Reseña biográfica
Poeta, novelista y crítico irlandés nacido en Foxrock en 1906.
Estudió los primeros años en el condado de Fermanagh y luego la carrera universitaria en Trinity College de Dublin, donde obtuvo el «Bachelor of Arts» en 1927.
Aprovechando su estancia en Paris como profesor de inglés, estudió profundamente a Descartes y Dante, trabó amistad con James Joyce y escribió los primeros estudios críticos publicados en Paris en 1929.
De regreso a Dublin empezó a luchar contra una profunda depresión producto de su carácter solitario y sombrío. Renunció al trabajo y empezó a viajar por diferentes países europeos, dictando conferencias y dedicando gran parte del tiempo a la literatura. Durante la guerra se unió a la resistencia, y una vez terminada se radicó en Paris donde inició la etapa más prolífica de su carrera. En 1949 publicó "Eleutheria" y en 1953 "Esperando a Godot", obras seguidas por "Final de juego" en 1958 y "Días felices" en 1961. Ese mismo año recibió el premio Prix Formentor y en 1969 el Premio Nobel de Literatura.
Después de una prolongada enfermedad, falleció en Paris en 1989. ©
lunes, 21 de septiembre de 2009
domingo, 20 de septiembre de 2009
Beckett in Poetry Foundation org.
Samuel Beckett (1906 - 1989)
"He wanders among misty bogs turned surreal, he talks to the wee folk of his own bad dreams, he files reports on introspected black visions with a kind of blarney eloquence. Like an actress cradling a doll for her stage baby, his language keens and croons about tales that are not quite there." Melvin Maddocks is talking about Samuel Beckett, a literary legend of the twentieth century. "It is neither night nor morning. A man must find himself without the support of groups, or labels, or slogans," writes R. D. Smith. And Beckett, by removing his characters from nearly all recognizable contexts, Smith continues, is "engaged in finding or saving" himself. Martin Esslin writes: "What is the essence of the experience of being? asks Beckett. And so he begins to strip away the inessentials. What is the meaning of the phrase 'I am myself'? he asks . . . and is then compelled to try to distinguish between the merely accidental characteristics that make up an individual and the essence of his self." A Time reviewer noted: "Some chronicle men on their way up; others tackle men on their way down. Samuel Beckett stalks after men on their way out." Such is the tone of most discussions of Beckett's work. But no single reviewer could communicate the unique power of Beckett's writing, his use of "a language in which the emptiness of conventional speech is charged with new emotion." "While [his] lesser colleagues work in rhetoric," writes Smith, Beckett produces poetry. "Well," says Harold Pinter, "I'll buy his goods, hook, line, and sinker, because he leaves no stone unturned and no maggot lonely. He brings forth a body of beauty. His work is beautiful." Leo Bersani, somewhat less politely, writes: "I know of no writer who has come closer than Beckett in his novels to translating the rhythms of defecation into sentence structure."
Along with the work of Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Harold Pinter, Beckett's stark plays are said to compose the "Theatre of the Absurd." But to so label Beckett's work is to disqualify one of his own first premises—that, since no human activity has any intrinsic meaning, it is pointless to ascribe traditional or categorical significance to the existence of an object or the performance of a deed. George Wellwarth discusses Beckett's concept of a protean reality: "What all these things—the sameness of human beings and their actions, the vanity of human ambition, the uselessness of thought—amount to is a pessimism deeper than any that has ever been put into words before. Throughout Beckett's work we can find evidence of his conviction that everything is hopeless, meaningless, purposeless, and, above all, agonizing to endure. Beckett's people are leveled off and merged into each other by being all more or less physically disabled—as if this were really the common condition on earth. . . . Beckett is a prophet of negation and sterility. He holds out no hope to humanity, only a picture of unrelieved blackness; and those who profess to see in Beckett signs of a Christian approach or signs of compassion are simply refusing to see what is there." Perhaps Beckett himself stated his dilemma most succinctly in L'Innommable: "Dans ma vie, puisqu'il faut l'appeler ainsi, il y eut trois choses, l'impossibilite de parler, l'impossibilite de me taire, et la solitude." ("One must speak; man cannot possibly communicate with his fellows, but the alternative—silence—is irreconcilable with human existence.")
Smith and Esslin, however, insist that Beckett did not intend to express unqualified despair, but that, by stripping significance from the world, he showed us the one way to achieve redemption (although any salvation, according to Beckett's essentially deterministic philosophy, is necessarily only a respite). Smith writes: "Beckett's characters remain at their darkest moments anguished human beings: Beckett, when intellectually at his most pitiless, feels and suffers with them." Esslin states that Beckett's message "is anything but gloomy or despairing." He writes: "On the contrary: the starkness of [his] reminders of the evanescence of life and the certainty of death, [his] uncompromising rejection of any easy solution or cheap illusion of comfort ultimately has a liberating effect; such is the nature of man that in the very act of facing up to the reality of his condition his dignity is enhanced; we are only defeated by things by which we are taken unawares; what we know and have faced up to we can master." Alec Reid also believes that Beckett's message must be interpreted optimistically. "Beckett's world," he writes, "is one of darkness, of disembodied voices, of ignorance, impotence, and anguish. But even as he insists that he knows nothing, can know nothing, Beckett reminds us of an astronaut, a human surrounded by nothing, walking on nothing. Our spacemen are no cause for despair; no more are Mr. Beckett's explorations." But then, according to Time magazine, "Beckett's champions argue that his threnodies in dusky twilight represent the existential metaphor of the human condition, that the thin but unwavering voices of his forlorn characters speak the ultimate statement of affirmation, if only because the merest attempt at communication is itself affirmation."
But in case the reader of Beckett criticism should come to regard this question as the black and white one of "despair" versus "optimism," Richard N. Coe adds new terms to the argument: "To class Beckett himself as the simple incarnation of 'despair' is a drastic oversimplification. To begin with, the concept of 'despair' implies the existence of a related concept 'hope,' and 'hope' implies a certain predictable continuity in time—which continuity Beckett would seriously question. 'Despair,' with all its inherent moral overtones, is a term which is wholly inadequate to describe Beckett's attitude towards the human condition; nor is this condition, in the most current sense of the definition, 'absurd.' It is literally and logically impossible. And in this central concept of 'impossibility,' his thought has most of its origins—as does also his art."
Although John Gassner was not happy with the scholarly complexity of the critical response to Beckett's work (he wrote: "To a parvenu intelligentsia, it would seem that a work of art exists not for its own sake but only for the possibilities of interpreting it"), some critics believe that Beckett's theater is most meaningful when considered within the context of a recognizable literary tradition. Kenneth Allsop writes: "His harsh, desolate, denuded style is entirely and unmistakably his own, but his literary 'form,' the stream-of-consciousness device which most young British writers wouldn't dream of using nowadays for fear of being thought quaint, derives from his years [working with] . . . James Joyce. That is only a partial explanation. He is in a monolithic way the last of the Left Bank Mohicans of the Twenties; the others of the avant-garde died or deserted or prospered, but Beckett was a loyal expatriate." Esslin, J. D. O'Hara, and John Fletcher prefer to align Beckett with the philosophers. "Although Beckett himself [was] not aware of any such influence," Esslin writes, "his writings might be described as a literary exposition of Sartre's Existentialism." O'Hara sees his work as exponential to the philosophy of Descartes: "In Beckett's world of post-Cartesian dualism, the mind has no connection to the body, its values worth nothing there, and so it cannot logically concern itself with the body's problems." Fletcher concludes that "whatever the truth of the matter, one thing is certain. Beckett has ranged freely among the writings of the philosophers, where he has found confirmation and justification of the metaphysical obsessions that haunt his work: the gulf set between body and mind, the epistemological incertitude. His genius has achieved the transmutation of such speculative problems into art." But, according to Coe, one must keep in mind that "Beckett has renounced his claim to erudition. The main theme of his work is impotence, of mind just as much as of body."
The problem of analyzing and interpreting Beckett's work, on the other hand, has been met with a somewhat surprising amount of scholarship and erudition. But David Hesla's criticism, in which the novels are considered as the expression of Beckett's personal enigma, is equally effective. Hesla notes that the dilemma which confronts the contemporary writer, according to Beckett, "is constituted . . . by the fact that the writer must take seriously two opposed and apparently irreconcilable claims to his allegiance. On the one hand, he must recognize that the principal fact about modern man's life is that it is a 'mess,' a 'confusion,' a 'chaos.' On the other hand, the writer, as artist, has an obligation to form. But to admit the 'mess' into art is to jeopardize the very nature of art; for the mess 'appears to be the very opposite of form and therefore destructive of the very thing that art holds itself to be.'" Hesla quotes Beckett as saying: "It only means that there will be a new form; and that this form will be of such a type that it admits the chaos and does not try to say that the chaos is really something else. The form and the chaos remain separate. The latter is not reduced to the former. That is why the form itself becomes a preoccupation, because it exists as a problem separate from the material it accommodates. To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now." Hesla notes that with Watt, "Beckett [began] a process of removing from his artificial world those tangibles by which the reader usually is able to orient himself in time and space, and those causal relationships amongst the incidents of the plot by which the reader is able to discern the conditions of necessity and probability which—be they never so strained or extraordinary—determine in part the structural coherence and the 'meaning' of the story. . . . In Watt he has found the form which permits 'the mess' to enter art without destroying it. He has developed a literary method—the negative way—which is capable of accommodating chaos without reducing it to form. Furthermore, in developing this method he has developed an instrument of greater precision for the explication of a world-view which was only roughly sketched out in Murphy. Beckett's work after Watt has, in a certain sense, consisted largely in refining and adapting both the manner and the matter of his new art."
Most critics agree that it was the 1954 English-language publication of Waiting for Godot that established Beckett's prominence in the United States. Many, in fact, still consider this play to be his most important work. H. A. Smith calls it "the most comprehensively and profoundly evocative play of the last thirty years," and William R. Mueller and Josephine Jacobsen write: "Waiting for Godot, of all of Beckett's dramatic works, expresses most clearly and explicitly the fundamental tension—to wait or not to wait—which is found to a lesser degree in his other writings. The human predicament described in Beckett's first [major, staged] play is that of man living on the Saturday after the Friday of the crucifixion, and not really knowing if all hope is dead or if the next day will bring the new life which has been promised." Allsop found the play's message less ambiguous. He writes: " Godot is a hymn to extol the moment when the mind swings off its hinges. . . . Beckett is unconcerned with writing requiems for humanity, for he sees life as polluted and pointless: he merely scrawls its obituary, without bitterness or compassion because he cannot really believe it is worth the words he is wasting." Gassner also found the play to be a straightforward pronouncement, but he did not accept it as a prediction of certain doom. "To all this tohu and bohu about the profundity and difficulty of the play," he wrote, "my reply is simply that there is nothing painfully or exhilaratingly ambiguous about Waiting for Godot in the first place. It presents the view that man, the hapless wanderer in the universe, brings his quite wonderful humanity—his human capacity for hope, patience, resilience, and, yes, for love of one's kind, too, as well as his animal nature—to the weird journey of existence. He is lost in the universe and found in his own heart and in the hearts of his fellow men." Bert O. States adds parenthetically: "Convicts and children love it!"
Kenneth Tynan believes that the implications of Waiting for Godot are significant not only in themselves, but for all of contemporary theater. He writes: "A special virtue attaches to plays which remind the drama of how much it can do without and still exist. By all known criteria, Beckett's Waiting for Godot is a dramatic vacuum. Pity the critic who seeks a chink in its armour, for it is all chink. It has no plot, no climax, no denouement; no beginning, no middle, and no end. Unavoidably, it has a situation, and it might be accused of having suspense. . . . Waiting for Godot frankly jettisons everything by which we recognise theatre. It arrives at the custom-house, as it were, with no luggage, no passport, and nothing to declare; yet it gets through, as might a pilgrim from Mars. It does this, I believe, by appealing to a definition of drama much more fundamental than any in the books. A play, it asserts and proves, is basically a means of spending two hours in the dark without being bored. . . . It forced me to re-examine the rules which have hitherto governed the drama; and, having done so, to pronounce them not elastic enough."
Some critics found 1957's Endgame to be an even more powerful expression of Beckett's negativism. Gassner wrote: "Nothing happens in Endgame and that nothing is what matters. The author's feeling about nothing also matters, not because it is true or right but because it is a strongly formed attitude, a felt and expressed viewpoint. . . . The yardsticks of dialectical materialism and moralism are equally out in appraising the play. Dialectical materialism could only say that Endgame is decadent. Moralism and theology would say that the play is sinful, since nothing damns the soul so much as despair of salvation. Neither yardstick could tell us that this hauntingly powerful work of the imagination is art."
Although critics discuss his plays more frequently than his novels, Beckett himself was said to have considered his novels to be his major works. Alec Reid notes: "For Beckett each novel is a journey into the unknown, into an area of utter lawlessness." And a Times Literary Supplement reviewer, in his discussion of Imagination Dead Imagine, summarizes Beckett's work thus: "[This novel] certainly describes two people in an imaginary situation and it is equally certainly a work of large implications and a desolate, cruel beauty. It might not seem so, however, if it had not been apparent for some time that Mr. Beckett's prose narratives compose a single, long saga of exclusion and heroic relinquishment as well as of the desperate, perhaps unavailing, pursuit of finality." A. I. Leventhal writes: "When Beckett changes to writing his novels in French he leaves behind him much of the humour, grim as it was, in his previous work. He has less interest in making his characters indulge in games to pass the time as in Waiting for Godot. They are now concentrating on their penible task of dying." Frank Kermode offers this analysis of the novels: "In Beckett's plays the theatrical demand for communicable rhythms and relatively crude satisfactions has had a beneficent effect. But in the novels he yields progressively to the magnetic pull of the primitive, to the desire to achieve, by various forms of decadence and deformation, some Work that eludes the intellect, avoids the spread nets of habitual meaning. Beckett is often allegorical, but he is allegorical in fitful patches, providing illusive toeholds to any reader scrambling for sense." Bersani hasn't discovered the toeholds (and laughs behind his hand at those who have), nor does he think he will, if, as he says, he continues to take Beckett "seriously." Bersani writes: "The most interesting fact about Samuel Beckett's novels is that they are, at their best, almost completely unreadable." Bersani, citing Beckett's expressed desire to fail (to be an artist, for Beckett, is to fail), finds his "extreme attempt to render literature autonomous" to be not only "an ironic reminder of the ultimate dependence of literature on life," but also a generally suspicious undertaking. "The attempt to eliminate 'occasion' from art," he writes, "is in itself an occasion, and insofar as this attempt is a process of what [Ruby] Cohn has called progressive 'retrenchment,' the process rather than the achievement becomes the subject of Beckett's work."
The fact that most of Beckett's important work was originally written in French is far more than coincidentally significant to his stylistic achievement. Coe explains: "Beckett, in the final analysis, is trying to say what cannot be said; he must be constantly on his guard, therefore, never to yield to the temptation of saying what the words would make him say. Only when language is, as it were, defeated, bound hand and foot; only when it is so rigorously disciplined that each word describes exactly and quasiscientifically the precise concept to which it is related and no other, only then, by the progressive elimination of that which precisely is, is there a remote chance for the human mind to divine the ultimate reality which is not. And this relentless, almost masochistic discipline, which reaches its culmination in Comment c'est, Beckett achieves by writing in a language which is not his own—in French." John Barth explains, however, that Beckett's denuded French is yet only another step in his creative process and must not be construed as a total achievement. Barth writes: "Beckett has become virtually mute, musewise, having progressed from marvelously constructed English sentences through terser and terser French ones to the unsyntactical, unpunctuated prose of Comment c'est and 'ultimately' to wordless mimes. One might extrapolate a theoretical course for Beckett: language, after all, consists of silence as well as sound, and the mime is still communication, . . . but by the language of action. But the language of action consists of rest as well as movement, and so in the context of Beckett's progress immobile, silent figures still aren't altogether ultimate. . . . For Beckett [in the 1960s, toward the end of his writing career], to cease to create altogether would be fairly meaningful: his crowning work, his 'last word.' What a convenient corner to paint yourself into!"
In 1967 the Firehouse Theatre of Minneapolis, directed by Marlow Hotchkiss, performed Act without Words I and Act without Words II simultaneously. Also in 1967, Jack Emery composed and performed an hour-long, one-man program consisting of "a selection of the desperate reveries and furious tirades of half a dozen of Samuel Beckett's dying heroes," including Malone, Hamm, and the Unnamable. A Punch reviewer writes: "Many of the passages are fatiguing to follow in the original novels but so conversational are the rhythms of Beckett's language and so eloquently does Mr. Emery speak them (except when he essays a scream) that the effect in a dark, hushed theatre of this grim gallows humour is electrifying. There is more to life than talking of waiting for death, but Beckett has phrases—'Vent the pent!'—that resound in the mind with the urgency of great poetry." Emery's program, which premiered at Arts Theatre, London, was also produced in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Exeter. Two years later, in 1969, Beckett won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Although unpublished for sixty years, Beckett's first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, finally made it into print in the United States in 1993. The author composed the book as a young man of twenty-six during a summer spent in Paris. The protagonist of Dream is the adventurous Belacqua, and the story centers on his varied experiences in Dublin and Paris. Beckett's style here, according to Colm Toibin in the London Review of Books, "is a rambling stream of consciousness, full of asides and associations, with a tone of half-seriousness and oblique mockery. . . . The writing is self-conscious: it reads as though the writer wrote it merely to read it himself." Beckett himself described Dream as "the chest into which I threw my wild thoughts." And, as J. D. O'Hara comments in the New York Times Book Review, "he reused them, often word for word." In the end, George Craig asserts in the Times Literary Supplement, "this is Beckett's earliest venture, and it shows. . . . But . . . something important is going on: the search for [his] voice."
Similarly, Beckett's first play, Eleutheria (the title means "freedom" in Greek), collected dust in the author's trunk for nearly fifty years before being published in 1995. The dark, three-act comic piece concerns a privacy-obsessed writer who tries in vain to escape from his family and friends, spending most of the play fighting off their efforts to mend what's left of his life. Eleutheria was written just prior to Waiting for Godot, but it demanded rather complex staging (seventeen characters and two sets, both which are shown simultaneously in the first two acts before one disappears into the orchestra pit in the final act) and so was not produced in the 1950s when Godot burst onto the contemporary theatrical scene.
"No one . . . disputes that Beckett did not want Eleutheria published," explains Jonathan Kalb in an article for the Village Voice. Its publication in 1995 prompted considerable controversy among members of the literary establishment, with opponents appalled at the thought of the author's final request for its suppression—from his deathbed, no less—being ignored. Kalb notes that the play is neither "a hidden masterpiece" nor "a catastrophe," but rather "a fascinating, rare instance of Beckettian excess. . . . At times windy, redundant, even confusing, it will certainly take its proper place as a minor, formative work that is bouyed by eloquent and hilarious passages and the tantalizing seeds of great themes, devices, and characters to come." As Mel Gussow puts it in the New York Times Book Review, " Waiting for Godot is revolutionary; Eleutheria is evolutionary."
Few critics have discussed Beckett's ideas (or the man himself) apart from their manifestation in his work. And Beckett would doubtless have it so. As Robert Wernick writes, "so striking is the personality that emerges from [his] gloomy plays and so striking [was] the occasionally glimpsed, gaunt pterodactylous face of the real-life Samuel Beckett that many people assume[d] the two [were] identical. A whole folklore of anecdote has grown up around Beckett, in which he appears as a fanatic solitary, brooding eternally . . . on the black mystery of the human race. . . . It is true that he . . . built a wall around his country house, but he denie[d] that he built it, as people contend, to shut out the view. It is true he avoid[ed] all the trappings of the celebrity life, [gave] no interviews, attend[ed] no cultural congresses. But then, why should he [have]?" Alec Reid met Beckett in New York during the making of Film and described him as "a close-knit person, all of a piece." Reid says that Beckett "believe[d] that physical movement conveys at least as much as the words. . . . Once the initial reserve . . . evaporated Beckett reveal[ed] a genius for companionship, a remarkable ability to make those around him feel the better for his presence."
CAREER
Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, France, lecturer in English, 1928-30; Trinity College, University of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland, lecturer in French, 1930-32 (resigned because "he could not bear the absurdity of teaching to others what he did not know himself"). During the early 1930s he, among others, helped James Joyce, who was then nearly blind, by taking dictation and by copying out parts of Finnegans Wake. (Beckett never served as secretary to Joyce as many believe. A. J. Leventhal, writing for Beckett, stated that "there was never any question of a formal position. . . . It's very hard to kill this story.") From 1932 to 1936 Beckett traveled extensively in England and Europe, residing briefly in London and in several European cities. He settled permanently in Paris in 1937. From about 1940 to 1943, Beckett was involved with the French resistance movement and had to hide from the Germans. He spent these years working as a farmhand near Roussillon, an isolated region in southeast France. From the early 1940s on, Beckett devoted most of his time to writing.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
NOVELS
* Murphy (written in English), Routledge Kegan Paul (London), 1938, Grove (New York City), 1957, French translation by Beckett, Bordas (Paris), 1947.
* Molloy (fragment of an earlier version published in transition, number 6, 1950 , together with an early fragment of Malone Dies under collective title, "Two Fragments"; also see below), Editions de Minuit, 1951, English translation by Beckett and Patrick Bowles, Grove, 1955.
* Malone meurt, Editions de Minuit, 1951, English translation by Beckett published as Malone Dies, Grove, 1956.
* Watt (written in English), Olympia Press (Paris), 1953, Grove, 1959, rewritten, and translated into French by the author, Editions de Minuit, 1968.
* L'Innommable, Editions de Minuit, 1953, English translation by Beckett published as The Unnamable, Grove, 1958.
* Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, [and] The Unnamable, Grove, 1959.
* Comment c'est, Editions de Minuit, 1961, English translation by Beckett published as How It Is, Grove, 1964 (excerpts published in X [a London magazine], number 1, 1959, and, under title "From an Unabandoned Work," in Evergreen Review, September-October, 1960).
* Imagination morte imaginez (although only 14 pages long, Beckett called this work a novel), Editions de Minuit, 1965, English translation by Beckett published as Imagination Dead Imagine, Calder Boyars, 1965.
* Mercier et Camier, Minuit, 1970, translation by Beckett published as Mercier and Camier, Calder Boyars, 1974 , Grove, 1975.
* Dream of Fair to Middling Women, edited by Eoin O'Brien and Edith Fournier, Arcade Publishing in association with Riverrun Press (New York City), 1993, reissued, 1996.
* Nohow On: Three Novels, edited by S. E. Gontarski, Grove Press, 1996.
SHORT FICTION
* More Pricks Than Kicks (ten short stories, written in English), Chatto Windus, 1934, special edition, Calder Boyars, 1966.
* Nouvelles et textes pour rien (fiction; contains "L'Expulse," "Le Calmant," and "La Fin," and thirteen monologues), Editions de Minuit, 1955, translation by Beckett and others published in England as No's Knife: Collected Shorter Prose, 1947-1965 (also includes "From an Abandoned Work," "Enough," Imagination Dead Imagine, and Ping; also see below), Calder Boyars, 1967, published as Stories and Texts for Nothing, Grove, 1967.
* Assez, Editions de Minuit, 1966.
* Ping, Editions de Minuit, 1966.
* Tete-mortes (includes Imagination morte imaginez, bing, Assez, and a new novella, Tete-mortes), Editions de Minuit, 1967.
* L'Issue, Georges Visat, 1968.
* Sans, Editions de Minuit, 1969, translation by Beckett published as Lessness, Calder Boyars, 1971.
* Sejour, Georges Richar, 1970.
* Premier amour, Editions de Minuit, 1970, translation by Beckett published as First Love, Calder Boyars, 1973.
* The North, Enitharmon Press, 1972.
* First Love and Other Shorts, Grove, 1974.
* Fizzles, Grove, 1976.
* For to End Yet Again and Other Fizzles, Calder, 1976.
* All Strange Away, Gotham Book Mart, 1976.
* Four Novellas, Calder, 1977, published as The Expelled and Other Novellas, Penguin, 1980.
* Six Residua, Calder, 1978.
* Mal vu mal dit, Editions de Minuit, 1981, translation by Beckett published as Ill Seen Ill Said, Grove, 1982, variorum edition edited by Charles France, Garland, 1996.
* Worstward Ho, Grove, 1983.
* As the Story Was Told, Riverrun Press, 1990.
* Stirrings Still, Blue Moon Books, 1991.
* Nohow On (novella), Riverrun Press, 1993.
* Collected Shorter Prose, 1945-1988, Riverrun Press, 1995.
* Samuel Beckett, The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989, edited and with introduction by S. E. Gontarski, Grove Press, 1995.
Also author of the short story "Premier amour" which was perhaps intended to complete a quartet begun with "L'Expulse," "Le Calmant," and "La Fin."
PLAYS
* Le Kid, produced in Dublin, 1931.
* En Attendant Godot (first produced in Paris at Theatre de Babylone, January 5, 1953), Editions de Minuit, 1952, English translation by Beckett entitled Waiting for Godot (first premiered at Arts Theatre Club, London, August, 1955; U.S. premiere in Miami Beach, FL, at Coconut Grove Playhouse, January, 1956; produced on Broadway at John Golden Theatre, April, 1956), Grove, 1954, with a revised text, Grove Press (New York City), 1994.
* All That Fall (radio play written in English; produced in London for BBC Third Programme, January 13, 1957), Grove, 1957, updated for American radio, French translation by Robert Pinget and Beckett published as Tous ceux qui tombent, Editions de Minuit, 1957.
* Fin de partie (a play in one act; first produced with Acte sans paroles in London at Royal Court Theatre, April 3, 1957), French European Publications, 1957, English translation by Beckett produced as Endgame in New York at Cherry Lane Theatre, 1958.
* Acte sans paroles (a mime for one player, with music by John Beckett), first produced with Fin de partie in London at Royal Court Theatre, April 3, 1957), English translation by Beckett produced as Act without Words, produced in New York at Living Theatre, 1959.
* From an Abandoned Work (written in English; produced in London for BBC Third Programme, 1957), first published in Evergreen Review, Volume 1, number 3, 1957, Faber Faber, 1958, published in French as D'un ouvrage abandonne, 1967.
* Krapp's Last Tape (written in English), first produced in London at Royal Court Theatre, October 28, 1958, then at Provincetown Playhouse, 1960, French translation as Le Derniere Bande, French & European Publications, 1960.
* Embers (written in English), first produced in London for BBC Third Programme, June 24, 1959.
* Acte sans paroles II, produced at Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1960, English translation as Act without Words II.
* Happy Days (written in English; first produced in New York at Cherry Lane Theatre, September 17, 1961; produced in New York by the Classic Stage Company, directed by Jeff Cohen, February 16, 2005), Grove, 1961, French translation by Beckett as Oh les beaux jours (produced in Paris, 1963), Editions de Minuit, 1963, 2nd edition, French European Publications, 1975.
* Spiel, German translation by Elmar Tophoven, produced in Germany, 1963, produced in English as Play, London, 1964, produced in French as Comedie, Paris, 1964.
* Film (22-minute mime adaptation, by Mariu Karmitz, of Play), directed by Alan Schneider for Evergreen Theatres, and starring Buster Keaton, M. K. Productions, 1966.
* Eh, Joe? and Other Writings (written in English for television; first produced by New York Television Theatre, 1966; also see below), Faber Faber, 1967.
* Va et vient (121-word "dramaticule," produced in Berlin, 1966), published in Comedie et actes divers, Calder Boyars, 1967, English version produced as Come and Go, Dublin, 1968.
* Breath, produced in Oxford, England, 1970.
* Le Depeupleur, French European Publications, 1970, translation by Beckett published as The Lost Ones (produced in New York, 1975), Grove, 1972.
* Not I (produced at Lincoln Center, New York, 1972), Faber, 1971.
* That Time (produced in London, 1976), Faber, 1976.
* Footfalls (produced in London, 1976), Faber, 1976.
* A Piece of Monologue, produced in New York, 1979.
* Company (monologue), Grove, 1980.
* Rockabye, produced in Buffalo, NY, 1981.
* Texts for Nothing, produced in New York, 1981.
* Ohio Impromptu, produced in Columbus, OH, 1981.
* Eleutheria (new edition), Editions de Minuit (Paris), 1995, published in English as Eleutheria: A Play in Three Acts, Foxrock (New York City), 1995.
OMNIBUS EDITIONS OF PLAYS
* Fin de partie [and] Acte sans paroles, Editions de Minuit, 1957, English translation by Beckett published as Endgame [and] Act without Words, Grove, 1958.
* Krapp's Last Tape [and] Embers, Faber Faber, 1959, published as Krapp's Last Tape and Other Dramatic Pieces (also contains All that Fall, Act without Words [I], and Act without Words II [written in English]), Grove, 1960.
* Dramatische Dichtungen (trilingual edition of dramatic works originally published in French; German translations by Tophoven), Suhrkamp Verlag, 1963-64.
* Play and Two Short Pieces for Radio (written in English; contains Play, Words and Music [first published in Evergreen Review, November-December, 1962], and Cascando [first published in Dublin Magazine, October-December, 1936; also see below]), Faber Faber, 1964.
* Comedie et actes divers (contains Comedie, Va et vient, Cascando, Paroles et musiques [French translation by Beckett of Words and Music], Dis Joe [French translation by Beckett of Eh, Joe?; also see below], and Acte sans paroles II), Editions de Minuit, 1966.
* Cascando and Other Short Dramatic Pieces, Grove, 1968.
* Breath and Other Shorts, Faber, 1971.
* Ends and Odds: Eight New Dramatic Pieces, Faber, 1977.
* Rockabye and Other Short Pieces, Grove, 1981.
* Catastrophe et autres dramaticules: Cette fois, Solo, Berceuse, Impromptu d'Ohio, Editions de Minuit, 1982.
* Three Occasional Pieces, Faber, 1982.
* Collected Shorter Plays, Grove, 1984.
* Ohio Impromptu, Catastrophe, and What Where, Grove, 1984.
* The Complete Dramatic Works, Faber, 1986.
* Samuel Beckett's Company-Compagnie and a Piece of Monologue—Solo: A Bilingual Variorum Edition, Garland, 1993.
* Dramaticulesg, Riverrun Press, 1995.
OTHER
* (Contributor) Our Exagmination round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (on James Joyce and Finnegans Wake), Shakespeare Co. (Paris), 1929, New Directions, 1939, 2nd edition, 1962.
* Whoroscope: Poem on Time (written in English), Hours Press (Paris), 1930.
* Proust (criticism, written in English), Chatto Windus, 1931, Grove, 1957.
* Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates (poems, written in English), Europa Press (Paris), 1935.
* A Samuel Beckett Reader, edited by John Calder, Calder & Boyars, 1967.
* (With Georges Duthuit and Jacques Putnam) Bram van Velde (criticism of the painter's work), Falaise (Paris), 1958, English translation by Olive Chase and Beckett, Grove, 1960.
* Henri Hayden, Waddington Galleries, 1959.
* Gedichte (in French and German; contains "Echo's Bones" and 18 poems written between 1937 and 1949), German translations by Eva Hesse, Limes Verlag (Wiesbaden), 1959.
* Poems in English, Calder Boyars, 1961, Grove, 1962.
* (With Georges Duthuit) Proust and Three Dialogues (criticism), Calder Boyars, 1965.
* Poemes, Editions de Minuit, 1968.
* Abandonne, Georges Visat, 1972.
* Au loin un oiseau, Double Elephant Press, 1973.
* An Examination of James Joyce, M.S.G. House, 1974.
* Pour finir encore, French and European Publications, 1976.
* I Can't Go On: A Selection from the Works of Samuel Beckett, edited by Richard Seaver, Grove Press, 1976.
* Collected Poems in English and French, Grove, 1977, revised edition published as Collected Poems, 1930-1978, Calder, 1984.
* Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment, edited by Ruby Cohn, Calder, 1983, Grove, 1984.
* Collected Shorter Prose, 1945-1980, Calder, 1984.
* Happy Days: The Production Notebook, edited by James Knowlson, Faber, 1985, Grove, 1986.
* (Translator with Edouard Roditi and Denise Levertov) Alain Bosquet, No Matter No Fact, New Directions, 1988.
* Collected Poems in English, Grove/Atlantic, 1989.
* Endgame: Production Notebook, revised edition, Grove, 1993.
* Collected Poems, 1930-1989, Riverrun Press, 1995.
* No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider, edited by Maurice Harmon, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1998.
Contributor to transition, New Review, Evergreen Review, Contempo, Les Temps Modernes, Merlin, Spectrum, and other periodicals.
FURTHER READINGS
BOOKS
* Abbott, H. Porter, Beckett Writing Beckett: The Author in the Autograph, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1996.
* Acheson, James, Samuel Beckett's Artistic Theory and Practice: Criticism, Drama, and Early Fiction, St. Martin's Press, 1997.
* Allsop, Kenneth, The Angry Decade, Copp, 1958.
* Andonian, Cathleen Culotta, The Critical Response to Samuel Beckett, Greenwood Press, 1998.
* Armstrong, William A., and others, editors, Experimental Drama, G. Bell, 1963.
* Baker, Phil, Beckett and the Mythology of Psychoanalysis, St. Martin's Press, 1997.
* Beckett at Sixty (a festschrift by twenty-four of his friends), Calder Boyars, 1967.
* Brater, Enoch, The Drama in the Text: Beckett's Late Fiction, Oxford University Press (New York City), 1994.
* Bryden, Mary, ed., Samuel Beckett and Music, Clarendon Press, 1998.
* Bryden, Mary, Samuel Beckett and the Idea of God, St. Martin's Press, 1998.
* Butler, Lance St. John, Critical Essays on Samuel Beckett, Ashgate Publishing Co. (Brookfield, VT), 1994.
* Coe, Richard N., Beckett, Oliver Boyd, 1964.
* Cohn, Ruby, Samuel Beckett: The Comic Gamut, Rutgers University Press, 1962.
* Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit), Volume 1, 1973, Volume 2, 1974, Volume 3, 1975, Volume 4, 1975, Volume 6, 1976, Volume 9, 1978, Volume 10, 1979, Volume 11, 1979, Volume 14, 1980, Volume 18, 1981, Volume 29, 1984, Volume 57, 1990, Volume 59, 1990, Volume 83, 1994.
* Cronin, Anthony, Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist, HarperCollins, 1996.
* Danziger, Marie A., Text/ Countertext: Fear, Guilt, and Retaliation in the Postmodern Novel, Peter Lang (New York City), 1996.
* Davies, Paul, The Ideal Real: Beckett's Fiction and Imagination, Associated University Presses (Cranbury, NJ), 1994.
* Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale, Volume 13: British Dramatists since World War II, 1982, Volume 15: British Novelists, 1930-1959, 1983.
* Dillon, Brian, Beckett's Blurry Signature, Department of Liberal Arts, Nova University (Ft. Lauderdale, FL), 1995.
* Esslin, Martin, The Theatre of the Absurd, Doubleday-Anchor, 1961.
* Fletcher, John, Samuel Beckett's Art, Barnes Noble, 1967.
* Gassner, John, Theatre at the Crossroads, Holt, 1960.
* Gordon, Lois G., The World of Samuel Beckett, 1906-1946, Yale University Press (New Haven), 1996.
* Guicharnaud, Jacques, and June Beckelman, Modern French Theatre from Giraudoux to Beckett, Yale University Press, 1961.
* Harding, James M., Adorno and "A Writing of the Ruins": Essays on Modern Aesthetics and Anglo-American Literature and Culture, State University of New York Press (Albany), 1997.
* Hoffman, Frederick J., Samuel Beckett: The Language of Self, Southern Illinois University Press, 1962.
* Kenner, Hugh, Samuel Beckett, J. Calder, 1962.
* Kenner, Hugh, A Reader's Guide to Samuel Beckett, Syracuse University Press (Syracuse, NY), 1996.
* Kermode, Frank, Puzzles and Epiphanies, Chilmark, 1962.
* Kim, Hwa Soon, The Counterpoint of Hope, Obsession, and Desire for Death in Five Plays by Samuel Beckett, P. Lang (New York City), 1996.
* Knowlson, James, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett, Bloomsbury, 1996.
* Kostelanetz, Richard, editor, On Contemporary Literature, Avon, 1954.
* Lumley, Frederick, New Trends in Twentieth-Century Drama, Oxford University Press, 1967.
* Minihan, John and Aidan Higgins, Samuel Beckett: Photographs, George Braziller (New York City), 1996.
* Murphy, P. J., Critique of Beckett Criticism: A Guide to Research in English, French, and German, Camden House (Columbia, SC), 1994.
* O'Hara, J. D., Samuel Beckett's Hidden Drives: Structural Uses of Depth Psychology, University Press of Florida, 1997.
* Oppenheim, Lois, Directing Beckett, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor), 1994.
* Oppenheim, Lois, Marius Buning and The International Beckett Symposium, Beckett On and On, Farleigh Dickinson University Press (Madison, NJ), 1996.
* Piette, Adam, Remembering and the Sound of Words: Mallarmae, Proust, Joyce, Beckett, Clarendon Press (New York City), 1996.
* Pilling, John, The Cambridge Companion to Beckett, Cambridge University Press (New York City), 1994.
* Pilling, John, Beckett before Godot, Cambridge University Press, 1997.
* Pultar, Geoneul, Technique and Tradition in Beckett's Trilogy of Novels, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 1996.
* Simpson, Alan, Beckett and Behan and a Theatre in Dublin, Routledge Kegan Paul, 1962.
* Smith, H. A., and R. D. Smith, contributors, Contemporary Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon Studies 4, edited by John Russell Brown and Bernard Harris, Edward Arnold, 1962.
* Tindall, William York, Samuel Beckett, Columbia University Press, 1964.
* Tynan, Kenneth, Curtains, Atheneum, 1961.
* Wellwarth, George, Theatre of Protest and Paradox, New York University Press, 1964.
* Wolosky, Shira, Language Mysticism: The Negative Way of Language in Eliot, Beckett, and Celan, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1995.
PERIODICALS
* American Scholar, winter, 1992, p. 124.
* Atlantic, August, 1967.
* Carleton Miscellany, winter, 1967.
* Christian Science Monitor, July 27, 1967.
* Comparative Literature, winter, 1965.
* Connoisseur, July, 1990, p. 56.
* Critique, spring, 1963; winter, 1964-65.
* Economist, January 6, 1990, p. 90.
* Esquire, September, 1967; May, 1990, p. 87.
* Hudson Review, spring, 1967.
* Kenyon Review, March, 1967.
* Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 1993, p. 162.
* Life, February 2, 1968.
* Listener, August 3, 1967.
* Livres de France, January, 1967.
* London Magazine, August, 1967.
* London Review of Books, November 9, 1989, p. 26; April 8, 1993, p. 14.
* Manchester Guardian, April 21, 1966.
* Nation, October 3, 1987, p. 349; December 19, 1988, p. 26; April 30, 1990, p. 611; May 6, 1996, p. 16.
* New Republic, December 12, 1988, p. 26; October 22, 1990, p. 30.
* New Statesman, February 14, 1964; March 25, 1966; July 14, 1967.
* New Statesman Society, July 6, 1990, p. 46; October 11, 1991, p. 22; January 8, 1993, p. 42.
* New York, September 28, 1987, p. 133; July 11, 1988, p. 46.
* New York Review of Books, March 19, 1964; December 7, 1967; December 8, 1988, p. 30; August 13, 1992, p. 17; December 16, 1993, p. 42.
* New York Times, July 21, 1964; February 27, 1966; April 19, 1966; July 20, 1967; September 14, 1967.
* New York Times Book Review, June 12, 1988, p. 18; June 13, 1993, p. 11; April 17, 1994, p. 24; June 25, 1995, p. 9; May 26, 1996, p. 4.
* Observer (London), July 16, 1967; July 15, 1990, p. 53; July 22, 1990, p. 52; November 1, 1992, p. 62.
* Partisan Review, spring, 1966.
* Publishers Weekly, September 26, 1994, p. 12.
* Punch, August 2, 1967.
* Saturday Review, October 4, 1958.
* Time, July 14, 1967; November 21, 1988, p. 58.
* Times Literary Supplement, December 21, 1962; January 30, 1964; June 30, 1966; July 20, 1990, p. 782; November 27, 1992, p. 25.
* Tri-Quarterly, winter, 1967.
* Tulane Drama Review, summer, 1967.
* Village Voice, April 6, 1967; July 13, 1967; June 20, 1995, p. 69.
* Washington Post Book World, May 23, 1993, p. 8.
* World Literature Today, winter, 1994, p. 125; autumn, 1995, p. 761.
OBITUARIES:
PERIODICALS
* Chicago Tribune, December 27, 1989.
* Los Angeles Times, December 27, 1989.
* Maclean's, January 8, 1990, p. 47.
* Newsweek, January 8, 1990, p. 43.
* New York Times, December 27, 1989.
* People, January 8, 1990, p. 46.
* Time, January 8, 1990, p. 69.
"He wanders among misty bogs turned surreal, he talks to the wee folk of his own bad dreams, he files reports on introspected black visions with a kind of blarney eloquence. Like an actress cradling a doll for her stage baby, his language keens and croons about tales that are not quite there." Melvin Maddocks is talking about Samuel Beckett, a literary legend of the twentieth century. "It is neither night nor morning. A man must find himself without the support of groups, or labels, or slogans," writes R. D. Smith. And Beckett, by removing his characters from nearly all recognizable contexts, Smith continues, is "engaged in finding or saving" himself. Martin Esslin writes: "What is the essence of the experience of being? asks Beckett. And so he begins to strip away the inessentials. What is the meaning of the phrase 'I am myself'? he asks . . . and is then compelled to try to distinguish between the merely accidental characteristics that make up an individual and the essence of his self." A Time reviewer noted: "Some chronicle men on their way up; others tackle men on their way down. Samuel Beckett stalks after men on their way out." Such is the tone of most discussions of Beckett's work. But no single reviewer could communicate the unique power of Beckett's writing, his use of "a language in which the emptiness of conventional speech is charged with new emotion." "While [his] lesser colleagues work in rhetoric," writes Smith, Beckett produces poetry. "Well," says Harold Pinter, "I'll buy his goods, hook, line, and sinker, because he leaves no stone unturned and no maggot lonely. He brings forth a body of beauty. His work is beautiful." Leo Bersani, somewhat less politely, writes: "I know of no writer who has come closer than Beckett in his novels to translating the rhythms of defecation into sentence structure."
Along with the work of Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Harold Pinter, Beckett's stark plays are said to compose the "Theatre of the Absurd." But to so label Beckett's work is to disqualify one of his own first premises—that, since no human activity has any intrinsic meaning, it is pointless to ascribe traditional or categorical significance to the existence of an object or the performance of a deed. George Wellwarth discusses Beckett's concept of a protean reality: "What all these things—the sameness of human beings and their actions, the vanity of human ambition, the uselessness of thought—amount to is a pessimism deeper than any that has ever been put into words before. Throughout Beckett's work we can find evidence of his conviction that everything is hopeless, meaningless, purposeless, and, above all, agonizing to endure. Beckett's people are leveled off and merged into each other by being all more or less physically disabled—as if this were really the common condition on earth. . . . Beckett is a prophet of negation and sterility. He holds out no hope to humanity, only a picture of unrelieved blackness; and those who profess to see in Beckett signs of a Christian approach or signs of compassion are simply refusing to see what is there." Perhaps Beckett himself stated his dilemma most succinctly in L'Innommable: "Dans ma vie, puisqu'il faut l'appeler ainsi, il y eut trois choses, l'impossibilite de parler, l'impossibilite de me taire, et la solitude." ("One must speak; man cannot possibly communicate with his fellows, but the alternative—silence—is irreconcilable with human existence.")
Smith and Esslin, however, insist that Beckett did not intend to express unqualified despair, but that, by stripping significance from the world, he showed us the one way to achieve redemption (although any salvation, according to Beckett's essentially deterministic philosophy, is necessarily only a respite). Smith writes: "Beckett's characters remain at their darkest moments anguished human beings: Beckett, when intellectually at his most pitiless, feels and suffers with them." Esslin states that Beckett's message "is anything but gloomy or despairing." He writes: "On the contrary: the starkness of [his] reminders of the evanescence of life and the certainty of death, [his] uncompromising rejection of any easy solution or cheap illusion of comfort ultimately has a liberating effect; such is the nature of man that in the very act of facing up to the reality of his condition his dignity is enhanced; we are only defeated by things by which we are taken unawares; what we know and have faced up to we can master." Alec Reid also believes that Beckett's message must be interpreted optimistically. "Beckett's world," he writes, "is one of darkness, of disembodied voices, of ignorance, impotence, and anguish. But even as he insists that he knows nothing, can know nothing, Beckett reminds us of an astronaut, a human surrounded by nothing, walking on nothing. Our spacemen are no cause for despair; no more are Mr. Beckett's explorations." But then, according to Time magazine, "Beckett's champions argue that his threnodies in dusky twilight represent the existential metaphor of the human condition, that the thin but unwavering voices of his forlorn characters speak the ultimate statement of affirmation, if only because the merest attempt at communication is itself affirmation."
But in case the reader of Beckett criticism should come to regard this question as the black and white one of "despair" versus "optimism," Richard N. Coe adds new terms to the argument: "To class Beckett himself as the simple incarnation of 'despair' is a drastic oversimplification. To begin with, the concept of 'despair' implies the existence of a related concept 'hope,' and 'hope' implies a certain predictable continuity in time—which continuity Beckett would seriously question. 'Despair,' with all its inherent moral overtones, is a term which is wholly inadequate to describe Beckett's attitude towards the human condition; nor is this condition, in the most current sense of the definition, 'absurd.' It is literally and logically impossible. And in this central concept of 'impossibility,' his thought has most of its origins—as does also his art."
Although John Gassner was not happy with the scholarly complexity of the critical response to Beckett's work (he wrote: "To a parvenu intelligentsia, it would seem that a work of art exists not for its own sake but only for the possibilities of interpreting it"), some critics believe that Beckett's theater is most meaningful when considered within the context of a recognizable literary tradition. Kenneth Allsop writes: "His harsh, desolate, denuded style is entirely and unmistakably his own, but his literary 'form,' the stream-of-consciousness device which most young British writers wouldn't dream of using nowadays for fear of being thought quaint, derives from his years [working with] . . . James Joyce. That is only a partial explanation. He is in a monolithic way the last of the Left Bank Mohicans of the Twenties; the others of the avant-garde died or deserted or prospered, but Beckett was a loyal expatriate." Esslin, J. D. O'Hara, and John Fletcher prefer to align Beckett with the philosophers. "Although Beckett himself [was] not aware of any such influence," Esslin writes, "his writings might be described as a literary exposition of Sartre's Existentialism." O'Hara sees his work as exponential to the philosophy of Descartes: "In Beckett's world of post-Cartesian dualism, the mind has no connection to the body, its values worth nothing there, and so it cannot logically concern itself with the body's problems." Fletcher concludes that "whatever the truth of the matter, one thing is certain. Beckett has ranged freely among the writings of the philosophers, where he has found confirmation and justification of the metaphysical obsessions that haunt his work: the gulf set between body and mind, the epistemological incertitude. His genius has achieved the transmutation of such speculative problems into art." But, according to Coe, one must keep in mind that "Beckett has renounced his claim to erudition. The main theme of his work is impotence, of mind just as much as of body."
The problem of analyzing and interpreting Beckett's work, on the other hand, has been met with a somewhat surprising amount of scholarship and erudition. But David Hesla's criticism, in which the novels are considered as the expression of Beckett's personal enigma, is equally effective. Hesla notes that the dilemma which confronts the contemporary writer, according to Beckett, "is constituted . . . by the fact that the writer must take seriously two opposed and apparently irreconcilable claims to his allegiance. On the one hand, he must recognize that the principal fact about modern man's life is that it is a 'mess,' a 'confusion,' a 'chaos.' On the other hand, the writer, as artist, has an obligation to form. But to admit the 'mess' into art is to jeopardize the very nature of art; for the mess 'appears to be the very opposite of form and therefore destructive of the very thing that art holds itself to be.'" Hesla quotes Beckett as saying: "It only means that there will be a new form; and that this form will be of such a type that it admits the chaos and does not try to say that the chaos is really something else. The form and the chaos remain separate. The latter is not reduced to the former. That is why the form itself becomes a preoccupation, because it exists as a problem separate from the material it accommodates. To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now." Hesla notes that with Watt, "Beckett [began] a process of removing from his artificial world those tangibles by which the reader usually is able to orient himself in time and space, and those causal relationships amongst the incidents of the plot by which the reader is able to discern the conditions of necessity and probability which—be they never so strained or extraordinary—determine in part the structural coherence and the 'meaning' of the story. . . . In Watt he has found the form which permits 'the mess' to enter art without destroying it. He has developed a literary method—the negative way—which is capable of accommodating chaos without reducing it to form. Furthermore, in developing this method he has developed an instrument of greater precision for the explication of a world-view which was only roughly sketched out in Murphy. Beckett's work after Watt has, in a certain sense, consisted largely in refining and adapting both the manner and the matter of his new art."
Most critics agree that it was the 1954 English-language publication of Waiting for Godot that established Beckett's prominence in the United States. Many, in fact, still consider this play to be his most important work. H. A. Smith calls it "the most comprehensively and profoundly evocative play of the last thirty years," and William R. Mueller and Josephine Jacobsen write: "Waiting for Godot, of all of Beckett's dramatic works, expresses most clearly and explicitly the fundamental tension—to wait or not to wait—which is found to a lesser degree in his other writings. The human predicament described in Beckett's first [major, staged] play is that of man living on the Saturday after the Friday of the crucifixion, and not really knowing if all hope is dead or if the next day will bring the new life which has been promised." Allsop found the play's message less ambiguous. He writes: " Godot is a hymn to extol the moment when the mind swings off its hinges. . . . Beckett is unconcerned with writing requiems for humanity, for he sees life as polluted and pointless: he merely scrawls its obituary, without bitterness or compassion because he cannot really believe it is worth the words he is wasting." Gassner also found the play to be a straightforward pronouncement, but he did not accept it as a prediction of certain doom. "To all this tohu and bohu about the profundity and difficulty of the play," he wrote, "my reply is simply that there is nothing painfully or exhilaratingly ambiguous about Waiting for Godot in the first place. It presents the view that man, the hapless wanderer in the universe, brings his quite wonderful humanity—his human capacity for hope, patience, resilience, and, yes, for love of one's kind, too, as well as his animal nature—to the weird journey of existence. He is lost in the universe and found in his own heart and in the hearts of his fellow men." Bert O. States adds parenthetically: "Convicts and children love it!"
Kenneth Tynan believes that the implications of Waiting for Godot are significant not only in themselves, but for all of contemporary theater. He writes: "A special virtue attaches to plays which remind the drama of how much it can do without and still exist. By all known criteria, Beckett's Waiting for Godot is a dramatic vacuum. Pity the critic who seeks a chink in its armour, for it is all chink. It has no plot, no climax, no denouement; no beginning, no middle, and no end. Unavoidably, it has a situation, and it might be accused of having suspense. . . . Waiting for Godot frankly jettisons everything by which we recognise theatre. It arrives at the custom-house, as it were, with no luggage, no passport, and nothing to declare; yet it gets through, as might a pilgrim from Mars. It does this, I believe, by appealing to a definition of drama much more fundamental than any in the books. A play, it asserts and proves, is basically a means of spending two hours in the dark without being bored. . . . It forced me to re-examine the rules which have hitherto governed the drama; and, having done so, to pronounce them not elastic enough."
Some critics found 1957's Endgame to be an even more powerful expression of Beckett's negativism. Gassner wrote: "Nothing happens in Endgame and that nothing is what matters. The author's feeling about nothing also matters, not because it is true or right but because it is a strongly formed attitude, a felt and expressed viewpoint. . . . The yardsticks of dialectical materialism and moralism are equally out in appraising the play. Dialectical materialism could only say that Endgame is decadent. Moralism and theology would say that the play is sinful, since nothing damns the soul so much as despair of salvation. Neither yardstick could tell us that this hauntingly powerful work of the imagination is art."
Although critics discuss his plays more frequently than his novels, Beckett himself was said to have considered his novels to be his major works. Alec Reid notes: "For Beckett each novel is a journey into the unknown, into an area of utter lawlessness." And a Times Literary Supplement reviewer, in his discussion of Imagination Dead Imagine, summarizes Beckett's work thus: "[This novel] certainly describes two people in an imaginary situation and it is equally certainly a work of large implications and a desolate, cruel beauty. It might not seem so, however, if it had not been apparent for some time that Mr. Beckett's prose narratives compose a single, long saga of exclusion and heroic relinquishment as well as of the desperate, perhaps unavailing, pursuit of finality." A. I. Leventhal writes: "When Beckett changes to writing his novels in French he leaves behind him much of the humour, grim as it was, in his previous work. He has less interest in making his characters indulge in games to pass the time as in Waiting for Godot. They are now concentrating on their penible task of dying." Frank Kermode offers this analysis of the novels: "In Beckett's plays the theatrical demand for communicable rhythms and relatively crude satisfactions has had a beneficent effect. But in the novels he yields progressively to the magnetic pull of the primitive, to the desire to achieve, by various forms of decadence and deformation, some Work that eludes the intellect, avoids the spread nets of habitual meaning. Beckett is often allegorical, but he is allegorical in fitful patches, providing illusive toeholds to any reader scrambling for sense." Bersani hasn't discovered the toeholds (and laughs behind his hand at those who have), nor does he think he will, if, as he says, he continues to take Beckett "seriously." Bersani writes: "The most interesting fact about Samuel Beckett's novels is that they are, at their best, almost completely unreadable." Bersani, citing Beckett's expressed desire to fail (to be an artist, for Beckett, is to fail), finds his "extreme attempt to render literature autonomous" to be not only "an ironic reminder of the ultimate dependence of literature on life," but also a generally suspicious undertaking. "The attempt to eliminate 'occasion' from art," he writes, "is in itself an occasion, and insofar as this attempt is a process of what [Ruby] Cohn has called progressive 'retrenchment,' the process rather than the achievement becomes the subject of Beckett's work."
The fact that most of Beckett's important work was originally written in French is far more than coincidentally significant to his stylistic achievement. Coe explains: "Beckett, in the final analysis, is trying to say what cannot be said; he must be constantly on his guard, therefore, never to yield to the temptation of saying what the words would make him say. Only when language is, as it were, defeated, bound hand and foot; only when it is so rigorously disciplined that each word describes exactly and quasiscientifically the precise concept to which it is related and no other, only then, by the progressive elimination of that which precisely is, is there a remote chance for the human mind to divine the ultimate reality which is not. And this relentless, almost masochistic discipline, which reaches its culmination in Comment c'est, Beckett achieves by writing in a language which is not his own—in French." John Barth explains, however, that Beckett's denuded French is yet only another step in his creative process and must not be construed as a total achievement. Barth writes: "Beckett has become virtually mute, musewise, having progressed from marvelously constructed English sentences through terser and terser French ones to the unsyntactical, unpunctuated prose of Comment c'est and 'ultimately' to wordless mimes. One might extrapolate a theoretical course for Beckett: language, after all, consists of silence as well as sound, and the mime is still communication, . . . but by the language of action. But the language of action consists of rest as well as movement, and so in the context of Beckett's progress immobile, silent figures still aren't altogether ultimate. . . . For Beckett [in the 1960s, toward the end of his writing career], to cease to create altogether would be fairly meaningful: his crowning work, his 'last word.' What a convenient corner to paint yourself into!"
In 1967 the Firehouse Theatre of Minneapolis, directed by Marlow Hotchkiss, performed Act without Words I and Act without Words II simultaneously. Also in 1967, Jack Emery composed and performed an hour-long, one-man program consisting of "a selection of the desperate reveries and furious tirades of half a dozen of Samuel Beckett's dying heroes," including Malone, Hamm, and the Unnamable. A Punch reviewer writes: "Many of the passages are fatiguing to follow in the original novels but so conversational are the rhythms of Beckett's language and so eloquently does Mr. Emery speak them (except when he essays a scream) that the effect in a dark, hushed theatre of this grim gallows humour is electrifying. There is more to life than talking of waiting for death, but Beckett has phrases—'Vent the pent!'—that resound in the mind with the urgency of great poetry." Emery's program, which premiered at Arts Theatre, London, was also produced in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Exeter. Two years later, in 1969, Beckett won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Although unpublished for sixty years, Beckett's first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, finally made it into print in the United States in 1993. The author composed the book as a young man of twenty-six during a summer spent in Paris. The protagonist of Dream is the adventurous Belacqua, and the story centers on his varied experiences in Dublin and Paris. Beckett's style here, according to Colm Toibin in the London Review of Books, "is a rambling stream of consciousness, full of asides and associations, with a tone of half-seriousness and oblique mockery. . . . The writing is self-conscious: it reads as though the writer wrote it merely to read it himself." Beckett himself described Dream as "the chest into which I threw my wild thoughts." And, as J. D. O'Hara comments in the New York Times Book Review, "he reused them, often word for word." In the end, George Craig asserts in the Times Literary Supplement, "this is Beckett's earliest venture, and it shows. . . . But . . . something important is going on: the search for [his] voice."
Similarly, Beckett's first play, Eleutheria (the title means "freedom" in Greek), collected dust in the author's trunk for nearly fifty years before being published in 1995. The dark, three-act comic piece concerns a privacy-obsessed writer who tries in vain to escape from his family and friends, spending most of the play fighting off their efforts to mend what's left of his life. Eleutheria was written just prior to Waiting for Godot, but it demanded rather complex staging (seventeen characters and two sets, both which are shown simultaneously in the first two acts before one disappears into the orchestra pit in the final act) and so was not produced in the 1950s when Godot burst onto the contemporary theatrical scene.
"No one . . . disputes that Beckett did not want Eleutheria published," explains Jonathan Kalb in an article for the Village Voice. Its publication in 1995 prompted considerable controversy among members of the literary establishment, with opponents appalled at the thought of the author's final request for its suppression—from his deathbed, no less—being ignored. Kalb notes that the play is neither "a hidden masterpiece" nor "a catastrophe," but rather "a fascinating, rare instance of Beckettian excess. . . . At times windy, redundant, even confusing, it will certainly take its proper place as a minor, formative work that is bouyed by eloquent and hilarious passages and the tantalizing seeds of great themes, devices, and characters to come." As Mel Gussow puts it in the New York Times Book Review, " Waiting for Godot is revolutionary; Eleutheria is evolutionary."
Few critics have discussed Beckett's ideas (or the man himself) apart from their manifestation in his work. And Beckett would doubtless have it so. As Robert Wernick writes, "so striking is the personality that emerges from [his] gloomy plays and so striking [was] the occasionally glimpsed, gaunt pterodactylous face of the real-life Samuel Beckett that many people assume[d] the two [were] identical. A whole folklore of anecdote has grown up around Beckett, in which he appears as a fanatic solitary, brooding eternally . . . on the black mystery of the human race. . . . It is true that he . . . built a wall around his country house, but he denie[d] that he built it, as people contend, to shut out the view. It is true he avoid[ed] all the trappings of the celebrity life, [gave] no interviews, attend[ed] no cultural congresses. But then, why should he [have]?" Alec Reid met Beckett in New York during the making of Film and described him as "a close-knit person, all of a piece." Reid says that Beckett "believe[d] that physical movement conveys at least as much as the words. . . . Once the initial reserve . . . evaporated Beckett reveal[ed] a genius for companionship, a remarkable ability to make those around him feel the better for his presence."
CAREER
Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, France, lecturer in English, 1928-30; Trinity College, University of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland, lecturer in French, 1930-32 (resigned because "he could not bear the absurdity of teaching to others what he did not know himself"). During the early 1930s he, among others, helped James Joyce, who was then nearly blind, by taking dictation and by copying out parts of Finnegans Wake. (Beckett never served as secretary to Joyce as many believe. A. J. Leventhal, writing for Beckett, stated that "there was never any question of a formal position. . . . It's very hard to kill this story.") From 1932 to 1936 Beckett traveled extensively in England and Europe, residing briefly in London and in several European cities. He settled permanently in Paris in 1937. From about 1940 to 1943, Beckett was involved with the French resistance movement and had to hide from the Germans. He spent these years working as a farmhand near Roussillon, an isolated region in southeast France. From the early 1940s on, Beckett devoted most of his time to writing.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
NOVELS
* Murphy (written in English), Routledge Kegan Paul (London), 1938, Grove (New York City), 1957, French translation by Beckett, Bordas (Paris), 1947.
* Molloy (fragment of an earlier version published in transition, number 6, 1950 , together with an early fragment of Malone Dies under collective title, "Two Fragments"; also see below), Editions de Minuit, 1951, English translation by Beckett and Patrick Bowles, Grove, 1955.
* Malone meurt, Editions de Minuit, 1951, English translation by Beckett published as Malone Dies, Grove, 1956.
* Watt (written in English), Olympia Press (Paris), 1953, Grove, 1959, rewritten, and translated into French by the author, Editions de Minuit, 1968.
* L'Innommable, Editions de Minuit, 1953, English translation by Beckett published as The Unnamable, Grove, 1958.
* Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, [and] The Unnamable, Grove, 1959.
* Comment c'est, Editions de Minuit, 1961, English translation by Beckett published as How It Is, Grove, 1964 (excerpts published in X [a London magazine], number 1, 1959, and, under title "From an Unabandoned Work," in Evergreen Review, September-October, 1960).
* Imagination morte imaginez (although only 14 pages long, Beckett called this work a novel), Editions de Minuit, 1965, English translation by Beckett published as Imagination Dead Imagine, Calder Boyars, 1965.
* Mercier et Camier, Minuit, 1970, translation by Beckett published as Mercier and Camier, Calder Boyars, 1974 , Grove, 1975.
* Dream of Fair to Middling Women, edited by Eoin O'Brien and Edith Fournier, Arcade Publishing in association with Riverrun Press (New York City), 1993, reissued, 1996.
* Nohow On: Three Novels, edited by S. E. Gontarski, Grove Press, 1996.
SHORT FICTION
* More Pricks Than Kicks (ten short stories, written in English), Chatto Windus, 1934, special edition, Calder Boyars, 1966.
* Nouvelles et textes pour rien (fiction; contains "L'Expulse," "Le Calmant," and "La Fin," and thirteen monologues), Editions de Minuit, 1955, translation by Beckett and others published in England as No's Knife: Collected Shorter Prose, 1947-1965 (also includes "From an Abandoned Work," "Enough," Imagination Dead Imagine, and Ping; also see below), Calder Boyars, 1967, published as Stories and Texts for Nothing, Grove, 1967.
* Assez, Editions de Minuit, 1966.
* Ping, Editions de Minuit, 1966.
* Tete-mortes (includes Imagination morte imaginez, bing, Assez, and a new novella, Tete-mortes), Editions de Minuit, 1967.
* L'Issue, Georges Visat, 1968.
* Sans, Editions de Minuit, 1969, translation by Beckett published as Lessness, Calder Boyars, 1971.
* Sejour, Georges Richar, 1970.
* Premier amour, Editions de Minuit, 1970, translation by Beckett published as First Love, Calder Boyars, 1973.
* The North, Enitharmon Press, 1972.
* First Love and Other Shorts, Grove, 1974.
* Fizzles, Grove, 1976.
* For to End Yet Again and Other Fizzles, Calder, 1976.
* All Strange Away, Gotham Book Mart, 1976.
* Four Novellas, Calder, 1977, published as The Expelled and Other Novellas, Penguin, 1980.
* Six Residua, Calder, 1978.
* Mal vu mal dit, Editions de Minuit, 1981, translation by Beckett published as Ill Seen Ill Said, Grove, 1982, variorum edition edited by Charles France, Garland, 1996.
* Worstward Ho, Grove, 1983.
* As the Story Was Told, Riverrun Press, 1990.
* Stirrings Still, Blue Moon Books, 1991.
* Nohow On (novella), Riverrun Press, 1993.
* Collected Shorter Prose, 1945-1988, Riverrun Press, 1995.
* Samuel Beckett, The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989, edited and with introduction by S. E. Gontarski, Grove Press, 1995.
Also author of the short story "Premier amour" which was perhaps intended to complete a quartet begun with "L'Expulse," "Le Calmant," and "La Fin."
PLAYS
* Le Kid, produced in Dublin, 1931.
* En Attendant Godot (first produced in Paris at Theatre de Babylone, January 5, 1953), Editions de Minuit, 1952, English translation by Beckett entitled Waiting for Godot (first premiered at Arts Theatre Club, London, August, 1955; U.S. premiere in Miami Beach, FL, at Coconut Grove Playhouse, January, 1956; produced on Broadway at John Golden Theatre, April, 1956), Grove, 1954, with a revised text, Grove Press (New York City), 1994.
* All That Fall (radio play written in English; produced in London for BBC Third Programme, January 13, 1957), Grove, 1957, updated for American radio, French translation by Robert Pinget and Beckett published as Tous ceux qui tombent, Editions de Minuit, 1957.
* Fin de partie (a play in one act; first produced with Acte sans paroles in London at Royal Court Theatre, April 3, 1957), French European Publications, 1957, English translation by Beckett produced as Endgame in New York at Cherry Lane Theatre, 1958.
* Acte sans paroles (a mime for one player, with music by John Beckett), first produced with Fin de partie in London at Royal Court Theatre, April 3, 1957), English translation by Beckett produced as Act without Words, produced in New York at Living Theatre, 1959.
* From an Abandoned Work (written in English; produced in London for BBC Third Programme, 1957), first published in Evergreen Review, Volume 1, number 3, 1957, Faber Faber, 1958, published in French as D'un ouvrage abandonne, 1967.
* Krapp's Last Tape (written in English), first produced in London at Royal Court Theatre, October 28, 1958, then at Provincetown Playhouse, 1960, French translation as Le Derniere Bande, French & European Publications, 1960.
* Embers (written in English), first produced in London for BBC Third Programme, June 24, 1959.
* Acte sans paroles II, produced at Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1960, English translation as Act without Words II.
* Happy Days (written in English; first produced in New York at Cherry Lane Theatre, September 17, 1961; produced in New York by the Classic Stage Company, directed by Jeff Cohen, February 16, 2005), Grove, 1961, French translation by Beckett as Oh les beaux jours (produced in Paris, 1963), Editions de Minuit, 1963, 2nd edition, French European Publications, 1975.
* Spiel, German translation by Elmar Tophoven, produced in Germany, 1963, produced in English as Play, London, 1964, produced in French as Comedie, Paris, 1964.
* Film (22-minute mime adaptation, by Mariu Karmitz, of Play), directed by Alan Schneider for Evergreen Theatres, and starring Buster Keaton, M. K. Productions, 1966.
* Eh, Joe? and Other Writings (written in English for television; first produced by New York Television Theatre, 1966; also see below), Faber Faber, 1967.
* Va et vient (121-word "dramaticule," produced in Berlin, 1966), published in Comedie et actes divers, Calder Boyars, 1967, English version produced as Come and Go, Dublin, 1968.
* Breath, produced in Oxford, England, 1970.
* Le Depeupleur, French European Publications, 1970, translation by Beckett published as The Lost Ones (produced in New York, 1975), Grove, 1972.
* Not I (produced at Lincoln Center, New York, 1972), Faber, 1971.
* That Time (produced in London, 1976), Faber, 1976.
* Footfalls (produced in London, 1976), Faber, 1976.
* A Piece of Monologue, produced in New York, 1979.
* Company (monologue), Grove, 1980.
* Rockabye, produced in Buffalo, NY, 1981.
* Texts for Nothing, produced in New York, 1981.
* Ohio Impromptu, produced in Columbus, OH, 1981.
* Eleutheria (new edition), Editions de Minuit (Paris), 1995, published in English as Eleutheria: A Play in Three Acts, Foxrock (New York City), 1995.
OMNIBUS EDITIONS OF PLAYS
* Fin de partie [and] Acte sans paroles, Editions de Minuit, 1957, English translation by Beckett published as Endgame [and] Act without Words, Grove, 1958.
* Krapp's Last Tape [and] Embers, Faber Faber, 1959, published as Krapp's Last Tape and Other Dramatic Pieces (also contains All that Fall, Act without Words [I], and Act without Words II [written in English]), Grove, 1960.
* Dramatische Dichtungen (trilingual edition of dramatic works originally published in French; German translations by Tophoven), Suhrkamp Verlag, 1963-64.
* Play and Two Short Pieces for Radio (written in English; contains Play, Words and Music [first published in Evergreen Review, November-December, 1962], and Cascando [first published in Dublin Magazine, October-December, 1936; also see below]), Faber Faber, 1964.
* Comedie et actes divers (contains Comedie, Va et vient, Cascando, Paroles et musiques [French translation by Beckett of Words and Music], Dis Joe [French translation by Beckett of Eh, Joe?; also see below], and Acte sans paroles II), Editions de Minuit, 1966.
* Cascando and Other Short Dramatic Pieces, Grove, 1968.
* Breath and Other Shorts, Faber, 1971.
* Ends and Odds: Eight New Dramatic Pieces, Faber, 1977.
* Rockabye and Other Short Pieces, Grove, 1981.
* Catastrophe et autres dramaticules: Cette fois, Solo, Berceuse, Impromptu d'Ohio, Editions de Minuit, 1982.
* Three Occasional Pieces, Faber, 1982.
* Collected Shorter Plays, Grove, 1984.
* Ohio Impromptu, Catastrophe, and What Where, Grove, 1984.
* The Complete Dramatic Works, Faber, 1986.
* Samuel Beckett's Company-Compagnie and a Piece of Monologue—Solo: A Bilingual Variorum Edition, Garland, 1993.
* Dramaticulesg, Riverrun Press, 1995.
OTHER
* (Contributor) Our Exagmination round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (on James Joyce and Finnegans Wake), Shakespeare Co. (Paris), 1929, New Directions, 1939, 2nd edition, 1962.
* Whoroscope: Poem on Time (written in English), Hours Press (Paris), 1930.
* Proust (criticism, written in English), Chatto Windus, 1931, Grove, 1957.
* Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates (poems, written in English), Europa Press (Paris), 1935.
* A Samuel Beckett Reader, edited by John Calder, Calder & Boyars, 1967.
* (With Georges Duthuit and Jacques Putnam) Bram van Velde (criticism of the painter's work), Falaise (Paris), 1958, English translation by Olive Chase and Beckett, Grove, 1960.
* Henri Hayden, Waddington Galleries, 1959.
* Gedichte (in French and German; contains "Echo's Bones" and 18 poems written between 1937 and 1949), German translations by Eva Hesse, Limes Verlag (Wiesbaden), 1959.
* Poems in English, Calder Boyars, 1961, Grove, 1962.
* (With Georges Duthuit) Proust and Three Dialogues (criticism), Calder Boyars, 1965.
* Poemes, Editions de Minuit, 1968.
* Abandonne, Georges Visat, 1972.
* Au loin un oiseau, Double Elephant Press, 1973.
* An Examination of James Joyce, M.S.G. House, 1974.
* Pour finir encore, French and European Publications, 1976.
* I Can't Go On: A Selection from the Works of Samuel Beckett, edited by Richard Seaver, Grove Press, 1976.
* Collected Poems in English and French, Grove, 1977, revised edition published as Collected Poems, 1930-1978, Calder, 1984.
* Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment, edited by Ruby Cohn, Calder, 1983, Grove, 1984.
* Collected Shorter Prose, 1945-1980, Calder, 1984.
* Happy Days: The Production Notebook, edited by James Knowlson, Faber, 1985, Grove, 1986.
* (Translator with Edouard Roditi and Denise Levertov) Alain Bosquet, No Matter No Fact, New Directions, 1988.
* Collected Poems in English, Grove/Atlantic, 1989.
* Endgame: Production Notebook, revised edition, Grove, 1993.
* Collected Poems, 1930-1989, Riverrun Press, 1995.
* No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider, edited by Maurice Harmon, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1998.
Contributor to transition, New Review, Evergreen Review, Contempo, Les Temps Modernes, Merlin, Spectrum, and other periodicals.
FURTHER READINGS
BOOKS
* Abbott, H. Porter, Beckett Writing Beckett: The Author in the Autograph, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1996.
* Acheson, James, Samuel Beckett's Artistic Theory and Practice: Criticism, Drama, and Early Fiction, St. Martin's Press, 1997.
* Allsop, Kenneth, The Angry Decade, Copp, 1958.
* Andonian, Cathleen Culotta, The Critical Response to Samuel Beckett, Greenwood Press, 1998.
* Armstrong, William A., and others, editors, Experimental Drama, G. Bell, 1963.
* Baker, Phil, Beckett and the Mythology of Psychoanalysis, St. Martin's Press, 1997.
* Beckett at Sixty (a festschrift by twenty-four of his friends), Calder Boyars, 1967.
* Brater, Enoch, The Drama in the Text: Beckett's Late Fiction, Oxford University Press (New York City), 1994.
* Bryden, Mary, ed., Samuel Beckett and Music, Clarendon Press, 1998.
* Bryden, Mary, Samuel Beckett and the Idea of God, St. Martin's Press, 1998.
* Butler, Lance St. John, Critical Essays on Samuel Beckett, Ashgate Publishing Co. (Brookfield, VT), 1994.
* Coe, Richard N., Beckett, Oliver Boyd, 1964.
* Cohn, Ruby, Samuel Beckett: The Comic Gamut, Rutgers University Press, 1962.
* Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit), Volume 1, 1973, Volume 2, 1974, Volume 3, 1975, Volume 4, 1975, Volume 6, 1976, Volume 9, 1978, Volume 10, 1979, Volume 11, 1979, Volume 14, 1980, Volume 18, 1981, Volume 29, 1984, Volume 57, 1990, Volume 59, 1990, Volume 83, 1994.
* Cronin, Anthony, Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist, HarperCollins, 1996.
* Danziger, Marie A., Text/ Countertext: Fear, Guilt, and Retaliation in the Postmodern Novel, Peter Lang (New York City), 1996.
* Davies, Paul, The Ideal Real: Beckett's Fiction and Imagination, Associated University Presses (Cranbury, NJ), 1994.
* Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale, Volume 13: British Dramatists since World War II, 1982, Volume 15: British Novelists, 1930-1959, 1983.
* Dillon, Brian, Beckett's Blurry Signature, Department of Liberal Arts, Nova University (Ft. Lauderdale, FL), 1995.
* Esslin, Martin, The Theatre of the Absurd, Doubleday-Anchor, 1961.
* Fletcher, John, Samuel Beckett's Art, Barnes Noble, 1967.
* Gassner, John, Theatre at the Crossroads, Holt, 1960.
* Gordon, Lois G., The World of Samuel Beckett, 1906-1946, Yale University Press (New Haven), 1996.
* Guicharnaud, Jacques, and June Beckelman, Modern French Theatre from Giraudoux to Beckett, Yale University Press, 1961.
* Harding, James M., Adorno and "A Writing of the Ruins": Essays on Modern Aesthetics and Anglo-American Literature and Culture, State University of New York Press (Albany), 1997.
* Hoffman, Frederick J., Samuel Beckett: The Language of Self, Southern Illinois University Press, 1962.
* Kenner, Hugh, Samuel Beckett, J. Calder, 1962.
* Kenner, Hugh, A Reader's Guide to Samuel Beckett, Syracuse University Press (Syracuse, NY), 1996.
* Kermode, Frank, Puzzles and Epiphanies, Chilmark, 1962.
* Kim, Hwa Soon, The Counterpoint of Hope, Obsession, and Desire for Death in Five Plays by Samuel Beckett, P. Lang (New York City), 1996.
* Knowlson, James, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett, Bloomsbury, 1996.
* Kostelanetz, Richard, editor, On Contemporary Literature, Avon, 1954.
* Lumley, Frederick, New Trends in Twentieth-Century Drama, Oxford University Press, 1967.
* Minihan, John and Aidan Higgins, Samuel Beckett: Photographs, George Braziller (New York City), 1996.
* Murphy, P. J., Critique of Beckett Criticism: A Guide to Research in English, French, and German, Camden House (Columbia, SC), 1994.
* O'Hara, J. D., Samuel Beckett's Hidden Drives: Structural Uses of Depth Psychology, University Press of Florida, 1997.
* Oppenheim, Lois, Directing Beckett, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor), 1994.
* Oppenheim, Lois, Marius Buning and The International Beckett Symposium, Beckett On and On, Farleigh Dickinson University Press (Madison, NJ), 1996.
* Piette, Adam, Remembering and the Sound of Words: Mallarmae, Proust, Joyce, Beckett, Clarendon Press (New York City), 1996.
* Pilling, John, The Cambridge Companion to Beckett, Cambridge University Press (New York City), 1994.
* Pilling, John, Beckett before Godot, Cambridge University Press, 1997.
* Pultar, Geoneul, Technique and Tradition in Beckett's Trilogy of Novels, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 1996.
* Simpson, Alan, Beckett and Behan and a Theatre in Dublin, Routledge Kegan Paul, 1962.
* Smith, H. A., and R. D. Smith, contributors, Contemporary Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon Studies 4, edited by John Russell Brown and Bernard Harris, Edward Arnold, 1962.
* Tindall, William York, Samuel Beckett, Columbia University Press, 1964.
* Tynan, Kenneth, Curtains, Atheneum, 1961.
* Wellwarth, George, Theatre of Protest and Paradox, New York University Press, 1964.
* Wolosky, Shira, Language Mysticism: The Negative Way of Language in Eliot, Beckett, and Celan, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1995.
PERIODICALS
* American Scholar, winter, 1992, p. 124.
* Atlantic, August, 1967.
* Carleton Miscellany, winter, 1967.
* Christian Science Monitor, July 27, 1967.
* Comparative Literature, winter, 1965.
* Connoisseur, July, 1990, p. 56.
* Critique, spring, 1963; winter, 1964-65.
* Economist, January 6, 1990, p. 90.
* Esquire, September, 1967; May, 1990, p. 87.
* Hudson Review, spring, 1967.
* Kenyon Review, March, 1967.
* Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 1993, p. 162.
* Life, February 2, 1968.
* Listener, August 3, 1967.
* Livres de France, January, 1967.
* London Magazine, August, 1967.
* London Review of Books, November 9, 1989, p. 26; April 8, 1993, p. 14.
* Manchester Guardian, April 21, 1966.
* Nation, October 3, 1987, p. 349; December 19, 1988, p. 26; April 30, 1990, p. 611; May 6, 1996, p. 16.
* New Republic, December 12, 1988, p. 26; October 22, 1990, p. 30.
* New Statesman, February 14, 1964; March 25, 1966; July 14, 1967.
* New Statesman Society, July 6, 1990, p. 46; October 11, 1991, p. 22; January 8, 1993, p. 42.
* New York, September 28, 1987, p. 133; July 11, 1988, p. 46.
* New York Review of Books, March 19, 1964; December 7, 1967; December 8, 1988, p. 30; August 13, 1992, p. 17; December 16, 1993, p. 42.
* New York Times, July 21, 1964; February 27, 1966; April 19, 1966; July 20, 1967; September 14, 1967.
* New York Times Book Review, June 12, 1988, p. 18; June 13, 1993, p. 11; April 17, 1994, p. 24; June 25, 1995, p. 9; May 26, 1996, p. 4.
* Observer (London), July 16, 1967; July 15, 1990, p. 53; July 22, 1990, p. 52; November 1, 1992, p. 62.
* Partisan Review, spring, 1966.
* Publishers Weekly, September 26, 1994, p. 12.
* Punch, August 2, 1967.
* Saturday Review, October 4, 1958.
* Time, July 14, 1967; November 21, 1988, p. 58.
* Times Literary Supplement, December 21, 1962; January 30, 1964; June 30, 1966; July 20, 1990, p. 782; November 27, 1992, p. 25.
* Tri-Quarterly, winter, 1967.
* Tulane Drama Review, summer, 1967.
* Village Voice, April 6, 1967; July 13, 1967; June 20, 1995, p. 69.
* Washington Post Book World, May 23, 1993, p. 8.
* World Literature Today, winter, 1994, p. 125; autumn, 1995, p. 761.
OBITUARIES:
PERIODICALS
* Chicago Tribune, December 27, 1989.
* Los Angeles Times, December 27, 1989.
* Maclean's, January 8, 1990, p. 47.
* Newsweek, January 8, 1990, p. 43.
* New York Times, December 27, 1989.
* People, January 8, 1990, p. 46.
* Time, January 8, 1990, p. 69.
Samuel Beckett - English encyclopedia.
Samuel Beckett
This article is about the Irish writer.
For the Scott Bakula character, see Sam Beckett.
Samuel Beckett
Born Samuel Barclay Beckett
13 April 1906(1906-04-13)
Foxrock, Dublin, Ireland
Died 22 December 1989 (aged 83)
Paris, France
Pen name Andrew Belis (Recent Irish Poetry)[1]
Occupation novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet, essayist
Nationality Irish
Genres Drama, fictional prose, poetry, film
Literary movement Modernism
Notable award(s) Nobel Prize in Literature
1969
Influences[show]
Dante Alighieri, Arnold Geulincx, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Jean Racine, Arthur Schopenhauer, J.M Synge, W.B. Yeats, Seán O'Casey, Oscar Wilde, Marquis de Sade, René Descartes, Laurence Sterne, Democritus, John Milton, Immanuel Kant, Bishop Berkeley
Influenced [show]
Edward Albee, Paul Auster, John Banville, Donald Barthelme, William S. Burroughs, Italo Calvino, Marina Carr, J. M. Coetzee, Don DeLillo, Philip K. Dick, Václav Havel, Eugene Ionesco, B. S. Johnson, Sarah Kane, Derek Mahon, David Mamet, Bruce Nauman, Edna O'Brien, Jamie O'Neill, Damian Pettigrew, Harold Pinter, Alberto Ruy-Sánchez, Sam Shepard, Tom Stoppard.
Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer, dramatist and poet. Beckett's work offers a bleak outlook on human culture and both formally and philosophically became increasingly minimalist.
As a student, assistant, and friend of James Joyce, Beckett is considered one of the last modernists; as an inspiration to many later writers, he is sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists. He is also considered one of the key writers in what Martin Esslin called "Theatre of the Absurd." As such, he is widely regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.[2]
Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969 for his "writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".[3] Beckett was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984. He died in Paris of respiratory problems.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Biography
o 1.1 Early life and education
o 1.2 Early writings
o 1.3 World War II
o 1.4 Fame: novels and the theatre
o 1.5 Later life and work
* 2 Works
o 2.1 Early works
o 2.2 Middle period
o 2.3 Late works
* 3 Legacy
* 4 Selected bibliography
o 4.1 Dramatic works
o 4.2 Prose
o 4.3 Poetry
o 4.4 Translations
* 5 References
* 6 Sources
o 6.1 Print
+ 6.1.1 Primary sources
+ 6.1.2 Secondary sources
o 6.2 Online
* 7 External links
Biography
Early life and education
The Beckett family (originally Becquet) were rumoured to be of Huguenot stock and to have moved to Ireland from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes of 1598, though this theory has been criticised as unlikely.[4] The Becketts were members of the Church of Ireland. The family home, Cooldrinagh in the Dublin suburb of Foxrock, was a large house and garden complete with tennis court built in 1903 by Samuel's father William. The house and garden, together with the surrounding countryside where he often went walking with his father, the nearby Leopardstown Racecourse, the Foxrock railway station and Harcourt Street station at the city terminus of the line, all feature in his prose and plays. Beckett's father was a quantity surveyor and his mother a nurse.[5]
Samuel Beckett was born on Good Friday, April 13, 1906. At the age of five, Beckett attended a local playschool, where he started to learn music, and then moved to Earlsford House School in the city centre near Harcourt Street. In 1919, Beckett went to Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh—the school Oscar Wilde attended. A natural athlete, Beckett excelled at cricket as a left-handed batsman and a left-arm medium-pace bowler. Later, he was to play for Dublin University and played two first-class games against Northamptonshire. As a result, he became the only Nobel laureate to have an entry in Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, the "bible" of cricket.[6]
Early writings
Beckett studied French, Italian, and English at Trinity College, Dublin from 1923 to 1927. While at Trinity, one of his tutors was the eminent Berkeley scholar and Berkelian Dr. A. A. Luce. Beckett graduated with a B.A., and—after teaching briefly at Campbell College in Belfast—took up the post of lecteur d'anglais in the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. While there, he was introduced to renowned Irish author James Joyce by Thomas MacGreevy, a poet and close confidant of Beckett who also worked there. This meeting was soon to have a profound effect on the young man, and Beckett assisted Joyce in various ways, most particularly by helping him research the book that would eventually become Finnegans Wake.[7]
In 1929, Beckett published his first work, a critical essay entitled "Dante...Bruno. Vico..Joyce". The essay defends Joyce's work and method, chiefly from allegations of wanton obscurity and dimness, and was Beckett's contribution to Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress, a book of essays on Joyce which also included contributions by Eugene Jolas, Robert McAlmon, and William Carlos Williams, among others. Beckett's close relationship with Joyce and his family, however, cooled when he rejected the advances of Joyce's daughter Lucia owing to her progressing schizophrenia.
It was also during this period that Beckett's first short story, "Assumption", was published in Jolas's periodical transition. The next year he won a small literary prize with his hastily composed poem "Whoroscope", which draws from a biography of René Descartes that Beckett happened to be reading when he was encouraged to submit.
In 1930, Beckett returned to Trinity College as a lecturer. He soon became disillusioned with his chosen academic vocation, however. He expressed his aversion by playing a trick on the Modern Language Society of Dublin, reading a learned paper in French on a Toulouse author named Jean du Chas, founder of a movement called Concentrism; Chas and Concentrism, however, were pure fiction, having been invented by Beckett to mock pedantry.
Beckett resigned from Trinity at the end of 1931, terminating his brief academic career. He commemorated this turning point in his life by composing the poem "Gnome", inspired by his reading of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and eventually published in the Dublin Magazine in 1934:
Spend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through a world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning.[8]
After leaving Trinity, Beckett began to travel in Europe. He also spent some time in London, where in 1931 he published Proust, his critical study of French author Marcel Proust. Two years later, in the wake of his father's death, he began two years' treatment with Tavistock Clinic psychoanalyst, Dr. Wilfred Bion, who took him to hear Carl Jung's third Tavistock lecture, an event which Beckett would still recall many years later. The lecture focused on the subject of the "never properly born," and aspects of it would become evident in Beckett's later works including Watt and Waiting for Godot.[9] In 1932, he wrote his first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, but after many rejections from publishers decided to abandon it; the book would eventually be published in 1993. Despite his inability to get it published, however, the novel did serve as a source for many of Beckett's early poems, as well as for his first full-length book, the 1933 short-story collection More Pricks Than Kicks.
Beckett also published a number of essays and reviews around the time, including "Recent Irish Poetry" (in The Bookman, August 1934) and "Humanistic Quietism", a review of his friend Thomas MacGreevy's Poems (in The Dublin Magazine, July–September 1934). These two reviews focused on the work of MacGreevy, Brian Coffey, Denis Devlin and Blanaid Salkeld, despite their slender achievements at the time, comparing them favourably with their Celtic Revival contemporaries and invoking Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and the French symbolists as their precursors. In describing these poets as forming 'the nucleus of a living poetic in Ireland',[10] Beckett was tracing the outlines of an Irish poetic modernist canon.
In 1935 — the year that Beckett successfully published a book of his poetry, Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates —, he was also working on his novel Murphy. In May of that year, he wrote to MacGreevy that he had been reading about film and wished to go to Moscow to study with Sergei Eisenstein at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. In mid-1936, he wrote to Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin, offering to become their apprentices. Nothing came of this, however, as Beckett's letter was lost owing to Eisenstein's quarantine during the smallpox outbreak, as well as his focus on a script re-write of his postponed film production. Beckett, meanwhile, finished Murphy, and then, in 1936, departed for extensive travel around Germany, during which time he filled several notebooks with lists of noteworthy artwork that he had seen, also noting his distaste for the Nazi savagery which was then overtaking the country. Returning to Ireland briefly in 1937, he oversaw the publishing of Murphy (1938), which he himself translated into French the next year. He also had a falling-out with his mother, which contributed to his decision to settle permanently in Paris (where he would return for good following the outbreak of World War II in 1939, preferring — in his own words — "France at war to Ireland at peace").[11] His was soon a known face in and around Left Bank cafés, where he strengthened his allegiance with Joyce and forged new ones with artists like Alberto Giacometti and Marcel Duchamp, with whom he regularly played chess. Sometime around December 1937, Beckett had a brief affair with Peggy Guggenheim, who nicknamed him "Oblomov" after the titular figure in Ivan Goncharov's novel.[12]
In Paris, in January 1938, while refusing the solicitations of a notorious pimp who ironically went by the name of Prudent, Beckett was stabbed in the chest and nearly killed. James Joyce arranged a private room for the injured Beckett at the hospital. The publicity surrounding the stabbing attracted the attention of Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil, who knew Beckett slightly from his first stay in Paris; this time, however, the two would begin a lifelong companionship. At a preliminary hearing, Beckett asked his attacker for the motive behind the stabbing, and Prudent casually replied, "Je ne sais pas, Monsieur. Je m'excuse" ("I do not know, sir. I'm sorry").[13] Beckett occasionally recounted the incident in jest, and eventually dropped the charges against his attacker—partially to avoid further formalities, but also because he found Prudent to be personally likeable and well-mannered.
[edit] World War II
Beckett joined the French Resistance after the 1940 occupation by Germany, working as a courier, and on several occasions over the next two years was nearly caught by the Gestapo.
In August 1942, his unit was betrayed and he and Suzanne fled south on foot to the safety of the small village of Roussillon, in the Vaucluse département in the Provence Alpes Cote d'Azur region. Here he continued to assist the Resistance by storing armaments in the back yard of his home. During the two years that Beckett stayed in Roussillon he indirectly helped the Maquis sabotage the German army in the Vaucluse mountains,[14] though he rarely spoke about his wartime work.
Beckett was awarded the Croix de guerre and the Médaille de la Résistance by the French government for his efforts in fighting the German occupation; to the end of his life, however, Beckett would refer to his work with the French Resistance as 'boy scout stuff'.[15] '[I]n order to keep in touch',[16] he continued work on the novel Watt (begun in 1941 and completed in 1945, but not published until 1953) while in hiding in Roussillon.
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In 1945, Beckett returned to Dublin for a brief visit. During his stay, he had a revelation in his mother’s room in which his entire future literary direction appeared to him. This experience was later fictionalized in the 1958 play Krapp's Last Tape. In the play, Krapp’s revelation, perhaps set on the East Pier in Dún Laoghaire (though nothing in the play would substantiate this presumption) during a stormy night, and some critics have identified Beckett with Krapp to the point of presuming Beckett's own artistic epiphany was at the same location, in the same weather. However, most literary critics would caution against equating a character's experiences with those of their authors. Throughout the play, Krapp is listening to a tape he made earlier in his life; at one point he hears his younger self saying this: “...clear to me at last that the dark I have always struggled to keep under is in reality my most...” Krapp fast-forwards the tape before the audience can hear the complete revelation.
Beckett later revealed to James Knowlson (which Knowlson relates in the biography Damned to Fame[17]) that the missing words on the tape are "precious ally". Beckett claimed he was faced with the possibility of being eternally in the shadow of Joyce, certain to never best him at his own game. Then he had a revelation, as Knowlson says, which “has rightly been regarded as a pivotal moment in his entire career." Knowlson goes on to explain the revelation as told to him by Beckett himself: "In speaking of his own revelation, Beckett tended to focus on the recognition of his own stupidity ... and on his concern with impotence and ignorance. He reformulated this for me, while attempting to define his debt to James Joyce: 'I realized that Joyce had gone as far as one could in the direction of knowing more, [being] in control of one’s material. He was always adding to it; you only have to look at his proofs to see that. I realized that my own way was in impoverishment, in lack of knowledge and in taking away, in subtracting rather than in adding.'"
Knowlson explains: "Beckett was rejecting the Joycean principle that knowing more was a way of creatively understanding the world and controlling it ... In future, his work would focus on poverty, failure, exile and loss -- as he put it, on man as a 'non-knower' and as a 'non-can-er.'"[17]
In 1946, Jean-Paul Sartre’s magazine Les Temps Modernes published the first part of Beckett’s short story "Suite" (later to be called "La fin", or "The End"), not realizing that Beckett had only submitted the first half of the story;
Simone de Beauvoir refused to publish the second part. Beckett also began to write his fourth novel, Mercier et Camier, which was not to be published until 1970. The novel, in many ways, presaged his most famous work, the play Waiting for Godot, written not long afterwards, but more importantly, it was Beckett’s first long work to be written directly in French, the language of most of his subsequent works, including the poioumenon, a "trilogy" of novels he was soon to write: Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable. Despite being a native English speaker, Beckett chose to write in French because—as he himself claimed—in French it was easier for him to write "without style." [18]
Beckett is publicly most famous for the play Waiting for Godot. In a much-quoted article, the critic Vivian Mercier wrote that Beckett "has achieved a theoretical impossibility—a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What's more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice." (Irish Times, 18 February 1956, p. 6.) Like most of his works after 1947, the play was first written in French with the title En attendant Godot. Beckett worked on the play between October 1948 and January 1949.[19] He published it in 1952, and premiered it in 1953. The English translation appeared two years later. The play was a critical, popular, and controversial success in Paris. It opened in London in 1955 to mainly negative reviews, but the tide turned with positive reactions by Harold Hobson in The Sunday Times and, later, Kenneth Tynan. In the United States, it flopped in Miami, and had a qualified success in New York City. After this, the play became extremely popular, with highly successful performances in the U.S. and Germany. It is still frequently performed today.
As noted, Beckett was now writing mainly in French. He translated all of his works into the English language himself, with the exception of Molloy, whose translation was collaborative with Patrick Bowles. The success of Waiting for Godot opened up a career in theatre for its author. Beckett went on to write a number of successful full-length plays, including 1957's Endgame, the aforementioned Krapp's Last Tape (written in English), 1960's Happy Days (also written in English), and 1963's Play.
In 1961, in recognition for his work, Beckett received the International Publishers' Formentor Prize, which he shared that year with Jorge Luis Borges.
Later life and work
The 1960s were a period of change, both on a personal level and as a writer.
In 1961, in a secret civil ceremony in England, he married Suzanne, mainly for reasons relating to French inheritance law. The success of his plays led to invitations to attend rehearsals and productions around the world, leading eventually to a new career as a theatre director. In 1956, he had his first commission from the BBC Third Programme for a radio play, All That Fall. He was to continue writing sporadically for radio, and ultimately for film and television as well. He also started to write in English again, though he continued to write in French until the end of his life.
Tomb of Samuel Beckett at the Cimetière de Montparnasse
In October 1969, Beckett, on holiday in Tunis with Suzanne, learned he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Suzanne, who saw that her intensely private husband would be, from that moment forth, saddled with fame, called the award a "catastrophe." [20] While Beckett did not devote much time to interviews, he would still sometimes personally meet the artists, scholars, and admirers who sought him out in the anonymous lobby of the Hotel PLM St. Jacques in Paris near his Montparnasse home. [21]
Suzanne died on 17 July 1989. Suffering from emphysema and possibly Parkinson's disease and confined to a nursing home, Beckett died on 22 December of the same year. The two were interred together in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris, and share a simple granite gravestone which follows Beckett's directive that it be "any colour, so long as it's grey."
Works
Beckett's career as a writer can be roughly divided into three periods: his early works, up until the end of World War II in 1945; his middle period, stretching from 1945 until the early 1960s, during which period he wrote what are probably his best-known works; and his late period, from the early 1960s until Beckett's death in 1989, during which his works tended to become shorter and shorter and his style more and more minimalist.
[edit] Early works
Beckett's earliest works are generally considered to have been strongly influenced by the work of his friend James Joyce: they are deeply erudite, seeming to display the author's learning merely for its own sake, resulting in several obscure passages. The opening phrases of the short-story collection More Pricks than Kicks (1934) affords a representative sample of this style:
It was morning and Belacqua was stuck in the first of the canti in the moon. He was so bogged that he could move neither backward nor forward. Blissful Beatrice was there, Dante also, and she explained the spots on the moon to him. She shewed him in the first place where he was at fault, then she put up her own explanation. She had it from God, therefore he could rely on its being accurate in every particular.[22]
The passage is rife with references to Dante Alighieri's Commedia, which can serve to confuse readers not familiar with that work. At the same time, however, there are many portents of Beckett's later work: the physical inactivity of the character Belacqua; the character's immersion in his own head and thoughts; the somewhat irreverent comedy of the final sentence.
Similar elements are present in Beckett's first published novel, Murphy (1938), which also to some extent explores the themes of insanity and chess, both of which would be recurrent elements in Beckett's later works. The novel's opening sentence also hints at the somewhat pessimistic undertones and black humour that animate many of Beckett's works: 'The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new'.[23] Watt, written while Beckett was in hiding in Roussillon during World War II, is similar in terms of themes, but less exuberant in its style. This novel also, at certain points, explores human movement as if it were a mathematical permutation, presaging Beckett's later preoccupation—in both his novels and dramatic works—with precise movement.
It was also during this early period that Beckett first began to write creatively in the French language. In the late 1930s, he wrote a number of short poems in that language, and these poems' spareness—in contrast to the density of his English poems of roughly the same period, collected in Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates (1935)—seems to show that Beckett, albeit through the medium of another language, was in process of simplifying his style somewhat, a change also evidenced in Watt.
[edit] Middle period
most famous work by Beckett; Waiting For Godot (in French En attendant Godot)
After World War II, Beckett turned definitively to the French language as a vehicle. It was this, together with the aforementioned "revelation" experienced in his mother's room in Dublin—in which he realized that his art must be subjective and drawn wholly from his own inner world—that would result in the works for which Beckett is best remembered today.
During the 15 years subsequent to the war, Beckett produced four major full-length stage plays:
En attendant Godot (written 1948–1949; Waiting for Godot),
Fin de partie (1955–1957; Endgame),
Krapp's Last Tape (1958), and
Happy Days (1960).
These plays—which are often considered, rightly or wrongly, to have been instrumental in the so-called "Theatre of the Absurd"—deal in a very blackly humorous way with themes similar to those of the roughly contemporary existentialist thinkers, though Beckett himself cannot be pigeonholed as an existentialist.
The term "Theatre of the Absurd" was coined by Martin Esslin in a book of the same name; Beckett and Godot were centerpieces of the book. Esslin claimed these plays were the fulfillment of Albert Camus's concept of "the absurd";[24] this is one reason Beckett is often falsely labeled as an existentialist. Though many of the themes are similar, Beckett had little affinity for existentialism as a whole.[25]
Broadly speaking, the plays deal with the subject of despair and the will to survive in spite of that despair, in the face of an uncomprehending and, indeed, incomprehensible world. The words of Nell—one of the two characters in Endgame who are trapped in ashbins, from which they occasionally peek their heads to speak—can best summarize the themes of the plays of Beckett's middle period:
Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. ... Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more.[26]
Beckett's outstanding achievements in prose during the period were the three novels Molloy (1951), Malone meurt (1951; Malone Dies) and L'innommable (1953; The Unnamable). In these novels—sometimes referred to as a "trilogy", though this is against the author's own explicit wishes[27]—the reader can trace the development of Beckett's mature style and themes, as the novels become more and more stripped down, barer and barer. Molloy, for instance, still retains many of the characteristics of a conventional novel—time, place, movement and plot—and is indeed, on one level, a detective novel. In Malone Dies, however, movement and plot are largely dispensed with, though there is still some indication of place and the passage of time; the "action" of the book takes the form of an interior monologue. Finally, in The Unnamable, all sense of place and time are done away with, and the essential theme seems to be the conflict between the voice's drive to continue speaking so as to continue existing and its almost equally strong urge to find silence and oblivion. It is tempting to see in this a reflection of Beckett's experience and understanding of what the war had done to the world. Despite the widely-held view that Beckett's work, as exemplified by the novels of this period, is essentially pessimistic, the will to live seems to win out in the end; witness, for instance, the famous final phrase of The Unnamable: 'I can't go on, I'll go on'.[28]
Subsequent to these three novels, Beckett struggled for many years to produce a sustained work of prose, a struggle evidenced by the brief "stories" later collected as Texts for Nothing. In the late 1950s, however, he managed to create one of his most radical prose works, Comment c'est (1961; How It Is). This work relates the adventures of an unnamed narrator crawling through the mud while dragging a sack of canned food, and was written as a sequence of unpunctuated paragraphs in a style approaching telegraphese:
you are there somewhere alive somewhere vast stretch of time then it's over you are there no more alive no more then again you are there again alive again it wasn't over an error you begin again all over more or less in the same place or in another as when another image above in the light you come to in hospital in the dark[29]
Following this work, it would be almost another decade before Beckett produced a work of non-dramatic prose, and indeed How It Is is generally considered to mark the end of his middle period as a writer.
Late works
Beckett's poster in Paris, France
Throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, Beckett's works exhibited an increasing tendency—already evident in much of his work of the 1950s—towards compactness that has led to his work sometimes being described as minimalist. The extreme example of this, among his dramatic works, is the 1969 piece Breath, which lasts for only 35 seconds and has no characters (though it was likely intended to offer ironic comment on Oh! Calcutta!, the theatrical revue for which it served as an introductory piece[30]).
In the dramas of the late period, Beckett's characters—already few in number in the earlier plays—are whittled down to essential elements. The ironically titled 1962 Play, for instance, consists of three characters stuck to their necks in large funeral urns, while the 1963 television drama Eh Joe—written for the actor Jack MacGowran—is animated by a camera that steadily closes in to a tight focus upon the face of the title character, and the 1972 play Not I consists almost solely of, in Beckett's words, 'a moving mouth with the rest of the stage in darkness'.[31] Many of these late plays, taking a cue from Krapp's Last Tape, were concerned to a great extent with memory, or more particularly, with the often forced recollection of haunting past events in a moment of stillness in the present. Moreover, as often as not these late plays dealt with the theme of the self confined and observed insofar as a voice either comes from outside into the protagonist's head, as in Eh Joe, or else the protagonist is silently commented upon by another character, as in Not I. Such themes also led to Beckett's most politically charged play, 1982's Catastrophe, dedicated to Václav Havel, which dealt relatively explicitly with the idea of dictatorship. After a long period of inactivity, Beckett's poetry experienced a revival during this period in the ultra-terse French poems of mirlitonnades, some as short as six words long. These defied Beckett's usual scrupulous concern to translate his work from its original into the other of his two languages; several writers, including Derek Mahon, have attempted translations, but no complete version of the sequence has been published in English.
Though Beckett's writing of prose during the late period was not so prolific as his writing of drama—as hinted at by the title of the 1976 collection of short prose texts entitled Fizzles, which was illustrated by American artist Jasper Johns—he did experience something of a renaissance in this regard beginning with the 1979 novella Company, and continuing on through 1982's Ill Seen Ill Said and 1984's Worstward Ho, later collected in Nohow On. In the prose medium of these three so-called '"closed space" stories',[32] Beckett continued his preoccupation with memory and its effect on the confined and observed self, as well as with the positioning of bodies in space, as the opening phrases of Company make clear:
A voice comes to one in the dark. Imagine.
To one on his back in the dark. This he can tell by the pressure on his hind parts and by how the dark changes when he shuts his eyes and again when he opens them again. Only a small part of what is said can be verified. As for example when he hears, You are on your back in the dark. Then he must acknowledge the truth of what is said.[33]
Beckett wrote his final work, the 1988 poem "What is the Word" (also known by its French name, Comment dire), in the hospital and nursing home where he spent his final days. The poem grapples with an inability to find words to express oneself—a theme echoing Beckett's earlier work, perhaps amplified by his sickness late in life.
Legacy
Samuel Beckett depicted on an Irish commemorative coin celebrating the 100th Anniversary of his birth.
Of all the English-language modernists, Beckett's work represents the most sustained attack on the realist tradition. He, more than anyone else, opened up the possibility of drama and fiction that dispense with conventional plot and the unities of place and time in order to focus on essential components of the human condition. Writers like Václav Havel, John Banville, Aidan Higgins and Harold Pinter [34] have publicly stated their indebtedness to Beckett's example, but he has had a much wider influence on experimental writing since the 1950s, from the Beat generation to the happenings of the 1960s and beyond. In an Irish context, he has exerted great influence on poets such as John Banville, Derek Mahon, Thomas Kinsella, as well as writers like Trevor Joyce and Catherine Walsh who proclaim their adherence to the modernist tradition as an alternative to the dominant realist mainstream.
Many major 20th-century composers, including Luciano Berio, György Kurtág, Morton Feldman, Pascal Dusapin, Scott Fields, Philip Glass and Heinz Holliger, have created musical works based on his texts. Beckett's work was also an influence on many visual artists, including Bruce Nauman, Alexander Arotin, and Avigdor Arikha; Arikha, in addition to being inspired by Beckett's literary world, also drew a number of portraits of Beckett and illustrated several of his works.
Beckett is one of the most widely discussed and highly prized of twentieth century authors, inspiring a critical industry to rival that which has sprung up around James Joyce. He has divided critical opinion. Some early philosophical critics, such as Sartre and Theodor Adorno, praised him, one for his revelation of absurdity, the other for his works' critical refusal of simplicities; others such as Georg Lukacs condemn for 'decadent' lack of realism.[35]
American critic Harold Bloom pays attention to his atheism of Anglican source, compared with James Joyce's, former Catholic. «Beckett and Joyce shared the aversion to Christianity in Ireland. The two chose Paris and atheism.»[36]
Since Beckett's death, all rights for performance of his plays are handled by the Beckett estate, currently managed by Edward Beckett, the author's nephew. The estate has a controversial reputation for maintaining firm control over how Beckett's plays are performed and does not grant licences to productions that do not strictly adhere to the writer's stage directions. Historians interested in tracing Beckett's blood line were, in 2004, granted access to confirmed trace samples of his DNA to conduct molecular genealogical studies to facilitate precise lineage determination.
Some of the best known pictures of Beckett were taken by photographer John Minihan, who photographed him between 1980 and 1985 and developed such a good relationship with the writer that he became, in effect, his official photographer. Some consider one of these to be among the top three photographs of the 20th century.[37] However, it was the theatre photographer John Haynes[38] who took possibly the most widely reproduced image of Beckett: it is used on the cover of the Knowlson biography, for instance. This portrait was taken during rehearsals of the San Quentin Drama Workshop at the Royal Court Theatre in London, where Haynes photographed many productions of Beckett's work.
[edit] Selected bibliography
[edit] Dramatic works
Theatre
* Eleutheria (1940s; published 1995)
* Waiting for Godot (1952)
* Act Without Words I (1956)
* Act Without Words II (1956)
* Endgame (1957)
* Krapp's Last Tape (1958)
* Rough for Theatre I (late 1950s)
* Rough for Theatre II (late 1950s)
* Happy Days (1960)
* Play (1963)
* Come and Go (1965)
* Breath (1969)
* Not I (1972)
* That Time (1975)
* Footfalls (1975)
* A Piece of Monologue (1980)
* Rockaby (1981)
* Ohio Impromptu (1981)
* Catastrophe (1982)
* What Where (1983)
Radio
* All That Fall (1956)
* From an Abandoned Work (1957)
* Embers (1959)
* Rough for Radio I (1961)
* Rough for Radio II (1961)
* Words and Music (1961)
* Cascando (1962)
Television
* Eh Joe (1965)
* Ghost Trio (1975)
* ... but the clouds ... (1976)
* Quad I + II (1981)
* Nacht und Träume (1982)
* Beckett Directs Beckett (1988/92) The San Quentin Drama Workshop
* Beckett on Film (2002) Hosted by Jeremy Irons, Produced by PBS [39]
Cinema
* Film (1965)
[edit] Prose
Novels
* Dream of Fair to Middling Women (1932; published 1992)
* Murphy (1938)
* Watt (1945; published 1953)
* Mercier and Camier (1946; published 1974)
* Molloy (1951)
* Malone Dies (1951)
* The Unnamable (1953)
* How It Is (1961)
Novellas
* The Expelled (1946)
* The Calmative (1946)
* The End (1946)
* The Lost Ones (1971)
* Company (1980)
* Ill Seen Ill Said (1981)
* Worstward Ho (1983)
Stories
* More Pricks Than Kicks (1934)
* First Love (1945)
* Stories and Texts for Nothing (1954)
* Fizzles (1976)
* Stirrings Still (1988)
Non-fiction
* Proust (1931)
* Three Dialogues (with Georges Duthuit and Jacques Putnam) (1949)
* Disjecta (1929 - 1967)
* Dante...Bruno. Vico..Joyce
Poetry
* Whoroscope (1930)
* Echo's Bones and other Precipitates (1935)
* Collected Poems in English (1961)
* Collected Poems in English and French (1977)
* What is the Word (1989)
* Selected Poems 1930-1989 (2009)
Translations
* Anna Livia Plurabelle (James Joyce, French translation by Beckett and others) (1931)
* Negro: an Anthology (Nancy Cunard, editor) (1934)
* Anthology of Mexican Poems (Octavio Paz, editor) (1958)
* The Old Tune (Robert Pinget) (1963)
* What Is Surrealism?: Selected Essays (André Breton) (various short pieces in the collection)
References
1. ^ Fathoms from Anywhere - A Samuel Beckett Centenary Exhibition
2. ^ Rónán McDonald, ed., The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Beckett, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007, pg. 17, via Google Books
3. ^ The Nobel Prize in Literature 1969
4. ^ Cronin, 3–4
5. ^ Samuel Beckett - 1906-1989
6. ^ On his mother's side, he was descended from the Roe family. Beckett's Athletics - paper by Steven O'Connor
7. ^ Knowlson, 106
8. ^ Collected Poems, 9
9. ^ Beckett, Samuel. (1906 - 1989) - Literary Encyclopedia
10. ^ Disjecta, 76
11. ^ Israel Shenker, 'Moody Man of Letters', The New York Times, 5 May 1956; quoted in Cronin, 310
12. ^ This character, she said, was so looed by apathia that he "finally did not even have the willpower to get out of bed". (Quoted in Gussow 1989.)
13. ^ Knowlson, 261
14. ^ Knowlson, 304–305
15. ^ The Modern Word
16. ^ Quoted in Knowlson, 303
17. ^ a b Knowlson, 1997, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett, pp. 352–353.
18. ^ Knowlson, 324
19. ^ Knowlson, 342
20. ^ Knowlson, 505
21. ^ Happiest moment of the past half million: Beckett Biography - themodernword.com
22. ^ More Pricks than Kicks, 9
23. ^ Murphy, 1
24. ^ Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1969.
25. ^ Ackerley, C. J. and S. E. Gontarski, ed. The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett. New York: Grove Press, 2004.
26. ^ Endgame, 18–19
27. ^ The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett: A Reader's Guide to His Works, Life, and Thought, 586
28. ^ Three Novels, 414
29. ^ How It Is, 22
30. ^ Knowlson, 501
31. ^ Quoted in Knowlson, 522
32. ^ Nohow On, vii
33. ^ Nohow On, 3
34. ^ Chequer, Brad. "Beginning to End - Ending to Begin - or, Some Brilliance and Bullshit on Samuel Beckett". The Cutting Ball. http://www.cuttingball.com/endgame/essay.php.
35. ^ Adorno, Theodor W. Trying to Understand Endgame [1961], The New German Critique, no. 26, (Spring-Summer 1982) pp.119–150. In The Adorno Reader ed. Brian O'Connor. Blackwell Publishers. 2000
36. ^ Bloom, Harold. El canon occidental (tr. to spanish The Western Canon). Barcelona, 2005. Ed. Anagrama. ISBN 84-339-6684-7. p. 509
37. ^ 1998 edition of The Royal Academy Magazine, the "Image of the century"
38. ^ Photographer John Haynes's website
39. ^ PBS STAGE ON SCREEN SERIES
[edit] Sources
[edit] Print
[edit] Primary sources
* Beckett, Samuel. Collected Poems in English and French. New York: Grove Press, 1977.
* — Endgame and Act Without Words. New York: Grove Press, 1958.
* — How It Is. New York: Grove Press, 1964.
* — More Pricks than Kicks. New York: Grove Press, 1972.
* — Murphy. New York: Grove Press, 1957.
* — Nohow On: Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, Worstward Ho. Ed. S.E. Gontarski. New York: Grove Press, 1996.
* — Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable. New York: Grove Press, 1995.
* — Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts. New York: Grove Press, 1954.
[edit] Secondary sources
* Ackerley, C. J. and S. E. Gontarski, ed. The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett. New York: Grove Press, 2004.
* Bair, Deirdre. Samuel Beckett: A Biography. Vintage/Ebury, 1978. ISBN 0-09-980070-5.
* Casanova, Pascale. Beckett. Anatomy of a Literary Revolution. Introduction by Terry Eagleton. Londres / New York : Verso Books, 2007
* Caselli, Daniela. Beckett's Dantes: Intertextuality in the Fiction and Criticism. ISBN 0-7190-7156-9.
* Cronin, Anthony. Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist. New York: Da Capo Press, 1997.
* Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1969.
* Fleming, Justin. Burnt Piano. Xlibris, 2004 (Coup d'État & Other Plays)
* Fletcher, John. About Beckett. Faber and Faber, London, 2006. ISBN 978-057-1-23011-2.
* Gussow, Mel. "Samuel Beckett Is Dead at 83; His 'Godot' Changed Theater." The New York Times, 27 December 1989.
* Igoe, Vivien. A Literary Guide to Dublin. Methuen Publishing, 2000. ISBN 0-413-69120-9.
* Kelleter, Frank. Die Moderne und der Tod: Edgar Allan Poe–T. S. Eliot–Samuel Beckett. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 1998.
* Knowlson, James. Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett. New York: Grove Press, 1996.
* Mercier, Vivian. Beckett/Beckett. Oxford University Press, 1977. ISBN 0-19-281269-6.
* O'Brien, Eoin. The Beckett Country. ISBN 0-571-14667-8.
* Ricks, Christopher. Beckett's Dying Words. Oxford University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-19-282407-4.
Online
* Samuel Beckett: An Annotated Bibliography (with full tables of contents)
* Apmonia - A site for Samuel Beckett
* Samuel Beckett at the Princess Grace Irish Library
* Article by Peter Hall, director of the first London production of Waiting for Godot
* Info on Samuel Beckett and his works
* Bibliography of the works about Beckett
* The Samuel Beckett On-Line Resources and Links Pages
* Article in The Economist
* Website of photographer John Haynes
* Website of John Minihan, Beckett's official photographer
* The Nobel Prize in Literature 1969
* English translation of Beckett's mock essay Le Concentrisme
* Beckett and the Holocaust
* The Life of Samuel Beckett
* "Godot at 50" by Said Shirazi.
* Samuel Beckett online exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center
* Poems by Samuel Beckett at The Poetry Foundation
* Beckett with Lacan - Slavoj Zizek
* Jaime Perales Contrera, "The Irishman who translated Mexican poetry"
* Beckett Centenary Festival (April 2006)
* The Annual Samuel Beckett Festival
* The Samuel Beckett Endpage
* Beckett's cricket record at CricketArchive
* Radio Plays for BBC on ubu.com
* Online centennial exhibition from the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin
* Irish author Keith Ridgway considers Beckett's Mercier and Camier in The Guardian
* "Sam I Am - Beckett’s private purgatories" by Benjamin Kunkel in The New Yorker
* The Samuel Beckett Papers at Washington University in St. Louis
* Samuel Beckett Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
* Samuel Beckett Timeline
* The San Quentin Drama Workshop - Beckett Directs Beckett - 50 years of work in Beckett's Theatre
* An online compilation of selected adaptations of the works of Samuel Beckett by Brock University's Department of English Language and Literature
* The Making of Samuel Beckett by J.M. Coetzee from The New York Review of Books
* The Beckett International Foundation
* The Samuel Beckett Society
* The Journal of Beckett Studies
This article is about the Irish writer.
For the Scott Bakula character, see Sam Beckett.
Samuel Beckett
Born Samuel Barclay Beckett
13 April 1906(1906-04-13)
Foxrock, Dublin, Ireland
Died 22 December 1989 (aged 83)
Paris, France
Pen name Andrew Belis (Recent Irish Poetry)[1]
Occupation novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet, essayist
Nationality Irish
Genres Drama, fictional prose, poetry, film
Literary movement Modernism
Notable award(s) Nobel Prize in Literature
1969
Influences[show]
Dante Alighieri, Arnold Geulincx, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Jean Racine, Arthur Schopenhauer, J.M Synge, W.B. Yeats, Seán O'Casey, Oscar Wilde, Marquis de Sade, René Descartes, Laurence Sterne, Democritus, John Milton, Immanuel Kant, Bishop Berkeley
Influenced [show]
Edward Albee, Paul Auster, John Banville, Donald Barthelme, William S. Burroughs, Italo Calvino, Marina Carr, J. M. Coetzee, Don DeLillo, Philip K. Dick, Václav Havel, Eugene Ionesco, B. S. Johnson, Sarah Kane, Derek Mahon, David Mamet, Bruce Nauman, Edna O'Brien, Jamie O'Neill, Damian Pettigrew, Harold Pinter, Alberto Ruy-Sánchez, Sam Shepard, Tom Stoppard.
Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer, dramatist and poet. Beckett's work offers a bleak outlook on human culture and both formally and philosophically became increasingly minimalist.
As a student, assistant, and friend of James Joyce, Beckett is considered one of the last modernists; as an inspiration to many later writers, he is sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists. He is also considered one of the key writers in what Martin Esslin called "Theatre of the Absurd." As such, he is widely regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.[2]
Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969 for his "writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".[3] Beckett was elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984. He died in Paris of respiratory problems.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Biography
o 1.1 Early life and education
o 1.2 Early writings
o 1.3 World War II
o 1.4 Fame: novels and the theatre
o 1.5 Later life and work
* 2 Works
o 2.1 Early works
o 2.2 Middle period
o 2.3 Late works
* 3 Legacy
* 4 Selected bibliography
o 4.1 Dramatic works
o 4.2 Prose
o 4.3 Poetry
o 4.4 Translations
* 5 References
* 6 Sources
o 6.1 Print
+ 6.1.1 Primary sources
+ 6.1.2 Secondary sources
o 6.2 Online
* 7 External links
Biography
Early life and education
The Beckett family (originally Becquet) were rumoured to be of Huguenot stock and to have moved to Ireland from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes of 1598, though this theory has been criticised as unlikely.[4] The Becketts were members of the Church of Ireland. The family home, Cooldrinagh in the Dublin suburb of Foxrock, was a large house and garden complete with tennis court built in 1903 by Samuel's father William. The house and garden, together with the surrounding countryside where he often went walking with his father, the nearby Leopardstown Racecourse, the Foxrock railway station and Harcourt Street station at the city terminus of the line, all feature in his prose and plays. Beckett's father was a quantity surveyor and his mother a nurse.[5]
Samuel Beckett was born on Good Friday, April 13, 1906. At the age of five, Beckett attended a local playschool, where he started to learn music, and then moved to Earlsford House School in the city centre near Harcourt Street. In 1919, Beckett went to Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh—the school Oscar Wilde attended. A natural athlete, Beckett excelled at cricket as a left-handed batsman and a left-arm medium-pace bowler. Later, he was to play for Dublin University and played two first-class games against Northamptonshire. As a result, he became the only Nobel laureate to have an entry in Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, the "bible" of cricket.[6]
Early writings
Beckett studied French, Italian, and English at Trinity College, Dublin from 1923 to 1927. While at Trinity, one of his tutors was the eminent Berkeley scholar and Berkelian Dr. A. A. Luce. Beckett graduated with a B.A., and—after teaching briefly at Campbell College in Belfast—took up the post of lecteur d'anglais in the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. While there, he was introduced to renowned Irish author James Joyce by Thomas MacGreevy, a poet and close confidant of Beckett who also worked there. This meeting was soon to have a profound effect on the young man, and Beckett assisted Joyce in various ways, most particularly by helping him research the book that would eventually become Finnegans Wake.[7]
In 1929, Beckett published his first work, a critical essay entitled "Dante...Bruno. Vico..Joyce". The essay defends Joyce's work and method, chiefly from allegations of wanton obscurity and dimness, and was Beckett's contribution to Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress, a book of essays on Joyce which also included contributions by Eugene Jolas, Robert McAlmon, and William Carlos Williams, among others. Beckett's close relationship with Joyce and his family, however, cooled when he rejected the advances of Joyce's daughter Lucia owing to her progressing schizophrenia.
It was also during this period that Beckett's first short story, "Assumption", was published in Jolas's periodical transition. The next year he won a small literary prize with his hastily composed poem "Whoroscope", which draws from a biography of René Descartes that Beckett happened to be reading when he was encouraged to submit.
In 1930, Beckett returned to Trinity College as a lecturer. He soon became disillusioned with his chosen academic vocation, however. He expressed his aversion by playing a trick on the Modern Language Society of Dublin, reading a learned paper in French on a Toulouse author named Jean du Chas, founder of a movement called Concentrism; Chas and Concentrism, however, were pure fiction, having been invented by Beckett to mock pedantry.
Beckett resigned from Trinity at the end of 1931, terminating his brief academic career. He commemorated this turning point in his life by composing the poem "Gnome", inspired by his reading of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and eventually published in the Dublin Magazine in 1934:
Spend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through a world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning.[8]
After leaving Trinity, Beckett began to travel in Europe. He also spent some time in London, where in 1931 he published Proust, his critical study of French author Marcel Proust. Two years later, in the wake of his father's death, he began two years' treatment with Tavistock Clinic psychoanalyst, Dr. Wilfred Bion, who took him to hear Carl Jung's third Tavistock lecture, an event which Beckett would still recall many years later. The lecture focused on the subject of the "never properly born," and aspects of it would become evident in Beckett's later works including Watt and Waiting for Godot.[9] In 1932, he wrote his first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, but after many rejections from publishers decided to abandon it; the book would eventually be published in 1993. Despite his inability to get it published, however, the novel did serve as a source for many of Beckett's early poems, as well as for his first full-length book, the 1933 short-story collection More Pricks Than Kicks.
Beckett also published a number of essays and reviews around the time, including "Recent Irish Poetry" (in The Bookman, August 1934) and "Humanistic Quietism", a review of his friend Thomas MacGreevy's Poems (in The Dublin Magazine, July–September 1934). These two reviews focused on the work of MacGreevy, Brian Coffey, Denis Devlin and Blanaid Salkeld, despite their slender achievements at the time, comparing them favourably with their Celtic Revival contemporaries and invoking Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and the French symbolists as their precursors. In describing these poets as forming 'the nucleus of a living poetic in Ireland',[10] Beckett was tracing the outlines of an Irish poetic modernist canon.
In 1935 — the year that Beckett successfully published a book of his poetry, Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates —, he was also working on his novel Murphy. In May of that year, he wrote to MacGreevy that he had been reading about film and wished to go to Moscow to study with Sergei Eisenstein at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. In mid-1936, he wrote to Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin, offering to become their apprentices. Nothing came of this, however, as Beckett's letter was lost owing to Eisenstein's quarantine during the smallpox outbreak, as well as his focus on a script re-write of his postponed film production. Beckett, meanwhile, finished Murphy, and then, in 1936, departed for extensive travel around Germany, during which time he filled several notebooks with lists of noteworthy artwork that he had seen, also noting his distaste for the Nazi savagery which was then overtaking the country. Returning to Ireland briefly in 1937, he oversaw the publishing of Murphy (1938), which he himself translated into French the next year. He also had a falling-out with his mother, which contributed to his decision to settle permanently in Paris (where he would return for good following the outbreak of World War II in 1939, preferring — in his own words — "France at war to Ireland at peace").[11] His was soon a known face in and around Left Bank cafés, where he strengthened his allegiance with Joyce and forged new ones with artists like Alberto Giacometti and Marcel Duchamp, with whom he regularly played chess. Sometime around December 1937, Beckett had a brief affair with Peggy Guggenheim, who nicknamed him "Oblomov" after the titular figure in Ivan Goncharov's novel.[12]
In Paris, in January 1938, while refusing the solicitations of a notorious pimp who ironically went by the name of Prudent, Beckett was stabbed in the chest and nearly killed. James Joyce arranged a private room for the injured Beckett at the hospital. The publicity surrounding the stabbing attracted the attention of Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil, who knew Beckett slightly from his first stay in Paris; this time, however, the two would begin a lifelong companionship. At a preliminary hearing, Beckett asked his attacker for the motive behind the stabbing, and Prudent casually replied, "Je ne sais pas, Monsieur. Je m'excuse" ("I do not know, sir. I'm sorry").[13] Beckett occasionally recounted the incident in jest, and eventually dropped the charges against his attacker—partially to avoid further formalities, but also because he found Prudent to be personally likeable and well-mannered.
[edit] World War II
Beckett joined the French Resistance after the 1940 occupation by Germany, working as a courier, and on several occasions over the next two years was nearly caught by the Gestapo.
In August 1942, his unit was betrayed and he and Suzanne fled south on foot to the safety of the small village of Roussillon, in the Vaucluse département in the Provence Alpes Cote d'Azur region. Here he continued to assist the Resistance by storing armaments in the back yard of his home. During the two years that Beckett stayed in Roussillon he indirectly helped the Maquis sabotage the German army in the Vaucluse mountains,[14] though he rarely spoke about his wartime work.
Beckett was awarded the Croix de guerre and the Médaille de la Résistance by the French government for his efforts in fighting the German occupation; to the end of his life, however, Beckett would refer to his work with the French Resistance as 'boy scout stuff'.[15] '[I]n order to keep in touch',[16] he continued work on the novel Watt (begun in 1941 and completed in 1945, but not published until 1953) while in hiding in Roussillon.
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In 1945, Beckett returned to Dublin for a brief visit. During his stay, he had a revelation in his mother’s room in which his entire future literary direction appeared to him. This experience was later fictionalized in the 1958 play Krapp's Last Tape. In the play, Krapp’s revelation, perhaps set on the East Pier in Dún Laoghaire (though nothing in the play would substantiate this presumption) during a stormy night, and some critics have identified Beckett with Krapp to the point of presuming Beckett's own artistic epiphany was at the same location, in the same weather. However, most literary critics would caution against equating a character's experiences with those of their authors. Throughout the play, Krapp is listening to a tape he made earlier in his life; at one point he hears his younger self saying this: “...clear to me at last that the dark I have always struggled to keep under is in reality my most...” Krapp fast-forwards the tape before the audience can hear the complete revelation.
Beckett later revealed to James Knowlson (which Knowlson relates in the biography Damned to Fame[17]) that the missing words on the tape are "precious ally". Beckett claimed he was faced with the possibility of being eternally in the shadow of Joyce, certain to never best him at his own game. Then he had a revelation, as Knowlson says, which “has rightly been regarded as a pivotal moment in his entire career." Knowlson goes on to explain the revelation as told to him by Beckett himself: "In speaking of his own revelation, Beckett tended to focus on the recognition of his own stupidity ... and on his concern with impotence and ignorance. He reformulated this for me, while attempting to define his debt to James Joyce: 'I realized that Joyce had gone as far as one could in the direction of knowing more, [being] in control of one’s material. He was always adding to it; you only have to look at his proofs to see that. I realized that my own way was in impoverishment, in lack of knowledge and in taking away, in subtracting rather than in adding.'"
Knowlson explains: "Beckett was rejecting the Joycean principle that knowing more was a way of creatively understanding the world and controlling it ... In future, his work would focus on poverty, failure, exile and loss -- as he put it, on man as a 'non-knower' and as a 'non-can-er.'"[17]
In 1946, Jean-Paul Sartre’s magazine Les Temps Modernes published the first part of Beckett’s short story "Suite" (later to be called "La fin", or "The End"), not realizing that Beckett had only submitted the first half of the story;
Simone de Beauvoir refused to publish the second part. Beckett also began to write his fourth novel, Mercier et Camier, which was not to be published until 1970. The novel, in many ways, presaged his most famous work, the play Waiting for Godot, written not long afterwards, but more importantly, it was Beckett’s first long work to be written directly in French, the language of most of his subsequent works, including the poioumenon, a "trilogy" of novels he was soon to write: Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable. Despite being a native English speaker, Beckett chose to write in French because—as he himself claimed—in French it was easier for him to write "without style." [18]
Beckett is publicly most famous for the play Waiting for Godot. In a much-quoted article, the critic Vivian Mercier wrote that Beckett "has achieved a theoretical impossibility—a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What's more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice." (Irish Times, 18 February 1956, p. 6.) Like most of his works after 1947, the play was first written in French with the title En attendant Godot. Beckett worked on the play between October 1948 and January 1949.[19] He published it in 1952, and premiered it in 1953. The English translation appeared two years later. The play was a critical, popular, and controversial success in Paris. It opened in London in 1955 to mainly negative reviews, but the tide turned with positive reactions by Harold Hobson in The Sunday Times and, later, Kenneth Tynan. In the United States, it flopped in Miami, and had a qualified success in New York City. After this, the play became extremely popular, with highly successful performances in the U.S. and Germany. It is still frequently performed today.
As noted, Beckett was now writing mainly in French. He translated all of his works into the English language himself, with the exception of Molloy, whose translation was collaborative with Patrick Bowles. The success of Waiting for Godot opened up a career in theatre for its author. Beckett went on to write a number of successful full-length plays, including 1957's Endgame, the aforementioned Krapp's Last Tape (written in English), 1960's Happy Days (also written in English), and 1963's Play.
In 1961, in recognition for his work, Beckett received the International Publishers' Formentor Prize, which he shared that year with Jorge Luis Borges.
Later life and work
The 1960s were a period of change, both on a personal level and as a writer.
In 1961, in a secret civil ceremony in England, he married Suzanne, mainly for reasons relating to French inheritance law. The success of his plays led to invitations to attend rehearsals and productions around the world, leading eventually to a new career as a theatre director. In 1956, he had his first commission from the BBC Third Programme for a radio play, All That Fall. He was to continue writing sporadically for radio, and ultimately for film and television as well. He also started to write in English again, though he continued to write in French until the end of his life.
Tomb of Samuel Beckett at the Cimetière de Montparnasse
In October 1969, Beckett, on holiday in Tunis with Suzanne, learned he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Suzanne, who saw that her intensely private husband would be, from that moment forth, saddled with fame, called the award a "catastrophe." [20] While Beckett did not devote much time to interviews, he would still sometimes personally meet the artists, scholars, and admirers who sought him out in the anonymous lobby of the Hotel PLM St. Jacques in Paris near his Montparnasse home. [21]
Suzanne died on 17 July 1989. Suffering from emphysema and possibly Parkinson's disease and confined to a nursing home, Beckett died on 22 December of the same year. The two were interred together in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris, and share a simple granite gravestone which follows Beckett's directive that it be "any colour, so long as it's grey."
Works
Beckett's career as a writer can be roughly divided into three periods: his early works, up until the end of World War II in 1945; his middle period, stretching from 1945 until the early 1960s, during which period he wrote what are probably his best-known works; and his late period, from the early 1960s until Beckett's death in 1989, during which his works tended to become shorter and shorter and his style more and more minimalist.
[edit] Early works
Beckett's earliest works are generally considered to have been strongly influenced by the work of his friend James Joyce: they are deeply erudite, seeming to display the author's learning merely for its own sake, resulting in several obscure passages. The opening phrases of the short-story collection More Pricks than Kicks (1934) affords a representative sample of this style:
It was morning and Belacqua was stuck in the first of the canti in the moon. He was so bogged that he could move neither backward nor forward. Blissful Beatrice was there, Dante also, and she explained the spots on the moon to him. She shewed him in the first place where he was at fault, then she put up her own explanation. She had it from God, therefore he could rely on its being accurate in every particular.[22]
The passage is rife with references to Dante Alighieri's Commedia, which can serve to confuse readers not familiar with that work. At the same time, however, there are many portents of Beckett's later work: the physical inactivity of the character Belacqua; the character's immersion in his own head and thoughts; the somewhat irreverent comedy of the final sentence.
Similar elements are present in Beckett's first published novel, Murphy (1938), which also to some extent explores the themes of insanity and chess, both of which would be recurrent elements in Beckett's later works. The novel's opening sentence also hints at the somewhat pessimistic undertones and black humour that animate many of Beckett's works: 'The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new'.[23] Watt, written while Beckett was in hiding in Roussillon during World War II, is similar in terms of themes, but less exuberant in its style. This novel also, at certain points, explores human movement as if it were a mathematical permutation, presaging Beckett's later preoccupation—in both his novels and dramatic works—with precise movement.
It was also during this early period that Beckett first began to write creatively in the French language. In the late 1930s, he wrote a number of short poems in that language, and these poems' spareness—in contrast to the density of his English poems of roughly the same period, collected in Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates (1935)—seems to show that Beckett, albeit through the medium of another language, was in process of simplifying his style somewhat, a change also evidenced in Watt.
[edit] Middle period
most famous work by Beckett; Waiting For Godot (in French En attendant Godot)
After World War II, Beckett turned definitively to the French language as a vehicle. It was this, together with the aforementioned "revelation" experienced in his mother's room in Dublin—in which he realized that his art must be subjective and drawn wholly from his own inner world—that would result in the works for which Beckett is best remembered today.
During the 15 years subsequent to the war, Beckett produced four major full-length stage plays:
En attendant Godot (written 1948–1949; Waiting for Godot),
Fin de partie (1955–1957; Endgame),
Krapp's Last Tape (1958), and
Happy Days (1960).
These plays—which are often considered, rightly or wrongly, to have been instrumental in the so-called "Theatre of the Absurd"—deal in a very blackly humorous way with themes similar to those of the roughly contemporary existentialist thinkers, though Beckett himself cannot be pigeonholed as an existentialist.
The term "Theatre of the Absurd" was coined by Martin Esslin in a book of the same name; Beckett and Godot were centerpieces of the book. Esslin claimed these plays were the fulfillment of Albert Camus's concept of "the absurd";[24] this is one reason Beckett is often falsely labeled as an existentialist. Though many of the themes are similar, Beckett had little affinity for existentialism as a whole.[25]
Broadly speaking, the plays deal with the subject of despair and the will to survive in spite of that despair, in the face of an uncomprehending and, indeed, incomprehensible world. The words of Nell—one of the two characters in Endgame who are trapped in ashbins, from which they occasionally peek their heads to speak—can best summarize the themes of the plays of Beckett's middle period:
Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. ... Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more.[26]
Beckett's outstanding achievements in prose during the period were the three novels Molloy (1951), Malone meurt (1951; Malone Dies) and L'innommable (1953; The Unnamable). In these novels—sometimes referred to as a "trilogy", though this is against the author's own explicit wishes[27]—the reader can trace the development of Beckett's mature style and themes, as the novels become more and more stripped down, barer and barer. Molloy, for instance, still retains many of the characteristics of a conventional novel—time, place, movement and plot—and is indeed, on one level, a detective novel. In Malone Dies, however, movement and plot are largely dispensed with, though there is still some indication of place and the passage of time; the "action" of the book takes the form of an interior monologue. Finally, in The Unnamable, all sense of place and time are done away with, and the essential theme seems to be the conflict between the voice's drive to continue speaking so as to continue existing and its almost equally strong urge to find silence and oblivion. It is tempting to see in this a reflection of Beckett's experience and understanding of what the war had done to the world. Despite the widely-held view that Beckett's work, as exemplified by the novels of this period, is essentially pessimistic, the will to live seems to win out in the end; witness, for instance, the famous final phrase of The Unnamable: 'I can't go on, I'll go on'.[28]
Subsequent to these three novels, Beckett struggled for many years to produce a sustained work of prose, a struggle evidenced by the brief "stories" later collected as Texts for Nothing. In the late 1950s, however, he managed to create one of his most radical prose works, Comment c'est (1961; How It Is). This work relates the adventures of an unnamed narrator crawling through the mud while dragging a sack of canned food, and was written as a sequence of unpunctuated paragraphs in a style approaching telegraphese:
you are there somewhere alive somewhere vast stretch of time then it's over you are there no more alive no more then again you are there again alive again it wasn't over an error you begin again all over more or less in the same place or in another as when another image above in the light you come to in hospital in the dark[29]
Following this work, it would be almost another decade before Beckett produced a work of non-dramatic prose, and indeed How It Is is generally considered to mark the end of his middle period as a writer.
Late works
Beckett's poster in Paris, France
Throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, Beckett's works exhibited an increasing tendency—already evident in much of his work of the 1950s—towards compactness that has led to his work sometimes being described as minimalist. The extreme example of this, among his dramatic works, is the 1969 piece Breath, which lasts for only 35 seconds and has no characters (though it was likely intended to offer ironic comment on Oh! Calcutta!, the theatrical revue for which it served as an introductory piece[30]).
In the dramas of the late period, Beckett's characters—already few in number in the earlier plays—are whittled down to essential elements. The ironically titled 1962 Play, for instance, consists of three characters stuck to their necks in large funeral urns, while the 1963 television drama Eh Joe—written for the actor Jack MacGowran—is animated by a camera that steadily closes in to a tight focus upon the face of the title character, and the 1972 play Not I consists almost solely of, in Beckett's words, 'a moving mouth with the rest of the stage in darkness'.[31] Many of these late plays, taking a cue from Krapp's Last Tape, were concerned to a great extent with memory, or more particularly, with the often forced recollection of haunting past events in a moment of stillness in the present. Moreover, as often as not these late plays dealt with the theme of the self confined and observed insofar as a voice either comes from outside into the protagonist's head, as in Eh Joe, or else the protagonist is silently commented upon by another character, as in Not I. Such themes also led to Beckett's most politically charged play, 1982's Catastrophe, dedicated to Václav Havel, which dealt relatively explicitly with the idea of dictatorship. After a long period of inactivity, Beckett's poetry experienced a revival during this period in the ultra-terse French poems of mirlitonnades, some as short as six words long. These defied Beckett's usual scrupulous concern to translate his work from its original into the other of his two languages; several writers, including Derek Mahon, have attempted translations, but no complete version of the sequence has been published in English.
Though Beckett's writing of prose during the late period was not so prolific as his writing of drama—as hinted at by the title of the 1976 collection of short prose texts entitled Fizzles, which was illustrated by American artist Jasper Johns—he did experience something of a renaissance in this regard beginning with the 1979 novella Company, and continuing on through 1982's Ill Seen Ill Said and 1984's Worstward Ho, later collected in Nohow On. In the prose medium of these three so-called '"closed space" stories',[32] Beckett continued his preoccupation with memory and its effect on the confined and observed self, as well as with the positioning of bodies in space, as the opening phrases of Company make clear:
A voice comes to one in the dark. Imagine.
To one on his back in the dark. This he can tell by the pressure on his hind parts and by how the dark changes when he shuts his eyes and again when he opens them again. Only a small part of what is said can be verified. As for example when he hears, You are on your back in the dark. Then he must acknowledge the truth of what is said.[33]
Beckett wrote his final work, the 1988 poem "What is the Word" (also known by its French name, Comment dire), in the hospital and nursing home where he spent his final days. The poem grapples with an inability to find words to express oneself—a theme echoing Beckett's earlier work, perhaps amplified by his sickness late in life.
Legacy
Samuel Beckett depicted on an Irish commemorative coin celebrating the 100th Anniversary of his birth.
Of all the English-language modernists, Beckett's work represents the most sustained attack on the realist tradition. He, more than anyone else, opened up the possibility of drama and fiction that dispense with conventional plot and the unities of place and time in order to focus on essential components of the human condition. Writers like Václav Havel, John Banville, Aidan Higgins and Harold Pinter [34] have publicly stated their indebtedness to Beckett's example, but he has had a much wider influence on experimental writing since the 1950s, from the Beat generation to the happenings of the 1960s and beyond. In an Irish context, he has exerted great influence on poets such as John Banville, Derek Mahon, Thomas Kinsella, as well as writers like Trevor Joyce and Catherine Walsh who proclaim their adherence to the modernist tradition as an alternative to the dominant realist mainstream.
Many major 20th-century composers, including Luciano Berio, György Kurtág, Morton Feldman, Pascal Dusapin, Scott Fields, Philip Glass and Heinz Holliger, have created musical works based on his texts. Beckett's work was also an influence on many visual artists, including Bruce Nauman, Alexander Arotin, and Avigdor Arikha; Arikha, in addition to being inspired by Beckett's literary world, also drew a number of portraits of Beckett and illustrated several of his works.
Beckett is one of the most widely discussed and highly prized of twentieth century authors, inspiring a critical industry to rival that which has sprung up around James Joyce. He has divided critical opinion. Some early philosophical critics, such as Sartre and Theodor Adorno, praised him, one for his revelation of absurdity, the other for his works' critical refusal of simplicities; others such as Georg Lukacs condemn for 'decadent' lack of realism.[35]
American critic Harold Bloom pays attention to his atheism of Anglican source, compared with James Joyce's, former Catholic. «Beckett and Joyce shared the aversion to Christianity in Ireland. The two chose Paris and atheism.»[36]
Since Beckett's death, all rights for performance of his plays are handled by the Beckett estate, currently managed by Edward Beckett, the author's nephew. The estate has a controversial reputation for maintaining firm control over how Beckett's plays are performed and does not grant licences to productions that do not strictly adhere to the writer's stage directions. Historians interested in tracing Beckett's blood line were, in 2004, granted access to confirmed trace samples of his DNA to conduct molecular genealogical studies to facilitate precise lineage determination.
Some of the best known pictures of Beckett were taken by photographer John Minihan, who photographed him between 1980 and 1985 and developed such a good relationship with the writer that he became, in effect, his official photographer. Some consider one of these to be among the top three photographs of the 20th century.[37] However, it was the theatre photographer John Haynes[38] who took possibly the most widely reproduced image of Beckett: it is used on the cover of the Knowlson biography, for instance. This portrait was taken during rehearsals of the San Quentin Drama Workshop at the Royal Court Theatre in London, where Haynes photographed many productions of Beckett's work.
[edit] Selected bibliography
[edit] Dramatic works
Theatre
* Eleutheria (1940s; published 1995)
* Waiting for Godot (1952)
* Act Without Words I (1956)
* Act Without Words II (1956)
* Endgame (1957)
* Krapp's Last Tape (1958)
* Rough for Theatre I (late 1950s)
* Rough for Theatre II (late 1950s)
* Happy Days (1960)
* Play (1963)
* Come and Go (1965)
* Breath (1969)
* Not I (1972)
* That Time (1975)
* Footfalls (1975)
* A Piece of Monologue (1980)
* Rockaby (1981)
* Ohio Impromptu (1981)
* Catastrophe (1982)
* What Where (1983)
Radio
* All That Fall (1956)
* From an Abandoned Work (1957)
* Embers (1959)
* Rough for Radio I (1961)
* Rough for Radio II (1961)
* Words and Music (1961)
* Cascando (1962)
Television
* Eh Joe (1965)
* Ghost Trio (1975)
* ... but the clouds ... (1976)
* Quad I + II (1981)
* Nacht und Träume (1982)
* Beckett Directs Beckett (1988/92) The San Quentin Drama Workshop
* Beckett on Film (2002) Hosted by Jeremy Irons, Produced by PBS [39]
Cinema
* Film (1965)
[edit] Prose
Novels
* Dream of Fair to Middling Women (1932; published 1992)
* Murphy (1938)
* Watt (1945; published 1953)
* Mercier and Camier (1946; published 1974)
* Molloy (1951)
* Malone Dies (1951)
* The Unnamable (1953)
* How It Is (1961)
Novellas
* The Expelled (1946)
* The Calmative (1946)
* The End (1946)
* The Lost Ones (1971)
* Company (1980)
* Ill Seen Ill Said (1981)
* Worstward Ho (1983)
Stories
* More Pricks Than Kicks (1934)
* First Love (1945)
* Stories and Texts for Nothing (1954)
* Fizzles (1976)
* Stirrings Still (1988)
Non-fiction
* Proust (1931)
* Three Dialogues (with Georges Duthuit and Jacques Putnam) (1949)
* Disjecta (1929 - 1967)
* Dante...Bruno. Vico..Joyce
Poetry
* Whoroscope (1930)
* Echo's Bones and other Precipitates (1935)
* Collected Poems in English (1961)
* Collected Poems in English and French (1977)
* What is the Word (1989)
* Selected Poems 1930-1989 (2009)
Translations
* Anna Livia Plurabelle (James Joyce, French translation by Beckett and others) (1931)
* Negro: an Anthology (Nancy Cunard, editor) (1934)
* Anthology of Mexican Poems (Octavio Paz, editor) (1958)
* The Old Tune (Robert Pinget) (1963)
* What Is Surrealism?: Selected Essays (André Breton) (various short pieces in the collection)
References
1. ^ Fathoms from Anywhere - A Samuel Beckett Centenary Exhibition
2. ^ Rónán McDonald, ed., The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Beckett, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007, pg. 17, via Google Books
3. ^ The Nobel Prize in Literature 1969
4. ^ Cronin, 3–4
5. ^ Samuel Beckett - 1906-1989
6. ^ On his mother's side, he was descended from the Roe family. Beckett's Athletics - paper by Steven O'Connor
7. ^ Knowlson, 106
8. ^ Collected Poems, 9
9. ^ Beckett, Samuel. (1906 - 1989) - Literary Encyclopedia
10. ^ Disjecta, 76
11. ^ Israel Shenker, 'Moody Man of Letters', The New York Times, 5 May 1956; quoted in Cronin, 310
12. ^ This character, she said, was so looed by apathia that he "finally did not even have the willpower to get out of bed". (Quoted in Gussow 1989.)
13. ^ Knowlson, 261
14. ^ Knowlson, 304–305
15. ^ The Modern Word
16. ^ Quoted in Knowlson, 303
17. ^ a b Knowlson, 1997, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett, pp. 352–353.
18. ^ Knowlson, 324
19. ^ Knowlson, 342
20. ^ Knowlson, 505
21. ^ Happiest moment of the past half million: Beckett Biography - themodernword.com
22. ^ More Pricks than Kicks, 9
23. ^ Murphy, 1
24. ^ Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1969.
25. ^ Ackerley, C. J. and S. E. Gontarski, ed. The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett. New York: Grove Press, 2004.
26. ^ Endgame, 18–19
27. ^ The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett: A Reader's Guide to His Works, Life, and Thought, 586
28. ^ Three Novels, 414
29. ^ How It Is, 22
30. ^ Knowlson, 501
31. ^ Quoted in Knowlson, 522
32. ^ Nohow On, vii
33. ^ Nohow On, 3
34. ^ Chequer, Brad. "Beginning to End - Ending to Begin - or, Some Brilliance and Bullshit on Samuel Beckett". The Cutting Ball. http://www.cuttingball.com/endgame/essay.php.
35. ^ Adorno, Theodor W. Trying to Understand Endgame [1961], The New German Critique, no. 26, (Spring-Summer 1982) pp.119–150. In The Adorno Reader ed. Brian O'Connor. Blackwell Publishers. 2000
36. ^ Bloom, Harold. El canon occidental (tr. to spanish The Western Canon). Barcelona, 2005. Ed. Anagrama. ISBN 84-339-6684-7. p. 509
37. ^ 1998 edition of The Royal Academy Magazine, the "Image of the century"
38. ^ Photographer John Haynes's website
39. ^ PBS STAGE ON SCREEN SERIES
[edit] Sources
[edit] Print
[edit] Primary sources
* Beckett, Samuel. Collected Poems in English and French. New York: Grove Press, 1977.
* — Endgame and Act Without Words. New York: Grove Press, 1958.
* — How It Is. New York: Grove Press, 1964.
* — More Pricks than Kicks. New York: Grove Press, 1972.
* — Murphy. New York: Grove Press, 1957.
* — Nohow On: Company, Ill Seen Ill Said, Worstward Ho. Ed. S.E. Gontarski. New York: Grove Press, 1996.
* — Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable. New York: Grove Press, 1995.
* — Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts. New York: Grove Press, 1954.
[edit] Secondary sources
* Ackerley, C. J. and S. E. Gontarski, ed. The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett. New York: Grove Press, 2004.
* Bair, Deirdre. Samuel Beckett: A Biography. Vintage/Ebury, 1978. ISBN 0-09-980070-5.
* Casanova, Pascale. Beckett. Anatomy of a Literary Revolution. Introduction by Terry Eagleton. Londres / New York : Verso Books, 2007
* Caselli, Daniela. Beckett's Dantes: Intertextuality in the Fiction and Criticism. ISBN 0-7190-7156-9.
* Cronin, Anthony. Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist. New York: Da Capo Press, 1997.
* Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1969.
* Fleming, Justin. Burnt Piano. Xlibris, 2004 (Coup d'État & Other Plays)
* Fletcher, John. About Beckett. Faber and Faber, London, 2006. ISBN 978-057-1-23011-2.
* Gussow, Mel. "Samuel Beckett Is Dead at 83; His 'Godot' Changed Theater." The New York Times, 27 December 1989.
* Igoe, Vivien. A Literary Guide to Dublin. Methuen Publishing, 2000. ISBN 0-413-69120-9.
* Kelleter, Frank. Die Moderne und der Tod: Edgar Allan Poe–T. S. Eliot–Samuel Beckett. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 1998.
* Knowlson, James. Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett. New York: Grove Press, 1996.
* Mercier, Vivian. Beckett/Beckett. Oxford University Press, 1977. ISBN 0-19-281269-6.
* O'Brien, Eoin. The Beckett Country. ISBN 0-571-14667-8.
* Ricks, Christopher. Beckett's Dying Words. Oxford University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-19-282407-4.
Online
* Samuel Beckett: An Annotated Bibliography (with full tables of contents)
* Apmonia - A site for Samuel Beckett
* Samuel Beckett at the Princess Grace Irish Library
* Article by Peter Hall, director of the first London production of Waiting for Godot
* Info on Samuel Beckett and his works
* Bibliography of the works about Beckett
* The Samuel Beckett On-Line Resources and Links Pages
* Article in The Economist
* Website of photographer John Haynes
* Website of John Minihan, Beckett's official photographer
* The Nobel Prize in Literature 1969
* English translation of Beckett's mock essay Le Concentrisme
* Beckett and the Holocaust
* The Life of Samuel Beckett
* "Godot at 50" by Said Shirazi.
* Samuel Beckett online exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center
* Poems by Samuel Beckett at The Poetry Foundation
* Beckett with Lacan - Slavoj Zizek
* Jaime Perales Contrera, "The Irishman who translated Mexican poetry"
* Beckett Centenary Festival (April 2006)
* The Annual Samuel Beckett Festival
* The Samuel Beckett Endpage
* Beckett's cricket record at CricketArchive
* Radio Plays for BBC on ubu.com
* Online centennial exhibition from the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin
* Irish author Keith Ridgway considers Beckett's Mercier and Camier in The Guardian
* "Sam I Am - Beckett’s private purgatories" by Benjamin Kunkel in The New Yorker
* The Samuel Beckett Papers at Washington University in St. Louis
* Samuel Beckett Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
* Samuel Beckett Timeline
* The San Quentin Drama Workshop - Beckett Directs Beckett - 50 years of work in Beckett's Theatre
* An online compilation of selected adaptations of the works of Samuel Beckett by Brock University's Department of English Language and Literature
* The Making of Samuel Beckett by J.M. Coetzee from The New York Review of Books
* The Beckett International Foundation
* The Samuel Beckett Society
* The Journal of Beckett Studies
viernes, 18 de septiembre de 2009
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett (Dublín, 13 de abril de 1906 - París, 22 de diciembre de 1989)
Escritor irlandés nacido en Foxrock, 1906. Hijo de padres
protestantes, estudió en el Trinity College de Dublín. En 1927, terminó la
Licenciatura en Italiano y Francés. En 1933, emigró a París como lector de la
“Ecole Normale Superieure”. En París conoció al escritor James Joyce, de quien
fue secretario y ejerció gran influencia en su obra.
En enero de 1938 y estando en París, debido a que rechazó los reclamos que le
hacía un mal afamado proxeneta, que por ironía se llamaba Prudent, Beckett fue
apuñalado en el pecho y se salvó por muy poco de la muerte. James Joyce
consiguió para el lesionado Beckett una habitación privada en el hospital. La
publicidad que generó el incidente atrajo la atención de Suzanne
Descheveaux-Dumesnil, que había tenido muy poco trato con Beckett en su primera
estancia en París. En esta ocasión, sin embargo, los dos iniciaron un
compañerismo que duraría toda la vida. En la primer audiencia judicial que
tuvieron, Beckett le preguntó a su atacante el motivo por el cual lo había
apuñalado y Prudent le contestó simplemente: "Je ne sais pas, Monsieur. Je
m'excuse" ("No sé, señor, lo siento mucho"). Beckett solía contar de vez en
cuando el incidente en broma. Levantó los cargos contra su atacante, en parte
para evitarse otras molestias procesales, pero también porque encontró que
Prudent era alguien agradable y de buenas maneras.
Beckett se unió a la Resistencia Francesa contra la ocupación nazi, su grupo
cayó en 1942 y se vio forzado a huir a la Francia Libre perseguido por la
Gestapo.
En los años cincuenta comienza su período más prolífico con una trilogía de
novelas: Molloy (1951), Malone muere (1952) El Innombrable (1953).
Su nombre se asocia, sobre todo, al Teatro del absurdo con la obra Esperando a
Godot estrenada el 5 de enero de 1952 en París. Manuel Vázquez Montalbán define
a esta obra como una metáfora de la esperanza inútil.
En 1961 le otorgan el premio Internacional de Literatura compartido con Jorge
Luis Borges por su contribución a la literatura mundial, y en 1969 gana el
premio Nobel de Literatura, que recogió su editor.
Está enterrado en el cementerio de Montparnasse en París.
Su obra [editar]Toda la obra de Beckett está atravesada por la percepción de
la tragedia que es el nacimiento. Frente a este dictamen lúcido y pascaliano de
abandono, el hombre permanece excluido, sin tregua, al borde de la asfixia, en
un espacio purgatorio, ni feliz ni desgraciado. Para el Irlandés, autor de Fin
de partida, esta condición debe ser vivida pese a todo, plenamente, con
vitalidad. Para esta vida, Beckett nos propone una coartada: la literatura o el
arte, ellos pueden inyectar en el desastre algo tolerable, una onza de música y
de aliento existencial. Pues como dice al final de El Innombrable: "no puedo
seguir, es menester seguir, voy, pues, a seguir"; hay que buscar un sentido, a
pesar de todo.
Samuel Beckett (Dublín, 13 de abril de 1906 - París, 22 de diciembre de 1989)
Escritor irlandés nacido en Foxrock, 1906. Hijo de padres
protestantes, estudió en el Trinity College de Dublín. En 1927, terminó la
Licenciatura en Italiano y Francés. En 1933, emigró a París como lector de la
“Ecole Normale Superieure”. En París conoció al escritor James Joyce, de quien
fue secretario y ejerció gran influencia en su obra.
En enero de 1938 y estando en París, debido a que rechazó los reclamos que le
hacía un mal afamado proxeneta, que por ironía se llamaba Prudent, Beckett fue
apuñalado en el pecho y se salvó por muy poco de la muerte. James Joyce
consiguió para el lesionado Beckett una habitación privada en el hospital. La
publicidad que generó el incidente atrajo la atención de Suzanne
Descheveaux-Dumesnil, que había tenido muy poco trato con Beckett en su primera
estancia en París. En esta ocasión, sin embargo, los dos iniciaron un
compañerismo que duraría toda la vida. En la primer audiencia judicial que
tuvieron, Beckett le preguntó a su atacante el motivo por el cual lo había
apuñalado y Prudent le contestó simplemente: "Je ne sais pas, Monsieur. Je
m'excuse" ("No sé, señor, lo siento mucho"). Beckett solía contar de vez en
cuando el incidente en broma. Levantó los cargos contra su atacante, en parte
para evitarse otras molestias procesales, pero también porque encontró que
Prudent era alguien agradable y de buenas maneras.
Beckett se unió a la Resistencia Francesa contra la ocupación nazi, su grupo
cayó en 1942 y se vio forzado a huir a la Francia Libre perseguido por la
Gestapo.
En los años cincuenta comienza su período más prolífico con una trilogía de
novelas: Molloy (1951), Malone muere (1952) El Innombrable (1953).
Su nombre se asocia, sobre todo, al Teatro del absurdo con la obra Esperando a
Godot estrenada el 5 de enero de 1952 en París. Manuel Vázquez Montalbán define
a esta obra como una metáfora de la esperanza inútil.
En 1961 le otorgan el premio Internacional de Literatura compartido con Jorge
Luis Borges por su contribución a la literatura mundial, y en 1969 gana el
premio Nobel de Literatura, que recogió su editor.
Está enterrado en el cementerio de Montparnasse en París.
Su obra [editar]Toda la obra de Beckett está atravesada por la percepción de
la tragedia que es el nacimiento. Frente a este dictamen lúcido y pascaliano de
abandono, el hombre permanece excluido, sin tregua, al borde de la asfixia, en
un espacio purgatorio, ni feliz ni desgraciado. Para el Irlandés, autor de Fin
de partida, esta condición debe ser vivida pese a todo, plenamente, con
vitalidad. Para esta vida, Beckett nos propone una coartada: la literatura o el
arte, ellos pueden inyectar en el desastre algo tolerable, una onza de música y
de aliento existencial. Pues como dice al final de El Innombrable: "no puedo
seguir, es menester seguir, voy, pues, a seguir"; hay que buscar un sentido, a
pesar de todo.
Esperando a Godot - wikipedia
Esperando a Godot (en frances: En attendant Godot), a veces subtitulada Tragicomedia en 2 actos, es una obra perteneciente al teatro del absurdo, escrita a finales de los años 40 por Samuel Beckett y publicada en 1952 por Éditions de Minuit. Beckett escribió la obra originalmente en francés, su segunda lengua. La traducción al inglés fue realizada por el mismo Beckett y publicada en 1955.
La obra se divide en dos actos, y en ambos aparecen dos vagabundos llamados Vladimir y Estragon que esperan en vano junto a un camino a un tal Godot, con quien (quizás) tienen alguna cita. El público nunca llega a saber quién es Godot, o qué tipo de asunto han de tratar con él. En cada acto, aparecen el cruel Pozzo y su esclavo Lucky (en inglés, afortunado), seguidos de un muchacho que hace llegar el mensaje a Vladimir y Estragon de que Godot no vendrá hoy, "pero mañana seguro que sí".
Esta trama, que intencionalmente no tiene ningún hecho relevante y es altamente repetitiva, simboliza el tedio y la carencia de significado de la vida humana, tema recurrente del existencialismo. Una interpretación extendida del misteriosamente ausente Godot es que representa a Dios (en inglés: God), aunque Beckett siempre negó esto.[1] Como nombre propio, Godot puede ser un derivado de diferentes verbos franceses. Beckett afirmó que derivaba de godillot, que en jerga francesa significa bota. El título podría entonces sugerir que los personajes están "esperando a la bota".
Contenido [ocultar]
1 Sinopsis
2 Interpretaciones
3 Referencias
4 Véase también
5 Enlaces externos
Sinopsis [editar]La obra está dividida en dos actos. La trama trata de Vladimir (también llamado "Didi") y Estragon (también llamado "Gogo"), quienes llegan a un lugar junto a un camino, al lado de un árbol, para esperar la llegada de Godot. Vladimir y Estragon parecen ser vagabundos: su ropa es andrajosa y no les viene bien; otra teoría [cita requerida] es que podrían ser refugiados o soldados desplazados de un conflicto, como la Segunda Guerra Mundial, que acababa de terminar y que inspiró mucho la dramaturgia de Beckett. Pasan el tiempo conversando y a veces discutiendo.
Estragon se queja de que las botas no le vienen, y Vladimir presume de piernas agarrotadas debido a un doloroso problema de vejiga. Hacen vagas alusiones sobre la naturaleza de sus circunstancias, y sobre las razones para encontrarse con Godot (pero el público nunca llega a saber quién es Godot o por qué es tan importante). Pronto les interrumpe la llegada de Pozzo, un hombre cruel pero lírico que afirma ser el dueño de la tierra donde se encuentran, junto con su criado Lucky, a quien parece controlar por medio de una larga cuerda. Pozzo se sienta para darse un festín de pollo, y más tarde tira los huesos a los dos vagabundos.
Los entretiene haciendo a Lucky bailar animadamente, y entonces les da un sermón improvisado sobre las teorías de George Berkeley. Tras la partida de Pozzo y Lucky, un niño llega con un mensaje de Godot: "aparentemente, no vendrá hoy, pero vendrá mañana por la tarde". El muchacho también confiesa que Godot pega a su hermano y que él y su hermano duermen en la buhardilla de un granero.
El segundo acto sigue un patrón similar al del primero, pero cuando Pozzo y Lucky llegan, Pozzo se ha vuelto inexplicablemente ciego, y Lucky, mudo. De nuevo el chico llega para anunciar que Godot no vendrá, si bien el muchacho afirma no ser el mismo niño que el día anterior había traído el mismo mensaje.
El celebérrimo final de la obra resume con claridad su falta de acción:
Vladimir: Alors, on y va ?
Estragon: Allons-y.
Ils ne bougent pas.
Vladimir: ¡Qué! ¿Nos vamos?
Estragon: Sí, vámonos.
No se mueven.
Interpretaciones [editar]Beckett utiliza la interacción entre sus personajes para simbolizar el tedio y la carencia de significado de la vida moderna, ambos temas principales del existencialismo. El crítico Vivian Mercier resumió los dos actos de la obra en: "nada ocurre, dos veces". Otro crítico, referiéndose a las interminables escenas y a la escasez de personajes, resumió su crítica con una frase de la propia obra: "¡Nada ocurre, nadie viene, nadie va, es terrible!"
A pesar de esa frialdad, sin embargo, la obra también presenta momentos de comedia, que recuerdan el hieratismo de la comedia de Charlie Chaplin o Buster Keaton. Algunas escenas que incluyen juegos con sombreros, fueron adaptadas de los Hermanos Marx, y quizás el número de personajes (cuatro, de los cuales uno es mudo y otro tiene un nombre italiano) podría basarse en lo mismo[cita requerida]. El crítico Kenneth Burke argumentó que la relación de Vladimir y Estragon está basada en la de Laurel y Hardy (El Gordo y el Flaco) [cita requerida].
Muchos lectores de esta obra han interpretado que el personaje Godot representa simbólicamente a Dios, pues no aparece en ningún momento y la espera sin objetivo claro de Vladimir y Estragon representaría la espera de las masas por un ser que jamás aparecerá. Es una interpretación bastante popular de la obra, pero el mismo Beckett lo negó taxativamente durante toda su vida: "Si por Godot hubiera querido decir Dios, habría dicho Dios y no Godot".[2] Otras interpretaciones mantienen que Pozzo representa el papel de explotador o dictador, dado su abuso tiránico de su criado y esclavo Lucky, quien ni siquiera piensa si no se le ordena (y cuando lo hace se niega a escuchar las órdenes de Pozzo durante un tiempo). Pozzo usa la búsqueda de Godot para hacer que Vladimir y Estragon se queden y hablen con él, paralelismo con el uso de la devoción a Dios de las masas por parte de los líderes oportunistas para su propio beneficio.
Éste fue el tercer intento de Beckett en el campo del drama después de una obra que no llegó a terminar sobre Samuel Johnson, y la mucho más convencional Eleutheria (que Beckett eliminó después de escribir Godot). Godot fue la primera que se llevó a escena. Fue un gran paso adelante hacia la experiencia normal humana tras su novela The Unnamable. Subtitulado como una tragicomedia, el guión hace poca referencia a cómo deben ser el escenario o el vestuario (excepto la nota que especificaba que los cuatro personajes principales debían llevar bombines); la única referencia al escenario es escueta: "Un camino en el campo. Un árbol. De tarde", antes del Primer Acto.
Referencias ↑ SB to Barney Rosset, 18th October 1954 (Syracuse). Quoted in Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 412
↑ SB to Barney Rosset, 18th October 1954 (Syracuse). Quoted in Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 412
Véase también [editar]Teatro del absurdo
La obra se divide en dos actos, y en ambos aparecen dos vagabundos llamados Vladimir y Estragon que esperan en vano junto a un camino a un tal Godot, con quien (quizás) tienen alguna cita. El público nunca llega a saber quién es Godot, o qué tipo de asunto han de tratar con él. En cada acto, aparecen el cruel Pozzo y su esclavo Lucky (en inglés, afortunado), seguidos de un muchacho que hace llegar el mensaje a Vladimir y Estragon de que Godot no vendrá hoy, "pero mañana seguro que sí".
Esta trama, que intencionalmente no tiene ningún hecho relevante y es altamente repetitiva, simboliza el tedio y la carencia de significado de la vida humana, tema recurrente del existencialismo. Una interpretación extendida del misteriosamente ausente Godot es que representa a Dios (en inglés: God), aunque Beckett siempre negó esto.[1] Como nombre propio, Godot puede ser un derivado de diferentes verbos franceses. Beckett afirmó que derivaba de godillot, que en jerga francesa significa bota. El título podría entonces sugerir que los personajes están "esperando a la bota".
Contenido [ocultar]
1 Sinopsis
2 Interpretaciones
3 Referencias
4 Véase también
5 Enlaces externos
Sinopsis [editar]La obra está dividida en dos actos. La trama trata de Vladimir (también llamado "Didi") y Estragon (también llamado "Gogo"), quienes llegan a un lugar junto a un camino, al lado de un árbol, para esperar la llegada de Godot. Vladimir y Estragon parecen ser vagabundos: su ropa es andrajosa y no les viene bien; otra teoría [cita requerida] es que podrían ser refugiados o soldados desplazados de un conflicto, como la Segunda Guerra Mundial, que acababa de terminar y que inspiró mucho la dramaturgia de Beckett. Pasan el tiempo conversando y a veces discutiendo.
Estragon se queja de que las botas no le vienen, y Vladimir presume de piernas agarrotadas debido a un doloroso problema de vejiga. Hacen vagas alusiones sobre la naturaleza de sus circunstancias, y sobre las razones para encontrarse con Godot (pero el público nunca llega a saber quién es Godot o por qué es tan importante). Pronto les interrumpe la llegada de Pozzo, un hombre cruel pero lírico que afirma ser el dueño de la tierra donde se encuentran, junto con su criado Lucky, a quien parece controlar por medio de una larga cuerda. Pozzo se sienta para darse un festín de pollo, y más tarde tira los huesos a los dos vagabundos.
Los entretiene haciendo a Lucky bailar animadamente, y entonces les da un sermón improvisado sobre las teorías de George Berkeley. Tras la partida de Pozzo y Lucky, un niño llega con un mensaje de Godot: "aparentemente, no vendrá hoy, pero vendrá mañana por la tarde". El muchacho también confiesa que Godot pega a su hermano y que él y su hermano duermen en la buhardilla de un granero.
El segundo acto sigue un patrón similar al del primero, pero cuando Pozzo y Lucky llegan, Pozzo se ha vuelto inexplicablemente ciego, y Lucky, mudo. De nuevo el chico llega para anunciar que Godot no vendrá, si bien el muchacho afirma no ser el mismo niño que el día anterior había traído el mismo mensaje.
El celebérrimo final de la obra resume con claridad su falta de acción:
Vladimir: Alors, on y va ?
Estragon: Allons-y.
Ils ne bougent pas.
Vladimir: ¡Qué! ¿Nos vamos?
Estragon: Sí, vámonos.
No se mueven.
Interpretaciones [editar]Beckett utiliza la interacción entre sus personajes para simbolizar el tedio y la carencia de significado de la vida moderna, ambos temas principales del existencialismo. El crítico Vivian Mercier resumió los dos actos de la obra en: "nada ocurre, dos veces". Otro crítico, referiéndose a las interminables escenas y a la escasez de personajes, resumió su crítica con una frase de la propia obra: "¡Nada ocurre, nadie viene, nadie va, es terrible!"
A pesar de esa frialdad, sin embargo, la obra también presenta momentos de comedia, que recuerdan el hieratismo de la comedia de Charlie Chaplin o Buster Keaton. Algunas escenas que incluyen juegos con sombreros, fueron adaptadas de los Hermanos Marx, y quizás el número de personajes (cuatro, de los cuales uno es mudo y otro tiene un nombre italiano) podría basarse en lo mismo[cita requerida]. El crítico Kenneth Burke argumentó que la relación de Vladimir y Estragon está basada en la de Laurel y Hardy (El Gordo y el Flaco) [cita requerida].
Muchos lectores de esta obra han interpretado que el personaje Godot representa simbólicamente a Dios, pues no aparece en ningún momento y la espera sin objetivo claro de Vladimir y Estragon representaría la espera de las masas por un ser que jamás aparecerá. Es una interpretación bastante popular de la obra, pero el mismo Beckett lo negó taxativamente durante toda su vida: "Si por Godot hubiera querido decir Dios, habría dicho Dios y no Godot".[2] Otras interpretaciones mantienen que Pozzo representa el papel de explotador o dictador, dado su abuso tiránico de su criado y esclavo Lucky, quien ni siquiera piensa si no se le ordena (y cuando lo hace se niega a escuchar las órdenes de Pozzo durante un tiempo). Pozzo usa la búsqueda de Godot para hacer que Vladimir y Estragon se queden y hablen con él, paralelismo con el uso de la devoción a Dios de las masas por parte de los líderes oportunistas para su propio beneficio.
Éste fue el tercer intento de Beckett en el campo del drama después de una obra que no llegó a terminar sobre Samuel Johnson, y la mucho más convencional Eleutheria (que Beckett eliminó después de escribir Godot). Godot fue la primera que se llevó a escena. Fue un gran paso adelante hacia la experiencia normal humana tras su novela The Unnamable. Subtitulado como una tragicomedia, el guión hace poca referencia a cómo deben ser el escenario o el vestuario (excepto la nota que especificaba que los cuatro personajes principales debían llevar bombines); la única referencia al escenario es escueta: "Un camino en el campo. Un árbol. De tarde", antes del Primer Acto.
Referencias ↑ SB to Barney Rosset, 18th October 1954 (Syracuse). Quoted in Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 412
↑ SB to Barney Rosset, 18th October 1954 (Syracuse). Quoted in Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 412
Véase también [editar]Teatro del absurdo
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