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Frederick J. Hoffman: Samuel Beckett: The Language of Self. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1964. 177 pages, (paperback) $1.50.
THE AUTHOR of this slender volume, a professor of modern literature at the University of California whose earlier works were devoted to Gertrude Stein, Freudianism, the literary mind, and the novel of the 1920s, has written a sophisticated essay on Beckett's epistemological inquiry into human existence. His discussion starts with Dostoevsky's "Notes from the Underground" and continues through the late nineteenth century with selected examples from Turgenev, Gogol, and Goncharov. Hoffman leads us to the twentieth century with brief references to Kafka and Beckett's friend, James Joyce. My commentary is concerned with Dostoevsky's, Kafka's, and Beckett's conceptions of the self and how they relate to those of Freud and Sullivan.
Hoffman initially presents a tripartite analysis of Dostoevsky's concept. It identifies three levels of awareness pertaining to the self: (a) as a self-conscious actor; (b) as a reflected appraisal of itself in the eyes of others (the observer and the observed); and (c) as a representation of a rational, Aristotelian type of logic. Dostoevsky's underground man is both sentimental and cynical. He watches himself in the mirror of his mind and assumes to some degree the dual role of actor and observer. The underground man as depicted by Dostoevsky is an ambiguous person suffering from "the disease of consciousness." Much of his energy is invested in assuming the part of the observer without having a reliable platform for his observations. He has strong romantic leanings, a tendency towards rebellion, and a never-ending desire to view himself as the