Second Glances

Yesterday in class, there was a lot of discussion about how "depressing" Malone Dies is as opposed to Molloy. I beg to differ.

Throughout my high school and college academic career, there have always been works or events, pieces of art, that my fellow classmates have deemed "depressing" and turned away from. To be clear, I hate this blanket term. We use it all the time, in a society who would rather not dwell on....well.....anything, to dismiss something that hurts or confronts us. A heart-wrenching story on the news may give us pause as we cycle through channel after channel, but a simple "that's depressing" frees us from it. We move on, hardly giving it a second thought. I had a similar experience this morning as I toured the exhibit of Goya prints at the Museum of the Rockies. After viewing the entirety of what is an amazing collection of original prints by this master, a fellow student commented on the disturbing nature of the series. She asked a question (the kind of question that is really a statement) saying, "Wasn't Goya schizophrenic? Isn't that their explanation for this sort of work?"

Ah yes. Schizophrenia. Let us forget the fact that the work is an indictment of a corrupt society. Let us forget the artist's despair at the futility of it all, his despair at having recently become deaf due to an illness. Let us forget all this, and with a simple word, dismiss the man and his masterpieces as the product of his alleged condition.

We can look at Beckett and Malone Dies in much the same way, dismissing the art, the talent, and the vision as simply "depressing".....or we can take the time to appreciate something that doesn't make us smile. We have this mentality ingrained in us that we have to be smiling to everyone else. Life has to be okay; people have to be okay. What do we do then, when things are not okay? Who do we turn to when the entire world becomes a masquerade of smiling faces without feeling and without humanity? I spoke recently to a friend of mine who spent much time overseas, and she told me everyone she spoke to in Europe said they could tell an American tourist a mile away. They smiled at everything.

We cannot smile at Beckett. And yet we do. This is the beauty of his work, that one can be horrified and wallowing in the decay and descent of a man and yet feel mirth. Even in the darkest of moments, there is joy, inexplicably. Moreover, there is a rawness to certain passages in Malone Dies that I personally found nowhere else in Molloy.

"I am far from the sounds of blood and breath, immured. I shall not speak of my sufferings. Cowering deep down among them I feel nothing. It is there I die, unbeknown to my stupid flesh. That which is seen, that which cries and writhes, my witless remains. Somewhere in this turmoil thought struggles on, it too wide of the mark. It too seeks me, as it always has, where I am not to be found. It too cannot be quiet. On others let it wreak its dying rage, and leave me in peace. Such would seem to be my present state." (Malloy Dies 186)

"the sounds of blood and breath". This is a living....dying....being. How do we equate this horrific beauty with anything but the divine? How can we walk past it, like a corpse on the street, without a second glance? It is beautiful! This body, this thing, it "cries and writhes" in the darkness, waiting for the "impending dawn. The impending dawn" (194). Far from "depressing"....this is heart-wrenching. Rather than imprison ourselves on the rack of these emotions, it is far, far simpler to turn our heads, far simpler yet to ignore the spectacle of death, hiding it away behind the doors of nursing homes.

Malone stands unwitnessed. He begs a witness to his death, to his life. Therein lies the driving need to create, to finish his story before his last breath is drawn. Though he dismisses the activity as "play," one cannot deny the prevalence of a need that wrenches itself from him painfully and painstakingly to the very last. Even upon reaching this moment, he writes "never there he will never never anything there any more" (288). A dying man's last words...

No, not depressing. Real.