Introduction

Summary

Beside this window that sometimes looks as if it were painted on the wall, like Tiepolo's ceiling at Würzburg, what a tourist I must have been, I even remember the diaresis

–Malone Dies

Samuel Beckett's interest in Italian culture dated from his juvenile years. It is well known that he graduated from Trinity College in modern languages (French and Italian) and that he took private lessons from his language tutor, Dr Bianca Esposito, a figure who nurtured his interest in Italian literature, was fictionalized as Adriana Ottolenghi in Dante and the Lobster and remained in his memories till the last days. The first trip to Italy took place in 1937, starting from Florence and its Renaissance heritage. While these Italian connections are by now an integral part of Beckett's biography, the way in which his early works established a strong connection between the Italian language and Italian arts has been far less noticed. The most clear examples in this regard come from Beckett's early prose works, More Pricks Than Kicks and Dream of Fair to Middling Women. Belacqua Shuah, the ‘hero’ of More Pricks Than Kicks, is an eager student of Italian and a witty connoisseur of Italian art, with a specific interest in the Renaissance. He clearly acts as Beckett's mouthpiece. Walking and singing through the streets of Dublin, he ironically superimposes Florence to the Free State capital:

For there Florence would slip into the song, the Piazza della Signoria and the No 1 tram and the Feast of St John. […]. Then slowly in his mind down the sinister Uffizi to the parapets of Arno, and so on and so forth. This pleasure was dispensed by the Fire Station opposite which seemed to have been copied here and there from the Palazzo Vecchio. In deference to Savonarola? Ha! ha!

Belacqua's Italian imagery vehiculates a subtle attack on Irish provincialism and on British stereotypes about Italy as an exotic, timeless museum. However, Beckett's negotiations with Italian art and language run far deeper. The creative multilingualism of his erudite, post-Joycean intellectuals draws on this imagery in order to outline a parody of modernist cosmopolitanism itself. Beckett, as stated in his Dante… Bruno. Vico.. Joyce, was well aware of the dangers of ‘the neatness of identifications’.