"FORGET EVERYTHING THAT WAS BEFORE": METATEXTUALITY IN SAMUEL BECKETT’S SHORT STORIES

The article dwells on the self-reflective nature of the Beckett's radical experiments in short prose writing (“Assez”, “Sans”, “L'image”, and “Pour finir encore”). Special attention is paid to the narrative and linguistic markers of metatextuality, in particular, to the discourse deixis, which is correlated with the structural and thematic specifics of the texts under investigation. Each of the above-mentioned short pieces in French demonstrates the awareness about the limits of the language of fiction in different ways. In the short story “Assez” the effect of the craftedness of the storyworld is reinforced by the metatextual metanarrative strategies; the chosen chronotope introduces the idea of the futility of attempts to express anything. “Sans” demonstrates the metadiegetic metanarrative strategies, problematizing thus the ontological status of the represented world; the plot events are replaced by disnarration; the references to the reader are foregrounded by the deictic words. The narrator of “L'image”, whom we consider as alter-ego of the author, is both the subject of the narration and the object of the story told; furthermore, in this story the problem of the completeness/ incompleteness of any text is thematized and commented. Finally, in the short story “Pour finir encore” Beckett abandons the mimetic object directedness in favor of the performative words, hence his need for a listener/reader.