Frossard, Jean-Baptiste <br/><br/>
Rockaby/Berceuse or the Desire for the Word 

 -  2012.<br/>							 
<br/><br/> 87 
<br/><br/> In Rockaby, Samuel Beckett defines a new kind of lyricism, while questioning the very possibility of drama. Through an accurate description of the formal construction of the play, I attempt to show how repetition and generative aggregation join to build a textual memory. The text is thus able to go on and to resist the failures of the character’s unstable being. I argue that repetition no longer signifies the inability of language, but becomes the principle of this new lyricism lacking both subject and audience. The drama therefore performs a poetic ceremony, but one may wonder whether Rockaby still belongs to the genre of drama, since it is determined by either poetic or narrative devices. In the last part of this article, I try to show that Beckett uses this ceremony to demonstrate the progressive, yet painful construction of a dramatic existence, at a time when the very notions of identity and presence may appear as weakened.