Text 5. The Inn, In the Village
Here, the mood, the question, the concern, this evening: what are the consequences for a life – for the life of one like I – if the world of phenomena, the embodied I, is illusion, mere appearance, mere representation (of a mind)? Or perhaps to put it like this: what is the experience of and what might be the sense of guilt in failing to believe in a world, failing to believe in a body, failing to believe in words reporting on (all lies) a world, saying none of it, world, body, words, exist? Countless ancient and modern religious and philosophic texts grapple with the idea that the world is an illusion, say Schopenhauer’s idea of world as representation (see also post on Schopenhauer in Beckett’s The Unnamable), or the Buddhist’s idea of Maya. Here, in Text 5, I – this inner-I that I call I – is less concerned about the other, about the life of I that is above and embodied as a separate being, that I call the other. (Here, I looks at the body, the hand “A little creepy crawly it ventures out an instant, then goes back in again, the things one has to listen to, I say it as I hear it.” (119)) Here, too, the words, the voices, try to convince I that he is among the living, as in The Unnamable, i.e., that I is in fact the other; here I is arguing, hearing the case. But I is not born so as to begin to die; to be among the living he would be able to die, he would be among the dying. To a graveyard//My journey has brought me.//I’ll turn in here, I thought to myself. O unmerciful inn,//You nonetheless turn me away? In Text 5, I looks inward, at his experience of illusion, and he tries to find himself, inside a head perhaps?
I is at vigil, dutifully making a record: “the vigil is in vain, [the voices, words tell him] that I’d be better advised to take a little turn, the way you manoeuvre a tin soldier.” (118) And: “The first thing would be to believe I’m there, if I could do that I’d lap up the rest, there’d be none more credulous than me, if I were there.” (119) It would be so simple, if I – I call him I – could believe that that other existed, that embodied man, the whole world would come in too, but without belief? – then where, who? what?
I is tired of all of this, his predicament, the hopelessness of it. “It’s a game, it’s getting to be a game, I’m going to rise and go, if it’s not me it will be someone, a phantom…” (120) I’m tired enough to collapse. But to do that, to go and mingle with air and earth, I would, in fact, only be even more “in exile.” (120)
The Text is structured (by I or the words) as a criminal trial. I or the words say that I is “in the dock.” This brings to mind Schopenhauer’s idea of life as guilt, a debt to work off. As discussed in a post on I’s pensum in The Unnamable, and in a post on The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, by Machado de assis, Schopenhauer describes life as a debt to pay off, a crime. One gets through life “like bonded labour to pay off a debt.” WWR, Volume II (583)
In Text 5, here, I looks “inside the head, to try and see inside, to look for me there, to look for someone there…” (117) He’s in the dark “where I will in vain to see there can’t be any willing.” (117) There is willing even here – I exists as a willing creature, willing to see “there can’t be any willing,” willing still. I is an individual, the art of the Texts is a universal expression of an experience. I is not Schopenhauer’s artist, say Proust, without will in the moment of contemplation of a thing, and, as Schopenhauer says, losing all individuation in the moment, not being an individual man. No, I is an individual, in spite of everything, in spite of nothing. But I is not the embodied individual narrowly serving the will, caring for narrow interests, desires, survival. I is the willing individual looking on, attempting to illuminate himself and the world, a “form of life” in itself (see Text 6). In Beckett’s art, I illuminates the individual and world in a new light.
In this phantom world, inside this “imaginary head,” (120) I says he must have “noted many a story with them [sky and earth] as setting… Between them where the hero stands a great gulf is fixed, while all about they [sky and earth] flow together more and more, till they meet, so that he finds himself as it were under glass, and yet with no limits to his movements in all directions…” (118, 119) I creates those others between earth and sky.
I says – “[T]his evening I’m the scribe. This evening, it’s always evening, always spoken of as evening… it’s to make me think night is at hand, bringer of rest.” No rest for I, no end to his journey, never to reach anywhere, a light, the light, for instance. Oh then now, only onwards “I’m tired of it, I’d be tired of it, if I were me.” (120) And “another evening, all happens at evening, but it will be the same night, it too has its evenings, its mornings and its evenings… it’s to make me think day is at hand, disperser of phantoms.” (120) No light of day will disperse phantoms. Bark me away, you watchful dogs,//Don’t let me rest in the hour of sleeping!//I’m at an end with all dreams – //Why should I linger among the sleepers?