Summary: | Against classical poetics such as those of Aristotle and of XVII French Classicism, Giambattista Vico
propos es a return to the origins of the human to explore the nature of poetry understood as poeisis, as
creation. Poet means creator. The first inhabitants of the earth after the universal flood were giants called
i bestioni by Vico, ferocious wild beings and wandering vagabonds that tried to account for their world
with the great poverty of their language. This Neapolitan thinker finds in these beings a fertile ground to
think about creation without recurring to the canon of prescriptive poetics. Of course, he was uncompre -
hended in his time, but he wouldn’t be two centuries later when Joyce and Beckett assume the project
of thinking about creations outside the canon and materializing their thought. In fact the first essay and
first poem written by Beckett deal with Vico. Throughout the article, we will show how Vico’s proposal
foreshadows the routes of creation in the XXth century, which doubtlessly inspired Beckett’s the aesthe-
tic project under the motif of artists of the time: creation as work in progress.
|