Introduction Haptics, Aesthetics, Philosophy

Abstract

In Beckett’s last television play Nacht und Träume , a pair of hands emerges from darkness to convey a cup to a dream-figure’s lips and rest on his head for a moment. No face is revealed behind the hands; the play is concerned primarily with what is a dreamt act of touch. This is perhaps the most explicit visualization of the act of touch in Beckett’s drama, yet it occurs within a dream and within the virtual, light-signal space of television. The hands are dreamt, imagined out of darkness, thus presenting many of the tensions surrounding touch that this study explores: between presence and absence, tangibility and intangibility, the hand that touches, and the hand that withdraws. Beckett’s work is deeply concerned with these touches variously remembered, half-remembered, imagined, and, most importantly, failing to happen at all. The owner of the hands in Nacht und Träume remains outside the field of vision, existing solely in this act of touching, however incomplete and virtual that touch may be.