The Beckettian Cosmos

Abstract

Samuel Beckett’s initial interest in cosmology and the new physics may well have been prompted by Joyce’s interest in and readings on this subject. In Murphy’s Bed, Sighle Kennedy refers to Ellmann’s interviews with Beckett about Joyce which reveal their shared interest in astronomy. Beckett further remarked on ‘Joyce’s belief that a cosmic view of existence is essential to the writer of fiction’ (1971, pp. 196–7). These interviews date from 1953 and 1954, meaning that this scientific version of Joyce had stayed with Beckett for many years; in fact, it survived into the period in which he was writing ‘The Trilogy’ and perhaps beyond. Beckett’s own early aesthetic statements underpin a cosmological reading of his work and also suggest a Joycean influence: for example, in a review of Denis Devlin’s poetry from 1938 he wrote that ‘art is the sun, moon and stars of the mind, the whole mind’ (1984, p. 94). The repetition of ‘the mind, the whole mind’, tempts us to think that Beckett is really talking about Mind, his emphasis not just on the wider cosmos, but on a quasi-idealist version of the artistic process such as that popularised by Jeans and Eddington. A focus on Murphy leads us towards a consideration of idealist versions of both the mind and the universe. A recent study of Beckett’s library by Van Hulle and Nixon discusses his reading and annotations of Berkeley’s Commonplace Book, as well as notes from A New Theory of Vision and A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, which mainly mark and comment on issues of epistemology (Van Hulle and Nixon, 2013, pp. 133–7).