POROSITIES: Aesthetic Correlations between Gertrude Stein and Samuel Beckett

Abstract

This paper assesses aesthetic convergences between Stein and Beckett, arguing that deployment of repetition in both authors works to free language from its bondage to signifier and signified. Through repetitive series and syntactical ambiguity, Stein and Beckett refuse teleological sensemaking in order to pierce through opacity of language, resulting in their respective aesthetics of porousness. Putting into use Deleuze's treatise Difference and Repetition, I argue that conjoining Stein and Beckett provides us with nuanced sense of dominant logic of repetition-with-a-difference in their writings.Cet article entend relever des convergences entre l'oeuvre de Gertrude Stein et celle de Samuel Beckett, avec l'hypothese que l'emploi recurrent de repetitions par les deux auteurs travaille liberer le langage de son assujettissement au signifiant et au signifie. Employant des series repetitives et des ambiguites syntaxiques, Stein et Beckett refusent la production de tout sens teleologique afin de trouer l'opacite du langage, et debouchent tous deux sur une esthetique de la porosite. En me fondant sur Difference et Repetition de Deleuze, j'entends demontrer que traiter de pair Stein et Beckett permet une comprehension nuancee de la logique de la 'repetition dans la difference' qui predomine dans leurs ecrits.Aesthetic correlations between Stein and Beckett have not garnered much notice from critics. However, Beckett's style shows remarkable resonance with Stein's. As Beckett's contemporary, Stein formulated and materialized principles of that Beckett acknowledges approximating his own, and he describes her as still in love with her vehicle, if only [...] as mathematician is with his numbers; for him solution of problem is of very secondary interest, yes, as death of numbers, it must seem to him indeed dreadful (2009, 519). Approving of Stein's language over Joyce's apotheosis of word, he declares, Perhaps, Gertrude Stein's Logographs come closer to what I mean. The fabric of language has at least become porous (2009, 519-20).But let us be clear: Beckett's approbation of Stein bears great weight because it tells of niche in literary field Beckett claimed for himself in famous German Letter of 1937. His familiarity with writers across four languages is well-documented (Cronin 99, 472), yet he identified an aesthetic kinship with Stein, woman who was publicly flogged by her peers in special edition of transition magazine after unmitigated success of The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas (Brinnin, 309).1 He found in Stein's work literary method akin to one he outlined to Axel Kaun, which would pierce terrifyingly arbitrary materiality of word surface that writers, unlike painters and musicians, had not been able to demolish (Beckett 2009, 518). Where were black pauses and chasms of that would conjure a whispering of endmusic or of silence underlying all, Beckett asks of modem (2009, 519). As Beckett wrote to Mary Manning Howe on 11 July 1937, he is interested in ruptured writing that hammers at language so that the void may protrude, like hernia (2009, 521n8). Stein's logographic writing, then, is an exceptional achievement, literature of non-word that relies on concentrated meaning of visual grapheme (Beckett 2009, 520). Beckett conveys admiration not only for Stein's technique but also her motivation for splicing grammatical mies. This paper addresses what two writers share thematically and stylistically. In part 1,1 delineate two grammatical drives in their work: unpunctuated ambiguity and aposiopesis (truncated sentences). In part 2, I take into account their mutual deployment of repetition and temporal circularity as foundation for difference. These two elements materialize porousness which Beckett saw in Stein's oeuvre and which he pursued in his own writing. …