CHANGED MODALITIES IN : Putting Sapo in His Place

Abstract

PreliminariesLiterature is so often parasitic upon itself - Dante 'rewriting' Virgil; Don Quijote redefining chivalry, with help of Ariosto; even Gaber and/or Youdi importing 'life' into Keats (Beckett 2009b, 172)1 - that it seems safe suppose that any educated reader wanting 'situate' Beckett's Malone Dies will find it difficult not think in terms of Marcel Proust, famous for writing his huge novel in bed in his apartment in Boulevard Haussman. But beware parasite that, in as typically as in life, works undermine host it has invaded; or potentially useful analogy which turns out have little substance (Beckett 2009b, 179; Beckett 1983, 19).2 Malone Dies is not in any meaningful sense an A la Recherche du temps perdu in disguise, even though it may seem occasionally prey upon its great predecessor. The mission of Proust's alter ego in Recherche is demonstrate that [literature] is only life that is really lived (Bersani, 215), whereas Beckett's Malone is much closer - and in every sense much closer - his immediate predecessors in Three Novels, Molloy and Moran. Following latter as he does, Malone is even more reluctant this late stage [...] give way literature (Beckett 2009b, 158), having - if only for fictional purposes - reached an even later stage of de-composition, and having apparently convinced himself that writing is little more than game be maintained best of one's ability: it is game, I am going play (Beckett 2010a, 4). In his Proust essay Beckett says Death has not required us keep day free (Beckett 1965, 17). But Malone Dies is in large part product of freedom we enjoy (or endure) before inevitable end which we shall all have come. Malone intends enjoy this freedom by starting out under aegis of a certain kind of (4), although aesthetics he has in mind are swiftly reduced an increasingly moribund monologue monitoring his Present state (6) on one hand, and gradually diminishing repertoire of stories on other. This apparently simple division of labour, tacitly predicated on distinction between self and not-self, proves unsustainable, any 'Proustian solution' having been turned inside out and poured out quicker than any decanter could cope with (Beckett 1965, 36, 22). It bears emphasising that in Malone Dies, in spite of future tense with which novel opens (I shall soon...), everything is streaming towards what is past, whereas Proust's Recherche only retrieves past time (strictly speaking temps perdu) in hope of ultimately arriving at kind of vanishing point. Proust's Marcel is in pursuit of the fictions of life and of art with idea of making them either coincide or interact (Bersani, 206ff.); Beckett's Malone - never really in pursuit of anything tangible - carries out his creator's distinctly differential wish demonstrate that these are two 'fictions' which must always remain incommensurable.Nothing better illustrates Beckett's deviant (and in many ways destructive) impulses in Malone Dies than his treatment of Sapo. From early on Malone insists that Nothing is less like me than this patient, reasonable child, struggling all alone for years shed little light upon himself, avid of least gleam, stranger joys of darkness (18), which virtually destroys Sapo from outset; but it does so at cost of leaving unanswered troubling question as why (if not to shed little light upon himself) Malone should ever have brought Sapo into 'being' in first place. Now it may be easy see that Sapo passages offered Beckett opportunity work off unfinished business of his two years in Roussillon.3 What is less obvious is that because Sapo cannot be allowed survive, neither can style of writing embodying him survive. Farewell Sapo, farewell Realism. It is as if Beckett were determined once and for all put at least one old chestnut behind him, Nouvelles and Molloy having failed deliver absolute coup de grâce in this connection. …