"Le besoin d’être mal armé": Samuel Beckett and the language of attenuation

Authors

  • Teresa Rossell Nicolás Universitat de Barcelona

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_tropelias/tropelias.202074786

Keywords:

Beckett, Language, Mauthner, Self-Translation

Abstract

In 1937 Samuel Beckett wrote a letter to the German bookseller and publisher Axel Kaun in which he outlined the aesthetics that will shape his writing, a writing that aspires to overcome the conventions of language and tends towards reduction and attenuation. Also, during this decade Beckett was impressed by the reading of Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache (1901-1902), by Fritz Mauthner, an Austrian philosopher who developed a scepticism regarding the possibility of knowing the world through language. In this sense, by means of these two texts, it is possible to trace Beckett's tendency towards the «Literatur des Unworts» and silencing, which will affect not only his oeuvre, but also the fact of choosing French as a language of creation.

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Published

2020-10-18

How to Cite

Rossell Nicolás, T. (2020). "Le besoin d’être mal armé": Samuel Beckett and the language of attenuation. Tropelías: Review of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature, (7), 510–520. https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_tropelias/tropelias.202074786

Issue

Section

Logophagies, heteroglossias and other transits