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SAMUEL BECKETT AND THE SINIC WORLD
thought in The World as Will and Idea (1818), which Beckett read closely in
1930 and throughout his lifetime, influenced his breadth and understanding
of philosophy. Beckett appreciated Schopenhauer as a philosopher who could
be read as a poet, and studied his work for an “intellectual justification of
unhappiness” rather than “philosophy.” This “justification,” however, drew
heavily on Eastern philosophy and the kind of “medieval Buddhist thinking”
that Kanze belatedly observed in Waiting for Godot. Dorothea Dauer has
convincingly shown that “each point of Buddhist philosophy finds its
counterpart bearing a more or less similar connotation in the system of this
German philosopher.’ That Time bears the faint imprint of Schopenhauer’s
comparative study of religion, as the “old Chinaman” and “Christ” are
syntactically unified, with the voice rewinding through history, from
“childhood” to the “womb” to “that old Chinaman.”*° This reference to Lao¬
Tzu, which first appears in the margin of the fourth draft, not only expands
the temporal range of the play, but also importantly demonstrates a conscious
reference to a pre-Christian, philosophical figure from the East."
The publication of Samuel Beckett’s Library (2013) shows that Beckett
owned and read Olga Plümacher’s Der Pessimismus, an “interleaved” copy
“filled with translations and summaries” that builds on Schopenhauer’s
study of comparative religion.” Mark Nixon describes it as “one of the most
surprising books in Beckett’s extant library.”°? Given Beckett’s interest in
Lao-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu, however, it is not in fact overly surprising that in
early 1938 he took an interest in the first chapter titled “Der Pessimismus
im Brahmanismus und Buddhaismus.”** This opening section distinguishes
“being” from “that which should or need not be,” before linking the two
religions [Brahmanism and Buddhism] with pessimism, based on the idea that
existence is worse than non-existence. In his copy of Pliimacher, it appears
that Beckett underlined the word “Nichtsein,” or non-existence, indicating an
interest in the German philosopher’s claim that it is a preferable condition to
existence, whilst also further suggesting his engagement with the concept of
non-being that is fundamental to much early Eastern metaphysical thought.
These philosophical sources could lead to an alternative interpretation of the
18 Samuel Beckett: The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Vol. 1, Cambridge, Cambridge University,
2009, 33.
® Dorothea Dauer: Schopenhauer as Transmitter of Buddhist Ideas, Berne, Lang, 1969, 35.
50 Beckett: That Time, 390.
5! Beckett: That Time, MS 1477/4, Beckett Manuscript Collection at the University of Reading.
52 Nixon: Beckett’s Library, 152.
58 Ibid., 151.
54 Olga Plümacher: Der Pessimismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, Heidelberg, Georg
Weiss Verlag, 1888, 18-27.
55 Nixon: Beckett’s Library, 154.