LIT4934 - Workbook Entry 17: Imagination Dead Imagine

Beckett's "Imagination Dead Imagine" shares a lot in common with "The Lost Ones."

First, it spends part of the time focused on the geometry and measurements of the space. "Diameter three feet, three feet from ground to summit of the vault. Two diameters at right angles…" and so on for several sentences. Several sentences may not seem like much compared to the lengthy descriptions of space in "The Lost Ones," but remember that this story is about three pages compared to 21 pages for "The Lost Ones" and suddenly those few sentences become more significant. Also note that the space is totally enclosed with no way in or out as in "The Lost Ones." Beckett says, "No way in, go in." Not only does this sentence establish the closed space, it seems to echo Beckett's "I can't go on, I'll go on," from his trilogy.

Then there's the light and the temperature. "The light that makes all so white no visible source," like the sourceless yellow light of "The Lost Ones." But wait, that light fluctuated, flashed several times per second. Well, a couple of sentences later we find, "… wait, the light goes down, all grows dark together, ground, wall, vault, bodies, say twenty seconds…" and then "Wait more or less long, light and head come back, all grows white and hot together…" So we see that the light in this story also fluctuates, though not as rapidly as in "The Lost Ones." Also in the last sentence cited we see that the temperature is increasing. This is after "the temperature goes down" at the same time as the light "to reach its minimum, say freezing-point."

There are two bodies in the space Beckett describes. A woman and a man lay back to back, squeezed into the small circular rotunda, their heads in opposite directions, knees folded, touching the perimeter of the circle, the roof arching up over them, but close. They are alive because a mirror before their mouth mists over. They are not asleep. They are merely laying in silence, never speaking. They are reminiscent of the bodies in "The Lost Ones," all of which eventually fell into immobility and whose mobility was utterly futile and pointless anyway.

The image that I get from this description is that of the interior of a skull. We've talked about Beckett trying to write what takes place inside the skull in various stories and plays. I think that here, he is literally figuratively describing the interior of the skull. The rotunda is the space wherein lies the two halves of the brain, joined at the middle by the commissural nexus.

A couple of other notes probably worth considering. Beckett describes "piercing, pale blue" eyes. I seem to remember something similar in "The Lost Ones" and perhaps other Beckett stories and plays. The other is in the first sentence of the story, wherein Beckett seems to call for the death of imagination before beginning. "… imagination not dead yet, yes, dead, good, imagination dead imagine." Why is it necessary for imagination to end before it can begin? Dunno. Finally, there was Beckett's description of the hair of the woman, which is white, but contrasts with the white background due to its "strangely imperfect whiteness." I thought this was a rather interesting turn of phrase.