METODOLOGÍA

Metaphysical desire is thus instigated by the non- in-difference of one to another. Levinas explains: “the transcendence of the Other . . . accounts for freedom” (TI 225). This transcendence is, once again, manifested positively: “passing over to being’s other, otherwise than being” (OTB 3).56 It is separation with regard to the Infinite: “Desire which does not arise from a lack or a limitation but from a surplus, from the idea of Infinity” (TI 210). 57

This relation is already fixed in the situation described by Descartes, and quoted by Levinas, where “the ‘I think’ maintains with the Infinite it can nowise contain and from which it is separated a relation called ‘idea of infinity’” (TI 48). Levinas states: “. . . infinity overflows the thought that thinks it” (TI 25).58 The idea of infinity revealed, but

which keeps reason away” (157). This argument is opposed by a number of critics most prominently by Bortolo Martinelli in his 2003 book Leopardi; Tra Leibniz e Locke.

56 _{Transcendence has multiple meanings in Levinas. A transcendental phenomenology, for instance, is}

characterized by sensation and by things encountered in the light. The light that makes a thing appear, however, drives out the shadows and thus empties space. Thus a thing is encountered in the light as much as the thing is encountered in nothingness. For Levinas to comprehend a particular being is “to apprehend it out of an illuminated site it does not fill” (Totality and Infinity 190). Indeed in driving out darkness, the light does not arrest the incessant play of what he calls the there is (see 2.5). Yet vision in the light is precisely the possibility of forgetting the horror of the there is (see 2.5). This deliverance from the horror of the there is is evinced in the contentment of enjoyment. Levinas, however, emphasizes, “Vision is not a transcendence. It ascribes a signification by the relation it makes possible . . . Light conditions the relations between data; it makes possible the signification of objects that border one another. It does not enable one to approach them face to face . . . Vision is a forgetting of the there is because of the essential satisfaction, the agreeableness of sensibility, enjoyment, contentment with the finite without concern for the infinite” (TI 191). The transcendence I will be interested in, particularly in the analysis of Endgame, is described by Levinas: “If the transcendent cuts across sensibility, if it is openness preeminently, if its vision is the vision of the very openness of being, it cuts across the vision of forms and can be stated neither in terms of contemplation nor in terms of practice. It is the face; its revelation is speech” (TI 193).

57 _{Levinas explains: “The Infinite then cannot be tracked down like game by a hunter. The trace left by the}

infinite is not the residue of a presence; its very glow is ambiguous. Otherwise, its positivity would not preserve the infinity of the infinite any more than negativity would” (OTB 12).

58 _{Descartes comes in once more whereby, as Levinas states, “The knowing of the cogito thus refers to a}

relation with the Master−with the idea of infinity or of the Perfect. The idea of Infinity is neither the immanence of the I think nor the transcendence of the object.” The movement of the Cartesian cogito is a movement of descent toward the ever more profound abyss of the “there is” (see 2.6). Levinas says that Descartes in this manner enters into a work of infinite negation which is “a movement unto the abyss, vertiginously sweeping along the subject incapable of stopping itself” (TI 93). Levinas says that the ‘I’ in negativity breaks with participation but it does not find in the cogito a stopping place. Descartes, according to Levinas, “gauge[s] in advance the return of affirmation behind the negation” (TI 93). What Levinas adds, however, to this Cartesian thought is that “to possess the idea of infinity is to have already welcomed the

not disclosed, through the other person who is Other is argued for in “La Ginestra,” Endgame and Happy Days (see 3.2; 3.3; 3.4).

Once it recognizes its material needs, the ‘I’ can turn to what it does not lack. It distinguishes the material from the spiritual, and opens to desire. This requires discourse antecedent to which is the other’s ‘Height’ (see 3.3). The Other is the poor one who presents him or herself as an equal. His equality within this essential poverty is

paradoxically also a commandment (and thus the idea of Height): “The Other qua Other is situated in a dimension of height and of abasement−glorious abasement; he has the face of the poor, the stranger, the widow, and the orphan, and, at the same time, of the master called to invest and justify my freedom” (TI 251). Levinas explains: “This command can concern me only inasmuch as I am master myself; consequently this command

commands me to command. The thou is posited in front of a we (TI 213). In “La Ginestra”, the thou is posited in the appeal to form a social chain against the far too powerful surrounding Nature. In Endgame and Happy Days this power lies in the overwhelmingly confined setting of the dark basement and the sucking mound respectively, the latter blocking Winnie who can “no longer turn, nor bow, nor raise” (CDW 160). I argue that in all three situations, the presence of the other person has bound the self before it can enter into any contractual system of language and exchange. I argue that the self is, in these literary works, always already for-the-other. The poetic voice’s appeal to reach out to the other in “La Ginestra” and the presence of Hamm, Nagg and Willie as Other could be construed as coming from a dimension of height, albeit without opposing the ‘I’ as obstacle or enemy; without an attempt to ‘totalize’ the other.

Other” (TI 93). It is the other who can offer that stopping place for the cogito. Levinas explains: “In returning to the Cartesian notion of infinity, the “idea of infinity” put in the separated being by the infinite, we retain its positivity, its anteriority to every finite thought and every thought of the finite” (TI 197).