‘Dans le manicome du crâne et nulle part ailleurs’: confinement and confusion in Mal vu mal dit (1981)

Abstract

Beckett’s late “closed space” works are characterized by the experience of confinement. This article revisits Mal vu mal dit (1981), focusing on two dimensions of the text that have characterized experiences of the current pandemic: confinement and confusion. I explore these notions and their productive co-existence in the text: firstly the experience of the enclosed, disturbing spaces of the cabin that are repeatedly described, as well as the mental space from which narration emerges, the “manicome du crane” or madhouse of the skull. Secondly I consider the disorderly mingling of past and present, reality and imaginary, perception and language, that structures the text and characterises our engagement with it. The austere picture of existence that emerges is tempered by poetic patterning and allusion that point to a (literary) possibility of solace beyond the brutality of the present. The radical challenges posed by this writing mean that it cannot represent a sustainable “new normal” for narrative fiction. Nevertheless, drawing on Beckett’s letters and informed by Milan Kundera and others, my reading proposes ways in which the confinement and confusion of Mal vu mal dit intensify our engagement with the processes and possibilities of narrative practice.