Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The anthropometric turn
- 1 Narrating the animal, amputating the soul
- 2 Conrad and technology: homo ex machina
- 3 The Lawrentian transcendent: after the fall
- 4 Woolf's luminance: time out of mind
- 5 Doubting Beckett: voices descant, stories still
- Conclusion: Humanness unbound
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Doubting Beckett: voices descant, stories still
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The anthropometric turn
- 1 Narrating the animal, amputating the soul
- 2 Conrad and technology: homo ex machina
- 3 The Lawrentian transcendent: after the fall
- 4 Woolf's luminance: time out of mind
- 5 Doubting Beckett: voices descant, stories still
- Conclusion: Humanness unbound
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
I don't know, perhaps it's a dream, all a dream, that would surprise me, I'll wake, in the silence, and never sleep again, it will be I, or dream, dream again, dream of a silence, a dream silence, full of murmurs, I don't know …
Samuel BeckettA man lies in bed asleep, assailed by dreams and phantoms. In his feverish, precarious condition images of chaos and tumult unsettle his mind – thunderstorms, violent winds, and an evil, supernatural genius trying to claim his soul. He experiences severe disorientation, until his already waning confidence vanishes completely. Terror seizes him; he is bent double and reeling, unable to regain his posture although the fierce winds have subsided. And as he struggles with these apparitions, these phantoms and demons, he floats in and out of consciousness. Finally the series of dreams comes to an end, and the dreamer awakens. Another man, in another era, alone in the dark. Alone on his back in the dark. A voice comes to him. Only a small part of what is said can be verified. The voice tells of a past. Apart from the voice and the faint sound of his breath there is no sound. None, at least, that he can hear.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Modernism, Narrative and Humanism , pp. 150 - 179Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002