Introduction

Where is one to begin, and where end, the study of a work or an œuvre or a philosophical position? How, in short, is one to decide upon a point of departure? If the work or the œuvre in question is Beckett’s (although to call his texts works, and those works an œuvre , is perhaps already to have mistaken them) and the philosophical position nihilism (although to call nihilism a philosophical position is perhaps already to have mistaken it), then we are fortunate enough to have the author’s own view on the matter. For in a letter of June 1967 to Sighle Kennedy, Beckett (responding to a proposed interpretation of his work) writes: ‘If I were in the unenviable position of having to study my work my points of departure would be the “Naught is more real ...” and the “Ubi nihil vales ...” both already in Murphy and neither very rational’ ( D 113). Beckett’s own point of departure, then, would be double, and thus perhaps unenviable because impossible; for how is one to start from two places at once, or to end at two places at once—unless, of course, that ‘one’ is already in pieces? Regarding such points of departure, the mood would have to be the conditional, and not just because departure might be distasteful.