Beckett and the Sub Specie Aeternitatis Vision

This essay will consider the idea of the creation of the feeling of the ‘eternal’ in Samuel Beckett through a strange identification of temporalities that involve the immediate sensation of direct perception in the present, and idealised feelings from the past. It begins by unpacking Beckett’s comment in a letter to Thomas McGreevy of 5 March 1936 that affirms the importance of the ‘sub specie aeternitatis [from the perspective of eternity] vision’ (2009b, 318–321; Knowlson, 219). It considers Spinoza’s definitions of the ‘eternal’ and draws upon Beckett’s early essay Proust in developing readings of Beckett’s late prose works Ceiling (1981) and Stirrings Still (1989). It does this not to attempt to demonstrate Beckett’s debt to Spinoza, which remains open to question, but rather to underline how Beckett’s works, in dialogue with those of Spinoza, allow us to glimpse what is at stake in a particular idea of the eternal.