Adelphi Publishing House

Adelphi Publishing House appears in the book’s closing literary commentary as the publisher of a 2018 edition of Samuel Beckett’s letters. The reference connects the publishing house to the transmission of a maxim that the commentary links to Beckett’s response to suicidal impulses and to a broader meditation on the renunciation of will.

Publication and Reference

The commentary recommends Samuel Beckett, Letters, 1929–1940, identified as a 2018 publication from Adelphi Publishing House. It points specifically to a letter dated January 16, 1936, in which Beckett tells his longtime friend Thomas McGreevy that he had encountered the maxim “Ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil velis.” The edition is invoked as a source through which readers can trace the maxim’s place in Beckett’s life and writing.

Connection to the Maxim

The book’s account places the maxim’s origin in the work of the Dutch occasionalist philosopher Arnold Geulincx, whose posthumously published Ethics contains the Latin formulation. It presents the precept—the elimination of the will as a way of resolving conflicts generated by the will—as an idea that seems to have helped Beckett during a period of suicidal torment. The letters published by Adelphi thus serve as documentary evidence for Beckett’s encounter with the thought, rather than as the source of the maxim itself.

Beckett and the Book’s Argument

The closing commentary follows the maxim beyond the 1936 letter: it appears in Beckett’s novel Murphy, published in 1938, and Geulincx is later mentioned directly in Molloy. Beckett’s characters’ practice of relinquishing will is connected to the book’s discussion of the Buddhist teaching of Dhukkha. Adelphi’s edition matters in this chain because it preserves a dated account of Beckett’s reading, linking a philosophical precept to his correspondence, fiction, and the book’s own reflection on suffering.