JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to New Literary History. N 1970 appeared a volume of Max Ernst's collected writings.1 As the title might indicate, Ecritures emphasizes the process rather than a finished literary work; writing, moreover, pertains to inventive craftsmanship as opposed to functional typography. The term ecritures epitomizes the manifestation of the self in artistic creation.2 Most texts included in Ecritures first appeared in such publications as La Revolution surrealiste, Le Surrealisme au service de la Revolution, Litterature, Le Minotaure, or View, illustrated journals, introducing both verbal and visual material for the sake of interaction and also to provide a dual documentation. In other words, in their original form of publication, Ernst's texts or drawings, exemplifying or extending other contributions, addressed themselves simultaneously to reader and viewer. His major critical work, Au-dela de la Peinture, a spiritual autobiography, a treatise on collage and frottage, also provides a catalogue of Ernst's major works while juxtaposing text and image in such a way that it becomes impossible to define either a graphic or a textual origin.3 The volume Ecritures, assembling printed texts of considerable variety-poetry, treatises, verbal comments of collage novels, interviews-is covered by mysterious ciphers invented by Ernst himself, a visible language hiding its meaning or relegating it to another world.4From the Dada period on, Ernst introduced words into his paintings or graphic works in more than one way. In his title he often created surprising and mysterious verbal combinations such as "The graminous bicycle" or "Les eclairs au-dessous de quatorze ans" ("Lightnings under fourteen years"). Moreover, he introduced "descriptive" texts into paintings or mixed media which defied any form of commentary. The 1923 "Tableau-poeme" suggests by its mere title that it represents as fully as possible the hybrid nature of Max Ernst's art ( fig. 1). The poetic text is entirely inscribed on the pictorial surface, apparently turning the canvas into a page.5 Yet, reversely, words occupying squares, dividing them into color zones, create themselves minicanvases. Written on parallel lines, words, however, do not follow for long the apparently rigorous order, for they are mysteriously This content downloaded from 185.2.32.58 on Fri, 13 Jun 2014 07:18:58 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions NEW LITERARY HISTORY Fig. 1 diverted into the three-dimensional space belonging to painting; letters themselves here and there assume volume. Writing and painting, borrowing each other's spatial characteristi...
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WHEN VIEWING BECKETI'S PLAYS IN chronological order, one notices that the characters' mobility and the impact of natural lights tend to decrease. This points not only to a diminuendo of dramatic illusion and realism but also to a gradual moving towards the zone where death impinges on life. Hamm, Clov, Nell and Nagg are more severely handicapped than Vladimir and Estragon, or even than Pozzo and Lucky during the second act of Godot. Hamm of Endgame can be moved around in his wheelchair whereas Winnie of Happy Days is buried up to her waist in Act I, up to her neck in Act II. In Play only the heads of the three nameless characters M, WI and W2 emerge from the urns which suggest death even more than the scorched land of Happy Days.
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