“No one that ever lived ever thought so crooked as we”: Endgame According to Adorno

Adorno’s essay “Trying to Understand Endgame” has had a large and enduring influence in the field of Beckettian study. Yet because of its banalization, it is now often assumed that Adorno’s historical argument is an interpretative grid applied to the play from without and that it consequently fails to account for Endgame’s essentially theatrical nature. The purpose of this article is to retrace the philosopher’s line of thought in the above-mentioned essay, trying to show that, contrary to a very common opinion, Adorno proves himself to be particularly conscious of the physical, oral, visual and, more generally, perceptive dimension of the play.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC

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