Images of Beckett - Index of

fabric of the work that they are no longer apparent. They survive there,
however, like bacteria in the lower intestine, healthy and active within the
body of the text. The ways in which learning was used merely evolved in his
later writing, as his acceptance of the inner as well as the outer chaos found
expression in poetic, and, in the later plays, pictorial or sculptural form.
Beckett always saw himself – his post-war, as well as his pre-war self –
as part of a continuum with the European literary and artistic past. We
cannot, therefore, understand the remarkable leaps of the imagination that
he made to produce some of the most radical work in prose, drama and
television of the twentieth century without knowing where he is leaping from
or the factors that provoked the stunning acrobatics that he performed with
word and image.
A PORTRAIT OF BECKETT 41