“The same blinding void as before”: Irish Neutrality in Samuel Beckett’s nouvelles

Abstract

AbstractWhen the Second World War ended, Samuel Beckett returned to his flat in Paris and set about writing. The experiences that he had gone through during the conflict (his subversive activities with the Resistance, his two-year period of hiding in Roussillon, his first-hand knowledge of the human cost of war as a hospital attendant in Saint-Lô) found their tortuous expression in the literary production that ensued. The Irish government’s official status as neutral over the previous five years was also a matter of concern for the exiled intellectual in Paris, and his opinions on this matter can be gleaned from a close reading of his nouvelles, particularly “The Calmative,” a narrative in which the blinding lights of the city of Dublin stand out as a disturbing element that demands an interpretation.