Samuel Beckett, Ludwig Wittgenstein and the I

Reading Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Beckett marked: 'The metaphysical subject does
not belong to the world but is a boundary of it'. Wittgenstein expanded, 'I confront every object but not
the I', prefiguring Beckett's, 'Could you ever say I to yourself in your lifetime?'
Beckett scholarship has seldom acknowledged Wittgenstein's I. The connection, however, has crucial
implications for biographical, philosophical, and genetic approaches. It begins with the proposition that
the I is among 'the most misleading representational techniques in our language', for Wittgenstein - 'too
red a herring' for Beckett's Unnamable - instigating a search for an absent referent. It leads, for both, to
the necessity of the I's elimination; inevitably, Wittgenstein argued, 'we'd see the previous
representation wasn't essential to the facts', the idea underpinning Beckett's Not I and Company. These
parallels remain unelucidated.
Beyond mere affinities, this project will demonstrate how Beckett's late interest in Wittgenstein coincides
with a shift in the I's depiction across his oeuvre. This will situate Wittgenstein's significance while
questioning how this late development challenges/develops his earlier, better known, philosophical
influences. Finally, it explores how Beckett becomes one of Wittgenstein's important critics.