The Poetics of Voice in Beckett’s Company

Abstract

It is curious that a novella such as Company, one of Beckett’s lastprose works, would get such limited attention. Perhaps that isbecause of the autobiographical nature of the piece or because itis too short or because most of his prose writing tends to be subsumedby his dramatic pieces. Yet Company is a rather startling bitof prose and the poetics of the piece, especially in relation to ‘voice’,are certainly as dynamic as any of Beckett’s other prose writing.The structure of Company is simple, the prose, laconic: in fewerthan twelve-thousand words there are 58 paragraphs in 56 pages,with extra-wide margins and numerous gaps of paragraphicalwhite space, in which he presents a microbiography of the narrator’slife. The paragraphs seem to follow two forms: a bit more thanthree dozen, 42 to be exact, tell about a figure ‘lying on his back inthe dark’ and 15 relate to the microbiography. The man is silentand is referred to as the listener or hearer; he is mute while thevoices he hears compete for a kind of mental domination. But thebest point of departure for a study of Beckett’s poetics of voice inCompany is to refer to Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit in whichhe says: ‘The expression that there is nothing to express, nothingwith which to express, nothing from which to express, no power toexpress, together with the obligation to express’ (Beckett, ThreeDialogues, p. 103). The operative word here is ‘expression’, the actof transforming ideas into words and the words are mediated byvoice, voice rendered. ‘The voice has been dramatic since itsappearance in Molloy, and the possibilities of staging it wereenhanced in 1965 when Beckett assisted two friends in such anenterprise’ (Acheson, p. 193).Beckett’s dramatic pieces have, by and large, been the mostsalient examples of voice in his oeuvre and the play, Not I, possiblythe most salient example of the salient examples. It is worth payingattention to what Beckett has done in Not I as a kind of prelude towhat he does in Company. If one looks at the opening note .