Chaos & Form

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Proceedings of the XIth Prague Interpretation Colloquium (April 11-13, 2016) commemorating Samuel Beckett’s 110th anniversary, focuses on a topic which has played a crucial role both in Beckett’s work and in his published reflections: the function of form in art. From Beckett’s perspective, as presented in the prevailing interpretations, the form can serve to expose the chaotic nature of the world we live in or to construe an artificial order and impose it on (our picture of) the world. The latter is typical of great literary manipulators and “masters of their material,” while the former amounts to resigning upon any kind of “mastery” and engaging in a never-ending search for a form that would not conceal the true nature of the work of art as part and product of the universal chaos and that would let the mess speak.