Still - Samuel Beckett's Quietism

In the 1930s, Samuel Beckett adopted a philosophical and religious attitude of renunciation and will-lessness known as quietism, which influenced his artistic vision and career as a fiction writer. This approach allowed him to break free from the literary traditions of nineteenth-century realism and early twentieth-century high modernism, creating a new kind of fiction characterized by tranquility and decomposition.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 272 pages
Publication date: 10 December 2021
Publisher: ibidem-Verlag, Jessica Haunschild u Christian Schon

In the 1930s, a young Samuel Beckett confessed to a friend that he had been living his life according to an abject self-referring quietism. Andy Wimbush argues that quietisma philosophical and religious attitude of renunciation and will-lessness is a key to understanding Becketts artistic vision and the development of his career as a fiction writer from his early novels Dream of Fair to Middling Women and Murphy to late short prose texts such as Stirrings Still and Company. Using Becketts published and archival material, Still: Samuel Becketts Quietism shows how Beckett distilled an understanding of quietism from the work of Arthur Schopenhauer, E.M. Cioran, Thomas á Kempis, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and André Gide, before turning it into an aesthetic that would liberate him from the powerful literary traditions of nineteenth-century realism and early twentieth-century high modernism. Quietism, argues Andy Wimbush, was for Beckett a lifelong preoccupation that shaped his perspectives on art, relationships, ethics, and even notions of salvation. But most of all, it showed Beckett a way to renounce authorial power and write from a position of impotence, ignorance, and incoherence so as to produce a new kind of fiction that had, in Molloy's words, the tranquility of decomposition.

In the 1930s, a young Samuel Beckett confessed to a friend that he had been living his life according to an abject self-referring quietism. Andy Wimbush argues that quietisma philosophical and religious attitude of renunciation and will-lessness is a key to understanding Becketts artistic vision and the development of his career as a fiction writer from his early novels Dream of Fair to Middling Women and Murphy to late short prose texts such as Stirrings Still and Company. Using Becketts published and archival material, Still: Samuel Becketts Quietism shows how Beckett distilled an understanding of quietism from the work of Arthur Schopenhauer, E.M. Cioran, Thomas á Kempis, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and André Gide, before turning it into an aesthetic that would liberate him from the powerful literary traditions of nineteenth-century realism and early twentieth-century high modernism. Quietism, argues Andy Wimbush, was for Beckett a lifelong preoccupation that shaped his perspectives on art, relationships, ethics, and even notions of salvation. But most of all, it showed Beckett a way to renounce authorial power and write from a position of impotence, ignorance, and incoherence so as to produce a new kind of fiction that had, in Molloy's words, the tranquility of decomposition.

Weight: 380g
Dimension: 149 x 212 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9783838213699