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Time- Lessness, simultaneity and successivity: repetition in Beckett’s short prose

University of Strathclyde, UK, steven.paton.100{at}strath.ac.uk

This article focuses on the ways in which Samuel Beckett’s short prose work Lessness constructs the idea of timelessness through formal means. It shows how stylistic features such as the exceptionally high levels of repetition and parallelism, omission of tensed verbs, and omission of connectives and subordinate clauses, work to remove time from the form of the text. In Jakobsonian terms these formal features are seen to replace the forces of successivity — movement in time and narrative progression — with a radical simultaneity. The article then deals with the problematic form of successivity created by the repetition which structures Lessness (in which the first 60 sentences are repeated in a different random permutation to create the text’s second half). Employing Genette’s (1980) terminology, the article shows that although the second half of Lessness does result in an increase in ‘narrative time’ (reader time), it does not result in any parallel increase in ‘story time’ (time within the fiction), and this is because the second set of sentences necessarily conveys the same timelessness as the first. Whereas Esslin (1986) reads this repetition as an economical way of showing that the text’s situation will last into infinity (i.e. in time), this article suggests that the repetition is necessary to show that the fictional situation is timeless and cannot possibly progress. Furthermore, the article ends by showing that the final sentence of Lessness closes off the text’s capacity for infinite regeneration by creating a strong sense of closure in form and content.

Key Words: Samuel Beckett • Gerard Genette • Roman Jakobson • Lessness • repetition • simultaneity • time

Language and Literature, Vol. 18, No. 4, 357-366 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0963947009343953


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