And now I understand that you’re talking about those authors’ own felt obligation to emancipate through their writing, not some universal obligation they believed in. I can see how the work of both men was driven by a larger task (not sure I would define it the way you have) that they felt inadequate to, yet felt obliged to pursue.

Not to prolong this, but I think you’re much closer in saying Kafka hated his writing because it wasn’t adequate to the task he set for it than in supposing he didn’t value the task itself. Far from wanting no more of the world, Kafka sacralized it; it was his own existence he saw as an abomination.

And now I understand that you’re talking about those authors’ own felt obligation to emancipate through their writing, not some universal obligation they believed in. I can see how the work of both men was driven by a larger task (not sure I would define it the way you have) that they felt inadequate to, yet felt obliged to pursue.

Not to prolong this, but I think you’re much closer in saying Kafka hated his writing because it wasn’t adequate to the task he set for it than in supposing he didn’t value the task itself. Far from wanting no more of the world, Kafka sacralized it; it was his own existence he saw as an abomination.

Alan, hi, man. Unfortunately out of time (and steam) to give your reply the answer it deserves but I do hold that ‘whether he liked it or not’ implies coercion not because one is more likely to not like it than to like it (Beckett’s too wise to stake a position on that, as both assessments occur) but because it happens in perfect indifference to the orientation of one’s desire in advance: it simply doesn’t alter its bound occurrence that one likes or does not like it. So you’re quite right to say that the coming of the day could be quite welcome by the subject even if it were detached from the subject’s will but the day wouldn’t much care for such welcoming either and thus, unavoidably, comes pre-set at cross-purposes to that welcome. Not to mention in Beckett one has to welcome the new day because the old one was always so terrible: a point both of ethical solidity (the new of the new day can never be surmounted as the same old thing because its opportunity is far too valuable to simply moot) as well as a depressing realisation of fortunes (the new day is a wretched opportunity, inevitably, wretched in that we cannot but embrace it, voluntarily or involuntarily, though it will smother us). I also do think there is an absolutely obligatory emancipatory decree in both Kafka and Beckett. Kafka’s obligation to emancipate is found in the very fact he wrote, I think. That said, I don’t think he was exactly approving of it. As you’d know, he hated his writing, in part, because it was an abomination to him in its emancipatory nature, its otherworlding. Kafka partly wanted no more world of any kind. But he also hated himself for it because he never wrote ‘well enough’ (or, in his own estimation, could never see through the emancipation of himself writing innately was but never made happen). In both cases, liked or not liked, the emancipatory was obligatory. As for Beckett, I think he was less at odds with writing but the obligation to emancipate is as obligatory for him in that the fickle worstfulness of reality summons one to a burnt conscience (but never burnt-out, hence its enduring agony).

Alan, hi, man. Unfortunately out of time (and steam) to give your reply the answer it deserves but I do hold that ‘whether he liked it or not’ implies coercion not because one is more likely to not like it than to like it (Beckett’s too wise to stake a position on that, as both assessments occur) but because it happens in perfect indifference to the orientation of one’s desire in advance: it simply doesn’t alter its bound occurrence that one likes or does not like it. So you’re quite right to say that the coming of the day could be quite welcome by the subject even if it were detached from the subject’s will but the day wouldn’t much care for such welcoming either and thus, unavoidably, comes pre-set at cross-purposes to that welcome. Not to mention in Beckett one has to welcome the new day because the old one was always so terrible: a point both of ethical solidity (the new of the new day can never be surmounted as the same old thing because its opportunity is far too valuable to simply moot) as well as a depressing realisation of fortunes (the new day is a wretched opportunity, inevitably, wretched in that we cannot but embrace it, voluntarily or involuntarily, though it will smother us). I also do think there is an absolutely obligatory emancipatory decree in both Kafka and Beckett. Kafka’s obligation to emancipate is found in the very fact he wrote, I think. That said, I don’t think he was exactly approving of it. As you’d know, he hated his writing, in part, because it was an abomination to him in its emancipatory nature, its otherworlding. Kafka partly wanted no more world of any kind. But he also hated himself for it because he never wrote ‘well enough’ (or, in his own estimation, could never see through the emancipation of himself writing innately was but never made happen). In both cases, liked or not liked, the emancipatory was obligatory. As for Beckett, I think he was less at odds with writing but the obligation to emancipate is as obligatory for him in that the fickle worstfulness of reality summons one to a burnt conscience (but never burnt-out, hence its enduring agony).