The Joy of Pain

When in Exeter in early 1980s, I once read and a book titled THE JOY OF SEX. Looting that book's title, I venture to say that Beckett celebrated, welcomed and even, when it wasn't there, missed and eventually sought pain. THE JOY OF PAIN could be an apt title of a book on SB. SB wrote with exuberant ecsatasy about maladies, aliments, illnesses, injuries of the heart and body and wounds of the soul as a result of "the slings and arrows that human flesh is heir to." The last quotation is snatched from Hamlet. There is a Boris Karloff film titled THE BODY SNATCHER, and like that body snatcher I snatch allusions, quotations and phrases. I am like SB's HAPPY DAYS Winnie, an inveterate allusioner, and these allusions swarm in my head that I want to cry with Pozzo when he says:" But this is unbearable". Yes, these allusions and quotations swarm in my head like the locusts that swarmed in Egypt with such huge numbers that turned daylight into night. Thus speaks THE BIBLE about those locusts in Pharaoh's days, and thus speaks John Milton in PARADISE LOST about Satan and his followers falling from Heavan and as THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA speaks SB Tawfeek about allusions and quotations that come to him, as Pozzo says, "all unawares."