Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T17:43:13.524Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 11 - Beckett’s Disabled Language

from III - New Hermeneutic Codes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 June 2019

Jean-Michel Rabaté
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Get access

Summary

My wound existed before me,” wrote poet Joë Bousquet: “I was born to embody it.”Bousquet was injured by a bullet in 1918 and he lived with paraplegia and the pain it caused him until 1950, composing poems infused with opiated imagery. Samuel Beckett never had a similarly life-changing wound, though he experienced considerable ill health and a serious injury. Still, there remains an uncanny sense that he too found in the crevices of physical and mental suffering, and then in the frailties that came at the end of his long life, flashes of linguistic possibility for which his writing had always been searching. In late life, Beckett struck up a friendship with writer Lawrence Shainberg, who was exploring neurological dysfunction in his work.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

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 Dropbox.

Available formats
×

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.

Available formats
×