Antonio Sanges, (Editorial note by Marino Alberto Balducci; Preface by Federica Perazzini; Preface by Maria Truglio).
Carla Rossi Academy Press, 2023, pp. 103. ISBN 978-88-6065-004-7
This book proposes a literal reading of Beckett’s theatre, especially Endgame, and challenges conventional interpretative approaches to Samuel Beckett’s works. Any allegorical reading of this text would be an over-interpretation which ultimately is a self-justification of the hermeneutic operation. The meaning of Beckett’s oeuvre is contextualized within an aesthetics of small talk and unveiled through a hermeneutics of superficiality. After the collapse of value of last century, Beckett would be the expression of a culture of superficiality: the ‘profound’ themes of Western culture (love, destiny, death) with which Beethoven (for example) dealt are to be abandoned. The book is divided into three sections. The first one, Les jeux sont faits, discusses the neutralization of the épos and of the drama in Beckett’s theatre, and argues that Waiting for Godot and Endgame configurate aesthetic games in which what is important is not the message conveyed by the characters, but the sounds they utter. Thus, there would be a coincidence between signifier and signified. The second section, What do we talk about when we talk about nothing, discusses and reject any philosophical interpretation of Beckett’s theatre, arguing that philosophical interpretation of his works ultimately justify the chosen interpretative school. The third section of the book, Musa epidermica, proposes a distinction between ‘depth’ and ‘superficiality’, and argues that Beckett’s works would truly mean what they say. Epistemologically, this would be consistent with hermeneutics of superficiality, skeptical towards the legitimisation of interpretative acts which go beyond the ‘literal’ (logical) reading of Beckett’s texts.
ANTONIO SANGES, Les jeux sont faits: la cultura della superficie. Beckett e il teatro della crisi
