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Thanks, Kevin. Big Beckett fan. Love the ironic tension in his work between human hopes and hopelessness unmoored from the Divine frame. Check out my artist friend’s brilliant portrait on Instagram - @beneastart.

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Thank you for plugging that artwork, Adrian — that is quite the portrait (like a gnarled tree trunk, it looks like). I'm curious: which work from Beckett do you feel best showcases that ironic tension you mentioned?

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Yes, riven with all the fault lines of postmodernism! You mentioned the ‘ending’ to The Unnamable which obviously captures the paradox of going on and also not being able to, along with the necessity and impossibility of ‘silence’ for a writer. I had in mind poor old Murphy’s end, despite his assorted searches for freedom. Also, the teleological suspension writ large that is Godot. And, I suppose, how Dante dogged Beckett’s agnosticism right up to death. Does that make any sense, (alas, not a Beckett scholar!)?

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That does make sense, as I am no scholar (here be only thinking readers, I'd bet). Beckett's fixation on Dante is another interesting tell, where Beckett's hope for an end to suffering is concerned, since Dante envisioned all suffering in the route to all glory also.

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If memory serves correct, the beauty of Purgatorio particularly haunted him. It spoke to his obsession with the liminal. Even if he never believed in the glory of Paradiso he also couldn’t quite believe in its complete absence. I’m thinking of his joke about his gravestone: any colour as long as it’s grey.

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I love the song also and your writings always, but I must confess that those last words are more hollow than they used to be. "I'll drop the cross of self-denial, and enter on my great reward." I need a world which brings meaning to every horror, not just something to endure for a time. Mary McCord Adams says the same in "Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God" though she paints the path vaguely. I'd rather the song end with that cross becoming a crown, every jewel reflecting the sufferings endured. Much like the exalted state of Jesus whose image of glorification is a slaughtered lamb on the exalted throne of God which proves his worth and gathers all to worship(Rev 5). The cross was the path for Christ's glorification and I believe it is ours also.

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That's more than insightful, Daren. I agree, now that you've walked me through that way of reading the final verse — wishing for eternal Christ-like glory, rather than wishing only for an end of Christian suffering. Because that is what we're promised, especially in 1 Peter (which I'm reading currently). Peter reminded those Christians under persecution of the glory waiting them, not only in heaven but also in the suffering itself.

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Well done, and congrats on the publications!

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