memory is the belly of the mind

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"MEMORY IS THE BELLY OF THE MIND": Augustine's Concept of Memory in Beckett Author(s): Michiko Tsushima Source: Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd'hui, Vol. 19, Borderless Beckett / Beckett sans

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MEMORY IS THE BELLY OF THE MIND": Augustine's Concept of Memory in Beckett

Michiko Tsushima

It is not only Proustian memory but also Augustinian memory that is important in understanding memory in Beckett. In his early period Beckett showed an interest in Augustinian memory, especially the idea that memory is a stomach for the mind, and remembering is analogous to rumination. This article shows how this aspect of Augustinian memory is evoked in Krapp's Last Tape and How It Is. Further it develops an understanding of Beckettian memory as an externalized container of the past (e.g., a tape-recorder and a sack) and dis cusses it in relation to Anzieu's concept of "the Skin Ego" as a psychical con tainer.

1. Introduction The theme of memory in Beckett's work has often been discussed in relation to the idea of memory in Proust. The "involuntary memory" that Beckett discusses in his book on Proust has been especially stressed. In Proust, Beckett observes that unlike "voluntary memory,"

which is based on our will and intelligence, "involuntary memory" can evoke the past in its fullness through some immediate and fortuitous act of perception that is related to bodily perception. In the same way that the "long-forgotten taste of a madeleine steeped in an infusion of tea"

transports the narrator to a whole lost paradise of childhood in Proust, bodily perception transports Beckettian characters to their past and enables them to relive their past.

Yet it is not only Proustian memory but also Augustinian memory that is important to understanding memory in Beckett's work. In

Augustine, that which grounds the self is found not in reason or the intellect but in the memory, or to be more concrete, in the process of

searching for God through the act of remembrance. Similarly, in Beckett (as well as in Proust), the basis of subjectivity is found in the memory. Memory and life are inseparable in both Augustine and Beckett. Here we should also note that the aspect of Augustinian mem

ory that attracted Beckett was not necessarily related to Augustine's


124 Michiko Tsushima

philosophical beliefs. Rather, it seems that, for Beckett, Augustine's work, especially the Confessions, is a kind of source from which he takes interesting phrases and sentences that he later transforms and

incorporates into his own work. We recall Beckett's interest in "the

shape of ideas" in the sentence he presumed to be by Augustine: "Do not despair; one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume; one of the thieves was damned" (see Cronin, 232).

In this article I would like to focus on two aspects of Augustinian thought that interested Beckett: namely, (1) Augustine's idea that

memory is different from the mind, and (2) his idea that memory is a stomach for the mind, and the act of remembering resembles that of

ruminating, or chewing food over again.1 I will look at Krapp's Last

Tape in terms of both of these ideas and How It Is in terms of the sec ond idea.

2. Beckett's Interest in Augustinian Memory According to Knowlson, before writing Dream of Fair to Middling Women, Beckett "immersed himself deeply in the Confessions of St.

Augustine" and used many quotations from this work in his novel

(Knowlson, 114). In a letter to MacGreevy of 1931, Beckett described himself as "phrase-hunting in St. Augustine." He read the Confessions in the translation of E.B. Pusey, and from time to time consulted the Latin original (See Beckett 1999, 11). In the Dream notebook, the notebook that he kept between 1930 and 1932, we find many quotations from the Confessions. The most relevant to our discussion is the follow

ing:

[1] Mind not memory: When with joy I remember my past sorrow, the mind hath

joy, the memory hath sorrow; the mind upon the joyfulness which is in it, is joyful, yet the memory upon the sadness which is in it, is not sad. ... The memory is the belly [ticked] of the mind & joy & sadness the sweet and bitter food; which, when committed to the

memory, are, as it were, passed into the belly, where they may be

stowed, but cannot taste.

(Augustine, qtd. in Beckett 1999, 25-26)

This is a famous passage from book 10, chapter 14, of The Confessions. As the phrases underlined by Beckett suggest, he pays attention to two

aspects of memory described by Augustine. First, we see that Beckett is


Augustine's Concept of Memory in Beckett 125

interested in the idea that the memory is different from the mind. While the mind is affected by what is in it, the memory is not affected by what is in it. Indeed, Beckett modifies the first half of the quote and incorpo rates it into Dream of Fair to Middling Women and More Pricks than Kicks (81):

After a moment's hesitation he [Belacqua] stated his absurd di lemma as follows: 'When with indifference I remember my past sorrow, my mind has indifference, my memory has sorrow. The

mind, upon the indifference which is in it, in indifferent; yet the memory, upon the sadness which is in it, is not sad.' 'Da capo,' said the Alba. 'When with indifference I remember my past sor row [...].

(1992, 235-36)

Apparently, what is important for Beckett is that memory is not af fected by what is contained in it; the memory is regarded as something insensitive or inhuman like a machine.

Secondly, Beckett pays attention to Augustine's idea that the

memory is a stomach for the mind. Augustine writes, "we might say that the memory is a sort of stomach for the mind, and that joy or sad ness are like sweet or bitter food" (220). Memory is considered to be a

container that stores food. Furthermore, Augustine points out the simi

larity between the acts of remembering and mminating: "Perhaps these emotions [desire, joy, fear, and sorrow] are brought forward from the

memory by the act of remembering in the same way as cattle bring up food from the stomach when they chew the cud." He depicts the act of

remembering as that of "chewing the cud," of 'chewing over' what is stored in memory (221). Thus the Dream notebook shows that Beckett

was interested in at least two aspects of memory presented in the Con

fessions.

3. 'Chewing the Cud' in Krapp's Last Tape The two aspects of Augustinian memory that we have discussed are

evoked in Krapp's Last Tape. In this play, which is set in "Krapp's den," a dark place like a cave, a "wearish old man" who is near death

tries to record his retrospective of the year on his sixty-ninth birthday, following the custom that he has continued for many years. Before he starts recording, he listens to the tape that he recorded thirty years be

fore. He hears the voice of his younger self who had just turned thirty



nine. On tape we hear Krapp-at-39 says that he has just been listening to the tape of a still earlier Krapp that was recorded at least ten or twelve years earlier.

On the stage, the audience sees Krapp-at-69 and a tape recorder with reels of tapes. We could say that the former corresponds to the mind and the latter to the memory in Augustine. Krapp, the character who appears on the stage is old and weak. Yet despite his physical limi

tations, he expresses emotions unrestrainedly; the audience sees him

cursing, smiling, laughing, or showing impatience while listening to his voice on tape. In contrast, the tape recorder is insensitive and inhuman, although it is faithful in the sense that it can record and store any words

together with pauses, nuance, intonation, and rhythm. It is a memory machine which does not have any emotion. In it past emotions and sen sations are neutralized, or in Augustine's words, they "lose taste." Thus

we could say that the difference between Krapp-at-69 and the tape recorder with its reels of tapes corresponds to the difference between

mind and memory in Augustine. The other aspect of Augustinian memory that interested Beckett is

that memory is a stomach for the mind, and the act of remembering is

analogous to the act of ruminating. In the same way that Augustine regards memory as a stomach that contains past emotions, Krapp's Last

Tape presents memory as a tape recorder with reels of tapes, that is, as a container which holds past sensations and images. And Krapp's act of

listening to his past voice and remembering his past moments can be seen as the act of ruminating. In listening to his past voice, he reflects on his past experiences such as sitting outside by the canal watching his mother's window during her dying days, seeing a vision on a memora ble night in March at the end of the jetty, and having his last love affair in a punt drifting in a lake before agreeing to end the relationship. Thus

we see the subject who 'chews on' the images of past moments, in other words, the subject who reexperiences past moments retained in his memory.

In this regard, it is important to note that this play begins with Krapp's act of taking out a large banana from a drawer of the table, peeling it and eating it meditatively while pacing to and fro at the edge of the stage. This act of eating a banana suggests that the act of chewing and that of remembering the past are inseparable from each other.

Krapp's act of eating a banana at the beginning of the play can be con sidered as a kind of switch that switches Krapp to a mode of reliving the past. In this mode, he can be liberated from the things in the present,



from the everyday with its depressing realities. Indeed after eating the

banana, Krapp starts preparing to listen to the tape of his past. Uttering the word 'spool' with relish and a smile, he starts poking at the boxes and picks up box three, and opening it, peers at the reels inside. Then he takes out spool five and peers at it, and loads it on the tape recorder and rubs his hands in anticipation. It is as if he were about to taste some food. This scene where hearing, taste, touch, and sight are interestingly

mingled with each other indicates the analogy between remembering and chewing the cud.

This striking image of eating a banana is repeated in the play, for example, when the voice of Krapp-at-39 says he has just eaten three bananas in his den. The play repeats Krapp's movement of retailing to his den, eating bananas, listening to the tape, and recollecting the past. But as Krapp treads on the skin of the banana, slips, and nearly falls at the beginning of the play, this state of indulgence in recollection sym bolized by the act of eating bananas is soon destroyed. He is forced to face his present self who is in complete solitude, misery, and despair.

If we consider that the act of eating is a bodily act, the act of re membering, which is inseparable from that of eating in Krapp's Last

Tape, can also be regarded as a bodily act. Remembering takes place in the body, or to be more specific, in the weak and deteriorating body of

Krapp-at-69, the character who physically exists on stage. As Ulrika Maude observes, "what is distinctly Beckettian about the memories is the plainly corporeal nature of the recollections," and, "the past is sedimented in the body itself (119), so too the act of remembering or ruminating past moments in Krapp's Last Tape involves bodily senses,

especially touch, taste, and hearing. Indeed, Krapp's Last Tape is full of

bodily movements involving tactile sensations which are inseparable from the act of remembering; for instance, fumbling in the pockets, feeling about inside the drawer, stroking the banana, rubbing his hands,

moving his lips without uttering any sound, touching the banana in the pocket, and so on.

4. Fragmentary Memories in the Sack in How It Is We have seen how in Krapp's Last Tape two aspects of Augustinian memory that Beckett paid attention to in his Dream notebook are evoked. In How It Is, Augustinian memory as a stomach that contains

food is found in the image of the sack the man crawling through the mud and the dark carries with him.



How It Is consists of three parts. In part 1 the man takes a journey towards Pirn. Finding the sack just after he starts his journey, he de scribes it as follows: "the sack sole good sole possession coal-sack to the feel small or medium five stone six stone wet jute I clutch it" (8).

During his journey, he crawls dragging the sack, which contains tinned

fish, such as herring, prawns, and sardines, and a tin-opener. Also he murmurs about his world and the fragmentary memories of life in the

light above as he hears it uttered by a voice within him. He can catch what is said inside him in fragments and murmur it forth only when his panting stops. This internal voice was said to be once an external voice heard "quaqua on all sides."

Before discussing the relation between the sack and memory in How It Is, we should note that the character crawling in the mud and dark is different from Krapp: whereas Krapp can be regarded as an individual subject who has memories of his past and recollects them, the character in How It Is cannot be considered as an individual subject. He is not really differentiated from the maternal mud in which he lies and crawls; the mud, which is depicted as having the "warmth of pri meval mud" (11), fills his mouth and engulfs him. Existing either not yet or no longer, he cannot be considered to be a subject with an indi vidual memory. Indeed, in one fragment, talking about the image of a woman (perhaps the mother) who sits watching the man (or boy) work

ing at his table, he says that it is neither a dream nor a memory: "that's all it wasn't a dream I didn't dream that nor a memory I haven't been

given memories this time it was an image the kind I see sometimes see in the mud part one sometimes saw" (11). All he does is quote or repeat obscure, fragmentary words heard within him. These internal words concern the previous life in the light, a life before this one, as well as his present life.

In returning to the motif of the sack in How It Is, we can say that the sack recalls Augustine's memory as a stomach where food is stored. In this text, at one level the sack is described as something that contains tinned food and a tin-opener, but at another level, it is presented as a container of images, episodes, and scenes of his life in the light above

ground. We could say that exactly like a herring and a prawn in the sack that are in "the tins in the depths of the sack hermetically under vacuum [...] for ever sealed" (92), the images of the past life in the light are "hermetically under vacuum [...] for ever sealed" in the tins stored in the sack.



To put it in another way, in How It Is we see a parallel between

eating the tinned food and recollecting the images of the man's life in the light. During the journey in the mud in part 1, the man opens tins

with the tin-opener and eats the food they contain. He also tells us of the fragmentary memories of his life in the light above, in other words, he quotes or repeats what the voice within him says: "past moments old dreams back again [...] memories I say them as I hear them murmur them in the mud" (7). The fragmentary memories of the past that the

man quotes take on the form of images. These images of his previous life appear and disappear on the screen of mud. If we think that rumina tion involves bringing back to the mouth what is contained in the stom ach and reexperiencing it, this act of repeating the fragmentary words resembles the act of ruminating. What was once heard outside is inter

nalized, and the man repeats the words as he hears them inside himself and reexperiences these internal words in the form of images. Thus the existence of the sack in How It Is involves the act of ruminating on the past.

This sack further reminds us of Winnie's bag in Happy Days. The bag is Winnie's sole possession and contains her daily necessities. On the stage she repeats taking them out, using them, and putting them back. In the same manner as Winnie takes out various daily necessities from her bag, she quotes famous lines from classical literature that she remembers imperfectly. At a metaphorical level we can think that Win nie's bag contains words of the past and her act of recollecting them is

analogous to that of ruminating. To return to How It Is, it is important to note that the sack is said

to be indispensable to the life of the man crawling in the mud. Like the mud, it is something that keeps him going. The man murmurs, "the sack

my life that I never let go [...]" (35). We often find him clasping the sack to his belly with his knees drawn up and his back bent in a hoop: "knees drawn up back bent in a hoop I clasp the sack to my belly I see me now on my side I clutch it the sack we're talking of the sack with one hand behind my back I slip it under my head without letting it go I never let it go" (10). This posture reminds us of that of a fetus in the mother's womb. The sack is described as having several uses. It is used as a larder, a pillow for the head, a friend to turn to, a thing to embrace, and a surface to cover with kisses. But there are occasions when it is said to be something far more than these things. In one fragment it is said that the sack is something to cling to, in the same way as the man

"who falls out of the window" "clutches [...] the window-sill" (66). The



importance of the sack, the object that we cling to, goes beyond its use

fulness. The only thing that is sustaining the life of the crawler, the sack - this container of fragmentary memories

- is also the only thing that remains when everything else is gone (105).

5. The Externalized Container and "the Skin Ego" We have seen Augustine's concept of memory being evoked in Krapp's Last Tape and How It Is. In particular, his idea of memory as a stomach for the mind, that is to say, the memory as a container of the past is found in both works. However, whereas in Augustine the memory is located inside the self, in Beckett the memory as a container of the past is brought outside the self and thus externalized. In Krapp's Last Tape, the memory appears on the stage as a tape recorder with reels of tapes; it becomes a machine that can be seen, heard, and touched by the actor and seen and heard by the audience. In How It Is, the memory is sym bolized as the sack that the man carries with himself. We can consider the tape recorder or the sack not merely as an external thing but as a

part of the self, as an externalized form of what is inside the self. To be more precise, it is an externalized form of a mental image of memory.

Dicker Anzieu's concept of "the Skin Ego," in particular its con

taining function, can help us understand such an image of memory. Anzieu defines "the Skin Ego" as "a mental image of which the Ego of the child makes use during the early phases of its development to repre sent itself as an Ego containing psychical contents, on the basis of its

experience of the surface of the body" (40). For Anzieu, one of the seven functions of "the Skin Ego" is "the containing function." In this

function, the young child has a mental representation of itself as a psy chical container, a psychical envelope, or a containing sac; it is called "the sac Skin Ego" (107).2 Writing that "The sensation/image of the skin as sac is awakened, in the very young infant, by the attention to its

bodily needs it receives from its mother," Anzieu explains that the men tal representation of "the Skin Ego" originates from the interplay be tween the mother's body and the infant's (101). And, referring to Rene

Kaes's view, Anzieu says one aspect of this function is that the con tainer forms "a passive receptacle where the baby may store its sensa

tions/images/affects, which in this way, are neutralized and preserved" (101). Thus Anzieu points out the existence of an archaic topology in

which the Ego of the young child becomes aware of the existence of itself and acquires a mental representation of the skin as the sac which contains and retains psychical contents.



If we look at memory in Krapp's Last Tape and How It Is in light of "the Skin Ego," we might be able to say that the memory as the con tainer of the past corresponds to "the sac Skin Ego," a mental represen tation of an Ego as a psychical container. In this sense, the tape recorder in Krapp' Last Tape or the sack in How It Is should not be considered

merely as things that are external to the human being. They could be

regarded as something like the mental representation of an Ego as the sac or a psychical container. In Beckett, the psychical container goes outside of the human being and reveals itself as a tangible thing that contains past images. The memory located inside the body in what

Augustine termed "a stomach for the mind" is placed outside the body. In this regard, we could say that the memory shown as a container of the past in Beckett transgresses the boundary separating interior and exterior. Significantly, in Krapp's Last Tape and How It Is, this con tainer of past images is presented as the sole possession of Beckett's characters and the only thing that sustains their lives.

Notes

1. For a discussion of Augustine's theory of memory, see, for example, Bourke (142-65), O'Connell (120-34), Rist (73-85), and Teske (148-58).

2. The idea of the psychical container in Anzieu comes from Wilfred Ru

precht Bion who was Beckett's analyst at the Tavistock Clinic. See, for in

stance, Anzieu, 38-39, 101.

Works Cited

Anzieu, Didier, The Skin Ego, trans. Chris Turner (New Haven: Yale UP, 1989).

Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961).

Beckett, Samuel, Proust (London: Chatto & Windus, 1931). -, Happy Days (New York: Grove, 1961). -, How It Is (New York: Grove, 1964). -, More Pricks than Kicks (New York: Grove, 1972). -, Krapp's Last Tape, in The Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (New

York: Grove, 1984), 53-63. -, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, ed. Eoin O'Brien and Edith Fournier

(Dublin: Black Cat, 1992).



-, Beckett's Dream Notebook, ed. John Pilling (Reading: Beckett International

Foundation, 1999). Bourke, Vemon J., Augustine's Love of Wisdom: An Introspective Philosophy

(West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 1992). Cronin, Anthony, Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist (New York: Da Capo,

1997). Knowlson, James, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (New York:

Touchstone, 1996). Maude, Ulrika, "The Body of Memory: Beckett and Merleau-Ponty," in

Beckett and Philosophy, ed. Richard Lane (London: Palgrave, 2002), 108-22.

O'Connell, Robert J., St. Augustine's Confessions: The Odyssey of Soul (Cam bridge: Harvard UP, 1969).

Rist, John, Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994).

Teske, Roland, "Augustine's Philosophy of Memory," in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001).


Article Contentsp. [123]p. 124p. 125p. 126p. 127p. 128p. 129p. 130p. 131p. 132

Issue Table of ContentsSamuel Beckett Today / Aujourd'hui, Vol. 19 (2008) pp. 1-468Front MatterINTRODUCTION [pp. 15-18]EIGHT WAYS OF LOOKING AT SAMUEL BECKETT [pp. 19-31]DISLOCATIONS: LIMITS AND LIMITLESSNESS"ON SUCH AND SUCH A DAY... IN SUCH A WORLD": Beckett's Radical Finitude [pp. 35-50] LA LIMITE...: lecture de Cette fois de Samuel Beckett [pp. 51-66]"ILL SEEN ILL SAID" AND THE JAPANESE SPATIAL CONCEPT "MA" [pp. 67-74]"WATT'"S WAYS: Addenda, Borders and Courses [pp. 75-85]

LITTRATURE ET PHILOSOPHIE: VOIX ET IMAGES EN QUESTION"MAIS QUELLE EST CETTE VOIX?" [pp. 89-101]IMAGE AND DISPOSITION IN BECKETT'S LATE PLAYS [pp. 103-112]IMAGES MUST TRAVEL FURTHER: Bataille and Blanchot Read Beckett [pp. 113-122]"MEMORY IS THE BELLY OF THE MIND": Augustine's Concept of Memory in Beckett [pp. 123-132]NARRATEURS ET ENTENDEURS DANS LES UVRES ROMANESQUES ET THTRALES DE SAMUEL BECKETT [pp. 133-141]ECHOES OF BERGSONIAN VITALISM IN SAMUEL BECKETT'S EARLY WORKS [pp. 143-154]

Of CLOWNS AND ARTISTSBECKETT, BLL, AND CLOWNS [pp. 157-171]FROM DADA TO DIDI: Beckett and the Art of His Century [pp. 173-181]GENESIS, CHILD'S PLAY, AND THE GAZE OF SILENCE: Samuel Beckett and Paul Klee [pp. 183-197]

ANIMALS, HUMANS, STONESBECOMING STONE: A Leibnizian Reading of Beckett's Fiction [pp. 201-210]NOT RIGHTLY HUMAN: Beckett and Animality [pp. 211-221]"LITTLE PEOPLE" IN "LE DPEUPLEUR": Beckett and the Eighteenth Century [pp. 223-233]

Impressions of Tokyo [pp. 235-256]TELEVISION'S "SAVAGE EYE": PHANTASMAGORICAL AND VIRTUAL BODIES"... BUT THE CLOUDS..." AND A YEATSIAN PHANTASMAGORIA [pp. 259-268]"IMAGINATION, EAR AND EYE" ET "MDES VOGELGESTHN": une rflexion sur la musique et l'influence du pome "The Tower" dans...nur noch Gewlk..., Geistertrio et Nacht und Trume [pp. 269-279]"HINT OF JUGULAR AND CORDS": Beckett and Modern Medicine [pp. 281-291]DANS LE FOR EXTRIEUR DE LA BOTE CRNIENNE: proses et pices pour la tlvision [pp. 293-301]VOYONS VOIR BECKETT RALISATEUR: qui voit quoi o? ou: n'y a-t-il vraiment que nuages passant dans le ciel la tlvision? [pp. 303-312]

BECKETT'S BORDERLESS WORDS / PAROLES SANS FRONTIRESFUN DE PARTIE: Puns and Paradigms in "Endgame" [pp. 315-325]"WHAT KIND OF NAME IS THAT?": Samuel Beckett's Strategy of Naming [pp. 327-337]LES POINTS DE VUE DE SIRIUS DANS L'INNOMMABLE ET LES TEXTES POUR RIEN [pp. 339-348]

WITNESSINGBEARING WITNESS IN "HOW IT IS" [pp. 351-360]BECKETT'S LEGACY IN THE WORK OF J. M. COETZEE [pp. 361-370]"NOT I" IN AN IRISH CONTEXT [pp. 371-379]

"SSSH": SOUNDS AND SIGNS OF SILENCEENTRE "MOTS MUETS" ET SILENCE BRUISSANT: le 'je' en tension [pp. 383-391]WRITING SILENCE: Samuel Beckett's Early Mimes [pp. 393-402]ACTES SANS PAROLES, PAROLES SANS SCNE [pp. 403-412]

BORDERLESSNESS: LIFE AND DEATH / BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGSAN END TO ENDINGS: Samuel Beckett's End Game(s) [pp. 415-417, 419-429]PLAYING WITH DEATH IN "MALONE DIES" [pp. 431-439]UNE MISE AU TOMBEAU: la terre beckettienne dans Oh les beaux jours [pp. 441-449]"SA NAISSANCE FUT SA PERTE" ET LA PERTE SON APORIE: Heidegger / Beckett / Derrida [pp. 451-461]

Back Matter

memory is the belly of the mind

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