Decoding Samuel Beckett’s language in Imagination Dead Imagine

Abstract

The study focuses on the short prose text Imagination Dead Imagine (1965) by the Irish writer Samuel Beckett (1906–1989). It argues that while at first sight Beckett’s text appears to be a chaotic verbal blend with no coherence, a close reading discloses an actual underlying pattern (mandala) which gives the text a structure and enables the reader to “understand” it. The authors of the paper claim that mandala, as the structural pattern of the text, represents an attempt to find a resolution of the existential and universal conflict within man. On one hand, there is spiritual alienation (exemplified here by the dissolution of the language) and, on the other hand, one’s desire to be integrated with unity and return to the centre.