Did Beckett know Buddhism? When asked, he always answered no. But Angela Moorjani’s new study reveals undeniable Buddhist resonances in Beckett’s corpus. There have been book-length publications on this topic, beginning with Paul Foster’s Beckett and Zen (1989). Whereas the earlier phase of research focused on parallels between some of Beckett’s writings and the writings of Zen masters, Moorjani’s study combines comparative and empirical approaches, diving deep into Beckett’s corpus to unearth historical and intertextual ties to the spiritual traditions. Placing Beckett in this new context of East-West dialogue, Moorjani makes a landmark contribution not only to Beckett and Irish studies but also to global literary studies and world literature.
It is not easy to track Buddhist resonances in Beckett’s works. Setting aside his own caginess on such questions, metaphysical ideas of emptiness, nonduality, void, and nirvana are shared by multiple strands of Eastern and Western philosophical systems, and Beckett...
