Images of Beckett - Index of

Reaper, discovering that what had once seemed
most important to him now appears worthless and
that what he had once rejected outright now seems
important. With Krapp seated at his table in a pool
of light with his register, his tapes, his dictionary
and his tape recorder, focusing intently on his
taped treasures, Krapp’s Last Tape has, then, both
visual and thematic affinities with the small
Rembrandt painting in Berlin.
Beckett’s later play, Ohio Impromptu, with its
two almost still figures sitting with a hat lying on a
plain white table, is a thoroughly Rembrandtesque
composition, although Avigdor Arikha has
surmised that Terborch’s painting, Four Spanish
Monks, in the National Gallery of Ireland may well
have been a source of inspiration for this play. 57
The image of the woman rocking herself into death
in Rockaby looks, on the other hand, like a
fascinating fusion of ancient and modern. One
thinks perhaps first of Rembrandt’s Margaretha Trip
(de Geer) that Beckett knew well from the National
Gallery in London, and of the flashes of light and
colour from the jet sequins on the dress of the
woman in Rockaby that perhaps echo the
magnificent Giorgione self-portrait that so
captivated Beckett in Brunswick in 1937. Perhaps
memories of Whistler’s Mother in Whistler’s
painting or Madame Roulin in Vincent van Gogh’s
La Berçeuse are also evoked within the image.
Certainly the closing moments of Beckett’s play
have something of the ambiguity of Jack Yeats’
Rembrandt, Portrait of Jacobsz Trip
IMAGES OF BECKETT 69