Late Modernist Style in Samuel Beckett and Emmanuel Levinas

Transcription

1 Late Modernist Style in Samuel Beckett and Emmanuel Levinas

2 New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-First Century Series Editor: Je n n i f e r M. Je f f e r s As the leading literary figure to emerge from post World War II Europe, Samuel Beckett s texts and his literary and intellectual legacy have yet to be fully appreciated by critics and scholars. The goal of New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-First Century is to stimulate new approaches and develop fresh perspectives on Beckett, his texts, and his legacy. The series will provide a forum for original and interdisciplinary interpretations concerning any aspect of Beckett s work or his influence upon subsequent writers, artists, and thinkers. Jennifer M. Jeffers is Professor of English and Associate Dean and Ombudsperson for the College of Graduate Studies at Cleveland State University. In addition to numerous articles, she is the author of The Irish Novel at the End of the Twentieth Century: Gender, Bodies, and Power; Britain Colonized: Hollywood s Appropriation of British Literature; Uncharted Space: The End of Narrative; the editor of Samuel Beckett ; and coeditor of Contextualizing Aesthetics: From Plato to Lyotard. Also in the Series: Samuel Beckett: History, Memory, Archive edited by Se á n Kennedy and Katherine Weiss Beckett s Masculinity by Jennifer M. Jeffers Sex and Aesthetics in Samuel Beckett s Work by Paul Stewart Late Modernist Style in Samuel Beckett and Emmanuel Levinas by Peter Fifield

3 Late Modernist Style in Samuel Beckett and Emmanuel Levinas Peter Fifield

4 LATE MODERNIST STYLE IN SAMUEL BECKETT AND EMMANUEL LEVINAS Copyright Peter Fifield, Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 All rights reserved. First published in 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number , of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fifield, Peter. Late modernist style in Samuel Beckett and Emmanuel Levinas / Peter Fifield. p. cm. (New interpretations of Beckett in the twenty-first century) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN Beckett, Samuel, Criticism and interpretation. 2. Lévinas, Emmanuel Criticism and interpretation. 3. Modernism (Literature) I. Title. PR6003.E282Z dc A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: March

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6 Contents Series Editor s Preface For e w or d Acknowledgments ix xi xv I nt ro duc t ion 1 Part I 1 Wr it i n g a g a i n s t A r t 23 2 A R e luc t a nt Po e t ic s 41 Pa r t I I 3 why after all not say without further ado what can later be unsaid ( Company ) 71 4 begin again all over more or less in the same place or in another ( How It Is ) The Turn to Hyperbole 141 C onc lu sion 161 Not e s 167 B ibl i og r a ph y 187 In d e x 203

7 Series Editor s Preface A s the leading literary figure to emerge from post World War II Europe, Samuel Beckett s texts and his literary and intellectual legacy have yet to be fully explored by critics and scholars. The purpose of New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-First Century is to stimulate new approaches and fresh perspectives on Beckett s texts and legacy. The series will provide a forum for original and interdisciplinary interpretations concerning Beckett s work and/or his influence upon subsequent writers, artists, and thinkers. Much has been made of James Joyce s influence on Beckett (which is limited to the early years of his career), but there has yet to be a thorough analysis of Beckett s influence not only on writers (Vaclav Havel, Edna O Brien, Harold Pinter, J. M. Coetzee, and James Kelman) but also on artists (Jasper Johns, Bruce Nauman, Avigdor Arikha), musicians (Philip Glass, Heinz Holliger, Mascual Dusapin), philosophers (Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Michel Foucault), and cultural and theoretical critics (Felix Guattari, Theodor Adorno, and Maurice Blanchot). Because Beckett s influence traverses disciplinary boundaries, scholarly possibilities are virtually without limit. New Interpretations of Beckett will be a forum for new critical discourses on Beckett and his ongoing interdisciplinary legacy. New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-First Century invites work that reconnects Beckett with his own cultural and historical situation. The importance of archival access to unpublished Beckett material, the impact of the publication of The Letters of Samuel Beckett, and a gestational period since the official biography

8 x Series Editor s Preface appeared all lead to the next phase of Beckett Studies brimming with exciting possibilities for interpretation and evaluation. Along with recovering from its ahistorical phase, Beckett criticism is also beginning to open up new avenues of critique across the four genres in which Beckett wrote (fiction, drama, poetry, critical essay). New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-First Century invites scholarly proposals that feature Beckett s work and/or his influence or cross-discourse with other creative artists, thinkers, or movements.

9 Foreword T he work of Emmanuel Levinas ( ) has become a touchstone for literary criticism over the past twenty years. Its characteristic elevation of ethics to the status of first philosophy has offered an antidote to the perceived ethical myopia of post-structuralism, and has thus made a strong claim for philosophical readings of literature in the period of literary theory s decline. The price of this recognition has been a twofold neglect. The first has been to Levinas s hostility to literature, which has been routinely sidestepped or forgiven as a faux pas that can be corrected by diligent critics. Consulted with particular urgency as theory lost prestige and authority at the end of the twentieth century, it proved an inconvenient fact that Levinas s opinions on literature were largely critical. With the exception of Jill Robbins s Altered Reading, which engages directly with this issue, and to which I return throughout this book, literary criticism is still to engage properly with Levinasian aesthetics. And it is yet to give anything like a Levinasian reading of a literary text that takes these writings into account. The second neglect has been to the manner in which Levinas s works are written, which has frequently been seen merely to provide a readymade lexicon with which to reinvigorate tired readings. Employing those terms that mark out Levinas s writing discussion of the face, alterity, and the other would thus bear the hopes of critics seeking an ethically responsive, or even responsible, criticism. Careful attention to the development and deployment of these terms will remedy this. Reading Levinas in tandem with Samuel Beckett allows us to take proper stock of both of these elements of what we might call

10 xii Foreword Levinasian aesthetics. Aesthetics here applies not simply to literary works but to the mechanics of philosophy also. This is not to read Levinas in bad faith and forswear the philosophical aims of his work, but to consider the artistry inherent in his project as a writer more generally. One of the effects of this is to reexamine the volatile relationship between literature and philosophy as it is conceived by Beckett and Levinas. In choosing Beckett I do not, of course, select a neutral zone for a Levinasian reading but an author whose own works obsessively query the viability of their own discourse. This endless critique, so iconically Beckettian, is also, I will argue, profoundly Levinasian. By exploring these oeuvres together, following the historical development of Levinasian concepts and techniques via the face, the trace, recommencement, and hyperbole, I hope that new light will be shed on the variety of Beckett s engagements with the manifold challenges of expression. To this end, this book is divided into two parts, which are intended to complement one another. The first considers the discussions of literature, philosophy, and expression more widely in Beckett s and Levinas s work. The longer second part includes analysis of Beckett s work in terms of broader Levinasian concerns with expression, and addresses their practice as writers, working within and across disciplines. The first part contains the majority of historical and biographical information, but employs this as an invitation to broader conceptual and thematic discussion and close reading. Little of my argument depends upon such contextual information in its own right this is not an argument for influence in either direction but the stylistic proximity of Beckett and Levinas s immediate postwar publications encourages a comparison whose significance stretches beyond historical circumstance. As such, while I start with a consideration of the historical nexus of texts in the final years of 1940s Paris, the rest of this book takes flight from that point to consider thematic and methodological questions. In doing so, I follow the spirit of Levinas s own reading, which is openly skeptical of the historicist impulse. Such a method, he writes, might risk attaching itself to the origin symbols that have long ago gone beyond the meaning they had at the time of their birth. It could

11 Foreword xiii impoverish or disqualify them in the anecdote or the local event in which they began (Levinas Nine Talmudic Readings, 8). Levinas s rise to prominence in the final decade of the twentieth century and Beckett s ever-growing popularity would, on its own, justify a consideration of the ongoing unfolding of meaning for current readers of Beckett and Levinas alike.

12 Acknowledgments I would like to thank the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York and St. John s College, Oxford, for support throughout this research. I would also like to acknowledge the work of the editorial team at Palgrave, particularly series editor Jennifer Jeffers and Brigitte Shull and Maia Woolner. Their professionalism made this a better book than would otherwise have been the case, and they have been supportive and helpful at every turn. Levinas s hesitation in the face of literature might seem to offer little to those in love with writing, but he proclaims the preeminence of a personal interaction that is borne out by my experience of academia. Derek Attridge and Geoffrey Wall provided guidance and support through my PhD and beyond. Without exception, the academics with whom I share a field have been generous with their time, effort, and knowledge; they have been kind both in criticism and encouragement, and have only increased the joy that literature offers. In particular, I would like to thank Chris Ackerley, David Addyman, Elizabeth Barry, Steven Connor, Matthew Feldman, Patrick Hayes, James Knowlson, Emilie Morin, Mark Nixon, John Pilling, Vike Plock, Erik Tonning, David Tucker, and Shane Weller. I met Ulrika Maude when she was my demanding and exciting tutor in Durham, and I now have the pleasure of counting her as a valued colleague and friend. Similarly, I have admired Laura Salisbury s superb work since my first encounter with it as an undergraduate and am flattered and grateful to have the benefit of

13 xvi Acknowledgments her expert comments on the manuscript, as well as her friendship. All remaining errors are my own. The most important of my thanks are to those for whom, rightly, this book has the least importance. My personal thanks go to my parents, David and Margaret, who show support for and happiness in everything I do. Finally, this book is dedicated to my wife, Katy, whom I love.