“Asunción”: the origin of liquid language in Samuel Beckett

Abstract

The semantic field of water and of related phenomena (rain, thirst, drowning) is recurrent in Beckett’s works. On the basis of a liaison between this imagery and the author’s ideas around language, this article explores the complex metaphorical apparatus that water articulates in metaliterary and linguistic terms in its initial formulations in “Assumption” (1929), Beckett’s first published story, and in Dream of fair to middling women, his first novel, written in 1932. The analysis will be complemented with an approach to the matter in the german letter of 1937 to Axel Kaun. The investigation is sparked by the idea that this liquid imagery is linked to Beckett’s ideas around language, and, particularly around the exploration of silence as literature’s limit in his poetics.