Samuel Beckett, Stirrings Still

Dirk Van Hulle (University of Antwerp)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of York), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1988

Places

Ireland, Republic of (Eire) (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Story

Resources

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Stirrings Still

is one of the last texts by “the last modernist”, as Samuel Beckett has been called. It was first published in 1988 in a limited edition that actually came out in 1989 and almost simultaneously in a newspaper edition (

The Guardian

, 3 March 1989). It was subsequently translated as

Soubresauts

by the author himself, and was followed only by

Comment dire / What is the Word

. The phrase “comment dire” is actually part of the earliest manuscripts for

Stirrings Still

, which has a long and complex genesis. After having finished

Worstward Ho

in English, Beckett tried but failed to translate it into French because its first words (“On. Say on.”) already proved to be an insurmountable obstacle. Instead, Beckett started writing a new prose text, hesitating between French…

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1433 words

Citation: Van Hulle, Dirk. "Stirrings Still". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 December 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1822, accessed 27 December 2024.]

Samuel Beckett, Stirrings Still

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