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SAMUEL BECKETI AND IHE SINIC WORLD o> 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. «45 e
