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Tonning’s repeated use of the concept of influence in his exploration of Schopenhauerian notions in Beckett’s work echoes similar practices in the writings of many of those who have sought to probe the place of Schopenhauer’s ideas in Beckett’s oeuvre. By highlighting Beckett’s acute awareness of Schopenhauer’s opposition to art which is overtly guided by rational discourse, this study specifies the ways in which uncritical notions of influence can impede our understanding of Beckett’s commitment to the primacy of the aesthetic. Any consideration of the role of Schopenhauer’s philosophy in the work of a creative artist should acknowledge Schopenhauer’s own explicit assertions regarding the inferiority of art which is subservient to conceptual thought. Kaufmann, in his study of Thomas Mann’s engagement with Schopenhauer’s work, notes that, while the reading of Schopenhauer was “the decisive intellectual experience of [Mann’s] youth,” such an encounter was “of a catalytic rather than generative nature; it brought him into his own.”41 In the majority of discussions of the role of Schopenhauer’s thought in Beckett’s work critics have not addressed the notion of influence upon which their research manifestly relies. Within Beckett studies, categorical assertions such as the following, made by Lees, are commonplace: “Beckett was deeply and permanently influenced by the writings of Schopenhauer.”42 Acheson claims that in Murphy “The influence of Leibniz, Geulincx and Schopenhauer is especially important.”43 Grouping Schopenhauer with such philosophers overlooks core issues in his aesthetics which radically problematize our basic assumptions about the concept of influence between the writings of philosophers and literary artists. Unlike Leibniz and Geulincx, Schopenhauer examines the distinctions between philosophy and literature in a way which can prove profoundly instructive in understanding how Beckett’s ideas and practices can be related to Schopenhauer’s thought. Even the more recent surveys of Schopenhauer’s importance to Beckett are illustrative of a tendency to proceed without a prior examination of the conceptual implications of the notion of influence. Büttner notes, “From the first studies on Beckett in the sixties until the present, Schopenhauer has been recognized as a major influence on [Beckett],”44 while Tonning is adamant that previous explorations of Beckett’s engagement with Schopenhauer’s thought understate its significance: “there simply is no comparable influence on Beckett’s work, philosophical or otherwise.”45 Both writers appear to disregard the ways in which the application of the concept of influence to their subjects of study warrants prior analysis, especially in light of Schopenhauer’s highly refined sense of the relationship between philosophy and literature.

Pothast deviates from the aforementioned critics insofar as he would “very much hesitate to speak of an ‘influence’ of Schopenhauer on Beckett.” He goes on to claim that, “Concerning Beckett’s literature, the idea of influence seems to be altogether mistaken.”46 Pothast thereby echoes the views of Knowlson, who observes that, “With a creative mind like that of Beckett, influence is simply too straightforward and too deterministic a concept to be very helpful. Instead, recognition—of affinities and resemblances—is much more appropriate to the ambiguity, subtlety and suggestiveness of his artistic world.”47 Beckett may well have been sensitive to the problem of assigning the concept of influence to Proust’s engagement with Schopenhauer’s thought. In the words of O’Hara, “Curiously . . . Beckett never notes that influence, despite his own persistent application of Schopenhauer to the text.”48 As the present study attempts to show, Beckett was very much in agreement with Schopenhauer’s insistence upon the proper role of ideas in literary texts. In his consistent commendation of art which resists the logical proprieties of analytic thought in its inception and reception, his views are very much of a piece with those of Schopenhauer. This study will underscore various elements of Schopenhauer’s thought which render the concept of influence essentially contestable in relation to Beckett’s work, particularly in our attempts to comprehend the critical and creative significance of Schopenhauer’s philosophy to Beckett’s authorial procedures.