Proust

I didn't know Beckett was a genius as a theorist. A very Schopenhauerian study (also influenced by Descartes in its structure and vigorous deductive technique) and an amazing way to see Proust with new lens. In his later writing career, Beckett, like all great creators, has a sort of epistemological and ontological modesty and moderation (meaning he could be understood at different levels: he has a superficial face you can admire, even if you hadn't understood him completely – and a deeper persona, you can grasp only after careful study). Like Balzac or Hugo, you can catch a glimpse of his genius even if you don't get him completely. But in this study on Proust, written when he was 24, Beckett shows no trace of “universalist” generalized wise modesty, he writes with cynism, sheer brilliance and aggressiveness like a bloodhound. It's so intense that I've almost highlighted the whole book and my extensive notes would look like Borges's map. And one should compare him to Ionesco, his rival and co-creator of the absurd theater, who also, in his Romanian-written essays, was equally brilliant, surreal and aggressive as a theoretician (e.g. see Ionesco's “No”, where he demolishes some of the best Romanian writers of the day, the same way he destroys Hugo in “Ego”). I was amazed by Beckett's highly coherent and explosive writing and I wonder, considering his level, if he ever blew up a literary genre. I mean I apreciate Joyce both as a poet and dramatist but his creations in those genres are distinctly minor. But Beckett was a titan as playwright and novelist and also a major, I venture to say, philosopher.