Beckett Samuel - Beckett after Wittgenstein

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Wittgenstein, Tractatus

I shall have to speak of things of which I cannot speak...

Beckett, The Unnamable

Words fail us. Why then dont we introduce more? What would the case have to be for us to be able to do so?

Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

Is not that so, Willie, that even words fail, at times? (Pause. Back front.) What is one to do then, until they come again?

Beckett, Happy Days

Das Rtsel gibt es nicht. (There is no riddle.)

Wittgenstein, Tractatus

Von Rtseln und Lsungen also kein Gedanke. (So no thought of riddles and solutions.)

Beckett, Disjecta

If I had planned it, I should never have made the sun at all. See! How beautiful! The sun is too bright and too hot. And if there were only the moon there would be no reading and writing.

Wittgenstein, to O. K. Bouwsma, Wittgenstein Conversations 19491951

If there were only darkness, all would be clear. It is because there is not only darkness but also light that our situation is inexplicable.

Beckett, to Tom Driver, Columbia University Forum

I want to play chess, and a man gives the white king a paper crown, leaving the use of the piece unaltered, but telling me that the crown has a meaning to him in the game, which he cant express by rules. I say, as long as it doesnt alter the use of the piece, it hasnt what I call a meaning.

Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Notebooks

At this point Mr. Endon, without as much as jadoube, turned his King and Queens Rook upside down, in which position they remained for the rest of the game.

Beckett, Murphy

If I listened to the words of my mouth, I might say that someone else was speaking out of my mouth.

Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

Stream of words... in her ear... practically in her ear... not catching the half... not the quarter... no idea what shes saying!

Beckett, Not I

Always descend from the barren heights of cleverness into the green valleys of foolishness.

Wittgenstein, Miscellaneous Remarks

Il faut retrouver lignorance. (Get back to ignorance.)

Beckett, to Anne Atik, How It Was

If I talk or write, there is, I assume, a system of impulses going out from my brain and correlated with my spoken or written thoughts. But why should the system continue further in the central direction? Why should this order not emerge, so to speak, from chaos?

Wittgenstein, Zettel

There is an end to the temptation of light, its polite scorching & consolations... The real consciousness is the chaos, a grey commotion of mind, with no premises or conclusions or problems or solutions or cases or judgments.

Beckett, letter to Mary Manning Howe

For it is no longer enough to be able to play the game well, rather the question again and again is: is this game now worth playing at all and what is the right game?

Wittgenstein, Miscellaneous Remarks

Meto play? (Pause. Wearily.) Old endgame lost of old, play and lose and have done with losing.

Beckett, Endgame

The thinking, presenting subject does not exist... The subject belongs not to the world but is a boundary of the world.

Wittgenstein, Tractatus

I know its not I, thats all I know, I say I, knowing its not I...

Beckett, The Unnamable

The work of art does not want to convey anythingelse, simply itself.

Wittgenstein, Miscellaneous Remarks

Dont ask me for any meaning in the thing; it just is what it is.

Beckett, while rehearsing Happy Days

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Conclusion

When someone promises from one day to the other, I will visit you tomorrow, is he saying the same thing every day, or every day something different? (Philosophical Investigations 226). profound situatedness of speech.

En attendant Godot premiered within a few months of the publication of Philosophische Untersuchungen in 1953, and like the latter the former had been largely completed almost four years earlier. These peculiarly complementary explorations of language rapidly entered the canon without becoming fully assimilated to it, and they remain objects no less of vehement aversion than of veneration. The play and the treatise have been accused of attempting to deal the coup de grce to their respective genres. Indeed, the accusation has been leveled at the authors entire oeuvres.

That Beckett would proceed to assemble a substantial collection of books by and about Wittgenstein should come as no surprise, though this interest has largely been discounted. Becketts unsparing exhibitions of petrified language-games coincides with Wittgensteins examination of the near-imperceptible waywardness of language and its collusion in the perpetuation of misleading a priori concepts. And while the ground of being is ungrounded, the attention of both writers falls equally on how that ground nevertheless gets traversed.