Murphy

by Samuel Beckett, Gabriele Frasca (Editor)

Murphy è un personaggio grottesco e affascinante che trascorre le giornate avvinto a una sedia a dondolo, gli occhi spenti, nella penombra, proiettato nei meandri del suo spirito. Schiavo di un'opprimente fisicità, è destinato a trovare l'evasione solo nella pazzia. Ma attorno a lui e ai suoi silenzi pullula una congerie di individui divertenti e ciarlieri che snodano una commedia di amori incorrisposti, sospesi in pochi gesti a definire per sempre le inconsistenze delle loro vite. La scrittura del primo grande romanzo di Beckett è ancora sotto l'ala del magistero joyciano, ma già proiettata verso quella visualità teatrale che sfocierà nelle indimenticabili pièces della maturità e verso la riduzione delle esistenze dei suoi personaggi ai primi segni della vita mentale. Una sorta di rappresentazione dell'indolenza cosmica che attraversa patologicamente il mondo, spinta dal nulla, ma popolata da un continuo balbettio, un flusso orale sconnesso, un linguaggio schizofrenico tendente al nonsenso.
La compresenza di comico e tragico che è in Murphy forse Beckett non l'ha più raggiunta, o perseguita, nei romanzi successivi. Rimane un caposaldo della sua produzione letteraria e, più generalmente, della letteratura del Novecento.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Irish Literature, Ireland, Literature, Novels, 20th Century

230 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1938

About the author

Novels of Samuel Barclay Beckett, Irish writer, include Murphy in 1938 and Malone Dies in 1951; a wider audience know his absurdist plays, such as Waiting for Godot in 1952 and Krapp's Last Tape in 1959, and he won the Nobel Prize of 1969 for literature.

Samuel Barclay Beckett, an avant-garde theater director and poet, lived in France for most of his adult life. He used English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black gallows humor.

People regard most influence of Samuel Barclay Beckett of the 20th century. James Augustine Aloysius Joyce strongly influenced him, whom people consider as one modernist. People sometimes consider him as an inspiration to many later first postmodernists. He is one of the key in what Martin Esslin called the "theater of the absurd". His later career worked with increasing minimalism.

People awarded Samuel Barclay Beckett "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".

In 1984, people elected Samuel Barclay Bennett as Saoi of Aosdána.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Samuel Becket has turned me on with the very first phrase in the book:

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

There is no reality, only a simulacrum of reality: individuals entertain themselves with bizarre occult practices and weird intellectual discourses:

Humanity is a well with two buckets, one going down to be filled, the other coming up to be emptied.

Isn’t it a perfect metaphor of birth and death, of knowledge and ignorance, of memory and oblivion?

Murphy’s mind pictured itself as a large hollow sphere, hermetically closed to the universe without. This was not an impoverishment, for it excluded nothing that it did not itself contain. Nothing ever had been, was or would be in the universe outside it but was already present as virtual, or actual, or virtual rising into actual, or actual falling into virtual, in the universe inside it.

A mind like this doesn’t need any company except its own. And it has no other way but down and out…
Our souls are kites on a string that dream to break free into eternity…

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well done, Sam!

Bellacqua, Dante's Purgatorial Born Loser from the Comedia - and Beckett's own nom de guerre in such early works as this - has almost graduated to a Dantean Purgatory Proper!

My friend and career mentor, Bruce Hodgins, used to say to me, "Don't sweat the small stuff, Fergus!" Yet here Murphy does just that. Wee, sleekit, cowerin', timorous beastie!

Murphy seeks to stop time by stopping his heart. Pretty crazy, I know. Don’t try it at home, kids.

The reason for such nutty mysticism is stress: the world, for him, is aporetic and thus unworkable, because he, puritanical at heart though not in hormones, is at war with himself and the world.

When body and mind are no longer in harmony, we need a larger container for our anxious souls.

Murphy eventually finds that bigger container in the caring but chaotic environment of a mental hospital, upon scoring work as an orderly.
***

Early on in the novel, his mad spiritual friend and teacher, Neary, teaches him to stop time by stopping his heart, and Murphy seeks further peace and solace in the embrace of Celia, a passionate streetwalker.

Murphy only wants peace from his demons, but Celia simply wants him to get a job. Sound familar, kids? If you want to go to heaven, you gotta go to hell. But Murphy just follows his private horoscope to get to peace: oh, well.

And hell, too, is Beckett's way of starting the narrative - for his guardian angel, Dante, only began his literary passage to Peace by slogging through an inferno. The Hell of self-knowlege.

And Celia is to Beckett as Beatrice is to Dante! When she gives advice, Murphy knows she’s right. The only way he’ll get to Heaven is hard work, not in Nearyisms or astrological mumbo jumbo.

"Myself am Hell - which way I turn is hell," John Milton says, and Murphy believes it. All his friends and lovers are lowlife woebegone wastrels, too. There’s gotta be a way out!

So Murphy gets another job he digs. Will he blow it?
***

The prose throughout is taut and lean - with multiple ironies and bons mots peppered throughout - and it holds you in its vice grip by making you laugh out loud.

It's so darkly hilarious!

After Beckett's siege of relentless words and fractious black affections, though, I yearned to open the Windows of my Soul and let Sunshine stream into my Heart.

Goodbye to you and your wasted buddies, Murphy!

I've queued up Corrie Ten Boom's miraculous Hiding Place next on my reading list.

I need to hide from you, Murphy, in my own warmly human heart's desire: the coming of God's Kingdom!

[Luís · Rating 3 out of 5]

At Beckett, the oddity seems normal. Murphy vegetates in his lullaby; he binds with women for the sake of breaking up, gets hired into a mental institution to play chess, and disappears in the eyes of his friends, who, almost as bizarre as he, seek him without success while seeking themselves. All of this occurs amid profound and unthinkable reflections on the nature of the mind. Madness allows itself to lull by reason, or perhaps it is the opposite. Beckett's world forgets the bodies, but they return unexpectedly with their incongruous procession. The reader witnesses, perplexed and stolen, a play of shadows. Sometimes he manages to take a little pleasure in it.

[Helga چـو ایـران نباشد تن من مـباد · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no return game between a man and his stars.

No wonder this book was repeatedly rejected by publishers! Absurdism wasn’t even a thing in 1936. Add ‘bleak’ and ‘satirical’ à la Beckett to it and the work becomes unpublishable.

In those days, who would have wanted to read a book which begins with 'The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.'
In those days who would have wanted to read a confusing storyline about a nihilistic nobody obsessed with astrology who doesn’t want to work and craves to sit on his favorite chair in silence and live through his mind rather than his body?
Or read about an old man whose only expectation in life is to be able to launch and fly his kite.
Or read about a prostitute who is in love with the aforementioned nihilist?
Or a (possibly/according to her)jilted lover who wants her nihilist back?
Or a rival who wants the nihilist gone?
Or an asylum for the insane?
Or a game or two of chess?
Or a gas tap in a bathroom…and a lighted candle?

Humanity is a well with two buckets... one going down to be filled, the other coming up to be emptied.

[Richard Derus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scintillating, superb, fractal geometry in words.

Yeah, that verdict stands too.

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: MURPHY, when first published in 1938, was Beckett's first novel and third work of ficiton. Very Irish in the post-Joycean tradition, it nevertheless was the beginning of a new form of literary expression as some discerning critics recognized at the time, drawing heavily on the author's time spent in London as a young man, and especially on his experiences as a male nurse. It has for many years been one of the most popular novels of one of the most seminal figures of the twentieth century. There's a sort of comfort in the dry, bare, language, in the spooky imagery and the incantatory repetitions... -- Howard Kinlay.

My Review: This is always hard when describing Beckett. Murphy loves Celia, the prostitute. Miss Counihan, surprisingly anthropoid for an Irishwoman, loves Murphy. Neary, a philosopher, comes to love Murphy as his best friend. Then there's this guy Murphy plays chess with in the mental hospital where Murphy goes to work.

Okay, it can't really be this hard. Murphy, an Irish depressive, has to get a job because Celia, his petite amie, thinks it will do him good. So he leaves Ireland, goes to London and starts working at a mental hospital. All sorts of Irish problems follow him, but Murphy finds himself escaping them among the mad, who have abdicated their responsibilities to the staff and lead lives of unencumbered irresponsibility that Murphy envies. Mr. Endon, the wisest madman, lures Murphy into playing a game of chess with him, and it's that game that forms the spine of the book. It's described in loving, and to me incomprehensible, detail, but if you're patient and willing to educate yourself with a chess reference source as you read, you'll come to realize that this game is the novel you're reading, and the novel is the chess game.

How do chess games end? Think on that for a moment. The novel's ending will then be clear to you. It's not the easiest read on the shelf. It's well worth your time and effort to engage with, because it's gorgeously wrought...there's a line about owls in the zoo, their joys and sufferings not starting until dark, that I wish I could find so as to quote exactly, but it's...well...perfect, and at the moment it comes in the narrative, so startlingly apt that it makes my hair stand up to remember it.

Beckett hated Ireland for its conformist, dead-spirited religiosity. He abhorred any and all forms of hypocrisy, and this (I think, could be wrong about this) is the last novel he wrote in English because he regarded the language as the carrier (think Typhoid Mary) of hypocrisy. (So what did he do? He wrote in FRENCH! Oh the irony.) Murphy is the soul-scream of an angry lover. It caustically throws in your face every unkind or unworthy thought you've ever had, every casually cruel deed you've ever done, and makes you weep and smile and sigh with pleasure as it alternately berates and caresses you.

Yes, this book is a bad love affair with a beautiful man put between hard covers. It's brilliant, it's beautiful, and it's never to be forgotten, even when you wish you could.

[K.D. Absolutely · Rating 5 out of 5]

My very first Beckett. Yesterday morning, when I finally closed this book, I was speechless. This is a work of a genius.

Reading the first half was a bit of a challenge though. If you are not used to reading modernist or postmodernist works, there is a big chance that Beckett's writing style would discourage you. Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) apprenticed with his friend and idol - my other favorite Irish writer - the author of Ulysses (5 stars too!), James Joyce (1882-1941). So, their styles have similarities but still distinctly recognizable. I liked them both. Although, "Murphy" of course is a lot shorter and easier to understand than "Ulysses."

But I have to admit again that I am not sure I understood everything that Beckett wanted to convey in this book. Like the attitude that I used for me to finish "Ulysses," I just went on and on with my reading even if I had to reread some paragraphs twice or thrice. This explains why it took me 1 month to finish this book. There were so many parts where I asked myself: "Huh? Again? What did he say?" However, in the second half, when Murphy was already working as a nurse in the hospital for crazy people, that's when the story made a huge turn and everything started to fall into right places. The conversation of his friends at the sickbed of Murphy's girlfriend Celia was the first scene that left me in awe because the prose, the playful beautiful prose, was something that I have not encountered yet even in his friend James Joyce's works. Then that scene was closely followed by the well-known chess game that seems to have encapsulated or mimicked or mirrored the whole novel. I am not good in playing chess and I don't exactly know how to read the written moves and I saw this style in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (3 stars) by Lewis Carroll but the listed explanations (letters a to r) at the bottom of the game sequence adequently explained to a non-chess playing person like me how the game relates to the characters in the novel. Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant.

Beckett's play of words is something that enthralled me. Even the effective use of font like: Music, Music, Music with the font going from 10pts to 14pts seems like meaningful or his repeated use of a phrase like "A rest" then a paragraph, the another "A rest", then another paragraph, and then another "A rest." Then you as a reader will ask yourself silent in your mind: Why? What's happening?" then you will later realize. You can't help but be mesmerized by his skillful execution in writing. I have not seen anything as effective as Beckett's style.

My advice to those who want to read this: don't be too bothered about the specifics in the first half. Just continue reading because the meat is in the second half where everything will become crystal clear.

Guaranteed. To. Take. Your. Breath. Away!

[Kristi Siegel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thought I'd review this as so few have, and this is Beckett's first, best, and funniest novel.

Many people think of Beckett's characters, and they come up with something like this:

These post-apocalyptic, hollowed-out characters sitting around in the blank landscapes of Beckett's plays have been blasted to hell and back; they patiently accept whatever happens to them and seem to be waiting for some form of grace.

In contrast, Murphy (the title character of the novel) isn't going anywhere, but he couldn't be happier. Unlike so many of the characters in Beckett's plays, Murphy is bursting with life. He might be one hell of an odd duck, but he's alive and hopping. Murphy has no desire to be housebroken by society or to parcel out his days and nights as productively as a character like Robinson Crusoe. Murphy isn't alarmed by the void that sends Lucy Snowe (Villette) into a near frenzy, but rather seeks out these unstructured spaces actively.

To achieve personal bliss, Murphy sits tied--by seven scarves--and naked "in his rocking chair of undressed teak, guaranteed not to crack, warp, shrink, corrode, or creak at night." This rather bizarre arrangement works to give his body pleasure and "free his mind": "For it was not until his body was appeased that he could come alive in his mind....And life in his mind gave him pleasure, such pleasure that pleasure was not the word."

In short, Murphy isn't heading anywhere in a hurry; his lack of what we might view as motivation parodies time, a point one could gather from the book's opening line, which neatly lampoons all the novels with predictably dull first lines about weather and time, and also lets us know we aren't in Kansas anymore:

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

I've been thinking a lot about humor this summer because I'm pondering whether to teach a course on the topic. While I think Murphy is one of the funniest books in literature, it's hard to define why. Like explaining a joke, which falls apart upon examination, nothing destroys humor faster than theorizing its characteristics. And it's pretty telling that those who have tried to define humor--Aristotle, Sigmund Freud, Henri Bergson, and Immanuel Kant, to name a few--are some pretty humorless dudes. Perhaps funny people know better than to try to define funny-dom.

Prodded by Celia, his good-hearted but mercenary prostitute girlfriend, Murphy reluctantly sets out to find employment: "Murphy on the jobpath was a striking figure..." Beckett goes on at length about the qualities of the green suit Murphy sports:

"His suit was not green but aeruginous....No less than the colour the cut was striking. The jacket, a tube in its own right, descended clear of the body as far as mid-thigh, where the skirts were slightly reflexed like the mouth of a bell in mute appeal to be lifted that some found hard to resist....With regard to the material of the suit, the bold claim was advanced by the makers that it was holeproof. This was true in the sense that it was entirely non-porous. It admitted no air from the outer world, it allowed none of Murphy's own vapours to escape.

Murphy's unusual aspect is noted by some of his potential employers. He's turned down for the job of "smart boy" at Gray's Inn Road, where he's assessed harshly:"'E ain't smart...."Nor 'e ain't a boy" [and:]"'E don't look rightly human to me." But luck shines on Murphy and he gets a job as a male nurse at Magdalen Mental Mercyseat, "a hospital for the better-class mentally deranged." Unaware that Murphy is happily employed by M.M.M., most of the book's characters are busily searching for him.

Despite the rather elaborate plot--which mocks plots in general--the book is not about the story arc. Whatever absurd situations confront Murphy are ultimately beside the point. The book's focus is on Murphy and his desire to avoid the sound and fury, all the tomorrows and tomorrows and tomorrows that natter at us and make us conform to a world that fits about as well as Murphy's green suit. As Murphy explains, "I am not of the big world, I am of the little world."

* * *

And, as a added boon, some of Beckett's better phrases:

"mercantile gehenna" - the work world
"long hank of Apollonian asthenia," "schizoidal spasmophile," "seedy solipsist" - words to call your friends
"jacking their jaws apart with the gag, spurning their tongues aside with the spatula, till the last tundish of drench is absorbed" - Ticklepenny describing how he feeds the patients at Magdalene Mental Mercyseat

[Φώτης Καραμπεσίνης · Rating 5 out of 5]

1η δημοσίευση, Book Press:
https://bookpress.gr/kritikes/xeni-pe...

Ο αναγνώστης που θα σπεύσει περιχαρής να διαβάσει αυτό το βιβλίο θα χρειαστεί δύο αντικείμενα: φακό και πυξίδα – φως και οδηγίες. Όσοι ήδη γνωρίζουν το έργο του Μπέκετ τόσο από την αριστουργηματική Τριλογία του όσο κι από τα θεατρικά του έργα, δεν πιστεύω πως θα ξενιστούν με αυτές τις επιλογές. Ας περιορίσω τώρα περαιτέρω τις δυνατές ερμηνείες εξηγώντας ότι ο φακός θα χρειαστεί προφανώς για τον Μπέκετ, η πυξίδα όμως για τον Τζόυς.

Πώς συνδυάζεται το μυστήριο των δύο συγγραφέων σε βιβλίο που φέρει το όνομα του ενός; Ο «Μέρφυ» είναι το πρώτο μυθιστόρημα του Μπέκετ (αν και όχι το πρώτο έργο που εξέδωσε), ως εκ τούτου εμπεριέχει σημεία αναφοράς και επιρροές, βασικότερη εκ των οποίων υπήρξε ο φίλος και συνεργάτης του ο Τζ. Τζόυς, του οποίου υπήρξε θαυμαστής. Οι συχνές αναφορές (και η αναπόφευκτη παρουσία σημειώσεων της ικανής μεταφράστριας) στη Βίβλο, σε ζωγράφους, φιλοσόφους κ.ο.κ., μα και η παρουσία πολλών προσώπων πλην του πρωταγωνιστή, οι οποίοι συμπλέουν και εμπλέκονται στη δράση αποτελούν ελαφρά παρέκκλιση από τις σταθερές του μπεκετικού έργου.

Το κατά Τζόυς σύμπαν (αναφέρομαι στον «Οδυσσέα» κυρίως) καθορίζεται από εξωστρεφή εσωστρέφεια, τουτέστιν αδιάκοπη κίνηση σε εξωτερικούς χώρους και συνάφεια με άλλα άτομα, με ταυτόχρονη εσωτερική ζωή, η οποία αποτυπώνεται με τον ιδιαίτερο αφηγηματικό τρόπο του καλλιτέχνη. Ο αναγνώστης που περιδιαβαίνει τακτικά στο σύμπαν αυτό, χρειάζεται απαραιτήτως όργανα πλεύσης, πορείας, κατεύθυνσης που θα τον οδηγήσουν ασφαλώς στα λιμάνια του αχανούς ωκεανού του Τζόυς. Καθόλου τυχαία, ο ίδιος απέδιδε εξαιρετική σημασία στην ακρίβεια της κίνησης στους δρόμους του Δουβλίνου, χρονομετρώντας αποστάσεις και χαρτογραφώντας τη δράση. Εξ ου και η αναγκαιότητα της πυξίδας.

Στον «Μέρφυ» εντούτοις δεν απαιτείται χάρτης, μολονότι για τα μπεκετικά δεδομένα της ασφυκτικής ανυπαρξίας κίνησης (θα επανέλθω στη συνέχεια), η εξωτερική δράση αποτελεί ενδιαφέρουσα παρέκκλιση από τα ειωθότα. Ακριβώς όπως και η επαφή με ανθρώπινες φιγούρες/ χαρακτήρες που ξεπηδούν άτακτα, ολόγυρα στον ήρωα, προκαλώντας θυμηδία, χάος, όπως σχηματοποιούνται με χιουμοριστικό τρόπο κυρίως. Το στοιχείο του χιούμορ, του ελαφρού σαρκασμού, αποτελεί ένα ακόμα σημείο ταύτισης με το ύφος του Τζόυς. Διόλου τυχαία τα κεφάλαια στα οποία κυριαρχούν οι λοιπές φιγούρες (όλες σχετιζόμενες με τον Μέρφυ, είτε το επιθυμεί/ γνωρίζει είτε όχι), οι διάλογοι γίνονται παραληρηματικοί, άναρχοι, σε βαθμό οιστρηλασίας, αφήνοντας τον αναγνώστη σε κατάσταση χαύνωσης ή απορίας σχετικά με τα τεκταινόμενα. Οι άνθρωποι αυτοί συνδέονται και αποσυνδέονται, κινούνται και στέκουν, εμφανίζουν ιδιότητες εξωανθρώπινες και διαχέονται αφηγηματικά στις σελίδες του βιβλίου, πλην όμως στοργικά και περιπαικτικά.

Αρκετά όμως με τις επιρροές από Τζόυς. Τοποθετούμε την πυξίδα στην τσέπη. Ήρθε η ώρα να χρησιμοποιήσουμε το άλλο αντικείμενο, τον φακό, για να εισέλθουμε στο «βασίλειο» του Μπέκετ. Η πρώτη μας επαφή, ήδη από το εναρκτήριο κεφάλαιο, οδηγεί σε σκοτεινό δωμάτιο, σε χώρο που δεν τον φωτίζει ο ήλιος (αεί ψευδόμενος) - κι αν υπάρχουν χαραμάδες, δεν αποκαλύπτουν τίποτα παραπάνω. Σε αυτό τον χώρο ο αναγνώστης εισέρχεται ακροπατώντας, καθότι δεν προσφέρεται διακόπτης που θα πλημμυρίσει με φως το δωμάτιο, αποκαλύπτοντας το μυστήριο, ανακουφίζοντας την αίσθηση μειονεξίας και ανασφάλειας ως συνακόλουθο της περιορισμένης οπτικής. Η οπτική οφείλει, επιβάλλεται, να είναι περιορισμένη στον χώρο του Μέρφυ, καθότι το μάτι είναι βλάσφημο, το μάτι είναι αδηφάγο, θέλει να καταπιεί τα πάντα εν ριπή, να εγκολπωθεί το όλον εντός του. Μα η τέχνη δεν ήταν ποτέ η ευκολία της άπλετης, αμετροεπούς προοπτικής. Η τέχνη είναι οι ελάχιστες αχτίδες φωτός που πέφτουν υπό γωνία στα αντικείμενα. Μα και οι σκιές – περισσότερο οι σκιές κι όσα κρύβουν μέσα τους, όσα υπόρρητα υπονοούν, όλα εκείνα που υποκαθίστανται από τη φαντασία, από την ενόραση.

Εκεί θα πρέπει να ρίξει το ασθενικό φως του φακού του ο αναγνώστης, γιατί έτσι το θέλησε ο συγγραφέας, περιφερόμενος ο ίδιος στις σκιές των σελίδων. Κι εκεί θα δει, ήδη από το πρώτο κεφάλαιο, μια πολυθρόνα. Κι επάνω στην πολυθρόνα δεμένο γυμνό τον ήρωα, με ιμάντες στα χέρια και τα πόδια, να κινείται νωχελικά εμπρός πίσω, σε κατάσταση ατονίας, αποκλεισμένος σε έναν κόσμο ταυτόχρονα οικείο και απελπιστικά απόμακρο από τον δικό μας.
Όχι, τίποτα ηρωικό δεν διαθέτει ετούτος ο κακορίζικος ανθρωπάκος. Δεν είναι ο Προμηθέας που θυσιάζεται προκειμένου να φέρει γνώση, ένα τραγικό πρόσωπο σε μάταιο αγώνα ενάντια στην εξουσία των Θεών, ένας επαναστατημένος άνθρωπος που οικτίρει την κατάστασή του. Τουναντίον, έχει εκούσια επιλέξει το μαρτύριο, διότι όπως κατανοούμε σταδιακά, το απολαμβάνει, βιώνει νωχελικά την αισθητηριακή απουσία, παραδομένος σε αυτήν.

Ο Μέρφυ βιώνει το υπαρξιακό δράμα στον εσωτερικό του κόσμο, δέσμιος κυριολεκτικά και μεταφορικά των παθών του, του πρωτογενούς τρόμου, ήτοι τού να είναι ανθρώπινο ον σε έναν ακατάληπτο, αναίτιο και αδιάφορο κόσμο. Έναν κόσμο που περιστρέφεται γύρω του με αδιανόητη ταχύτητα, υποκείμενος στους δικούς του σκοπούς, που είναι παντελώς ανοίκειοι με του Μέρφυ. Κι όσο πιο ανεξέλεγκτα περιστρέφεται ο κόσμος τόσο πιο σταθερά δεμένος παραμένει ο πρωταγωνιστής στην πολυθρόνα του, θαρρείς σε μια απέλπιδα προσπάθεια να σταματήσει την κίνηση του έξω, ενισχύοντας αποκλειστικά την εσωτερική του κίνηση που παραμένει πανίσχυρη, ορατή στον εξωτερικό παρατηρητή (εμάς) αποκλειστικά από την αέναη κίνηση των μελών του. Ο συγγραφέας αναφέρει ρητά ότι μόνο εκεί ένιωθε ελεύθερος, μόνο στην εσωτερική του ζωή έβρισκε καταφύγιο από όλα όσα βρίσκονται εκτός – του εαυτού του και κατ’ επέκταση του δωματίου του.

Σε ετούτο το δωμάτιο κάνουμε την πρώτη μας γνωριμία με τον Μέρφυ, εκεί έρχεται και τον βρίσκει ο κόσμος με τη μορφή μιας γυναίκας (ονόματι Σήλια), ξετυλίγοντας την ιστορία. Κρατώντας στο χέρι μας τον φακό (και κάποιες φορές και την πυξίδα για όσα συμβαίνουν εκτός), συνεχίζουμε να ανιχνεύουμε χώρους και να ακολουθούμε τα βήματά του. Η ανάγκη επιβίωσης, η αδιάπτωτη σύγκρουση της βούλησης με την αναγκαιότητα υπό τη μορφή συμμόρφωσης με το υπάρχον, την αναζήτηση επαγγέλματος, λειτουργούν ως κίνητρα κίνησης προς τα έξω, μια βίαιη καισαρική τομή ώστε ο Μέρφυ να διαβεί τον Ρουβίκωνα, την πόρτα του δωματίου που οδηγεί στον έξω κόσμο.

Με το πέρας κάποιων σελίδων τον συναντούμε εκ νέου εργαζόμενο στο «Μέγαρο Μεταμέλειας της Μωρίας η Μαγδαληνή», όπου προσλ��μβάνεται ως βοηθός (υπό την εποπτεία των υπευθύνων…Μπιμ και Μπομ). Το σκοτεινό δωμάτιο-μήτρα δίνει τη θέση του στο ψυχιατρείο, όπου ο μονήρης πρωταγωνιστής νιώθει οικεία, καθότι ο εγκλεισμός «δευτέρα φύσις». Με τη βασική διαφορά ότι σε αυτό το περιορισμένο περιβάλλον διαθέτει εκλεκτή παρέα: τους τρόφιμους, με τους οποίους χτίζει σχέση αλληλεξάρτησης, ως ο πλέον ικανός στον χειρισμό της καθημερινότητάς τους. Ο ίδιος, απέχοντας ελάχιστα από τον εγκλεισμό του, βιώνει τα πάθη τους, μοιράζεται το όραμα της παράνοιάς τους, τον βαθμό ελευθερίας που προσφέρει, απορρίπτοντας την άνευρη λογική του υπάρχοντος. Ετούτος ο μικρόκοσμος φαντάζει ουτοπικός, έχοντας εξοβελίσει τον μακρόκοσμο, το ευρύτερο πλαίσιο της παραγωγικής, κοινωνικής ύπαρξης με τους δεσμούς, τις δεσμεύσεις και τις προδιαγραφές της. Και ξανά, σύμφωνα με την αδιάλλακτη μπεκετική οπτική, το εντός αντιπαρατίθεται στο εκτός.

Διόλου τυχαία (ξεκάθαρος εδώ ο συμβολισμός) ο Μέρφυ αναλαμβάνει τη φροντίδα του σχιζοφρενούς κυρίου Ένδον, στον οποίον επανέρχεται κάνοντας ατέρμονους γύρους στον λαβύρινθο του ιδρύματος, εν μέσω τροφίμων και ανθρωποφυλάκων. Η δυναμική σχέση των δύο ανδρών βασίζεται σε ένα παιχνίδι (αγαπημένο του Μπέκετ), το σκάκι. Αυτή και η μοναδική μορφή επικοινωνίας τους - μάλιστα όχι ενώπιος ενωπίω. Και η επαφή αυτή είναι μονοδιάστατη, διόλου αμοιβαία «μια συναρπαστική εκδοχή αφηγηματικής αντιφώνησης» (κατά Φ. Ροθ).

Ο Ένδον ενδιαφέρεται αποκλειστικά για το σκάκι, αδιαφορώντας πλήρως για τον Μέρφυ, ο οποίος αναζητά στον Ένδον…τον εαυτό του. Καρφώνει με ένταση το βλέμμα του στο άδειο από έκφραση πρόσωπο του συνομιλητή του, βλέμμα διερευνητικό, διεισδυτικό, απεγνωσμένο. Ο αναγνώστης την ίδια ώρα βιώνει την ασφυκτική κατάσταση, ένα σφίξιμο στο κεφάλι, καθώς η επιθυμητή ένωση, η μονομερής αυτή προσέγγιση αποτυγχάνει, με αποτέλεσμα ο κύριος Ένδον αναπόφευκτα να αποσυρθεί παντελώς από την…παρτίδα. Το τι απομένει, το ξεκαθαρίζει ο Μπέκετ: «Ο κύριος Μέρφυ είναι μια κουκίδα στο αθέατο του κυρίου Ένδον». Ο πρωταγωνιστής παραμένει αποκομμένος στο υπαρξιακό του κενό, αθέατος, λησμονημένος, ουδέποτε παρών.

Ο Μέρφυ αποχωρεί από το ψυχιατρείο έχοντας απωλέσει και την έσχατη ελπίδα (υπάρχει κάτι τέτοιο στον Μπέκετ;) συμμετοχής/ ζεύξης, για να επιστρέψει στη σοφίτα του, στην οποία διαμένει αφότου εκδιώχθηκε από το πρωταρχικό δωμάτιο, τη μήτρα. Είναι ο τρίτος και τελευταίος σταθμός (δωμάτιο-κλινική-σοφίτα) μιας βραχείας διαδρομής από το ποτέ στο πουθενά. Εκεί βρίσκεται η πολυθρόνα του, εκεί και η θερμαντική του σόμπα που δουλεύει με γκάζι (μια περίτεχνη κατασκευή, την οποία του προμήθευσε και συνέδεσε ο φίλος του). Απονεκρωμένος συναισθηματικά, ένα άδειο κέλυφος, μιας και η ύπαρξή του (το ένδον του) απέμεινε στο ίδρυμα, θα ξεφορτωθεί και το σαρκίο του, ανάβοντας ένα κερί. Το φως εισέρχεται τροπαιούχο στον εσωτερικό σκοτεινό χώρο, με τη μορφή της φλόγας που φωτίζει, κατακαίοντας. Ο Μέρφυ αποχωρεί «λάμπων ως φλοξ πυρός» από τη σκηνή.

Απομένει στον παρδαλό θίασο των αγαπημένων, των φίλων, των γνωστών να τελέσουν τα της κηδείας. Το όλο γκροτέσκο σκηνικό, όπως περιγράφεται στα τελευταία κεφάλαια, αποδίδει το τίποτα στο τίποτα. Δεν θα περιμέναμε βέβαια κάποιου είδους απόδοση τιμών, δεκάρικων περί του μεγαλείου του εκλιπόντος και τα συναφή. Επιλέγεται η καύση του ήδη απανθρακωμένου σώματος, με την τέφρα να τοποθετείται σε πακέτο (βάρος: 2 κιλά). Άνδρας ονόματι Κούπερ αναλαμβάνει να τη μεταφέρει και αφού προς στιγμήν μπαίνει στον πειρασμό να την ξεφορτωθεί σε κάδο σκουπιδιών, καταλήγει σε παρακείμενη pub.
Η κατανάλωση αλκοόλ οδηγεί σε σύρραξη με άλλους θαμώνες και ο οργίλος άνδρας εκσφενδονίζει το πακέτο στοχεύοντας τον αντίπαλο. Η κατάσταση εκτρέπεται, και το περιεχόμενο καταλήγει στο πάτωμα της pub όπου το πρωί σκουπίζεται και πετάγεται μαζί με τα «γυαλιά, τα σπίρτα, τις ροχάλες, τα ξερατά». Τούτη η κατάληξη προφανώς δεν προκαλεί ουδεμία απορία, εκνευρισμό ή σύγχυση στον αναγνώστη, ίσως μόνο ελαφρά θυμηδία. Η κωμωδία της ύπαρξης με ήρωα τον αποσυνάγωγο Μέρφυ προϋποθέτει αντίστοιχα αντιηρωικό τέλος.

Απομένει το καταληκτικό κεφάλαιο, όπου η πρώην αγαπημένη του εκλιπόντος, η Σήλια, μεταφέρει έναν κύριο Κέλλυ με την αναπηρική του πολυθρόνα στο πάρκο, με σκοπό να πετάξουν χαρταετό - ο άνδρας παραληρεί σπασμωδικά, η κοπέλα συναινεί, παρακολουθεί, με τη σκέψη της να περιδιαβαίνει αλλού. Τα πρόσωπά τους διαλύονται σιγά σιγά, το σούρουπο πέφτει, οι φύλακες φωνάζουν «κλείνουμε, κλείνουμε!». Το παράταιρο ζευγάρι αποχωρεί, με τον άνδρα να σωριάζεται στο χώμα και να επανατοποθετείται στην αναπηρική πολυθρόνα, την κοπέλα να επιστρέφει σύννους στο σπίτι και τον χαρταετό να χάνεται στον βραδινό ουρανό.
Κλείνουμε…

https://fotiskblog.home.blog/2021/03/...

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having started and stopped this novel for years and yonks, professing a love for Beckett’s trilogy and later prose works in the interim, I was more disposed to appreciating this first novel at the nineteenth attempt of reading. To my annoyance, the lights were not switched on to the same alleluia choir as with Molloy or Malone Dies—the wit, the absurd contortions of prose logic, the frequent deployment of recondite words and terms, the same grimly hilarious worldview of the plays—all this was registered. Lacking was the sublime music of later Beckett, the symphonies of blissful density present in the trilogy. I found a mashup of the wilful obscurity of the early stories, the first flourishings of Beckettian dialogue, and the earliest rumblings of the later prose rhythms, not yet distilled into something over which I might rant and rave. In other words, make mine a Molloy or a Malone, you can keep your Murphy.

[To-The-Point Reviews · Rating 2 out of 5]

Greatest opening line of any novel... ever.

Followed by the world's worst novel.

[Antonomasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

[4.5] Nine years ago, I was in love with someone whose favourite book was Murphy; this copy was from a second hand bookshop en route between our flats. (He was one of those people who never lends anything, and in any case I wouldn't have been able to read and return it in good time, as this time that year I was embarking on months of convalescence following a very severe bout of flu.) It was never my intention to leave it quite this long, but - as per an old comment - whenever I picked it up, I found the first couple of pages too depressing.

Honestly, what was I reading? Must've made some skewed assumptions, for different stuff was happening on the paper this time. And Beckett is not the writer I thought he was, a minimalist miserablist - my only previous experience being a not-very-careful teenage reading of Waiting For Godot whilst standing in a library, it being too short to waste a loan on. I was reminded of none so much as Pynchon: the black humour, the ridiculousness, the near-farcical caper, the breadth of vocabulary... this required even more frequent looking-up than Pynchon as Beckett's very fond of obscure uses of fairly common words, as well as his rare archaisms and classicisms (Joycean to those who've read him more recently, no doubt). A spideysense of more to a sentence often proved right: consulting the barely adequate ereader dictionary, and looking through definitions, would reveal an unusual or more precise meaning, or perhaps that an etymological root had been engaged in furtive wordplay with something else nearby. Impressed, I was alright. (Why can we still not get the Shorter Oxford, never mind the full thing, as an optional booster for these gadgets? c.35% of the terms I tried to look up whilst reading Murphy were not in the Concise as found on Kindle.)

Why (2) isn't Murphy found on some of those lists of Great London Novels? Not that I've done a comprehensive survey as research for this post, mind. Murphy's questionable progression from the 1930s boardinghouses of SW10 and then - with paramour Celia - N7, and on to work in one of those outer-North-London psychiatric monstrosities as later chronicled by Iain Sinclair and Will Self ... not to mention the wanderings of so many named streets and tubes and markets, and the Mary Poppins-in-negative interludes of kite flying in Hyde Park - this is what The London Novel is made of, surely. There are chapters set in Ireland too, which in the eyes of some may disqualify it, but Murphy's atmosphere of grubby, fray-cuffed, straitened, eccentric London bedsitland is exquisitely done if you have affection for that setting. Description of the way light comes through the windows of a dingy flat over a day's course may not be adjectivally conventional description, yet - or so - it pins it utterly.

I long had a bad habit, a faulty reflex, almost, of looking for a person in their favourite books and films (more so when it was someone I fancied, a elusive sprite, than a long-standing close friend who could simply be asked). This wouldn't always work, I realised as I got older. Not everyone's favourite things are favourites because of a deep identification. And even where someone does identify, it won't be with every aspect of a work or character - so a person who doesn't know them well could misunderstand and missassume all over the shop. Perhaps you actually won't see how them something is until you've known them a good while. (Seven years it was, mostly the long-distance friendship of the afterwards, and it was me who stopped it - there was a veiled reference in my post about The Ice Palace.) And I can't remember when this strange wish of finding someone in a book was so fully rewarded; a remarkable correlation of traits between unusual people, one real, one made up by a very clever Irish bloke in the 1930s. It would be indecent to write it all up in public, but I consider it incumbent on me to spare the (theoretical??) embarrassment of someone unknown to you by clarifying that the similarities to Murphy don't include penchants for self-bondage or astrology. Curiously or not, there are a handful of other things that feel more *me* than *him*; some always were, some changed - and as for those shared, I now understand Murphy's love of introspection more than I would have nearly a decade ago.

The character of Murphy is, of course, ultimately mocked here (his Cartesian dualism is as much nonsense as that theory always is) and the book's peculiar personal history may give me more affection for it and all its characters than might otherwise make sense. (Given its absurdist intellectualism, I can understand those who don't find it very human.)

This is very close to 5 stars - just some scenes of grimness mean I hold back on that last little bit - as the confluence of extreme cleverness and silliness and darkness and resonance is very much a winner. And if I didn't have an even more absurd number of other books already, I'd be wanting some more Beckett, please, with a tentative view to joining Fans of.

[Marchpane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Murphy, Samuel Beckett’s first novel is clever, oh so clever, but something about its tone didn’t sit right with me. It’s a sort of a courtship comedy, with lots of elevated wordiness and absurd goings-on that should be fun but just left me cold. The characters are never seen clearly and that might be what deflates the comic effect… to me it came across as more mean-spirited than wry.

When picked apart, it’s full of great lines, like the opener:
“The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.”

Or this, which neatly sums up the experience of reading the book:
“She felt, as she felt so often with Murphy, spattered with words that went dead as soon as they sounded; each word obliterated, before it had time to make sense, by the word that came next; so that in the end she did not know what had been said. It was like difficult music heard for the first time.”

A novel that is more enjoyable in the form of excerpted quotations than in its entirety. Recommended for misanthropes and teachers looking for new spelling bee words.

[Sean Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Murphy is a strange, sad, melancholic and sometimes funny novel on madness, boredom, misunderstanding and isolation. Murphy, our main character and isolated 'solipsist', stuck in a void, jobless and work-shy, decides to withdraw from life away from his prostitute fiance. What follows is Beckett's bleak and absurd humour on everyday life, an outlook shared by his alter ego on paper, Murphy, and his ambitious wordplay. When writers treat language as if it were gold, that's when a work of literature becomes something special. Murphy is certainly one of those. Now, where's the Trilogy...?

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read this one twice, and am gearing up for another it's such a warm hug. I was going back through it recently looking for something and found a list I made of words looked up while reading it. Here it is, in case anyone else would find this helpful.
Beckett’s Murphy words (italics notes from 4 years later)

‘rutting cur’s rejectementa’:
rutting - furrow, groove, a fixed or established mode of procedure or course of life, usually dull or unpromising
cur – worthless coward,
rejectamenta – worthless things
reversioner - one that has or is entitled to a reversion; broadly : someone having a vested right to a future estate
softsoap (verb) – to cajole, flatter (to use soft soap in washing)
pensum - ‘improved out’ danish or norwegian for syllabus
tuffets everted - A clump or tuft of grass; A low seat, such as a stool.
the moon at perigree - point nearest to earth in a body orbiting it
a fake jossy – ??
‘tipstaff with warrant to distain’
tipstaff – an attendant or crier in a court of law; a staff tipped with metal, formerly carried as a badge of office, as by a constable.
distain – sully, stain, discolor
bumbailiff- I thought this was just a portmanteau of bumbling and bailiff but it turns out: server of writs, maker of arrests, etc., 1601, from bum "arse," because he was always felt to be close behind.
neap – of a tide
naevus – birthmark
suspiration – breathing, sighing
dun - to make repeated and insistent demands upon, esp. for the payment of a debt; a person, esp. a creditor, who duns another; a demand for payment, esp. a written one.
thema coeli – theme
whinge – whine
heard bilge- the widest circumference or belly of a cask.; to bulge or swell out
Bollitoes (should be Ballitoes)- a brand of silk stockings secured with suspenders to corset or belt
cuchilion – (Cuchulain alt.) A hero of ancient Ulster who single-handedly defended it against the rest of Ireland; cuchillo 2nd alt. - knife
the mercantile gehenna - the valley of Hinnom, near Jerusalem, where propitiatory sacrifices were made to Moloch. II Kings 23:10; any place of extreme suffering, hell
diastolesystole - in prosody, systole is the shortening of a syllable that is by pronunciation or by position long. Systole is most often used to adjust the rhythm of a line to achieve metrical regularity. The word is from the Greek systole, meaning, literally, “contraction.” Diastole, the opposite of systole, is the lengthening of a short quantity or syllable for metric irregularity.
not green but aeruginous – bluish green, copper
parthian – designating a glance/ remark delivered by a person departing (parting shot)
‘serenade, nocturne, albada’ – spanish for nocturne serenade
synecdoche - A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole (as hand for sailor), the whole for a part (as the law for police officer), the specific for the general (as cutthroat for assassin), the general for the specific (as thief for pickpocket), or the material for the thing made from it (as steel for sword).
lee – protective shelter; region toward which the wind blows
cozeners, cozened – to cozen is to cheat, deceive or trick (amazing that the name of my dad’s old law firm was cozen and o’conner- “to cheat and con”- great!
Cony-catching – same thing as cozen- cheat deceive trick
tumbril - one of the carts used during the French Revolution to convey victims to the guillotine; a farmer's cart, esp. one for hauling manure, that can be tilted to discharge its load.
child’s halma - long jump with weight in hands (ancient greece) or some sor tof old board game
gambadoes, worked up
‘in this kip’ - the hide of a young or small beas; also a rooming house or place to sleep
‘the plaisir de rompre: for Murphy the rationale of social contracts’ french for putting an end to
triorchous – three testicled
in doss, dossed – place to sleep; to sleep in a convenient place
curate - cleric
‘derogating from the general to the particular’ – he’s using the archaic definition - to take away (a part) so as to impair the whole, which I still don’t understand, but the usual definition is to detract from authority
will not parley – a discussion; to talk
wantum - ??
from the hegira – flight to escape danger
amnion - A thin, tough, membranous sac that encloses the embryo
her ruelle – french for alley
clumsy genustuprations – ??, based on context I’d say some sort of sexual advance
lost tundish of drench - funnel
dipso - drunk
prosodoturfy – based on context and roots, I’d guess ‘native habits of speaking/ writing’
senechalesque figure of 5 lb.s - ??
induration to abuse – pathological hardening
syzygy - an alignment of three celestial objects, as the sun, the earth, and either the moon or a planet; any two related things, either alike or opposite
permangate - ??, permanganate is a chemical compound of potassium and some other shit
nosonomy – taxonomoy of diseases
condole – to express sympathy
spado – impotent, castrated person
‘touching little argonautic maieutic saws’ - pertaining to the method used by Socrates of eliciting knowledge in the mind of a person by interrogation and insistence on close and logical reasoning.
hypermetropic - abnormal ability to focus of distant objects
pellucid - clear in meaning
quoits - a game in which rings of rope or flattened metal are thrown at an upright peg, the object being to encircle it or come as close to it as possible.
irrefragable - not to be disputed or contested.
scarlet ampelopsis - a climbing, woody vine or shrub having small greenish flowers and inedible berries.
consuum - ??
lanugo - a coat of delicate, downy hairs, esp. that with which the human fetus or a newborn infant is covered.
afflatulence – affable farts
protasis - The dependent clause of a conditional sentence; a stretching towards
Lassata – seems like a random proper noun
canaille – riffraff; the masses
obole – medieval coin
soughing - A soft murmuring or rustling sound
involute – intricate, complex, curled, curved
abolla - a woolen cloak worn by men in ancient Rome.
coadjutor – assistant to an ecclesiastic type
clave - one of a pair of wooden sticks or blocks that are held one in each hand and are struck together to accompany music and dancing. I don’t think this is how he was using it. I think he used it as an archaic form of ‘cleave.’
fillip - anything that tends to rouse, excite, or revive; a stimulus
immured – to imprison
gyves – shackles for the legs
postmonitions – a warning after the fact
sheriffalty – jurisdiction of a sheriff
‘cyanosis of youth’ - A bluish discoloration of the skin and mucous membranes resulting from inadequate oxygenation of the blood
fug – stale air
aposiopoesis - a sudden breaking off in the midst of a sentence, as if from inability or unwillingness to proceed
plutolaters - ??
analphabet – person who can’t read or write
crispated - rough
apnoen - ??
preterist - ??
erebus - The dark region of the underworld through which the dead must pass before they reach Hades.
‘low battuta of anger’ – a beat, measure
‘vulpine endowments’ – cunning, crafty
acathisia - a condition characterized by uncontrollable motor restlessness
‘palatial tantalus’ - a stand or rack containing visible decanters, esp. of wines or liquors, secured by a lock
fusee - a spirally grooved spindle in a clock that counteracts the diminishing power of the uncoiling mainspring; a colored flare used as a warning signal by trucks and trains; a friction match with a large head that will stay alight in the wind; any igniter that is used to initiate the burning of a propellant
contumely - insulting display of contempt in words or actions
‘instinct was a menstrum’ - A solvent, especially one used in extracting compounds from plant and animal tissues and preparing drugs
eleutheromania – a mania for freedom
depilatories – agents capable of removing hair
‘vermigrade wave of light’ – worm-shaped
‘turn to civet’ - a yellowish, unctuous substance with a strong musklike odor, obtained from a pouch in the genital region of civets and used in perfumery.
niobaloo – p. 131 of “Murphy's Bed: A Study of Real Sources and Sur-Real Associations in Samuel Beckett’s First Novel” by Sighle Kennedy is the best resource if you really want to know what he’s doing with this word
clonic – relating to convulsion characterized by alternating contractions and relaxations
‘oakum of her history’ - loose fibers

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

November 2024 reread—

I defer to boundless songwriting genius Kurt Heasley and his wondrous Lilys:

“Will My Lord Be Gardening?”

Shakin’
Get the leaf off
Caterpillar moths
With no time
for questions

Shake me,
fellow blossom
The fall is awesome
Where is mine? Please answer

Still I think the best of you
Even your worst will do
Even when you do more than you should
I think the best of you
Even your worst will do
I’m glad we made it happen
when we woke up from the trance
I’m with you

The easy world
I’m thinking of
I’d take it all
Will my Lord be gardening?
My Lord will be gardening

Peek in
Can you show up and not start?
You can’t walk through Hunting Park
without finding the dark

Shake it, girl,
You’re not losing anything
but your fresh start
You can’t come to Hunting Park
without getting married
to what will remain in the dark

Still I think the best of you
Even your worst will do
Even when you do more than you should
I think the best of you
Even your worst will do
I’m glad we made it happen

We did what was possible
Never did we stand a chance
We did what was possible

(Yes. I actually typed that shit out on my phone.)

What strikes me most this time around is the tragedy of Celia. I think that betrays where my head is these days, more than 7-years after last rereading this.

Fuck me, was I blind all these years. There’s your true goddamn tragic character. St. Celia of the Round Pond.

“‘And yesterday?’ said Mr. Kelly.
‘A kid and a drunk,’ said Celia.”

Live and learn or don’t, I guess.

(Cooper and the bowler is a gladdening of light in so much darkness)

And now I may as well reread the rest of Sam’s novels. One only has so long, and no one knows when that hook is coming from stage left.


_________________

If Murphy, his chair, and the jury-rigged gas-jet doesn't tear at the fibrous fuzz of your constitution, I don't want to know you as a human being. Pretty simple, really.

[Makis Dionis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Εκδόσεις Δωρικός, 1970.
Μετά το Νόμπελ λογοτεχνίας 1969 η πρώτη νουβέλα του Μπέκετ (1938) μεταφράζεται στα ελληνικά.
Με έκδηλη την επιρροή του δασκάλου Joyce, ο Μπέκετ ξεδιπλώνει το φλέγμα του και το απαράμιλλο ύφος του μέσα από τους καθόλα κανονικούς αλλά καθόλου τυχαίους χαρακτήρες του
Επίκεντρο, η καλτ φυσιογνωμία του αναρχικού κ στα όρια της παραφροσύνης , Murphy, που αναγνωρίζει μια ματαιότητα στο ζειν. Γοητευτικοτατη δε για τους γύρω του, ακόμα και εν τη απουσία του.

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name · Rating 2 out of 5]

Can someone explain to me please WHY DOES BECKETT PUT SHIT IN EVERYTHING HE WRITES? If I remember correctly from my university classes this book fixation is a symptom of something. I really don’t want to get up and look for my DSM. But it’s just poop, poop, poop.
It’s like Neruda writing poems with fish in them except not as sickening.

[Chris Via]

This is included in my video on Beckett's life and work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teB1U...

[Yunusemre Yener · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dili ve anlatım tekniği itibarı ile zorlayıcı bir kitaptı. Metinde yer yer Yunan, Roma, İncil gibi Batı edebiyatının klasik referanslarının yanında psikolojik, müzikal, edebi vs. atıflar da var. Bunları duraksamadan okuyabilmek, hatta bazısını anlayabilmek için dahi geniş bir entelektüel birikim veya bir Beckett sözlüğü (var böyle bir şey) gerekiyor. Eh, bende ikisi de yok. O açıdan zorladı. Ancak her ince detaya takılmadan “bu adam ne anlatmak istiyor”a odaklanmak bu kitabı okumak için geçerli bir yöntem olabilir. Ben de öyle yaptım.
Beckett bir çok isim yanında Descartes ile de ilgilenmiş. Murphy’de de bunu yoğun biçimde görüyoruz. Descartes bilginin kaynağı olarak usu (akıl) merkez alan (rasyonel) bir bilgi felsefesini benimsemişti. Meşhur “cogito ergo sum” lafını yüzeyselce şöyle özetleyebiliriz:
“Algıladığım hiç bir şeyin gerçekliğinden/doğruluğundan emin olamam, dış dünyadan gelen her türlü bilgiye şüphe ile yaklaşırım. Emin olduğum tek şey şüphem/ düşünmemdir. Öyleyse -en azından- var olduğumu söyleyebilirim. ” Matematiksel kanunlar gibi, bu bilgi de doğruluğu kesin, üzerine başka katlar çıkabileceğimiz bir zemin sağlar bize. Us yoluyla kavradığımız başka bilgilere bu noktadan ulaşabiliriz. Deneyimlerden elde edilen (ampirik) bilgi ise onu algılama aygıtlarımla, çevresel şartlarla sınırlıdır ve/veya yanıltıcıdır. Bilginin asıl kaynağı ustur fakat beden de dış dünya ile sürekli temas halindedir - beden dünyanın etkisindedir. Bu ikilik ya da dualite Descartes ve onun izinden gidenler tarfından üstesinden gelinmeye çalışılan bir sorun olarak var olagelmiş. Beckett daha ilk cümleden bu ikiliği vurgulayarak başlıyor : “Hep aynı dünyanın üzerinde ışıldıyordu güneş, başka seçeneği yoktu çünkü” Güneş her gün hesaplanan yerden doğar, yükselir ve hesaplanan yerden batar. Deterministiktir. Bu yüzden gerçek özgürlüğü burada aramak boşunadır. Murphy de, bu güneşin ışınlarından korunmaya çalışırken çıkıyor karşımıza. Roman da us/beden, özne/nesne ikilikleri paralelinde bir iç roman/ dış roman gibi ilerliyor. Birinde Murphy’nin usa dönme veya bu ruha halinden çıkma çabaları, diğerinde ise onun peşindeki “kuklaların”, ilişki yumağı ve etraflarında gelişen olaylar örgüsü var.
Kitabın başındaki mevcut durumu bozan etmen Celia’nın Murphy’yi iş bulmaya zorlaması oluyor.
Murphy bu “dış işleri” bir yıldız falcısından aldığı bilgiler doğrultusunda yapıyor. Spinozacı bir yoruma göre yukarıda bahsedilen us/beden ikilisi aslında aynı şeyin, tanrının farklı tezahürleridir. (Murhpy’e göre) Yıldız hareketleri de buna dahildir ve akıl harici yegane güvenilir bilginin kaynağıdır. Benim aklıma daha fazla yatan ikinci bir yoruma göre ise Murhpy burada “Us / beden ikiliğinin üstesinden gelinemez, birbiriyle bağdaştırılamaz ve aralarında ilişki kurulamaz” yaklaşımında. Bu da, kitapta da daha sonradan ikinci yorumu güçlendirir şeklide adı geçen Geulincx adında bir filozofun yaklaşımıymış.
Murphy, ironik bir şekilde bu dünyevi bilginin kendisini sürüklemesi ile (Ticklepenny ile tanışma, Magdalen enstitüsü) usa dönme motivasyonunu tekrar kazanıyor. Hastalar Murphy’de bir zamanlar oldukları şeyi, Murphy de hastalarda dönüşeceği şeyi görüyor. Enstitü’de tanıştığı Endon (yunanca “içinde,kendinde” demekmiş bu da) Murphy’nin tasarımının tamamlanmış hali gibi. Tamamen usunda yaşayan, satrançta karşı tarafın hamlesinden bağımsız ve kazanma amacı gütmeden oynayan Endon’da erişmek istediğini görüyor Murphy. Onu taklit etmeye çalışıyor ancak açmazı bilinçli bir şekilde bilinç dışına, aklını kullanarak akıl dışına çıkmaya çalışması oluyor. Kaza veya intihar, sonunda Murphy’nin ulaştığı yer usu ya da “üçüncü bölge” yerine hiçlik oluyor.
Ana damar böyle. Bu tema döne döne işlendiğiniden ıskalaması zor. Geri kalanı kitap yazarın Joyce tilmizliği dönemine rastladığından mıdır nedir, kafa yormak gerektirebilir. Çeviri de bu muammalı dile katkıda bulunuyor bir nebze. Örneğin çevirmen “Figure and ground” gibi, “parallel thirds” gibi terminolojik denebilecek bir ifadeleri kendince yorumlayarak ve dipnot düşmeden çevirmiş. Zaten Beckett’in laf oyunlarıyla karışan kafayı bunlar daha da karıştırıyor. Okunurluğu azaltan şeyler.

[Joshua Gonsalves · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Bridge From Modernism to Postmodernism

"'This is all rather irregular,' said Dr. Killiecrankie.

'Life is all rather irregular,' said Neary"

I have picked up and put down this novel a few times before, never being able to get through it all in one continuous reading, despite my enjoyment of it and its bizarre prose, absurd comedy, and Worstword Ho! on. But now I have read it all, in full. Tho I will admit to having taken a lengthy break in the middle of my misadventure, I still stand beside the fact of my having got through the entirety of this spectacle of absurdity and tragedy and comedy and plenty other words ending in y.

I found this work, in particular, to be pretty difficult, mainly in its earlier sections when Beckett seemed to be bombarding me with his vast vocabulary and literary inventiveness, playfully tossing into the text enough obscure words to make a professor profess to having ejaculated in his flooding trousers because o! how witty and erudite this Beckett chap comes across! Beckett even makes up plenty of terms, terms whose origins are not easily recognizable to begin with, and are often cryptic to an irritating point. But, his prose style is not without its heavy advantages, as this novel simply stuns on a page by page basis with its wit and wonder...and, while it was tough to read at first (and even perhaps here and there but a trifle bothersome and easy prey to accusations of pretention), as the story went on, I fell in love with everything about the text. Every sentence was a treasure to behold, the limits of fiction were stretched into the status of that which is gleefully and excitingly unlimited, and the comedy was on par with some of Beckett's most witty-but not exactly broadly comical-works, and paired itself brilliantly well with the later instances of heavy tragedy that made my bones shake and tremble as I turned the last pages of this masterpiece with reluctant acceptance that this journey was indeed over.

[Graham P · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant little novel that explodes majestic. One might call it a parody of manners, or a scatter-brained farce of love and desire. It's all that and much more. My first foray into Beckett, and I must admit that I wasn't deterred by his obtuse, madcap and heartbreaking observations about the struggles of day-to-day life. His prose reads like a lonely man's guide to madness where epiphanies pass like gas, and boredom develops its owns manic design. While he writes at angles (and around corners), there is lots of heart behind the lively prose. Most of the characters are wildly off-center, but in the end, you really feel for them. As the main player, Murphy is a clusterfuck of idleness, contradiction, and callousness -- he mistreats women, believes in all things insubstantial - but his transformation from layabout to caretaker (in an asylum, no less) is captivating. The supporting cast is just as entertaining - Cooper, the drunk - Miss Couninan, the embodiment of the lustful Irish - Celia, the sound and caring lover of Murhpy - Ticklepenny, the failed, miserable poet - Miss Corridge, the miserly landlady with a peculiar body odor ('when body odor and volubility meet, then there is no remedy'). These characters give life to a book that at its core is about failure - no matter how hard one tries, the end is absurd, the climax not ascending but leveling off in a flatline tremor. The ending of the book typifies this, consisting of a soaring cruel joke where slapstick turns heartbreaking in one sentence. Beckett throws so much in 170 pages that it's impossible to even provide a synopsis. A high watermark of literature - playful and tragic, profane and manic.

Selections from MURPHY:

'He had the curious hunted walk, like that of a destitute diabetic in a strange city.'

'He thought of the four caged owls in Battersea Park whose joys and sorrows did not begin till dusk.'

'Here he was not free, but a mote in the dark of absolute freedom.'

'Enter Cooper. Like a mollusc torn from its rock Wylie came away.'

'At the corner he paused to admire the pub, superior to any he had ever seen. Suddenly a man was standing in the porch, radiant in his shirt-sleeves and an apron of fine baize, holding fast a bottle of whiskey. His face was as the face of an angel, he stretched out his hand upon Cooper.'

'...in the morning nothing remained of the dream but a postmonition of calamity, nothing of the candle but a little coil of tallow.'

'...his success with the patients was the signpost pointing to them. It meant that they felt in him what they had been and he in them what he would be.'

'...simplicity is as slow as a hearse and as long as a last breakfast.'

[Αντίποδες · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ο Σάμιουελ Μπέκετ γεννήθηκε πάνοπλος μέσα από το κεφάλι του Τζέημς Τζόυς. Η πλήρης επίγνωση των πνευματικών και καλλιτεχνικών αδιεξόδων της εποχής του, η βαθιά λογοτεχνική και φιλοσοφική παιδεία, η κάθετη ρήξη με κάθε λυρισμό της ομορφιάς, η τριβή με τα τεχνικά προβλήματα της πεζογραφικής δουλειάς, η φιλοσοφική παρωδία, το μαύρο, σαρδόνιο, απελπισμένο χιούμορ, αστράφτουν στο πρώτο του μυθιστόρημα, γραμμένο το 1936, που σε τίποτα δεν υστερεί από τα μεταπολεμικά του αριστουργήματα. Κι ακόμη υπάρχει εδώ η ορμή εκείνη που θα τον σπρώξει πέρα από τη βαριά σκιά του Τζόυς, η συνείδηση ότι ο ίδιος πρέπει να υιοθετήσει μια μέθοδο αντίθετη με εκείνη του δασκάλου του, που δούλευε σωρευτικά και προσθετικά, προς την αφαίρεση, την αποπτώχευση και την άγνοια.


«Δυστυχώς έχουμε φτάσει στο σημείο της ιστορίας στο οποίο πρέπει να επιχειρήσουμε να δικαιολογήσουμε την έκφραση “ο νους του Μέρφυ”. Ευτυχώς δεν χρειάζεται να ασχοληθούμε με αυτή τη μηχανή όπως πραγματικά ήταν –αυτό θα ήταν υπερβολή και απρέπεια– αλλά μόνο μ’ αυτό που ένιωθε και φανταζόταν ότι είναι. […] Ο νους του Μέρφυ φανταζόταν πως είναι μια μεγάλη κούφια σφαίρα ερμητική στο εξωτερικό σύμπαν. Δεν επρόκειτο για εξασθένιση, γιατί δεν απέκλειε τίποτα που να μην το περιέχει η ίδια. Τίποτα δεν έχει υπάρξει, δεν υπήρξε και δεν θα υπάρξει ποτέ στο σύμπαν εκτός της που να μην ήταν ήδη παρόν ως εικονικό ή πραγματικό ή εικονικό το οποίο υψωνόταν σε πραγματικό ή πραγματικό που έπεφτε σε εικονικό, στο σύμπαν μέσα του.
Αυτό δεν οδηγούσε τον Μέρφυ στην ιδεαλιστική πίσσα. Υπήρχε το νοητικό γεγονός και υπήρχε και το σωματικό γεγονός, τα οποία ήταν εξίσου πραγματικά αν όχι εξίσου ευχάριστα.
Έκανε τη διάκριση ανάμεσα στο πραγματικό και το εικονικό του νου του, όχι ανάμεσα στη μορφή και στον άμορφο πόθο για τη μορφή, αλλά ανάμεσα σε αυτά από τα οποία είχε τόσο νοητική όσο και σωματική εμπειρία και σε αυτά από τα οποία είχε μόνο νοητική εμπειρία. Έτσι η μορφή της κλωτσιάς ήταν πραγματική και η μορφή του χαδιού εικονική.»

[Cymru Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a first effort, Beckett demonstrates that he has total control over the conventions of a novel. The tricky ways in which he unravels exposition, the exquisite wordplay (keep dictionary on hand), and not least the characters themselves all attest to his strength as a writer. He also has sensory-perception and an ear for tone, a "viridescent" tone in fact, which is lovely. Combined with deep imaginative understanding, this book is heavier than it reads. It reads like a breeze. And funny to boot!

First published in 1938, Murph predates Pynchon and Vonnegut (Why aren't these authors compared more often? Just cuz Pynch is "smart" I guess). As a verbal freestyler, it's hard to argue any of the later literary tricksters are as keen or poetic as Beckett. The drawback to the arch-sarcastic literary mode is that it can be hard to take anything seriously, like, when someone dies for instance. Becky is tender enough in parts here however to eschew a total lack of caring for plot, and Murph's eventual post-demise is one of my favourite scenes ever. If we all could be utilized so!

If this is Beck's first book, I can imagine why he won the Nobel Prize. I plan on going in chronological order with him. I like doing that with authors.

[Griff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only lacking in stars because I can't earnestly say I understood everything I read. I read this book over about a week and I still had to go back frequently to go look up exactly what the characters' relations to each other was, and more. I never felt dense reading this book, however, and thanks to reading on my Kindle, often times when I looked up a word's definition it felt like I was being let in on a punchline. There are some truly fantastic quotables in Murphy, some from the gorgeous language and context of the plot, but more from Beckett's cunning wordplay and humor.
"It was true that Cooper never sat, his acathisia was deep-seated and of long standing..."
^ That is probably one of the cornier jokes, but I still found it amusing enough to highlight.

I was mostly grateful to read this book to see that Beckett's prose is not necessarily all like his absurdist and minimal theatre works, and I am eager to continue with more Beckett novels.

[Hank1972 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Il sole splendeva, senza possibilità di alternative, sul niente di nuovo.


Emil Nolde, Oceano

Un incipit, quello sopra, che finisce tra i più belli.

E prepara il terreno a Murphy ed al tema del libro. L’insensatezza, l’assurdità, il non senso, del vivere. O la paura che la nostra vita si trasformi in questo.

Murphy è un indolente, che ci ricorda Oblomov. Non ha voglia e non vuole lavorare. La ricerca di un lavoro è un incubo e un orrore. Accetterà un solo lavoro, al manicomio MMMM, perché pensa di aver trovato nei pazienti i suoi simili. Ma anche questo non sarà vero. In una scena notevole guarderà negli occhi uno di loro, Endon, è non si riconoscerà. La (famosa) partita a scacchi con lo stesso Endon si rivelerà sterile, inutile, assurda.

Murphy ha la sua macchina del tempo, un dondolo a tutta velocità, per fuggire dal mondo esterno, il “grande mondo”, e rifugiarsi nel proprio mondo interiore, il “piccolo mondo”. Nel mirabile capitolo VI ci saranno spiegate le III zone che attraversa con la sua personale macchina. Nell’ultima fase si è oltre il nirvana, “Qui egli non era libero, ma un atomo nella tenebra della libertà assoluta. Qui non si muoveva, era un punto in un ribollimento di linee, in una generazione e in uno sfacelo di linee, senza sosta né condizione.”

Oblomov troverà sollievo e momenti felici nell’amore. Murphy no. O forse non avrà il modo ed il tempo di amare Celia (”Che cos’è la mia vita, se non Celia”), la puttana che in una notevole scena incontra in una strada di Londra. Ignaro peraltro di essere al centro di un intreccio amoroso, con sfumature vagamente hard boiled, tra una sua ex, un suo prof, un altro allievo di questi ed un improbabile investigatore privato.

Il finale, Murphy che finisce in un bar di quart’ordine e Celia che accompagna il nonno ad Hyde Park a far volare l’aquilone, è fantastico.


Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Franzi in una sedia intagliata

Stile modernista, il periodo è quello, e quindi basato su flusso di pensieri, sottintesi, allusioni, incertezza sui tempi dell’azione. Citazioni coltissime, come in Joyce, suo maestro. Descrizioni molto dettagliate, alla Proust, di cui fu tra i primi recensori. Tutto basato su un tono comico-ironico-tragico. Difficile e appagante.

Come scoprirete il libro ha due versioni; io ho letto, alternandole, entrambe, preferendo forse quella tradotta dal francese.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Célia, Wylie, Kelly, Ticklepenny, Cooper, Neary, Clinch, Counihan, Carridge,...e mais.
Não gostei de ninguém. Não percebi ninguém.

Mas Murphy...
vive "numa gaiola de dimensões médias, virada a noroeste, com uma vista ininterrupta para outras gaiolas de dimensões médias, viradas a sudoeste."...
amarra-se a uma cadeira de baloiço, com sete tiras de pano, para acalmar o corpo, submergir-se no espírito e encontrar a paz interior...
não lê e a única coisa que escreve é quanto à disposição final do seu corpo: queimado e despejado numa latrina...

De Samuel Beckett não li muito e nem o entendo bem.
Parece-me absurdo o que escreve, mas ao mesmo tempo não.
Incomoda-me. Confunde-me. Devia fazer-me chorar, mas faz-me rir.
É estranho e fascinante...

[Mahmood666 · Rating 5 out of 5]

ساموئل بكت
سهيل سمي
نشر ققنوس
ساموئل بكت نويسنده و نمايشنامه نويس ايرلندي را شايد بشود يكي از محبوب ترين و در عين حال دير ياب ترين نويسندگان قرن بيستم محسوب كرد .شهرت ادبي بكت در جهان هنر وادبيات بيشتر به نمايشنامه هايش به وىژه معروفترين آنها (در انتظار گودو )باز مي گردد اما بكت خالق تعداد زيادي رمان و داستان كوتاه ،شعر و جستار نيز هست.
مرفي اولين رماني است كه بكت در دوران جواني و تحت تاثير نويسنده هموطنش ،جيمز جويس منتشر كرد(مرفي دومين رمان بكت است و اولين رمان او يعني روياي زنان ميان مايه پس از مرگش به چاپ رسيد).
مرفي بر خلاف ديگر رمانهاي بكت چون مالون ميميرد و نام ناپذير، داستاني تودرتو و خط روايي مشخص دارد و تا حدي متفاوت از باقي كارهاي اين نويسنده دشوار نويس ايرلندي است .
مِرفي روايت دو جستجوست.جستجوي مردي به نام مرفي توسط گروهي به سركردگي عاشق پيشه اي به نام (نيري)و در سطحي ديگر ،مرفي در جستجوي خودش .هيچكدام از اين دو جستجو موفقيت آميز نيستند چرا كه يافتن مرفي چه از جانب ديگران و چه از جانب خودش دشوار است .طرح رمان به شدت پيچيده است و شخصيتهاي رمان همگي عجيب و دور از واقعيتند .در بين اين همه شخصيت عجيب و غريب اين تنها مرفي است كه انسان است و يا حداقل نشانه هايي از انسان بودن را در خود دارد و همين انسانيت اوست كه نابودي اش را رقم ميزند.
رمان سرشار است از نقل قول هاي عجيب و ارجاعات فرامتني دور از ذهن و همينهاست كه خواندنش را براي خواننده مشتاق ، دشوار و در عين حال لذت بخش مي سازد .
و اما نكته اي مهم در خوانش كتاب!سعي كنيد كتاب را با آرامش و بدون تاكيد بر جملات و عبارات بخوانيد و در گير پيچيدگيهاي ظاهري آن نشويد .بكت همچون ديگر اثارش (البته با قوامي كمتر)دامي براي مخاطب فراهم ديده است كه تا ميتواند او را گيج و سردرگم نمايد و راه به پايان بردن كتاب فرار از اين دامهاست .

[محمد فرد · Rating 5 out of 5]

راستش مرفی ممکن است برای کسانی لذت بخش نباشد، اما برای همان‌ها هم به نظرم واجب است.
اینکه در رمان مرفی با چه چیزی روبه‌رو خواهید شد را باور کنید نمی‌شود به‌راحتی توصیف کرد. داستان پیرامون شخصیت عجیبی است که به قول یکی از دوستان به دنبال پایان است. و این همه‌اش است نیست. کسی است که حرف‌های مفت زیادی پیرامون ارتباط میان جهان درون و بیرون می‌زند و مدام می‌خواهد سر شما را با صحبت‌هایش درد بیاورد. و این جدای از راوی حراف داستان است. اما راستش حراف، در این بخش اصلا صفت بدی نیست، بر خلاف بار معنایی‌اش دی: راوی طبعا سعی می‌کند شما را حتی یک لحظه هم با شخصیت اصلی تنها نگذارد. امکان هر نوع همذات پنداری را از شما می‌گیرد و تمام مدت سعی در اثبات وجودش دارد و فاصله‌ای که میان شما و مرفی وجود خواهد داشت. و این هم اصلا بد نیست. بکت است دیگر.
در هر حال جدای از همه‌ی این شاهکارها که شاید شبیه توصیف ضعف یک داستان میانه باشد و برای تکمیل صحبتم، از نوشته‌ی خود مترجم کتاب چیزی وام می‌گیرم
<از ترجمه شدن مرفی خوشحالم، چون می‌تواند به بعضی از علاقه‌مندان به رمان نشان دهد که رمان فقط زبان است و محتوای تازه معنی ندارد و با زبان <چه کارهایی می‌توان کرد

البته این صحبت را غلوی از یک صحبت درست می‌دانم اما:
هیچ سلیقه‌ای نمی‌تواند یک شاهکار را نادیدیه بگیرد، حتی اگر مطابق میلش نباشد.
از معدود کارهایی که بدون ذره‌ای شک پنج می‌گیرد.

[Carduelis · Rating 3 out of 5]

"İnsanlık iki kovalı bir kuyudur, biri dolmak için aşağı inerken öteki boşalmak için yukarı çıkar"

Murphy, Becketten okuduğum dördüncü kitap ve aralarında en beğendiğim bu oldu. Bu kitapta varoluşu, insan bilincinin doğasını sorguluyor ve yine diğerleri gibi zor bir metin, can sıkıcı, kara komik, okuması da anlaması da yorucu, çevirinin de payı büyük bu konuda yeni bir çevirisi olursa tekrar okumak isteyeceğim bir kitap Murphy.

Giriş cümlesi " Hep aynı dünyanın üzerinde ışıldıyordu güneş, başka seçeneği yoktu çünkü. Murphy, sanki özgürmüş gibi,... kendini korumaya çalışıyordu güneş ışınlarından".

İnsanın dünyaya gelişi özgür iradesiyle değil ve yaşamak dışında bir seçeneği yok; yani daha baştan özgür değil. Murphy kendi içinde, küçük dünyasında minimumlarda yaşayan biri, bu dünyayı yadsıyor; kitap boyunca kendi varlığını, dünya ile insan ilişkisini ya da ilişkisizliğini irdeliyor, bilinci sorguluyor. en büyük mutluluğu sallanan koltuğuna çırılçıplak bağlıyor kendini ve tutkuyla sallanıyor. çıplaklığı doğum anını, sallanması yaşamdaki ileri geri gidişlerimizi hatta tepe taklak oluşlarımızı, bağlanması da hayata zincirlenmiş olmamızın simgesi bence.
Ama yaşam bırakmıyor onu sevgilisinin isteğiyle ne kadar dirense de çalışmaya zorlanıyor, akıl hastanesinde hasta bakıcı olarak çalışıyor.

Murphy yaşamı bir fiyasko olarak tanımlıyor, akıl hastalarını iyileştirme çabalarını da "onları kendi özel küçük çöplüklerinden çıkarıp, muhteşem dünyanın merak sevgi nefret tutku sevinme ağlama gibi paha biçilmez ayrıcalıklarına kavuşacağı! - ve kendisinden hiç de farklı olmayan ötekilerle akılcı ve dengeli biçimde 'avunacağı' - duruma getirme çabası" olarak tanımlıyor.

"Korkarım ki yaşam denen güçlükler yığını başa çıkılmayacak kadar geniş" dedi. "Üstesinden gelinen her güçlük, yerini bir başkasına bırakıyor. İnsan gereksinmeleri kısır bir döngü oluşturuyor. Biri tatmin edilir edilmez, öteki çıkıyor karşımıza."

Hastalardan Bay Endon çok sevimli bir şizofren, ona kendini çok yakın hissediyor. Kazanma hırsı olmadan birlikte satranç oynuyorlar. Murphy aslında ordaki hastalara özeniyor, mutlu olduklarını düşünüyor, asıl gerçek özgürlüğe kavuşmak için bilinçli olarak delirmeyi tercih edebilir aslında ama olmayınca bunun yerine tercih ettiği şey "hiçlik" oluyor.

Herkese keyifli okumalar.


Murphy hiçliği görmeye başladı, yani insanın doğduktan sonra tadabildiği nadir ayrıcalıklardan şu renksiz ışıltıyı, (ince bir ayrımı abartarak kullanalım) algılanamayan ama kişiyi ele geçiren o yokluğu. Öteki duyuları da çalışmaz olmuştu, beklenmedik bir hazdı bu.Bir anlık algılama kaybının yarattığı uyuşuk haz değildi ama bir şeylerin geri çekildiği ya da yalnızca Hiçliğe, Abderite'in gülünç öyküsünde Hiçbir şeyin ondan daha gerçek olamayacağını belirttiği hiçliğe indirgenmişliğin yarattığı olumlu bir hazdı bu. Zaman durmadı, bu çok şey istemek olurdu ama Murphy başı ordularının arasında çorak ruhunun gizli kapılarından Hiçlik diye adlandırılan, olaysızlığın asal niteliğini verdiği şeyi iliklerine, içine çekmeyi sürdürürken denetimlerin ve araların tekerleği dönmedi.syf168

[Annie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mmm, not for me. I don't always understand Joyce's writing, but when layers of meaning reveal themselves, it's thrilling. Beckett seems to go for the same thing, but fails in my eyes. Joyce writes effortlessly, but Beckett feels so forced to me. It feels like he's trying so, so hard to make High Art, and the trying ruins it for me.