Ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil velis

Ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil velis is a maxim by the Dutch occasionalist philosopher Arnold Geulincx, meaning that where one has no power, one should will nothing. In the novel, Marco recalls it when Miraijin asks whether he wants her to bring the people he has lost touch with to see him. The maxim names his sense that nothing can be wanted because nothing can be changed, yet the invitation turns that resignation toward a final act of care for the survivors.

Meaning and Source

The maxim appears in Geulincx’s posthumously published work Ethics. Its stark prescription is the elimination of willing as a radical way of resolving conflicts generated by the will. The novel’s afterword traces its later literary life through Samuel Beckett: Beckett acknowledged encountering it in a 1936 letter to Thomas McGreevy, used it in Murphy, and later referred directly to Geulincx in Molloy. The afterword also links the maxim’s affinity with Beckett to the discourse on Dhukkha discussed in the chapter “Weltschmertz & Co.”

Marco Recalls the Maxim

Twelve days before the gathering in the living room at Piazza Savonarola, which had been converted into a hospital room, Miraijin proposes inviting people Marco has not seen for years. The suggestion catches him unprepared. He cannot remember exactly how long it has been since he heard from Luisa, and he knows that he himself ended their relationship. In recent years she has written letters that he never answered. His estrangement from Giacomo has unfolded in the opposite direction: Marco wrote to him for years without receiving a reply, until he finally gave up.

Asked whether he would like to see them, Marco answers with the maxim, though he cannot remember who first said it. He remembers what it means and recognizes it as a fitting expression of his own state: where nothing is worth anything, there is nothing to want. His reply does not settle whether he wants the reunion; he is unsure even of his uncertainty. The maxim gives language to a life he believes has already run its course, in which changing things at the very end seems inconceivable.

From Resignation to a Gift

Miraijin reframes the invitation. She says she is not asking for Marco’s sake, but for herself and for those who will remain. Her concern extends to people she has never met: she knows his grandmother, Greta, and Carradori only vaguely, and knows Luisa and Giacomo only because Marco has told her about them. That attention to the survivors changes the proposal’s meaning for him. What first felt impossible becomes a gift he can give to those left behind, and his helplessness recedes enough for him to agree.

Marco still assumes that bringing everyone together cannot be done. Miraijin tells him not to worry and says she will take care of it. The resulting gathering includes Giacomo, who comes from America; Luisa, from Paris; and Marina and Greta, from Germany. Carradori arrives from Lampedusa, while Miraijin’s boyfriend Oscar comes from Barcelona. The practical improbability of the reunion makes the maxim’s place in the scene more than a statement of defeat: Marco cannot command the past or undo years of silence, but Miraijin’s initiative lets him want, and accept, one last meeting.

Narrative Significance

The maxim’s movement through the scene is a movement from powerlessness toward limited, relational agency. Marco cannot repair estrangements by willing them away, and his memory is failing as metastases have reached his brain. Yet his recognition of the maxim’s meaning does not foreclose desire altogether. Miraijin’s appeal relocates the question from what he can recover for himself to what he can offer others. The reunion does not erase the years of unanswered letters and silence; it gathers the people who remain around the approaching end.

The afterword’s account of Beckett extends the maxim beyond Marco’s immediate recollection. What functions as a formula for withdrawing desire also carries a literary history shaped by suicidal impulses, the renunciation of will, and the problem of suffering. In Marco’s scene, that severe philosophy is neither simply refuted nor enacted as total withdrawal: it becomes the language through which he recognizes his incapacity, before Miraijin’s care makes room for a final wish.