Chaos in Malone Dies

While perusing Malone Dies I was so excited to come upon a quote from John Milton’s Paradise Lost! Before finding this I wasn’t sure if Beckett even quoted other authors, and that I had the wherewithal to register a quote he might actually use was a nice and shocking surprise. (Then again it is Milton, and a popular line, but I refuse to let that detract from my glory). Oh Mr.Beckett, you don’t empty everything out.

Found on page 208, “Can it be Easter Week? Thus with the year Seasons return. If it can, could not this song I have just heard, and which frankly is not yet quite stilled within me, could not this song have simply been to the honour and glory of him who was first to rise from the dead, to him who saved me, twenty centuries in advance? Did I say the first? The final bawl lends colour to this view.”

And in Paradise Lost:

“Thus with the year/ Seasons return, but not to me returns/ Day, or the sweet approach of ev’n or morn,/ Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose,/ Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine.”

Not only did I connect the imagery of darkness (for in this particular passage Satan is describing the enveloping and endless dark of Chaos as he ascends to earth from the underworld), but the hopelessness accompanying it. Satan feels as though he will never escape it, that life will continue in the light and he will be eternally, sense-lessly roaming the in-between. In Malone Dies, a little further up the same page, Malone says “Yes. it is quite dark. I can see nothing.” and goes on to describe the distortion of his senses, his hearing in particular. Satan feels as though the dark will never end, while Malone feels it will never envelope him fully, ending his misery, and completing the process of decay as he wishes. Kind of an interesting comparison if you ask me.

I realize there’s also a Jesus connection in there somewhere, with Malone talking of Easter Week, and Paradise Lost dealing wholly with the Satan, God, Son of God, and Mankind. But I won’t go into that, because I find it far less interesting than the previous comparison:)