Below, William Empson writes to Francis Doherty, a scholar specializing in the work of Samuel Beckett. Empson finds fault with Doherty’s book-length treatment of his subject, denouncing the Beckett’s “Artful-Dodger glee” and unwarranted “despair,” which he attributes to Irish Catholicism and its God—”the most evil God yet invented.”
December 7, 1971, London
I write my answer a day after your gift arrived; it took seven weeks.
My dear Doherty,
Thank you so much for your kind letter and the gift of your book [Samuel Beckett, 1971]. I realise that I must try to be abreast of the modern world now that I am superannuated, and am glad of any help in my pathetic attempts. But it is generally found that the capacity to appreciate modern work is one of the first things to go; in fact, whenever an old buffer is observed giving a prize to a young hopeful (a standard practice) one must reflect that, unless someone young enough has advised the buffer, he is certain to have picked on the wrong hopeful. I will say what occurs to me about Beckett and your sober graceful book on him, but I speak as a colleague in another Department might do.
Some while ago I was given the paperback of All that Fall as a Christmas present, and was told the basic plot to encourage me to read it; a new book then. What I was told sounded to me artificially horrible, so I did not read it. An almost impotent blind man is put onto a train, to be taken out by his loving relations when he reaches the right station, but he exposes his sex and tries to masturbate before a female whose voice sounds to him sympathetic, not realising that this is a child, who throws herself in horror out of the window of the train and somehow manages to get under its wheels, so that she is killed. Such is the story, and it would be worth asking the police records of England and Ireland, and France I suppose, whether they find it familiar. I think that Beckett was just trying to think of something really nasty to foist on the BBC. An Artful-Dodger glee was all that he really felt about his plot. Your account has a beautiful cool detached purity, but surely this is done at the cost of leaving out the whole point.
Then again, I liked (in a way) and certainly admired the London production of Waiting for Godot. It was said to be much more cosy and human than the Paris one, but Beckett is a very intelligent man and probably allowed nature to take its course. Your letter speaks of a vague memory of something I had said about disliking Beckett. I have a specific memory of you here, but these things are always liable to be wrong. I had written to the TLS [on 30 March 1956] saying that the play was about the effects of the fierce religious education still prevalent in Ireland, which tells the children that life becomes worthless if they stop believing in God, and they have nothing to keep them from crime, so when they grow up and discover that the Christian God is the wickedest devil ever invented they behave like a dog on the road with its back broken by a motorcar; and I said that this is a very unfair way to treat a child. I was very surprised when you came up and told me (having read my letter) that you agreed that this was an unfair method of education. It struck me that no other Roman Catholic would have made this generous admission; but later on I found that Beckett was brought up as a Protestant (which of course would make no difference to the Irish insistence on the most evil features of the religion), and then I am afraid I presumed you must have known he was a Protestant when you spoke to me. I am rather sorry now to hear you have forgotten all about it. Your report of his remarks about his childhood religious teaching and reactions does not really alter the position; he had religious feelings at his first communion, and it stuck in his head that his ‘brother and mother got no value from their religion when they died’. God had cheated the family somehow, and it was an excuse for him—this emerges even when he tries to debunk the idea.
Very likely his work for the French resistance brought grim experiences; and, not long after, he was willing to marry Joyce’s daughter, on the theory that a bit of sex would keep her from going mad; he was saved from the marriage only because she became plainly too mad, and we are not encouraged to think that his advances drove her over the edge, but he would be sensitive enough to suspect it. Joyce himself, though basically kind, would be an exasperating tyrant to work for. I am trying to list the excuses for despair of young Beckett, and it strikes me that half the population of the world had much greater ones. The truth is, he was surrounded with what he wanted, plenty to refuse to write about in the heart of the great luxury-centre, where his poutings and pretences of contempt for all creation were each of them sure to be received with a great roar of applause. I think him a circus animal. It is much to his credit that, when kidnapped by the Irish a few years ago on St Patrick’s Night, he cried like a horse on peat whisky at the Irish Club of Paris; it would have been out of character to refuse.
Your book is reticent, and I estimate only about 45,000 words; I wonder whether you reduced the words to make it cheaper; publishing is very queer now. But clearly reticence is a Roman Catholic ploy here; what you want to tell the children is that everybody feels absolutely miserable unless they worship the God
who could be brought by the offer of having his son tortured to death to let off mankind from Hell in exchange; but he ratted on the bargain so completely that the vast majority of mankind will go to eternal torture all the same; and the tiny remnant who escape to Heaven are condemned to spend their whole time in gloating over the tortures in Hell of those they loved on earth, meanwhile incessantly praising God for his mercy.
I indent it hoping to win your attention. This is the most evil God yet invented, which means that his worshippers are under great temptation to imitate his evil. And the present Pope is demanding the destruction of all mankind, by forcing them to breed to the point of famine—offering no reason whatever (as he cannot offer any religious one) except the snobbish one that ‘human dignity’ demands it. No wonder any propaganda for it has to be reticent.
I think it dreadful, my dear fellow, that a man of your ability has to let himself be hamstrung by such gross farcical evil.
Very affectionately
William Empson
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