Oldal 50 [50]
SAMUEL BECKETT AND THE SINIC WORLD
Setting the precedent for Beckett’s transfer of “Chinese wisdom into Irish
wit,” Oscar Wilde wrote a review of Herbert Giles’s Chuang-Tzu: Mystic,
Moralist, and Social Reformer (1889) in 1890.73 Given that Beckett attended
the same school and university as Wilde and read Richard Ellmann’s biography
of the Irish writer, the notion that he had read Wilde’s enthusiastic review,
A Chinese Sage, is far from inconceivable.* Comparing Western philosophy
with early Eastern thought, Wilde writes: “In fact, Chuang Tzu may be said
to have summed up in himself almost every mood of European metaphysical
or mystical thought, from Heraclitus down to Hegel. There was something in
him ofthe Quietist also; and in his worship of Nothing he may be said to have
in some measure anticipated those strange dreamers of mediaeval days who,
like Tauler and Master Eckhart, adored the purum nihil and the Abyss.””°
This suggestive equation of Chuang-Tzu’s Taoist thought with “European
metaphysics,” mystical thought, and Quietism is one that Beckett, given his
interest in these schools of thought, is likely to have made.
Giles’s writings on Taoism and Chuang-Tzu’s conception of “the pure
men of old,” translated from the Zhuangzi, engaged Beckett, just as they had
Wilde, and played a crucial role in his philosophical return to Chinese, pre¬
Christian thought.”° The importance of Giles’s quotation from Chuang-Tzu,
a Taoist philosopher and follower of Lao-Tzu of the third and fourth centuries
B.C., to Beckett’s writing is worthy of substantial revaluation:
But what is a pure man? The pure men of old acted without calculation, not seeking
to secure results. They laid no plans. Therefore, failing, they had no cause for
regret; succeeding, no cause for congratulation. And thus they could scale heights
without fear; enter water without becoming wet, and fire without feeling hot.
The pure men of old slept without dream, and waked without anxiety. They ate
without discrimination, breathing deep breaths. For pure men draw breath from
their heels; the vulgar only from their throats.*’
In Dream, following a “hark back to the lit’ business,” Beckett’s meta-narrator
directly draws on this passage, “we live and learn, we draw breath from our
heels now, like a pure man, and we honour our Father, our Mother, and
For a more comprehensive study of Wilde’s review, see Joshua McCormack: From Chinese
Wisdom to Irish Wit: Zhuangzi and Oscar Wilde, Irish University Review, Vol. 37, No. 2
(Autumn - Winter, 2007), 302-321.
See Mark Nixon — Dirk Van Hulle: Samuel Beckett's Library, New York, Cambridge
University, 2013, 37.
> Oscar Wilde: A Chinese Sage, in Hesketh Pearson (ed.): Essays by Oscar Wilde, London,
Methuen, 1950, 287.
26 Giles: The Civilisation of China, 33.
Ibid., 33-34.; my emphasis.
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