Fantasie e parodie del cibo nell'opera di Samuel Beckett

The essay analyses the role of food in Samuel Beckett’s oeuvre, drawing examples that range from Beckett’s juvenile tales (Dante and the Lobster) to his later works (How It Is). As stated in the title, food is the vehicle elected for the mise en abyme of some of Beckett’s core concerns: parody and metafiction. A Joycean parody of the Eucharist characterizes Dante and the Lobster, a tale where the desire for knowledge leads inevitably to death drive and impotence. Mr Knott’s enigmatic and all-encompassing dish in Watt anticipates the protagonist’s failed metaphysical quest and prepares the bitter metamorphosis of Watt and Sam in the second part of the novel, where they are turned into stammering, sadistic Yahoos. In Waiting for Godot carrots, radishes and chicken legs are explicitly presented as the essential props of a poor, “de-theatricalized” theatre, where the actor’s body itself is an alienated, deprived relic of an unattainable past. Beckett’s characters chew and spit scraps of philosopical thought (Pascal) and theatrical tradition (Hamlet) along with their food. Krapp, the parody of a clown, “meditatively” eats a pen/banana that becomes a tin-opener in How It Is, turning into an explicit metaphor of writing as both impossible longing and violent disfiguration.