four Provinces in Ireland? Why twelve Tables of the Law, and twelve Apostles and twelve months and twelve Napoleonic marshals and twelve men in Florence called Ottolenghi? Why should the Armistice be celebrated at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month? He cannot tell you because he is not God Almighty, but in a thousand years he will tell you, and in the meantime must be content to know why horses have not five legs, nor three. He is conscious that things with a common numerical characteristic tend towards a very significant interrelationship. This preoccupation is freely translated in his present work, see the “Question and Answer” chapter, and the Four speaking through the child’s brain. They are the four winds as much as the four Provinces, and the four Episcopal Sees as much as either.
A last word about the Purgatories. Dante’s is conical and consequently implies culmination. Mr. Joyce’s is spherical and excludes culmination. In the one there is an ascent from real vegetation—Ante-Purgatory, to ideal vegetation—Terrestial Paradise: in the other there is no ascent and no ideal vegetation. In the one, absolute progression and a guaranteed consummation: in the other, flux—progression or retrogression, and an apparent consummation. In the one movement is unidirectional, and a step forward represents a net advance: in the other movement is non-directional—or multi-directional, and a step forward is, by definition, a step back. Dante’s Terrestial Paradise is the carriage entrance to a Paradise that is not terrestial: Mr. Joyce’s Terrestial Paradise is the tradesmen’s entrance on to the sea-shore. Sin is an impediment to movement up the cone, and a condition of movement round the sphere. In what sense, then, is Mr. Joyce’s work purgatorial? In the absolute absence of the Absolute. Hell is the static lifelessness of unrelieved viciousness. Paradise
the static lifelessness of unrelieved immaculation. Purgatory a flood of movement and vitality released by the conjunction of these two elements. There is a continuous purgatorial process at work, in the sense that the vicious circle of humanity is being achieved, and this achievement depends on the recurrent predomination of one of two broad qualities. No resistance, no eruption, and it is only in Hell and Paradise that there are no eruptions, that there can be none, need be none. On this earth that is Purgatory, Vice and Virtue—which you may take to mean any pair of large contrary human factors—must in turn be purged down to spirits of rebelliousness. Then the dominant crust of the Vicious or Virtuous sets, resistance is provided, the explosion duly takes place and the machine proceeds. And no more than this; neither prize nor penalty; simply a series of stimulants to enable the kitten to catch its tail. And the partially purgatorial agent? The partially purged.
Part II
The Post-War Years (1946-1960)
Fiction
First love
This story emanates from that remarkable vintage year of 1946, which produced Beckett’s first works written directly in French. The rich harvest included, in addition to “First Love,” the stories “The Expelled,” “The Calmative,” and “The End,” and the novel Mercier and Camier.
The stories, excepting “First Love,” Beckett published in various literary magazines, first in French and later in translation. In 1955 he brought out, with Les Editions de Minuit, a volume containing these same three stories—“L’Expulsé” (“The Expelled”), “Le Calmant” (“The Calmative”), and “La Fin” (“The End”)—and the thirteen “Textes pour rien” (“Texts for Nothing”) written in 1950. Pointedly, “First Love” was omitted, and it was not until 1970 that Beckett consented to make this story public. In that year it was published in French; Beckett finally completed its translation into English in 1973; it appeared in 1974, almost thirty years after its composition.
Reading “First Love,” one finds it hard to understand the author’s reluctance, for it is marvelously funny and yet poignant, full of what Christopher Ricks in The New Statesman called “that bone-deep fatigue which gives Beckett’s decrepit figures . . . their ruined strength, their rigor, not mortis, but of moribundity.” And yet it stands apart from the other three stories, which have a unity of their own, and form a mini-trilogy, perhaps presaging the later, major trilogy of novels.
As Beckett moved from English to French, so he moved from a third-person to a first-person narrative, hero and narrator merging into one. Typically, the “first love” of the title is associated with death, for the memory is evoked by a visit by the narrator to his father’s grave. Untypically—for most of Beckett’s characters are past the climacteric—the hero of “First Love” is a mere twenty-five, but he has, at least in posse, all the attributes of those impossible, beloved tramps who will soon people the rich canvases of Beckett’s later period.
I associate, rightly or wrongly, my marriage with the death of my father, in time. That other links exist, on other planes, between these two affairs, is not impossible. I have enough trouble as it is in trying to say what I think I know.
I visited, not so long ago, my father’s grave, that I do know, and noted the date of his death, of his death alone, for that of his birth had no interest for me, on that particular day. I set out in the morning and was back by night, having lunched lightly in the graveyard. But some days later, wishing to know his age at death, I had to return to the grave, to note the date of his birth. These two limiting dates I then jotted down on a piece of paper, which I now carry about with me. I am thus in a position to affirm that I must have been about twenty-five at the time of my marriage. For the date of my own birth, I repeat, my own birth, I have never forgotten, I never had to note it down, it remains graven in my memory, the year at least, in figures that life will not easily erase. The day itself comes back to me, when I put my mind to it, and I often celebrate it, after my fashion, I don’t say each time it comes back, for it comes back too often, but often.
Personally I have nothing against graveyards, I take the air there willingly, perhaps more willingly than elsewhere, when take the air I must. The smell of corpses, distinctly perceptible under those of grass and humus mingled, I do not find unpleasant, a trifle on the sweet side perhaps, a trifle heady, but how infinitely preferable to what the living emit, their feet, teeth, armpits, arses, sticky foreskins and frustrated ovules. And when my father’s remains join in, however modestly, I can almost shed a tear. The living wash in vain, in vain perfume themselves, they stink. Yes, as a place for an outing, when out I must, leave me my graveyards and keep—you—to your public parks and beauty-spots. My sandwich, my banana, taste sweeter when I’m sitting on a tomb, and when the time comes to piss again, as it so often does, I have my pick. Or I wander, hands clasped behind my back, among the slabs, the flat, the leaning and the upright, culling the inscriptions. Of these I never weary, there are always three or four of such drollery that I have to hold on to the cross, or the stele, or the angel, so as not to fall. Mine I composed long since and am still pleased with it, tolerably pleased. My other writings are no sooner dry than they revolt me, but my epitaph still meets with my approval. There is little chance unfortunately of its ever being reared above the skull that conceived it, unless the State takes up the matter. But to be unearthed I must first be found, and I greatly fear those gentlemen will have as much trouble finding me dead as alive. So I hasten to record it here and now, while there is yet time:
Hereunder lies the above who up below
So hourly died that he survived till now.
The second and last or rather latter line limps a little perhaps, but that is no great matter, I’ll be forgiven more than that when I’m forgotten. Then with a little luck you hit on a genuine interment, with real live mourners and the odd relict rearing to throw herself into the pit. And nearly always that charming business with the dust, though in my experience there is nothing less dusty than holes of this type, verging on muck for the most part, nor anything particularly powdery about the deceased, unless he happen to have died, or she, by fire. No matter, their little gimmick with the dust is charming. But my father’s yard was not among my favourite. To begin with it was too remote, way out in the wilds of the country on the side of a hill, and too small, far too small, to go on with. Indeed it was almost full, a few more widows and they’d be turning them away. I infinitely preferred Ohlsdorf, particularly the Linne section, on Prussian soil, with its nine hundred acres of corpses packed tight, though I knew no one there, except by reputation the wild animal collector Hagenbeck. A lion, if I remember right, is carved on his monument, death must have had for Hagenbeck the countenance of a lion. Coaches ply to and fro, crammed with widows, widowers, orphans and the like. Groves, rottoes, artificial lakes with swans, purvey consolation to the inconsolable. It was December, I had never felt so cold, the eel soup lay heavy on my stomach, I was afraid I’d die, I turned aside to vomit, I envied them.
But to pass on to less melancholy matters, on my father’s death I had to leave the house. It was he who wanted me in the house. He was a strange man. One day he said, Leave him alone, he’s not disturbing anyone. He didn’t know I was listening. This was a view he must have often voiced, but the other times I wasn’t by. They would never let me see his will, they simply said he had left me such a sum. I believed then, and still believe, that he had stipulated in his will for me to be left the room I had occupied in his lifetime and for food to be brought me there, as hitherto. He may even have given this the force of condition precedent. Presumably he liked to feel me under his roof, otherwise he would not have opposed my eviction. Perhaps he merely pitied me. But somehow I think not. He should have left me the entire house, then I’d have been all right, the others too for that matter, I’d have summoned them and said, Stay, stay by all means, your home is here. Yes, he was properly had, my poor father, if his purpose was really to go on protecting me from beyond the tomb. With regard to the mon
ey it is only fair to say they gave it to me without delay, on the very day following the inhumation. Perhaps they were legally bound to. I said to them, Keep this money and let me live on here, in my room, as in Papa’s lifetime. I added, God rest his soul, in the hope of melting them. But they refused. I offered to place myself at their disposal, a few hours every day, for the little odd maintenance jobs every dwelling requires, if it is not to crumble away. Pottering is still just possible, I don’t know why. I proposed in particular to look after the hothouse. There I would have gladly whiled away the hours, in the heat, tending the tomatoes, hyacinths, pinks and seedlings. My father and I alone, in that household, understood tomatoes. But they refused. One day, on my return from stool, I found my room locked and my belongings in a heap before the door. This will give you some idea how constipated I was, at this juncture. It was, I am now convinced, anxiety constipation. But was I genuinely constipated? Somehow I think not. Softly, softly. And yet I must have been, for how otherwise account for those long, those cruel sessions in the necessary house? At such times I never read, any more than at other times, never gave way to revery or meditation, just gazed dully at the almanac hanging from a nail before my eyes, with its chromo of a bearded stripling in the midst of sheep, Jesus no doubt, parted the cheeks with both hands and strained, heave! ho! heave! ho!, with the motions of one tugging at the oar, and only one thought in my mind, to be back in my room and flat on my back again. What can that have been but constipation? Or am I confusing it with the diarrhoea? It’s all a muddle in my head, graves and nuptials and the different varieties of motion. Of my scanty belongings they had made a little heap, on the floor, against the door. I can still see that little heap, in the kind of recess full of shadow between the landing and my room. It was in this narrow space, guarded on three sides only, that I had to change, I mean exchange my dressing-gown and nightgown for my travelling costume, I mean shoes, socks, trousers, shirt, coat, greatcoat and hat, I can think of nothing else. I tried other doors, turning the knobs and pushing, or pulling, before I left the house, but none yielded. I think if I’d found one open I’d have barricaded myself in the room, they would have had to gas me out. I felt the house crammed as usual, the usual pack, but saw no one. I imagined them in their various rooms, all bolts drawn, every sense on the alert. Then the rush to the window, each holding back a little, hidden by the curtain, at the sound of the street door closing behind me, I should have left it open. Then the doors fly open and out they pour, men, women and children, and the voices, the sighs, the smiles, the hands, the keys in the hands, the blessed relief, the precautions rehearsed, if this then that, but if that then this, all clear and joy in every heart, come let’s eat, the fumigation can wait. All imagination to be sure, I was already on my way, things may have passed quite differently, but who cares how things pass, provided they pass. All those lips that had kissed me, those hearts that had loved me (it is with the heart one loves, is it not, or am I confusing it with something else?), those hands that had played with mine and those minds that had almost made their own of me! Humans are truly strange. Poor Papa, a nice mug he must have felt that day if he could see me, see us, a nice mug on my account I mean. Unless in his great disembodied wisdom he saw further than his son whose corpse was not yet quite up to scratch.
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