Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Representation and presentation: Deleuze, Bergson, Peirce and ‘the image’
- 2 Beckett's aesthetic writings and ‘the image’
- 3 Relation and nonrelation
- 4 The philosophical imaginary
- 5 Cogito nescio
- 6 Beckett, Berkeley, Bergson, Film: the intuition image
- 7 The Ancient Stoics and the ontological image
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Works cited
- Index
2 - Beckett's aesthetic writings and ‘the image’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Representation and presentation: Deleuze, Bergson, Peirce and ‘the image’
- 2 Beckett's aesthetic writings and ‘the image’
- 3 Relation and nonrelation
- 4 The philosophical imaginary
- 5 Cogito nescio
- 6 Beckett, Berkeley, Bergson, Film: the intuition image
- 7 The Ancient Stoics and the ontological image
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Works cited
- Index
Summary
Beckett's understanding of the image, and its importance to literature, as it is expressed in his occasional aesthetic writings, is formed around premises which closely relate to understandings which pass through the idea of the presentation. Beckett's interest in the image begins quite early in his career, and attention to his aesthetic writings makes it apparent that he holds consistently to certain of the conceptions he develops early on. This is not to claim that there are no developments or shifts in his understanding or practice, or that he is always able to adequately apply these ideas to his works. Rather, as we will see in examining Beckett's aesthetic practice in the next chapter, there are important shifts as well as points of apparent contradiction between his works and the aesthetic ideas he describes. In short, it takes Beckett some time before he is able to develop a form which is able to do justice to ideas whose outlines at least he seems to have perceived from the outset.
We have seen, through the reading of Bergson, Peirce and Deleuze, how, rather than being understood as relating to the Thirdness of the sign, which already involves interpretation, the image should be understood as involving the immediacy of Secondness, which is presented to us and requires interpretation. A similar understanding of the cognitive functioning of the image (which is immediate and requires interpretation), as opposed to the symbol (which exists as a relation and so already carries an intended interpretation) can be found in Beckett's own aesthetic writings.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Samuel Beckett and the Philosophical Image , pp. 24 - 35Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006