Beckett, Benjamin and the Modern Crisis in Communication

Author(s): Jan Bruck

Source: New German Critique, No. 26, Critical Theory and Modernity (Spring - Summer,
1982), pp. 159-171
Published by: New German Critique
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Beckett, Benjamin and the Modern Crisis
in Communication

by Jan Bruck

Beckett has so far largelydefied sociologicalanalysis,and most schol-

ars are still preoccupiedwith the psychologicalandphilosophicalaspectsof
his work.' In an attemptto move towardsa sociologicalperspectivewhich
could help to define more precisely the place and functionof Beckett's
writings in contemporaryWestern society, I am going to make use of
Walter Bejnamin's theory of literaryproduction,which provides an ex-
planation of the crisis in communicationand aestheticperceptionthat has
been constitutivefor manymoder writerssince the turnof the century.In
drawingthis connection, whichsurprisinglyhas so far escapedattention,I
am not consideringBeckett's oeuvre in toto, but only those texts whichhe
wrote a few years after WorldWar II - Waitingfor Godot and the novel
trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable.I shall assumethat his
later plays and novels can be seen as a consistent developmentof the
earlier themes and problems,some of whichhe had alreadyformulatedin
his major aestheticmanifesto, the essay on "Proust"of 1931.This treatise
raised issues strikinglysimilar to those which Benjamin discusseda few
years later in his Illuminationsessays, particularly"The Storyteller"and
"On Some Motifs in Baudelaire."They deal with the conceptsof "story-
telling," "memory"and "experience"which provide focal points for the
comparativeanalysisof Benjamin'saesthetictheoryand Beckett'sliterary
practice.2
When Beckett arrivedon the European scene, he was received by a

1. This is still evident, for example, in a recentselectionof criticalessays edited by H.

Engelhardt and D. Mettler, Materalien zu Samuel Becketts Romanen (Frankfurt/M., 1976).
The only importantexceptionI knowof is the interpretationof Endgameby Th. W. Adorno,
"Versuch, das Endspiel zu verstehen,"Noten zur LiteraturII (Frankfurt/M.,1963), pp.
188-236. Adorno relates Beckett'snihilisticview of historyand his parodyof existentialist
philosophyto the catastrophichistoricaleventsof fascismandthe War.I am not dealingwith
the essay in detail, since it does not providea basisfor a systematicsociologicalanalysis.The
better known treatiseon "Commitment"(New Left Review,87/88 [1974],75-89) mightbe
more fruitfulin this direction.
2. Benjamincriticismin Englandand the USA has been growingin recentyears. Most
helpfulfor this analysiswere:R. Burns,"Understanding Benjamin,"RedLetter,7 (1978);R.
G. Davis, "Benjamin, Storytellingand Brecht in the USA," New GermanCritique,17,
Special WalterBenjaminissue (Spring1979), 143-157; and S. M. Weber, "WalterBenja-

159
 160 Jan Bruck

stunned, speechless audience, whose traumatic experience of fascism and

the War had destroyed its power of memory - the ability to "think
history" (Adorno) and the capacity to relate its "story." Yet the speech-
lessness whch beset both Beckett's heroes and their audience alike was not
only due to the horrors of war; beyond the immediate historical catas-
trophe, it signalized the destruction of the traditions and values of Western
culture and society, which Beckett saw in terms of a fundamental crisis in
communication and aesthetic representation. Waitingfor Godot presents
this dilemma. Vladimir and Estragon, the existential tramps, have lost the
essential capacity to tell their story - memory. Not only do they fail to
remember how they came to be where they are, they also do not know
what to do: "nothing to be done" is the leitmotif of their habitual and
frustrating dialogue. As "time has stopped," preventing any development
or change, there can be no progress in their understanding of the world,
no formation of an experience on which they themselves or the audience
could build:3
V.: And where were we yesterdayeveningaccordingto you?
E.: How do I know? In anothercompartment.There'sno lack of void.
V.: (sure of himself).Good. We weren'there yesterdayevening.Now what
did we do yesterdayevening?
E.: Do?
V.: Try and remember.
E.: Do ... I supposewe blathered.
V.: (controllinghimself).About what?
E.: Oh ... this and that, I suppose,nothingin particular.(withassurance).
Yes, now I remember,yesterdaywe talkedabout nothingin particular.
That's been going on now for half a century.
V.: You don't rememberany fact, any circumstance?
E.: (weary). Don't tormentme, Didi.
V.: The sun. The moon. Do you not remember?
E.: They must have been there, as usual.
V.: You didn't notice anythingout of the ordinary?
E.: Alas!
Beckett's creatures have been stripped of all the elements which identified
the bourgeois individual as the subject and center of the world: possessions
and property, social relations and human ties, knowledge and rationality.
Beckett treats these values of bourgeois life with cynical contempt, par-
odying the most important discourses that provided the ideological backing
of Western society - the Bible, Science and Philosophy - whose failure
in explaining the world and in providing a useful knowledge of the self and

min, CommodityFetishism, the Modem and the Experienceof History,"The Unknown

Dimension in EuropeanMarxismSince Lenin, ed. Dick Howardand Carl E. Klare (New
York: Basic Books, 1972),249-275.
3. Waitingfor Godot (London, 1959),p. 66.
 Beckett,Benjaminand the ModernCrisisin Communication 161

of society became drastically apparent in the historical moment of fascism

and the War.
The inability to communicate experience through a "story" is also the
subject matter of the novel-trilogy preceding Waitingfor Godot. The hero
of the first part, Molloy, attempts to reconstruct how he reached his
mother's room in which he is living, incapacitated, after crawling out of a
ditch through unknown terrain. As in Godot, the essential elements neces-
sary for the formation of an experience are lacking, and although the hero
is still able to recall people and occurrences of the past, to reminisce about
certain aspects of his life, his writing does not comprise a unified "story,"
as the traditional coordinates of space and time are out of order. Having
discarded material possessions and human ties, Molloy engages in trivial
activities and thoughts, merely to pass time and to wait for his end which
occurs in part II of the trilogy, Malone Dies.
Lying in his mother's room, Malone, alone, is awaiting his death.
There is no need anymore to reconstruct the past, only to play the final
game. Tied to his bed and equipped with a short pencil, Malone relates his
final "stories," "lifeless like the teller,"4 stories about the inability to
narrate, to describe, to communicate. Malone's desire is to write his novel
into death, to die writing and to write dying, thereby "being given ...
birth to into death."5 His desire for death can be linked with a "detestation
for the mother who ejected the hero from the womb." According to
Fletcher, most of Beckett's early heroes regard the womb as a "protective
calm" and life as "a punishment, a pensum," which makes death "a
second, and perhaps happier birth," because "it will finally reverse the
process that has been so painful to recall and for which life itself has not
been sufficient to atone."6 Psychoanalytic interpretations find their paral-
lel in those that relate the trilogy to biblical myth: "Building through
biblical allusions a parodic dialectic between Genesis and Revelation,
Beckett mocks the beginning and the end of "creation." He uses the
Creative Word as a comic epistemological mirror reflecting a distorted and
now grotesque image of his narrator "I," "creator of all fictions .. ."7
Birth and death correlate to creation and destruction, the individual
human life being as pointless and incomprehensible as is the history of
humankind in general. On the aesthetic/epistemological plane, this psycho-
logical or mythical death signifies the decline of the story and of its author,
in short the crisis in communication.
In The Unnamable, the point of no return is reached. An unidentifiable

4. Molloy, Mallone Dies, The Unnamable (London, 1959), p. 180.

5. Ibid., p. 285.
6. J. Fletcher, "Malone 'Given Birth to into Death,"' ed. J. O'Hara, Twentieth Century
Interpretations of Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable (New York, 1955), p. 60.
7. Jan Hokenson, "A Stuttering Logos: Biblical Paradigms in Beckett's Trilogy," James
Joyce Quarterly, 8, No. 4 (1971), 293.
162 Jan Bruck

"I" sits, in purgatory, watching the shadows of Malone, Molloy and all
other heroes of the previous novels move past, no longer in life, mere
speech, language, consciousness. There is no longer any "story," however
rudimentary, to be told, all traditional categories of time, place, subject
and object have been jettisoned, all sense of continuity, tradition and
identity has been lost, and distrust in the power of memory is complete.
What is left is a conglomerate of contradictory, self-relativizing and non-
referential statements that flow on from page to page without a break,
"inarticulate murmurs" that cannot be ended. The "story" ends without
an end, so to speak: ". . . the voice begins again, it begins trying again,
quick now before there is none left, no voice left, nothing left but the core
of murmurs, distant cries, quick now and try again, with the words that
remain, try what, I don't know, to have them carry me into my story, the
words that remain, my old story, which I've forgotten, far from here,
through the noise, through the door, into the silence, that must be it, it's
too late, perhaps it's too late, perhaps they have, how would I know, in the
silence you don't know .." "... I can't go on, you must go on, I'll go on,
you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they
say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it's done
already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me
to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that
would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be silence, where am I, I
don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go
on, I can't go on, I'll go on."8
It seems here that Beckett reached as close as one possibly could to ex-
pressing the fundamental dilemma of communication which he formulated
several times in his theoretical essays (Three Dialogues, I) and which
reappears, in distorted form, in The Unnamable: "The fact would seem to
be, if in my situation one may speak of facts, not only that I shall have to
speak of things of which I cannot speak, but also, which is even more
interesting, but also that I, which is if possible even more interesting, that I
shall have to, I forget, no matter. And at the same time I am obliged to
speak. I shall never be silent. Never."9
What a short-sighted critic discounts as "lack of talent" in writing
stories (Alvarez) is precisely the point of Beckett's work: by producing
texts which lack the essential ingredients of story-telling - plots with a
clear beginning, middle and end, and characters sure of their identity-
he demonstrates that the meaningful writing of stories and novels is no
longer possible. Beckett's prose is a parody of story-writing, it is "meta-
fiction" in the sense recently defined by Margret Rose, in that it "super-
sedes a tradition of prose, while making this reflective supersession a

8. Op. cit., p. 417f.

9. Ibid., p. 294.
 Beckett, Benjamin and the Modern Crisis in Communication 163

subject of another fiction."'0 Through their parodistic self-destruction,

Beckett's "stories" represent the dilemma of story-telling, and the crisis of
literary communication in the contemporary Western world.
In order to uncover the causes of this crisis and the dilemma of
aesthetic representation, I will now turn to Benjamin. Benjamin's main
theoretical goal was to uncover the links that exist between the changing
modes of aesthetic perception and artistic creation on the one hand, and
the general "production process," the technique or technology of the
production and reproduction of artworks, on the other. As the latter
progresses, revolutionizing the means of communication (from print and
lithograph to film and radio), artistic forms undergo crises which necessi-
tate the introduction of new forms. In preindustrial culture, where the
production of artworks relied on the technology of the artisan, story-telling
was the dominant medium of communication. With growing industrializa-
tion and the invention of print, literary production superseded the oral
tradition and the novel became the dominant form. Finally, with the
appearance of advanced technology such as newpaper and film, the domi-
nance of the traditional forms of "narrating" was challenged by a new,
post-literary form of communication which Benjamin calls "information."
In the process of this development, a fundamental change took place: in
preindustrial society, where artistic production was part of a ritual or cult,
the work of art was endowed with a near sacred "distance," "inapproach-
ability" and "uniqueness" in place and time, in short with an "aura"; and
it contained a truth that was passed on from generation to generation. With
the advent of mechanical reproduction, the work of art moved out of its
collective cultic context into the competitive sphere of the commodity
market, where the "exhibition value" became prevalent, destroying the
traditional aura, i.e. its authenticity and authority, and leading to a crisis in
aesthetic perception. Out of this crisis, however, originated a new form of
communication which emancipated the audience from authority and tradi-
tion and released its critical potential, thereby changing it from a passive
recipient of pre-established truths to an active collaborator, less interested
in cathartic experiences than in political argument. Benjamin applied this
general model to the analysis of the modern crisis in communication and
the decline in traditional aesthetic forms in his essays on "The Storyteller"
and on "Baudelaire," which provide a basis for the critical analysis of
Beckett's dilemma of story-telling.
The essay on "The Storyteller" is concerned with the reasons for the
disappearance of story-telling in the modern world. The traditional story,
which Benjamin defines of course in an ideal form, derives from oral
traditions in artisan culture, describing either local events and traditions
("lore of the past") or journeys and travels ("lore of faraway places"). It

(London, 1979), p. 65.

10. M. Rose, Parody/Meta-fiction
164 Jan Bruck

was characterized by an "orientation towards practical interests," i.e., it

contained "something useful" in the form of counsel or advice. In modern
times - probably beginning with the end of the Middle Ages - giving
counsel through a story becomes less and less possible, since the communi-
cability of experience receded and "wisdom," which Benjamin defines as
"counsel woven into thq fabric of real life," is dying out. I The resulting
decline of the story coincides with the rise of the novel as the dominant
epic form. As an expression of the aspirations of the bourgeois industrial
age, this new form of aesthetic communication is due to the loss of many of
the characteristics that defined story-telling, in particular the change from
a collective to an individualist social structure. Whereas the storyteller
passed his experiences on to the other members of his social group as
counsel and in a communal situation, the novelist speaks for "the solitary
individual,"'2 the privatized subject, who is no longer linked to the other
members of the society through communal ties, but through increasingly
complex and rationalized apparatuses of socialization and communication.
Benjamin does not enter into an analysis of the social and economic
factors responsible for the radical transformation from artisan to industrial
culture. He is concerned only with the impact of the technological changes,
accompanying the social transformation, on aesthetic perception and the
modes of artistic production. They are to him the indicators that reveal the
changing social function of literature and art. The process of transforma-
tion, which took place gradually over hundreds of years from mythical age
to modern industrial society, led to the replacement of traditional forms by
information as the new medium of communication. Benjamin explains the
fundamental difference between story-telling and information in this way:
"the value of information does not survive the moment in which it was
new. It lives only at that moment; it has to surrender to it completely and
explain itself to it without losing any time."'3 For this reason, information
constantly needs to be replaced and renewed. Mass media communication
does not aim at the formation of a complete, unified experience which
could be perpetuated in future generations; its purpose is "to isolate what
happens from the realm in which it could affect the experience of the
reader. The principles of journalistic information (freshness of the news,
brevity, comprehensibility and, above all, lack of connection between
news items) contribute as much to this as does the make-up of pages and
the paper's style."'4 The amount of sense stimuli and items of information
has multiplied many times over through the increased number of signs and
signals, the speeding up of traffic and communication, the pace of work in
the factory and general global mobility, as is the case in mass society. In

11. W. Benjamin, Illuminations (London, 1970), p. 85f.

12. Ibid., p. 87.
13. Ibid., p. 90.
14. Ibid., p. 160f.
 Beckett,Benjaminand the ModernCrisisin Communication 165

such a world it is of course much more difficult, if not impossible, to

structure the millions of bits of informationinto a unified whole and to
make sense of them in their totality. With the rapidly changing and
expanding horizon of communicationin which every individualis living,
the connection between the presentand the past, the self and the others,
the individualand the communityis breakingup, worsenedby the increas-
ing subjection of the individualto anonymousforces of bureaucracyand
economic interests.As a resultof this simultaneousexpansionand disinte-
gration of social communication,we no longer possess a discoursewhich
functions as a source of truthand wisdomas the old storiesand the Bible
did in earlier times. Instead, we have to contend with competing dis-
courses, as disparate and contradictoryas the reality we live in, and it
seems hard to imagine that the world will ever agree on any discourse
which it can share collectively as a common mediumof communication.
The decline of storytellingmanifestsitself also in fundamentalchanges
in the notions of truthand representation.The "story"in its simpleforms
(e.g. the saga, legend or fairy tale) had a linearmorphologywith a clear
evolution of plot and character- the dominantpartsof narration.In this,
it did not differ much from the telling (and later writing)of historyand,
before it assumeda purelyfictionalcharacter,couldclaima "truth"similar
to that of history,on the groundsthat it relatedevents of the past, even if
they were mythicalor legendary.The "truth"of the story/historylay in the
coherence and plausibilityof the events, it revealed itself throughthat
structured order, and the listener comprehendedit because the story,
rendered usually in a collective situation, revealed a truth explicablein
terms of the audience'ssharedexperience.With the rise of the novel and
following the failed attemptsby idealisticand romanticwritersin the early
nineteenth century to regain the lost world of legend and myth, the
completeness of a story and its ability to relate a "true"experiencewas
no longer guaranteed through its history-relatingstructure.The realist
novelists and their successorswere increasinglycompelled to search for
the - now privatisedand internalized- truth in an abstractrelationof
reflection between the work of art and reality,between the internalstruc-
ture of the text and that of its object, tryingto bridgethe gap thathadbeen
opened up by the Kantianseparationof the recognizingsubject and the
objective world. The difficulties of objectively representingthe world
through signs (language) became an urgent matter for philosophyand
aesthetics and can be traced from the nineteenth-centurynoveliststo the
nouveau roman, from the realists to the surrealists,expressingin the
aesthetic/epistemologicalspherethe atrophyof experienceand the privat-
ization of the individual that occurred in the social sphere. It is this
dilemma of communicationand aesthetic representationto which Beck-
ett's work gives meta-fictionalexpression.15

15. The implicationsof this epistemologicaldilemmafor Beckett'swork have been dis-

166 Jan Bruck

In order to understand the implications of this dilemma for Beckett

more fully, we need to take a closer look at the concepts of "memory" and
"experience," the structure and function of which Benjamin and Beckett
explain in their essays on "Baudelaire" and "Proust" respectively. Ac-
cording to Benjamin, "memory" is the cardinal faculty in producing and
listening to a story, it is "the epic faculty par excellence" as it "creates the
chain of tradition which passes a happening on from generation to genera-
tion," 6 and thereby provides those cultural and spiritual links necessary
for the experience of completeness and totality: "Where there is experi-
ence (Erfahrung) in the strict sense of the word, certain contents of the
individual past combine with material of the collective past. The rituals
with their ceremonies, their festivals... kept producing the amalgama-
tion of these two elements over and over again. They triggered recollection
at certain times and remained handles of memory for a lifetime."'7 With
the rise of the novel, the role of memory changes. For the privatised
individual whose communal ties have been cut off and whose immediate
relationship with death and eternity has been destroyed (making way for a
"transcendental homelessness" which Lukacs regards as characteristic for
the modem novel), the past can be at best recollected synthetically,
through the powers of association and reminiscence, as in the exemplary
case of Proust. Consequently, the "quest for life" (Lukacs) becomes the
goal of the modern novel, which centres on the development of an indi-
vidual hero and his consciousness which, in Hegelian terms, tries to
reconcile itself with reality and understand itself as part of a necessary
historical process within an ideal totality.
The new faculty constitutive for the novel is "involuntary memory," as
distinct from "voluntary memory"; Beckett and Benjamin borrow the
terms from Proust, who first introduced them in his novel, modifying
Bergson's concept of memoire pure. In the essay on "Proust," Beckett
defines "involuntary memory" as a faculty the novelist needs to evoke an
image of the past and of the unity underlying the complexity of human
action. Proust was the last and foremost novelist to utilize its power; in his
Remembrance of Things Past, the "miracle of evocation," initiated usually
through intense sense perceptions which Beckett calls "fetishes," occurs
about thirteen times, beginning with the famous madelaine steeped in tea.
They bring back the narrator's past, revealing its unity with the present
and thereby its essence. In contrast to this, "voluntary memory" is "the
uniform memory of intelligence," which can reproduce only "those

cussed by Olga Bernal, in "Lc Dilemma de la representation," Language et fiction dans le

roman de Beckett (Paris, 1969) (German translation in Engelhardt/Mettler, Materialen . . .)
The study is partly based on Foucault's discourse analysis provided in his Les Mots et les
cfioses, but it lacks a sociological dimension.
16. Op. cit., p. 97f.
17. Ibid.. p. 96.
 Beckett,Benjaminand the ModernCrisisof Communication 167

impressionsof the past that were consciouslyand intelligentlyformed."Its

images are "arbitrary"and "remote from reality,"and its actionscan be
compared to the turningof pages in a photographalbum: "the material
that it furnishescontainsnothingof the past, merelya blurredand uniform
projection once removedof our anxietyand opportunism- that is to say,
nothing."18The novelist who is unable to drawon the power of involun-
tary memory- and most modernwritersafter Proustseem to be in this
predicament- cannot overcome the gap between presentand past, con-
sciousness and the world in a totalizingpicture.
In search of a more precise definitionof voluntarymemory,Benjamin
draws on Freud and his Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1921), where he
contrasts memory with consciousness:"Becomingconscious and leaving
behind a memory trace are processes incompatiblewith one another."
Reformulatedin Proustiantermsthis meansthat "onlywhat has not been
experienced explicitly and consciously, what has not happened to the
subject as an experience (Erlebnis),can become a componentof involun-
tary memory."'9Freud had stated that consciousness(or voluntarymem-
ory) does not retain any permanent memory traces at all; its function
consists, rather, in the "protectionagainststimuli,"and againstthe exces-
sive energies at work in the externalworld which enter consciousnessin
the form of "shocks." "The more readily consciousnessregistersthese
shocks, the less likely are they to have a traumaticeffect."20WhatFreud
describeshere seems similarto the mechanismof repressionthroughwhich
we shift unpleasant experiences and problems into the subconsciousto
avoid being troubledby them. But whereasthe mechanismof repressionis
one of storing away without a release, the function of consciousnessor
voluntarymemoryas describedhere is to preventthe externalstimuliand
shocks from becoming a traumatic Erfahrung,from leaving behind a
memory trace, by turning them into a short-lived, conscious Erlebnis.
(Benjamin makes use here of the two differentmeanings,in German,of
the word "experience,"for whichthe Englishlanguagehas no equivalents.
Erfahrungrepresentsa wholeness and continuity,a unifiedexperienceof
reality, which carrieswith it an increase in knowledgeand wisdom- in
this sense, older people are supposed to have "experience."In contrast,
Erlebnis is an atomised and isolated experience, realitylived in disparate
and fragmentedmomentswhich do not form any coherenceand continu-
ity.) It needs pointingout, of course, that althoughour memorytodaymay
not achieve the completeness of earlier generations, it is impossiblefor
anyone to live without any memorytraces at all, withoutsome notion of
continuity and tradition,as a point of referenceand a parameterfor our
individual and national identity. The dichotomy between consciousness

18. Ibid., p. 32f.

19. Ibid., p. 162f.
20. Ibid., p. 163.
168 Jan Bruck

and memory is, in everyday psychological reality, not as strict as Benja-

min's theoretical opposition in the aesthetic sphere makes it appear to be.
Without a knowledge of Freud, and a few years before Benjamin,
Beckett arrived at surprisingly similar insights into the function of con-
sciousness and "voluntary memory," which he equates with "habit":
"Habit is a comprise affected between the individual and his environ-
ment."21 It is also an "agent of security," and "when it ceases to perform
that second function, when it is opposed by a phenomenon that it cannot
reduce to the condition of a comfortable and familiar concept, when, in a
word, it betrays its trust as a screen to spare its victim the spectacle of
reality, it disappears, and the victim, now an ex-victim, for a moment free,
is exposed to that reality,"22 - or, we may add, its shocks and threats.
Related to habit is curiosity, "a non-conditioned reflex.... a reaction
before a danger stimulus," it is the "safeguard, not the death, of the
cat,"23 a mental readiness and attention which includes the occurrence of
the unexpected into its horizon. The curiosity of the cat is the attitude
called for by the modem artist; voluntary memory with heightened aware-
ness is the recipe for the modem artist who wants to survive - as it is for
people in everyday life, separated from the communal ties that provided
order and tradition.
This is the point at which Beckett parts with Benjamin, as well as most
modernist writers. Although he recognizes the protective function of con-
sciousness and voluntary memory, he regards the loss of involuntary
memory and the concurrant atrophy of experience, which has rendered the
story (and the novel) a useless instrument of communication, as the sign of
a fundamental inability of the modern artist to communicate, as the virtual
end of communication. Instead of utilizing the creative potential of schock
experience in the fashion of other modernist writers, Beckett pursues the
depressing task of expressing the meaninglessness of discourse, and the
catastrophic impact of mass-society and war on consciousness and mem-
ory. Not seeking refuge in either avant-garde experiments or in political
utopias, he dedicates himself to the expression of the failure of the modem
artist to perform his traditional function: that of giving meaning and unity
to the world through his discourse. In view of the catastrophes that he
experienced, and the greater potential ones facing humankind today, he
denies any positive value to human history and moves towards a position
of complete silence. But to reach that position, he is compelled to write, to
express his traumatic experience of shock, to use the words which contain
the very angst of which he is a victim. In this sense his work is truly absurd.
In sharp contrast to Beckett, Benjamin discovered in the loss of aura
and the disappearance of traditional artistic forms (such as the story) the

21. Proust (London, 1965),p. 18.

22. Ibid., p. 21.
23. Ibid., p. 30.
 Beckett,Benjaminand the ModernCrisisin Communication 169

potential for new, revolutionarymeans of communicationwhichcan help

to liberate the audiencefrom authorityand traditionand instilla political
awareness, thereby laying the ground for a democraticand collective
artisticproductionand consumptionof the type envisagedby the Russian
film-makersof the 1920sand by Brecht, whose theoryand practiceof epic
theatre and whose notion of dialecticintervention(Eingreifen)throughart
became a model for Benjamin'saestheticideas. For Benjaminthe task of
the modem artist is to develop a trainedconsciousness,always ready to
parry the continuous barrageof threateningsense stimuli, or "shocks,"
and to utilize their critical potential. The first writer for whom "the
experience of shock has become the norm"was Baudelaire,whose poetry
displays "a large measureof consciousness"and reveals"a plan at workin
the composition"24not unlike, one may add, Poe's stories of "ratiocina-
tion." Benjamin regardsBaudelaireas the first modem artistand shows
how the shock-experienceof the crowdand the amorphousmassesin the
industrial cities has become constitutive for his work. In the twentieth
century, movementssuch as futurism,dadaismand surrealismbased their
aesthetic manifestos and artistic practices on the experience of shock,
intensified by the realityof war, industrialismand imperialism.Formally,
this new orientation manifested itself in the destructionof traditional
syntax and a disregardfor the rules of logic and empiricalobservation-
which is not quite what Benjaminhad in mind when he talked about the
most revolutionarykind of modem art, the film, whose arrivalhe explains
in the followingway: "Technologysubjectedthe humansenses to a train-
ing of a new kind. There came the day when a new and urgentneed for
stimuli was met by the film. In film, perceptionin the form of shockswas
established as a formal principle.That which detemines the rhythmof a
conveyor belt is the basis of rhythmin film."25Jump-cut,close-up, slow
motion and other technicalinnovationswere attemptsto exploit the expe-
rience of shock, by separatingcertainaspectsand detailsout of the stream
of events and alienatingtheir impression,therebymakingthem available
to conscious, criticalanalysis, similarto Brecht's techniqueof "epic the-
atre."
Whereas Beckett saw modem technologysolely as a destructiveforce,
Benjamin believed in its aestheticallyproductiveand politicallyliberating
potential. However, Benjamin's technological and aesthetic optimism,
which he inherited from the 1930s, is no longer justified today. The
historicaldevelopmenthas shown that it is not technologicalprogressand
concomitant aesthetic/culturalrevolutions per se that lead to political
liberation. The subjectionof the modem mass media to the forces of the
capitalisticmarket, which requiresthe continualproductionof commodi-
ties and assimilateseven the most radicaltheoreticaland artisticpractices,

24. Op. cit., p. 164.

25. Ibid.,p. 177.
170 Jan Bruck

clearly limits the political influenceof the modernwriteror artist.Benja-

min's theoretical position is in fact an ambiguousone: it forces him to
ascribe aesthetic- and political- liberationto a technologicalprogress
resultingfrom the same economicand social forceswhichat the same time
prevent that very liberation. This dilemma led Adorno, who insistently
criticisedBenjamin'sand Brecht'snaive optimism,to defendBeckett and
the modernistwritersagainstthe attacksfrom the Left and to espouse an
aesthetic practicewhich, ratherthan attemptingto intervenein the polit-
ical process, assumesa positionof total negationandwithdrawal,alwaysof
course in danger of being destroyed throughit. Beckett himself defined
this attitude in his essay on "Proust":"Theartistis active, but negatively,
shrinkingfrom the nullityof extracircumferential phenomena,drawninto
the core of the eddy." For Beckett, any attempt to break out of the
communicationaldilemma is futile and art remainsthereforenothingbut
"the apotheosis of solitude."26
Adorno's point needs to be taken seriously,althoughhe does fall into
the opposite extreme by placingBeckett and Kafkaabove Brechtand the
"committed" writers in the measure of their political import, and by
denying the relevanceof direct politicalinterventionto the artist.In view
of this it is necessaryto overcome the simplistic- and elitist - opposi-
tion between "modernism"and "realism,"avant-gardeand politicalart,
and to see the relationshipbetweenthemas a dialecticalone. Despite their
obvious differences,most modernistand realistliteratureand art sharean
antagonistic,negativerelationshipto the existingsocialandpoliticalorder,
and both draw their strengthand criticalpotentialfrom their relationship
to each other.27Explicitlypoliticalauthorsare not necessarilymore "com-
mitted" than absurdistwriters such as Kafka or Beckett, whose greater
politicalscepticismhas some justificationin a worldfacedwiththe threatof
destruction throughyet another- atomic war. And despite the need for
direct political action and intervention,it would be naive not to see the
constant danger of failure of the kind which Beckett's work expresses.
What is to be avoidedis a self-indulgentpessimismwhich,in the face of the
possible catastrophe,resignsitself to politicalinactivity.I do not thinkthat
Beckett's work is of this kind;I regardit ratheras a politicalact, a warning
of a danger of which we have to be aware.
The dilemma in which both Beckett and Benjaminfind themselvesin
relationto politicalrealityand the similaritiesas well as differencesin their

26. Op. cit., p. 164.

27. It is time that aesthetictheorymovedout of the enclosuresof the modernism-realism
debate, which has reifiedworksof art into fixedobjectsand aestheticpositionsinto political
dogmas, disregardingthe fact that artisticproduction,as well as theoreticalactivity,do not
exist in their own right, but as part of a dynamicprocessof communicationtakingplace
between texts and theiraudiencesand dependenton specifichistoricalsituations.It is, after
all, not only the work of art as such, but also our interpretationand the use we makeof it
which is politicallyreactionaryor progressive.
 Beckett,Benjaminand the ModernCrisisin Communication 171

theoretical position are revealed in their notion of history. For Beckett,

history is primarilya process of destruction:"There is no escape from
yesterdaybecauseyesterdayhas deformedus, or has been deformedby us.
Deformation has taken place. Yesterdayis not a milestonethat has been
passed, but a daystoneon the beaten trackof the years, and irredeemably
part of us, withinus, heavy and dangerous.We are not merelymoreweary
because of yesterday, we are other, no longer what we were before the
calamity of yesterday."28The destructiveexperience of war lurks also
behind Benjamin's work: historyoverwhelmsus in the form of catastro-
phes and confrontsus in ever new momentsof "emergency";the past has
to be struggled against and coped with all the time, and cannot be off-
loaded with a comfortableknowledgeof the future.29Both Beckett and
Benjamin relinquishthe traditionalconceptsof history:the idealisticbelief
in a gradualdevelopmenttowardsever greaterperfection,the positivistic
view of an evolution according to natural laws, and the dogma of a
necessarymovementtowardsan ideal goal. Being in the positionof Tanta-
lus (Beckett), we live, according to Benjamin, in a constant "state of
emergency," no longer certainof our future. It is not only the destructive
experience of war, but also the awarenessof the widersocial and political
crisis of mass-societywhich is responsiblefor the pessimisticaspects of
Beckett's and Benjamin's work. Both believe that bourgeois society is
faced with a fundamentalcrisis and is nearing its end. But whereas in
Beckett's work the breakdownof society and the crisisin communication
and aesthetic representationtake the form of a total negation, describing
its catastrophic effects without any indication of positive alternatives,
Benjamin, from the vantage point of his materialistphilosophy,regards
the crisis as a necessarystage in the historicaldevelopmentfromcapitalist
to proletariansociety, from literateto mass-mediaculture.He recognizes
the progressive potential of the mass-media for the liberation of the
individualfrom authorityand traditionand for the developmentof demo-
cratic forms of communication,no longer based upon auraticexperiences
but on criticalargumentand politicalconsciousness.This optimisticview is,
as we know better today, overshadowedby a fundamentaldilemmawithin
the political process:moder technologyand the mass-mediacannotfunc-
tion in a democraticway without political liberation,and politicallibera-
tion is impossible without the help of the new media. Both requireeach
other, and until the media have been changedfroman instrumentof social
control into a forum of collective decision-making,Beckett's vision of
crisis and destructionpresentsa seriouswarning:that the individualcould
be engulfed and communitiesdestroyedby the oppressiveand contradic-
tory forces of mass-society.

28. Ibid., p. 13.

29. See in particularthe "Theseson the Philosophyof History."