Sex and Aesthetics in Samuel Beckett’s Work

233 Pages·2011·1.689 MB·English

by  Paul Stewart (auth.)

New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-first Century
Series Editor: Jennifer M. Jeffers
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, 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 Seán Kennedy and Katherine Weiss
Beckett’s Masculinity
by Jennifer M. Jeffers
Sex and Aesthetics in Samuel Beckett’s Work
by Paul Stewart
Previous Publications
Zone of Evaporation: Samuel Beckett’s Disjunctions. 2006.
Sex and Aesthetics in Samuel
Beckett’s Work
Paul Stewart
SEX AND AESTHETICS IN SAMUEL BECKETT’S WORK
Copyright © Paul Stewart, 2011.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-10881-3
All rights reserved.
First published in 2011 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
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 785998, 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 978-1-349-29162-5 ISBN 978-0-230-33927-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230339279
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stewart, Paul, 1971–
Sex and aesthetics in Samuel Beckett’s work / Paul Stewart.
p. cm.—(New interpretations of Beckett in the twenty-first century)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Beckett, Samuel, 1906–1989—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Sex
in literature. I. Title. II. Series.
PR6003.E282Z8354 2011
8489.91409—dc22 2011005471
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: August 2011
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1 A Rump Sexuality: The Recurrence of
Defecating Horses in Beckett’s Oeuvre 17
2 The Horror of Sex 29
3 The Horrors of Reproduction 63
4 Alternating and Alternative Sexualities 99
5 Sex and Aesthetics 133
6 Aesthetic Reproduction across the Oeuvre 161
Conclusion 195
Notes 199
Bibliography 217
Index 225
Acknowledgments
I
would like to thank the University of Nicosia for granting me a sabbat-
ical and research time release, without which this book could not have
been finished. My colleagues, Drs. Terzieva-Artemis, Kogetsidis, and
Mackay, were very generous in covering for me during the sabbatical pe-
riod. I would also like to thank Christina Papageorgiou of the University
of Nicosia Library for her invaluable aid in overcoming the difficulties of
conducting research in Cyprus. I would also like to thank Jill McDonald for
her patient efforts at unpacking my prose and checking for howling errors.
I have enjoyed wonderful support from the wider Beckett community.
I would like to thank Mark Nixon, Ronan McDonald, Matthew Feldman,
Erik Tonning, John Pilling, and Sean Kennedy, in particular, for their assis-
tance in accessing archive material, organizing conferences at which I was
able to develop the arguments of this volume, and for their insightful and
helpful suggestions. My thanks also go to Laura Salisbury, Ulrika Maude,
and Elizabeth Barry.
Certain sections of this volume have appeared in different forms in
journals and edited collections. I would like, therefore, to note with ap-
preciation that a version of Chapter 1 first appeared in “All Sturm and no
Drang”: Beckett and Romanticism/Beckett at Reading 2006: Samuel Beckett
Today/Aujourd’hui 18, edited by Dirk van Hulle and Mark Nixon. Aspects
of Chapter 5 appeared as “Sterile Reproduction: Beckett’s Death of the
Species and Fictional Regeneration” in Beckett and Death, edited by Steven
Barfield, Matthew Feldman, and Philip Tew (London: Continuum, 2009).
My thanks to all these editors. The section of Chapter 5 entitled “The Art
of Reproduction: Malone and Schopenhauer” is a revised version of “Sexual
and Aesthetic Reproduction in Malone Dies,” in Samuel Beckett: Debts
and Legacies, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui 22 (2010), edited by Erik
Tonning, Matthew Feldman, Matthijs Engelberts, and Dirk van Hulle.
Again, thanks to those editors.
viii ● Acknowledgments
I would also like to acknowledge the diligence and dedication of the
Palgrave team, especially the series editor Jennifer M. Jeffers, my editor
Brigitte Shull, and the editorial assistants Joanna Roberts and Lee Norton.
They have guided me expertly through the whole process.
Finally, I am deeply indebted to the patience of Katy, Sam, and Joe
Stewart, whose collective light darkened and deepened my understanding
of Beckett.
Introduction
Sex, Procreation, and Suffering
Estragon: What about hanging ourselves?
Vladimir: Hmm. It would give us an erection!
Estragon: [Highly excited.] An erection!
Vladimir: With all that follows.1
V
ladimir and Estragon are waiting for Godot, of course, as they
briefly entertain the possibility of hanging themselves and argu-
ably thereby taking control of their situation and ending the pause
in which they seem to live. There are other benefits to hanging oneself,
as Vladimir points out. This spilling of semen as one expires through
asphyxiation might be taken as an ironic comment on the very sexlessness
of these two old men; the only hope of erection and ejaculation for this
jaded, beleaguered couple is in the act of suicide. Such an ironic reading,
as shall be seen, would suit the more general treatment of sex and sexuality
within Beckett’s works, which often views matters of sexuality as an early
concern that is rigorously excised from the novels and plays as Beckett suc-
ceeds in focusing on the more universal, less temporal themes with which
his work has become associated. Such a reading would ignore the “highly
excited” reaction of Estragon at the mere possibility of an erection. Didi
and Gogo are still excited by the prospect of physical sexual expression and
not (as a thoroughly Cartesian reading might suggest) horrified by a body
seemingly acting beyond the control of the mind. It is certainly true that
the opportunities for sexual expression have dwindled to almost nothing
for Didi and Gogo, but this does not mean that the possibility of sexual
expression, nor the desire for it, has disappeared. Didi’s and Gogo’s excite-
ment over an erection may be a ruined remnant of “normal” sexuality, but
2 ● Sex and Aesthetics in Samuel Beckett’s Work
the fact that it is entertained at the point of death speaks to the tenacity
of that remnant.
The matter, however, would not be closed with death and ejaculation.
Vladimir’s “all that follows” goes beyond the spilling of semen: “Where it
falls mandrakes grow. That’s why they shriek when you pull them up” (18).
The myth of the mandrake as a by-p roduct of a suicide’s semen is an old
and varied one. Beckett activates two key components of the myth—that
the mandrake is a human-v egetable (the Greeks referred to it as anthropo-
morphon, and the Romans as semihominus2) and that when pulled up the
plant shrieks as if in pain. In some accounts, the shriek is fatal to humans,
as Shakespeare relates in Henry VI, Part 2: “Could curses kill, as doth the
mandrake’s groan.”3 The mandrake has a paradoxical set of associations sur-
rounding it, best described by Hugo Rahner in Greek Myths and Christian
Mastery: “The mandrake [can] be the herb of life or of death, symbol of both
sensual love, the bringer of death, or of divine love, the restorer of life.”4 The
mandrake was used as an aid to fertility, and yet also hedged about with
dire warnings for those who would pick it. The association of life and death
with this single semi- human vegetable is precisely what Beckett gains by the
allusion. Vladimir’s comment points to the cycle of birth, suffering, and
death, which is a consistent motif in Beckett’s work, and he also points to
the danger inherent within sexual activity; even semen spilled on the ground
at a suicide’s feet might not be safely spent but might rather perpetuate the
chain of events that guarantees pain.
The mandrake association of sex, suffering, and death forms a key part
of this volume, for it is through sex that death and suffering are perpetu-
ated. This association, as expressed by such figures as Mani, Augustine, and,
most importantly for Beckett, Schopenhauer, has been a constant if some-
what submerged current throughout Western thought. In his persuasive
and almost encyclopedic work, Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture,
Jonathan Dollimore effectively catalogues the tone of much early Christian
thought concerning reproduction and death. In a comment that might cast
a new perspective on Beckett’s use of “Death and the Maiden” as a musical
introduction to All That Fall, Gregory of Nyssa, as recorded by Dollimore,
writes:
the bodily procreation of children [ . . . ] is more an embarking upon death
than upon life. [ . . . ] Corruption has its beginning in birth and those
who refrain from procreation through virginity themselves bring about
a cancellation of death by preventing it from advancing further because
of them. [ . . . ] they keep death from going forward [ . . . ] Virginity is
stronger than death. [ . . . ] The unceasing succession of destruction and