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“Ruins True Refuge”: Beckett and Pinter

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Ruins in the Literary and Cultural Imagination

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Abstract

This essay uses a combination of archival material and textual analysis to explore how Harold Pinter managed to take Samuel Beckett’s fragmentary texts, his self-reflexive dead ends and entropic permutations, into new lineages of literary creativity. Taking a lead from the notion of the ruin, the essay uses the history of so-called language scepticism to argue for commonalities between the two writers in order to show how various ways in which things might be “ruined,” that is physically, psychologically and primarily linguistically, can provide a useful lens through which we might track some of the ways in which Pinter took Beckett’s work into new realms.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Eoin O’Brien discusses possible real-life counterparts of such fictionalized, memorialized ruins in The Beckett Country, such as one on the slopes of Prince William’s Seat in the Wicklow mountains outside Dublin (1986, 63).

  2. 2.

    With personal correspondence now available it is possible to note that Beckett did indeed discuss Blanchot during the six-year period between Blanchot publishing Faux pas and Beckett writing the Three Dialogues. Duthuit sent articles by Blanchot to Beckett, at least one of which—likely an essay on Sade—was sent in order that Beckett would translate it. In 1951 Beckett mentions Faux pas explicitly when advising Duthuit on how to present the text for publication in Duthuit’s journal Transition.

  3. 3.

    For an excellent introduction to reading Beckett in relation to broader traditions of language/linguistic scepticism, see Dirk van Hulle’s essay in Beckett/Philosophy (2015).

  4. 4.

    Harold Pinter, letter to Mick Goldstein , August 1955, reprinted in Pinter (2009, 17–18).

  5. 5.

    Martin Esslin Collection, Keble College, Oxford, AD 65/HP/2/83.

  6. 6.

    Harold Pinter, letter to Mick Goldstein , BL Add MS 89083/1/1/2, letter 12.

  7. 7.

    Harold Pinter, letter to Mick Goldstein , BL Add MS 89083/1/1/2, letter 8.

  8. 8.

    Harold Pinter, letter to Mick Goldstein , BL Add MS 89083/1/1/3, letter 8.

  9. 9.

    Review of Silence and Landscape at The Aldwych Theatre, London in The Observer July 6, 1969.

  10. 10.

    Martin Esslin Collection, Keble College, Oxford, AD 65/HP/2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK

    David Tucker

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  1. David Tucker
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Efterpi Mitsi

  2. National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Anna Despotopoulou

  3. National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Stamatina Dimakopoulou

  4. National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Emmanouil Aretoulakis

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Tucker, D. (2019). “Ruins True Refuge”: Beckett and Pinter. In: Mitsi, E., Despotopoulou, A., Dimakopoulou, S., Aretoulakis, E. (eds) Ruins in the Literary and Cultural Imagination. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26905-0_8

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