Vegetating Life and the Spirit of Modernism · Modernism/modernity, John Hopkins University Press 1...

JosephAnderton,‘VegetatingLifeandtheSpiritofModernism’Modernism/modernity,JohnHopkinsUniversityPress

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VegetatingLifeandtheSpiritofModernism

inKafkaandBeckett

Modernism/modernity,JohnHopkinsUniversityPress(post-printversion)

At an acute theoretical level, belatedness and recommencement are inherent to

modernism’spursuitofthenowandthenew.Asanartisticsensibilitydedicatedtothe

ephemeral and elusive flux of modernity, modernism can be conceived as a

contradictory spirit that enacts an auto-defeating and therefore auto-sustaining rapid

cycle of attempt and failure, purpose and obsolescence. In this essay I argue that the

unachievable, self-perpetuating aspiration that modernism contains is refigured as

despondent, latemodern ‘vegetating life’ in theworks of two limit-modernists, Franz

KafkaandSamuelBeckett.Despiteproducing thebulkof theirmostmemorablework

over30yearsapart,bothKafkaandBeckettrepeatedlyoffercomparableexpressionsof

endlessness–throughpurgatorialnarrativeconditionsencapsulatedbythecontinuous

recontextualizationofdeictic language–thatresonatewiththe inevitablebelatedness

and creative recommencement of modernism. Although deictic language is not

especiallyfrequentinKafkaorBeckett,itacquiresgreatsignificanceintheirevocations

of‘vegetation’,anunderexploredstateidentifiedbycriticssuchasGeorgLukács,Walter

Benjamin andTheodorAdorno that encompasses a series of relatedbinaries: activity

andstasis,desireandpassivity,lifeanddeath.InKafka’sproto-formandBeckett’slater-

form, each writer conveys what Shane Weller calls the ‘paradoxical experience of

endlessending,anexperiencethatisalientotheEnlightenmentconceptionofprogress

whichunderlinesthepowerfulmythofmodernity,andthatliesattheheartofthelate


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modernistconceptionofhistory’.1Throughportrayalsofsuch interminablevegetative

states, Kafka anticipates and Beckett epitomises a virtually exhausted latemodernist

life, undergoing the throes of modernism’s drive for novelty and immediacy while

subject to the pervasive negativity and failure that replaces the possibility of

achievement. Ifmodernism’s intrinsic tardiness fuels its inventionof ever-new forms,

the lateness in late modernism manifests as futility, burden and nostalgia. The

vegetating life evident narratively and linguistically in Kafka’s ‘The Hunter Gracchus’

(1917/1931)andBeckett’sTextsforNothing(1950-51),forexample,demonstratesthe

purgatorial conditionofmodernismhabitually startinganewand converts it into late

modernism’sprotractedending.

TheSpiritofModernism

It is common for the critical distillation of discrepant modernisms to derive an

elementaldynamicspirit thatgoesback to itsetymological roots:modern,modo, ‘just

now’.Inhisessay‘Modernity:AnUnfinishedProject’,firstpublishedinGermanin1981,

Jürgen Habermas portrays modernism as a persistent rebellion kicking against the

normativepast:‘Withvaryingcontent,theterm“modern”againandagainexpressesthe

consciousnessof anepoch that relates itself to thepastof antiquity, inorder to view

itself as the result of a transition from old to the new’.2 As an agent of change,

modernism appears necessarily retrospective to legitimately and repeatedly disturb

sedimented cultural traditions. Likewise, in an earlier 1967 essay, ‘The Culture of

Modernism’,IrvingHowediscernstheintensereactivityofmodernism,arguingthat‘no

matterwhatimpasseitencountersinitsclasheswiththeexternalworld,modernismis

ceaselessly active within its own realm, endlessly inventive in destruction and

improvisation’.3 Howe accentuates the energetic versatility of themodernist spirit to


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the point of infinitude, underlining its restless originality in defiance of shifting

historical contexts. More recently, Gabriel Josipovici summarises his book,Whatever

HappenedtoModernism?(2010),withtheclaimthatmodernism‘willalwaysbewithus,

for it isnotprimarilya revolution indiction,ora response to industrialisationor the

First World War, but is art coming to a consciousness of its limitations and

responsibilities’.4 Rather than a specific aesthetic, historical or ideological

understanding,Josipoviciarticulatestheenduringspiritofmodernism:adiffusesense

ofmodernistartasanaggressive,resistantdynamic.Hispresenttensephrase,‘coming

to’,suggeststhatmodernismisacontinualprocess,oneofreflectionandrenewal.Susan

Stanford Friedman describes such conceptions of ‘modern/modernity/modernism’ as

the ‘relational definition’ which ‘stresses the condition or sensibility of radical

disruption and accelerating change wherever and whenever such a phenomenon

appears, particularly if it manifests widely. What is modern or modernist gains its

meaning throughnegation, as a rebellion againstwhatoncewasorwaspresumed to

be’.5 To extend this premise to its logical conclusion, the constant production of a

cultural past would guarantee that the spirit of modernism is always emergent and

potentiallylimitless.

However, as early as 1929, modernism’s knell was sounding. ‘Demands for

ceaseless artistic innovation–Pound’s injunction to “make itnew”–were starting to

soundold’6;aneditorialinTheTimesproclaimedthe‘EclipseoftheHighbrow’in1941,

opining‘thatageispast,thoughsomeofitsghostsstillwalk’7;andby1955,theoutright

‘Decline ofModernism’ had occurred: no longerwould arts be ‘brought down to the

levelofesotericparlourgames’.8HarryLevin’s1960essay‘WhatWasModernism?’and

MauriceBeebe’s1974response‘WhatModernismWas’bothreflectedonmodernismin

thepasttense,abletodefineabygoneartwithmore ‘detachmentandobjectivity’.9 In


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Howe’sworkfromthe late1960sandearly70s,modernismisaddressedasawaning

sensibilitysufferinganundignifieddemiseasaresidual,inauthenticcopyoftheradical.

Howe asserts that ‘there areworks inwhich the outermannerisms and traits of the

modernarefaithfullyechoedormimickedbuttheanimatingspirithasdisappeared—is

thatnotausefulshorthandfordescribingmuchofthe“advanced”writingoftheyears

aftertheSecondWorldWar?’10Similarly,althoughHabermasrecognisesmodernityas

an ‘unfinished project’, he also deems it a haunting semblance: ‘The impulse of

modernity […] is exhausted; anyonewho considers himself avant-garde can read his

owndeathwarrant.Although theavant-garde isstill considered tobeexpanding, it is

supposedlyno longer creative.Modernism isdominantbutdead’.11 ForPeterBürger,

writing in 1984, ‘newness’ was always a characterisation ofmodernism as a kind of

shallowavant-gardism,not false in its focuson the intenselyexperimentalper se, but

lacking the ‘criteria for distinguishing between faddish (arbitrary) and historically

necessarynewness’.12Suchdeclarationsamounttoa‘declensionnarrative’thatattests

to howmodernism’s failsafe ethos of rupture and renewal hasmatured into aweary

historicalzeitgeistinthesecondhalfofthetwentiethcentury.13Itsfatewassealedasa

victimofinescapableassimilationaccordingtoStanfordFriedman,whorecognises‘the

impossibilityofperpetualdisruptionorrevolutionaschangebecomesinstitutionalized.

Whatbeginasmultipleactsofrebellionagainstprevailinghegemoniesbecomethrough

their very success a newly codified, often commodified system’.14 By virtue of its

reactivity to the normative, however, the bizarre suspicion remains that a brand of

fundamentalistmodernismisabletodealwithitself,orpreviousiterationsofitself,as

the status quo. Indeed, modernism can promise a paradoxical form of survival by

committingsuicideorperformingaself-conductedpost-mortem.Twenty-firstcentury

criticalstudiesonmodernism’s ‘futures’and‘legacies’ inpost-1945andcontemporary


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literaturegivecredence to itspotential tocontinueasasensibility thatoutlives itself,

eitherasarevivedprospectorinheritedpast.15

Itisapparentfromthisbriefoverviewthatthehistoricaldeclineofmodernismis

inconflictwiththeenduringspiritofmodernismasareactive,resistantsensibility.The

very notion of decline seems anathema to modernism as ‘a drama of perpetual

remaking’,bestunderstoodas‘aperformativeprocessratherthanameanstoanend’.16

However, these contradictory narratives – one of constant renewal, one of gradual

decline – reveal the possibility of detecting a confluence of activity and stasis, or an

enlivening and deadening duality, in the inveterate spirit of modernism. Without a

teleologicaltrajectory,modernistart iscondemnedtoimmediacy,turningovervoided

productsandrestoredpurpose inastateofperpetualbelatedness, that,whenviewed

panoramically, appears to have stagnancy engrained in its very flux. As Stanford

Friedman expresses: ‘Like the noun modernity, the adjectival form slips and slides

betweenmeanings rooted in thepossibility and impossibilityof “making itnew”’.17A

double take on Habermas’s and Howe’s formulations also show that, for all of its

investment in the new, their modernism appears to get locked into a stale pattern,

foreveroutmoding itself.Habermas recognises that ‘thedistinguishingmarkofworks

whichcountasmodernis“thenew”whichwillbeovercomeandmadeobsoletethrough

thenoveltyofthenextstyle’.18Theonwardmarchofmodernismmeansitonlyseemsas

new as its most vanguard front, so that the trailing remainder must appear

anachronistic,astaticrelicbycomparison.Althoughthisinsistenceoninnovationmight

strikeoneasthepreconditionofitstimelinessandrelevance,asaprofoundlytransient

form,modernismseemstoanticipate itsdesolationand inefficacy. Indeed,Howegoes

furtherthanHabermastoclaim:


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modernismdoesnotestablishaprevalentstyleofitsown;orifitdoes,itdenies

itself, thereby ceasing tobemodern.Thispresents itwith adilemmawhich in

principlemaybebeyondsolutionbut inpractice leads to formal inventiveness

and resourceful dialectic—the dilemma that modernismmust always struggle

but never quite triumph, and then, after a time,must struggle in order not to

triumph.Modernism need never come to an end, or at least we do not really

know, as yet, how it can orwill reach its end. […]. The essence ofmodernism

reveals itself in the persuasion that the true question, the one alone worth

asking,cannotandneednotbeanswered; itneedonlybeaskedoverandover

again,foreverinnewways.19

Modernism’sanimationprinciple restsuponanannulmentof its recentself, akindof

neutralisation of its productivity, which casts modernist art into a compulsive but

unavailing existence, which I elaborate on below as ‘vegetating life’ in Kafka and

Beckett.Notwithstanding thedangerof reducingmodernism to a ravenous consumer

appetite for the latest fashion, the common account ofmodernism as an avant-garde

sensibility,assketchedabove,isdrivenbyaforlornimperative,aseachnewapproach

negates the last, to reveal at once a stimulating and numbing process. The ‘spirit’ of

modernism,then,isanappositephraseinitsevocationofbothatenaciouslifeforceand

spectrallackofsubstance.

VegetatingLife:Lukács,BenjaminandAdornoonKafkaandBeckett

The enlivening-deadening duality of modernism can be related to Georg Lukács’s,

Walter Benjamin’s and Theodor Adorno’s uses of the pertinent word ‘vegetate’, or

derivatives,todescribetheworksofKafkaandBeckett,aswellasBeckett’sowncritical


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evolutionoftheword‘vegetation’inrelationtopurgatoryinDanteAlighieriandJames

Joyce. In Georg Lukács’s chapter ‘The Ideology of Modernism’ from The Meaning of

ContemporaryRealism(German1957/English1962),heidentifiesseveral limitations

in modernist literature that contribute to an essentially static conception of human

societyandhistory,despiteitsostensibledynamism.Lukács’scriticismsofmodernism

include the excessive preoccupations with form, style and technique that govern

narrativeandcharacter;thefocusonasocialandahistoricalsubjectivityoverobjectivity

thatreducessubjectstosuperficialdevelopmentsandincoherentexperiences;andthe

perverseaccentuationofpsychopathology,primitivismandallegoryat theexpenseof

perspective. Whereas contemporary bourgeois realism ‘has assumed change and

developmenttobethepropersubjectofliterature’,Lukácsseesanoverallsenseoffixity

inmodernist psychological narratives that swing between the phenomenology of the

presentandrecollectionsofthepast.20ReferringinparticulartoJoyce,henotesthat‘the

perpetuallyoscillatingpatternsofsense-andmemory-data,theirpowerfullycharged–

but aimless and directionless – fields of force, give rise to an epic structurewhich is

static,reflectingabeliefinthebasicallystaticcharacterofevents’.21Despitetherestless

movementandmanicenergyofmodernistinteriority,Lukácsarguesthatitamountsto

a rather myopic and curiously conservative approach, without social context or

historicalprogress.

Lukács’s forceful dichotomy of realism and modernism, ‘dynamic and

developmental on the onehand, static and sensational on the other’ iswell known.22

Less commonplace is his recourse to the language of purgatory to describe this

differenceinrelationtoKafkaand,inmorescathingterms,Beckett.LikeRobertMusil,

Kafka summons ‘the ghostly aspects of reality’, according to Lukács, whereby even

‘realistic detail is the expression of a ghostly un-reality, of a nightmareworld,whose


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functionistoevokeangst’.23Thisunrealityisintensifiedwhenadoptingtheperspective

of ‘an abnormal subject’, or, as in Beckett’s case, ‘an image of the utmost human

degradation–anidiot’svegetativeexistence’.24Forbothwriters,Lukácsconcedes,the

immersion intostrangepsychologicalworlds isassociatedwith ‘lifeundercapitalism’,

which is ‘often rightly, presented as a distortion (a petrification or paralysis) of the

human substance. But to present psychopathology as a way of escape from this

distortionisitselfadistortion’.25Hecontinues:

This implies the absolute primacy of the terminus a quo, the condition from

which it is desired to escape. Any movement towards a terminus ad quem is

condemnedtoimpotence.Astheideologyofmostmodernistwritersassertsthe

unalterability of outward reality (even if this is reduced to a mere state of

consciousness) human activity is, a priori, rendered impotent and robbed of

meaning.26

Lukácsperceivesaviciouscyclicpattern,withmodernistsindulginginthesymptomsof

the problem, descending into the psychic disorders produced by the simultaneously

agitating and desensitising repetition compulsions of modern capitalist modes of

production. This generates a host of purgatorial conditions that Lukács touches on,

includingthe‘ghostly’,‘vegetative’,‘petrified’,‘paralysed’and‘impotent’,althoughthese

emergemoreconcretelyasanidiosyncratic,secularformofpurgatoryinthehandsof

Benjamin,AdornoandespeciallyBeckett.

InLukács’sreferenceto ‘vegetativeexistence’ inparticular,heinvokesmultiple

relatedmeanings.Theadjective, ‘vegetative’, featuresinAristotle’sphilosophytorefer

to‘onecomponentoftheirrationalpartofthesoul,namelythecomponentresponsible


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forsimplegrowthandalteration’.27Thevegetativesoulistheentiretyofplantlifeandit

isanaspectthathumanandnon-humananimalspossessamongothers.Thisbasiclife

spirit of plants, added to their stillness, immobility and periods of dormancy,means

‘they“onlyseemtolive”’,andyet,reducedtoalmostnon-being,‘afterwestriplifeofall

its recognizable features, vegetal beings go on living’.28 In the parlance of the French

‘poet of things’, Francis Ponge, the imperceptible but persistent biology of vegetation

‘givesbirthtolivingcrystals,cristauxvivants’,asifstimulatingorganicactivityininert

mineralsubstances.29Throughsuchassociationswithplants,theword‘vegetate’canbe

employedtodifferentiatebetweenbareexistenceandmeaningfullife,suchasinColley

Cibber’s1740memoirApologyforLifeofColleyCibber: ‘TheManwhochusesneverto

laugh…seemstomeonly in thequietStateofagreenTree;hevegetates, ‘tis true,but

shallwesayhelives?’.30Indeed,inGerman,vegetierencanliterallytranslateas‘toeke

outabareexistence’.31Withtheadventofpsychoanalysis,particularly1930sReichian

psychotherapy or ‘vegetotherapy’, ‘“vegetative” life refers to the “vegetative nervous

system”. In English this is called the autonomic nervous system, that which governs

basic, involuntary functions. Ithasnothing todowithplant life,despite theawkward

resemblance to “vegetables” in English’, according to James Strick.32 This modern

connection to the nervous system gives rise to terms for relatedmedical conditions,

such as ‘persistent vegetative state’ or ‘vegetative dormancy’.33 Despite Strick’s

rejection, these names for nervous functions and chronic disorders of consciousness

encourageparallelswith thebasic functionsof thevegetativesoulandtheembedded,

passive,relativelydiminishedlifeofplants,totheextentthatmedicalresearchershave

sought more neutral terms, such as ‘unresponsive wakefulness syndrome’, to avoid

pejorativeassociationsandpreservehumandignity.34


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However, in Lukács’s account of modernism overall, he actually finds a

concomitanceofostensibleactivityandveritableinertia,whichevokesthepurgatorial

dualmeaningalreadysecretedintheverb‘vegetate’,asatermthatincludesvitalityand

torpidity,livelinessandlifelessness.Itmeans‘tosprout;togerminate;toproducenew

growth’aswellas‘toleadadull,monotonouslife,withoutintellectualorsocialactivity;

to live or spend time in an unchallenging, inactive way’.35 Together, these meanings

indicatethat‘tovegetate’istobesubjecttoanongoingbutemptylife,caughtbetween

renewalandrepetition. It isadualitythatsmacksofSigmundFreud’sspeculationson

competing life and death instincts in his 1920 essay ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’,

although Lukács strongly disagrees with attempts to ‘explain man’s social relations

fromhisindividualconsciousness(orsubconsciousness)’,asanapproachthat‘turnsthe

essence of things upside down’.36 It is apparent that Lukács considered the

psychopathologyofmodernistliteraturetosharethesamesystemicerrorsasFreudian

psychoanalysis.Andso, thestand-offbetweenactivityand inertiaunderlyingLukács’s

assessmentofJoyce,aswellasKafkaandBeckettbyimplication,resembleswhatFreud

expresses as ‘a kind of fluctuating rhythmwithin the life of organisms: one group of

drives goes storming ahead in order to attain the ultimate goal of life at the earliest

possiblemoment, another goes rushing back along theway in order to do it all over

againandthusprolongthejourney’.37Itisaparadoxicallyvitalandstagnatingrhythm

that Lukács finds foundational to modernism wholesale, as he accepts the flux of

individualsenseimpressionsandloadedsubjectiveexperiencewhiledetectingastatic,

unchanging macrocosm. Lukács’s ‘vegetative existence’ effectively identifies both

modern conceptions of subjectivity and modernist aesthetics: it connotes a medical

assessment of psychological suspension, which, given modernism’s focus on the


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individualanditsmergingofformandcontent,filtersintothepurgatorialdynamicsof

theartwork’sdeepstructure.

ThephrasethatLukácsusestodecryBeckettspecificallyisonethatbothWalter

BenjaminandTheodorAdornoevokeaschampionsofKafkaandBeckett. Inhis1934

essay for the 10th anniversary of Kafka’s death, Benjamin compares the holders of

power in Kafka (court judges and castle secretaries) to the depressive Russian

statesman Grigory Potemkin, ‘who vegetates, somnolent and unkempt, in a remote,

inaccessible room’. Benjamin then asks: ‘Why do they vegetate? Could they be the

descendantsofthefiguresofAtlasthatsupportglobeswiththeirshoulders’or‘itisjust

that themost commonplace things have theirweight’.38 Under either the pressure of

great responsibility or the gravity of everyday details, such figures of authority are

renderedvacantandinert.Whilethesemystifyingpowersencapsulatethedull,inactive

sideofvegetatinglife,theassistantsormessengersinKafka’sstoriesconveytheactive

counterpart,throughtheircontingencyandliminality.Benjaminlikenstheassistantsor

messengers to ‘Gandharvas’:messengersbetweengodsandhumans inHinduism,and

spirits between death and rebirth in Buddhism.39 Such characters are ‘beings in an

unfinishedstate’, ‘nonehasa firmplace in theworld, firm, inalienableoutlines’, ‘none

that has not completed its period of time and yet is unripe, none that is not deeply

exhaustedandyet isonlyat thebeginningofa longexistence’.40Benjaminrecognises

the purgatorial incompleteness of vegetating life in this striking depiction of lives

seemingly enervated and not completely terminated. In their imprecise ontological

state,thesebeingsareprecarious,nebulousandcondemnedtobe.Benjamingoesonto

enlist another echelon of character, the ‘fool’, as part of this ‘indefatigable’ troop,

referringspecificallytothosein‘ChildrenonaCountryRoad’(1910).41Theinclusionof

fools,alongsidefiguresofpower,messengersandassistantsmeansthatfromthecastles


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andcourtsallthewaydowntobewilderedvictimssuchasK,JosefKandGregorSamsa,

vegetating life infectsKafka’sentireworld, inbothvacuously inanimateandaimlessly

wanderingforms.

Benjamin’s evocations of vegetation add a mythic, spiritual scale to Lukács’s

structuralandpsychopathological ideas.Heelaborates further stillwithaestheticand

artisticcomponents,drawingontheinfinitemeaningofgestureandtheprovocationof

failure.Benjaminwritesthat ‘Kafka’sentireworkconstitutesacodeofgestureswhich

surely had no definite symbolic meaning for the author from the outset; rather, the

author tried to derive such a meaning from them in ever-changing contexts and

experimental groupings’.42 Lukács co-optsBenjamin’s point here todeprecateKafka’s

‘transcendentalNothingness’,citingthetransferabilityofmeaningarisingfromthedeep

ambiguity of modernist allegory.43 This proliferation of potential meaning and

defermentofstablemeaningowingtovaryingcontextsandjuxtapositionsgeneratesan

open, unsettled and unlimited spirit. The fact that many of Kafka’s stories were

abandoned as unfinished fragments and that he instructed his executorMax Brod to

destroyhispapersonhisdeath‘saysthatthewritingsdidnotsatisfytheirauthor,that

heregardedhiseffortsasfailures,thathecountedhimselfamongthoseboundtofail’.44

ThedissatisfactionandinevitabilityoffailurethatBenjaminseesinKafkacanindicate

anunyieldingobligationtotry,whichalsoimpliesvegetativedynamics,notleastthose

foundinmodernism’sowncreativerecommencement.

Benjamin’sfriendandcriticAdornoalsoemploystheterm‘vegetate’inhisessay

‘Trying to Understand Endgame’ (1961), in which he defends Beckett’s abstract

modernismasanappropriateartisticresponsetothe‘damagedlife’ofapost-Holocaust

world that is effectively the culmination of late capitalism’s logic of ‘abstraction,

identification, exchange and use which characterises all human relationships and


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relationshipstotheworld,andthatallowsfornospontaneityordifferencetoarise’,as

Alistair Morgan puts it.45 The protracted denouement that Hamm and Clov suffer in

Endgame(1957)atteststoanerainwhich‘[h]umankindcontinuestovegetate,creeping

alongaftereventsthateventhesurvivorscannotreallysurvive,onarubbishheapthat

has made even reflection on one’s own damaged state useless’.46 In this instance,

vegetating life refers to the human condition in the aftermath of a global

epistemological and ontological event. People are not really living as they oncewere

andarethereforenotsurvivorsinthecommonsense;althoughtheyliveon,theyareso

thoroughlytransformedastobedisparatefromtheirpriorselves.Thepowerofthought

is also impacted, as the catastrophic event ensures it exempts itself from

comprehensionbyleavingpeopleunabletorationaliseorrepresentwhathashappened

lucidly.ThesubtitletoAdorno’s1951bookMinimaMoralia,‘reflectionsfromdamaged

life’,underlinesthisaffronttophilosophicalexamination.47Thechoiceof‘from’,rather

than ‘on’, shows that all sense-making reflections are now impaired. Only the

fragmented,incoherentstateofthe‘reflections’themselvesgivesanyindicationofwhat

theyattemptedtoreflectonorabout.Equally,Adorno’sepigramtothattext,Ferdinand

Kürnberger’s‘lifedoesnotlive’,repeatsoneofthedualitiesofvegetation,exposingthe

differencebetweenlifeproperandbareexistence.AsMorganexplains, ‘implicit inthe

phrase“lifedoesnotlive”istheassumptionthattheverb“tolive”impliesafullersense

oflifewhicheitherliesrepressedbeneaththeexistenceofalifethatdoesnotlive,oras

a suppressed possibility within this deadened form of existence’.48 For Adorno,

vegetatinglife,whichentailsthedecayofexperience,theimpairmentofreflectionand

theimmersioninculturalandphilosophicalruins,isthemaladyofmodernity.

Yet, in contrast to Lukács, it is crucial for Adorno that this malady spreads

through modernist art too, particularly post-Holocaust late modernism. In Adorno’s


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essayon‘Metaphysics’,henotes: ‘thecheapjibethatBeckettcannevergetawayfrom

urns,refusebins,andsandheapsinwhichpeoplevegetatebetweenlifeanddeath–as

they actually vegetated in the concentration camps – this jibe seems to me just a

desperate attempt to fend off the knowledge that these are exactly the things that

matter’.49ReferringtoBeckett’sPlay(1963),EndgameandHappyDays(1961),Adorno’s

comment highlights the human potential to suffer limbo on earth, as an interstice

betweenanimateand inanimate,between lifeanddeath.Hisconceptionofvegetating

life after Beckett, then, intensifies the condemned existence that he already saw in

Kafka.Adornowritesinhis‘NotesonKafka’:

In the concentration camps, the boundary between life and death was

eradicated. A middle ground was created, inhabited by living skeletons and

putrefyingbodies,victimsunabletotaketheirownlives,Satan’slaughteratthe

hopeof abolishingdeath.As inKafka’s twistedepics,whatperished therewas

thatwhichhadprovidedthecriterionofexperience–lifelivedouttoitsend.50

Adornotakestheabsenceofanendpoint,or‘terminusadquem’,thatLukácscriticised

inKafkaandBeckett’snon-progressive,dystopianmodernism,andrefiguresitasaform

ofethicallyengagedliteraturecongruoustothetimes.Therefore,damagedlife,ofwhich

vegetation is a part, is not merely an escape from the social and historical concrete

worldofrealism.Itistheubiquitousproductofthecontextthatartmustalsoimbibe.In

thestrongestterms,anythingelsewouldnotbearemedy;itwouldbeatravesty.

Adorno’suseof ‘vegetate’ todescribeanendless limbobetween lifeanddeath

recalls Beckett’s own earlier use of the term ‘vegetation’ in his 1929 essay, ‘Dante…

Bruno. Vico.. Joyce’, written to support Joyce’s ‘Work in Progress’ (later Finnegans


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Wake).BeckettcomparesDante’stemporaryandJoyce’spermanentformsofvegetation

to relate twoconceptionsofpurgatory.Hewrites: ‘In theone there isanascent from

realvegetation–Ante-Purgatory,toidealvegetation–TerrestrialParadise:intheother

there is no ascent and no ideal vegetation’.51 Beckett notices that Dante presents a

progressivemodelfromrealtoidealvegetation,whichfollowsthepurgatoryoutlinedin

theCatechismof theRomanCatholicChurch. In thisrendering, ‘purgatoryoffered the

soulapost-mortemsecondchancetosatisfythedebtsduetoitsredeemerforitsbodily

andspiritualsins’.52Aspiritualsortingprocessidentifiesthepenitentsoulsrequiredto

undergothispurifyingperiodofvegetationowingtotheirunpaidvenialsins.Thisisa

processthatisconveyedelsewhereinChristianscripturethroughaharvestinganalogy,

althoughtheBibledoesnotexplicitlysupportthenotionofaprovisionalafterlifebefore

admittance to heaven. Chapter 13 of the Gospel ofMatthew, the Parable of Tares or

Weeds, teachesof theangelsdividinghumanity intoeither theheaven-boundgoodor

thehell-boundevil.Afteramansowedhis fieldwithgoodseed, ‘hisenemycameand

sowedtaresamongthewheatandwenthisway’.Ondiscovery,themanannounces:‘Let

bothgrowtogetheruntiltheharvest,andatthetimeofharvestIwillsaytothereapers,

“Firstgathertogetherthetaresandbindtheminbundlestoburnthem,butgatherthe

wheatintomybarn”’.Theactofseparatingthegoodwheatfromtheunwantedtares(to

burn inanactofpurification)brings tomind theproverb ‘separating thewheat from

thechaff’,oritsvariation,thegrainfromthehusks.

The harvesting analogy presents an image of divine judgement that Beckett

knowswellasaraisedProtestantandutilisesoccasionallyoverthecourseofhiscareer,

most famously in theopeningpartofKrapp’sLastTape throughthereferencetoa39

year-old Krapp ‘Sat before the fire with closed eyes, separating the grain from the

husks’.53TheimagetakesitsmostBeckettianforminhis1951novel,MaloneDies, the


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middle text of his post-war trilogy. A bed-ridden Malone passes away time telling

himself stories, including the narrative of Macmann, who has ‘a cast-iron vegetative

system’and ‘sat and laydownat the leastpretext andonly roseagainwhen theélan

vitalorstruggleforlifebegantoprodhiminthearseagain’.54Despitelivingonafarm,

Macmann’sabilitytoidentifythewheatfromtheweedsdesertshim:‘suddenlyallswam

before his eyes, he could no longer distinguish the plants destined for the

embellishmentofthehomeorthenutritionofmanandbeastfromtheweedswhichare

saidtoservenousefulpurpose,butwhichmusthavetheirusefulnesstoo,fortheearth

tofavourthemso’.55Macmannisnotdamninginhisassessmentofweedsbecauseheis

unable to distinguish between plants types and assumes the ubiquity ofweedsmust

evidence their usefulness somehow. This more inclusive, indiscriminate stance

presumably applies to the symbolic equivalent of weeds, the lost souls, which

problematisesthebinaryjudgementofheavenorhellandraisestheprospectofamore

complex spectrum ranging from good to evil, valuable to worthless, that tallies with

Beckett’s evocations of a purgatorial middle ground in his corpus that confuses the

boundariesoflifeanddeath.

Similarly,KafkaraisesapurgatorialstatefromaBiblicalsymbolthroughplants

andfireinhisearlierparabolicfragment,‘TheThornBush’,probablywrittenin1922,in

which aman gets stuck in a thorn bush andmustwait for the park directors to get

permission to releasehim.The agitatedman is literally trapped in vegetation; in this

pricklysuspensionhecanthinkbutnotact,speakbutnotmove.Thefragmentalludes

toExodus3:2,MosesandtheBurningBush,whichKafkaaphorisesas:‘Thethornbush

istheoldobstacleintheroad.Itmustcatchfireifyouwanttogofurther’.56AsRichie

Robertson acknowledges, through the symbol of the thorn bush, Kafka shows that

‘[s]piritual progressmust be through the fire, an image recalling purgatory’.57 These


17

allusionstoburningbushesandweedsinKafkaandBeckettareremindersthatpartsof

thediscourseofthefinaljudgmentarelooselyentwinedwithplantlife,andthatanon-

binaryvegetatinglifegerminatesfromthem.

Whileanimplicitgreyareabetweenheavenandhell,amidstthewheatandthe

weeds,andwithinthethornbush,reinforcestheconnectionbetweentemporaryforms

ofvegetationandpurgatory,inJoyce’s‘noascentandnoidealvegetation’,theprevailing

imageisnotofclimbingtowardsasummittoachievecatharticrelease,butoneofcyclic,

perpetuatingactivity.InhisreadingofJoyce,BeckettdrawsontheItalianphilosopher

GiambattistaVico’snotionoftheidealeternalhistoryfromScienzaNuova(1725),which

Beckettarticulatesas‘allhumanitycirclingwithfatalmonotonyabouttheProvidential

fulcrum’.58Havingidentifiedthiscyclicpattern,Beckettarguesthatthereis‘acontinual

purgatorialprocessatwork’ in Joyceowing to itsstructuralpreclusionof totalityand

stylistic revolutions.59Hewrites of ‘the absolute absenceof theAbsolute’ and locates

thischaracteristicinminiatureinhiscompatriot’slatestyle:‘Thereisanendlessverbal

germination,maturation,putrefaction, thecyclicdynamismofthe intermediate’.60The

indeterminacy and recurrence that Beckett reads in Joyce are analogous with the

constellation of restless vegetative dynamics expressed in Benjamin and Adorno’s

reflections on Kafka and Beckett, particularly the sense of an unfinished or endless

condition.The interrelationbetweenvegetating lifeandpurgatory is foundedonsuch

dynamics, anddoesnot exclude theplant-like overtones of vegetationbecause of the

perceived infinite drive of plant life, as Michael Marder notes in Plant-Thinking: ‘if

incompletionmeansopen-endedness, thenvegetalgrowthfullysatisfiesthisrendition

ofateles, in that it knowsneitheran inherentend,nor limit’.61AlthoughMarder cites

passivity and torpor as other vegetal characteristics, the process of reproduction ‘by

replacing what goes off or is antiquated with something other’ leads to ‘pure


18

proliferation bereft of a sense of closure’.62 The peculiar incompletion of plants,

togetherwiththeactivityandstasisinvegetationmorebroadly,isstrangelyevocative

ofmodernism’sactsofself-preservationthroughprolifictransformation.ItisviaJoyce,

then,thatBeckettidentifiesasuitablymodernmodelofvegetationthatchallengesthe

linearityimpliedinDante’sascendingspiralandreplacesitwithanideaofmovement

as ‘non-directional – ormulti-directional, and a step forward is, by definition, a step

back’,whichseems toconflateorcollapsenotionsofprogressionandretrogression.63

Although the esteemed mythologist Joseph Campbell argues that Joyce’s Finnegans

Wake is likeDante’s visionofpurgatory in that it ‘iswritten in a circlewith a break:

thereisanout’,forBeckett,Joycehasaregenerativeandthereforeinterminablequality

that extends purgatory beyond an intermediate zone indefinitely.64 It is this distinct

stateofsuspensionwithoutdeliverancethatemergesasvegetatinglifeintheworksof

KafkaandBeckett.

Resolution:RenewableDeixisinKafka’sShortStories

ThevegetatinglifecompositedfromLukács,Benjamin,AdornoandBeckettisrestlessly

static, incomplete, residual and cyclic.Thesedynamics resound inKafka’sdiaries,not

only inblatantlynegativeexpressions, suchas ‘[o]nly thiseverlastingwaiting,eternal

helplessness’, in which Kafka chronicles his depressive feelings of incarceration, but

alsowhenhearticulatesthecomplexdualityofvegetatinglife,asitvacillatesbetween

or otherwise conflates activity and passivity, continuation and termination.65 In an

entrydated6thAugust1914,Kafkanotes ‘my lifehasdwindleddreadfully,norwill it

ceasetodwindle. […]Iwaver,continually flytothesummitof themountain,butthen

fallback inamoment. […]Iwaverontheheights; it isnotdeath,alas,buttheeternal

tormentsofdying’.66Kafkaacknowledgesan infinitecapacity todiminish inamanner


19

akintoZeno’sdichotomyparadox,ashebecomeslessandlessbutnevernothing.Ina

differentbutstillinterminableprocess,healsodescribestraversingthepolesofecstasy

andmisery,with the implied adverbs ‘continually’ and ‘eternally’ preventing his end.

Dyingisnotdeath,Kafkaiswellaware.Later inthesameyear,heexpressesasimilar

plight,thistimeinrelationtohisliterature:‘Ican’twriteanymore.I’vecomeupagainst

the last boundary, beforewhich I shall in all likelihood again sit down for years, and

then in all likelihood begin another story all over again that will again remain

unfinished. This fate pursues me’.67 By ‘can’t write any more’, Kafka means he has

stalled on this story and is unable to conclude. As the repetition of ‘again’ shows, he

actually has a strong urge to create and will write much more in other attempts,

although,likehismanyunfinishedstories,Kafkaisconsignedtotheinfiniteprocessas

muchasthefiniteproduct.

Examples of ‘vegetative existence’ are plentiful in Kafka’s fiction too, from the

judicialvortexofTheTrial(1914-15)totheunobtainablegoalinTheCastle(1922).He

consistently centres on forsaken protagonists floundering in the perplexing

mechanismsofauthority,whichleadsHowetoassertthatKafka‘presentsdilemmas;he

cannotandsoondoesnotwishtoresolvethem;heoffershisstrugglewiththemasthe

substance of his testimony; […]. After Kafka it becomes hard to believe not only in

answers but even in endings’.68 No instance of Kafkaesque vegetation is more

compelling than the story of the mysterious Hunter Gracchus, who fell to his death

whilehuntingdeerintheBlackForest.Writtenin1917,itbeginswithGracchusarriving

inRivabyboat,supineonabier,totellhistaletotheMayor,orBurgomaster:

‘Areyoudead?’

‘Yes,’saidtheHunter.‘Asyousee.’[…]


20

‘Butyouarealivetoo’saidtheBurgomaster.

‘Inacertainsense,’saidtheHunter,‘inacertainsenseIamalivetoo.’69

ThereisanoteofhumourinGracchus’s‘asyousee’comment,whichpresumesthathim

beingdeadisself-evident,despitehimwalkingandtalking.Gracchusbeingalive,onthe

otherhand, isdemoted to thevague ‘inacertainsense’. If thedeathlyelementseems

foremost,itisnotfatallyso,asGracchusremainssuspendedinalimbothatcontravenes

both life and death. It is not exactly a petrified, standstill existence either. In fact, he

notestwice,‘Iamalwaysinmotion’,althoughtherepetitionofthisstatementbetraysits

etiolatedqualitytoo.Gracchusexplains:‘Iamforever,onthegreatstairthatleadsupto

it [the other world]. On that infinitely wide and spacious stair I clamber about,

sometimesup,sometimesdown,sometimesontheright,sometimesontheleft,always

inmotion’.70DespiteHaroldBloom’sattempttodefinetheGracchusmythasaparable

for Kafkaesque writing as ‘repetition, labyrinthine and burrow-building’, Gracchus’s

erraticmovement here, ranging indiscriminately in all directions eternally, inevitably

does evoke purgatorial myths, including the Wandering Jew and the ghost ship, the

Flying Dutchman.71 Gracchus repeats: ‘I am always in motion. But when I make a

supremeflightandseethegateshiningbeforemeIawakenpresentlyonmyoldship,

stillstrandedforlornly insomeearthlyseaorother’.72Kafkarevealsamoremundane

inspiration for the story in his diary entry from 6th April 1917 where he recalls

witnessing a boat arriving at the port and no passengers disembarking.73 In that

experience,Kafkapresumably thought thehelmsmanwasdestinednever to leave the

boat.Inthewrittenstory,itisstrikingthatGracchusemphasiseshisrestlessmovement,

toensurethatbeingstrandedisunderstoodasasentencetobeactive,whichpertainsto

the vegetative life in Lukács’s readings of modernism suspended in animation,


21

Benjamin’s exhausted, unfinished beings and Adorno’s broken creatures in quasi-

survival.

Although Gracchus’smovement is constant, it is not linear or progressive and

therefore will not amount to salvation or redemption. His world is ‘a meaninglessly

revolvingcarrouselonwhichtheendflowsagainandagainintothebeginning’;heisan

‘eternally living-dead man, who can neither live nor die’, subject to the ‘durable

presenceofcatastrophe,whichbecomesanormal,permanentcondition’.74Itisastate

ofbeingherecognisesinhimself:‘Iamhere,morethanthatIdonotknow,furtherthan

thatIcannotgo.Myshiphasnorudder,anditisdrivenbythewindthatblowsinthe

undermostregionsofdeath’.75Gracchusisapparentlyadrift,devoidofagencyandatthe

mercy of external forces. In this existential crisis, he is divested of a teleological

trajectory and therefore shackled to the immediate context, the place currently

occupied.Kafkareinforcesthis ‘eternalpresent’throughhisnarrativetense,according

toDorritCohn,whoarguesthatthe‘presenttenseusedbytheghostlynarratorsisthe

grammatical signal for theirunrelievedsurvival’.76But ‘here’ is feltasamorespecific

limittoo,astheboundaryofGracchus’sknowledgeinhismobileprison,whichsuggests

he is restricted to the present in more ways than one. Early in the story, Gracchus

implieshehascomprehensiveknowledgeoftheworld,yetittranspiresheisforgetful

andmustbereminded ‘in the firstmomentsof returning toconsciousness’, signalling

his deficient powers of recall.77 Without a reliable, self-initiated memory, the rich

contextsofthewiderworldandpastexperienceareoddlyunavailabletohim.

Theemphasison‘here’inGracchus’s‘Iamhere’,withitssenseofbeinganchored

ina spatialand temporalpresent, lendssignificance toKafka’s latermicropiece, ‘The

Departure’,writtenbetween1920and1921.Thelastlinesread:


22

“Whereisthemastergoing?”

“Idon’tknow,”Isaid,“justoutofhere,justoutofhere.Outofhere,nothingelse,

it’stheonlywayIcanreachmygoal.”

“Soyouknowyourgoal?”heasked.

“Yes,”Ireplied,“I’vejusttoldyou.Outofhere–that’smygoal.”78

Clearly,themaster’simperativeistoleave,butasadeicticworddependentoncontext,

‘here’ can exceed a singular place. It has the peculiar ability to follow the master,

pointing to each current situation. The goal to get out of here is therefore foiled

infinitely as it is repeatedly reset, which evokes the unachievable, self-perpetuating

aspirationofmodernism.Readersaremadeawareofthis indexicalregenerationatan

acute level through the repetition of the word ‘here’ four times in quick succession.

Logicallyspeaking,thereferencepointinthefirstutteranceisminutelydifferenttothe

lastutterance;indeed,escapingbeginsasameanstoreachhisgoal,beforetransmuting

into the goal itself. This deictic mobility reveals the renewability of ‘here’, while

simultaneously appearing and sounding rather hackneyed owing to its frequency. It

conveysbothafreshcontextandanaggingimperative.Inalittleoverahundredwords,

then, Kafka evokes modernism’s transformation from a single, historically necessary

departurein‘outofheretoreachmygoal’toanabortiveandpersistentspiritin‘outof

here–that’smygoal’.

Kafka expresses vegetating life in different terms in his fragment ‘Resolutions’

(1911), translated from the German title ‘Entschlüsse’ (decisions), a relative of

Entschlossenheit (determination). The title itself holds connotations of finitude, in the

way something can be resolved, as well as connotations of purpose, as in something

steadfast or resolute. Like the related word ‘determination’, resolution is at once an


23

expressionofclosureandperseverance.Kafka’sshortpieceutilises thisduality in the

narrator’s failure to integratesociallyandhis recourse toamorehermetic, solipsistic

existence.Itfinishesonthefollowingnote:

perhaps thebestresource is tomeeteverythingpassively, tomakeyourselfan

inertmass,and,ifyoufeelthatyouarebeingcarriedaway,nottoletyourselfbe

luredintotakingasingleunnecessarystep,tostareatotherswiththeeyesofan

animal, to feelnocompunction, inshort,withyourownhand to throttledown

whatever ghostly life remains in you, that is, to enlarge the final peace of the

graveyardandletnothingsurvivesavethat.79

Kafka’s narrator describes conditions associated with a vegetative existence in his

recourse topassivity, inertia, emotional austerity, suppressedghostly life anddeathly

peace. The difference in this example is that the narrator articulates a contradictory

stateofwilledlifelessnessinvolvingadecisiontobecomeanonentity,sothatapathyis

actuallydesiredasafacilitytobeused.Curiously,thereisresistancetolifeatworkin

this instance inwhich theveryactof resisting lifewould contain someof thevitality

that is supposedly resisted. In otherwords, the volition implied in ‘making yourself’,

‘notletting’, ‘throttlingdown’and‘lettingnothing’constitutesaparadoxicalprocessof

‘self-denial’, wherein the presence of self is reinforced in the act of self-effacement.

However, considering the combination of activity and stasis outlined in the forms of

vegetatinglifeabove,itisarguablythisimpulsionwithdesignsonpassivitythatensures

theendlessendofvegetation ismore thoroughlyachieved.Kafkaeffectivelyrevealsa

quirk of vegetative life through the narrative voice actively pursuing inactivity and

expending energy on a lacklustre state. This dynamic appears to be a negative


24

formulation of the utopian progress that underpins modernism, where the spirit is

redirectedintoneutralityandindifference.Itisaperverseappropriationthatpresages

theintersectionofmodernistélanandlatemodernistfatigue.

Thevegetatinglifeinrenewabledeicticlanguageandtheparadoxofself-denial

can thereforebeadded toWeller’s identificationofKafka’s ‘linguisticnegativism’asa

‘proleptic’ realisationof latemodernism.80 In ‘Performing theNegative:Kafkaand the

Origins of Late Modernism’ (2016), Weller examines the frequency and variety of

negative language components andmodifiers in Kafka’s stories, particularly the ‘un-’

affixasa‘morphologicalenactmentofanegation’,toarguethatKafkaisaprecursorto

Beckett’s late modern ‘literature of the unword’.81 After referring to Adorno’s and

Blanchot’sreflectionsonGracchus’sexperienceof‘undeath’asa‘terrifyingvisionofthe

livingdeathtobeexperiencedbysomanyintheNaziconcentrationcampsandSoviet

gulags’,Wellerconcludesthat:

The emergence of latemodernism inEuropeowes somuch toKafkaprecisely

becausehis is a literatureof thedark times, inwhichbeing (above all, human

being) can only be defined negatively, and in which, ironically, no amount of

negativitycan,forallitsjustification,reducebeingtonothing,theanimatetothe

inanimate,theproperlylivingtotheproperlydead.82

Weller refers to Kafka’s historical relevance for post-Holocaust late modernists here

and yet the surviving, purgatorial dynamic he describes also relates to the spirit of

modernism’s own persistence as a vestigial presence in late modernism. If late

modernism is, asWeller stateselsewhere, ‘perhapsbestunderstoodpreciselyassuch

an art of impotence and ignorance, an art that no longer trusts the power of the


25

aesthetictoachieveepiphany,thatnolongerbelievesartcan’,oneofthewaysthistakes

shapeinKafka’snascentformisanexposuretotherenewabilityofafailingmoment.83

Theelusivenessof ‘here’ transforms frommultiple rousingopportunities towretched

eternal toil. To adoptKafka’s title ‘Resolutions’, the active component, or ‘resolve’, of

modernismappearstoattendandprotractitsclosure,or ‘resolution’, leavingtracesof

modernistlifecompellingthenegative,attenuatedformulationsoflatemodernism.

‘NoIdealVegetation’:VoidDeixisinBeckett’sTextsforNothing

WhileKafka envisions the suspended animation implicit in highmodernist dynamics,

Beckett exemplifies it as an author writing predominantly after 1945, during

modernism’splateau.TheendlessnessofvegetatinglifepervadesBeckett’swritingfrom

his lastprose text,StirringsStill, in1989,backtohis firstpublishednovel,Murphy, in

1938,inwhichthetitlecharacterpursuesaremarkablysimilarkindof‘will-lessness’to

thatexpressedinKafka,inthethird,darklevelofhismindwherethereis‘nothingbut

formsbecomingandcrumblingintothefragmentsofanewbecoming,withoutloveor

hateoranyintelligibleprincipleofchange’.84TextsforNothing,aseriesof13shorttexts

written between 1950 and 1951, is a particularly pertinent example given the title’s

indicationof activitywithoutprospect or progress.Bearing inmind thatKafka found

himselfstuckinacreativeloopofstartingbutneverendingstories,TextsforNothingis

significantasaresponsetoBeckett’sowncreativeimpasseafterL’Innommable,written

betweenMarch1949andSeptember1950.InalettertoJeromeLindoninApril1951,

heconfides:‘ithasleftmeinasorrystate.I’mtryingtogetoverit.ButIamnotgetting

overit.Idonotknowifitwillbeabletomakeabook.Perhapsitwillhaveallbeenfor

nothing’.85Overthecourseof1951,Beckettdescribeshistexts‘fornothing’variouslyas

‘afewlittleturds’;‘awhirlingdervish’;‘littlefly-splashesagainstthewindow’;and‘the


26

afterbirth of L’Innommable and not to be approached directly’.86 These wry

formulationsofferaninsightintothestatusofthetextsasnotsingularorfully-fledged

in their own right; they exist as excess,waste and remains inBeckett’smind, closely

related to past endeavours. For Louis Oppenheim, this intertextual relationship is

characteristicofBeckett’sworkas‘adiscoursethatself-reflectivelyfocusesonitsown

undoingofnarrative,itsunwritingofwriting–inwriting.Beckett’screativeprocessis

saidtohavebeen“decreative”inthesensethatitwasmotivatedbytheneedtorewrite

and continually fine tune previous texts in new ones’.87 In his negative inclination to

‘undo’ and ‘unwrite’, Beckett evokes an alternative vision of modernism’s creative

wellspring, which, as we have seen, also contains a form of neutralisation of its

productivityinitsresistancetothepastandinsistenceontheimmediate.

Beckett’s ‘decreative’ drive existswithin single texts as the familiarBeckettian

process of ‘unwording’, involving affirmation, reflection, revision, negation and

repetition. This process contributes to the collocation of activity and stasis that

constitutes thevegetating life inBeckett.Forexample, thenarrativevoice inTexts for

Nothingutters:‘Whatvarietyandatthesametimewhatmonotony,howvarieditisand

at the same time,what’s theword,howmonotonous.Whatagitationandat the same

timewhatcalm.Whatvicissitudeswithinwhatchangelessness’.88Thenarratorachieves

the monotony, calm and changelessness of which he speaks by repeating a basic

syntacticalstructure:therhetorical‘what’inconjunctionwith‘andatthesametime’.In

keeping,therearealsopermutationsofthecorethemetoachievethevariety,agitations

andvicissitudes,namelytheuseof‘how’insteadof‘what’;thereflectionandhesitation

inthequestioning‘what’stheword’;andthemovetoanewconfigurationthroughthe

preposition ‘within’.Beckett’snarratordoes looselypracticewhatheobserves in this

largely repetitive and yet refreshed passage, although, admittedly, describing his


27

changesas‘variety’and‘vicissitudes’isahumorousexaggeration.

DeicticlanguagefurtherincreasesthesustainabilityofBeckett’s‘literatureofthe

unword’.SimilartotheKafkashortstoriesdiscussedabove,Beckettdrawsattentionto

the infinite present of the here and now, as well as highlighting the challenges to

immediacy and identity inherent to context-dependent language. Early in Texts for

Nothing, Beckett’s narrator underlines the temporal and psychological aspects of his

purgatorialcondition,althoughhesarcasticallylinksthemtoacelestialsphereinitially:

‘And now here, what now here, one enormous second, as in Paradise, and themind

slow,slownearlystopped’.89Intextthree,‘Here,departfromhereandgoelsewhere,or

stayhere,butcomingandgoing’isrepresentativeofthecomplexityof‘here’inrelation

toaspeakingsubject.90Thefirsthalfindicatesthat ‘here’,onceuttered,isvacatedand

severedfromthesubject.Itisoriginaryandcannotbeoccupiedthroughreflection.The

secondhalfindicatesthat‘here’canbeexperiencedasalivemomentbutmustremain

an ineffable, reoccurring activity. This combination of delay and performativity

resurfaceswhenBeckett’snarratorinsists‘IsayitasIhearit’,whichisalinerepeated

several times in Beckett’s later novel-length work How It Is (1964).91 In an

acknowledgementofthecreativeprocessandtheregisteringofinspiration,‘IsayitasI

hearit’professesimmediacy,like‘here’does,butitactuallyintimateseitheraninternal

dialogue or dictator-scribe relationship, in which what is thought or heard must be

computedandthenverballyrepeated,therebyresultinginaminuteschismbetweenthe

heardandsaid.InBeckett,then,‘here’ispurgatorialbecauseitistransientandelusive;

itisrepeatedlyvoidedandthereforenotentirelyavailabletothe‘I’otherthanasaform

ofbeing.Hence,thenarratorsays‘I’mherethat’sallIknowandthatit’sstillnotme,it’s

ofthatthebesthastobemade.Thereisnofleshanywhere,noranywaytodie’.92While

thebeginningofthisexampleisremarkablysimilartotheHunterGracchus’scomment


28

‘Iamhere,morethanthatIdonotknow’,Beckettalsoconveysthenon-identityarising

fromthedelayinself-reflectiveutterances,inwhichtheacutedistancebetween‘I’and

‘here’revealsthespeakerisinevitablyoverdueorbehindtimeintermsofthepresence

affordedbythefirstpersonpronounanddeicticlanguage.

Beckett is attracted to the contradiction in ‘where you are will never be long

habitable’,which,asfarasthehereandnowgoes,meanstheimpossibilityofrealising

one’s self in themoment, as opposed to experiencing the livedmoment itself.93 This

revelation is evident in a series of remarks on the emptiness of the present, such as

‘Here,nothingwillhappenhere,noonewillbehere,formanyalongday’and‘howisit

nothing iseverhereandnow? […]Whatelsecan therebe to this infinitehere’.94The

presentappearsemptybecausethegapbetweenconsciousnessandself-consciousness

meansapperceptionmusthappenretrospectivelyand thus imperfectly.Cognizanceof

thepresentisactuallyshowntobeanexerciseinassimilatingtherecentpast,andthe

upshotforidentityinBeckettisthatthetemporalnowfeelsuntenanted.Consequently,

Beckett’snarratorrelateswiththesingularpasttense,astextsixsuggestsinareference

to Dante’s Purgatorio: ‘I was, I was, they say in Purgatory, in Hell too’.95 Beckett

mentions this purgatorial non-existence to George Duthuit in an earlier 1948 letter,

makingthereferencetoDantemoreexplicitbyusingtheoriginalItalian:‘Doyouknow

thecrycommontothoseinpurgatory?Iofui’.96Incontrasttothemoreunifiedpresence

of ‘I am’ found in theCartesianaxiom jepense,donc je suis, thephrase ‘Iwas’ reveals

thatBeckettrealisesaDanteanformofselfassomethingalreadypassed,ensuringthat

theipseityspokeninthepresent,‘I’,haselapsedupondetection,‘was’.IfforHabermas,

modernity’s‘newvalueplacedonthetransitory,theelusiveandtheephemeral,thevery

celebration of dynamism, discloses a longing for an undefiled, immaculate and stable

present’, Beckett demonstrates the impossibility of pursuing ‘nowness’ as


29

uncontaminated immanence.97 Through narrative figures riveted to self-reflection on

theirpotentialorpendingcreationanddesired termination,Texts forNothing reveals

the unshakable void that coexists with attempts at the conscious representation of

modernperceptionsofsubjectivityintimeandspace.

However,Beckett’s‘Dante…Bruno.Vico..Joyce’essaydiscussedearlierindicates

that although his later narrative voicesmight conceive of a Dantean purgatory, they

actuallysufferaJoyceanone.Beckett’s‘lastword’onpurgatoriesreads:

Dante’s isconicalandconsequently impliesculmination.MrJoyce’s isspherical

and excludes culmination. In the one there is an ascent from real vegetation –

Ante-Purgatory, to idealvegetation–TerrestrialParadise: in theother there is

no ascent and no ideal vegetation. In the one, absolute progression and a

guaranteedconsummation;intheother,flux–progressionorretrogression,and

anapparentconsummation.98

Dante’s purgatory posits an end, away out at the top of the spiralledmountain into

EarthlyParadise.Itisatransitionalplace‘inwhichthehumanspiritcuresitself/And

becomesfittoleapupintoheaven’.99Incontrast,Joyce’spurgatoryisaclosedsystem,

proteanandprovisionalinside,butlackingtheprospectofcatharsis.AsDanielaCaselli

explains: ‘Joyce’s and Dante’s Purgatories are similar because both move; in Joyce,

however, the movement has lost its redemptive guarantee, its fixed structure, its

characterofspace-in-between.Ithasbecomeasphere,aviciouscircleinwhichastep

forward is a stepback’.100 Yet the impetus to end, and,moreover, to end in the right

way,keepsBeckett’snarratorgoing.Itisasthoughthepromiseofgraduationfromreal

vegetationtoidealvegetationremandsthenarratorinhisplaceofnoidealvegetation:


30

‘No,somethingbettermustbefound,abetterreason,forthistostop,anotherword,a

betteridea,toputinthenegative,anewno,tocancelalltheothers,alltheoldnoesthat

buriedmedownhere,deepinthisplacewhichisnotone,whichismerelyamomentfor

thetimebeingeternal,which iscalledhere’.101Despitebeingstuck intheperditionof

the deictic instant, Beckett’s narrator clings on to a form of totality in the way he

recognises his existence as a ‘pensum’, a task to be completed.102 The early Beckett

commentatorWalterStraussarguesthat:

The heroes of Beckett’s universe really vegetate, and, since this fate is

unendurable, they try to vegetate ideally, i.e., they persuade themselves that

thereisanascentandwaitforsomesortofangeltobeckonthemon,likeDante's

pilgrims.Buttheangel,theepiphany,nevercomes,andtheyfinallyreturntoreal

vegetation.Likethevegetable,theywiltanddisintegrate.103

It is this idealof finality thatmaintains thenarrator’s realityof infinitude inTexts for

Nothing,asitrecurrentlypositsanalternativemeanstoanendthatpreventshimfrom

reconcilingwithhisendlesssituation.Becketteffectivelyconveysvegetatinglifethatis

nourishedbythepurgatorialnarrativesofmovementanddevelopmentbut isactually

rootedinitscyclicpatterns,andthereforerelentlesslydeniedfruition.

Ifthetaskistoproduceaconsummationofnegation,or‘anewno’asBeckett’s

narrator expresses, it nevertheless requires vestigial willpower and desire. David

Watsonclaimsthat,‘[a]taprimarylevel,narrativesareaboutdesire:allstoriesconcern

thedrivetoresolveastateofdisruption,discoveramissingobject,achieveafulfilment

of ambition, and soon’.104 It is fair to claim thatBeckett’snarrativesare repletewith

waysinwhichsuchdesiresareinvalidated,notleastbecauseofhisopen,self-cancelling


31

structuresandprovisional,hypotheticalregistersthatrepeatedlythwartprogressand

resolution, often at the expenseof individual autonomy.AsRubenBorg argues inhis

essay on Beckettian afterlife and the posthuman, Beckett is ‘staging the exhausted,

impracticable afterlife of that enduring Enlightenment ideal—the self-determined

subject’,inwhich‘thesenseofbeingnotonlymortal,butinexcessofone’sowndeath,

corresponds to a stateof infinite passivity—precisely that “limbopurgedof desire” in

which Beckett’s characters are always suspended’.105 Borg extrapolates this principle

fromBelacquaShuah inBeckett’sDreamofFair toMiddlingWomen(1932),who, like

Murphy,isabletoaccesspartsofthemindhecalls‘thecup,theumbra,thetunnel’for

monthsatatime,‘wheretherewasnoconflictofflightandflowandEroswasasnullas

Anteros’.106However,itisworthnotingthatwhileBelacquais‘uniquelyathomeinthe

middle-ground’ofpassivityand ‘is innohurrytoberedeemed’,evenhispurgationof

desire is temporaryand incomplete.107 Indeed, it is impossible tocompletelyexpunge

desireinBeckett’sworld,preciselybecauseBeckettianvegetativelifeisoftenaproduct

of theunfulfilleddesire for such indifference,which iswhatmakes itbothactiveand

static. As with Kafka’s self-denial that reinforces the self that it effaces, and akin to

Beckett’snarrators’urgestospeakintosilence,thedesireforapathyisanotherexample

of aporia as itmustultimatelyusewhat itwants tonegate. In thisway, the resulting

vegetating life is not another path to the contented equilibrium implied in Beckett’s

readingofDante,despiteresortingtoaDanteanqueststructurethatprojectsanend.As

AlistairMorgansuggests:‘thefigureofexhaustioninBeckettprecludesatimeofpeace

orrest.Thepointatwhichtheendcomesbecomesanendlesslyvanishingmoment’.108

Desire emerges as a revenant in Beckett, the hardy but hollow leftover of genuine

possibilitythatneverthelesscontinuestopropelhisshatteredsubjects.

Whether the residual desire in Beckett’s work produces the invigorating


32

differences of renewal or stultifying sameness of repetition is a critical point of

contentionwhenregardingBeckettasalatemodernist.H.PorterAbbottsuggeststhat

Beckett’scentreofgravityisinmodernism,preciselyowingtoaspiritofoppositionthat

runs through his whole oeuvre, from text to text and within texts. He argues that

Beckett affords himself new creative opportunities through a ‘deliberate process of

recollection by distortion', which produces ‘deliberate metamorphosis, a kind of

misremembering’.109AsBeckett revisits and crucially revisesprevious territory, he is

‘recapitulating an antagonism to habit one can trace well back in Baudelairean

modernité’.110 InPorterAbbott’sreading,Beckettretainstheexperimental, innovative

moderniststatus,albeit,alatemoderniststatussince,aftertheinitialaestheticshocks

ofthepost-warperiod,Beckett’soeuvredisplayedmoreconstrainedinnovations.Mark

Perdetti, however, argues that Beckett’s is a knowing modernism, which upsets the

dominanceofthemodernistgravitythatPorterAbbottidentifies.ForPerdetti,Beckett’s

‘self-awareness represents a fundamental inversion of the modernist ideology of

perpetualinnovation:insteadofnovelty,latemodernismpresentsuswiththetediumof

the already-said’.111 The impetus of the oppositional spirit has seemingly been

exhausted in this view, and ‘[i]n the absence of an alternative aesthetic, the late

modernist writer is condemned to occupy that limit position, and to write from its

weariness’.112Perdetti raises the ideaofBeckett inanartisticno-man’s landbetween

modernism and postmodernism, having to perform an inauthentic rendition of an

expiring aesthetic. In conjunction, however, the genuine development and the ironic

reiterationinPorterAbbott’sandPerdetti’srespectiveanalysesshowthatBeckettgives

offtheimpressionofbothresumingmodernism,asanongoingresistancetothesame,

as well as consciously returning tomodernism, as a jaded, anterior formwithout an

established successor.Beckett’swork can support bothof thesepositionsbecausehe


33

conveys the enlivening-deadening duality of vegetating life that already exists in the

auto-defeating and auto-sustaining spirit of modernism, especially as perceptions of

modernism’sdynamismmaturetodetectrestlessstasisandnostalgiaforproductivity.

Beckett’s late modernism is therefore with and without modernism: the

experimentation involved in excavating the modernist ruins of originality and

immediacy,aswellasitsnarrativesofindividualsubjectivityandtheideaofprogress,

appearstobearitsspiritualhallmarkwhilebearingwitnesstoitsideologicaldemise.

Conclusion:TheLateModernistExecutionofModernism

ThevegetatinglifeinKafkaandBeckettisacompulsiontobeactivewhileanchoredina

spatial and temporalpresent that inhibits salvationor totality. Critical orthodoxafter

Benjamin, Lukács and Adorno is to relate these purgatorial conditions to the

dehumanising forces of industry, technology, urbanity and war in early twentieth-

centurymodernityorthedecayofculture,experienceandsubjectivityinthedamaged

life of post-Holocaust later modernity. However, vegetative life also chimes with the

dynamics ofmodernism as a sensibility, particularly the duality that emerges from a

conceptionofmodernismasanunfulfilledspirit consistingofcompulsiveactivityand

overall inertia.Aswithdeictic language,however,thevalueofmodernism’spursuitof

thenowandthenewisamatterofperception,asitcanpresentbothinfinitepotential

and endless emptiness.Kafka andBeckett are receptive to the latter cycle of attempt

without prospect, and subsequently their modernist life spirit shifts to a negative

teleological or eschatological project to terminate itself, whereby the effort invested

into ending is ironically the cause of its continuation. Kafka’s prescient literature

forecasts the later application of modernism’s vestigial spirit to pore over its own

remains, in thewayBeckett’s post-war art of failuredoes so assiduously. The lackof


34

authenticororiginallifethatthisvegetatinglifeimpliesisproperlyassociatedwithlate

modernism, if understoodas adesignation that covers ‘the empty spaces left byhigh

modernism’s dissolution’ in which ‘late modernists reassembled fragments into

disfigured likenesses of modernist masterpieces: the unlovely allegories of a world’s

end’.113 Despite his narrow periodization of latemodernism as the late 1920s to the

1930s,TyrusMiller recognises the importantpoint that ‘in suchworks thevectorsof

despairandutopia,thecompulsiontodeclineandtheimpulsetorenewal,arenotjust

related;theyarepracticallyindistinguishable’.114Latemodernismthereforeformalises

theabortivebutenduringkernelthatexistswithinthespiritofmodernism;itenactsthe

chronic belatedness and persistence endemic to its oppositional, experimental

forbearer. Kafka and Beckett invoke and perform this sense of protracted failure

presentintheirownsupposedmodernistartisticsensibilitytoexposetheburdensome,

atrophiedsideof itsdynamism.Indoingso,thesetwowriterseffectively ‘execute’the

spirit ofmodernism as they are both engagedwith and consciously going beyond it.

Subject to the frisson of the creative process but without convincing progression,

Kafka’sandBeckett’svegetatingfiguresareemblematicoflatemodernism,lingeringon

thelossandpossiblerenewalofself,communityandmeaning,butfromagreaterself-

reflectivepositionofdejectionandincredulity.

1ShaneWeller,‘PerformingtheNegative:KafkaandtheOriginsofLateModernism’,TheModernLanguageReview,111:3(2016),775-794:784.2JürgenHabermas,‘Modernity:AnUnfinishedProject’,inHabermasandtheUnfinishedProjectofModernity,ed.MaurizioPasserind'EntrèvesandSeylaBenhabib(Cambridge:MITPress,1997),3.3IrvingHowe,‘TheCultureofModernism’,Commentary,November1967.https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-culture-of-modernism/(accessedJuly30,2017)4GabrielJosipovici,‘Modernismstillmatters’,NewStatesman,6September2010:67.5SusanStanfordFriedman,‘DefinitionalExcursions:TheMeaningsofModern/Modernity/Modernism’,MODERNISM/modernity,8:3(2001),493–513:503.6DavidWeisberg,ChroniclesofDisorder:SamuelBeckettandtheCulturalPoliticsoftheModernNovel(NewYork:SUNYPress,2000),53.7‘EclipseoftheHighbrow’,TheTimes,25March1941,5.8‘P.R.A.OnDeclineof‘Modernism’’,TheTimes,1June1955,8.


35

9MauriceBeebe,‘Introduction:WhatModernismWas’,JournalofModernLiterature,3:5(1974),1065-1084:1065.10Howe,‘CultureofModernism’.11Habermas,‘Modernity:AnUnfinishedProject’,6.12PeterBürger,TheoryoftheAvant-Garde,trans.MichaelShaw(Minneapolis:UniversityOfMinnesotaPress,1984),63.13RobertGenter,LateModernism:Art,Culture,andPoliticsinColdWarAmerica(Philadelphia:UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress,2010),7.14StanfordFriedman,‘DefinitionalExcursions’,503.15Forexample,seeDavidJames,ModernistFutures:InnovationandInheritanceintheContemporaryNovel,(CambridgeUniversityPress:Cambridge,2012)andDavidJames,ed.,TheLegaciesofModernism:HistoricisingPostwarandContemporaryFiction(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,2011).16DavidJames,ModernistFutures(CambridgeUniversityPress:Cambridge,2012),15.17StanfordFriedman,‘DefinitionalExcursions’,505.18Habermas,‘Modernity:AnUnfinishedProject’,3.19Howe,‘CultureofModernism’.20GeorgLukács,TheMeaningofContemporaryRealism,trans.JohnandNeckeMander(London:MerlinPress,1969),35.21Lukács,MeaningofContemporaryRealism,18.22ibid.19.23ibid.26.24ibid.26,31.25ibid.33.26ibid.36.27ElaineMiller,TheVegetativeSoul:FromPhilosophyofNaturetoSubjectivityintheFeminine(Albany,StateUniversityofNewYorkPress,2002),187.28MichaelMarder,Plant-Thinking:APhilosophyofVegetalLife(NewYork:ColumbiaUniversityPress,2013),22.29Marder,Plant-Thinking,163.30“vegetate,v.”.OEDOnline.June2017.OxfordUniversityPress.https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/221884?rskey=R69ymm&result=2(accessedJuly30,2017).31“vegetieren,v.”.CollinsGermantoEnglishDictionaryOnline.https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-german/vegetieren(accessedJuly30,2017).32JamesE.Strick,WilliamReich:Biologist(Cambridge:HarvardUniversityPress,2015),52.33ItwouldbeviabletakethepsychopathologyinLukács’sdiagnosisofan‘idiot’svegetativeexistence’atfacevalue.Representationsofnotablebodiedorevendisembodiedbeingsdisplayingpsychologicalandneurologicaldisorders,suchasschizophrenia,paranoia,hypergraphia,dysfluencyandexpressiveaphasia,arerifeinBeckettasresearchprojectson‘BeckettandtheBrain’haveshown.Forexample,seeElizabethBarry,UlrikaMaudeandLauraSalisbury,eds.,‘Beckett,MedicineandtheBrain’SpecialIssue,JournalofMedicalHumanities,37:2(2016).34SeeStevenLaureys,etal,‘UnresponsiveWakefulnessSyndrome:ANewNamefortheVegetativeStateorApallicSyndrome’,BMCMedicine,8:68(2010).35OEDOnline.36GeorgLukács,‘Freud’sPsychologyoftheMasses’,inLukács:ReviewsandArticlesfromDieroteFahne,trans.PeterPalmer(London:MerlinPress,1983),33-36;33.37SigmundFreud,BeyondthePleasurePrincipleandOtherWritings,trans.JohnReddick(London:Penguin,2003),81.38WalterBenjamin,‘FranzKafka:OntheTenthAnniversaryofHisDeath’,inIlluminations,ed.HannahArendtandtrans.HarryZorn(London:Pimlico,1999),108–35:109.39Benjamin,‘FranzKafka’,113.40ibid.113,114.


36

41ibid.131.42ibid.117.43Lukács,MeaningofContemporaryRealism,45.44Benjamin,‘FranzKafka’,125.45AlistairMorgan,‘MereLife,DamagedLifeandEphemeralLife’,Angelaki,19:1,113-127:120.46TheodorAdorno,‘TryingtoUnderstandEndgame’,NewGermanCritique,26(1982),trans.MichaelT.Jones,119–50:122.47TheodorAdorno,MinimaMoralia:ReflectionsfromDamagedLife(London:Verso,2005).48AlistairMorgan,Adorno’sConceptofLife(London:Continuum,2007),2.49TheodorAdorno,‘Metaphysics’,inCanOneLiveafterAuschwitz?APhilosophicalReader,ed.RolfTiedemann(Stanford:StanfordUniversityPress,2003�),442.50TheodorAdorno,‘NotesonKafka’inPrisms,trans.SamuelandShierryWeber,(Minneapolis:MITPress,1981),259.51SamuelBeckett,‘Dante…Bruno.Vico..Joyce’inDisjecta,ed.RubyCohn(JohnCalder:London,1983),33.52JohnL.Murphy,‘Beckett’sPurgatories’,inBeckett,JoyceandtheArtoftheNegative,ed.ColleenJaurretche(AmsterdamandNewYork:Rodopi,2005),109.53SamuelBeckett,Krapp’sLastTapeandothershorterplays(London:FaberandFaber,2009),5.ThenameKrappsuggeststhehomophonic‘crap’,derivingfromtheAnglo-Latincrappa,meaning‘chaff’,whichalsosoundslikeBeckett’sshortstorytitle‘Draff’’fromMorePricksthanKicks(1934),whichstemsfromtheGermantreber,meaning‘husks,grain’.54SamuelBeckett,MaloneDies(London:FaberandFaber,2010),71.55Beckett,MaloneDies,72.56FranzKafka,Kafka:TheBlueOctavoNotebooks,(Cambridge,MA:ExactChange,1991),23.57RichieRobertson,‘KafkaasAnti-Christian’inACompaniontotheWorksofFranzKafka,ed.JamesRolleston(Rochester,NY:CamdenHouse,2003),101-121;113.58Beckett,‘Dante…Bruno.Vico..Joyce’,23.59ibid.33.60ibid.33,29.61Marder,Plant-Thinking,24.62ibid.192,24.63Beckett,‘Dante…Bruno.Vico..Joyce’,33.64JosephCampbell,MythicWorlds,ModernWords:TheArtofJamesJoyce(Novato:NewWorldLibrary,1993),15.65FranzKafka,Diaries1910-1923,(NewYork:SchockenBooks,1988),266.66Kafka,Diaries1910-1923,302.67ibid.318.68Howe,‘CultureofModernism’.69FranzKafka,TheCompleteShortStories(London:Vintage,2005),228.70Kafka,CompleteShortStories,228.71HaroldBloom,ed.,FranzKafka(NewYork:ChelseaHouse:2010),7.72Kafka,CompleteShortStories,229.73Kafka,Diaries1910-1923,373.74WilhelmEmrich,WilliamLangebartelandIreneZuk,‘FranzKafkaandLiteraryNihilism’,JournalofModernLiterature,6:3,FranzKafkaSpecialNumber(1977),366-379:370.75Kafka,CompleteShortStories,230.76DorritCohn,‘Kafka’sEternalPresent:NarrativeTensein“EinLandarzt”andOtherFirst-PersonStories’,PMLA,83:1(1968),144-150:147.77Kafka,CompleteShortStories,228.78ibid.449.


37

79ibid.398.80Weller,‘PerformingtheNegative’,780.81ibid.783.82ibid.793,794.83ShaneWeller,‘BeckettandLateModernism’,inTheNewCambridgeCompaniontoBeckett,ed.DirkVanHulle(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,2015),89-102:95-96.84SamuelBeckett,Murphy(London:FaberandFaber,2009),72.85SamuelBeckett,TheLettersofSamuelBeckett,1941–1956,Vol.2,eds.GeorgeCraig,MarthaDowFehsenfeld,DanGunnandLoisMoreOverbeck(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,2011),234.86Beckett,Letters,Vol.2,241,289,285,300.87LoisOppenheim,‘SituatingSamuelBeckett’,TheCambridgeCompaniontotheModernistNovel,ed.MoragShiach(NewYork:Cambridge,2007),224-237:231.88SamuelBeckett,TextsforNothingandOtherShorterProse,1950-1976(London:FaberandFaber,2010),37.89Beckett,TextsforNothing,8.90ibid.11.91ibid.22.92ibid.14.93ibid.7.94ibid.15,26.95ibid.27.96Beckett,Letters,Vol.2,92.97Habermas,‘Modernity:AnUnfinishedProject’,5.98Beckett,‘Dante…Bruno.Vico..Joyce’,33.99DanteAlighieri,TheDivineComedy,trans.C.H.Sisson(Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress,2008),199.100DaniellaCaselli,Beckett’sDantes:IntertextualityintheFictionandCriticism(Manchester:ManchesterUniversityPress,2006),20.101Beckett,TextsforNothing,48.102ibid.31.103WalterA.Strauss,‘Dante’sBelacquaandBeckett’sTramps’,ComparativeLiterature,11:3(Summer,1959),250-261:260104DavidWatson,ParadoxandDesireinSamuelBeckett’sFiction(Basingstoke:PalgraveMacmillan,1991),56.105RubenBorg,‘PuttingtheImpossibletoWork:BeckettianAfterlifeandthePosthumanFutureofHumanity’,JournalofModernLiterature,35:4(2012),163-180:174.106SamuelBeckett,DreamofFairtoMiddlingWomen(NewYork:Arcade,1993),46,121.107Borg,‘PuttingtheImpossibletoWork’,169.108Morgan,Adorno’sConceptofLife,113.109HPorterAbbott,‘LateModernism:SamuelBeckettandtheArtofOeuvre‘LateModernism:SamuelBeckettandtheArtoftheOeuvre’,inAroundtheAbsurd,eds.RubyCohnandEnochBrater(AnnArbor:UniversityofMichigan,1990)73-96:75.110PorterAbbott,‘LateModernism:SamuelBeckettandtheArtofOeuvre’,77.111MarkPerdetti,‘LateModernRigmarole:BoredomasForminSamuelBeckett’sTrilogy’,StudiesintheNovel,45:4(2013),585.112Perdetti,‘LateModernRigmarole’,591.113TyrusMiller,LateModernism:Politics,FictionandtheArtsbetweentheWorldWars(Berkeley&London:UniversityofCaliforniaPress,1999),14.114Miller,LateModernism,14.

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