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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, preChristian 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. «49 «
