Speaker sessions and discussions

Beckett in Print(s)

An all-day exhibition of rare books and manuscripts

A selection of books and manuscripts from the University of Maryland Libraries and a private collection exploring Samuel Beckett's legacy in print. From modest first appearances in print to elaborate livres d'artistes, Beckett's words have reached readers through many versions of the printed text. Publishers and artists have attempted to capture, with varying degrees of success, the visual element in the author's work. This display will present a brief introduction to some of this richness in interpretation.

Child's Play and the Learned Art of Unseeing: Paul Klee and Samuel Beckett

Presented by Angela Moorjani

Introduced by Joseph Brami, Department of French, University of Maryland

For Samuel Beckett, Paul Klee was among "the great of [his] time." This presentation explores the reasons for Beckett's recognition of an artist whose distillations suggest that Klee is to painting what Beckett is to the written word and stage. Klee was among the many modernist artists who prized the art of children and drew on their nonrepresentational translations of an intersecting inner and outer world to a two-dimensional medium. Beckett's path took him similarly in the direction of a willed impoverishment of unseeing and unknowing whose trajectory will be briefly traced.

Fail Again. Fail Better. The Derivation of Beckett's Aesthetics

Presented by Gerry Dukes

Introduced by Susan Schreibman, Assistant Dean, University of Maryland Libraries

The quotation in the title is from Worstward Ho, one of Beckett's late prose texts, written over thirty years after he had memorably claimed that "to be an artist is to fail" (Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit). With reference to Beckett's published works and to his correspondence, it will be argued that Beckett assembled his "aesthetics of failure" out of his growing familiarity with the art practice of Jack B. Yeats, Cézanne, the Van Velde brothers (Geer and Bram) and others. His assault on literary realism — "the penny-a-line vulgarity of a literature of notations" — was a necessary prelude to the development of an exploratory, excavatory literature of interiority.

Art as Rhetorical Interrogation ("less the rhetoric"!)

Presented by Lois Oppenheim

Introduced by Elizabeth Bergmann Loizeaux, Associate Professor of English, Associate Dean, College of Arts and Humanities, University of Maryland

In what sense may we say that Beckett's writing is "painterly"? How does this notion help us to understand his thinking on art and his preferences for certain painters over others? With what artists did Beckett collaborate, either directly or indirectly, and why? These are some of the questions to be explored in a paper that will examine the meaning of visual art for Beckett in the context of his writing as a perpetual allegorizing of vision. Slides will accompany the presentation.

Beckett and the Visual

A panel discussion moderated by Brian Richardson

A panel discussion with Beckett critics, directors, and actors exploring symposium themes.

A Celebration of Beckett Plays, Monologues, and Film

Performances and talkback with actors and directors moderated by Thomas Cousineau

The evening will open with two short plays produced as part of the D.C. Beckett Centenary Festival: Ohio Impromptu, directed by Dan Brick and featuring Christopher Henley and Jay Hardee, and Come and Go, directed by Jessica Burgess. The plays will be followed by a talkback by actors and directors. After a short break, the program will feature a monologue and a viewing of What Where from the Beckett on Film series.