Samuel Beckett and Anthropomorphic Insolence

2007 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Ackerley
Keyword(s):  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
The Self

Samuel Beckett's writings display a contradictory attitude to Romanticism, their incipient lyricism ruthlessly constrained and the "impulse to animise" rejected in favour of a view of nature as atomistic, mineral and organic. Beckett's distrust of the dictum that "man is the measure of all things" leads in to a sustained critique of the anthropomorphic impulse and of any epistemology (including Romanticism) that thus asserts the self. I then critique, from the perspective of , two Romantic tenets: "mythical fancy" and the transcendental impulse. The essay concludes where it begins, with Beckett's ambiguous attraction to a tradition he rejected, this constituting his experience of the romantic agony.

Samuel Beckett's Disruptive Translations of ‘je voudrais que mon amour meure’

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-178
Author(s):  
Trask Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
The Self ◽  
Irish Poetry ◽  
Poetic Translation

Self-translators are often granted freedoms in their translations unimaginable for standard translators. Whereas a standard translation usually prizes sameness (or invisibility as Lawrence Venuti argues), the self-translator may instead highlight difference or disruption. A burgeoning subfield of criticism has outlined the ways in which one of the most famous of these self-translators, Samuel Beckett, makes use of his role as translator to further the reach of his work beyond the constraints of a monolingual text. Whereas most of this criticism has taken aim at Beckett's prose and theater, this essay asks what can be gleaned about Beckett's translation style from his early poetry. Here I focus on Beckett's four-line, untitled poem which begins ‘je voudrais que mon amour meure’ (‘I would like my love to die’). Originally published in 1948 in the bilingual journal Transition Forty-eight, this poem would go on to be edited, translated, reedited, and retranslated over the course of nearly thirty years. The various iterations and translations of the poem are not always harmonious and instead force the reader to consider more deeply the themes of the poem and to question the role of translation. I read the poem in light of Beckett's 1934 essay ‘Recent Irish Poetry’ as well as consider it in response to W.B. Yeats' 1899 poem ‘He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead’. By situating the poem in this context, I argue that this poem is a manifestation of Beckett's argument in the essay that poetry must take into account the division between poet and object. His short poem demonstrates this division as well as that between original and translation and thus allows us a window onto his translation project at large. Considering Beckett's poetic translation permits us to consider how a complementarity of intention towards language does not necessarily entail complementary translations.

scholarly journals Starość niedoskonała. Doświadczenie starości w dramatach „Końcówka” Samuela Becketta i „Wieczór” Alaksieja Dudaraua

2017 ◽  
Vol 163 ◽  
pp. 377-388
Author(s):  
Beata Siwek
Keyword(s):  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Dramatic Text ◽  
Stage Directions

Imperfect senility. The experience of senilityin dramas Endgame by Samuel Beckettand Evening by Aleksiej DudarauThe article is devoted to the image of senility in two dramas — Endgame by Samuel Beckett and the dramatic text entitled Evening by Aleksiej Dudarau. The authoress introduces the conception of acharacter realized in analyzed texts and also shows the great importance of stage directions in the reconstruction of the title issue. In both dramas death appears very frequently. Death and senility are depicted as mutually conditioning experiences. The self-awareness of one’s own temporality increases with age and the sensation that the nature is limited and mortal starts to cause the most intense feelings and emotions, triggers questions, full of disbelief about the sense and end of everything.Несовершенная старость. Опыт старостив пьесах Конец игры Сэмюэля Беккетаи Вечер Алексея ДудареваСтатья посвящена образу старости в двух драматических произведениях — Конец игры Сэмюэля Беккета и Вечер Алексея Дударева. Автор работы рассматривает концепции характеров, представленных в анализируемых текстах, а также обращает внимание на огромную роль ремарок для понимания главной идеи произведений. В обеих пьесах постоянно присутствует тема смерти. Смерть и старость показаны как взаимообуславливающие явления. Осознание кратковременности собственной жизни, а с ним и понимание ограниченности сил природы, усиливается с возрастом; что в итоге рождает важнейшие вопросы, полные недоверия, о смысле и конце всего сущего.

Samuel Beckett and the Mathematics of Salvation

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-29
Author(s):  
Chris Ackerley
Keyword(s):  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
The Self ◽  
Waiting For Godot

Abstract One of the thieves was saved .… If, as Vladimir concludes at the outset of Waiting for Godot, “It’s a reasonable percentage,” then why not accept Pascal’s celebrated exhortation to believe, rather than to risk in the afterlife the terrors of the abyss or the inferno? This essay traces Beckett’s use of the motif of the two thieves with respect to the truism of Credo quia absurdum est, as manifest in the calculus that underlies the Monadology of Leibniz and informs Beckett’s writing from Murphy to How It Is, and his sense of the self as something that is/was neither One nor Zero.

Tender Ties: Elizabeth Bowen and Habit

2019 ◽  
pp. 79-95
Author(s):  
Ulrika Maude
Keyword(s):  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
The Self ◽  
Elizabeth Bowen ◽  
The Senses ◽  
As If

This chapter compares Bowen’s depictions of habit to contemporary psychological discourses and its presentation in other works (by, for example, Samuel Beckett), The significance of objects, places and habits in Bowen’s work, she argues, reveals how the narratives present objects and places as so integral to the self that they acquire near sentience, with the capacity to console, pierce or wound. Although Bowen’s ‘characters fasten their fears and desires’ onto objects (Inglesby 312-13), it shows that the objects also have a hold over these emotions, as if they have scarred her characters, leaving their own inscriptions on the nerves and the senses. Bowen’s writing seems to suggest that we bury our intentions in objects, which, although they exist externally, exist for us only to the extent to which they arouse in us volitions, thoughts or emotions.

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