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IN SEARCH OF LOST IMAGE walking and holding hands with a young girl. These naïve but comical features that present the younger character share some aspects already developed in Krapp. The idyllic but also humorous image of a deep moment recovered from the past, and one that he truly seems to be experiencing, ironically shows the disappointing future of the character in the present scene in a way similar to the one in the punt in Krapp's Last Tape. Unlike Proustian privileged moments, in Beckett’s oeuvre, particularly in Krapp’s Last Tape and L’image, reminiscences, which are extremely fragile and aroused with a painful effort, are associated to the memory of someone lost. This fact emphasizes the complete solitude of the characters that can evoke privileged moments which could have diverted them from failure, while the narrator in Proust achieves sublimation as a lone, self-sufficient omnipotent artist. According to Godeau,™ if the crisis of the modern subject and of language in Proust are displayed through snobbish chatting, procrastination or creative impotence, in the end these elements are overcome. In Beckett, however, the result is a condemnation to repetition, like Tantalus, the Greek mythological figure famous for his eternal punishment: “So that we are rather in the position of Tantalus, with this difference, that we allow ourselves to be tantalized.”” The images created through reminiscences by Krapp or the character in L’image are sensitive and illusory traces that are definitely lost. The collection of conventional black and white postcards that Krapp rescues from the spools are opposed to Proust’s idea of life as a text to be deciphered. If the task of the artist is to recover form out of uniformity, the appearance of those “privileged” moments display the only certainty that Beckett’s characters can have: they make life real for the first time. BIBLIOGRAPHY ACKERLEY, Chris: The Past in Monochrome: (In)voluntary Memory in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, in D. Guardamagna - R. M. Sebellin (eds.): The Tragic Comedy of Samuel Beckett. “Beckett in Rome” 17-19 April 2008, Universita degli Studi di Roma «Tor Vergata» Gius. Laterza & Figgie, 2009, 277-291. ALBERES, René M.: Métamorphoses du roman, Paris, Editions Albin Michel, 1972. BECKETT, Samuel: Proust, London, Chatto and Windus, 1931. 54 Godeau: Image premiere, image dernière, 160. 55 Beckett: Proust, 13. + 31°
