Andy Wimbush: Samuel Beckett and Quietism

[@jackdolphy8965]

Thank you for such an interesting and animated conversation 🙏🏽

[@emmaphilo4049]

Very interesting, I have worked on Proust and Beckett (through analysing the Trilogy) for my master at the University of Strasbourg. I always knew that being 'quiet' was important to Beckett, but I didn't know about Quietism.

[@gregleonard1562]

What a thrilling well captured encounter between two probing pollinators. A great and lively interrogative extrication.

[@steveneardley7541]

super-interesting, connects up a lot of threads. In high school (in the mid-sixties) me and my best friend both saw a stripped-down version of Act without Words II by Beckett. It hit us like lightning. The next day, we came into school, eyes agog: "Did you see that thing on TV last night?" Almost immediately we got into absurdism, and started writing absurdist plays. We ran a fictitious absurdist character for student government: "Join the Giml, vote for Friml." "Sue Friml gets Mr. Borders to sponsor LSD club," "Sue Friml to detonate new science building." This was accompanied by a picture of a woman's hand holding a bottle of nitroglycerin with a pink ribbon tied around it. We started making absurdist objects in woodshop class. We did absurdist walks in the hallways. We practiced talking backwards into a tape recorder, to see how realistic we could get once the tape was reversed. And the underlying philosophy helped us a lot; it helped us thoroughly disengage from the nonsense of the high school mind. As an adult, I got heavily into epistemological issues, and ended up with a PhD in the history of science. I see right away that I need to follow some of the threads laid out here: Schopenhauer and Gide were already on my radar, but I have not read them. Curiously, the only church I have ever regularly attended was a Quaker meeting, devoted to quiet sitting. When will your dissertation be available to be read?

[@LouFederer]

Fantastic conversation. Andy is such a great speaker! I want to hear more!

[@Remarkablepepper37]

Thank you so much for this!

[@annegraaff]

I understand Beckett in a new way. Fastinating insights through the study of Queitism and its emphasis on the resignation of the self. Thanks!

[@mikedickman9623]

nice! - thanks for this, Anne.

[@bleedinggumsroberts3579]

+Anne Graaff i agree

[@Wrenasmir]

Looking up Quietism with a view to Nihilism, came across Beckett in the process, a perfect footfall trajectory, terrific interview, hope the PhD went well.

[@poetcomic1]

Fascinating to see Quietism, Madame Guyon etc. pop up in a discussion of Beckett. I really wish you can apply the concept to the plays - it seems it would be enlightening.

[@Mrjacharles]

Love Beckett - studied Endgame at Exeter University, and have just recently watched Hurt's Krapp's last tape, the 1980s version of Happy Days, and (of course) Waiting for Godot (an eighties version). I never thought about the quietness though; I was always more captured by the props and the disabilities of certain characters. Still, it's definitely something you seen in many of Beckett's plays. Nice commentary guys :)

[@mrpicky1868]

i was mysteriously introduced to Beckett exactly at a time when i was thinking about role of Ego ... and had some interest towards France.... interesting

[@haroldadams1219]

Love this

[@Paulkazey1]

Fascinating.

[@adrianthomas1473]

Thank you - Quietism is much maligned but is a pure form of spiritual Christianity. Miguel Molinos, Jeanne Guyon and François Fenelon were influential on the Quakers - there is a lovely book A Guide to True Peace which is an anthology of them and a Quaker classic.

[@steveneardley7541]

Thanks for the recommendation.

[@reaganwiles_art]

Yiy! I have recently read Murphy, Watt (my preferred of these five), and the so-called trilogy. Seems to me that Beckett is a poet, his prose is cadenced as verse, from comma to comma, from stop to stop as it were.

[@williambird1234]

What is the mind doing during a "proper" session of practicing quietism? Or, what, according to quietists, is the mind doing before it receives whatever it is it is supposed to receive?

[@puneetpandey8962]

very interesting , strong parallel to Vipassana

[@HellomynameisN]

It's like the magic conch shell in spongebob

[@bleedinggumsroberts3579]

+HellomynameisN yes

[@naturphilosophie1]

There may be a misunderstanding of christian mysticism and quietism here. The misunderstanding would be the mistake of neglecting the importance of metaphysics and its relation to mystic doctrines of e.g. the dissolution of personal identity, love, learned ignorance, coincidence of opposites etc. Beckett was obviously a pessimist and Christian Mysticism has been interpreted in a joyful way, Deleuze's metaphysics is the most accurate synthesis between philosophy and mysticism/quietism in an optimistic mood. Pseudo-dionysus and Nicholas Cusanus are quietists in the sense that there is an understanding that is unspeakable and can only be expressed through an individuals own loss of identity into metaphysical identity. Jakob Boehme is another example of a mystic who is profoundly intoxicated with love of God, not a pessimism like Beckett.

[@darklingeraeld-ridge7946]

Excellent. Tho' I think it is a thread, not the rope.

[@bleedinggumsroberts3579]

Is it possible to be a quietist and an artist?

[@cartoonphilosopher2577]

+bleedinggums roberts wasn't Goethe a quietist?

[@bleedinggumsroberts3579]

interesting

[@elinorpotts689]

In which of Beckett's notebooks does he made this explicit transition from English to French? (11:10)

[@sallylauper8222]

Yeah, I was wondering that too.

[@sixeses]

Beckett was from a Huguenot family.

[@cartoonphilosopher2577]

Was Goethe a quietist?

[@EG-uv8fd]

9:44 13:50 16:47

[@den-leroykangalee4783]

I look forward to the day when artists reclaims Beckett and leave absolutely nothing for the academics to chew on - but rather something to choke on. I can appreciate all of this but Beckett has been over-analyzed, contorted, and put upon by the very people he actually had no interest or admiration for. Beckett's art may contain a multitude of anxieties, ideas, concepts, feelings...but it is important to remember that art cannot be tamed or contained by academia. Ever.

[@JohnTLyon]

Quietus sounds alot like "sitting meditation" in the zen manner. Leave it to us to discover something the East has known for thousands of years.

[@celestialteapot309]

Zazen

[@DomhnallOSuileabhainPrin-tm1fw]

Did I see Mein Kampf on his bookshelf? BTW when the Englishman says that psychoanalysis was illegal in Ireland in the 1930's the Irishman throws back his head and laughs at the absurdity of it. Wise 1930's Irishmen in my opinion. Psychoanalysis is pseudo science and simply brainwashing invented by a cash hungry charlatan, the better to empty his clients pockets. Never knew about quietism though, so that's good.

[@mrhamgolian9006]

zaqs 3:32 SLAA

[@karenedonald]

2 fair to middling men.

[@GOFFMEISTER]

harsh

[@mrpicky1868]

"rational theology"??? well thats a first . lol

[@EXALTEDDIRT]

these guys definitely are not quietists...or dead to self; neither filled with the spirit of the living God...