Marker of Borders and Giver of Language and Time: A Study of the Figure of Birds in the Work of Samuel Beckett

Kumiko Kiuchi

This paper presents some reflections on the figure of ‘birds’ (small wild birds) in the work of Samuel Beckett and defines its function as marking the border between human and non-human language, life and birth/death, language and sound/music. In the introduction, the paper gives an overview of the constellation of ‘birds’ in Beckett’s work and explains the difference between his carnivorous birds, domestic birds, and smaller wild birds. The first part of the paper explores the figure of birds in Molloy and Malone Dies. A bilingual reading of some passages in these novels reveals the double function of bird-language. The birds’ singing not only lures the characters to the possibility of understanding bird-language but also casts doubt on this possibility. In light of this double function bird-language is considered to articulate human language, out of which the boundary between human and non-human languages emerge. The second part of the paper focuses on the bird figure in ‘Text 5’ in Texts for Nothing and ‘Afar a bird’ in Fizzles and sees it as a divider of time which, as space continuum, is inarticulable in human language. It divides time into evening, night and day, and into birth, life and death, and ultimately articulates time itself. In light of the bird figure assimilated in the phantoms that give a name (nom) to the narrator I in ‘Text 5’, the paper studies how the problems of birth/death and of naming/calling converge in the figure of the birds. It offers a brief etymological exploration of the words ‘appeler’ and ‘appel’ (in its relation to ‘appeau’) in order to further clarify the above point. Based on this, the paper suggests that the act of the dividing of the bird figure as an omen precedes time and also gives time to human language. The conclusion opens up the above analysis to the problem of language that penetrates Beckett’s entire work. Quoting a passage in his letter to Axel Kaun, it restates the significance and singularity of the bird figure as a divider of language and sound/music in Beckett’s work. The conclusion would also propose a peculiar turn – seeing the doubling between the bird figure and the surname Beckett, whose etymological origin is explained as a diminutive of old French ‘bec’ (little beak or mouth). The paper, then, would finish by stating the singularity of the bird figure as a divider of the author’s proper name.

PhD candidate, University of Tokyo, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies/University of Sussex Department of English Literature

Borderless Beckett: International Samuel Beckett Symposium in Tokyo 2006 September 29 – October 1