Samuel Beckett's Hidden Drives: Structural Uses of Depth Psychology (Crosscurrents)
J. D. O'Hara
Language: English
Pages: 320
ISBN: 0813015278
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
"Culminates with the closest, most detailed and systematic reading of Beckett’s most important novel, Molloy, yet produced. . . . No other work in Beckett studies has attempted to deal with these works in this much detail, with this strong a thesis, and, most important, with this much success. . . . A masterwork. It will completely revise how we think of Beckett’s creative process and how we read Molloy."--S. E. Gontarski, Florida State University
While much has been written on the subject of Joyce’s uses of sources and models, little has been written about Samuel Beckett’s similar preference for using formal systems of thought as scaffolding for his own work. In the most comprehensive study of his use of source material, J. D. O’Hara examines specifically Beckett’s almost obsessive concern with psychological sources and themes and his use of Freudian and Jungian narrative structures.
Beginning with Beckett’s early monograph, Proust, O’Hara traces Beckett’s preference for Schopenhauer’s philosophy as the system of thought most appropriate for thinking and writing about Proust. O’Hara then examines Beckett’s shift from philosophical to psychological models, specifically to Freudian and Jungian texts. Beckett used these, as O’Hara demonstrates, for characterization and plot in his early writings.
Beckett’s use of depth psychology, however, in no way allows the reader to hang either a "Freudian" or "Jungian" tag on Beckett. O’Hara cautions his readers against inferring "truth value" from what is more properly understood as scaffolding--a temporary arrangement used during the construction of his own absolutely unique art form. O’Hara analyzes this scaffolding in the novel Murphy, the story collection More Pricks Than Kicks, the short works "First Love" and "From an Abandoned Work," and the radio play All That Fall. He concludes with the most comprehensive and detailed reading of Molloy available anywhere. No serious reader of Beckett will want to be without this book.
Interpretation and Overinterpretation
and Molloy are heading. The sketchy psychic landscape has none of the complexity of Mag or of Bally, and certainly it cannot match Lousse's gardened estate. In addition, one is increasingly distracted from the narrative by Molloy's developing tendency to lecture. He has left his Cartesian lair, but not his rational egoconsciousness. Analyses flourish in this
Because Schopenhauer is little read now, some hasty survey of his ideas, so far as they are central to Beckett's interest in him, should be afforded those who have not studied The World as Will and Representation. This section provides such a survey, warped to fit Beckett's interest in Schopenhauer's ideas. Arthur Schopenhauer (178–1860) bitterly opposed the Hegelian orthodoxy of German philosophy in his time. As a result he was kept from teaching and had little professional success until
intellect responds directly. A human being's knowledgeinhibited intellect makes such a direct response impossible. Therefore, the intellect must temporize, must tell itself stories about romance, Page 18 love, marriages made in heaven, lasting satisfaction — stories that in the end permit the will to have its way. The extended result, however, is always the same: the
Maddy often expresses her sensuality, both positively and negatively. She is excited when Mr. Slocum pushes her up into his car, but she objects to mere unproductive affection and laments her lack of a living daughter: “Childlessness. . . . Minnie! Little Minnie! Love, that is all I asked, a little love, daily, twice daily, fifty years of twice
for material that he would then incorporate into his own writing. Beckett copied out striking, memorable or witty sentences or phrases into his notebooks. Such quotations or near quotations were then woven into the dense fabric of his early prose” (109). Knowlson goes on to cite the example of Beckett's reading the Confessions of Saint Augustine just before writing his first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, in 1929 (published only in 1993): ‘‘A private notebook of