ABSTRACT
The writings of Samuel Beckett seem to be particularly, perhaps uniquely, resistant to philosophical interpretation. To speak from the vantage point of a conceptual framework, an interpretative method or any form of metalanguage, is, at the best of times, a hazardous exercise with regard to those texts regarded as ‘literary’— traduttore, traditore. However, the peculiar resistance of Beckett’s work to philosophical interpretation lies, I think, in the fact that his texts continually seem to pull the rug from under the feet of the philosopher by showing themselves to be conscious of the possibility of such interpretations; or, better, such interpretations seem to lag behind the text which they are trying to interpret; or, better still, such interpretations seem to lag behind their object by saying too much: something essential to Beckett’s language is lost by overshooting the text and ascending into the stratosphere of metalanguage.1
