“Sameness and Otherness: A Synchronic and Analytical Approach to the Reception of Samuel Beckett’s and Franz Kafka’s Short Prose in Romania.”
Introduction
Samuel Beckett’s work, having been translated into twenty languages, naturally prompted an overview of the extent to which the writer’s work was subjected to different acts of criticism and translations in Romania. In analyzing the technique employed by both Beckett and Kafka, it became clearer that it was the organization of the piece, the clarity of “details”, the control, the variety of the sentence structure, the word choice, the consistency and the appropriateness of tone that were to be extensively pondered upon. The reception of Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka in Romania during 1963-1993 took the form of a contrastive pattern, an astonishing “otherness” with a more prolific output in the case of Samuel Beckett’s reception outside Romania and Franz Kafka’s reception in Romania. This pattern proves to be worthy of an in-depth analysis hopefully leading to a better insight into the political, economic and even geographic influences at a specific time of transient social turmoil in Romania.
In his works Samuel Beckett presents, according to Eugen Ionescu, the futility and absurdity of the human condition. He does not depict single destinies but tends to generalize the destiny of the individual. With him, the totality of the human condition is the concrete reality that comes to be questioned, not the abstract “man” of a certain society. Therefore, Beckett presents several relations between human beings in order to meaningfully render man’s struggle for existence and affection in a “meaningless” world. To what extent this intent is accomplished in the Romanian reception of Beckett’s work, grounded as it is within the universal validity of the human condition and destiny, becomes the main task of the present study. The author’s goals are thereby limited to the ultimate truths of existence and the metaphysical implication of the narrative discourse.
Among the plenteousness of his short-prose writings “The End” could be regarded as a representative piece of introduction to his entire short-prose creation.2 The literary editor John Banville wrote that “First Love” is “the most nearly perfect short story ever written”.3 However, the entire short-prose was omitted from representative books such as William Trevor’s The Oxford Book of Irish Short Stories (1989). Bearing in mind what the master of the Irish short story Frank O’Connor stated, that “there is something in the short story at its most characteristic-something we do not often find in the novel-an intense awareness of human loneliness,“(O’Connor, in Gontarski 11) the choice for examination of this short form of fiction proved rewarding. However, Beckett’s style was considered to be precise and cold, resembling the denseness and thickness of poetry.
S.E. Gontarski, Professor at Florida State University, explains that as Beckett’s creative roots are deeply immersed in the Irish tradition of story telling and his cherishing of the “immediacy of the spoken word”, especially that of the seanchai, became evident, he never abandoned the pervasive way of storytelling although his work proved mostly reflective, experimental and mannered. Nevertheless, it was with this “derivative” short prose that he started his literary career in the magazine transition edited by Eugene Jolas.4 This opportunity proved to be Beckett’s literary launching point. However, this fact did not endorse his international recognition. In spite of the hardships he faced in getting his writings sold, he became prolific and utterly involved in the process of producing literary material.
In the analysis undertaken, we have assumed that the more known the two authors’ work became to the Romanian reading public, the more this fact would be reflected in the remaking of the creative act, i.e. in the frequency of translations of the original work. This is due to the fact that the act of translation becomes a creation process in its turn and therefore it must reiterate the entire creation act as accurately as possible. Translations proved thus inexhaustible resources for an in-depth acquaintance with the rich literary landscapes created by the two writers, and provided inspirational material for a larger literary comprehension. We mention here only a few very accomplished translations of the author’s works: “Fără“ (Lessness),”Bătaia în poartă“(The Knock at the Gate)“,”Renunţă“(Give It Up).
Samuel Beckett’s main aim was to free the word from its immediate meaning and to reach an artistic form that was to have a direct reference to nothingness. His “literature of the unword” was to resemble music, ballet and painting, and therefore to be freed from concrete meaning. This break with conventional techniques such as representation, succession, description, setting and character was to become innovative and revolutionary. It is in this siege upon the unword that Samuel Beckett differs from Joyce who relentlessly relied on the power of the word itself:
Beckett’s explicit desire to turn his back on Joyce’s aesthetic, while always continuing to express his admiration for him, largely explains why critics, fixing on the extravagance of the one and reserve of the other have been prevented from making much progress in relating the two oeuvres to one another.(Casanova 95-96)
While the Romanian criticism and translations of Kafka gained a particular status, in Beckett’s case the body of Romanian literary criticism is highly misleading, in that political influence gained an uppermost importance and left its mark on the critical attitude that was to become pervasively positive in Kafka’s case and negatively biased in Beckett’s case. Fawning versus bigotry thus became an interesting phenomenon that sometimes reached outrageous proportions. It is one aim of the current study to debate on the validity of the critical statements up to the fall of communism.
A brief look at the definition of the concept of hermeneutics helps in grasping the manner in which Beckett’s and Kafka’s oeuvre might be approached:
The circle is that movement from a guess at the whole meaning of a work to an analysis of parts in relation to the whole followed by a return to a modified understanding of ‘the whole’ of the work. It embodies the belief that part and whole are interdependent and have some necessary organic relationship. In this version of interpretation the historical gap which separates a literary work from critic or reader is a negative feature to be overcome by an oscillating movement between historical reconstructions on the one hand and divinatory acts of empathy... 5 (Cuddon, 377)
1 This process developed successfully in Kafka’s case, while with Beckett it proved rather a hard and tiresome task since his post-war novels were a cause of highly divergent opinions.
2 See Christopher Rick’s remark in: Samuel Beckett. The Complete Short Prose. 1929-1989. (New York: Grove Press. Ed.S.E.Gontarski. 1995) 9.
3 See ibidem: 9.
4 See ibidem: 9.
5 See Cuddon’s full definition of hermeneutic reception at op.cit.: 377.
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