‘The world is my representation’: — this holds true for every living, cognitive being, although only a human being can bring it to abstract, reflective consciousness: and if he actually does so he has become philosophically sound. It immediately becomes clear and certain to him that he is not acquainted with either the sun or the earth, but rather only with an eye that sees a sun, with a hand that feels an earth, and that the surrounding world exists only as representation, that is, exclusively in relation to something else, the representing being that he himself is. – If any a priori truth can be asserted, then this is it; for this truth expresses the form of all possible and conceivable experience.
The World as Will and Representation, Volume 1, First Book, Section 1, (first paragraph) Schopenhauer, edited and translated by Norman, Welchman, and Janaway.
One might have a twofold existence: the I who is embodied, enslaved to the service of the will in Schopenhauer’s terms; the other I is the one who comes to understand that he is not acquainted with either the sun or the earth but rather only with an eye that sees the sun, with a hand that feels an earth. It is Beckett’s radical innovation to recognize this latter existence as a distinct and separate existence, and to shift the I to this existence. I note this I has a body by necessity, but perhaps it is utterly still, as if not there, not real.
The unnamable I of The Unnamable documents a life experience – in fictional terms, is an individual, a character. Beckett’s I, like Ahab, is the rare character who like a radical philosopher illuminates the world around him in a new light. I name the I of The Unnamable “I” for purposes of this discussion.
In the experience of life, there is or might be a self, as if a distinct self, looking on: looking on at a distance, looking on in a way that is distinct even in personality from the named self moving about in a world (i.e.,distinct from the engaged self who is immersed in all that is happening ‘out there’). I looks on as if separate from the body and named being in a world that I is apparently adhered to. Perhaps it can be said like this: in the long years of human work, human life reflected in words, the idea of “looking on,” the feeling of reflection or reflecting at a distance – perhaps it is Thoreau standing at lake, or the Stoic notion of judging fate swirling around one (the correct moral response to a threatening storm is to recognize that a storm and even death are indifferent) – is not new or even uncommon. Beckett’s innovation, as noted, one with an enormous expansion of insight, is to shift the “I” to the “one” who is looking on. Thus, I is not Thoreau standing at a lake, reflecting. I is (apparently, I wonders) an aspect of the body and life of Thoreau, peering on even at the life and body of Thoreau. I calls himself ‘I’ and looks. Thoreau’s experiences of being human might include I, but I as a separate being experiences and feels very differently from Thoreau. I might not even recognize Thoreau as himself (yes, the I of The Unnamable is a “him”), even if Thoreau claims, positively argues to the end, that “I is me, a truer me.” I doesn’t believe him. I experiences himself as separate from the life and body of Thoreau.
Understanding the nature of I is crucial to reading The Unnamable. That is, understanding the nature of I – his distinct existence – reveals, unveils aspects, one might say, of what can even be considered conventional aspects of the novel, the hilarious, outrageous nature of this novel. I will discuss this when discussing the plot – yes, there is a plot. The character ‘I’ is also, as noted, a revolutionary fictional technique, enabling one to see the nature of one who ‘looks on.’
In my experience, the more one (to say one) not only reflects on the part of oneself that seems to be looking on (in wonder in my case), as if at a distance from the passionate or banal, small or large events, being a body in a world, the more one not only reflects on the strange feeling of looking on, but even becomes I, dwells in I, lives as I looking on – shifts to being, living as I, immersing oneself in I, I’ll call her I. The more one immerses oneself in I the more one feels estranged from a world of phenomena, including the named creature I is attached to who is a body living a life “above,” who is in the world in the days experiencing time and space. Besides the rest, the more one is I, lives in or as I, the more questions arise. Nothing is clear. Everything becomes unclear. Nothing is even real (perhaps) or known or can help one know. It is unclear whether either I exists – I in the light or I in the dark – and if I in the dark exists, then where, and if not existing, whether I in the dark can die. In any event, I in the dark feels apart, a separate creature with different “life” dreams and goals, to call this life.
I is perhaps best illuminated by what he is not. He can see the man interacting in the world, a web of relations, moving and restless, one thing after another. But I is not that nature. I looks on. I might be closer to the Stoic view. The Stoics reflect on “what is not mine,” which includes, according to Epictetus, everything that others may say or do; everything that I have said and done in the past, as well as what troubles me because the thing is still to come; everything that happens to me, independently of my will, because of the body that surrounds me or my innate vital breath; everything which stirs the waves of the violent sea which bathes me. In I, being I, is an ever deeper reflection on and embodiment of “what is not mine” – the body, its hunger, thirst, desires, its voice, words, are not me, not mine.
In Jungian terms, the two, the I and the embodied I, might, perhaps, each have a distinct ego-consciousness and personality, and yet they are not Jung’s “dual personalities.” These two, in Beckett, are aspects of what is conventionally considered one ego, I believe; but in fact, if one dwells in I, one discovers I is a different being from the embodied I.
Perhaps this two-in-one seems like madness, or if not madness, on the road. Perhaps it is. The two-I’s-in-one is, perhaps, in part a kind of schizophrenic split due to a modern world. And yet, I believe the experience of I, the nature of I, is sanity, relief, an experience of one’s nature, an experience of a bit of reality – a reality one might linger with in The Unnamable, and other works of Beckett’s. Of course, this ‘I’ is in the background of many books of literature and philosophy. But in The Unnamable we delve into the experience of I himself, on his own terms, the life and travails of an I that is possibly (and impossibly) buried in ourselves, more deeply buried the more one fails to recognize I and take I out of the cave or prison of that self in a body in a world. I is born and comes to be in his own way, lives a unique existence, to call it living, and perhaps dies in his own way if he dies.