Marxism and Irish Communism In Beckett's

Abstract

translation work during the 1930s for Nancy Cunard's Negro: An Anthology (1934) undoubtedly exposed him to left-wing notions of art: Alan Warren Friedman notes that most of the writers Beckett translated for Cunard were surrealists, politically active supporters of left-wing causes, and Communist Party members (xxvi). The translations for Cunard's revolutionary anthology, which he completed early 1933 (Beckett 2009, 147), seem to have heightened awareness of Irish left-wing politics during the composition of More Pricks Than Kicks (More Pricks), on which he worked until October 1933 (Pilling, 6-7). Likewise, James Knowlson notes that Beckett's attitudes were basically left-wing and anti-establishment, and these attitudes can be found as early as More Pricks its opposition to capital punishment (641). Moreover, it will be argued, Belacqua's encounters while navigating social spaces 1930s Dublin are situated confrontation with established Irish political idealisms and debates, specifically, Marxist-based communism. Exploring the ideological principles theorized by Marx and Engels, on which the Irish Left is primarily based, will facilitate a richer understanding of aesthetic confrontation of the ideology of Irish Communism More Pricks. However, despite its historical, political and social content, More Pricks does not engage, dialectically or otherwise, with 1930s Irish politics. Although, the political and social issues therein, it will be argued, function as acknowledgement of the context which the text was written, few resolutions to political problems are proposed, as work resists solutions that participate the problems addressed. Belacqua's movements through Dublin demonstrate his reluctant participation with Irish politics. This disengagement from political discourse allows the text to expose the failure of left-wing politics to promote substantial social change, all the while avoiding a dialectic engagement with Irish politics.Marxist readings of Beckett, used to examine such antiestablishment attitudes, are not uncommon. Marjorie Perloff contextualizes post-war work relation to French Vichy politics and notes that in the sixties, Marxism became dominant France, work could be read, as it was by Adorno, as a brilliant expose of the capitalist ethos of modemmechanized (26). 'expose' of the capitalist mechanized society has roots his earlier work. For instance, Beckett provides such a portrayal of mechanized life Dublin through his depiction of Pearse Street as a highway dehumanized a tumult of busses. Trams were monsters, moaning beneath the wild gesture of the trolley (1993, 54). More commonly, Marxism is used to examine aesthetic exploration of human alienation. Philosophically, characters are examined relation to posthumanism based on Marxist alienation, by Boulter for instance (13), or they are viewed through a postcolonialist lens by David Lloyd (1989) and others. Likewise, Kevin Brazil analyzes post-war work, Eleutheria, for example, which, he argues, attacks [...] discourses of humanism (94). Peter Gidal's 1986 book-length study draws on postAlthusserian Marxism to probe the politics of theatre, whereas Patrick Bixby invokes Terry Eagleton to historicize Dream of Fair to Middling Women relation to the Irish Free State as an exemplary case of what Marx has dubbed combined and uneven development (40). However, references to Irish Communism and Marxism as a visible element of The Irish Free State, which manifest themselves, or are confronted by Beckett, More Kicks remain relatively unexplored.The Irish Left during the 1930s was primarily focused on ideologically tethering industrial unionism with Irish nationalism, history and culture. The Marxist ideological foundations for the Irish Left the twentieth century are reflected James Connolly's proposed 'Celtic communism' as a principle of common ownership by a people of their sources of food and maintenance (qtd. …