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The Plays of Samuel Beckett
Eugene Webb
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The Plays of Samuel Beckett
Eugene Webb
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In The Plays of Samuel Beckett Eugene Webb first summarizes the western philosophical tradition which has culminated in the void--the centuries of attempts to impose form and meaning on existence, the failure of which has left experience in fragments and man a stranger in an unintelligible universe. Succeeding chapters take up the plays work by work, interpreting each individually and tracing recurrent motifs, themes, and images to show the continuity in the underlying tendencies of Beckett's mind and art.
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Literary CriticismNOTES
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
1Matthew Arnold, âPreface to First Edition of Poems (1853),â On the Classical Tradition, ed. R. H. Super (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960), pp. 2-3.
2Marjorie Hope Nicolson, The Breaking of the Circle (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960).
3Arnold, âPreface to First Edition,â p. 1.
4The opening line of the Metaphysics, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), p. 689.
5Beckett studied French and Italian at Trinity College, Dublin (B.A., 1929; M.A., 1931), and at one time intended to take up an academic career. His masterâs thesis was on Descartes.
6See Ruby Cohn, âPhilosophical Fragments in the Works of Samuel Beckett,â in Samuel Beckett: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Martin Esslin (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1965), pp. 169-77.
7Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (New York: Grove Press, 1954), p. 41a. The play originally appeared in French as En attendant Godot (Paris: Ăditions de Minuit, 1952) and was translated by the author himself. The Grove Press edition numbers only the left hand pages; to indicate that a quotation is from the right hand page, I will insert the letter âaâ after the page number, as in this case. Subsequent page references will be given in parentheses.
8Aristotle, De Anima, in Basic Works, p. 553.
9Philip Wheelwright, ed. The Presocratics (New York: Odyssey Press, 1966), p. 70.
10Ibid, p. 71.
11Ibid, p. 74.
12Ibid, p. 79.
13Ibid, p. 72.
14Samuel Beckett, Endgame (New York: Grove Press, 1958), p. 70. The play originally appeared in French as Fin de partie (Paris: Ăditions de Minuit, 1957) and was translated by the author. Subsequent page references refer to the Grove Press edition and are given in parentheses.
15All of the above passages from Democritus may be found on pages 182-83 of Wheelwright, The Presocratics.
16Samuel Beckett, Murphy (New York: Grove Press, 1957), pp. 3-4. See William York Tindall, Samuel Beckett (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), p. 14.
17Samuel Beckett, Watt (New York: Grove Press, 1959), p. 34. See Tindall, Samuel Beckett, p. 20.
18Murphy, p. 47.
19Wheelwright, The Presocratics, p. 239.
20See Eugene Webb, Samuel Beckett: A Study of His Novels (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970; London: Peter Owen, 1970); pp. 22-25.
21In Samuel Beckett, Poems in English (New York: Grove Press, 1961), pp. 11-17. See Webb, Beckett: Novels, pp. 26-27.
22See Webb, Beckett: Novels, pp. 26-27, 44.
23Berkeley is mentioned in Luckyâs speech in Waiting for Godot, p. 29, and the Berkeleian principle, âesse est percipi,â is cited by Beckett himself in the notes to Film, in Samuel Beckett, Cascando and Other Dramatic Works (New York: Grove Press, 1968), p. 75.
24Purgatorio, canto IV. Beckett named the protagonist of his early collection of stories, More Pricks Than Kicks (London: Chatto and Windus, 1934), after this figure. See Webb, Beckett: Novels, pp. 23, 44-45.
25See Webb, Beckett: Novels, pp. 24, 62-63.
26The volumes of the trilogy originally appeared as Molloy (Paris, 1951), Malone meurt (Paris, 1951), and LâInnomable (Paris, 1953), and were all published by Ăditions de Minuit. The English translations, all published by Grove Press, are Molloy (New York, 1955), Malone Dies (New York, 1956), and The Unnamable (New York, 1958). All translations are by Samuel Beckett himself except in the case of Molloy, which he translated in collaboration with Patrick Bowles.
27David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), p. 253.
28See Edwin Arthur Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1932), pp. 52-55, 63.
29The importance of atomism in our century is obvious. Hylozoism can be seen in recent attempts to trace all matter to a common origin in a single element, hydrogen for example, and in the close association between spirit and matter in a thinker like Teilhard de Chardin.
30The Unnamable, p. 70.
31A chronology of Beckettâs works, giving both the dates of composition and the dates of publication (which sometimes differ considerably), may be found in Hugh Kenner, Samuel Beckett: A Critical Study (New York: Grove Press, 1961; Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), pp. 26-28.
32Bram van Velde (New York: Grove Press, 1960), p. 13.
33Ibid., p. 10.
34Ibid., pp. 10-13.
35Samuel Beckett as quoted in Tom F. Driver, âBeckett by the Madeleine,â Columbia University Forum, IV, no. 3 (Spring, 1961), 23.
36Israel Shenker, âMoody Man of Letters,â ...