Blanchot in Infinite Conversation(s) with Beckett

Abstract

In a short text entitled "Oh All to End," the preface to the 1990 issue of Critique commemorating Samuel Beckett, Maurice Blanchot claimed that Beckett was prepared to recognize himself in a passage from Awaiting Oblivion. Carrying on thoroughly exploring this assertion, I examine the polyphonic dialogue between Blanchot and Beckett, from the way in which Beckett approached Blanchot's work to Blanchot's engagement with the Beckettian intertext and analyzing Awaiting Oblivion and The Infinite Conversation from the perspective of the Neuter. If, on the one hand, Awaiting Oblivion mirrors Waiting for Godot not only thematically, but also in the way the nothing itself acts as a foil, then on the other hand, Blanchot's text poetically mirrors several of Beckett's fragments from How It Is and Texts for Nothing that Blanchot blends in his prose. Beckett's voice is "ill-heard," "ill-murmured," "ill-recorded" in The Infinite Conversation where Blanchot, similarly to Krapp, rewinds Beckett's last tape, yet never reveals its end to us.