ABSTRACT
In dealing with these two writers whose kinship is only obliquely evident, it is best to begin with Samuel Beckett, who exerted real but subtle influence on Italo Calvino, and whose dark nihilism contrasts with the sunny face Calvino consistently turns to an unconquerable, incomprehensible world. Calvino’s sense of the relationship between his fictions and the deeper problems of his own historical period is the major area to which attention can be paid. Beckett’s dramatic step in the early development of his career was to clear away the detritus of the past in fiction. As the master of deprivation and nihilism, Beckett continuously experiments with form, altering his methods of presenting narrative voices, while his thematics remain consistent. Beckett early made it clear that the fragility and expressiveness of form challenge him bitterly, and indeed it seemed that after the completion of the trilogy in the 1950s Beckett was stalled.
