Page 295 [295]
OCR
DENIALS OF THE DIVINE: TRACES OF INELUCTABLE PRESENCE IN THE ANTECEDENTS OF SAMUEL BECKETT’S FIN DE PARTIE, ENDGAME, AND FILM! —o> — ANITA RÁKÓCZY ABSTRACT Samuel Beckett’s fervent anticlericalism and scepticism in matters of religion are detectable in his dramatic works. However, instead of denying and therefore omitting the subject of the divine altogether, Beckett’s plays are interwoven on multiple levels with religious imagery and his deep knowledge of Scripture. At the same time, these images, which convey Beckett’s anger and rage, are inexhaustible attacks on his non-existent God. Beckett’s most common approach to addressing the divine is blasphemy. Whenever a religious reference appears in his plays as part of the action, set, text, or dramaturgy, it is paired with irony, mockery, grotesque inappropriateness, or verbatim negation. Some of his early Fin de partie-related fragments and manuscripts and the published play itself provide examples of Beckett’s treatment of the divine as a playwright. In Film, O destroys God’s image by tearing it into four pieces and treading on its remains on the ground. However, the imprint of the picture remains on the wall: a clear white spot with a nail protruding from it. My paper explores traces of divine presence in a number of dramatic works by Samuel Beckett, who, through denial, provokes and creates God in his plays. 1 Excerpts from manuscripts and unpublished preliminary fragments of Samuel Beckett’s Fin de partie reproduced by permission of the Estate of Samuel Beckett c/o Rosica Colin Limited, London. Special thanks to Bernard Adams for proofreading and translating the manuscript quotations from French to English with the permission of the Estate of Samuel Beckett. All manuscript quotations are subject to copyright. (c) The Estate of Samuel Beckett. + 293 + Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 293 6 2020.06.15. 11:04:25
