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1. The role of certain types of literature is for Gilles Deleuze « avant tout de
mettre le langage en rapport avec sa propre limite, avec une sorte de ‘non-
langage’ (la violence qui ne parle pas, l’érotisme dont on ne parle
pas). » (Gilles Deleuze, Présentation de Sacher Masoch, 1967). How far does
Beckett’s Comment c’est conform to this statement?

Samuel Beckett’s Comment c’est pushes languages to its limits, through brutally

violent inner-monologue and a creature’s struggle to understand its existence in the

mud. To break down language and explore its limitations, Beckett uses ‘non-language’

– which will be explored in this essay as all that does not pertain to traditional speech.

This includes silence, music and singing, and also interrogates the relationship

between violence, eroticism and language. The text deliberately destroys

preconceived notions of representation in a violent challenge of the natural and

inherent workings of language. As the narrator’s journey progresses, the nature of

language, of human relationships and our own relationship with words is called into

question. We can understand Beckett’s text as a rejection of the traditional concepts of

language and of prose. It breaks down the concepts of language as the formation of a

self-identity, as will be shown through the relationship between language and the

body and the narrator’s relationship with Pim. In examining to what extent Comment

c’est conforms to Deleuze’s statement, we must explore Beckett’s use of language and

non-language, to arrive at the conclusion that in breaking down traditional concepts of

language through non-language, Comment c’est shows the unavoidable truth that man

is alone in a cruel world, without any means of making sense of his condition.

First, the setting of Comment c’est will be explored. Language is traditionally used to

represent reality, to describe our objective surroundings. Yet Beckett destroys this use

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of language to portray objective reality, using a sort of non-language to create a

subjective reality that in fact, does not exist. Migernier argues that Beckett ‘uses a

broken, twisted verbal cry that exists solely in his mind to portray an existence and a

world, a dante-esque seventh circle of hell that we will never understand in

reality’ (2006, p14). The narrator’s language is a violent refusal to mirror the

workings of the world, and to understand all operating under its aegis:

“Que moi en tout cas oui seul oui dans la boue oui le noir oui ça tient oui la boue…
non avec mon sac non plaît-il non pas de sac non plus non même pas un sac avec moi
non” (Beckett, 1961, p176)

In Comment c’est, we can never know what objectively exists. We can therefore argue

that Beckett uses language at its limits – that even in using language, the text becomes

non-language. For example, we understand the narrator’s surrounding environment

through his use of language, thus there is a clear disparity between what the narrator

perceives and what the narrator relays to the outside world and to the readers. Thus

the surroundings do not exist in objective reality, and we understand the world

through the narrator’s narrow view. We can only assume that the novel takes place in

the dark and in the mud, yet there is no way of objectively knowing this. Here, we can

further understand the importance of language and the setting in linking the setting of

Comment c’est to that of Dostoevsky’s The Underground Man. Dostoevsky underlines

the importance of dark, squalidness of the Underground, yet as the novel progresses

we understand that the Underground only exists in the protagonist’s head – the setting

of the underground is subjective as he in fact lives above ground (Dostoevsky, 2004).

The incongruity of objective and subjective reality has in both texts created an

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unreliable setting. In Comment c’est, we can argue that it is in this incertitude that

non-language arises. For example, a language of gaps emerges in the disparity

between objective and subjective reality. The setting deliberately evades description,

and it in the act of not knowing that Beckett takes language to its limit and employs

non-language. Beckett’s language allows us to “penser autrement” as Deleuze says,

for it provides a new way of engaging another and exploring subjectivity (Migernier,

2006, p16).

Furthermore, it is within the structure of the text that we understand the limits of

language and the realm of non-language. The text is clearly divided into three –

before Pim, with Pim, after Pim. This traditional structure, pertaining to the Judeo-

Christian control of Western writing is from the outset somewhat problematic in

considering Beckett’s apparent transgression of language. From the outset he clearly

adheres to the most traditional structures of prose. However, Beckett employs this

structure only to destroy it – what we consider to be a progression in the narration is

an illusion – the novel could continue ceaselessly. Astro cites the “terrible

recursiveness” of the book, where “the past is an eternally returning present” (Astro,

1990, p108):

“lorsqu’on songe au couple que nous fîmes Pim et moi deuxième partie et que nous
referons sixième partie dixième quatorzième ainsi de suite chaque fois pour
l’impensable première lorsqu’on songe” (Beckett, 1961, 147)

Just as the book could carry on infinitely into the future, we have no guarantee that

the beginning was in fact the beginning (Astro, 1990, p108). Thus the ‘biblical’

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structure becomes circular. This circular theme will be discussed throughout the essay,

as it is intrinsic to the limits of language.

We will now explore the relationship between language and the body, first discussing

the narrator’s own body, before exploring the relationship between the narrator, Pim

and language. The body is used in Comment c’est to demonstrate the limits of

language. Indeed, it is the body’s relationship with language that pushes language to

its limits and into the realm of ‘non-language’. As the narrator crawls eastwards

through the mud, stopping only to lie inert and face down, he shows through interior

monologue the close relationship between language and the body. The narrator

becomes aware that he is speaking when he places his face in the mud, and it is the

physical sensation of the mud entering his mouth and sliding over his face that

reminds him that his mouth is forming words.

“je me vois à plat ventre… j’ouvre la bouche la langue sort va dans la boue” (Beckett,
1961, 11)

It is from here that he recognises himself as a thing separate from yet connected with

his dark surroundings. Federman asserts that “physical contortions become verbal

contortions”, no longer reflecting the physical hardship of a body crawling through

the mud but that of a mind battling with language in an attempt to communicate an

incommunicable experience (Federman, 1965, p462). As he is face down in the mud,

he murmurs:

“elle doit faire une ligne droite à present c’est fini c’est fait j’ai eu l’image” (Beckett,
1961, 38)

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The body and the surroundings become indiscernible, as the mouth’s straight line in

the mud is also understood as the straight Eastwards journey that the narrator is

undertaking (Cohn, 1962, 200). Words are evoked as a journey, linked to the physical

journey the narrator’s body undergoes.

Next, we will explore the relationship between the narrator and Pim. Their

relationship is defined by language, in particular language acquisition, wherein the

narrator teaches Pim to speak by maiming Pim’s body by carving letters into his back

with his fingernails:

“En creusant bien le P et en le piquant comme il faut pour qu’un jour quitté à essayer
toutes les consonnes de l’alphabet roman” (Beckett, 1961, 88)

As it is pitch black, and Pim cannot turn to see his back, it is interesting that Pim does

not acquire language through sight and the recognition of letter groups, but instead

through the physical sensation of having language brutally assimilated into his being,

without his permission. In this case, language is acquired silently – not through the

repetition of sounds. Thus language becomes the violent ‘non-language’ that Deleuze

writes of. The tortuous aspect of this is important in taking language to its limits, for

the idea that words are used to define and signify the subject is taken to the extreme

when the subject becomes the words. The narrator gives Pim his name, thus gives him

a signifier and a means of distinguishing himself from the other nameless creatures in

the mud. Pim is taught his own name through having it carved on his buttocks – thus

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Pim becomes the word in physical form. Pim is a name created by Beckett – one is

made to assume that no other Pim exists. The letters are deep enough in the flesh to

cause the blood to flow, therefore showing that Pim is the living, breathing, bleeding,

sweating, embodiment of ‘Pim’. Interestingly, the novelist John Updike cites Kafka’s

The Penal Colony in a similar vein as Comment c’est (Updike, 1979, p257). In

Kafka’s novel, a tortuous machine grafts the prisoner’s sentence on to his back, so

that he may comprehend it in the most literal and physical sense. Language becomes

corporeal - an organic life form, constantly pulsing and transforming. Furthermore,

the narrator has given life to a seemingly lifeless creature, thus showing that language,

which Beckett believed could only restrict human communication, can now give life

and a new signification to someone or something. In respects to non-language,

Beckett uses language only in order to reject it. The narrator uses language to turn

Pim into the embodiment of language, but only to reject (and be abandoned by) Pim.

Thus we see a physical incarnation of Beckett’s rejection of language, and the solitude

that results from Pim’s abandonment of the narrator causes the text to develop its non-

language.

The objects mentioned in Comment c’est have interesting linguistic significations

which help us understand the limits of language and the realm of non-language. The

creatures have been provided with sacks of tinned goods, cord and a can opener. For

example, as a means of pushing language to its limit, Beckett refers to objects that

have clear meaning in language – can-opener is the most obvious of these, for its

signifier denotes the exact function that it was made to carry out. The same goes for

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‘can’, ‘cord’ and ‘sack’. Yet the narrator rejects these signifiers, for instance, he uses

the can opener as a torture device rather than as a tool for opening cans:

“Prends l’ouvre-boite dans ma droite le descends le long de l’echine et le lui enfonce

Beckett gains possession of language, albeit paradoxically through its dispossession.

Here, Beckett takes language to its limit by destroying its primary roots – that a word

is understood by the majority to have the same meaning. The word ‘can-opener’

becomes meaningless, causing readers to interrogate the arbitrariness of all language:

“plus rien sur ce sac l’ouvre-boîte l’ouvre-boîte bientôt Pim va parler”

This links together the emptiness and arbitrariness of words with language, which is

shown through the violent acts that the narrator inflicts upon Pim. Thus Beckett

destroys language, leaving us with a language of empty words. This emptiness is a

sort of silence, which Deleuze claims is at the limit of language. The coal sack is

another interesting item to consider. At the start of the novel – narrator slips the sack

over his head, which could be construed as a play on ‘voir le fond du sac’ - to get to

the bottom of things (Cohn,1962, p194). Immediately we understand that Beckett is

pushing language and understanding to its limit. ‘Vider son sac’ can mean to have

one’s say, which embodies the nature of the monologue as a violent vomiting of

words. Cohn notes that sack can stand for stomach – remplir le sac ‘to eat copiously’

although the narrator suffers from lack of appetite (Cohn, 1962, 194). The emptiness

of the narrator’s stomach, and of the sack exemplifies the relationship between

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emptiness, words and the body. Indeed, sack analogies define the text, as the sack

itself comes to define the narrator: “mon sac seul variable”(Beckett, 1961, 20) “le sac

premier vrai signe de vie”(1961, 30) “le sac ma vie”(1961, 108) “ce sac sans quoi pas

de voyage”(1961, 135). By evoking the coal sack, Beckett takes language to its limit –

that of silence and emptiness. Indeed, the Coalsack is the empty centre of the Milky

Way, devoid of stars (Cohn,1962,193). Similarly, in A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze

uses analogies of black holes to describe the spaces in language (Stevenson, 2009,

p87). We can extend the coal analogy further – carbon is the founding element of the

human being. It is the beginning and the end of human life. Thus the reference to

carbon denotes the endless, circularity of existence, the futility of the narrator’s

struggle, and the circular structure of Comment c’est as a whole:

“Le sac c’est le sac Pim est parti sans sac il m’a laissé son sac j’ai donc laissé mon sac
à Bem je laisserai mon sac à Bom je quitterai Bom sans sac j’ai quitté Bem sans sac
pour aller vers Pim c’est le sac” (Beckett, 1961, 135)

Overall, we reach the limits of language when language can no longer carry out its

primary function – to enable communication. If each creature understands the words

given to the objects in the sack differently, then language has entirely disintegrated.

As the sack itself signifies emptiness and nothingness, we see that Beckett has taken

language to its limit by unveiling its arbitrariness.

The next aspect of language to consider is Beckett’s use of silence. Silence is of

utmost important in Comment c’est, for, like Deleuze, Beckett asserted that silence is

at the limits of language, and silence is ultimate non-language. Deleuze states,

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‘language in its entirety reaches the limit that marks its outside and makes it confront

silence’ (Deleuze, 1998, 113). Language is used to constantly define life, aliveness

and to understand the world. Humans try to understand death through language, thus

bringing death into the realm of the living. Silence is the rejection of this life-

affirming language – silence belongs to the domain of death. Beckett uses silence to

demonstrate the absurdity of a confining language system. The limit of language,

therefore, is silence, just as the limit of life is death. Indeed, Stewart argues that ‘the

lifelessness of the voices, and hence of words themselves, ensure the failure of the

aesthetic programme to bring life and hence death to the narrator’ (Stewart, 2011,

p164). However, Beckett uses silence not as an absolute signifier of death, but to push

language, hence life, right up to the borders of death. Indeed, Deleuze shares this

opinion, he regards silence as a kind of voice. Silence could be the continuation of

voice. Even if words are dried up into silence, the silence is still not an absolute one

(Deleuze 1998:152-174). This is never so apparent as when the narrative ends with

“JE VAIS CREVER” (Beckett, 1961, 177). In Astro’s reading, the narrator dies

following this statement, yet there are still words following the narrator’s death (Astro

1990, 111). Thus the silence that one expects from death never arrives, and the non-

language of silence is again used to take language to its limits. Where there is speech

there is life, Beckett takes language to its limit by making language death-affirming

rather than life-affirming.

Thus, we proceed to examine the converse of silence - sound, and in particular, music.

Any sound can be music and any silence can be sound, as John Cage states that

silence cannot exist (Cage, 1968). Both music and silence are forms of non-language.

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In breaking down traditional rules of prose writing, Beckett creates a new, staccato-d

style of narrative voice. This has a certain musicality to it, as the constant repetition of

phrases - “je le dis comme je l’entends” – creates a rhythm, albeit fragmented, that

forms a rich musical text. Music is considered as an art form that evades

representation, and is beyond the restrictiveness of description or portrayal that is

intrinsic to other art forms such as writing or painting. As music often uses recurring

motifs, Beckett uses repetition in language, which takes the text to the transcendental

heights of music. Beckett’s use of repetition causes language to break down and

rebuild itself. This is most apparent in the repetition of “dix…quinze”, with these

quantifiers interchangeably denoting body, time and distance. “dix metres quinze

metres” “dix secondes quinze secondes” “dix coups quinze coups” “dix mots quinze

mots” “dix autres quinze autres”. Thus language comes to occupy space, time and the

body, and in in rhythmic repetition throughout it defies the traditional limits of

language, as language and music now exist beyond representation in the same realm.

Another aspect of music to consider is Beckett’s reference to singing. The narrator

teaches Pim to sing through torture. The same method is then used to generate silence:

“première leçon thème qu’il chante je lui enfonce mes ongles dans l’aisselle main
droite aisselle droite il crie je les retire grand coup de poing sur le crâne son visage
s’enfonce dans la boue il se tait” (Beckett, 1961, pp77-78)

Jankélévitch says of singing in La Musique et l’Ineffable, that “chanter dispense de

dire… chanter est une façon de se taire! (1983, p173). Singing is used as a means of

creating silence, or as Bryden argues ‘singing provides a respite for the Beckettian

organism whose inner ear is all too often a straining, buckling receiver for a stream of

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sound-scars’ (Bryden, 1998, p29). Conversely, Beckett also uses singing as a means

of blocking out other sounds, which could be the sound of other creatures, or more

abstractly, the sounds of returning memories and regrets (Bryden, 1998, p28). Singing

in Comment c’est is therefore both violent and calming.

Now we must consider violence as an important aspect in Comment c’est. Beckett

uses violence to create and simultaneously destroy traditional concepts of language.

Violence, according to Deleuze, pertains to non-language. In Deleuze’s theory,

violence does not speak – there is no attempt at communication (Cheatham, 2011, p3).

In Comment c’est, Beckett uses violence to create silence:

“Il crie je le retire coup sur le crâne il se tait c’est mécanique”

This embodies Deleuze’s ‘la violence qui ne parle pas’. In this sense, Deleuze has

linked language with acts of sado-masochism, directly referencing Sacher-Masoch’s

La Vénus à la Fourrure, wherein sado-masochistic acts are beyond the realms of

ordinary representation for they are beyond communication. We see this in Comment

c’est as the use of words can in fact transcend the traditional use of language. Yet in

Deleuze’s claim that violence evades communication, we could argue that Beckett

twists this idea by using violence as a method of creating communication. Indeed, it is

through pain and suffering at the hands of the narrator that Pim learns to

communicate:

“Il a pour effet le coup sur le crâne on parle maintenant du coup sur le
crâne” (Beckett, 1961, 79)

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The violence is perpetrated by two categories – the victim and the torturer. It is

through the narrator’s experience of both categories that language is fully taken to its

limits by non-language. In the victim-torturer dialectic, it is important to note the

protective role that language plays. For instance, in modern sado-masochistic practice,

those involved decide on ‘safe word’, in order that the participants understand when

to break out of their role of torturer or victim. However, Beckett has destroyed the

protectiveness of language, thus we can no longer rely on language to shelter us and

keep us within our comfort zone – we must now face language as Beckett wishes us

to – empty, arbitrary and the main reason for every man’s solitude. The narrator

subjects Pim to physical torment, imposing language physically on his body by means

of scratching letters into his back so that he may learn to communicate. Following

this, the narrator is then subjected to physical suffering at the will of Bom, another

creature in the mud. Indeed, we may understand that the victim-torturer cycle is the

first occurrence, but it may be a repeat:

“et quand sur les imprévisibles fesses pour la millionième fois la main tâtonnante se
pose que c’est pour la main les premières fesses pour les fesses la première
main” (Beckett, 1961, 147)

This is distinctly Freudian, as he asserts that although we may believe we may have

found a new love, we are repeating our old relationship – “the finding of an object is

in fact a refinding of it” (Freud, 1975, p222). The victim-torturer dialectic is defined

by language; indeed, the torture is the grafting of letters on to the skin of another.

However, at the end, abandoned by both Pim and Bom, one can argue that it is not

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due to the Other that we may be the victim or the torturer. In fact, it is in the hands of

language that we are tortured and imprisoned. As language gives us our subjectivity, it

also isolates us and affirms our solitude – indeed, the narrator moves towards a

greater understanding of his existence through words:

“que moi oui seul oui avec ma voix oui mon murmure oui…

le silence pas de réponse crever pas de réponse CREVER hurlements JE POURRAIS

Therefore, Beckett uses the violence of solitude to explore the limits of language. For

example, as soon as Pim becomes a self-aware creature with a name and ability to

communicate, eg as soon as Pim is assimilated into language, he abandons the

narrator. This shows that the subject, even when assured that another subject is there

for them, is ultimately alone. As we can never fully understand the subjectivity of

another, we are forced to realise our solitude in the world. In relation to language,

Beckett poses language as one of the main forces in engendering this realisation of

solitude. It is man’s inevitable solitude, driven by language, that is the greatest torture,

and of which we are unavoidably the victim.

In conclusion, Comment c’est is a tragic meditation on the solitude of man due to the

inherently isolating nature of language. Through the circular process of love and

abandonment, we understand that communication is fundamentally tortuous and

restrictive. Yet Beckett does not offer a solution to free us from the constraints of

language; moreover, he cannot create a world where language is not brutal. Deleuze’s

notion of non-language is therefore refuted as Beckett integrates non-language into

the realm of language. Beckett does not use non-language to transgress the boundaries

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of language, as Deleuze states. Instead, Beckett asserts that it is only through the

possession of language that one can ultimately dispossess it and break its limits. Thus

a paradox is created – that only through using language can one reject its use.

Language transgresses its own limitations through the use of language itself, and the

assimilation of non-language into the realm of language. Overall, Comment c’est does

not conform to Deleuze’s statement, for its aim of transgressing language’s limits is

achieved through language itself.

Bibliography

Astro, A. 1990. Understanding Samuel Beckett. Columbia: University of South

Beckett, S. [Link] c’est. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit.

Bryden, M. 1998. Samuel Beckett and Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cage, J. 1968. Silence (Lectures and Writings by John Cage) London: Calder and
Boyars.

Cheatham, P. 2011, Sacher-Masoch and the Masochistic Rebirth. (http://

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Cohn, R.1962. Samuel Beckett: the Comic Gamut. New Jersey: Rutgers University
Press.

Deleuze, G. 1967. Presentation de Sacher-Masoch. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit.

Deleuze, G. 1998. Essays Critical and Clinical. He stuttered pp107-15. London:

Dostoevsky, F. 2004. The Underground Man. Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa
Volokhonsky New York: Everyman’s Library.

Federman, R. 1965. “How It Is”: with Beckett’s Fiction. The French Review Vol. 38,
No.4. Feb., pp459-468

Freud, S. 1975. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. New York: Basic Books.

Jankélévitch, V. 1983. La Musique et l’Ineffable. Paris: Editions de Seuil.

Migernier, E. 2006. Beckett and French Theory. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

Stevenson, F. Stretching Language to Its Limit: Deleuze and the Problem of Poiesis
Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 35.1 March 2009: 77-108

Stewart, P. 2011. Sex and Aesthetics in Samuel Beckett’s Work. London: Palgrave
Macmillan.

Updike, J. 1979. Samuel Beckett: the Critical Heritage ed. Lawrence Graver and
Raymond Federman. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

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