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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Anthony Uhlmann
Affiliation:
University of Western Sydney
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Summary

in relation to intelligence, the image is the condition of thought; ‘there is no thought without an image,’ because the image is the material through which intelligence contemplates the universal.

Ever since people have written about Beckett it has been noticed that he is a writer who is, even more than usual, interested in images. A good deal of work has recently been done concerning Beckett's interest in, and use of, images from the visual arts. Most famously, Beckett told Ruby Cohn that he had remembered a Casper David Friedrich painting, Two Men Looking at the Moon, which he had seen during his trip to Germany prior to World War Two and had adapted this image, staging it in En Attendant Godot. Working from a diary Beckett made while travelling through Germany and visiting art galleries before World War Two, and directed by comments made by Beckett himself, James Knowlson has convincingly displayed how Beckett made use of images from paintings which had had a forceful impression on him and reconfigured them in developing his own striking images in later works. Might the same be claimed for Beckett's use of philosophy? That is, did he borrow images used by philosophers and reuse them in his texts? Furthermore, what, in effect, is an ‘image’; what can it do, and what does Beckett make it do?

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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  • Introduction
  • Anthony Uhlmann, University of Western Sydney
  • Book: Samuel Beckett and the Philosophical Image
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511485404.001
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  • Introduction
  • Anthony Uhlmann, University of Western Sydney
  • Book: Samuel Beckett and the Philosophical Image
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511485404.001
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Anthony Uhlmann, University of Western Sydney
  • Book: Samuel Beckett and the Philosophical Image
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511485404.001
Available formats
×