Samuel Beckett et l’univers de la fiction by Fernande Saint-Martin (review)

456 LEITERS IN CANADA 1976 sans interet, leur proliferation meme et l'absence de conclusions explicites donne }'impression que Ie texte de Breton se Ieduit a une succession d'emprunts. On peut regretter ainsi que soit minimisee la part de l'experience qu/avaH Breton de l'ecriture automatique par exemple, experience qu'il avait integree a sa nHlexion et qu'on doit tenir pour responsable de l'ecart qui apparait entre les propositions du Manifeste et les theories dont Breton avait eu connaissance. En d'autres termes, Ie processus d'integration des connaissances livresques de Breton a la reflexion de plusieurs annees qui precede la redaction de son texte se voit ainsi quelque peu occulte. Cependant, cette etude demeure exemplaire et s'averera indispensable pour toute interpretation ulterieure. On attendra avec impatience Ie livre complementaire sur Ie Second Manifeste que Robert nous promet. (MICHEL PARMENTIER) Femande Saint-Martin. Samuel Beckett et l'univers de la fiction. Les Presses de l'Universite de Montreal. 271. $11.25 Any intelligent speculation on a work as complex and intractable as that of Samuel Beckett deserves attention, and Fernande Saint-Martin's study Samuel Beckett et ['univers de la fiction is no exception. That it remains no more than intelligent speculation derives in part from the resistance of Beckett's work to accepted critical procedures and in part from SaintMartin 's own methodological uncertainties: her theoretical introduction , while very clear and to the point, does not fully justify her subsequent analysis or explain its apparent contradictions. The introduction, entitled 'Langage et fiction: surveys the Beckett terrain, situating his work in the twentieth century ('l'une des plus representatives de la sensibilite et des aspirations de l'hornrne du xxe siecle: p 7), isolating the major problematic ('la remise en question de la nature du langage: p 7), and tracing its departure from the tradition of the novel through its criticism of realism and through its surrealist affiliations. Saint-Martin sees Beckett's work evolving chronologically in two distinct stages, the one centred on the discovery of the 'essential self: the other on a redefinition of fictional material itself and on the function of language. The first stage, comprising especially Murphy, Watt, the short fictions and Molloy, explores the world of mental alienation and dreams, whence the link with surrealism and certain sociocultural assumptions of the post-World Wan period. This stage justifies, in Saint-Martin's view, a psychoanalytic exegesis which she carries out in the individual chapters devoted to the fictions, as instanced by such headings as 'Watt ou I'approche du Pere' and by the application of Gestalt theories to a reading of Murphy. The second stage in Beckett's development shows him abandoning these socio-cultural coordinates in order to focus on the fundamental HUMANITIES 457 mechanisms of language itself and on the narrator's reactions to the fictional projections hypostasized by language. It is at this point that contradictions occur in Saint-Martin's study. Having posited for this stage in Beckett's development the elimination of the referential dimension in fiction in favour of the auto-referential, Saint-Martin persists, however obliquely, in applying a referential grid to the texts. So in discussing Comment c'est under the heading 'Le Refus du masochisme', there is an apparent continuation of the psychoanalytic gloss initiated in the earlier chapters. Certainly the author deals with the problem of language in Comment c' est but in existential and thematic terms, in terms of the dynamics of 'self' and 'other': 'Comment it travers Ie langage ... peut-on vraiment faire exister I'autre pour soi et soi pour J'autre' (p 264). This paraphrase ultimately fails to show how in the functioning of the language of the novel itself this problematic is revealed. (JOHN GILBERT) R.C. Mayles, compiler. English-Canadian Literature to 1900: A Guide to In/ormation Sources. Gale Research Company. 346. $18.00 In examining Canada's past through its literature one cannot help thinking that every century, most certainly the nineteenth, was heroic. Each in its own way. Through the original work of such bibliographers as Tremaine , Peel, Hare, Wallat, Morley, Lande, Watters, Bell, and others, this prolific publishing time...