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Samuel Beckett, Fritz Mauthner, and the Limits of Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Linda Ben-Zvi
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Abstract

Samuel Beckett, early in his career and on James Joyce’s advice, read Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache ‘Contributions toward a Critique of Language,’ the three-volume, 2,200-page work written between 1903 and 1923 by the Austrian philosopher of language Fritz Mauthner. Significantly influenced by the work, Beckett gave literary shape to several of Mauthner’s ideas: the correlation between thinking and speaking; the denial of any certainties outside language, even certainty about the existence of self; and the impossibility of overcoming the limits of language. Both authors place language at the center of their works, subsume all knowledge under it, and then systematically deny its basic efficacy, thus using language to indict itself.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 95 , Issue 2 , March 1980 , pp. 183 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1980

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References

Notes

1 Ellmann, James Joyce (New York: Oxford Univ. Press. 1959), pp. 661–62. In a conversation with James Knowlson, however. Beckett revealed that Ellmann had reported the event inaccurately: Beckett had borrowed Mauthner's Critique and read it himself, at the suggestion of Joyce. There has also been some confusion about when the reading took place. Deirdre Bair, in her biography Samuel Beckett (New York: Harcourt, 1978), p. 90, incorrectly places the event in 1929–30, citing Ellmann as the source for the information. Both James Knowlson in the Afterword to his bilingual edition of Happy Days (London: Faber and Faber, 1978), p. 92; and John Pilling in his study Samuel Beckett (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), p. 127, mention the “late 30's.” Knowlson offering no source and Pilling again citing Ellmann. The 1932 date seems the most accurate: Beckett would then have read the Critique while he was working on “Dream of Fair to Middling Women,” after he had completed Proust (1931) and before he wrote Murphy (1936).

2 Beckett. Proust (1931; rpt. New York: Grove, 1957), p. 47. All further references to Beckett's books are to the Grove editions, with the following exceptions: Happy Days/Oh Les Beaux Jours: A Bilingual Edition, ed. Knowlson (cited in n. 1); “Dante … Bruno. Vico… Joyce.” in Our Exagminalion round His Factification for lncamination of Work in Progress (1929: rpt. London: Faber and Faber. 1972); and Texts for Nothing (London: Calder and Boyers. 1974). Page citations to Beckett's works and dates of the Grove editions are given in the text.

3 Kern. Existential Thought and Fictional Technique (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. 1970), p. 238.

4 Hesla, The Shape of Chaos (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press. 1971). p. 234.

5 Mauthner, Aristotle, trans. D. Gordon (London: n.p., 1907).

6 Weiler, Mauthner's Critique of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. 1970); Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan, 1967), v, 221–24.

7 For studies of Mauthner's life, see Weiler, pp. 332–40; Encyclopedia of Philosophy, p. 221; and Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin. Wittgenstein's Vienna (New York: Simon, 1973). 120–32.

8 Quoted in Max Brod, Franz Kafka (New York: Schocken, 1963). p. 41.

9 Mauthner. Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache, 3rd ed., 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1923; rpt. Hildesheim: Georg Olms. 1967), i, 703. This translation and all subsequent translations from the German were done in collaboration with Sabine Jordan, who offered invaluable assistance in interpretation as well as in translation. All further references to Mauthner's work appear in the text.

10 The writing of Mauthner did interest Ludwig Wittgenstein, who mentions him as an opponent: “All philosophy is a ‘critique of language’ (though not in Mauthner's sense)” (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuiness [London: Rout-ledge and Kegan Paul. 19611. 4.0031). For an excellent discussion of the possible influence of Mauthner on Wittgenstein, particularly on Wittgenstein's later Philosophical Investigations, see Weiler, pp. 298–306.

11 Walter Eschenbacher. Fritz Mauthner und die deutsche Lileralur um 1900: Eine Untersuchitng zur Sprachkrise der Jahrhundertwende, Europäische Hoch schulschriften, No. 163 (Bern: Lang, 1976), and Joachim Kühn, Gescheiterte Sprachkritik: Fritz Mauthner, Leben und Werk (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1975).

12 Monegal, Jorge Luis Borges (New York: Dutton, 1978), p. 138. Monegal lists Mauthner, along with Zeno, Korzybski, Bergson, Bertrand Russell, and Nietzsche, as an influence on Borges (p. 245).

13 Ends and Odds: Eight New Dramatic Pieces also includes Not I, That Time, Footfalls, Ghost Trio, Theatre J, Theatre 11, and Radio I.

14 Cohn, “Philosophical Fragments in the Works of Samuel Beckett.” Criticism, 6, No. 1 (1964), 33–43; rpt. in Samuel Beckett: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Martin Esslin (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965), p. 169.

15 See Pilling, p. 127. In answer to a query of mine in the summer of 1978, Beckett said that he still owns the three volumes of the Critique.

16 Samuel Beckett. “Dream of Fair to Middling Women,” p. 106. A photocopy of the original corrected manuscript with annotations by John Fletcher is on display in the Beckett archives at the University of Reading, MS 1227/7/16/9. Page references are to this copy.

17 Cited by Ruby Cohn in “Chronology of Beckett's Life,” Back to Beckett (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press. 1973), pp. vii-viii.

18 Beckett and Georges Duthuit. “Three Dialogues” [on Tal Coat, Masson, and Bram Van Velde], Transition Forty-Nine, No. 5 (1949), pp. 97–103.

19 Jacqueline Hoefer cites Ludwig Wittgenstein as a possible source of the image in “Watt,” Perspective, 101 (Autumn 1959), 166–82. Beckett, however, denied reading Wittgenstein before 1961 (see John Fletcher. The Novels of Samuel Beckett [New York: Barnes and Noble. 1964]. pp. 87–88). Rubin Rabinowitz cites Mauthner as a more likely source; see Rabinowitz, “Watt from Descartes to Schopenhauer,” Modern Irish Literature: Essays in Honor of William York Tindall (New York: Iona Coll. Press, Twayne. 1972), pp. 28687. Jennie Skerl, too, connects Mauthner to the compo-sition of Watt; see her “Fritz Mauthner's Critique of Language in Samuel Beckett's Walt,” Contemporary Literature. 15 (1974). 474–87. Edith Kern also quotes Mauthner's reference to the ladder, but she does not connect the use with Beckett's Watt (p. 238). For Wittgenstein's use of the ladder image, see Weiler. pp. 298–99.

20 Mauthner's basic ideas are highly derivative, reflecting the particular influences of Heraclitus, Locke, and Hume, philosophers with whom Beckett was acquainted before reading Mauthner. It is therefore sometimes difficult to determine conclusively whether Beckett's theories of language can be traced directly to Mauthner or to these philosophers. Also, since Mauthner tends to repeat ideas in the three volumes of the Critique in no clear order, the list of major items is based only on the frequency of their occurrence, not on their sequence in the work.

21 Samuel Beckett as quoted in Lawrence Harvey, Samuel Beckett: Poet and Critic (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1970), p. 433.

22 Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable are cited from Beckett, Three Novels (1955).

23 Mauthner consistently speaks of the senses as a matter of chance or of accident, i.e., as Zufallssinne. The German word Zufull normally refers to things or events that might be called matters of chance or of accident. The things so denoted might also be called contingent, as Weiler, for instance, interprets the word, if it is understood that the word is not being used in its strictest sense, viz.. as the name for a modal category encompassing only things or events that are both possible and nonnecessary. The word Kontingenz, sometimes used in German philosophical writings to indicate contingency, is not used at all by Mauthner. Mauthner does not adequately clarify the sense in which he uses Zufall. and he recognizes the ambiguity (see i, 114). The closest he comes to defining his use of the term is the following: “The concept of accidental sense [Zufallssinne'] is nothing but a provisional expression for the sad certainty that our senses have evolved, have developed slowly, and have developed accidently [zufallig]” (i. 360).

24 Kühn notes that, while Mauthner himself did not follow the implications of his own radical skeptical stance and cease writing, “One poor student … really drew the last consequence from Mauthner's doctrine and committed suicide” (p. 52). This incident echoes the relationship between Heraclitus—a philosopher whose skepticism is close to Mauthner's—and his student Cratylus, who also followed the implications of his master's theories and committed suicide.

25 Barge, “ ‘Coloured Images’ in the ‘Black Dark’: Samuel Beckett's Later Fiction,” PMLA, 92 (1977), 277.

26 Cohn, “Outward Bound Soliloquies.” Journal of Modern Literature, 7, No. 1 (1977), 37.

27 By acknowledging that we do communicate with one another to some extent, Mauthner seems to indicate that, while the source of all language is sensation, we have similar enough experiences to allow for a semblance of communication—each of us assuming that our own sensations are similar to those verbalized by others.

28 Gessner, Die Unzulänglichkeit der Sprache (Zurich: Juris, 1957). p. 76. cited by Kühn, p. 18. Gessner's study deals with the linguistic innovations in Waiting for Godot.

29 Wittgenstein, too, seems to have arrived at this sense of “godless mysticism.” As his friend Paul Englemann indicates, when Wittgenstein was asked to attend meetings of the Vienna Circle of logical positivists he “would not discuss philosophical topics but preferred to read out poetry, particularly the poetry of Tagore” (Englemann, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, with a Memoir, ed. B. F. McGuinnes, trans. L. Furtmüller [Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1967], p. 46).

30 This study was begun under a National Endowment for the Humanities summer session grant, directed by Ruby Cohn, who was helpful during all stages of the investigation and who read, and offered important comments on, the completed manuscript. I also wish to acknowledge the help of Martin Esslin, who provided background on the Vienna circle; Bernard Rollin and Robert Jordan, of the philosophy department of Colorado State University, who made suggestions about philosophical background; and James Knowlson and John Pilling, of the University of Reading (England), who first cited the importance of Mauthner to Beckett studies.