Glaucon asks Socrates: “So, tell us then, in what way the power of dialectical discussion works, into what kinds it is divided, and what roads it follows. I mean, it is these, it seems, that would lead us at last to that place which is a rest from the road, so to speak, for the one who reaches it, and an end of his journey.” (Republic, translated by Reeves, Book 7, 532d5) But for I in Texts for Nothing: no end to the journey, no rest from the road, no “place which is a rest from the road.”

Texts for Nothing. Winter’s Journey

Texts for Nothing, this most beautiful and pure text, is (I believe) — in addition to the myriad and complex references and/or resonances to other texts or art forms (including his own works) — “embedded in” and/or an inversion of Schubert’s Winterreise – Winter Journey. 

In the annotations to Texts for Nothing, it states that the “title [Texts for Nothing] derives from the musical term, measure pour rien, a silent measure at the outset of a performance, ‘adapted from the phrase conductors use for that ghost measure which sets the orchestra’s tempo’….” See Samuel Beckett, Texts pour rien / Texts for Nothing, Annotations, Edition de Chris Ackerley et Llewellyn Brown (LA REVUE des lettres modernes 2018-7) (“Annotations”). The Texts of Texts for Nothing, are, I believe, a reflection and mirror – or like ghost measures – to the songs of Winter Journey. In Winter Journey, a man journeys “above” in a world, still able to believe in the life of a man, in himself as embodied man, still able to believe in love, in God, in the existence of things, trees, a world, in spite of loneliness and loss. But I – the I of Texts for Nothing – has lost the world, I cannot believe in the world’s existence, in the “reality” of phenomena, in the “reality” of body or words, let alone a God. The “I” in Texts for Nothing inverts the winter journey into a journey-less journey in pure darkness. The evolved “I” of The Unnamable sings a woeful song of a ghost-like journey that is going nowhere, that goes nowhere is nowhere. 

My thoughts, comments, focus on the ghost-like journey of I in Texts for Nothing. I add references to Winter Journey in italics, to note possible mirroring to the song.

Note: to better understand the posts on Texts for Nothing, it is best to read some if not all of the posts on Beckett’s The Unnamable first.

Text 1. Good Night

I sadly gives in: he doesn’t rail against being “adhered” to a body, a head (i.e., against being “gathered together for life” with the other, such as Mahood or Beckett) as he rails and denies in The Unnamable. I is still a separate being (i.e., character) distinct from the body, the head, the named creature (i.e., there are two, I and man, say Beckett or Mahood, this latter ‘man’ I call “other”). As noted, understanding the distinctness of I as a separate character in full is fundamental to understanding The Unnamable, and this is true for the Texts. “[I am] away from the body, away from the head…. Ah yes, we seem to be more than one, all deaf, not even, gathered together for life.” (Pages 100-101, The Complete Short Prose, Edited and with an Introduction and Notes by S. E. Gontarski (1995).)

I is here (still). The “same voice[s], the same ideas,” the same questions. “How long have I been here, what a question, I’ve often wondered. And often I could answer, An hour, a month, a year, a century, depending on what I meant by here, and me, and being.” (101) Being: here or there, either way, how describe it? and here, how describe it? “I’m here, always have been, always shall be.” (103) Why do they ask about my sorrows?

I no longer rails against the idea of having “been born” – with the other or perhaps initially as the other (until I recognized himself as distinct). “To change, to see, no, there’s no more to see, I’ve seen it all, till my eyes are blear, nor to get away from harm, the harm is done, one day the harm was done, the day my feet dragged me out that must go their ways, that I let go their ways and drag me here, that’s what possessed me to come.” (102)

In sensation, the other is there, the body, the life, the one living life above, having to go and come and move on in a body, “it’s himself all right.” (102) “I’m up there and I’m down here, under my gaze, foundered, eyes closed, ear cupped against the sucking peat, we’re of one mind, all of one mind, always were, deep down, we’re fond of one another, we’re sorry for one another, but there it is, there’s nothing we can do for one another.” (102) I came a stranger, / I depart a stranger.

The long night of the gods. “Yes, it will be night, the mist will clear… the whole night sky open over the mountain, with its lights, including the Bears, to guide me once again on my way, let’s wait for night.” (102) The curlews “crying when the darkness gathers” (101) – a haunting song of night, as stated in Annotations, foreshadows death and as in Yeats, O’ curlew (He reproves the Curlew), accentuates a lost passion. I cannot choose the time / of my journey: / Must find my own way in this darkness. / A moon beam goes along / As my companion, / And on the white meadows / I look for tracks of deer. There is a hint of winter, but I is not in time or space, or doesn’t experience time or space, doesn’t know what time is, the idea of night and of winter is an abstraction or a metaphor: “like buried in snow” (102), “the cold is eating me… at least I presume so” (102); his father read the story to him of Joe Breem or Breen “all the long winter through.” (103)

I is the (resistant) story teller, still having to describe “the place,” and to use the right tense, but failing, “All mingles, times and tenses, at first I only had been here, now I’m here still, soon I won’t be here yet, toiling up the slope…” (102) He has “given myself up for dead all over the place… the same old questions, the same old mutterings, the same old stories, the same old questions and answers, no malice in me, hardly any….” (103) “Yes, to the end, always muttering, to lull me and keep me company” – as when his father took him on his knee and read him the one about Joe Breem or Breen. I is “my father and I was my son, I asked myself questions and answered as best I could, I had it told to me evening after evening, the same old story I knew by heart and couldn’t believe.” In many of the Texts, as we’ll see, I is his father and his son, I asking himself questions, telling himself the same old story, evening after evening. I and other, I here, other above: “we walked together, hand in hand, silent, sunk in our worlds, each in his worlds, the hands forgotten in each other.” (103)

Good night. “I’m holding myself in my arms…. Sleep now, as under that ancient lamp, all twined together, tired out with so much talking, so much listening, so much toil and play.” (104) I won’t disturb you in your dream, / It would be a shame to disturb your rest… Softly, softly the door closes!