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.

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Tuesday, September 14th

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