Beckett, Duthuit and ongoing dialogue

In this chapter I will examine aspects of the nature of the intellectual exchange between Samuel Beckett and the French visual arts critic and editor of Transition Georges Duthuit. While 'Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit' (1949) is one of Beckett's better known pieces of aesthetic theory, and while the publication of the second volume of Beckett's correspondence and recent work by John Pilling has shed important new light on this relationship, much remains to be done by way of examining its significance. I argue here that Duthuit's ideas approach and diverge from Beckett's known aesthetic statements in ways which allow us to more fully understand the contexts from which Beckett's ideas emerge, the originality of Beckett's ideas, and the importance of the dialogue with Duthuit to Beckett's still developing aesthetic theories and practice