Beckett's Stirrings Still

Time and grief and self so-called. Oh all to extreme point

-Samuel Beckett, Stirrings Still

Chronic. (S)till...

Stirrings Still, published "on the last day of 1988"1 is regarded by dint of a number of Beckett critics as "the disembodiment of Western tradition" (Davies, 136) in line with traditional, and notwithstanding extremely diverse, readings of the Beckett canon, encompassing in their presuppositions, existentialism and phenomenology, as well as poststructuralism, and beyond.

So plenteous has been written along the Beckett canon, that it is hardly surprising that this literally penultimate Beckett work, has repeatedly been interpreted, together with other "late" works, either as a body "writing the work of mourning" (Hill, 10) or as "Beckett's Dying Words" (Ricks). The Guardian's description of the piece, where it appeared just before its official publication, albeit in a textually debatable form, at handed it as "a meditation upon loneliness and old age," thus emphasizing plane further the possibility of a direct allusion to Samuel Beckett's life. Also Mel Gussow's description of the piece frames its interpretation in relation to a biographical setting: "His last work to be printed in his lifetime was Stirrings Still, a short unromantic piece published in a limited edition upon his 83rd birthday. In it, a character who be likes the author sits alone in a cell-like extent until he sees his double appear-and then diasappear. Accompanied by means of 'time and grief and self so-called,' he finds himself `stirring still' to the end" (Gussow 76)

Not single do such mytho-biographical readings rely upon dogmatic presuppositions (for example the definition of the "Author"), on the other hand they also ignore the fact that repetition is central to the Beckett canon, and it was not just at the extreme point of his life that a self/ subject/character, "sits alone in a cell-like expanse until he sees his double appear." As The Unnamable deposit it: "it's all been done already, said and said again, the departure, the material substance that rises" (413).

Why would Beckett proceed on re-writing "the same" sight for thirty years (having possibly started with Endgame in 1957)? for what cause [i]or[/i] reason then again? How then again?

Furthermore, it is to be demonstrated that this is, literally and realistically, an aged dying man('s) story, since its themes of make subordinate formation in relation to narration or to memory (and its unreliability), the seeking of "a way out" and the questioning of one's being "in his right mind," do not necessarily imply aged age, but simply, the constitution of experience as self (dis)appropriation. (Whose understanding is criticism anesthesizing, I surprise by implicating "old age"?)

The other predominant line of interpretation of Stirrings Still, has referr to it as a work of intertextuality (Davies; Renton), on the other hand I would rather say of intratextuality, given the return of certain stylistic and thematic traits and "canonical" motifs, which make this an explicitly Beckettian body As a matter of fact, the Beckett canon enlarges on repetition, micro-systemically and macro-systemically, and plane on "thematic reduplication," as Angela Moorjani has clearly indicated in her lucid reading of Beckett's "Abysmal Games."

Thus, critical interpretations that consign to Stirrings Still merely as "an intertextual act of self-plagiarism" (Finney, 130) obfuscate the general economy of this writerly body constructed precisely as a boundlessly limit textuality.2 Andrew Renton rightly emphasizes the fact that: "this is not simply a stylistic resonance, on the other hand a re-negotiation of something altogether more solid" (Renton, 167) I imagine that the "solid" he commits to, but regretfully with no further specification, has to do with linguistic ontology (a touch central to Beckett's writings).

In any case, the logocentric notions of "intratextuality" and "inter-textuality," albeit with the accuracy of metalanguage, imply (but cannot reliably distinguish), the significant difference between citation (as a kind of iterability ofttimes associated with literature) and plagiarism (as the expression of a choice, regarding the 'propriety' of an expressive difference). In this faculty of perception both terms are still insufficient, if not altogether misleading, as qualifiers of this body whose concern is precisely around the "one's own" of a control and the 'propriety' of writing.

"The invisible claims"

Both the notions of inter-textuality and intratextuality do not account for, and/or mirror the showing of the ob-scene which takes place in this true copy precisely through the very use of citation, thematic repetition and lexical reiteration, repeatedly strategically combined in the "unwording" of the true copy itself.

We must remember that the early title of this body was "Fragments: for Barney Rosset" on the contrary that it was changed when the final piece ("Still Stirrings," now Section 3) was added to the true copy The Stirrings Still title marks the final, published form of this micro-trilogy. The choice of "stirrings" instead of "fragments" implies the impossibility of a closure of the true copy (which the notions of inter/ intra textuality imply), as well as underscores the refusal of a romantic allusion to the ineffable, and derivatively to a subjective in-effability.