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Beckett and Language Pathology

This article begins with an account of Beckett's translations of Surrealist texts for the September 1932 issue of This Quarter, which contained extracts from Breton and Eluard's Simulations. The essay argues that Beckett was influenced by these sketches in psychic confusion and suggests that traces of this encounter can be found in Lucky's speech in Waiting for Godot. Beckett is seen to use pathological language structures in a deliberate way and Lucky's schizophrenic language seems to correspond to the psychiatric concept of formal thought disorder. Irrational speech patterns in Watt are also examined and viewed as another deliberate sabotage of logical speech. A discussion of Worstward Ho using Deleuzean conceptions of language pathology suggests that Beckett is swayed, in the later prose, by the rhythms of pathological language in an unconscious way. Beckett's linguistic play is seen to echo, in an austere manner, the more expansive language of Finnegans Wake.