Oldal 53 [53]
PATRICK ÁRMSTRONG
breath are again “strictly synchronised,” demonstrating the blending of
Manichaeism with the lasting imaginative influence of the deep breaths of
Chuang-Tzu’s pure men.** In That Time, John Pilling and James Knowlson
suggest that the effect of the pauses in which the Listener opens his eyes and
audibly breathes “is to refocus attention on the somewhat harrowing physical
actuality of the old man’s breathing presence.”“* Through this exploration of
Beckett’s engagement with the Taoist idea of a “pure man,” as one who draws
“deep breaths,” however, this interpretation can be countered. If the breaths
are from the figure’s “throat,” as opposed to his “heels,” then he is indeed a
“vulgar” figure, whose “physical actuality” may be interpreted as “harrowing”;
however, as the breath is deliberately rendered “audible,” it seems more likely
that it is “deep” and from the “heels,” rendering the Listener an “old white”
representation of a pure man."
In another passage from Giles that further connects Beckett’s interest in
breathing to early Chinese philosophy, Taoism is explained as a way of life
that “professes to teach the art of extending life”:
This art would probably go some way towards extending life under any
circumstances, for it consists chiefly in deep and regular breathing [...] and finally,
as borrowed from the Buddhists, in remaining motionless for some hours a day,
the eyes shut, and the mind abstracted as much as possible from all surrounding
influences.
In That Time, Beckett dramatizes the “art of extending life,” as the “deep
and regular” breaths are made audible and the figure remains motionless,
though not entirely “abstracted.” The “motionless” nature of the protagonist
is explained by Beckett’s Massonic shift towards the “Chinese esthetic” of
“inner emptiness.” If That Time is in effect a “re-run” of Krapp’s Last Tape
“without the props,” then it is so because of Beckett’s gradual movement
towards an aesthetics of contraction and emptiness. Prefiguring the ending
of Catastrophe, the Listener’s ambiguous closing smile interrupts the former
stillness, which the voice describes as “not a sound only the old breath and the
leaves turning,” with a memorable final gesture.”
As a philosopher who engaged with, and assimilated into his thinking,
both Eastern and Western religion, Arthur Schopenhauer was also crucial
to the formation of Beckett as a writer. In particular, the writings on Eastern
#3 Beckett: Breath, in The Complete Dramatic Works, 371.
* James Knowlson — John Pilling: Frescoes of the Skull, The Later Prose and Drama of Samuel
Beckett, London, John Calder, 1979, 208.
15 Beckett: That Time, 388.
16 Giles: The Civilisation of China, 33.
17 Beckett: That Time, 395.