To Cry or Not to Cry

THE ANGEL OF GRIEF
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

The Angel of Grief Weeping Over the Dismantled Altar of Life ~ 1901

Photos (above & below) taken ~ April 2014
Artistic blog post ~ February 2015
Angel vandalized ~ August 2015

For those of you watching The Chair, I thought I would follow the lead of David Duchovny and recycle one of my old Samuel Beckett papers. For several semesters, back in the mid 1980s, I immersed myself in Beckett's drama and fiction, looking particularly at the theme of weeping. Two weeks ago, even before watching The Chair -- how prescient of me! -- I pulled out my ancient tears and crying manuscript in order to share a few paragraphs on my blog about the physical and mental need for crying, as illustrated by the dilemma of Beckett's characters (Seen Through Tears).

Here's a further installment, in which the sound of murmured cries becomes a distinct motif. As Sandra Oh / Professor Ji-Yoon Kim observes, "this Beckett scholarship must be over thirty years old; it reads like something from the 1980s." One thing remains true no matter when you read Beckett: tears are a constant. Crying need not be reserved for death or birth; rather, tears bind the birth to death continuum and accentuate the circular progression of the human condition. There are numerous other times during the course of life when crying provides the appropriate form of communication. For some people and some Beckett characters, crying seems to be the appropriate response to just about everything.

In The Unnamable for example, the main character cries, as he himself says, "unceasingly." He can move barely at all, but talks -- and cries -- continually. The murmured cries which the narrator hears in the distance when he concludes that he "must go on" are not easily forgotten by the reader. The sound of crying, sometimes distanct and unidentified, sometimes the narrator's own, is heard throughout the novel. Early in the story, before the narrator's physical deterioration is too far advanced, he uses the physical impact of his tears to locate himself spatially and kinaesthetically. He understands crying as a physiological phenomenon that enables him to "know" something concrete about himself:

"I, of whom I know nothing, I know my eyes are open, because of the tears that pour from the umceasingly. . . . Then there is the way of flowing of my tears which flow all over my face, and even down along the neck, in a way it seems to me they could not do if the face were bowed, or lifted up. . . . I feel my tears coursing over my chest, my sides, and all down my back. Ah yes, I am truly bathed in tears."(The Unnamable, 304 - 05)

From Time to Time
Human beings, in order to maintain their human sensibility, should be moved to tears -- if not at regular intervals -- at least from time to time:

"The tears stream down my cheeks from my unblinking eyes. What makes me weep so? From time to time. There is nothing saddening here. Perhaps it is liquefied brain." (292)

"After so long a silence a little cry, stifled outright. What kind of creature uttered it and, if it is the same, still does, from time to time? Impossible to say. Not a human one in any case, there are no human creatures here, or if there are they have done with crying." (296)

"And from my sleeping mouth the lies would pour, about me. No, not sleeping, listening, in tears." (310)

"But the eye . . . it's to see with . . . it's to weep with. . . . Tears gush from it practically without ceasing, why is not known . . . perhaps it's . . . at having to see, from time to time, some sight of other . . . perhaps he weeps in order not to see, though it seems difficult to credit him with an initiative or this complexity. The rascal he's getting humanized." (359 - 60)

". . . talking without ceasing, thirstier than ever, seeking as usual, blathering away, wondering what it's all about, seeking what it can be you are seeking, exclaiming, Ah yes, sighing. No no, crying." (385)

~ all passages from The Unnamable, emphasis added

The Unnamable narrator strives to be honest with himself and with the reader about the connection between crying and humanness. He does not attempt to disguise his need to cry nor the actual tears that he sheds. He says that he is given to crying for the sake of his health if nothing else. And he aptly illustrates that he needs such an outlet for the sorrow and frustration he experiences. Tears keep him -- and Mrs. Rooney -- in touch with their own humanity, in whatever condition they may find it, and with the thriving and faltering human activity around them.

Even though Becket subjects his protagonists to excruciatingly inhuman extremes, they, in their ability -- indeed their willingness -- to embrace the extremes of human emotional communication, lift themselves above despair. Their tears also facilitate perception of, and regulate interaction with, a state of humanity outside the intensely suffering personal Self. Weeping is for them a healing, fulfilling necessary experience which, despite the sadness it inherently connotes, is ultimately postitive and affirmative.

Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, September 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Seen Through Tears

LIFE IS LIKE AN ONION,
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

“Life is like an onion; you peel it off one layer at a time, 
and sometimes you weep.” ― Carl Sandburg 

❤️

Section 5:
"The facts of this world seen clearly
are seen through tears;
why tell me then
there is something wrong with my eyes?"

from "Notes Towards a Poem that Can Never Be Written"
a poem in 6 sections, for Carolyn Forché
by Margaret Atwood

❤️

hidden ocean
"She held her grief behind her eyes like an ocean
& when she leaned forward into the day
it spilled onto the floor
& she wiped at it quickly with her foot
& pretended no one had seen."

from StoryPeople by Brian Andreas

❤️

“Crying does not indicate that you are weak.
Since birth, it has always been a sign that you are alive.”

from Charlotte Brontë by Jane Eyre

❤️

“Tears are the medium of our most primal language in moments as unrelenting as death, as basic as hunger, and as complex as rites of passage. They are the evidence of our inner life overflowing its boundaries, spilling over into consciousness. Tears spontaneously release us to the possibility of realignment, reunion, catharsis, intractable resistance short-circuited… It’s as though each one of our tears carries a microcosm of the collective human experience, like one drop of an ocean.”

from "The Topography of Tears: A Stunning Aerial Tour of the Landscape of Human Emotion Through an Optical Microscope"

by Maria Popova

❤️

"Home they brought her warrior dead:
She nor swoon'd nor utter'd cry:
All her maidens, watching, said,
'She must weep or she will die.'"

from "The Princess" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

❤️

A Look at Tears & Crying
in the Work of Samuel Beckett (1906 - 1989)
~ Part I ~

"What kind of a country is this
where a woman can't weep her heart out
on the highways and byways
without being tormented by retired billbrokers!"

~ by Samuel Beckett from "All That Fall" ~
In the work of Samuel Backett, ranging from his earliest fiction to drama and later fiction, we find a world in which people can indeed weep their hearts out, a world in which the ability to cry is a quality that keeps human beings in touch with their own humanity and aware of the humanity of others. In Beckett's world, crying is a means of communication. Sometimes it is a necessary addition to words; other times it replaces them. In the next couple of blog posts, I will take a look at the theme of crying that runs consistently through Beckett's art.

Tears and crying offer an alternative to linguistic expression and a supplement to a language which is, by its very nature, insufficiently expressive. To allow characters to cry and to describe their tearful experiences in painstaking detail is a stylistic choice made by Beckett, not only out of an obligation to express the inexpressible, but also in at attempt to provide a mimetic realization of a world in which people actually do weep in reaction to the disorientation, the rage, the suffering, and the disconcerting frustrations they experience.

For those who cry, for Beckett's characters, crying is neither a linguistic act nor a stylistic choice. Rather it is an involuntary expression of emotion. Of course, one can choose to cry for the production of an effect, but such is not usually the case -- in life or in the modern fiction of Beckett, where crying is a sincere, uncontrived emotional and physiological reaction to distress.

In "All That Fall," a character named Mrs. Rooney argues for the right to publicly display emotion. Why must we be denied -- or deny ourselves -- the option of a good cry? Mrs. Rooney seeks to defy the human tendency to deny that we are or have been crying. Typically, we would rather claim "it's the onions," or "it's my allergies" or "I have been sleeping." We would rather wear dark glasses than let others see our puffy eyes. But not Mrs. Rooney. She says that crying is a natural and necessary activity that should not be denied to any individual because tears are a "vent" which promotes "good health."

In the play, Mrs. Rooney is suddenly overcome with sadness as she walks to the station to meet her husband. She thinks of her daughter, Minnie, who died in infancy, and imagines that, had she lived, she would now be in her forties, nearly beyond child-bearing, approaching menopause. Mrs. Rooney grieves not only her deceased child, but also the imagined aging of her adult daughter, and the lost opportunity for grandchildren. She desires only to vent her emotions rather than suppressing them at the expense of her health, but she is annoyed by the solicitous Mr. Tyler, who wants to take her arm and comfort her. Sobbing, she asks him, "Have you no respect for misery? . . . What kind of a country is this where a woman can't weep her heart out on the highways and byways without being tormented by retired billbrokers!" No sooner has Mr. Tyler taken himself off than Mr. Slocum comes along asking, "Is anything wrong, Mrs. Rooney? You are all bent double. Have you pain in the stomach?" Following his remark is Beckett's stage direction: "[Silence. Mrs. Rooney laughs wildly. Finally.]"

This final wild laugh signifies her despair that she will ever be allowed to vent her grief properly, considering all the artificial restraints placed on her and all the well - meaning but ill - directed attempts to solace her. The solace that Mrs. Rooney needs can be achieved only through weeping, not through stifling her cries or having them stifled. She prefers to express her emotions unabashedly, on the highways and byways or wherever sadness overtakes her. She laughs wildly in realization that she must relegate her emotional responses to privacy and solitude if she is not to be repeatedly misunderstood.

Next Fortnightly Post: ~ To Cry or Not to Cry ~
Saturday, August 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Red Colander Harvest
Green Tomatoes ~ Fall 2019

Multi-Colored Veggies ~ Fall 2017

Apples ~ August 2013

Onions (at top) ~ Summer 2020