Samuel Beckett's German Diaries 1936-1937 [Hardcover]

Six diary notebooks kept by Samuel Beckett during his 1936-7 trip through Nazi Germany were discovered in 1989.Samuel Beckett's German Diaries 1936-1937is the first study to explore the relevance of these diaries to Beckett's development as a writer.

Using the diaries as the central point of focus, Nixon draws on unpublished manuscripts, notebooks, correspondence, reading notes from the 1930s to reflect on both Beckett's creative evolution prior to 1936 and the direction his writing took after his return to Dublin in April 1937. As well as gaining an insight into Beckett's reading of classical German literature, Nixon shows how the pared-down style of writing, the self-examination and the importance of the visual arts that govern Beckett's post-war works traces back to the pages of these notebooks.

By illuminating how Beckett's writing and aesthetics underwent a far-reaching change during the 1930s, Nixon's study is crucial to our understanding of the emergence of Beckett as a radical writer in the post-war years.

One of the great strengths of Nixon's book is his recourse to manuscript materials in the navigation of densely theoretical problems; the use of historicist methods in tackling questions of form and genre proves a formidable critical combination. The Times Literary Supplement

This is the book we had been waiting for, as it dispels the myths surrounding Beckett's German Diaries. With extreme attention to detail, with unrivalled care for context and with penetrating judgment, Mark Nixon gives us a rationale for Beckett's apparently absurd tour of Nazi Germany. Nixon explains why the talking cure of psychoanalysis in London had to be replaced by a Romantic walking cure that passed through the ruins of a culture threatened with extinction. The doomed and melancholy Winterreise wló;