BEGINNINGS: A MATTER OF ACTION?

Dragana Jelenic, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

Geschrieben steht: >Im Anfang war das Wort!<Hier stock ich schon! Wer hilft mir weiter fort?Ich kann das Wort so hoch unmöglich schätzen,

Ich mub es anders Übersätzen,Wenn ich vom Geiste recht erleuchtet bin.Geschrieben steht: Im Anfang war der Sinn.

Bedenke wohl die erste Zeile,Dab deine Feder sich nicht übereile!

Ist es der Sinn, der alles wirkt und schafft?Es sollte stehn: Im Anfang war die Kraft!Doch auch indem ich dieses niederschreibe,

Schon warnt mich was, dab ich dabei nicht bleibe.Mir hilft der Geist! auf einmal seh ich RatUnd schreibe getrost: Im Anfang war die Tat!-

(Goethe: Faust)

0. PRELIMINARY NOTES

The present paper approaches the problem of beginnings as a matter of action. The

action is analysed in several of its configurations. In each of the configurations analysed the

inherent component is a reflective attitude, i.e. reflection. The term “reflection” derives from the

optical sphere. In a broader sense, it connotes an attitude of bending back. In this context,

reflection amounts to the transitus ab actu ad potentiam, i.e. the action of stepping back from

the realm of positivity into the realm of potentiality. In this sense, there is no reflexion without

transition. Likewise, the action characterized by a transitive attitude connotates, apart from the

former action of stepping back, the action of stepping out (ex-isting) from the positivity into the

pursuit of ever-new beginnings. Both of these movements trigger the dynamics of the arché that

put the original difference into motion. This results in the initial hiatus between the origin and

the beginning, which offers space and time for experience. The origin referred to is the absence

of origin, an origin without positivity, openness (Gelassenheit) that enables communication

(Mitteilung) by means of its transpassability (transpassibilité) , i.e. mediation (Verteilung)1. The

experience in question is the experience of non-identity, due to the mise en ouvre of the original

difference that does not allow absolute identity. In this sense, two As are never the same

because of the infinitesimal oscillation between them. Furthermore, the experience of never

being identical to itself, nor to its concept is the only possibility for A to reach existence.

Therefore, in this newly gained space for experience, the original difference is not expressed,

but only ex-posed the way it is, with its original oscillation. It is split into the ex-sistance and

thus, opened up to the experience of its proper finitude. In this sense, the action of stepping out,

and the very freedom to do so, is nothing but a decision for ex-istance.

Due to the fact that experience is intrinsically entangled with the movement, it cannot

be but kinetic. Thus, what we are dealing with here is a kinetic experience and its intrinsic

power to move in the direction of action. However, to begin implies two different types of

action: action at a distance and action tout court. We suggest that the parallel between kinetics

and kinematics be studied. Kinetics is a spacing and temporalizing movement in the realm of

the positivity, i.e. effective reality that corresponds to action tout court, while kinematics is

absolute movement in its permanent oscillation that corresponds to action at a distance.

Moreover, kinetics as motion of bodies having mass, would be movement in the effective

reality, while kinematics that refers to position, velocity, acceleration (but not forces, torques

nor masses), would be placed off-stage, in the context of Schelling’s negative philosophy. In

this sense, position, disposition and transposition of the movement of the Potenzen will be

discussed.

*

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Good evening. Mine is a faint voice. Kindly tune accordingly.[Pause]. Good

evening. Mine is a faint voice. Kindly tune accordingly. [Pause]. It will not

be raised, nor lowered, whatever happens.[Pause].

S. Beckett, Ghost Trio

We suggest Beckett and Schelling have a similar approach to the problem of

beginnings. The following are some of the points they may have in common.

1. The main issue for both, Schelling and Beckett, is the issueless predicament of

existence.

2. According to Beckett, nothing is really accessible without performance, i.e. theatrical

ex-position, which corresponds to Schelling’s interpretation of the ex-istance in terms

of the Greek existamenon, which literally means “standing outside itself”, i.e., ex-

isting in effective reality (Wirklichkeit). In this sense, it is a matter of an act, a bringing-

forth of something previously held back within the self, which corresponds to “living by

proxy”, as Beckett called his performative art2.

3. Beckett suggested that mental space be attempted in the theatre. He wrote a series of

plays, which, while leaving virtually no possibility for mimetic reception, seemed to

prove that mental space could be put on stage. When converted to theatrical space, it

opens up new possibilities for immediacy and directness that can make the viewer

dramatically aware of sharing an introvert space of mind3. This could perhaps be

considered as a token for the possibility of staging Schelling’s Potencies.

4. Rather than representing something, a Beckett play stages the return of (1) a pre-

conceptual experience which is beneath representation and (2) a post-conceptual

experience which is beyond representation. In this sense, Beckett’s theatre is a theatre

of difference4 that is always beneath or beyond representation and provides, in this way,

the stage for the ever-new repetition that appears without a prescribed model, as a

mime. Indeed, an utterance in Beckett’s plays is always what it says it is, despite the

artist. This capacity of making the essence of something speak for itself in terms of

itself – deictically5 – corresponds to the “tautegorical mode of appearing” of Potencies

in Schelling’s Spätphilosophie.

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5. Furthermore, Beckett’s aim to create the form in movement corresponds to Schelling’s

construction of the Figure of Being (die Figur des Seienden) whose ambiguous

appearance defies notions of causality, referentiality of space and time, and is capable

of circumventing corporeality. In this sense, it is a matter of an appearance that has

more to do with music than theatre, except for Beckett’s theatre that attests to an

auditory memory6 that is spatial and rhythmic rather than visual.

6. Yet, Beckett advocated also turning to a vision, only conveyed in a complexity of

rhythm, colour, gesture, and united not by the plot and character, but by lyric

expression7, which corresponds to the poetic condensation (Dichtung) of being, acting

and thinking in the Figure of Being and their “tautegoric ex-position”.

7. For both Schelling’s Potenzenlehre and Beckett’s performative art, in which the visual

or figurative components of movement and stasis are conveyed by the spatial and

musical quality, action at a distance is the indispensable component that incites and

increases the heuristic aspect of the off-stage action.

8. Moreover, both suggest a movement ab actu ad potentiam. The mimetic space is often a

pretext for negation of the solidity of the events within the positive reality, which opens

up possibilities for new horizons. Moreover, the mental drama of creation8, the

experience of re-creating this final account of a life-long quest for meaning is a process

that does not end within the playing time, nor within effective reality.

9. All this could be transcribed in a formula for the theatrum philosophicum of their own:

minimal theatre-space + maximal openness, communication and transpassability.

I hope that these remarks will lead to a tentative analysis of the work of Beckett and

Schelling (how can indeed – such an analysis be anything but tentative) in view of the theatrum

philosophicum of their own in which the on-stage and off-stage action are simultaneously

transpassable. Moreover, the aforementioned formula ventures us on to the No-Man’s Land

between performance and meaning where a glimpse of the Figure of Being can be caught in the

very course of its production.

4

THE OFF-STAGE ACTION

The problem of origin and an introduction to Becket’s phantasm

Footfalls echo in the memoryDown the passage which we did not take

Toward the door we never openedInto the rose-garden. My words echo

Thus, in your mind.

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

Thirty thousand nights of ghosts beyond.Beyond that black beyond. Ghost nights.

Ghost rooms. Ghost graves.Ghost ... he all but said ghost loved ones.

S. Beckett, A Piece of Monologue

Now the question rises as to how to embark on the adventure of thinking, acting and

existing? From where to take a departure? From where to begin? Any systematic thinking is

preceded by a stage of the original confusion at which reason notices only the signs by which

organisms are differentiated. These signs, marks and indications are differentials that enable

cognition to distinguish one thing from another. Also, they are that by which the organisms

break loose from the general continuity of being as such, separate themselves from others and

are explicitly for themselves. However, these signs are unmediated and unspiritual differentials,

les Wesen sauvages, according to Richir, that are necessary but not sufficient to escape from this

system of absolute differentiation.

We shall take this relentless system of in/difference as a terminus a quo in an attempt to

approach the problem of origin. In this state of original confusion nothing can be discerned and

everything is far away from any shape or definition. This is le trou noir whose negative gravity

dramatically and theatrically sucks everything in; far away from any origin, but nevertheless

able to originate an origin. It corresponds to the “ultra-cerebral obscurity” of Beckett’s plays 9

that is also referred to as a state of transcendental psychosis in terms of Richir’s interpretation of

Schelling10. However, precisely this condition of radical differentiation allows a certain freedom

with regard to the assignment of meaning (Meinen) that offers on all sides the beginnings of

laws, traces of necessity, allusions to order and system, witty and plausible connections.

However, none of these beginnings is plausible if the state of the original confusion were not

transcended.

To approach the problem of origin, Schelling postulates an actuality (the act of

existence) that precedes all possibility. This throws some light on the problem of beginnings.

This actuality that precedes possibility is also an actuality that precedes thought and precisely

for that reason is unthinkable (unvordenklich), thus the first genuine object of thought (quod se

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objicit). In this sense, it is the beginning of all real thought – for the beginning of thought is not

yet thought itself.11 Similarly, an actuality that precedes possibility is also an actuality that

precedes action and for that reason it is the first genuine object of action. As such this actuality

is not actualised and precisely on that ground it is the beginning of all real action – for the

beginning of action is not yet action itself. However, this actuality as the act of existence is not

completely devoid of the condition of action, so that it ultimately might perform an action, i.e.

an action at a distance. It is a matter of a kinematics’ action that consists of absolute movement

in permanent oscillation and is able to suspend concrete, symbolic possibilities for existing as

possibilities. Only by the means of this action, the original actuality (the act of existance, the

pure act) escapes from the transcendental psychosis and the negative gravity of the black hole.

Of course, there is something of an agent to this action. It is pure Potency that is

contained in the act of existence. It has an existence but not of its own, it acts, but only at a

distance. It is also designated as the necessary existent natura sua, “that that can be” (das

Könnensein), or a mere Potency (die blosse Potenz), which corresponds to the unmediated

differential above mentioned. It is situated in the original actuality (the pure act) and ought to be

a contingency regarding itself. In this unprethinkable being, it does not have a willingness of its

own. For this reason, its doing (Tun) is free in respect of this being. However, due to the

condition of being free in the act of existence, pure Potency is always below or above itself, but

never itself. To escape from this unwanted condition of groundless freedom (grundlose

Freiheit), the necessary existent must become other than that which is in this unprethinkable

being. In this sense, it must transcend the necessary existent purely in act, transgress it, and be

more than it. Nevertheless, it cannot remain the Being, because it has transgressed the

prescribed condition of being a mere possibility. Thus, pure Potency ceases to be potentia actus

(a potency of an act) and becomes potencia potentiae12.

Briefly put, pure Potency does act in the act of existence, but only at a distance.

However, it is precisely action at a distance that offers Beginnings on all sides. In this sense, we

shall attempt to outline briefly the phenomenology of pure Potency in its condition of being a

beginning of everything that exists by means of its three main characteristics that are the

following:

a) TRANSPASABILITY. The simple potency (die blosse Potenz) or that that can be

precedes all beginnings. In this sense, it is the beginning of everything that exists. It is

constituted by the transpassability of the condensed concept of the act of existence (the original

actuality) and is transpossible because it does not actualise itself immediately, which ensures its

quality of being transpassible. However, the beginning of everything that exists in itself is a

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simple subject for the being, yet without being an entity. Accordingly, that that can be is the

simple subject for (zum) the being, that has no being of its own, hence, a simple potency.13

b) ATTRACTION. The next important characteristic of pure potency is attraction.

“Simple potency is the internal beginning of everything that exists – the initial capture (seizure)

(der An-fang) because of its infinite not being. The attractive potency of the equally infinite

being also exists, but only in second place. To begin and to attract are already in view of the

terms (anfangen and anziehen) equivalent concepts. Beginning lies in attraction.” Thus, to

attract is to begin.14

c) THE SUBLIME. Simple potency is the original, unprethinkable mystery, but also for

that reason, the primum cogitabile whose being consists of winking, oscillation, and vibration

and by no means of a concrete action or donation. The initiation of meaning is produced by the

process of condensation by the means of magic (Magie), charm (Zauber), hypnosis due to the

fact that the pure act elevates itself to the “pure superabundant being” (überschwenglich) and

appears as sublime in the infinitive symbolic condensation (Dichtung, poetry) of the

phenomenological mass of the language (that has ceased to be le tour noir). In this way, the

divinely sublime does not exert its horrible power to act, but fascinates, i.e. exists

transcendentally and hypnotises, which is nothing but an action at a distance.

Briefly put, the absence of a fixed origin is replaced by an origin that situates itself in

the stepping outside (transition) of the original state of confusion. The condition of being open

permits the action of transposition that is made effective by transpassability. In the very course

of transpassability an origin without positivity is being effectuated. Thus, the origin is nothing

but the site in which the transcendental psychosis of the apperception and the continence of the

Stimmung, cease to be continent, impermeable and hermetically closed, and open to

transposition.15 Now, the question is how it decides for itself and assigns itself its proper origin

in the absence of origin. We shall try to outline a possible solution according to Schelling in the

next section, but before we embark on this task, we would like to consider some possible

parallels in the treatment of the problem of origin in the work of Schelling and Beckett.

We suggest the phenomenological status of pure Potency (das Könnensein or die blosse

Potenz) be compared with the phenomenological status of Beckett’s phantasm of his later plays.

The ability to set a distance, to separate itself and split into its own double, is a matter of the

absolute, yet the groundless freedom (die grundlose Freiheit) of pure Potency that introduces

contingency and opens up the space of the Double, i.e., of phantasm. This contingency produces

the interior distance that discloses the enigma of the same: A is never identical to another A

(A≠A), because of the infinitesimal distance between them (A≈A) which produces the

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infinitesimal difference constituted by the trans- of their transpassability, i.e. of their porosity;

transpassability being an indispensable constituent in the process of meaning production. This

space, in which the distance and the proximity of the Same is at stake, inaugurates the phantasm

of Beckett’s later plays that is embodied by a protagonist that is always present in the quality of

being absent, that is always on stage without being of the stage, a disembodied voice that hovers

over our heads, yet, in its full fleshy weight. In this sense, this newly opened space generates

“the figure that is an icon, a bodily frame to signal human presence, the external forma, not a

person sustained in drama but an emblem of an assumed person behind, the Beckettian persona,

the figure of identity, of the missing “I” conspicuously absent by contrast to the corporal figure

of the actor”16.

In this sense, we suggest both authors share the same attempt to materialise the

immaterial and repotentialise the positivity of the world by means of the performative action, to

which some refer in Beckett’s case as “ghosting”17. According to our interpretation, it is a

matter of putting a phantasm on stage, or of staging the dance of Schelling’s Potencies. The

parallel can be illustrated by the paradigm of the forms of reflexivity that enable action at a

distance, which both, pure Potency (das Könnensein) and Beckett’s phantasm, have in common.

Accordingly, the phantasm and pure Potency are nothing but porous, attractive, and sublime,

offering Beginnings on all sides.

THE ON-STAGE ACTION the phenomenology of inner reality

There are three conditions which often look alikeYet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:

Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachmentFrom self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them,

indifferenceWhich resembles the others as death resembles life,

Being between two lives...

T.S. Eliot, Burt Norton

Now, the question is how Being, as pure Potency or a phantasm, has come into being,

i.e. how the existence outside of the pure world of ideas could possibly have originated.

Schelling maintains that the eternally perfect ideas could never by themselves have generated an

extra-ideal, corruptible reality. Consequently, the only explanation for the existence of this

material universe must be to postulate an utterly contingent, yet primordial, leap (Sprung) out of

ideality into corporeal finitude.18 This issue provides the driving force for Schelling’s final

philosophy and can be accounted for by the theory of Potencies (Potenzenlehre)19.

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Potencies are mediators between the necessary laws of the rational and the creative

forces of the suprarational, as well as the irrational. They are endowed with concrete

individualities that enable them to assume innumerable relations. They constitute the “figure of

being” (die Figur des Seienden) that is an indispensable constituent of reality, but not yet real. It

lacks the specificity of material presence and individuality, because neither particularity nor

freedom can be produced by essences alone. Schelling maintains that these essences are lacking

in full actality. Indeed, as Beach argues, even the very concepts of space and time, of particular

and freedom are still only hypothetical thought-determinations.20 How, then, is to be understood

the transition a potencia ad actum, from ideal being to actual existence, from the formal to the

concrete?

In their original condition of rest, the Potencies have a “being” as ideal possibilities,

without possessing concrete actuality in real space and time. Hence, for the Potency to effect a

transition from potential-being to actual-being (a potentia ad actum) would involve stepping

outside the prescribed limits, and taking upon itself a mode of being that would, at least in the

beginning, be quite foreign to it. In other words, the Potency must cease to relate itself to the

other Potencies, because they are mere universals and as such possess no particularity of their

own. However, it is not enough. Due to the fact that no mere concept by itself is able to confer

actuality, the Potency must utterly transcend the system of ideas in order to acquire the

particularity. How is this to be managed?

Schelling embarks on the following argument. Ideally the Potency should accept the

imposed limitations. Nevertheless, being the source of all possibilities, it also possesses the

ability not to subordinate itself to the principle of order. As a pure possibility, a being entirely in

itself, it is free to assume a decision to turn inside out, i.e., to ex-ist (the word “exist” being

derived from the Greek existamenon that literally means “standing outside itself”)21. In case it

exercises that option, the Potency will undergo a profound alteration that endows it involve a

dislocation of its former character that previously sustained an ideal system of harmony and

order. Moreover, it will be endowed with a condition of radical disorder: not only must the

Potency actualise itself and be passively resistant to the orders, but also become an active power

that works in opposition to the principles of rationality. In this way, it will transform into a

positive force for disorder. This new Potency will in effect be an “inversion” (Umkehrung), or a

“perversion” (Verkehrung), of the Potency as it was in the original state of rest. Thus, this

transformation involves much more than just a radical break from the ideal world of essences.

This new Potency negates the forces of order, resists formal determinations of any kind in order

to ex-sist.22 Moreover, this is the way in which the individuality emerges. Briefly put, the

possible pushes toward the act, and freedom (the decision of the Potency in favour of existence)

is the force that actualises the possible. This being so, the particular in Schelling’s work would

be nothing but a matter of actualisation of the Potency, i.e. of its (re)potentialisation.

9

THE EXPERIENCE OF THE IMPOSSIBLE

For most of us, there is only the unattendedMoment, the moment in and out of time,

The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning

Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeplyThat it is not heard at all, but you are the music

While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,Hints followed by guesses; and the rest

Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is incarnation.

Here the impossible unionOf spheres of existence is actual,

Here the past and futureAre conquered and reconciled, ...

T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Till now, we have considered the possibility of movement of the transcendental

facticity. Now, it is time to tackle the issue of its dynamic transformation. When Potency

abandons its condition of being a mere Potency, it enters into the realm of effective reality, i.e.

of impossibility, in which it ceases to be possible and becomes effectively real. The dynamic

transfer of the kinetic experience puts the transcendental facticity into motion by exposing its

mode of presentation (Darstellung) and its differences, that are the differences in clarity and

non-clarity, immediacy and mediation, the modes of symbolic consciousness insofar as the

symbolic consciousness of image (bildlich) or non-image, modes of direct intuition of

phantasia, and indirect intuition of image, etc. However, transcendental facticity is not figurable

(darstellbar), although it does contribute to the figurability (Darstellbarkeit)23 of the Figure of

Being. In this regard, transcendental facticity does not express, but ex-poses itself as it is. For

this reason, it is necessary to account for the mode of appearing (Art der Aufweisung) of this

kinetic ex-position of the Figure of Being as a dancing consort of being, acting and thinking.

Accordingly, our task is to grasp the phenomenality of the Figure of Being in the exact mode of

appearing, not the mere fact of it. In this way, the appearing of the Figure of Being will be

approached not only in its physicality, but also in its phenomenality as the indispensable

constituent of the entire experience, and ultimately, of the aesthetic experience. In this sense,

Cézanne attempted to paint the sensation, Bacon to register the fact and Pollock to perform

action painting. We suggest that Schelling’s Potenzenlehre and Beckett’s stage rather consist of

the same attempt. All of them offer different modes of the ex-position of being, acting and

thinking that have in common a tautegoric approach24 according to which neither content nor

form are to be discerned separately. Thus, the ex-posed is not first embodied in a form and then

it appears, but it appears in this form and is (means) this form. Only in this way, being, acting

and thinking do exist effectively and are not different, nor mean anything different from what

they are– but the very fact that they are.

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THE KINETIC SCULPTURE

The end is where we start from. And every phraseAnd sentence that is right (where every word is at home

Taking its place to support the others,The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,

An easy commerce of the old and the new,The common word exact without vulgarity,The formal word precise but not pedantic.

The complete consort dancing togetherevery phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning.

T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

The kinetic experience of the Figure of Being can be accounted for only by the dynamic

transfer of transcendental facticity. The dynamic transfer puts the Figure of Being into

locomotion, so that it turns into kinetic sculpture. In this section we shall deal with the athletics

of kinetic sculpture.

A kinetic experience is produced by a movement that works out the meaning and makes

a complete consort of Potencies dance together. This movement results in a kinetic sculpture

that is both, an object and an event, or “happening”. In fact, this is a mobile that depends for its

aesthetic effect on constantly changing patterns of relationships between Potencies taking place

through space and time. The movement of the kinetic sculpture goes simultaneously in two

directions: ab actu ad potenciam and a potencia ad actum, i.e. a) from the pure act (or the state

of original indetermination) to the potency free to obey or to act on its own and b) from the

positivity of the unmediated and unspiritual selves to the realm of possibilities. This can be

illustrated by the athletics of the Figure of Being that consists of three different motions:

translation (or motion along a path from one place to another), rotation about an axis, vibration,

or any combination of motions. The coexistence of all motions in the Figure of Being is the

rhythm that sets a distance in regard to the condition of original indetermination. Indeed, every

movement is a movement, vertigo-like, to somewhere not previous reckoned on – a matter of

submission in order to release. In this sense, the rhythm must be rightly timed and cannot be

imitated. Thus, learning to wait for the Figure of Being to discover its rhythm, waiting without

knowing and the waiting itself mean a submission to the inimitability of the rightly timed

rhythm. Only this rhythm is able to set the levels of sensation, i.e., to produce affectation,

alteration, difference, movement, change. In fact, sensation is nothing but vibration that turns

into resonance. This movement corresponds to the kinematics of the dynamic transfer of the

Figure of Being, or perhaps, in Beckett’s terms, to “the static image of the egg stirring with life-

never-to-become-hatched”25. However, there should be also a “third term” to explain how

something becomes affected and how the force becomes affectation. Thus, we come to the

triptych Deleuze uses in the “Logic of Sensation” that is: vibration – resonance – time.

The dance of the kinetic sculpture is also performed by means of four different

movements which basic element is always action (Wirkung). These are: traction, abstraction,

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attraction, and distraction. The basic activity is traction; that is a particular form of power that

makes something move in the direction of the action. Furthermore, the kinetic sculpture relies

on the movement of ab-straction; that is the activity of getting something out of something else

(=extraction) by which Potencies are enabled to step out of the original state of indetermination.

It is a matter of an abs-traction (ab-ziehen) from the absence of origin that makes the possibility

possible. Also, the abstraction works simultaneously in two directions: a) ab actu ad potenciam,

by inciting the potency to use its possibility of acting on its own –in case of particularisation or

individualisation and b) a potencia ad actum, by breaking the positivity of the unmediated and

unspiritual selves into a plurality in potentiam –in case of repotentialisation. In fact, in both

cases, it is a matter of repotentialisation that repotentialises simultaneously i) the pure act and,

ii) the positivity of unmediated and unspiritual selves. This process is enabled either by the

activity of dis-traction or attr-action. Dis-traction, as a means of repotentialisation, makes

something free from its positivity and ready to succumb to up until now an unknown attr-action.

And thus, the end is where we start from: in the movement of the attraction, as a particular

feature that offers beginnings on all sides. Be as it may, basically, it is always a matter of action

(regardless of the type: tr-action, abstr-action, distr-action or attr-action).

By these means, the dance of the Figure of Being turns into a spectacle of hearing and

seeing, measured by a sequence of visual and aural signals that interact, join and split, mirror

each other, showing agreement and conflict. And, the stage is always where the figure appears,

recorded or live, and where it is posed against another figure, embodied or not, and set against

the setting where there is a human body which can obey or challenge the voice and where the

possible movements of the body and sound of speech or music are set against changes and

modulations of lighting.

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REPOTENTIALISATION REVISITED

dead calm, then a murmur, a name, a murmured name, in doubt, in fear, in love, in fear, in doubt, wind of winter in the black boughs, cold calm sea whitening whispering to the shore, stealing, hastening, swelling, passing, dying, from naught come, to naught gone.

S. Beckett, Addenda to Watt

These are some moments of the phenomenological insight of the kinetic sculpture in the

theatrum philosophicum of Schelling and Beckett in which one listens to the rising and

subsiding rhythm of vivid and exuberant life20. Indeed this sort of listening to where a rhythm

changes, begins and ends, and becomes sound, and eventually a word that is also an act (Tat) –

listening to the roots of things and sources – is where everything begins and ends. This implies

authenticity of radical listening to the inward frequences of merely being alive 26, which is not

static but kinetic experience that allows us to consider action as a matter of openness

(Gelassenheit), and, thus, beginnings as a matter of action (Wirkung).

NOTES

Richir, M., L’Expérience du penser. Phénoménologie, philosophie, mythologie, Editions Jérôme Millon, Grenoble, 1996 (henceforth cited as Exp.); Courtine, J.-F., “La subjectivité: Fondation et extase de la raison” in Extase de la Raison. Essais sur Schelling, Galilée, Paris, 1990, pp. 151-167.

2 Knottenbelt, E.M., “Samuel Beckett: Poetry as performative act” Buning, M. And Oppenheim, L. (eds.) Beckett in the 1990s. Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – Atlanta, GA 1993, pp. 32.

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3 Kedzierski, M., “Texts for performance: Beckett’s late works and the question of dramatism, performability and genre” in Buning, M. And Oppenheim, L. (eds.) Beckett in the 1990s. Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – Atlanta, GA 1993, pp. 305-311.

4 Cousineau, “Beneath Representation: On Staging Beckett’s Plays” in Stewart, B., ed. Beckett and Beyond, The Princess Grace Irish Library, Monaco, 1999, pp. 62-63.

5 Knottenbelt, E.M., op. cit., p. 32-33.6 Ibid., p. 35.7 Kedzierski, M., op. cit., pp. 305-311.8 Duckworth, C., “Beckett’s theatre: beyond the stage space” in Stewart, B., ed. Beckett and Beyond, The

Princess Grace Irish Library, Monaco, 1999, p. 96. 9 Beckett, S., Dream of Fair to Middling Women, The Black Cat Press, Dublin, 1992. 10 Richir, M., “Qu’est-ce qu’un Dieu? Mythologie et question de la pensée”, preface to Schelling F.W.J,

Philosophie de la mythologie, Editions Jérôme Millon, Grenoble, 1994, pp. 8-85; Richir, M., Exp., p. 103.11 Schelling, F.W.J., Einleitung in die Philosophie der Offenbarung oder Begründung der positiven

Philosophie, 1891. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schellings sämmtliche Werke, K.F.A. Schelling (ed.), Vol. XIII, Stuttgart/Augsburg: J.G. Cotta’scher Verlag, 1856-61, 162; Beach, E.A., The potencies of God(s): Schelling’s philosophy of mythology, State University of New York Press, New York, 1994, 106 (henceforth cited as The Potencies).

12 Schelling, F.W.J., Philosophische Einleitung in die Philosophie der Mythologie oder Darstellung der rein-rationalen Philosophie, Vol. XI, 337-338, 346-347.

13 Ibid., 355.14 Ibid., 355.15 Richir, M., Exp., pp. 100-106, 139-279.16 Kedzierski, M., op. cit., pp. 305-311.17 Cohn, R., “Ghosting throught Beckett” in Buning, M. And Oppenheim, L. (eds.) Beckett in the 1990s.

Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – Atlanta, GA 1993, pp. 1-11.18 Schelling, Philosophie und Religion, 1804. Vol. VI, 36; Beach, E.A., The Potencies, p. 97.19 Schelling, XI.20 Beach, E.A., The Potencies, pp. 129-136.21 Schelling, XI, 388; XII, 38.21 Schelling, XIII. This is also the way in which Richir accounts for the action of les Wesen sauvages, i.e. “les

Wesen de language phénoménologique”, Exp., p. 270.22 Schelling, XII, 195-196, 237-238.23 Beckett, S., Breath and other shorts, Faber and Faber, London, 1971.24 Knottenbelt, E.M., op. cit., p. 35.

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