La saggezza dei pigri. Figure di rifiuto del lavoro in Melville, Conrad e Beckett

[Autom. eng. transl.] In the increasingly frantic rhythms of a never-ending modernity indolence becomes, if not a value, a precious element of contrast. "The wisdom of the lazy" tells and analyzes three literary characters who, refusing to work, give body to an alternative look at their time. Bartleby, who in Melville's story insists on "prefer not to", expresses a reaction to the emerging capitalism in which dedication to work is combined with consumerist hedonism. James Wait, the sailor lured to the center of "The Nigger of the 'Narcissus" by Conrad, is a symptom of the conflict between the exaltation of the industriousness of a supposed traditional community and the awareness of his unreality. On the refusal to work of the protagonist of "Murphy," then, Beckett modulates a reflection on the relationship between activity and passivity, internal and external, identity and difference. In Bartleby, James Wait and Murphy we see the convergence of the greatest potential with the most radical impotence and in this paradox an idea of the human is configured as an intertwining of productive creativity and sterile abandonment.