The Imperative of Narration

The notion of an imperative is clearly and boldly put forward in this wonderful essay. Jean-Michel Rabat, Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. This is the first book to deal with the self-reflexive nature of narration of Beckett and Bernhard. Samuel Becketts and Thomas Bernhards works are representative of a persisting perplexity with regard to language. The texts of both authors are marked by their narrators obsessive need to write, which is inextricably intertwined with their profound suspicion of language. The perpetuation of the narration is explained as an imperative, a simultaneously conscious and unconscious command which forces the artist to submit to the creative process. The author places this inexplicable force of the imperative within the context of Arthur Schopenhauers aesthetic theory and Jacques Lacans concept of desire. The attempt to define and interpret the two authors prose and drama is displaced by this sense of the infinity of desire (Lacan) and by the eternal becoming of the will (Schopenhauer), which reveal themselves to lie at the heart of Becketts and Bernhards creativity.