Samuel Beckett and the primacy of love Keller_00_Prelims 23/9/02, 10:42 am Keller_00_Prelims 23/9/02, 10:42 am Samuel Beckett and the primacy of love JOHN ROBER T KELLER Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Keller_00_Prelims 23/9/02, 10:42 am Copyright © John Robert Keller 2002 The right of John Robert Keller to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Distributed exclusively in Canada by UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for Cu ISBN 7190 6312 hardback ISBN 7190 6313 paperback First published 2002 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 10 Typeset in Dante with Tiffany display by Koinonia Ltd, Manchester Printed in Great Britain by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow Keller_00_Prelims 23/9/02, 10:42 am For Liwah, beautiful flower Keller_00_Prelims 23/9/02, 10:43 am Keller_00_Prelims 23/9/02, 10:43 am Contents Acknowledgements—page viii Foreword by Lance St John Butler—ix Introduction—1 Preliminaries and Proust No Endon sight: Murphy’s misrecognition of love 49 This emptied heart: Watt’s unwelcome home 90 A strange situation: self-entrapment in Waiting for Godot 133 The dispeopled kingdom: the hidden self in Beckett’s short fiction 172 Epilogue—217 References—219 Index—225 Keller_00_Prelims 23/9/02, 10:43 am Acknowledgements I am grateful to many individuals for their support and guidance My primary reader (and listener) was Ian Alexander, who until recently taught Beckett at the University of Aberdeen Shane Murphy, who currently teaches Beckett at Aberdeen, also read the manuscript and provided sage commentary Lance St John Butler advised me in many ways and wrote a most generous foreword In Toronto, both Don Carveth and Otto Weininger discussed my work with me on many occasions Ron Ruskin kindly invited me to present my work on Waiting for Godot at the Day in Applied Psychoanalysis Norman Holland, at the University of Florida, published sections of this study in the online journal Psyart and made helpful comments on the Introduction The team at Manchester University Press – in particular Matthew Frost and Kate Fox – and freelance editor Susan Williams, are consummate professionals, and managed to the impossible in making the publication process an enjoyable one I must also thank my patients, from whom I learn continually On a personal note, I am grateful to Victor Likwornik, Charles Hanly, Joshua Levy and to Doug Frayn, all of whom have been central to my development as a psychoanalyst, writer and person My friends and colleagues Fadi Abou-Rihan, Keith Haartman, Mimi Ismi and Jane Baldock have always been patient, helpful listeners for me For obvious reasons, writers always acknowledge their partners, whose patience and support is crucial to their work My wife Betty’s encouragement allowed the original conception of this study, and her unfailing sacrifice made its completion possible Our three daughters, Liwah, and the twins, Annika and Katrina, were born during the course of this project They have inspired it more than they can ever know Keller_00_Prelims 23/9/02, 10:43 am Foreword Beckett once remarked that he was interested in ‘fundamental sounds’ and the challenge for Beckett critics has been to find a metalanguage in which they can adequately comment on the profound noises of his drama and prose A number of studies have considered Beckett’s work alongside analogies from philosophy and, more recently, there has been an interest in Beckett as a sort of ‘dud mystic’ and espouser of what in theology is called the Via Negativa Aesthetically he has been seen as a minimalist minimalist But what is ‘fundamental’ can also include the psychological, and there have been several attempts at trying out the mind (rather than the nature of things, or the soul) as the locus of the Beckettian anguish John Keller, a practising psychoanalyst, has plunged into these bottomless waters with great energy and insight and has written a book that throws more light onto the Beckettian murk, at least for this long-term reader of his work, than has been available before I came away from reading the manuscript of this book with a sense of clarity and simplicity: whatever else Beckett is about, it now seems to me certain that his work is also a response to childhood trauma and an extended exploration of the effects on human beings of the primal loss Keller has the vigour and fearlessness of a scholar with a solid basis in one discipline applying his skills freely in another What he sees, from the perspective of his own special knowledge, is a series of texts crying out, perhaps almost literally, for a reading that acknowledges one source of the pain to be the separation from goodness (the Mother) that is the lifelong curse of the sensitive mind The readings he gives of the Beckett works dealt with are highly convincing and in places quite stunning Beckett Studies, for me at least, will never be quite the same again My own interests are leading me towards a Beckett more tormented by God (an absent God, bien entendu) than once people thought he was, but perhaps that is no contradiction of the immense explanatory power Keller_00_Prelims 23/9/02, 10:43 am ... appreciation of Keller_02_ch1pm 17 23/9/02, 10:49 am 18 Samuel Beckett and the primacy of love the wholeness of the other, and a toleration of the attendant anxieties that one has destroyed or damaged the. . .Samuel Beckett and the primacy of love Keller_00_Prelims 23/9/02, 10:42 am Keller_00_Prelims 23/9/02, 10:42 am Samuel Beckett and the primacy of love JOHN ROBER T KELLER... experiences of the power and the felt reality of the presence of another within the self I use the term ‘self’, in general, to refer to the totality of subjective experience, whether conscious