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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 June 2025
Abstract
This paper will examine Beckett's lifelong interest in Romance literature and troubadour poetry, and its relation to Italy, beginning with the recalling of some features and lasting effects of his early love affairs with Ethna MacCarthy and Peggy Sinclair. Furthermore, troubadour lyric poetry will be examined as serving Beckett in his search for a poetic language for modernity, which therefore will be set also against the background of key figures of modernism, such as Ford Madox Ford, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. References to Beckett's poetic work – which spans from the 1930 ‘Whoroscope’ poem to ‘What is the word’, written shortly before his death – focus on the 1930 lyric collection of Echo's Bones and on how its themes and forms anticipate Beckett's succeeding works.
It will also be contented that the temporal gaps in the poetic output of a long and consistent poetic production are in fact filled through the diffusion and absorption of the lyric mode in Beckett's dramatic and novelistic production, with specific references to Molloy and the Dantean character of Sordello.
Keywords: Beckett; poetry; troubadour; Echo's Bones; modernism; Sordello; Molloy
Drawing on the seminal work on Beckett's poetry by Laurence Harvey, this paper will examine Beckett's lifelong interest in troubadour poetry, emphasizing how that is, to some degree, also related to Italy. Such an argument will entail examining Beckett's interest in early Romance literature in conjunction with some key figures of modernism, against which his own stance is to be set and interpreted. Additionally, we will touch upon how his interest is manifested not only in a consistent lyric production throughout his whole career but also in the lyric mode of his novelistic production, with specific references to Molloy.
Recalling some biographical details might help define Beckett's bend towards Romance culture, particularly to that of the Middle Ages. It is well known that Thomas Rudmose-Brown, his college teacher of French, was also an admirer of Provençal language and literature, and affiliated with Félibrige, an association that aimed to renew the memory and modern relevance of the old literature and even bring back in use the old language.
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