Oldal 46 [46]
SAMUEL BECKETI AND IHE SINIC WORLD
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PATRICK ARMSTRONG
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this essay is to explore how the influence of early Chinese
philosophy and Buddhist thought is deeply embedded in Samuel Beckett’s
later plays. By tracing this affinity from Beckett’s early fiction through to his
later work, the reader will be able to see That Time (1975), a play pervaded
by Eastern thought and tradition, in a new light. Through the consideration
of significant sources present in Beckett’s extant library — such as Herbert
Giles’s The Civilisation of China (1911), Louis Laloy’s La Musique Chinoise
(1910), and Olga Pliimacher’s Der Pessimismus (1884) — this essay begins to
reveal the more entrenched, and previously overlooked, Eastern dimensions of
his prose and drama.
“We should have approached Beckett from the way we learned from the
medieval Buddhist thinking in Japan, rather than from the Christian
thinking." After his 1973 production of Waiting for Godot (1953), Japanese
director and Noh actor Hisao Kanze recognized the reason for its lack of
success: an overly Western and Christian approach. By neglecting his own
theatrical heritage — his knowledge of Eastern culture, philosophy and drama
— he had been unable to illuminate fully the Chinese and Japanese aspects
of Beckett’s work. With this acknowledgment of failure, however, came the
aspiration to reconsider the “medieval Buddhist” aspects of the drama and
to try to “produce [...] again”: a most fitting place to begin a discussion of the
works of Samuel Beckett, the artist whose “fidelity to failure” famously led
him to “try again,” “fail again,” and “fail better.”* It will become clear that
1 Hisao Kanze: Writings of Hisao Kanze: Vol. 4, Surroundings of Noh Actors, Tokyo, Heibonsha,
1981, 178, quoted in Yoshiki Tajiri - Mariko Hori Tanaka: Beckett’s Reception in Japan,
in Mark Nixon — Matthew Feldman (eds.): The International Reception of Samuel Beckett,
London, Continuum, 2009, 153.
2 Ibid., 178; Samuel Beckett: Three Dialogues, in Ruby Cohn (ed.): Disjecta: Miscellaneous
Writings and a Dramatic Fragment, London, John Calder, 1983, 145; Samuel Beckett:
Worstward Ho, London, John Calder, 1983, 7.
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