The dead die hard, they are trespassers on the beyond, they must take the place as they find it, the shafts and the manholes back into the muck, till such time as the lord of the manor incurs through his long acquiescence a duty of care in respect of them. Then they are free among the dead by all means, then their troubles are over, their natural troubles. But the debt of nature, that scandalous post-obit on one’s own estate, can no more be discharged by the mere fact of kicking the bucket than descent can be made into the same stream twice. This is a true saying.
At least it can truly be said of
Belacqua who now found himself up and about in the dust of the world, back at
his old games in the dim spot, on so many different occasions that he sometimes
wondered if his lifeless condition were not all a dream and if on the whole he
had not been a great deal deader before than after his formal departure, so to
speak, from among the quick.
***
Passage from Echo’s Bones,
written in 1933, published posthumously in 2014, by Samuel Beckett. Originally the
short story was written to ‘bulk-up’ the physical book of More Pricks Than
Kicks
Upon receiving the manuscript, Beckett’s
publisher protested –
It is a
nightmare. Just too terribly persuasive […] the same horrible and immediate
switches of the focus, and the same wild unfathomable energy of the population.
‘Echo’s Bones’ would, I am sure, lose the book a great many readers. People
will shudder and be puzzled and confused; and they won’t be keen on analysing
the shudder (Knowlson)
***
The title, Echo’s Bones, is
taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses – Echo’s bones were turned to stone
Echo mourns her unrequited love
for Narcissus. She pines until only her voice and bones remain
***
Life after death after life, as
in the life before, another Heideggerian thrownness (Gerworfenheit) as
the dead must take the place as they find it – back in the ditch. There was
no ascent after all, just falling, falling
***
Who is the lord of the manor?
- Lord Gall of Wormwood, a dwelling place or some other?
***
Free among the dead – refer
to Psalms 88:5 – Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave
***
Legalisms and accounting terms in
the opening paragraph – trespassers,
duty of care, debt, estate, discharge, post-obit
(after death, bond given by a borrower)
***
Same stream twice, from
Heraclitus – You cannot step into the same river twice, for other waters are
continually flowing on
All is change, the literal
and metaphorical
The partiality of the author,
taking sides – this is a true saying
The impossibility of fixity (no
change) like the impossibility of stepping back into the same stream twice; there
is no reprieve from falling back into the muck even after death
***
Distant and dim echoes - Beckett’s
literary habit of taking notes from every book that came to his hands and his ‘technique
of distant echo and semi-allusion’ (Ackerley) when writing his first prose
fictions
***
Having undergone a minor
procedure, and after dying in the operating theatre, the return of Belacqua in
the afterlife - this queer customer
[Belacqua] who always looked ill and dejected (from Dante and the
Lobster)
***
First encounter of Belacqua in
Dante’s Purgatory -
His lazy acts
and broken words my lips
To laughter
somewhat mov'd; when I began:
"Belacqua,
now for thee I grieve no more”
- Canto IV, Purgatory
***
The cyclical nature of life and
death, not linear, intimations of karma, a precarious path to of
progress, a ‘step in the right direction’ –
This is he and
the position from which he ventures, to which he is even liable to return after
the fiasco, in which he is installed for each dose of expiation of great strength,
from which he is caught up each time a trifle better, dryer, less of a natural
snob
***
2nd paragraph – words of
phantasmagoria – like a dream, dim and in the dust, lifeless,
deader – and yet, in death, now more alive than before (Belacqua was a
great deal deader before)
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