Abstract
The article discusses the usefulness of Ronald Barthes’ concept of the death of the author in reference to the output of Samuel Beckett. On the one hand, the playwright refused to provide any interpretation or explanation of his oeuvre and thus left the finding of its meaning to individual receivers. On the other, however, he rigorously insisted on a strict following of his stage directions, or, to put it differently, on respecting his original vision of the given drama. At present, the faithfulness to the spirit of his output is guarded by the Beckett Estate, represented by his nephew who has to cope with a difficult, if possible at all, task of protecting the authorial rights of his great uncle. The problems connected with the legal status of Beckett’s writings are further complicated by the fact that, in most of the cases, there exist a number of his manuscripts, often introducing changes even in the same language and there are also differences between the French and English versions. As far as the productions of his dramas are concerned the situation is also similar—for instance, apart from the published version of Beckett’s Production Notebook of Happy Days, registering his work on the Royal Court production in 1979, there are three annotated copies prepared by Beckett himself and records made by Martha Fehsenfeld and Alfred Hübner concerning still other productions on which Beckett worked.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Susanne Langer. Feeling and Form. New York: Scribner’s, 1953, p. 139.
- 3.
- 4.
Gerald Rabkin. “Is There a Text on This Stage? Theatre/Authorship/Interpretation.” Performing Arts Journal 9, no. 2, 1985, pp. 142–59.
- 5.
Patricia A. Suchy. “When Words Collide: The Stage Directions as Utterance.” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 6, no. 1, Fall 1991, pp. 69–82.
- 6.
Stanley Wells. Literature as Drama. London: 1970, 7. Quoted after Törnikvist 1991, p. 13.
- 7.
Ronald Barthes. „Literature and Signification.” Critical Essays. Transl. Richard Howard. Kingsport, Tenn.: Kingsport Press, 1963. XI.
- 8.
- 9.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_Author (16. II. 2010).
- 10.
Samuel Beckett to Alan Schneider and many others. Bair 1978, p. 382.
- 11.
Samuel Beckett to Harold Hobson. Bair 1978, pp. 382–383.
- 12.
Samuel Beckett, November 17:1971. Bair 1978, p. 186.
- 13.
Samuel Beckett. Happy Days. London: 1963, p. 30.
- 14.
Guardian 24 March 1994, p. 25.
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Uchman, J. (2013). Adaptation and the Idea of the Death of the Author: The Case of Samuel Beckett. In: Fabiszak, J., Urbaniak-Rybicka, E., Wolski, B. (eds) Crossroads in Literature and Culture. Second Language Learning and Teaching. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21994-8_33
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