"A fragment of a vitagraph": Hiding and revealing in Beckett, Geulinex, and Descartes

The exact nature of the relationship between a work of literature and the life of the writer who creates that work is, evidently, impossible to perfectly describe. It does not follow, however, that the problem is therefore without interest; on the contrary, attempting to trace some elements of its outline remains an endeavour of some importance. This essay considers how notions of occlusion, or hiding and revealing at once, are important to our understanding of Beckett's use of the seventeenth century philosophers Descartes and Geulincx.