Belacqua's Fear of Death (Ennui and the Arts)

"Disbelief is a bore. We do not count our change. We simply cannot bear to be bored." (Selected Works, Vol. IV 116)

(The Real Belacqua)

     If we are to agree with the Jesuit's statement given in "A Wet Night," we can see throughout Belacqua's stories, specifically "Ding Dong," that he fears boredom, but ultimately lingering behind this boredom is the fear of death. The narrator of the story begins by telling us that Belacqua held the "belief that the best thing he had to do was to move constantly place to place...The mere act of rising and going, irrespective of whence and whither, did him good" (99). Traveling poorly from place to place, Belacqua has reached a point in his life where he is constantly on the move, frequently diving into seedy bars for his desired gin and tonics. If you constantly fear something, what is the best way to ignore it? -Occupy your mind. By continuously moving, Belacqua's mind is rarely at rest, allowing him to ignore his real fear: Death. Although, when aware of why he is traveling so much, "He was at times tempted to wonder whether the remedy were not rather more disagreeable than the complaint, but he could only suppose that it was not, seeing that he continued to recourse to it" (99-100). The remedy is travel, the complaint is Death, or knowing that he is eventually going to die. I believe that Belacqua suffers from some sort of existential ennui. He is described as a poet and often times turns to art, specifically music, not religion, to calm his anxiety: "A great major symphony of supply and demand, effect and cause, fulcrate on the middle C of the counter and waxing, as it proceeded, in the charming harmonics of blasphemy and broken glass and all the aliquots of fatigue and ebriety. So that he would say that the only place where he could come to anchor and be happy was a low public-house" (104). Here in the public house, Belacqua is able to transcend himself, becoming comfortable without being on the move. The music of the place, the symphonies of sorrow, calms him. 

     Throughout the story, we see fixations on death: the paralytic blind man in the wheel chair, a pedestrian girl run over in the street, and constant images of darkness. Belacqua focuses on death, for as an artist he must constantly be aware of it - if he is going to make art, then his work will be immortal, or at least live long passed him; this alone should naturally cause anxiety, knowing that a piece of work will serve as a representation of yourself long after you are gone. He is always confronting his mortality each time a work is created. His fixations on death seen throughout the stories tell us he is definitely concerned with it, and his uneasiness and constant travel shows that he fears it. 

(A seedy Irish Bar (in Ft. Lauderdale), similar to the ones Belacqua may have encountered)

     In "Ding Dong," sitting in the dark bar, Belacqua becomes fascinated with a woman, specifically her face which "was so full of light" (105). More importantly, Belacqua is so interested in her because her face "bore no trace of suffering" (106). Suffering, or rather release from death. Belacqua constantly suffers and to see this face mystifies him. He is lost in her and "at her mercy" (106). He transcends himself and his suffering into her light, and being the first human he does so with (not art), he opens up entirely, possibly believing in something, and the experience is so profound he instantly denies her and breaks out into an incredibly anxious sweat. He does this because he is completely vulnerable at the mercy of a woman who allows him to transcend himself, and being in this situation, he has no other reaction but fear from its profoundness. After the encounter, Belacqua "tarried a little to listen to the music. Then he also departed, but for the Railway Street, beyond the river" (107). To recover from the event, he tries once more to hear the music, and then leaves, heading away from the woman at the bar. He experienced true love with this woman, and understanding the beauty of art and passion, he had to leave to preserve its wonder.

     Belacqua's fear of death positions himself as an artist and a lover. With the constant anxiety of knowing we are to die, sentiment that grasps our existence as something profound, transcendent and beyond, pulls Belacqua in to experience moments of true beauty. Like Proust and Wilde, Belacqua suffers constantly throughout More Pricks than Kicks, allowing him to be an artist, understanding beauty to the level of creating it. 

(Cutler) Beckett confronting Death