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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. « 14 e
