Un montón de cosas repugnantes: rechazo y melancolía en la obra de Samuel Beckett

Abstract

Linda Ben-Zvi has recently related the work of Samuel Beckett to some aspects mentioned in Aurel Kolnai’s theory of disgust. The analysis of Ben-Zvi emphasized the preeminence achieved by the body in our Irish author’s work. she also infers that it could be even more relevant in his writing than the mind, which for most critics defines the Beckettian subject of knowledge. This essay intends to explore how representations of disgust integrate the melancholic dynamics in Samuel Beckett’s work and how they play an obliged role in his solitary and abstracted characters’ withdrawal. External images in Samuel Beckett´s first poems and prose refer to a traumatic experience of bleakness, suffering and neglect. Beckett’s subjects don’t react to this in an active way nor evaluate the possibility of becoming agents of change; in fact, we realize that they are constrained to play a role that forces them to inaction and rumination.