Greek Laughter and the Problem of the Absurd

Abstract

T Xhe eponymous protagonist of Samuel Beck? ett's early novel Murphy spends most of his time in search of an escape from the burden of mundane consciousness?from what the novel calls his "unredeemed split self." Murphy survives by cultivating a variety of ataraxy: in Beckett's words, a "self-immersed indifference to the contingencies of the contingent world which he had chosen for himself as the only felicity." It is not at all inappropriate to gloss such a mental life in the vocabulary of Greek philosophy. The novel itself invites us to do so. We learn, for one thing, how Murphy had studied with the eccentrically Pythagorean Neary, whose attempt to inculcate an "attunement" and blending of "the opposites in Murphy's heart" had been fruitless. An entire chapter, moreover, is devoted to the depiction of Murphy's mind as both markedly tripartite and as a kind of private Platonic Cave, divided into zones of light, half light, and darkness. In the light, into which he rarely finds his way, Murphy has access to the "forms" of a fantasized reordering of his actual existence. In the half-light, he enjoys a dream-like, peaceful contemplation. But in the