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INTRODUCTION
want to buy, he doesn’t give a bollock whether I buy or not.” If Beckett offers
influence today, it is an increasingly distant and passive transaction. Beckett
is part of the theatrical architecture now, and this allows him to shape our
experience, for the most part, without us noticing.
This volume reflects an attempt to notice nonetheless. It collects the vibrant
recent scholarship of the Samuel Beckett Working Group under two broad
headings: first, “Influencing Beckett,” or the ongoing traces of how Beckett
constructed his own work by drawing on artists and thinkers near and far,
ancient and current; second, “Beckett Influencing,” or how his work has
unfolded into the contemporary world across genre, across media, and as a
source for others’ artworks. The third section, “Practitioner Voices,” concerns
the implementation of such patterns of influence in theatrical practice.
This framing consciously echoes (and, we hope, augments) the distinction
between “Debts and Legacies” that gave its name to a long-running seminar
series (based at Oxford, 2005-2014), then to a special issue of Samuel Beckett
Today / Aujourd’hui (2010) and a volume from Bloomsbury (2013). Reviewing
the collections Beckett after Beckett (2006) and Beckett’s Dantes (2005),
Robert M. Kirschen observed that the books “in conjunction” could be said to
“create a productive dialogue examining the concept of influence as it relates
to the works of Samuel Beckett.” Indeed, there are few scholarly works of the
past fifteen years in Beckett Studies of which this could not be said: the critical
tradition, especially among anthologies of criticism or critical companions,
has fully blossomed into excavating not only Beckett’s own works, but their
deeper sources and implications over time. Drawing on the special expertise
of the Working Group and its affiliation with the International Federation for
Theatre Research (IFTR) has meant that the range of references considered in
this book include both more contemporary and more international examples
than are available elsewhere. Given the Working Group’s focus, the attention
here is predominantly on theatre, performance, and media, without losing
sight of Beckett’s broader literary and philosophical engagements.
This volume is also special because it records the first time that the Working
Group meeting was held in Hungary, with a great number of internationally
distinguished Beckett scholars coming to Budapest to present, discuss, and
develop their papers. The result of the 2017 event is threefold: it provided a
chance for Hungarian theatre practitioners and researchers to present their
work and engage in a broader dialogue with Beckett scholars from around the
world, enabling mutually productive cultural exchange. Secondly, it might
inspire more Beckett-related research and theatre activity in Hungary, and
Lawrence Graver — Raymond Federman (eds.): Introduction, in Samuel Beckett: The Critical
Heritage, London and New York, Routledge, [1979] 1999, 12.
Robert M. Kirschen: The Influences of and on Samuel Beckett, Journal of Modern Literature,
Vol. 31, No. 2 (2008), 148.
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