BECKETT’S "REVERSED METAMORPHOSIS"—WHAT CONSTITUTES A SERIOUS
READING OF THE CASTLE?
I’ve only read Kafka in
German—serious reading—except for a few things in French and English—only The
Castle in German. I must say it was difficult to get to the end. The Kafka
hero has a coherence of purpose. He’s lost but he’s not falling to bits. My
people seem to be falling to bits. Another difference, you notice how Kafka’s
form is classic, it goes on like a steamroller—almost serene. It seems to be
threatened the whole time—but the consternation is in the form. In my work
there is consternation behind the form, not in the form. (Samuel Beckett,
interviewed in The New York Times, May 6, 1956)
INCONSISTENCIES IN BECKETT’S
critical terminology, particularly with respect to what he variously denotes by
form, have led the above remarks to be read specifically to the end of
formulating a Beckettian aesthetic. James Mays, for instance, has noted that
Beckett makes analogous points critiquing the artist Masson in the "Three
Dialogues": Masson "has to contend with his own technical gifts, which
have the richness, the precision, the density and balance of the high classical
manner." According to Beckett, Kafka’s "competence" similarly
"keeps at bay problems it cannot encompass." As a result, Kafka’s
fidelity to failure is short-circuited by a technical competence that limits him
to expressing what can be, as opposed to the "expression that there is
nothing to be expressed, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to
express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation
to express." In short, Kafka does not go the whole Beckettian hog and is
merely another can-doer circumscribed, like Masson, within the circle of his
technical competence.
Although Mays elucidates some valid formal contrasts in his essay, he neglects seriously to consider the engagement suggested by Beckett’s remarks, and especially the question of what Beckett means by "serious reading." This critical omission dates back to Ruby Cohn’s 1961 essay "Watt in the Light of The Castle," which has seemingly persuaded posterity to consider the subject laid to rest. In fact, however, Cohn leaves the question of a direct link between Watt and The Castle dangling. In an attempt to buck the trend in assimilating Kafka and Beckett to shibboleths like "pessimism," Cohn provides a series of finely calibrated contrasts between The Castle and Watt, while at the same time neglecting a playful logic haunting the very contrasts she observes. In what follows I attempt to uncover that logic by identifying in those contrasts a structure of intertextual operations that reflects Beckett’s reference to "serious reading."
What constitutes (a) "serious reading"? I begin my attempt to answer this question by returning to a phrase from Beckett’s remarks on Kafka: "I must say it was difficult to get to the end." Now, coming from anyone else this remark would seem innocuous enough, reflecting what is, after all, a common grievance with The Castle. Coming from Beckett, however, it gives considerable pause for thought. For even after one notes the calculated and comical impertinence—Beckett remarking the difficulty of another’s writing—and masters one’s suspicion that, coming from Beckett, this might even constitute a compliment, one has yet to begin to appreciate the phrase in the light of Beckett’s literary rhetoric and practice. For it is difficult to imagine that Beckett, the incomparable poet of ends, and never one to take words lightly, accidentally stumbled upon the phrase I must say it was difficult to get to the end.
The Castle, after all, famously remains incomplete, and appended to its abortive end are several unfinished chapters, fragments, and variations, followed in turn by Max Brod’s "Nachwort" or "Additional Note," in which Brod relates the projected end of The Castle: "Kafka never wrote his concluding chapter. But he told me about it once when I asked him how the novel was to end." It is indeed difficult for anyone to get to the end of The Castle: Beckett’s predicament is ours as well.