Jung and Easily Freudened

James Joyce aside, there’s a complexity to simplicity we humans create seemingly for the joy of wallowing in the confusion that results, and seeing the puzzlement it brings to others. An instance of this can be found in A Listening Thing, wherein Stephen tries to make sense of Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable, which, like Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, have been causing confusion for ages, some of which is quite scholarly, and has been the basis of a self-perpetuating industry, made up of people who like to think they know exactly what a writer meant when he or she created a given work, even if it took years to bring about, during which the maker went blind, lost loved ones, and spent time living in the street while addicted to opium, before finally being saved by an angel or kind prostitute — and this, before finishing the first chapter. As another instance, one might cite this very paragraph, which has almost nothing to do with Specimen 2, a piece that, while clever, isn’t confusing at all. If I were to put my finger on it, I would call it a reminder of just how powerful, as individuals, we are, and how dangerous we can be when we’re unaware of that power, especially when we choose or refuse to look further than our nose. This is not to say, though, that life is not a mellow, miraculous dream, the simplicity of which is of such a complex nature as to be inexhaustibly inspiring and beautiful. And what of Specimen 1? It goes like this:

The patient didn’t know he was the patient / the doctor didn’t know he was the doctor / I didn’t know either of them / so I turned away from the mirror — yes, I said I turned away from the mirror.

[ 1956 ]