ESPERANDO A GODOT

buzz y facebook - infinitamente fastidiosos

2010-02-13T06:07:00.001-08:00

Los riesgos de Google Buzz
Por: Adrián Segovia
Gmail ocupa en nuestro país la segunda posición en cuanto a uso de webmails. Su alcance, según Netview, panel de audiencias de Nielsen Online, es de casi 7 millones de personas al mes. Además, sus métricas más cualitativas proporcionalmente superan al servicio de correo electrónico más popular: Hotmail (de Microsoft).

Las cifras:

Cuando Google lanzó Buzz, a diferencia de Google Wave, utilizó gmail para nacer con garantía de usuarios. Dentro de sus expectativas sobre el producto, el buscador americano tiene un objetivo: aumentar los tiempos medios de consumo de sus usuarios. Ahora mismo, las Redes Sociales le están venciendo en la batalla por la atención del internauta. Por lo que es necesario que Google tome medidas. Y Buzz es la primera de ellas.

Ahora bien, puede que en este caso Google se haya precipitado con el lanzamiento y no haya valorado las contraindicaciones del mismo. Porque las primeras experiencias de Buzz en Gmail suscitan estas percepciones, que a la vez son riesgos evidentes sobre el producto:

* Saturación de los mensajes en la bandeja de entrada
* Recuperación de contactos olvidados, y pérdida de control sobre la captación automática de tus contactos vinculados a Gmail
* Enfrentamiento del servicio con Google Talk en algunos aspectos
* Obviar la integración con Facebook* Querer ganar atención a costa de tu usuario, no con tu usuario. Ya que Gmail existe sin Buzz, pero Buzz no existe sin Gmail
* Problemas de usabilidad en los inicios

Puede que Buzz acabe reconsiderando algunos de estos puntos, o puede que no consigan su objetivo de igualar los elevados índices de recurrencia y perdurabilidad del usuario en las Redes Sociales

comentario de la amante del absurdo.

Buzz y Facebook
Infinitamente fastidiosos.

Google Buzz y Facebook -
Infinitamente fastidiosos.

¿Dejarán tranquilos a los usuarios alguna vez, en lugar de bombardearlos con publicidad y correo spam, que termina jugándoles en contra?

el rey se interesa por la economía

2010-02-13T06:03:00.000-08:00

Bono cree que es "normal" que el Rey se interese por lo que pasa en España
El presidente del Congreso defiende el papel que está desempeñando don Juan Carlos ante la crisis económica
EFE - Madrid - 13/02/2010

Vota Resultado 5 votos Comentarios - 32
El presidente del Congreso, José Bono, ha defendido el papel que está desempeñando el Rey ante la crisis económica y ha subrayado que es "normal" que se interese por lo que pasa en España, y que para ello haya mantenido reuniones con los agentes sociales. Bono, en declaraciones a la cadena Ser, ha respaldado el trabajo de Don Juan Carlos, una labor que viene "bien determinada" por la Constitución y que ha ejercido "de maravilla" en todo su reinado.

El Rey intensifica contactos ante la gravedad de la crisis
Toxo y Méndez, juntos en La Zarzuela
José Bono Martínez

A FONDO
Nacimiento: 14-12-1950 Lugar: Salobre

"Ha moderado cuando tenía que moderar" y ha sido "árbitro" cuando tenía que hacerlo, ha señalado el presidente de la Cámara Baja, y nunca "ha ingerido" en la vida política ni "ha quitado un papel a nadie", una "discreción", ha añadido, que ha sido "ejemplar" en este terreno. El Rey "lo hace bien", según Bono, y "ha hecho más por la monarquía que todos sus antepasados juntos".

Por otro lado, se ha referido a la decisión del Gobierno de reducir el gasto público y ha recordado que, como dijo ayer el ministro de Trabajo, Celestino Corbacho, el Gobierno administra el 20 por ciento de todo el gasto público, mientras que a comunidades y ayuntamientos les corresponde el 80 por ciento. Así, se ha preguntado si alguien "con sentido común" puede pensar que el Ejecutivo va a ser "eficaz" en el recorte del gasto cuando únicamente decide sobre el 20 por ciento.

Sobre las declaraciones del presidente de Castilla-La Mancha, José María Barreda, en las que recomendó al presidente, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, remodelar su Gobierno tras el semestre de la Presidencia de la UE y reducir ministerios, Bono ha comentado que fueron "interpretadas maliciosamente" por otros. "Sé que a él -ha apuntado- no le ha gustado ser utilizado en contra de Zapatero, a quien tiene una lealtad a prueba de bomba".

La profe

2010-02-13T05:59:00.000-08:00

Una profesora mata a tiros a tres compañeros en la Universidad de Alabama

La mujer, que ha sido detenida, abrió fuego durante una reunión de trabajo tras negársele la titularidad de su puesto.- Hay también tres heridos
AGENCIAS - Washington / Nueva York - 13/02/2010

Tres personas murieron y tres resultaron heridas, dos de ellas en estado crítico, en un tiroteo perpetrado supuestamente por una profesora de la facultad de biología de la Universidad de Alabama, que disparó durante una reunión con varios compañeros del centro, según ha confirmado la policía de la ciudad de Huntsville, donde se encuentra la sede de este centro. Se cree que los tres fallecidos son también profesores de esa facultad.

Estados Unidos
A FONDO
Capital: Washington. Gobierno: República Federal. Población: 303,824,640 (est. 2008)

La sospechosa, identificada como Amy Bishop, una científica especialista en neurología, fue detenida inmediatamente por la policía, que también arrestó a su marido, aunque a él no se le han imputado cargos. Según medios locales, poco antes del tiroteo a la mujer se le había negado la titularidad en el cargo de profesora de la universidad.

En el edificio había pocos alumnos y ninguno resultó herido. La policía de la universidad acordonó el edificio después de evacuar a todos los estudiantes. La institución canceló todas las clases del viernes y alentó a los estudiantes (alrededor de 7.500) a regresar a su casa.

El incidente se produjo sólo una semana después de que la ciudad Huntsville fuera sacudida por un suceso similar, cuando un estudiante de secundaria dio muerte a balazos a uno de sus compañeros. "Esta es una universidad muy segura. Nada como lo que experimentamos hace una semana. Esta ciudad no está acostumbrada a los tiroteos y a un número múltiple de víctimas", declaró Ray Garner, portavoz de la universidad

Kurt Vonnegut

2010-01-29T11:13:00.000-08:00

8 reglas para escribir ficción según Kurt Vonnegut

1. Utiliza el tiempo de un completo desconocido de forma que él o ella no sienta que lo está malgastando.
2. Dale al lector al menos un personaje con el que él o ella se pueda identificar.
3. Todos los personajes deben querer algo, aunque sea un vaso de agua.
4. Cada frase debe hacer una de estas dos cosas: revelar un personaje o hacer que la acción avance.
5. Empieza tan cerca del final como te sea posible.
6. Sé sádico. No importa cuán dulces e inocentes sean tus protagonistas, haz que les pasen cosas horribles (para que el lector compruebe de qué madera están hechos)
7. Escribe para contentar únicamente a una persona. Si abres la ventana para hacerle el amor al mundo, o lo mismo para hablarle, tu historia cogerá una neumonía.
8. Dale a tus lectores toda la información posible lo más rápido posible. Para mantener el suspense. Los lectores deben tener una idea general de lo que está pasando, cómo y porqué, de modo que puedan acabar la historia ellos mismos; las cucarachas pueden comerse las últimas páginas.
And so it goes.

(Foto: Vonnegut en el verano del 2006 en Cape Cod, repartida a la prensa por su hija Edie Vonnegut. Traducción de Papel en Blanco).

Jacinta a las 02:58 PM | Referencias

suicidio y literatura

2010-01-29T11:08:00.000-08:00

El Club de los Escritores Suicidas: El suicidio y la literatura
Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Cesare Pavese, Jack London, Sandor Marai, Alfonsina Storni, Jack London, José Asunción Silva, Yukio Mishima, Jacques Rigaut, Horacio Quiroga, Anne Sexton, Vladimir Maiakovski... La lista de escritores y poetas que han cometido suicido en diferentes épocas y lugares, de las más diversas (y a veces brutales maneras) es bastante larga.
El suicidio y los procesos creativos de los artistas es una relación que ha fascinado a estudiosos y aficionados desde hace mucho tiempo. Una de las obsesiones de los que se acercan al tema es descifrar si, al analizar los escritos dejados atrás, hubiera sido posible predecir el final de dichos autores. Lo que durante mucho tiempo fue apenas una fascinación morbosa comenzó en algún momento a tornarse en asunto para estudios más serios.
Posiblemente no fue sino hasta fines del siglo XIX cuando intentó dársele confirmación científica, con la publicación en 1889 de Genio y locura escrita por el médico y antropólogo italiano Cesare Lombroso. El autor planteaba que el genio artístico era una forma de desequilibrio mental hereditario y para apoyar esta afirmación, se dedicó a coleccionar lo que llamó “arte psiquiátrico”, escritos, dibujos y pinturas realizados por pacientes encerrados en hospitales mentales. Lombroso también vinculó el genio artístico con la esquizofrenia, debido al alto índice de pacientes que sufrían de este mal y que lograban plasmar por medio de la expresión creativa, su atormentado y complejo mundo interior.

Dichas afirmaciones no son tomadas muy en serio hoy en día, pero el estudio de Lombroso sirvió como arranque para que otros científicos se acercaran al tema. En años más recientes, los estudios más exhaustivos realizados sobre el tema son posiblemente los de la psicóloga clínica estadounidense Kay Redfield Jamison, autora de Touched with Fire (Tocados por el fuego) de 1993, un minucioso análisis sobre la relación entre los desórdenes maníaco-depresivos y los procesos creativos de varios prominentes artistas. Algunos de los autores incluidos en este estudio son Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Baudelaire, Herman Hesse, Ernest Hemingway, John Keats, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginia Woolf y Kurt Vonnegut.
Otro de sus libros, Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide (La noche cae pronto: comprendiendo el suicidio), es un estudio donde Jamison discute el suicidio desde la óptica histórica, religiosa y cultural, y cataloga el suicidio (sin lugar a discusión), como un factor relacionado con enfermedades mentales de diversa índole.

El suicidio como manifestación de enfermedad mental
A pesar de todos los estudios y aproximaciones científicas, no hay datos definitivos que confirmen el vínculo entre los procesos creativos o artísticos con la enfermedad mental y/o el suicidio. Pero no es necesario ser artista para suicidarse. Un informe de la Organización Mundial de la Salud de hecho calcula que cada año se suicidan un millón de personas alrededor del mundo, de las cuales aproximadamente un 80 por ciento sufren enfermedades mentales que no han sido tratadas y, en muchos casos, ni siquiera diagnosticadas, como la depresión o el desorden bipolar.
Por lo demás, la creatividad es una característica propia de todo ser humano, un recurso al que recurrimos en nuestra vida cotidiana para resolver una amplia gama de situaciones, desde el menú familiar y la decoración del hogar hasta la solución de problemas de toda índole. ¿Acaso por eso estamos todos expuestos al suicidio?
Las motivaciones del suicidio entre escritores son semejantes a las de cualquier mortal. También sus métodos, algunos más rebuscados que otros, como el de Jerzy Kossinski.
El autor de origen polaco, conocido por su excepcional novela Desde el jardín, se suicidó ingiriendo una gran cantidad de barbitúricos con un trago de ron y Coca Cola, se metió a la tina de baño y además se amarró una bolsa de supermercado alrededor de la cabeza. Su nota de suicidio, el cual constituyó una gran sorpresa para sus allegados, decía “voy a dormir ahora un rato más largo del usual. Llamemos a ese rato Eternidad”. Problemas cardíacos, la incapacidad de poder escribir más acusaciones de plagio, podrían haber sido el detonante para esta decisión.

¿Suicidio o accidente?
La poeta rusa Marina Tsvetaeva se colgó hasta morir. Emilio Salgari, creador de Sandokán y varias novelas de aventuras, se abrió el vientre con un cuchillo. La narradora alemana Unica Zürn se tiró desde la ventana del apartamento que compartía con su compañero sentimental, el pintor Hans Bellmer. Jacques Vaché, amigo de André Breton y uno de los fundadores del surrealismo, murió de una sobredosis de opio.
La clásica bala es uno de los métodos más populares de suicidio entre autores. A ello recurrieron Ernest Hemingway, José Asunción Silva, Sandor Marai, Jacques Rigaut y Hunter S. Thompson, entre otros.
También lo es la ingesta de venenos y sobredosis de medicamentos. Horacio Quiroga tomó cianuro poco después de saber que sufría cáncer estomacal. Leopoldo Lugones se tomó un trago de whisky mezclado con cianuro. Cesare Pavese tomó una sobredosis de barbitúricos luego de una decepción amorosa. Georg Trakl acabó consigo mismo tomando una sobredosis de cocaína.
El suicidio por inmersión es otro de los recursos comunes entre autores. Alfonsina Storni se adentró en el mar en la playa La Perla, en la ciudad de Mar del Plata, agobiada por la soledad y tras detectársele un cáncer mamario. Virginia Woolf se llenó los bolsillos del abrigo con piedras y se sumergió en el Río Ouse, muy cerca de su casa. Paul Celan se arrojó al Río Sena en París.
Otros escritores prefirieron inhalar algún tipo de gas. Sylvia Plath y René Crevel abrieron las llaves de sus respectivos hornos. Anne Sexton se encerró en su garaje, encendió el motor de su automóvil y murió por envenenamiento con monóxido de carbono. Algo similar hizo John Kennedy Toole.
Algunas muertes ocurrieron de manera tal que la línea entre suicidio y accidente no queda muy clara. Es el caso de Primo Levi, el escritor italiano de origen judío que sobreviviera al holocausto y que fuera encontrado muerto en las escaleras interiores de su edificio. Sus allegados y el forense que lo examinó estuvieron de acuerdo en que Levi se suicidó lanzándose de las escaleras, ya que jamás pudo sobreponerse al trauma y la culpa de haber sobrevivido Auschwitz.
Sobre la muerte de Jack London también se alza la sombra del suicidio. London sufría de uremia y los dolores lo obligaban a tomar morfina. Si la sobredosis que lo mató fue ingerida de manera accidental o deliberada, es algo que sigue en el misterio.
Al estudiar varios de estos casos, una característica común (además de las enfermedades mentales), fue la imposibilidad de poder escribir: no escribir con la frecuencia o con la calidad deseada fue motivo de angustia para muchos. ¿Acaso la escritura sería para ellos una válvula de escape que, al verse bloqueada, hacía intolerable la existencia?
Aunque jamás pueda definirse con exactitud por qué existe o cuál es el vínculo entre escritores y suicidio, lo cierto es que el tema siempre volverá, de manera recurrente, a plantearse en nuestro imaginario y a alimentar nuestras fascinaciones personales.
Comenzamos con esta introducción una serie de aproximación a cuatro conocidos escritores que se suicidaron, todos en circunstancias muy diferentes: Yukio Mishima, Sylvia Plath, Reinaldo Arenas y Alejandra Pizarnik.
¿Hubo pistas en la escritura de estos autores sobre su eventual suicidio? ¿Algunas actitudes o situaciones de su vida propiciaron dicha circunstancia? ¿Hubo señales que sirvieron como advertencia a quienes los rodeaban? Si alguien hubiese leído los textos de estos autores como llamados de auxilio dentro del contexto de sus vidas, ¿habrían podido evitarse sus muertes?
Trataremos de averiguarlo.

(Leopoldo Lugones, escritor argentino, quien se suicidó en 1938.
Publicado hoy en C.A. 21. Cada lunes estaré posteando uno de los artículos de esta serie).

Antología de poetas suicidas
(1770-1985)
José Luis Gallero

Puede decirse que con el envenenamiento de Chatterton (1770) inicia el suicidio su edad moderna. La muerte del jovencísimo Chatterton es cantada por Keats, Coleridge, Shelley, Vigny. Su suicidio en la realidad y el de Werther en la novela proporcionan status intelectual a un acto que antes de eso se consideraba de pésimo gusto, a no ser que fuera motivado por falta de liquidez o cualquier otro capricho.
El suicida sigue sin poder reposar en tierra sagrada, pero en adelante ocupará un puesto de honor en la mitología artística.

A la hora de hacer una «anatomía del suicidio» llama la atención que se den por igual los suicidas de vocación y los súbitamente inspirados. Entre los primeros, Kleist, Maiakovski, Crevel, József, Pavese, Sylvia Plath, Jens Bjorneboe... Pero más que la premeditación acaso admira la insistencia en el gesto. ¿De qué huía Ángel Ganivet cuando se arroja desde un vapor al Duina, y tras ser rescatado trabajosamente por los pasajeros aprovecha un descuido para sumergirse otra vez en la corriente helada? ¿Qué le da fuerzas a Yávorov, ciego a resultas de un anterior intento de suicidio, para ingerir veneno y, en previsión de algún accidente benéfico, volarse luego la tapa de los sesos? ¿Y a Antero de Quental para dispararse dos veces consecutivas? Costas Cariotakis, la noche del 20 de julio de 1928, se dirige al agitado Mediterráneo con la intención de acabar con su vida. Diez horas después la corriente le devuelve sano y salvo a la playa. Entonces regresa a su casa, se cambia de ropa, sale a desayunar, compra una pistola y se dispara una bala en el corazón...

Huían de su propia vida, de sus fracasos artísticos, de sus deseos siempre insatisfechos, de su exacerbada sensibilidad. Exploradores de vastos territorios del alma, expuestos a las más inclementes contradicciones, se encuentran en ocasiones en la tesitura de elegir la sensibilidad o la supervivencia. En todo caso no debemos creer que los poetas suicidas son una especie lánguida, sumida en un desánimo que le impide percibir lo que de grato tiene la existencia. Las vidas de estos muertos son un ejemplo de vitalidad extraordinaria. El peso de su sufrimiento no lastraba su paso, sino que por el contrario parecía dotarles de una maravillosa ligereza.

2010-01-29T11:07:00.000-08:00

Paul Valéry

(Paul Ambroise Valéry, Sète, 1871-París, 1945) Escritor francés. Su obra poética, que prolonga la tradición de Mallarmé, está considerada como una de las más importantes de la poesía francesa del siglo XX. Su obra ensayística es la de un hombre escéptico y tolerante, que despreciaba las ideas irracionales y la inspiración poética, y creía en la superioridad moral y práctica del trabajo, la conciencia y la razón.

Estudió derecho en Montpellier, donde también publicó sus primeras poesías: «Sueño», en la Revue maritime (1889); Élevación de la luna», en Le Courier libre (1889); «La marcha imperial», en La Revue indépendante, y «Narciso habla», en La Conque (1891). Su amistad con Pierre Louïs le abrió las puertas del París literario, donde conoció a André Gide y a Stéphane Mallarmé (1891), a quien le uniría una gran amistad. Su amor no correspondido por una tal Madame Rovira precipitó una crisis, que le llevó, en 1892, a renunciar a la poesía y a consagrarse al culto exclusivo de la razón y la inteligencia.

En 1894 se instaló en París, y al año siguiente publicó los ensayos filosóficos Introducción al método de Leonardo da Vinci y La velada con el señor Edmond Teste; este último, aparecido en la revista Le Centaure, fue el primero de una serie de diez fragmentos donde expone el poder de la mente por entero volcada en la observación y deducción de los fenómenos.

Tras trabajar como funcionario del Ministerio de Guerra (1895), fue secretario particular de Édouard Lebey (1900-1920), uno de los directores de la agencia Havas. Obtuvo gran notoriedad con la publicación del largo poema La joven Parca (1917), y de dos volúmenes de versos, Álbum de versos antiguos (1920) y Cármenes (1922) -que incluye su poema El cementerio marino, considerado el prototipo de la «poesía pura» de Valéry-, y en 1925 ingresó en la Academia Francesa.

Sus obras siguientes fueron diálogos en prosa: Eupalinos o el Arquitecto (1923) y El alma y la danza (1923). Posteriormente publicó una recopilación de ensayos y conferencias (Variedad, 5 vols., 1924-1944), y una serie de obras, como Rhumbs (1926), Analecta (1927), Literatura (1929), Miradas al mundo actual (1931), Malos pensamientos y otros (1941), y Tal cual (1941-1943), consideradas el diario intelectual de Valéry. Fue profesor de poética del Colegio de Francia (1937-1943). Escribió también para el teatro los ballets Amphion (1931) y Semíramis (1934), a los que Arthur Honegger puso música, y compuso el libreto de La cantata de Narciso (1942), con música de Germaine Tailleferre.

Póstumamente aparecieron el drama Mi Fausto (1946), y también Historias rotas (1950), Cartas a algunos (1952), Correspondencia con André Gide (1955), Descartes (1961) y, a partir de 1956, los numerosos volúmenes de sus Cuadernos.

Jerome D. Salinger

2010-01-29T04:31:00.001-08:00

J.D. Salinger, uno de los más grandes escritores estadounidenses
16:13|Tenía 91 años y desde hace medio siglo vivía recluido en una cabaña en New Hampshire, nordeste de EE.UU. Su emblemática obra "El guardián entre el centeno" es un clásico de la literatura moderna.
1 de 1Salinger y su mujer, en una de sus pocas apariciones públicas. (Archivo Clarín)
mas informacion
Salinger, el guardián de los títulos que se bifurcan
El escritor estadounidense Jerome David Salinger murió hoy a los 91 años por causas naturales, según publicó el diario The New York Times tras recibir un comunicado del hijo del autor.

Salinger vivía aislado en una cabaña en New Hampshire tras consagrarse en 1951 con su primera novela corta: "El guardián entre el centeno" (también conocida como "El cazador oculto"). El libro fue un gran éxito y convirtió a Salinger en un "monstruo sagrado".

El libro cuenta la historia de un adolescente rebelde, ultrasensible, que debe enfrentar el feroz mundo de los adultos en la selva neoyorquina. Es, al fin, la pérdida de la inocencia, sólo que Holden Caufield busca un refugio en un extraño universo que linda con la locura, una huida ante una realidad que el muchacho considera intolerable.

"El guardián en el centeno" fue un éxito espectacular. Dos años más tarde, apareció "Nueve cuentos", y en 1961 "Franny y Zooey", un compilación de relatos cortos. La obra de Salinger "termina" con una colección de novelas cortas: Levantad, carpinteros, la viga del tejado , y Seymour: una introducción.

En realidad, lo último que se publicó de él fue Hapworth 16, 1924, un cuento que ocupó casi todo el número del 19 de junio de 1965 de "The New Yorker". Este cuento- recordó " The New York Times"- "nunca se publicó como libro y no se parece a nada de lo que escribió anteriormente Salinger. Hapworth es una carta, o más bien la transcripción de una carta, escrita a los apurones por Seymour Glass, a los 7 años, a sus padres. Lo más fascinante de este cuento es que la voz es insegura, ya que el pequeño Seymour alterna los tonos entre lo serio, ansioso, travieso y sarcástico.

Lo que hizo que los Glass y Seymour fuesen tan atractivos para Salinger, es que eran demasiado sensibles y excepcionales para este mundo, pero esto mismo los transformó en irritantes para muchos lectores. El problema de los Glass puede plantearse así: ¿cómo se hace arte para un público, o un establishment de la crítica, que es demasiado ignorante para entenderlo? Esta es la cuestión- concluye "The New York Times"- que ha llevado a Seymour a renunciar y, seguramente, la que ha inducido a Salinger a no querer publicar más".

Ante la publicación de este cuento, la mayoría de los críticos lo defenestró: "Es lo peor que escribió Salinger", podría ser la mejor síntesis de lo que escribieron. La periodista y escritora Joyce Maynard, amante de Salinger cuando ella tenía 19 años y él ya superaba los 50, cuenta en su libro "Mi verdad" sobre el enojo que los críticos le producían a Salinger.

En el 2000, su hija Margaret publicó "El guardián de los sueños", un libro de "confesiones" en donde afirmaba que su padre bebía su propia orina, rara vez tenía relaciones sexuales con su madre, y ella era mantenida como una "prisionera virtual" en su casa, ya que su padre se negaba a permitirle que viera a parientes y amigos. Dos visiones negativas de este hombre alto y delgado, devoto del budismo zen y de una dieta alimentaria que sólo incluía frutas, hortalizas y nueces. Esto es lo que dice su ex amante, claro. Desde principios de los ochenta, Salinger no dio más entrevistas. Su misantropía se agudizó con los años.

otro cuento del absurdo diario clarin.espiame.com y las agresiones ortográficas visuales.

2009-11-21T19:11:00.001-08:00

Beckett en Buenos Aires
Este fin de semana cierra la tercera edición del Festival Beckett de Buenos Aires. Se realizó simultáneamente en Rosario y Capital Federal y los elencos de actores vinieron de diversos paises cómo Irlanda, Brasil y Chile. Revistaenie.com charló sobre el presente y futuro del festival con su organizador, Patrico Orozco.

Por: Andrés Hax
Fotos Videos PATRICIO OROZCO, el director del festival, cuenta cómo nació su interés por Samuel Beckett.
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COMEDIA. Carla Peterson, Mario Mahler y Esmeralda Mitre en la obra de Samuel Beckett, Comedia, del Festival Beckett Buenos Aires 2006.
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Una vez —lo juro— vi a Samuel Beckett aquí en Buenos Aires. Yo estaba bajando en bicicleta a toda velocidad un domingo por la tarde por la calle Corrientes a la altura del Abasto (antes que el Abasto se convirtiera en shopping pero mucho más tarde de que fuera un mercado). Y allí, parado en una esquina, como esperando para cruzar la calle, lo vi (fue un milisegundo) con su sobretodo gris y sus anteojos de Trotsky y su pelo gris parado. Pero era el invierno de 1996 y Beckett murió en 1989. Igual, juro que lo vi. No a alguien que se parecía a Beckett o un fantasma de Beckett. Vi a Beckett. Tal vez se había escapado del Aleph en la calle Garay para tomar un café por allí, o para caminar las infinitas cuadras de Buenos Aires para estirar sus piernas un rato antes de volver al otro lado.

Cuento esto no solo porque es verdad sino también para ilustrar la devoción que inspira el escritor Irlandés en sus acólitos, dentro de los cuales me cuento. No sé si Patricio Orozco, el joven director del Festival Beckett Buenos Aires ha tenido una visión post-mortem del flaco, melancólico y elegante escritor. Pero tras un encuentro casual con una obra de Beckett en un taller de teatro en el 2004 Orozco se ha dedicado a la obra del irlandés con el fervor de un discípulo. Aparte de dirigir el Festival Beckett Buenos Aires anualmente desde el 2004, ha dedicado sies años a escribir una biografía (aun inédita) sobre el autor irlandés para la cual viajó a París y Londres para entrevistar a miembros del circulo íntimo del escritor y "caminar las mismas calles y tomar en los mismos cafés" que Beckett. Viajó hasta allí con la única intención de ver el mundo a través de sus ojos.

Este fin de semana concluye la edición 2009 del festival y el viernes, sábado y domingo habrá una excelente variedad de obras, tanto en Buenos Aires cómo en Rosario, tanto para los neófitas al mundo dramatúrgico del escueto y melancólico Beckett como para sus amantes incondicionales.

De las obras que se pueden destacar esta Rockaby, un desconcertante monologo, protagonizado por Chunchuña Villafañe que es parte de una trilogía de obras breves dirigida por Cecilia Propato que se puede ver en el Espacio Cultural Pato de Ganso (Pasaje Zelaya 3211. Tel. 4862-0209).

(Para el resto de la programación vayan al sitio del Festival Becket Buenos Aires y para ver partes de la entrevista con Patricio Orozco vean los videos adjuntos a esta nota.)

Charlamos con Orozco una tarde lluviosa y soleada a la vez en un café delante de la Casa del Teatro de la Calle Santa Fe donde estaba ensayando una de las obras del festival.

¿Cómo ha evolucionado el festival en sus tres años? ¿Qué balance hace de la experiencia hasta ahora?

Lo que yo fui viendo a lo largo de los años del festival es que cada vez más jóvenes presentan obras y proyectos. Y lo que sucede interesante es que a la par que los jóvenes presentan sus obras también hay actores que están pegando la vuelta, que empiezan a compartir escenario con los jóvenes. Este año, por ejemplo están Chunchuña Villafañe y Nélida Romero...Y lo que pasa es que esa unión se da en el escenario, pero también fuera del escenario. Cada generación va descubriendo la otra.

En las obras que se presentan en el festival hay modificaciones de los textos de Beckett. Yo tenía entendido que el odiaba cuando le hacían eso. ¿Te preocupa algo este tema?

No, no para nada. El era muy puntilloso cuando lo dirigía otro pero él con sus textos reescribía mucho y si veía en un ensayo que no andaba algo hacía modificaciones. No estaba muy atado a lo que había escrito originalmente. Cuando lo dirigían otros, si era muy estricto. Pero yo creo que los textos resisten los cambios. Hay que tener cuidado y tomarlo caso por caso.

Hablaste de los actores jóvenes. ¿Qué puede aprender un actor joven de actuar Beckett? Ya que la mayoría de sus obras son muy minimalistas, a veces el actor es solamente una voz...

En general los actores siempre te plantean la dificultad de estar más acotados. Pero lo que yo veo es que hay mucha pasión con los textos. Y lo que nosotros hacemos en el festival es sumar nuevas disciplinas, como el danza-teatro. Lo que apareció en esta edición con un elenco chileno fue increíble. Porque allí nos dimos cuenta de cómo cuando un bailarín lee un texto de Beckett ve todo los movimientos que para nosotros son como cíclicos ellos lo ven como una corografía. Toman los movimientos que en el texto se repiten como un mantra y lo resignifican de una manera muy interesante.

La obra de Beckett fue disminuyendo a lo largo de su vida: en la extensión y en los movimientos y palabras de sus personajes. ¿Tiene una teoría acerca de este movimiento hacía la austeridad visual y verbal?

Bueno, yo ahora hace poco terminé de escribir la biografía de él...Yo identifico dos pasos muy claros que dio. Uno, que es muy evidente, es cuando el empezó a escribir en francés. Beckett era un gran memorioso. Te podía decir la Divina Comedia de memoria y Shakespeare lo sabía todo. Entonces para mí —para mi y para un montón de gente— el pasaje al francés es tratar de ser más auténtico, en el sentido de que cuando el escribiera no estuviera a su vez a un autor que el tenía en la cabeza. Que la frase que el describía no le sonara nada conocido. Porque es muy difícil cuando tenés todos esos libros en la cabeza empezar a escribir y no copiar...

Esa es la primera ida hacia una síntesis. Y después hay una anécdota que es muy curiosa. En la segunda guerra mundial él participa en una célula de la resistencia, que se llama Gloria, en Francia. Y la tarea que la hacían era hacer los partes que se escribían en los famosos microfilmes. Y allí no entraban más de treinta palabras, por ejemplo. Entonces su tarea era ser muy sintético y preciso en la elección de palabras para pasar una información que después iba en un tubito para para en París... Y allí, después de este incidente, después de la segunda guerra, uno ve que cambia su prosa. Las frases son muy precisas. Son cortas. Le quedó algo de ese ejercicio en la resistencia.

Hay una aparente dicotomía entre su obra y su vida. En el sentido que su obra es muy parca, los personajes están abatidos... Pero Beckett era una persona muy generosa y expansiva con sus amigos...

Yo no lo veo como una contradicción. El tenía muy buen humor. Era muy dado con el tema del dinero. El le mandaba plata a los amigos diciendo "Ayer soñé que te faltaba guita." Y así. Lo mismo con el Premio Nobel, lo regalo a sus escritores amigos jóvenes para incentivarlos.
Pero yo no veo una dicotomía. El era una persona muy sola, en un punto pero creo que el se planteaba que lo que le pasaba adentro de su cabeza era mucho más interesante de lo que le pasaba afuera. El tenía una casa de fin de semana en las afueras de París, por ejemplo, donde el se retiraba. Y en la casa había una sola silla. Si voz ibas a reunirte estabas vos en la silla, el tirado en la cama – y si había un tercero se quedaba parado. Tiene como ese mundo de soledad, de mirar lo que pasaba. Le gustaba mucho caminar, y caminatas largas.

¿Que de nuevo va a aportar tu biografía comparado con todas las otras que existen?

A mi lo que más me importaba era caminar por las calles donde caminó el, sobre todo. Estuve en Inglaterra en las casas de sus familiares donde se quedaba. Ir a ver los cafés donde iba. Más que nada quería tener un panorama del contexto en cual el se movía. Y después todo esta dentro de su cabeza.

¿Finalmente, que se puede esperar para el festival del año que viene?

El año que viene esperamos traer a Rick Cluchey, el director del San Quentin Drama Workshop, que es un grupo de teatro fundado en la cárcel se San Quentin y dode dirigió Beckett mismo. También queremos traer al fotógrafo John Minihan que hizo mucho de los retratos más famosos de Beckett. La idea también es que el festival se haga siempre en Buenos Aires y una ciudad del interior, simultáneamente y que las producciones del interior se vengan para acá y visa versa. Vamos a ver cómo vamos evolucionando.

Mensaje de Lucía Folino a revista Ñ:

Andrés Hax, Orozco: son retruchos.

Como yo inicié un blog AMANTE DEL ABSURDO y otro SOBRE BECKETT, ESPERANDO A GODOT, clarin (el más trucho de todos) les presta pantalla de revista enie (Ñ).

Pero, al menos podrían usar un corrector, los párrafos mal construidos y las faltas de ortografía son escandalosas.

Muchachos, Beckett fue discípulo de Joyce.
Ustedes no pueden jugar el papel de estudiosos ni en figuritas.

Te podía decir (hay una palabra que es recitar que se aplica a este caso concreto) la Divina Comedia de memoria y Shakespeare lo sabía toda. Entonces para mi —para mi (este "mí" va acentuado, éste no porque cumple función adjetival de mí) y para un montón de gente— el

pasaje al francés es tratar de ser mas (lleva tilde) auténtico, en el sentido de que cuando el -...- escribiera no estuviera (estuviese) a su vez a un autor que el tenía en la cabeza. Que la frase que el describía no le sonara nada conocido. Porque es muy difícil cuando tenés todos esos libros en la cabeza empezar a escribir y no copiar...

Uf... mejor no sigo. Se supone que es una de las revistas literarias de mayor circulación del país.

Es lo que tiene la Kultura de los que compran títulos por internet.

Segundo comentario:

¿visa versa?

¿y dónde está la gita?

Entiendo. Es una joda para ver cuántos lectores reaccionan. ¿No?

frases de S.B.

2009-10-07T14:36:00.000-07:00

frases de Samuel Beckett

Loco

Todos nacemos locos, algunos continúan así siempre.

Destino

¿Qué es lo que sé sobre el destino del hombre? Podría decirte más cosas sobre rábanos.

Palabra
--Cada palabra es como una innecesaria mancha en el silencio y en la nada.

--Las palabras es todo lo que tenemos.

--Empleo las palabras que me has enseñado. Si no significan nada, enséñame otras. O deja que me calle.

Tristeza
Nada es más divertido que la infelicidad, te lo aseguro. Sí, sí, es la cosa más cómica del mundo.

Fracaso
Da igual. Prueba otra vez. Fracasa otra vez. Fracasa mejor.

Pereza

No existe pasión más poderosa que la pasión de la pereza.

Aburrimiento
Nuestro tiempo es tan excitante que a las personas sólo puede chocarnos el aburrimiento.

Hábito
Respirar es un hábito. La vida es un hábito o, mejor dicho, una sucesión de hábitos, ya que un individuo es una sucesión de individuos.

Preguntas
¡Ah, las viejas preguntas, las viejas respuestas, no hay nada como ellas!.

Olvido
Hubo momentos en que no sólo me olvidé de mí, sino también de lo que soy.

Animales

No me gustan los animales. Es una cosa extraña, no me gustan los hombres ni me gustan los animales. En cuanto a Dios, él está empezando a disgustarme.

Lágrima
Yo, que no sé nada, sé que mis ojos están abiertos, porque las lágrimas no dejan de caer.

Soledad

Sí, en mi vida, si se puede llamar así, hay tres cosas: la incapacidad de hablar, la imposibilidad de estar en silencio, y la soledad, que es lo mejor que he hecho.

Sol
El sol brilló, al no tener otra alternativa, sobre lo nada nuevo.

Amor
Eso que llaman el amor es el exilio, con una postal del país de vez en cuando.

el sastre y el pantalón.

El cliente: Dios hizo el mundo en seis días, y usted no es capaz de hacerme un pantalón en seis meses.

El sastre: Pero señor, mire el mundo y mire su pantalón.

Memoria

Hay que pensar en ciertas cosas, cosas que te habitan por dentro, o no, mejor sí, hay que pensar en ellas porque si no pensamos en ellas, corremos el riesgo de encontrarlas, una a una, en la memoria.

El mar, el cielo, la montaña, las islas, vinieron a aplastarme en una sístole inmensa, después se apartaron hasta los límites del espacio. Pensé débilmente y sin tristeza en el relato que había intentado articular, relato a imagen de mi vida, quiero decir sin el valor de acabar ni la fuerza de continuar.

Nace: 13 de abril de 1906
Lugar: Dublín, Irlanda
efemérides 13 de abril

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Muere: 22 de diciembre de 1989
Lugar: Paris, Francia
efemérides 22 de diciembre

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Biografía: Poeta, novelista, crítico y destacado dramaturgo irlandés, uno de los representantes más importantes del llamado teatro del absurdo. Samuel Beckett nació en el seno de una familia anglicana de buena posición, de padre William Beckett, aparejador (actual ingeniero civil) y madre May Roe, enfermera. Comenzó su educación en el "Earlsford House School" y en 1919 pasó a la "Portora Royal School". Durante su adolescencia, Samuel Beckett se destacó como un gran deportista y jugador de ajedrez en el "Trinity College", donde estudió francés, italiano e inglés y obtuvo la licenciatura en lenguas romances en 1927 y el doctorado en 1931. Tras un periodo breve en el que dio clases en el "Campbell College", se trasladó a París (Francia), donde aceptó el puesto de lector de inglés en la Escuela Normal Superior de París y trabó amistad con James Joyce. En 1929, Samuel Beckett escribió su primer relato breve "Conjetura" que publicó en la revista literaria "transition" y al siguiente año ganó un premio por su poema "Whoroscope". Durante la década de 1930 viajó por Europa, trabajando en diversos oficios para subsistir y estando en los más variados ambientes, que le sirvieron luego para volcar en sus obras. En 1940, Samuel Beckett se alistó en la Resistencia Francesa tras la ocupación nazi en plena Segunda Guerra Mundial (1939-1945), y trabajó como mensajero, y en varias ocasiones, a lo largo de los dos años siguientes, estuvo a punto de ser apresado por la Gestapo. Finalizada la guerra fue reconocido con la "Croix de Guerre" y la "Médaille de la Résistance" por el gobierno francés debido a sus esfuerzos en la lucha contra la ocupación alemana. En 1945, tras un breve paso por Dublín, Samuel Beckett se estableció definitivamente en París, donde produjo entre 1951 y 1953 cuatro grandes obras, la trilogía "Molloy", "Malone muere" y "El innombrable" y la obra de teatro "Esperando a Godot". Tanto en sus novelas como en sus obras, Samuel Beckett centró su atención en la angustia indisociable de la condición humana, con una prosa austera y disciplinada, sazonada de un humor corrosivo y alegrado con el uso de la jerga y el humor fino. En 1969 fue galardonado con el Premio Nobel de Literatura y unos años más tarde, en 1984, recibiría la más alta distinción de la asociación de artistas de Irlanda denominada "Aosdána".

obras destacadas
Esperando a Godot (1952)
Molloy (1951)
Malone muere (1951)
El innombrable (1953)
Whoroscope (1930)
Proust (1931)
Enlaces
Samuel Beckett Premio Nobel Literatura 1969

El arte según Samuel Beckett

2009-10-07T14:09:00.000-07:00

el arte según Samuel Beckett (la realidad como raíl)
por Andreu Navarra Ordoño

El texto titulado El mundo y el pantalón (1) parece desarrollar una serie de ideas sobre el arte, y más concretamente, sobre el pictórico (aunque sus contenidos puedan ser aplicados a cualquier otra actividad creativa). Es muy probable que así sea (de otro modo escribiría muy perdido). Podría tratarse de un ensayo, aunque quizás sea mejor calificarlo de prosa, porque el texto no es, desde luego, un ensayo canónico o habitual. Este es el chiste amargo que lo encabeza:

EL CLIENTE: Dios hizo el mundo en seis días, y usted no es capaz de hacerme un pantalón en seis meses.

EL SASTRE: Pero señor, mire el mundo y mire su pantalón.

A continuación, se desarrolla una especie de letanía gélida, absolutamente desconcertante, que no cesará ya hasta el fin:

Para empezar, hablemos de otra cosa, hablemos de dudas antiguas, caídas en el olvido, o reabsorbidas por elecciones que no se ocupan de ellas, por lo que se ha convenido en llamar obras maestras, malas esculturas y obras de mérito.

Dudas de aficionado, claro está, de aficionado muy sabio, tal y como sueñan los pintores, que llega agitando los brazos y se marcha agitando los brazos, con la cabeza aturdida por lo que ha creído entrever. Qué tontería las preocupaciones del ejecutante, al lado de las angustias del aficionado, que nuestra iconografía de tres al cuarto ha cebado de fechas, de períodos, de escuelas, de influencias, y que sabe distinguir, hasta tal punto es sabio, entre un gouache y una acuarela, y que de vez en cuando cree adivinar lo que ama, manteniendo el espíritu abierto. Pues el pobre se imagina que nada de lo que es pintura debe serle extraño.

El lector de Samuel Beckett tendrá que irse acostumbrando a no analizar, a no comprender, a operar entre la nada. Porque leer a Beckett puede ser asomarse a la desnudez más absoluta, indigestarse y dejar el libro a la primera línea, o bien marearse y tener que irse a tomar un analgésico. De cualquier modo, uno siempre resulta enormemente enriquecido al leerle. Es como descalzarse un pie y mojar su punta en un río, en una corriente inexorable, y a la vez fría como el hielo, despiadada. Y esta corriente (luego descubriremos que de cristales rotos) es lo más parecido a la verdad. A la verdad cognoscitiva: a nuestras posibilidades reales de percepción. Esto es lo que nos fascina del autor. Su nivel nulo de fabulación o simpatía. Su honestidad sin ningún tipo de fisura.

Pero es falaz afirmar que es imposible comentarle. Una mentira como un templo. Paradójicamente, y lo demuestra el fragmento que hemos citado, Samuel Beckett es el artista de la claridad, es el escritor de la transparencia. Sus textos son, a la vez, de lo más comprensible. Lo que pasa es que nuestra realidad, nuestra percepción de ella, la de nosotros como lectores de él, nos nubla. Nos obnubila. Molesta. Hemos de partir de cero, como muchos de sus mutilados. Tenemos que atrevernos a mojarnos en su río, y bucear en él como lo haríamos en la conversación que nos brindara un buen amigo, de los que realmente nos complican nuestra vida haciéndola más placentera.

Partir de cero significa, en primer lugar, vaciar la mente de prejuicios; y, en segundo, liberarla del deber de tener que juzgar lo que se ha visto leído, comprendido. Esa es una de las primeras lecciones del fragmento (con la cabeza aturdida de lo que ha creído entrever). El aficionado, a quien se ha intentado aleccionar mediante toda una literatura de la recepción de obras de arte, cree entrever, por lo que nos situamos lejos de cualquier tipo de juicio absoluto. Porque cualquier juicio que pretenda ser coherente, es a la fuerza un absoluto.

Esta es la propuesta de Beckett, no solo en este texto sino en el conjunto de su obra: no tenemos por qué juzgar. No pasa nada. No hay nada. Somos bien poco. Por qué actuar. Por qué explorar. Por qué preguntarse por lo que pasa, por lo que pasó. Lo asombroso es que no se nos esté diciendo debéis hacer esto, o no hacer lo otro. Siempre podremos seguir haciéndolo, seguir preguntándonos, seguir dudando. De lo que se nos informa es de lo que no solemos hacer, de lo que solemos obviar gracias a nuestros prejuicios. Porque la realidad es un prejuicio. Lo prueba el hecho de que nos lo esté diciendo alguien que ha realizado todo esto, ha conducido estas preguntas hasta sus límites, se ha paseado por las fronteras de la nada sin pagar los aranceles que son la muerte, y se ha acercado a la extinción.

Lo asombroso es que no nos lo esté diciendo un nihilista, un analfabeto que desprecie la cultura, sino uno de los hombres más leídos, más profundos, más rabiosamente cultos (así lo demuestra la abundante documentación que se evidencia tras esta prosa). Pero ni siquiera eso sabemos. Podría ser una erudición más o menos ficticia, o multiplicada mediante la palabra, como en el caso de Borges.

Todo esto en arte se traduce en una libertad total: radical y absurda. Cierto profesor de teoría de la literatura, de cuyo nombre sí quiero acordarme, siempre nos decía que el texto original, que la obra absolutamente nueva en todos y cada uno de sus constituyentes, era un imposible filosófico. Y lo es porque ese texto, esa obra, no sería reconocida como tal. La obra radicalmente nueva no se asemeja a nada, no es perceptible en cuanto obra de arte. Es un absurdo. No es ni siquiera una locura. Es una nada inconcebible. No puede existir.

Sam Beckett dice: vale la pena intentarlo. Esto es lo que nos propone: la creación pura, desde la nada. Es una cuestión de perspectiva, y no de resultados. Quizás Huidobro se aproximase a este estado de libertad taumatúrgica, que es la que, en el caso de Gerardo Diego, diferencia unos poemas de otros. El ciprés de Silos parte del ciprés de Silos. Gesta debe de partir de las proximidades de la nada conceptual, objetiva o exterior. Eso no significa que ambos poemas partan, según palabras del propio Diego, de su real gana poética. La diferencia entre un tipo de poemas y otro es meramente procedimental. Uno tiene referentes reales. El otro, no tanto.

Según Isaac Asimov (2), una entre las muchas teorías que intentan explicar el origen del universo es la del chorro primitivo. Consiste en una especie de explosión primitiva de energía de la que derivaría todo. La ordenación de toda esa energía desprendida es lo que diferenciaría el universo de la nada. Así se forma el arte según Beckett: a través de una manifestación arbitraria, fruto de la libre voluntad del artista. Así se crean nuevos universos, nuevas realidades.

Los críticos coinciden en señalar que los textos del autor posteriores a la segunda guerra mundial, si antes de ella indagaban en las contradicciones de la realidad, ya no pretenden vincularse con ella. Los personajes de Molloy, Malone muere o El Innombrable ya no se proponen entender ninguna realidad, por difusa que sea: han renunciado ella. No se proponen nada.

Un buen ejemplo de esto es Malone, suerte de anciano que vive recluido en lo que parece una habitación: sin recibir visita alguna. Malone no intenta recordar ya cómo llegó a la cama en la que convalece, se acerca al mundo a través de un bastón sin el cual se ve absolutamente indefenso. Como se ve, el autor es especialmente cruel con sus personajes. Para entretenerse, Malone intenta contarse una historia, la del joven Saposcat, pero fracasará una vez tras otra: Malone no soporta los tópicos de las historias de personas indefensas. La vida de Saposcat, Sapo, es un infierno. Malone no cree que la suya lo sea: todo le da igual. Se limpia con babas los puntos del cuerpo que nota sucias. Espía las nauseabundas relaciones sexuales de algún vecino (el sexo en Beckett aparece a menudo vinculado a la senectud). Hacia el final de la novela, que no es más que la suma de verbalizaciones mentales de Malone, vemos a este recluido en una suerte de manicomio u hospital. Durante una excursión, alguien llamado Lemuel asesina a todos sus compañeros con un hacha. Esto es lo último que se profiere en la novela:

ni con su lápiz ni con su bastón ni
ni luces luces quiero decir
nunca eso es tocará nunca
nunca tocará
eso es nunca
eso es eso es
nada

¿Quién es Malone? ¿Dónde ha estado durante toda la novela? ¿Quién es Lemuel? ¿Por qué comete el vil asesinato? ¿Se ha convertido Malone en Lemuel, o Lemuel en Malone? ¿Alguien se ha convertido en alguien? ¿Quiénes han muerto? ¿Qué significa eso es nada? ¿Muere Malone como vaticinaba en las primeras palabras de la novela? ¿Es Malone muere una novela? No parece haber respuestas. ¿Deben preocuparnos estas cuestiones?

Según Félix de Azúa, Beckett no busca una aproximación más o menos verosímil a la realidad sino la creación de una realidad independiente, una realidad literaria. Giacometti quería hacer un rostro, El Rostro, Beckett también quiere hacer, no imitar. Por eso todas sus obras son una sola obra y los géneros uno. (3)

¿No se parece este final de novela al del poema Altazor, de Vicente Huidobro ¿No intentan ambas obras alcanzar el mismo objetivo?

Hasta el siglo XX el arte partió de las cosas, quiso traducirlas a lenguajes distintos. El cubismo, el arte fauve,... hacía eso mismo pero pretendiendo acentuar el filtro que separaba el objeto del lienzo. Así el artista hacía de mediador descarado, más descarado que nunca, y aplicaba sus colores, su multiplicidad de perspectivas simultáneas, sus pruritos, sus visiones, sus abstracciones y, ¿por qué no?, sus voluntarias tonterías y puerilidades. Por eso el arte más contemporáneo expulsa a sus espectadores. Por eso los artistas más aplaudidos, más cotizados, más revolucionarios (pienso en Miró o en Tàpies) sean a la vez los más incomprendidos.

La pintura de los hermanos van Velde, los que Sam Beckett pone como ejemplos, (¿pintores ficticios?) no es ni abstracta, ni surrealista, ni cubista. No se preocupa de ser algo. Solo se preocupa de ser la nada, de plasmarla. Uno de estos dos hermanos no ha expuesto nunca. El otro realizó una exposición en Londres, en 1938.

La prosa es, en cierta forma, una aproximación a la obra de estos dos artistas, que practican algo más desquiciado que el automatismo: lo que hay en sus cerebros una vez vaciados de todo posible contenido. Por eso, dice Beckett, la pintura de uno de los hermanos es tan placentera. Porque libera, es una libertad que se aproxima al trance místico, la nada a ultranza, el garabato más insignificante, la más oculta y primordial de las pinceladas, mucho más cavernícola que la de los cavernícolas.

Una verdad no causal. Una arbitrariedad extrema, exenta de preocupaciones y de vinculaciones con el mundo exterior. Es la realidad autónoma, autosuficiente. Y por eso es, en cierto modo, relajante.

Estas concepciones son las que laten tras la obra de Samuel Beckett. ¿Qué hay detrás de ellas? ¿Qué se pretende? Una vez más nos lo contesta el fragmento citado cuando empezábamos: se trata de creer adivinar lo que se ama, de mantener abierto el espíritu. Porque traducir, comentar, comparar, es realizar la conversión de incomprensible a comprensible. El objetivo no es que esa conversión sea imposible, sino advertir que no es necesario hacerla. Eso no significa que no pueda hacerse, como la estoy haciendo yo. Eso significa que no pasa nada si no se hace: que somos libres de hacer lo que nos plazca con la obra. Podemos insultarla, olvidarla, calumniarla. Nada ni nadie debería exigirnos explicaciones. Otra cosa es lo que ocurra en nuestra sociedad. El juicio, la obligación de emitir enunciados exteriores que versen sobre tareas de los demás, es lo que arruina para Beckett el pensamiento humano. Lo que ha venido arruinándolo durante siglos de masoquismo conceptual.

Las frases siguientes ilustran la voluntad de libertad mental y receptiva, de libertad honrada. Son una crítica total al deber más o menos socializado de que el arte signifique, de que tenga que expresar, de que tenga que comprometerse con nuestro mundo habitual (el extracto reproduce estrictamente el orden del autor):

Eso llueve sobre los medios artísticos con una abundancia muy particular. Es una pena. Pues el arte no parece necesitar cataclismos para poder ejercerse.

Los estragos son ya considerables.

Con "Esto no es humano", está dicho todo. A la basura.

El día de mañana se le exigirá a la charcutería que sea humana.
Eso no es nada. Por lo menos estamos acostumbrados.

Lo que es propiamente espantoso es que el artista mismo lo admita.

El poeta que dice: no soy un hombre, no soy más que un poeta. El medio más rápido de hacer rimar amor y vacaciones pagadas.

El arte expresivo, tanto el formal como el informal, es un arte policial por lo que tiene de represor de la creatividad:

¿Quieren un existente adecuado? Pónganle un azul. Denle un silbato.

¿Les interesa el espacio? Hagamos que cruja.

¿Les atormenta el tiempo? Matémosle juntos.

¿La belleza? El hombre reunido.

¿La bondad? Extinguir.

¿La verdad? La ventosidad del mayor número.

Y el que modestamente nos parece uno de las más bellos pasajes formulables por un ser humano:

Se ha hecho lo imposible para que elija. Para que tome partido, para que acepte a priori, para que rechace a priori, para que deje de mirar, para que deje de existir, delante de una cosa que simplemente habría podido amar, o encontrar fea, sin saber por qué.

¿Puede existir amor al arte más sincero que el contenido en esta frase? ¿Puede aspirarse a mayor libertad? El verdadero arte, la verdadera escritura de Samuel Beckett se sitúan en otra realidad, la que resultó de la experiencia de la nada circundante, la realidad más verdadera que vive en el lenguaje, y que se alimenta de materia gris.

__________________

Notas:

(1) BECKETT, Samuel, Manchas en el silencio, Tusquets, Barcelona, 1990, págs. 25-52 (traducción de Jenaro Talens.)
(2) ASIMOV, Isaac, Cien preguntas básicas sobre la ciencia, Alianza, 1973.
(3) BECKETT, Samuel, Residua, Tusquets, Barcelona, 1969 (prólogo de Félix de Azúa).

Waiting for Godot

2009-10-02T19:58:00.000-07:00

Waiting for Godot
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Waiting for Godot

1st English edition (Grove Press) translated by the author
Written by Samuel Beckett

Characters Vladimir
Estragon
Pozzo
Lucky
The Boys
Mute Godot
Date premiered 5 January 1953 (1953-01-05)
Place premiered Théâtre de Babylone, Paris

Waiting for Godot (pronounced /godoot/) is a play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait for someone named Godot. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's premiere.

Voted "the most significant English language play of the 20th century"[1], Waiting for Godot is Beckett's translation of his own original French version, En attendant Godot, and is subtitled (in English only) "a tragicomedy in two acts".[2]

The original French text was composed between 9 October 1948, and 29 January 1949.[3] The première was on 5 January 1953 in the Théâtre de Babylone. The production was directed by Roger Blin, who also played the role of Pozzo.

Contents
1 Plot synopsis
1.1 Act I
1.2 Act II
2 Characters
2.1 Vladimir and Estragon
2.2 Pozzo and Lucky
2.3 The Boys
2.4 Godot
3 Setting
4 Interpretations
4.1 Samuel Beckett
4.2 Political interpretations
4.3 Freudian interpretations
4.4 Jungian interpretations
4.5 Existentialist interpretations
4.6 Biblical interpretations
4.7 Autobiographical interpretations
4.8 Homoerotic interpretations
4.9 Interpretations from compassion
4.10 Beckett's objection to female actors
5 History
6 Related works
7 Works inspired by Godot
8 References
9 External links

Plot synopsis
Act I
Waiting for Godot follows two days in the lives of a pair of men who divert themselves while they wait expectantly and unsuccessfully for someone named Godot to arrive. They claim him as an acquaintance but in fact hardly know him, admitting that they would not recognise him were they to see him. To occupy themselves, they eat, sleep, converse, argue, sing, play games, exercise, swap hats, and contemplate suicide — anything "to hold the terrible silence at bay".[4]

The play opens with the character Estragon struggling to remove his boot from his foot. Estragon eventually gives up, muttering, "Nothing to be done." His friend Vladimir takes up the thought and muses on it, the implication being that nothing is a thing that has to be done and this pair is going to have to spend the rest of the play doing it.[5] When Estragon finally succeeds in removing his boot, he looks and feels inside but finds nothing. Just prior to this, Vladimir peers into his hat. The motif recurs throughout the play.

The pair discuss repentance, particularly in relation to the two thieves crucified alongside Jesus, and that only one of the Four Evangelists mentions that one of them was saved. This is the first of numerous Biblical references in the play, which may be linked to its putative central theme of the search for and reconciliation with God, as well as salvation: "We're saved!" they cry on more than one occasion when they feel that Godot may be near.

Presently, Vladimir expresses his frustration with Estragon's limited conversational skills: "Come on, Gogo, return the ball, can't you, once in a while?". Estragon struggles in this regard throughout the play, and Vladimir generally takes the lead in their dialogue and encounters with others. Vladimir is at times hostile towards his companion, but in general they are close, frequently embracing and supporting one another.

Estragon peers out into the audience and comments on the bleakness of his surroundings. He wants to depart but is told that they cannot because they must wait for Godot. The pair cannot agree, however, on whether or not they are in the right place or that this is the arranged day for their meeting with Godot; indeed, they are not even sure what day it is. Throughout the play, experienced time is attenuated, fractured or eerily non-existent.[6] The only thing that they are fairly sure about is that they are to meet at a tree: there is one nearby.

Estragon dozes off, but Vladimir is not interested in hearing about his dream after rousing him. Estragon wants to hear an old joke about a brothel, which Vladimir starts but cannot finish, as he is suddenly compelled to rush off and urinate. He does not finish the story when he returns, asking Estragon instead what else they might do to pass the time. Estragon suggests that they hang themselves, but they quickly abandon the idea when it seems that they might not both die: this would leave one of them alone, an intolerable notion. They decide to do nothing: "It's safer," explains Estragon,[7] before asking what Godot is going to do for them when he arrives. For once it is Vladimir who struggles to remember: "Oh ... nothing very definite," is the best that he can manage.[7]

When Estragon declares that he is hungry, Vladimir provides a carrot, most of which, and without much relish, the former eats. The diversion ends as it began, Estragon announcing that they still have nothing to do.

Their waiting is interrupted by the passing through of Pozzo and his heavily-laden slave Lucky. "A terrible cry"[8] from the wings heralds the initial entrance of Lucky, who has a rope tied around his neck. He crosses half the stage before his master appears holding the other end. Pozzo barks orders at his slave and frequently calls him a "pig", but is civil towards the other two. They mistake him at first for Godot and clearly do not recognise him for the self-proclaimed personage he is. This irks him, but, while maintaining that the land that they are on is his, he acknowledges that "[t]he road is free to all".[9]

Deciding to rest for a while, Pozzo enjoys a pre-packed meal of chicken and wine. Finished, he casts the bones aside, and Estragon jumps at the chance to ask for them, much to Vladimir's embarrassment, but is told that they belong to the carrier. He must first, therefore, ask Lucky if he wants them. Estragon tries, but Lucky only hangs his head, refusing to answer. Taking this as a "no", Estragon claims the bones.

Vladimir takes Pozzo to task regarding his mistreatment of his slave, but his protestations are ignored. When the original pairing tries to find out why Lucky does not put down his load (at least not unless his master is prevailing on him to do something else), Pozzo explains that Lucky is attempting to mollify him to prevent him from selling him. At this, Lucky begins to cry. Pozzo provides a handkerchief, but, when Estragon tries to wipe his tears away, Lucky kicks him in the shins.

Before he leaves, Pozzo asks if he can do anything for the pair in exchange for the consort that they have accorded him. Estragon tries to ask for some money, but Vladimir cuts him short, explaining that they are not beggars. They nevertheless accept an offer to have Lucky dance and think.

The dance is clumsy and shuffling, and everyone is disappointed. Lucky's "think", induced by Vladimir's putting his hat on his head, is a lengthy and disjointed verbal stream of consciousness.[10] The soliloquy begins relatively coherently but quickly dissolves into logorrhoea and only ends when Vladimir rips off Lucky's hat.

The soliloquy is full of classical references, as well as words that are distorted versions of ordinary words, slang and vulgar speech — "Belcher" as "belch", "Fartov" as "fart", "Testew" as "testes", "Cunard" as the French 'conard' ('idiot' or 'prat'), "possy" as "pussy" and "Feckham" as "fuck him". Most of these words, although crude, describe normal human functions, which in some ways bring the discourse "down to earth".[citation needed] They also, however, represent or indicate a disordered and disintegrating mind, one perhaps disturbed by too much waiting.

Some other unusual words include "apathia", which is synonymous with "apathy"; "aphasia", the loss of ability to understand or to express speech owing to brain damage; and "athambia", the meaning of which has been subject to debate, but which may be broadly interpreted, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, as "imperturbability". The implication may be that God is unfeeling, unseeing and inattentive.[11] Also repeated is the word "quaquaqua", which may simply be meaningless sound, but which is similar to "quaquaversal", which means "pointing in every direction", appropriate to Lucky's roundabout discourse.

Broadly speaking, Lucky's speech falls into four gambits: "the first describes an impersonal and callous God, the second asserts that man 'wastes and pines', the third mourns an inhospitable earth and the last attempts to draw the threads of the speech together by claiming that man diminishes in a world that does not nurture him."[12] It may be summarised as follows:

[A]cknowledging the existence of a personal God, one who exists outside time and who loves us dearly and who suffers with those who are plunged into torment, it is established beyond all doubt that man for reasons unknown, has left his labours, abandoned, unfinished.[13]

Once Lucky has been revived, Pozzo has him pack up his things and, together, they leave. At the end of the act (and its successor), a boy arrives, purporting to be a messenger sent from Godot, to advise the pair that he will not be coming that "evening but surely tomorrow."[14] During Vladimir's interrogation of the boy, he asks if he came the day before, making it apparent that the two men have been waiting for an indefinite period and will likely continue to wait ad infinitum. After the boy departs, they decide to leave but make no attempt to do so, an action repeated in Act II, as the curtain is drawn.

[edit] Act II
Act II opens with Vladimir singing a recursive round about a dog which serves to illustrate the cyclical nature of the play’s universe, and also points toward the play's debt to the carnivalesque, music hall traditions, and vaudeville comedy (this is only one of a number of canine references and allusions in the play). There is a bit of realisation on Vladimir's part that the world they are trapped in evinces convoluted progression (or lack thereof) of time. He begins to see that although there is notional evidence of linear progression, basically he is living the same day over and over. Eugene Webb writes of Vladimir's song that [15] “Time in the song is not a linear sequence, but an endlessly reiterated moment, the content of which is only one eternal event: death.”[16]

Once again Estragon maintains he spent the night in a ditch and was beaten – by “ten of them”[17] this time – though once again he shows no sign of injury. Vladimir tries to talk to him about what appears to be a seasonal change in the tree and the proceedings of the day before, but he has only a vague recollection. Vladimir tries to get Estragon to remember Pozzo and Lucky but all he can call to mind are the bones and getting kicked. Vladimir realises here an opportunity to produce tangible evidence of the previous day's events. With some difficulty he gets Estragon to show him his leg. There is a wound which is beginning to fester. It is then Vladimir notices that Estragon is not wearing any boots.

He discovers the pair of boots, which Estragon insists are not his. Nevertheless, when he tries them on they fit. There being no carrots left, Vladimir offers Estragon the choice between a turnip and a radish. He opts for the radish but it is black and he hands it back. He decides to try and sleep again and adopts the same fetal position as the previous day. Vladimir sings him a lullaby.

Vladimir notices Lucky’s hat, and he decides to try it on. This leads to a frenetic hat swapping scene. They play at imitating Pozzo and Lucky, but Estragon can barely remember having met them and simply does what Vladimir asks. They fire insults at each other and then make up. After that, they attempt some physical jerks which don’t work out well, and even attempt a single yoga position, which fails miserably.

Pozzo and Lucky then arrive, with Pozzo now blind and insisting that Lucky is dumb. The rope is now much shorter and Lucky – who has acquired a new hat – leads Pozzo, rather than being driven by him. Pozzo has lost all notion of time, and assures them he cannot remember meeting them the day before, and that he does not expect to remember the current day’s events when they are over.

They fall in a heap at one point. Estragon sees an opportunity to extort more food or to exact revenge on Lucky for kicking him. The issue is debated at length. Pozzo offers them money but Vladimir sees more worth in their entertainment value since they are compelled to wait to see if Godot arrives anyway. Eventually though, they all find their way onto their feet.

Whereas the Pozzo in Act I is a windbag, since he has become blind he appears to have gained some insight. His parting words – which Vladimir expands upon later – eloquently encapsulate the brevity of human existence: “They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.”[18]

Lucky and Pozzo depart. The same boy returns to inform them not to expect Godot today, but he would arrive the next day. The two again consider suicide but their rope, Estragon’s belt, breaks in two when they tug on it. Estragon's trousers fall down, but he doesn’t notice till Vladimir tells him to pull them up. They resolve to bring a more suitable piece and hang themselves the next day, if Godot fails to arrive.

Again, they agree to leave but neither of them makes any move to go.

Characters
Beckett refrained from elaborating on the characters beyond what he had written in the play. He once recalled them when Sir Ralph Richardson “wanted the low-down on Pozzo, his home address and curriculum vitae, and seemed to make the forthcoming of this and similar information the condition of his condescending to illustrate the part of Vladimir … I told him that all I knew about Pozzo was in the text, that if I had known more I would have put it in the text, and that was true also of the other characters.”[19]
Vladimir and Estragon
When Beckett started writing he did not have a visual image of Vladimir and Estragon. They are never referred to as tramps in the text. Roger Blin advises: “Beckett heard their voices, but he couldn’t describe his characters to me. [He said]: ‘The only thing I’m sure of is that they’re wearing bowlers.’”[20] “The bowler hat was of course de rigueur for male persons in many social contexts when Beckett was growing up in Foxrock (when he first came back with his beret … his mother suggested that he was letting the family down by not wearing a bowler), and [his father] commonly wore one.”[21] There are no physical descriptions of either of the two characters. However, the text indicates that Vladimir is likely the heavier of the pair. They have been together for fifty years but when asked – by Pozzo – they don’t reveal their actual ages. The bowlers and other comic aspects of their personas have reminded modern audiences of Laurel and Hardy, who occasionally played tramps in their films. (Beckett alludes to the team specifically in his novel Watt (1953), when a healthy shrub is described at one point as "a hardy laurel".)

Vladimir stands through most of the play whereas Estragon sits down numerous times and even dozes off. “Estragon is inert and Vladimir restless.”[22] Vladimir looks at the sky and muses on religious or philosophical matters. Estragon “belongs to the stone”,[23] preoccupied with mundane things, what he can get to eat and how to ease his physical aches and pains; he is direct, intuitive. He finds it hard to remember but can recall certain things when prompted, e.g. when Vladimir asks: “Do you remember the Gospels?”[24] Estragon tells him about the coloured maps of the Holy Land and that he planned to honeymoon by the Dead Sea; it is his short-term memory that is poorest and points to the fact that he may, in fact, be suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.[25] Al Alvarez writes. “But perhaps Estragon’s forgetfulness is the cement binding their relationship together. He continually forgets, Vladimir continually reminds him; between them they pass the time.”[26]

Vladimir’s life is not without its discomforts too but he is the more resilient of the pair. “Vladimir's pain is primarily mental anguish, which would thus account for his voluntary exchange of his hat for Lucky's, thus signifying Vladimir's symbolic desire for another person's thoughts.”[27]

Throughout the play the couple refer to each other by pet names, “Didi” and “Gogo” although one of the boys addresses Vladimir as “Mister Albert”. Beckett originally intended to call Estragon, Lévy but when Pozzo questions him he gives his name as “Magrégor, André”[28] and also responds to “Catulle” in French or “Catullus” in the first Faber edition. This became “Adam” in the American edition. Beckett’s only explanation was that he was “fed up with Catullus”.[29]

Vivian Mercier – famous for describing Waiting for Godot as a play which “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.)[30] – once questioned Beckett on the language used by the pair: “It seemed to me … he made Didi and Gogo sound as if they had earned Ph.D.’s. ‘How do you know they hadn’t?’ was his reply.”[31] They clearly have known better times, a visit to the Eiffel Tower and grape-harvesting by the Rhône; it is about all either has to say about their pasts. In the first stage production, which Beckett oversaw, both are “more shabby-genteel than ragged … Vladimir at least is capable of being scandalised … on a matter of etiquette when Estragon begs for chicken bones or money.”[32]

[edit] Pozzo and Lucky

Mehdi Bajestani, as Lucky, (from a production by Naqshineh Theatre).Although Beckett refused to be drawn on the backgrounds of the characters this has not stopped actors looking for their own motivation. Jean Martin had a doctor friend called Marthe Gautier, who was working at the Salpêtrièe Hospital, and he said to her: “‘Listen, Marthe, what could I find that would provide some kind of physiological explanation for a voice like the one written in the text?’ [She] said: ‘Well, it might be a good idea if you went to see the people who have Parkinson's disease.’ So I asked her about the disease … She explained how it begins with a trembling, which gets more and more noticeable, until later the patient can no longer speak without the voice shaking. So I said, ‘That sounds exactly what I need.’”[33] “Sam and Roger were not entirely convinced by my interpretation but had no objections.”[34] When he explained to Beckett that he was playing Lucky as if he were suffering from Parkinson’s, Beckett said, “‘Yes, of course.’ He mentioned briefly that his mother had had Parkinson’s, but quickly moved on to another subject.”[35]

“When Beckett was asked why Lucky was so named, he replied, “I suppose he is lucky to have no more expectations…”[36]

Although it has been contended that "Pozzo and Lucky are simply Didi and Gogo writ large"[37] there is a different kind of dynamic at work here. Pozzo may be mistaken for Godot by the two men but, as far as Lucky goes, Pozzo is his Godot, another way in which he is lucky. Their association is not as clear cut as it first seems however for “upon closer inspection, it becomes evident that Lucky always possessed more influence in the relationship, for he danced, and more importantly, thought – not as a service, but in order to fill a vacant need of Pozzo: he committed all of these acts for Pozzo. As such, since the first appearance of the duo, the true slave had always been Pozzo.”[27] Pozzo credits Lucky with having given him all the culture, refinement, and ability to reason that he possesses. His rhetoric has been learned by rote. Pozzo’s ‘party piece’ on the sky is a case in point, as his memory crumbles he finds himself unable to continue under his own steam.

We learn very little about Pozzo besides the fact that he is on his way to the fair to sell his slave, Lucky. He presents himself very much as the Ascendancy landlord, bullying and conceited. His pipe is made by Kapp and Peterson, Dublin’s best-known tobacconists (their slogan was ‘The thinking man’s pipe’) which he refers to as a “briar” but which Estragon calls a “dudeen” emphasising the differences in their social standing. He confesses to a poor memory but it is more a result of an abiding self-absorption. “Pozzo is a character who has to overcompensate. That’s why he overdoes things … and his overcompensation has to do with a deep insecurity in him. These were things Beckett said, psychological terms he used.”[38]

Pozzo controls Lucky by means of an extremely long rope which he jerks and tugs if Lucky is the least bit slow. Lucky is the absolutely subservient slave of Pozzo and he unquestioningly does his every bidding with “dog-like devotion”.[39] He struggles with a heavy suitcase without ever thinking of dropping it. Lucky speaks only once in the play and it is a result of Pozzo's order to “think” for Estragon and Vladimir. Pozzo and Lucky had been together for sixty years and, in that time, their relationship has deteriorated. Lucky has always been the intellectually superior but now, with age, he has become an object of contempt: his “think” is a caricature of intellectual thought and his “dance” is a sorry sight. Despite his horrid treatment at Pozzo's hand however, Lucky remains completely faithful to him. Even in the second act when Pozzo has inexplicably gone blind, and needs to be led by Lucky rather than driving him as he had done before, Lucky remains faithful and has not tried to run away; they are clearly bound together by more than a piece of rope in the same way that Didi and Gogo are “[t]ied to Godot”.[40] Beckett’s advice to the American director Alan Schneider was: “[Pozzo] is a hypomaniac and the only way to play him is to play him mad.”[22]

“In his [English] translation … Beckett struggled to retain the French atmosphere as much as possible, so that he delegated all the English names and places to Lucky, whose own name, he thought, suggested such a correlation.”[41]

[edit] The Boys
The cast list specifies only one boy.

The boy in Act I, a local lad, assures Vladimir that this is the first time he has seen him. He says he was not there the previous day. He confirms he works for Mr Godot as a goatherd. His brother, who Godot beats, is a shepherd. Godot feeds both of them and allows them to sleep in his hayloft.

The boy in Act II also assures Vladimir that it was not he who called upon them the day before. He insists that this too is his first visit. When Vladimir asks what Godot does the boy tells him, “He does nothing, sir.”[42] We also learn he has a white beard – possibly, the boy is not certain. This boy also has a brother who it seems is sick but there is no clear evidence to suggest that his brother is the boy that came in Act I or the one who came the day before that.

As messengers from Godot, those who take a Christian interpretation of the play naturally cast the boys in the role of angels.[citation needed]

[edit] Godot
The identity of Godot has been the subject of much debate. “When Colin Duckworth asked Beckett point-blank whether Pozzo was Godot, the author replied: ‘No. It is just implied in the text, but it's not true.’”[43]

“When Roger Blin asked him who or what Godot stood for, Beckett replied that it suggested itself to him by the slang word for boot in French, godillot, godasse because feet play such a prominent role in the play. This is the explanation he has given most often.”[44]

“Beckett said to Peter Woodthorpe that he regretted calling the absent character ‘Godot’, because of all the theories involving God to which this had given rise.[45] “I also told [Ralph] Richardson that if by Godot I had meant God I would [have] said God, and not Godot. This seemed to disappoint him greatly.”[46] That said, Beckett did once concede, “It would be fatuous of me to pretend that I am not aware of the meanings attached to the word ‘Godot’, and the opinion of many that it means ‘God’. But you must remember – I wrote the play in French, and if I did have that meaning in my mind, it was somewhere in my unconscious and I was not overtly aware of it.”[47] This is an interesting remark, especially considering that “Beckett has often stressed the strong unconscious impulses that partly control his writing; he has even spoken of being ‘in a trance’ when he writes.”[48]

Unlike elsewhere in Beckett's work, no bicycle appears in this play, but Hugh Kenner in his essay "The Cartesian Centaur" [49] reports that Beckett once, when asked about the meaning of Godot, mentioned "a veteran racing cyclist, bald, a 'stayer,' recurrent placeman in town-to-town and national championships, Christian name elusive, surname Godeau, pronounced, of course, no differently from Godot." Waiting for Godot is clearly not about track cycling, but is said that Beckett himself did wait for French cyclist Roger Godeau (1920-2000; a professional cyclist from 1943 to 1961), outside the velodrome in Roubaix.

What if Godot were to arrive? The Christian reading of the play suggests that were this to happen only one of the two tramps would benefit. Of the two thieves crucified along with Jesus only one was saved, of the two boys who work for Godot only one appears safe from beatings, “Beckett said, only half-jokingly, that one of Estragon’s feet was saved”;[50] it is perhaps better for the pair of them that he does not come.

The name "Godot" is pronounced in Britain and Ireland with the emphasis on the first syllable, /ˈɡɒdoʊ/); in North America it is usually pronounced with an emphasis on the second syllable, /ɡəˈdoʊ/. Beckett himself said the emphasis should be on the first syllable, and that the North American pronunciation is a mistake. [1] The T is silent.

Setting
There is only one scene throughout both acts. Two men are waiting on a country road by a tree. The script calls for Estragon to sit on a low mound but in practice – as in Beckett’s own 1975 German production – this is usually a stone. In the first act the tree is bare. In the second, a few leaves have appeared despite the script specifying that it is the next day. The minimal description calls to mind “the idea of the ‘lieu vague’, a location which should not be particularised”.[51]

Alan Schneider once suggested putting the play on in a round – Pozzo has often been commented on as a ringmaster[52] – but Beckett dissuaded him: “I don’t in my ignorance agree with the round and feel Godot needs a very closed box.” He once even contemplated at one point having “faint shadow of bars on stage floor” but, in the end, decided against this level of what he called “explicitation”. (See Beckett in Berlin) In his 1975 Schiller-Theatre production there are times when Didi and Gogo appear to bounce off something “like birds trapped in the strands of [an invisible] net”, to use James Knowlson’s description. Didi and Gogo are only trapped because they still cling to the concept that freedom is possible; freedom is a state of mind, so is imprisonment.

[edit] Interpretations
[edit] Samuel Beckett
Beckett's interpretation:[53]

"Because the play is so stripped down, so elemental, it invites all kinds of social and political and religious interpretation," wrote Normand Berlin in a tribute to the play in Autumn 1999, "with Beckett himself placed in different schools of thought, different movements and 'ism's. The attempts to pin him down have not been successful, but the desire to do so is natural when we encounter a writer whose minimalist art reaches for bedrock reality. 'Less' forces us to look for 'more,' and the need to talk about Godot and about Beckett has resulted in a steady outpouring of books and articles."[54]

Throughout Waiting for Godot, the reader or viewer may encounter religious, philosophical, classical, psychoanalytical and biographical — especially wartime — references. There are ritualistic aspects and elements literally lifted from vaudeville[55] and there is a danger in making more of these than what they are: that is, merely structural conveniences, avatars into which the writer places his fictional characters. The play "exploits several archetypal forms and situations, all of which lend themselves to both comedy and pathos."[56] Beckett makes this point emphatically clear in the opening notes to Film: "No truth value attaches to the above, regarded as of merely structural and dramatic convenience."[57] He made another important remark to Lawrence Harvey, saying that his "work does not depend on experience — [it is] not a record of experience. Of course you use it."[58]

Beckett tired quickly of "the endless misunderstanding". As far back as 1955, he remarked, "Why people have to complicate a thing so simple I can't make out."[59] He was not forthcoming with anything more than cryptic clues, however: "Peter Woodthrope [who played Estragon] remembered asking him one day in a taxi what the play was really about: 'It's all symbiosis, Peter; it's symbiosis,' answered Beckett."[60]

Beckett directed the play for the Schiller-Theatre in 1975. Although he had overseen many productions, this was the first time that he had taken complete control. Walter Asmus was his conscientious young assistant director. The production was not naturalistic. Beckett explained,

It is a game, everything is a game. When all four of them are lying on the ground, that cannot be handled naturalistically. That has got to be done artificially, balletically. Otherwise everything becomes an imitation, an imitation of reality [...]. It should become clear and transparent, not dry. It is a game in order to survive."[61]

Over the years, Beckett clearly realised that the greater part of Godot's success came down to the fact that it was open to a variety of readings and that this was not necessarily a bad thing. Beckett himself sanctioned "one of the most famous mixed-race productions of Godot, performed at the Baxter Theatre in the University of Cape Town, directed by Donald Howarth, with [...] two black actors, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, playing Didi and Gogo; Pozzo, dressed in checked shirt and gumboots reminiscent of an Afrikaner landlord, and Lucky ('a shanty town piece of white trash'[62]) were played by two white actors, Bill Flynn and Peter Piccolo [...]. The Baxter production has often been portrayed as if it were an explicitly political production, when in fact it received very little emphasis.[citation needed] What such a reaction showed, however, was that, although the play can in no way be taken as a political allegory, there are elements that are relevant to any local situation in which one man is being exploited or oppressed by another."[63]

[edit] Political interpretations
"It was seen as an allegory of the cold war"[64] or of French resistance to the Germans. Graham Hassell writes, "[T]he intrusion of Pozzo and Lucky [...] seems like nothing more than a metaphor for Ireland's view of mainland Britain, where society has ever been blighted by a greedy ruling élite keeping the working classes passive and ignorant by whatever means."[65]

The pair is often played with Irish accents, as in the Beckett on Film project. This, some feel, is an inevitable consequence of Beckett's rhythms and phraseology, but it is not stipulated in the text. At any rate, they are not of English stock: at one point early in the play, Estragon mocks the English pronunciation of "calm" and has fun with "the story of the Englishman in the brothel".[66]

[edit] Freudian interpretations
"Bernard Dukore develops a triadic theory in Didi, Gogo and the absent Godot, based on Freud's trinitarian description of the psyche in The Ego and the Id (1923) and the usage of onomastic techniques. Dukore defines the characters by what they lack: the rational Go-go embodies the incomplete ego, the missing pleasure principle: (e)go-(e)go. Di-di (id-id) — who is more instinctual and irrational — is seen as the backward id or subversion of the rational principle. Godot fulfils the function of the superego or moral standards. Pozzo and Lucky are just re-iterations of the main protagonists. Dukore finally sees Beckett's play as a metaphor for the futility of man's existence when salvation is expected from an external entity, and the self is denied introspection."[67]

Jungian interpretations
"The four archetypal personalities or the four aspects of the soul are grouped in two pairs: the ego and the shadow, the persona and the soul's image (animus or anima). The shadow is the container of all our despised emotions repressed by the ego. Lucky, the shadow serves as the polar opposite of the egocentric Pozzo, prototype of prosperous mediocrity, who incessantly controls and persecutes his subordinate, thus symbolising the oppression of the unconscious shadow by the despotic ego. Lucky's monologue in Act I appears as a manifestation of a stream of repressed unconsciousness, as he is allowed to "think" for his master. Estragon's name has another connotation, besides that of the aromatic herb, tarragon: "estragon" is a cognate of oestrogen, the female hormone (Carter, 130). This prompts us to identify him with the anima, the feminine image of Vladimir's soul. It explains Estragon's propensity for poetry, his sensitivity and dreams, his irrational moods. Vladimir appears as the complementary masculine principle, or perhaps the rational persona of the contemplative type."[68]

Existentialist interpretations
Broadly speaking, existentialists hold that there are certain questions that everyone must deal with if they are to take human life seriously, questions such as death, the meaning of human existence and the place of (or lack of) God in that existence. By and large, they believe that life is very difficult and without an "objective" or universally known value: the individual must create value by affirming it and living it, not by talking about it. The play may be seen to touch on all of these issues.

[edit] Biblical interpretations
Much can be read into Beckett's inclusion of the story of the two thieves from Luke 23:39-43 and the ensuing discussion of repentance. It is easy to see the solitary tree as representative of the Christian cross or, indeed, the tree of life. Similarly, because Lucky describes God as having a white beard, and Godot, if the boy's testimony is to be believed, also has a white beard, many see God and Godot as one and the same. Vladimir's "Christ have mercy upon us!"[69] could be taken as evidence that that is at least what he believes.

This reading is given further weight early in the first act when Estragon asks Vladimir what it is that he has requested from Godot:

VLADIMIR: Oh ... nothing very definite.

ESTRAGON: A kind of prayer.

VLADIMIR: Precisely.

ESTRAGON: A vague supplication.

VLADIMIR: Exactly.[70]

Much of the play, sated as it is in scriptural allusion, deals with the subject of religion. The boy claims to be a goatherd, while his brother, he says, is a shepherd: in the Bible, goats represent the damned and sheep those who have been saved.

According to Anthony Cronin, "[Beckett] always possessed a Bible, at the end more than one edition, and Bible concordances were always among the reference books on his shelves."[71] Beckett himself was quite open on the issue: "Christianity is a mythology with which I am perfectly familiar so I naturally use it."[72] As Cronin (one of his biographers) points out, his biblical references "may be ironic or even sarcastic".[73]

"In answer to a defence counsel question in 1937 (during a libel action brought by his uncle) as to whether he was a Christian, Jew or atheist, Beckett replied, 'None of the three'".[74] Looking at Beckett's entire œuvre, Mary Bryden observed that "the hypothesised God who emerges from Beckett's texts is one who is both cursed for his perverse absence and cursed for his surveillant presence. He is by turns dismissed, satirised, or ignored, but he, and his tortured son, are never definitively discarded."[75]

[edit] Autobiographical interpretations
Waiting for Godot has been described as a "metaphor for the long walk into Roussillon, when Beckett and Suzanne slept in haystacks [...] during the day and walked by night [... or] of the relationship of Beckett to Joyce."[76] The earliest drafts contain significant personal references, but these were later excised.[citation needed]

Homoerotic interpretations
That the play calls on only male actors, with scarcely a reference to women, has caused some to look upon Vladimir and Estragon's relationship as quasi-marital: "they bicker, they embrace each other, they depend upon each other [.... T]hey might be thought of as a married couple."[77]

Certainly, the pair has a long history — "Who am I to tell my private nightmares to if I can't tell them to you?" asks Gogo of Didi in the opening act[78] — and frequently displays intimacy, although none of it overtly homosexual. In Act One, Estragon speaks gently to his partner, approaching him slowly and laying a hand on his shoulder. After asking for his hand in turn and telling him not to be stubborn, he suddenly embraces him but backs off just as quickly, complaining, "You stink of garlic!"[79]

When Estragon reminisces about his occasional glances at the Bible and remembers how prettily coloured were the maps of the Dead Sea, he remarks, "That's where we'll go, I used to say, that's where we'll go for our honeymoon. We'll swim. We'll be happy."[80] These words do much to buttress the homoerotic standpoint, for no mention is made of either protagonist's wife, leading to the assumption that Estragon's honeymoon would have been with Vladimir. On one occasion, too, Beckett has Estragon "[w]heedling" a fraught Vladimir "[v]oluptuously".[78]

It is also notable that the temptation to achieve post-mortem erections arises in the context of a world without females, and that the pair wishes to achieve them together. Estragon in particular is "[h]ighly excited", in contrast with Vladimir, who chooses this moment to talk about shrieking mandrakes.[79] His apparent indifference to his partner's arousal may be viewed as a sort of playful teasing.

Their apparent affiliation as soulmates has much to recommend it, as their dialogue frequently regresses into a soliloquy spoken by two, with each extending the other's train of thought, much as married couples are known to do:

ESTRAGON: And what did he reply?

VLADIMIR: That he'd see.

ESTRAGON: That he couldn't promise anything.

VLADIMIR: That he'd have to think it over.

ESTRAGON: In the quiet of his home.

VLADIMIR: Consult his family.

ESTRAGON: His friends.

VLADIMIR: His agents.

ESTRAGON: His correspondents.

VLADIMIR: His books.

ESTRAGON: His bank account.

VLADIMIR: Before taking a decision.[81]

Another, albeit less concrete, instance of possible homoeroticism has been discerned in the segment in which Estragon "sucks the end of it [his carrot]",[82] although Beckett describes this as a meditative action.[82]

Interpretations from compassion

All pairs in the play show a lack of compassion — sometimes brutally, as when the main characters, always looking at the advantage to themselves, seek to kick, instead of help, Pozzo, who is calling out piteously for help over and over again. Is the island, with its single tree, a place of purgatory in which the pairs eternally await an expression of compassion for their fellow, as one evildoer expresses towards the Christ on the Cross? Is Godot in fact not a man but a personification of compassion that only arrives when created in the breast of man himself?

Just after Didi and Gogo have been particularly selfish and callous, the boy comes to say that Godot is not coming. The boy (or pair of boys) may be seen to represent meekness and hope before compassion is consciously excluded by an evolving personality and character, and may be the youthful Pozzo and Lucky; in which case, Lucky would be the brother allegedly beaten by Godot.[dubious – discuss] That would make Pozzo Godot, but, since both of the main characters also beat Lucky, they, too, are Godot.[dubious – discuss]

Thus Godot is compassion and fails to arrive every day, as he says he will. No-one is concerned that a boy is beaten.[83] In this interpretation, there is the irony that only by changing their hearts to be compassionate can the characters fixed to the tree move on and cease to have to wait for Godot.

The leaves on the tree may signify decades or even centuries of circumlocution, like a prisoner counting off days of imprisonment. The men, like the pair crucified with "the saviour" (id est, Jesus Christ), find themselves fixed to a tree and faced with the certainty of death and the uncertainty of life. If one was compassionate, his destiny would be different to the other, for he would await the "saviour" for life;[dubious – discuss] the other would await the opportunity for exercising compassion, which is the purpose of human existence.[dubious – discuss]

Finally, it has been seen to explain the famous plot in which nothing happens: nothing is lack of compassion and empathy for one's fellow on earth — a failure to love, which makes life pointless, whatever is pursued and however long one lives. This nothing, to the pair, seems infernally eternal. At many points in the play, there are opportunities for compassion to be shown, as in leading the blind Pozzo, which would have spirited the tortured souls away from the tree no longer as two but as four.[dubious – discuss] The repeated answer that they cannot leave because they are waiting for Godot would not apply because they would recognise that he is already there and has eternally ended his hold on them. If there is a message in this play, under this interpretation it could be the uncomplicated one that loving others is the purpose of each day of life, and the alternative is to await the next day to avoid a futile existence.

Beckett's objection to female actors
Beckett was not open to most interpretative approaches to his work. He famously objected when, in the 1980s, several women's acting companies began to stage the play. "Women don't have prostates," said Beckett,[84] a reference to the fact that Vladimir frequently has to leave the stage to urinate.

In 1988, Beckett took a Dutch theatre company, De Haarlemse Toneelschuur to court over this issue. "Beckett [...] lost his case. But the issue of gender seemed to him to be so vital a distinction for a playwright to make that he reacted angrily, instituting a ban on all productions of his plays in The Netherlands."[85] In 1991, however, "Judge Huguette Le Foyer de Costil ruled that the production would not cause excessive damage to Beckett's legacy", and the play was duly performed by the all-female cast of the Brut de Beton Theater Company at the prestigious Avignon Festival.[86]

The Italian Pontedera Theatre Foundation won a similar claim in 2006 when it cast two actresses in the roles of Vladimir and Estragon, albeit in the characters' traditional roles as males.[87] At the 1995 Acco Festival, director Nola Chilton staged a production with Daniella Michaeli in the role of Lucky[88], and a 2001 production at Indiana University staged the play with women playing Pozzo and the Boy.[citation needed]

[edit] History
“[I]t was Beckett’s escape from the increasingly despotic interiority of the fictional trilogy; in Beckett’s own phrasing, ‘I began to write Godot as a relaxation, to get away from the awful prose I was writing at the time.’”[89] It was inspired, according to Beckett himself, by a painting by Caspar David Friedrich. Ruby Cohn recalls seeing the painting, Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon of 1824, along with Beckett who “announced unequivocally, ‘This was the source of Waiting for Godot, you know.’”[90] “He may well have confused two paintings since, at other times, he drew the attention of friends to Two Men Contemplating the Moon from 1819, in which two men dressed in cloaks and viewed from the rear are looking at a full moon framed by the black branches of a large, leafless tree.”[91] In either case both paintings are similar enough that what he attested to could apply equally to either. However, some sources point to conversations between Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil and Beckett in Roussillon as the inspiration for the work. Beckett admitted such in a New York Post interview by Jerry Tallmer [2].

“[O]n 17 February 1952 … an abridged version of the play was performed in the studio of the Club d’Essai de la Radio and was broadcast on [French] radio … [A]lthough he sent a polite note that Roger Blin read out, Beckett himself did not turn up.”[92] Part of his introduction reads:

I don’t know who Godot is. I don’t even know (above all don’t know) if he exists. And I don’t know if they believe in him or not – those two who are waiting for him. The other two who pass by towards the end of each of the two acts, that must be to break up the monotony. All I knew I showed. It’s not much, but it’s enough for me, by a wide margin. I’ll even say that I would have been satisfied with less. As for wanting to find in all that a broader, loftier meaning to carry away from the performance, along with the program and the Eskimo pie, I cannot see the point of it. But it must be possible … Estragon, Vladimir, Pozzo, Lucky, their time and their space, I was able to know them a little, but far from the need to understand. Maybe they owe you explanations. Let them supply it. Without me. They and I are through with each other.[93]
The Minuit edition appeared in print on 17 October 1952 in advance of the play’s first full theatrical performance. On 4 January 1953, “[t]hirty reviewers came to the générale of En attendant Godot before the public opening … Contrary to later legend, the reviewers were kind … Some dozen reviews in daily newspapers range[d] from tolerant to enthusiastic ... Reviews in the weeklies [were] longer and more fervent; moreover, they appeared in time to lure spectators to that first thirty-day run”[94] which began on 5 January 1953 at the Théâtre de Babylone, Paris. Early public performances were not, however, without incident: during one performance “the curtain had to be brought down after Lucky’s monologue as twenty, well-dressed, but disgruntled spectators whistled and hooted derisively … One of the protesters [even] wrote a vituperative letter dated 2 February 1953 to Le Monde.”[95]

The cast comprised Pierre Latour (Estragon), Lucien Raimbourg (Vladimir), Jean Martin (Lucky) and Roger Blin (Pozzo). The actor due to play Pozzo found a more remunerative role and so the director – a shy, lean man in real life – had to step in and play the stout bombaster himself with a pillow amplifying his stomach. Both boys were played by Serge Lecointe. The entire production was done on the thinnest of shoestring budgets; the large battered valise that Martin carried “was found among the city’s refuse by the husband of the theatre dresser on his rounds as he worked clearing the dustbins,”[96] for example.

A particularly significant production – from Beckett’s perspective – took place in Lüttringhausen Prison near Wuppertal in Germany. An inmate obtained a copy of the French first edition, translated it himself into German and obtained permission to stage the play. The first night had been on 29 November 1953. He wrote to Beckett in October 1954: “You will be surprised to be receiving a letter about your play Waiting for Godot, from a prison where so many thieves, forgers, toughs, homos, crazy men and killers spend this bitch of a life waiting … and waiting … and waiting. Waiting for what? Godot? Perhaps.”[97] Beckett was intensely moved and intended to visit the prison to see a last performance of the play but it never happened. This marked “the beginning of Beckett’s enduring links with prisons and prisoners … He took a tremendous interest in productions of his plays performed in prisons … He even gave Rick Cluchey a former prisoner from San Quentin financial and moral support over a period of many years.”[98] Cluchey played Vladimir in two productions in the former Gallows room of the San Quentin California State Prison, which had been converted into a 65-seat theatre and, like the German prisoner before him, went on to work on a variety of Beckett’s plays after his release.

The English-language premiere was on 3 August 1955 at the Arts Theatre, London, directed by the 24-year-old Peter Hall Again, the printed version preceded it (New York: Grove Press, 1954) but Faber’s “mutilated” edition did not materialise until 1956. A “corrected” edition was subsequently produced in 1965. “The most accurate text is in Theatrical Notebooks I, (Ed.) Dougald McMillan and James Knowlson (Faber and Grove, 1993). It is based on Beckett’s revisions for his Schiller-Theatre production (1975) and the London San Quentin Drama Workshop, based on the Schiller production but revised further at the Riverside Studios (March 1984).”[99]

Like all of Beckett’s translations, Waiting for Godot is not simply a literal translation of En attendant Godot. “Small but significant differences separate the French and English text. Some, like Vladimir’s inability to remember the farmer’s name (Bonnelly[100]), show how the translation became more indefinite, attrition and loss of memory more pronounced.”[101] A number of biographical details were removed, all adding to a general “vaguening”[102] of the text which he continued to trim for the rest of his life.

In the nineteen-fifties, theatre was strictly censored in the UK, to Beckett's amazement since he thought it a bastion of free speech. The Lord Chamberlain insisted that the word "erection" be removed, “‘Fartov’ became ‘Popov’ and Mrs Gozzo had ‘warts’ instead of ‘clap’”.[103] Indeed, there were attempts to ban the play completely. For example, Lady Dorothy Howitt wrote to the Lord Chamberlain, saying: "One of the many themes running through the play is the desire of two old tramps continually to relieve themselves. Such a dramatisation of lavatory necessities is offensive and against all sense of British decency."[104] “The first unexpurgated version of Godot in England … opened at the Royal Court on 30 December 1964.”[105]

The London run was not without incident. The actor Peter Bull, who played Pozzo, recalls the reaction of that first night audience:

“Waves of hostility came whirling over the footlights, and the mass exodus, which was to form such a feature of the run of the piece, started quite soon after the curtain had risen. The audible groans were also fairly disconcerting … The curtain fell to mild applause, we took a scant three calls (Peter Woodthorpe reports only one curtain call[106]) and a depression and a sense of anti-climax descended on us all.”[107]
The critics were less than unkind but “[e]verything changed on Sunday 7 August 1955 with Kenneth Tynan’s and Harold Hobson’s reviews in The Observer and The Sunday Times. Beckett was always grateful to the two reviewers for their support … which more or less transformed the play overnight into the rage of London.”[108] “At the end of the year, the Evening Standard Drama Awards were held for the first time ... Feelings ran high and the opposition, led by Sir Malcolm Sargent, threatened to resign if Godot won [The Best New Play category]. An English compromise was worked out by changing the title of the award. Godot became The Most Controversial Play of the Year. It is a prize that has never been given since.”[109]

The first production of the play in the United States was at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Coconut Grove, Florida on 3 January 1956.[110]. It starred Tom Ewell as Vladimir and Bert Lahr as Estragon.

Beckett resisted offers to film the play, although it was televised in his lifetime. When Keep Films made Beckett an offer to film an adaptation in which Peter O’Toole would feature, Beckett tersely told his French publisher to advise them: “I do not want a film of Godot.”[111] The BBC broadcast a production of Waiting for Godot on 26 June 1961, a version for radio having already been transmitted on 25 April 1960. Beckett watched the programme with a few close friends in Peter Woodthorpe’s Chelsea flat. He was unhappy with what he saw. “My play,” he said, “wasn’t written for this box. My play was written for small men locked in a big space. Here you’re all too big for the place.”[112]

Although not his favourite amongst his plays – perhaps because of the way it came to overshadow everything else he wrote – it was the work which brought Beckett fame and financial stability and as such it always held a special place in his affections. “When the manuscript and rare books dealer, Henry Wenning, asked him if he could sell the original French manuscript for him, Beckett replied: ‘Rightly or wrongly have decided not to let Godot go yet. Neither sentimental nor financial, probably peak of market now and never such an offer. Can’t explain.’”[113]

A 2009 Broadway revival of the play, starring Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin, was nominated for 3 Tony Awards: Best Revival of a Play, Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play (John Glover), and Best Costume Design of a Play (Jane Greenwood).[114] It received rave reviews, and was a huge success for the Roundabout Theatre. Variety called it a "transcendent" production.

On 30 April 2009 a landmark production of Waiting for Godot was launched in London's West End, at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. The production stars Sir Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart as the two lead roles. The pair bring a rapport to the characters of Vladimir and Estragon that has won much critical acclaim [115]. In 2009, The Daily Telegraph reported that Patrick Stewart saw the ghost of John Baldwin Buckstone standing in the wings during a performance at the Haymarket.[116]

[edit] Related works
Racine’s Bérénice is a play “in which nothing happens for five acts.”[117] In the preface to this play Racine writes: “All creativity consists in making something out of nothing.” Beckett was an avid scholar of the 17th century playwright and lectured on him during his time at Trinity. “Essential to the static quality of a Racine play is the pairing of characters to talk at length to each other.”[51]
The title character of Balzac's 1851 play Mercadet is waiting for financial salvation from his never seen business partner, Godeau. Although Beckett was familiar with Balzac's prose; he is insistent that he learned of this play after finishing Waiting for Godot. Coincidentally, in 1949, Balzac's play was closely adapted to film as The Lovable Cheat (starring Buster Keaton, whom Beckett greatly admired).
Clifford Odets' famous 1935 play Waiting for Lefty was about workers oppressed by capitalism, waiting for the salvation in the form of union organiser Lefty. But the play ends as the workers learn that Lefty will not come after all (having been murdered).
The unity of place, the particular site on the edge of a marsh which the two tramps cannot leave, recalls Sartre's striking use of the unity of place in his 1944 play, No Exit. There it is hell in the appearance of a Second Empire living room that the three characters cannot leave. The curtain line of each play underscores the unity of place, the setting of which is prison. The Let’s go! of Godot corresponds to the Well, well, let's get on with it....! of No Exit. Sartre's hell is projected by use of some of the quid pro quos of a bedroom farce, whereas the unnamed plateau – the platter Didi and Gogo are served up on in the French version – evokes an empty vaudeville stage.
Many critics regard the protagonists in Beckett’s novel Mercier and Camier as prototypes of Vladimir and Estragon. “If you want to find the origins of Godot,” he told Colin Duckworth once, “look at Murphy.”[118] Here we see the agonised protagonist yearning for self-knowledge, or at least complete freedom of thought at any cost, and the dichotomy and interaction of mind and body. It is also a book that dwells on mental illness something that affects all the characters in Godot. In defence of the critics, Mercier and Camier wander aimlessly about a boggy, rain-soaked island that, although not explicitly named, is Beckett's native Ireland. They speak convoluted dialogues similar to Vladimir and Estragon's, joke about the weather and chat in pubs, while the purpose of their odyssey is never made clear. The waiting in Godot is the wandering of the novel. “There are large chunks of dialogue which he later transferred directly into Godot.”[119]
[edit] Works inspired by Godot
An unauthorised sequel was written by Miodrag Bulatović in 1966: Godo je došao (Godot Arrived). It was translated from the Serbian into German (Godot ist gekommen) and French. The playwright presents Godot as a baker who ends up being condemned to death by the four main characters. Since it turns out he is indestructible Lucky declares him non-existent. Although Beckett was noted for disallowing productions that took even slight liberties with his plays, he let this pass without incident but not without comment. Ruby Cohn writes: “On the flyleaf of my edition of the Bulatović play, Beckett is quoted: ‘I think that all that has nothing to do with me.’”[120]
An unauthorised prequel, of sorts, formed Part II of Ian McDonald's 1991 novel King of Morning, Queen of Day (partly written in Joycean style). Two main characters are clearly meant to be the original Vladimir and Estragon.
Another unauthorised sequel was written by Daniel Curzon in the late 1990s: Godot Arrives.
A radical transformation was written by Bernard Pautrat, performed at Théâtre National de Strasbourg in 1979-1980: Ils allaient obscurs sous la nuit solitaire (d'après ‘En attendant Godot’ de Samuel Beckett). The piece was performed in a disused hangar. “This space, marked by diffusion, and therefore quite unlike traditional concentration of dramatic space, was animated, not by four actors and the brief appearance of a fifth one (as in Beckett’s play), but by ten actors. Four of them bore the names of Gogo, Didi, Lucky and Pozzo. The others were: the owner of the Citroën, the barman, the bridegroom, the bride, the man with the Ricard [and] the man with the club foot. The dialogue, consisting of extensive quotes from the original, was distributed in segments among the ten actors, not necessarily following the order of the original.”[121]
French playwright Matei Vişniec (of Romanian origin), wrote his famous play Old Clown Wanted, inspired by Waiting for Godot.
Matei Vişniec's play, "The Last Godot", in which Samuel Becket and Godot are characters, ends with the first lines in Waiting for Godot.
The film Waiting for Guffman, in which Guffman never arrives.
Godot is a character in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, named for the mystery of his identity. He likes coffee.
In the Bollywood film Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na, a man is waiting outside an airport with a card saying "GODOT". He is an old man, which shows that he has probably been waiting for a very long time.
The music video for k.d. lang's song "Constant Craving" depicts a crowd watching a 1950s production of Waiting for Godot.
[edit] References
^ Berlin, N., "Traffic of our stage: Why Waiting for Godot?" in The Massachusetts Review, Autumn 1999
^ Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p. 620.
^ Ackerley and Gontarski 2006, p. 172.
^ The Times, 31 December 1964. Quoted in Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p. 57.
^ Beckett objected strongly to the sentence being rendered: "Nothing Doing". (Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p. 567)
^ The character Pozzo, however, prominently wears and takes note of a watch that he is wearing.
^ a b Beckett 1988, p. 18.
^ Beckett 1988, p. 21.
^ Beckett 1988, p. 23.
^ Roger Blin, who acted in and directed the premier of Waiting for Godot, teasingly described Lucky to Jean Martin (who played him) as "a one-line part". (Cohn, R., From Desire to Godot (London: Calder Publications; New York: Riverrun Press, 1998), p. 151)
^ The phrase in question refers to "a personal God [...] who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly [...]." (Beckett 2006, p. 42)
^ Brown, V., Yesterday's Deformities: A Discussion of the Role of Memory and Discourse in the Plays of Samuel Beckett, (doctoral thesis), p. 92.
^ Cliffs Notes on Beckett's Waiting for Godot & Other Plays (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1980), p. 29.
^ Beckett 1988, p. 50.
^ See Clausius, C., ‘Bad Habits While Waiting for Godot’ in Burkman, K. H., (Ed.) Myth and Ritual in the Plays of Samuel Beckett (London and Toronto: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1987), p 139
^ Webb, E., The Plays of Samuel Beckett (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 1974)
^ Beckett, S., Waiting for Godot, (London: Faber and Faber, [1956] 1988), p 59
^ Beckett, S., Waiting for Godot, (London: Faber and Faber, [1956] 1988), p 89
^ SB to Barney Rosset, 18 October 1954 (Syracuse). Quoted in Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 412
^ Quoted in Le Nouvel Observateur (26 September 1981) and referenced in Cohn, R., From Desire to Godot (London: Calder Publications; New York: Riverrun Press), 1998, p 150
^ Cronin, A., Samuel Beckett The Last Modernist (London: Flamingo, 1997), p 382
^ a b Letter to Alan Schneider, 27 December 1955 in Harmon, M., (Ed.) No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), p 6
^ Kalb, J., Beckett in Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p 43
^ Beckett, S., Waiting for Godot, (London: Faber and Faber, [1956] 1988), p 12
^ See Brown, V., Yesterday’s Deformities: A Discussion of the Role of Memory and Discourse in the Plays of Samuel Beckett, pp 35-75 for a detailed discussion of this.
^ Alvarez, A. Beckett 2nd Edition (London: Fontana Press, 1992)
^ a b Gurnow, M., No Symbol Where None Intended: A Study of Symbolism and Allusion in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot
^ Fletcher, J., ‘The Arrival of Godot’ in The Modern Language Review, Vol. 64, No. 1 (Jan., 1969), pp. 34-38
^ Duckworth, C., (Ed.) ‘Introduction’ to En attendant Godot (London: George Harrap, 1966), pp lxiii, lxiv. Quoted in Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett, (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p 183
^ Mercier, V., ‘The Uneventful Event’ in The Irish Times, 18 February 1956
^ Mercier, V., Beckett/Beckett (London: Souvenir Press, 1990), p 46
^ Mercier, V., Beckett/Beckett (London: Souvenir Press, 1990), pp 47,49
^ Jean Martin on the World Première of En attendant Godot in Knowlson, J. & E., (Ed.) Beckett Remembering – Remembering Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 2006), p 117
^ Wilmer S. E., (Ed.) Beckett in Dublin (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1992), p 28
^ Jean Martin to Deirdre Bair, 12 May 1976. Quoted in Bair, D., Samuel Beckett: A Biography (London: Vintage, 1990), p 449
^ Duckworth, C., The Making of Godot, p 95. Quoted in Bair, D., Samuel Beckett: A Biography (London: Vintage, 1990), p 407
^ Friedman, N., 'Godot and Gestalt: The Meaning of Meaningless' in The American Journal of Psychoanalysis 49(3) p 277
^ Kalb, J., Beckett in Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p 175
^ Mercier, V., Beckett/Beckett (London: Souvenir Press, 1990), p 53
^ Beckett, S., Waiting for Godot, (London: Faber and Faber, [1956] 1988), p 21
^ Barney Rosset to Deidre Bair, 29 March 1974. Referenced in Bair, D., Samuel Beckett: A Biography (London: Vintage, 1990), p 464
^ Beckett, S., Waiting for Godot, (London: Faber and Faber, [1956] 1988), p 91
^ Colin Duckworth’s introduction to En attendant Godot (London: George G Harrap & Co, 1966), lx. Quoted in Cohn, R., From Desire to Godot (London: Calder Publications; New York: Riverrun Press, 1998), p 150
^ Bair, D., Samuel Beckett: A Biography (London: Vintage, 1990), p 405
^ Interview with Peter Woodthrope 18 February 1994. Referenced in Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 785 n 166
^ SB to Barney Rosset, 18 October 1954 (Syracuse). Quoted in Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 412
^ Bair, D., Samuel Beckett: A Biography (London: Vintage, 1990), p 591
^ Mercier, V., Beckett/Beckett (London: Souvenir Press, 1990), p 87
^ Kenner, H., The Cartesian Centaur, (Perspective, 1959)
^ Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett, (London: Faber and Faber, 2006)
^ a b Cronin, A., Samuel Beckett The Last Modernist (London: Flamingo, 1997), p 60
^ Hampton, W., Theater Review: Celebrating With 'Waiting for Godot' New York Times, 11 June 2007
^ Genest, G., ‘Memories of Samuel Beckett in the Rehearsals for Endgame, 1967’ in Ben-Zvi, L., (Ed.) Women in Beckett: Performance and Critical Perspectives (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), p x
^ Berlin 1999.
^ The game of changing hats is an echo of the Marx Brothers' film Duck Soup, which features almost exactly the same headgear-swapping action. See Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p. 609.
^ Cronin, A., Samuel Beckett The Last Modernist (London: Flamingo, 1997), p. 391.
^ Beckett, S., The Grove Centenary Edition, Vol III (New York: Grove Press, 2006), p. 371.
^ An undated interview with Lawrence Harvey. Quoted in Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), pp. 371, 372.
^ SB to Thomas MacGreevy, 11 August 1955 (TCD). Quoted in Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p. 416.
^ Interview with Peter Woodthrope, 18 February 1994. Quoted in Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), pp. 371, 372.
^ Quoted in Asmus, W., ‘Beckett directs Godot’ in Theatre Quarterly, Vol V, No 19, 1975, pp. 23, 24. Quoted in Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p. 607.
^ Irving Wardle, The Times, 19 February 1981.
^ Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), pp 638,639
^ Peter Hall in The Guardian, 4 January 2003
^ Hassell, G., ‘What's On’ London, 2nd - 9 July 1997.
^ Beckett 2008, p. 8.
^ Sion, I., "The Zero Soul: Godot's Waiting Selves In Dante's Waiting Rooms" in Transverse No 2, November 2004, p. 70.
^ Sion, I., ‘The Shape of the Beckettian Self: Godot and the Jungian Mandala’ in Consciousness, Literature and the Arts Volume 7 Number 1, April 2006. See also Carter, S., ‘Estragon’s Ancient Wound: A Note on Waiting for Godot’ in Journal of Beckett Studies 6.1, p. 130.
^ Beckett, S., Waiting for Godot, (London: Faber and Faber, [1956] 1988), p. 92.
^ Beckett 2006, pp. 10-11.
^ Cronin, A., Samuel Beckett The Last Modernist (London: Flamingo, 1997), p. 21.
^ Duckworth, C., Angels of Darkness: Dramatic Effect in Samuel Beckett with Special Reference to Eugène Ionesco (London: Allen, 1972), p. 18. Quoted in Herren, G., ‘Nacht und Träume as Beckett's Agony in the Garden’ in Journal of Beckett Studies, 11(1)
^ Cronin, A., Samuel Beckett The Last Modernist (London: Flamingo, 1997), pp. 20, 21.
^ Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p. 279. Referenced in Bryden, M., ‘Beckett and Religion’ in Oppenheim, L., (Ed.) Palgrave Advances in Samuel Beckett Studies (London: Palgrave, 2004), p. 157.
^ Bryden, M., Samuel Beckett and the Idea of God (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan, 1998), introduction.
^ Bair, D., Samuel Beckett: A Biography (London: Vintage, 1990), pp. 409, 410, 405.
^ Boxall, P., "Beckett and Homoeroticism" in in Oppenheim, L., (ed.) Palgrave Advances in Samuel Beckett Studies (London: Palgrave, 2004).
^ a b Beckett 2006, p. 8.
^ a b Beckett 2006, p. 9.
^ Beckett 2006, p. 4.
^ Beckett 2006, p. 11.
^ a b Beckett 2006, p. 13.
^ On the other hand, Didi only learns of this in asking the boy's brother how Godot treats him, which may in itself be seen as a show of compassion.
^ Meeting with Linda Ben-Zvi, December 1987. Quoted in "Introduction" to Ben-Zvi, L., (ed.) Women in Beckett: Performance and Critical Perspectives (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), p. x.
^ Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p. 695.
^ "Judge Authorizes All-Female Godot" in New York Times, 6 July 1991.
^ "Beckett estate fails to stop women waiting for Godot" in The Guardian, 4 February 2006.
^ Acco Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre, 1995 Archive
^ Cohn, R., From Desire to Godot (London: Calder Publications; New York: Riverrun Press, 1998), p 138
^ Ruby Cohn to James Knowlson, 9 August 1994. Quoted in Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 378
^ Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 378
^ Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), pp 386,394
^ Ruby Cohn on the Godot Circle in Knowlson, J. & E., (Ed.) Beckett Remembering – Remembering Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 2006), p 122
^ Cohn, R., From Desire to Godot (London: Calder Publications; New York: Riverrun Press), 1998, pp 153,157
^ Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), pp 387, 778 n 139
^ Interview with Jean Martin, September 1989. Referenced in Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), pp 386,387
^ Letter from an unnamed Lüttringhausen prisoner, 1 October 1956. Translated by James Knowlson. Quoted in Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 409
^ Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), pp 410,411
^ Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), pp 620,621
^ A farmer in Roussillon, the village where Beckett fled during World War II; he never worked for the Bonnellys, though he used to visit and purchase eggs and wine there. See Cronin, A., Samuel Beckett The Last Modernist (London: Flamingo, 1997), p 333
^ Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett, (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), pp 622,623
^ An expression coined by Beckett in which he make the “meaning” less and less clear at each draft. A detailed discussion of Beckett’s method can be found in Pountney, R., Theatre of Shadows: Samuel Beckett’s Drama 1956-1976 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988) although it concentrates on later works when this process had become more refined.
^ Bair, D., Samuel Beckett: A Biography (London: Vintage, 1990), p 471
^ Letter released under the Freedom of Information Act. Quoted by Peter Hall in ‘Godot Almighty’, The Guardian, Wednesday 24 August 2005
^ Bair, D., Samuel Beckett: A Biography (London: Vintage, 1990), p 613
^ Peter Woodthorpe on the British première of Waiting for Godott in Knowlson, J. & E., (Ed.) Beckett Remembering – Remembering Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 2006), p 122
^ Bull, P., I know the face but …, quoted in Casebook on ‘Waiting for Godot’, pp 41,42. Quoted in Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 414
^ Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 415
^ Peter Hall looks back at the original Godot, Samuel-Beckett.net
^ Cohan, Carol, Broadway By the Bay, (Miami, Florida: The Pickering Press, 1987). p 6.
^ SB to Jérôme Lindon, 18 April 1967. Quoted in Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 545
^ Interview with Peter Woodthrope 18 February 1994. Referenced in Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), pp 487,488
^ SB to Henry Wenning, 1 January 1965 (St Louis). Quoted in Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 527
^ http://www.tonyawards.com/en_US/nominees/index.html
^ http://www.thealligatoronline.com/?blog/81
^ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-news/6087811/Patrick-Stewart-saw-ghost-performing-Waiting-for-Godot.html
^ Mercier, V., Beckett/Beckett (London: Souvenir Press, 1990), p 74
^ Cooke, V., (Ed.) Beckett on File (London: Methuen, 1985), p 14
^ Bair, D., Samuel Beckett: A Biography (London: Vintage, 1990), p 376
^ Bulatović, M., Il est arrive (Paris: Seuil, 1967). Quoted in Cohn, R., From Desire to Godot (London: Calder Publications; New York: Riverrun Press, 1998), p 171
^ Murch, A. C., ‘Quoting from Godot: trends in contemporary French theatre’ in Journal of Beckett Studies, No 9, Spring 1983
[edit] External links
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Samuel Beckett
Waiting for Godot at the Internet Broadway Database
Waiting for Godot (1977) (TV) at the Internet Movie Database
Waiting for Godot (2001) at the Internet Movie Database
Text of the play (Act I)
Text of the play (Act II)
Act I, part 1, from a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation production (Real Audio)
Act I, part 2, from a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation production (Real Audio)
Godot Quotes and Director's Notes A compendium of quotes geared toward the concept of playing Godot with a slightly more Laurel and Hardyesque bent.
Beckett on Film
Beckett Directs Beckett The San Quentin Drama Workshop
"Waiting for Godot" full play in video (Fr)

http://www.beckettatbrock.com/

2009-10-02T19:53:00.000-07:00

This site is dedicated to various adaptations of the works of Samuel Beckett. It endeavours to be as extensive as possible in an attempt to contribute a valuable research resource to the academic world. Within, one will find various lists indicating works that have been adapted as sorted by various means. Perhaps the particular adaptation you are looking for is not there or is listed incorrectly -- e-mail us the correct information with proper academic support for your claim, and we will gladly change it. The site (and ultimately the course) attempts to uncover exactly what is an ‘adaptation’ -- entries may or may not conform to your working definition of the concept; however, therein lies the fun.

The product of Tim Conley’s English Graduate Course entitled “Samuel Beckett: Meditations and Mediations,” this site is the result of the hard work of fourteen of Brock University’s graduate students.

We would like to acknowledge the assistance of a great number of people and organizations who assisted in making this project possible --

Lucas Ryan Bedell

M.A. Specialization: English Language and Literature

Site Task: Webmaster/Editor

Area of Research/Major Research Paper Topic: Postmodernism and Children’s Literature

Undergraduate Degree: Algoma/Laurentian

Deborah Cox

M.A. Specialization: English Language and Literature

Site Task: Krapp’s Last Tape

Area of Research/Major Research Paper Topic: Internal/External Landscapes in Michael Ondaatje

Undergraduate Degrees: Brock (English)/Kennesaw State (Education)

Graduate Degree: Toronto (Education)

Elizabeth Hirst

M.A. Specialization: English Language and Literature

Site Task: Act Without Words I/Act Without Words II

Area of Research/Major Research Paper Topic: Contemporary British Fantasy and Postcolonialism

Undergraduate Degree: Brock

Susan Hroncek

M.A. Specialization: English Language and Literature

Site Task: Embers/Ohio Impromptu

Area of Research/Major Research Paper Topic: Children’s Literature

Undergraduate Degree: Brock

Alex Jankovic

M.A. Specialization: Studies in Comparative Literature and Arts

Site Task: Ghost Trio/Eh Joe

Area of Research/Major Research Paper Topic:

Undergraduate Degree:

Angela Klassen

M.A. Specialization: English Language and Literature

Site Task: Endgame

Area of Research/Major Research Paper Topic: Aboriginal Children’s Literature

Undergraduate Degree: Brock

Patricia Köpke-Crick

M.A. Specialization: English Language and Literature

Site Task: Endgame

Area of Research/Major Research Paper Topic: Virginia Woolf

Undergraduate Degree: University of Mannheim

Graduate Degree: Second Juridicial State Exam, Ministry of Justice, Germany

Marisa Lancione

M.A. Specialization: English Language and Literature

Site Task: Not I/Footfalls

Area of Research/Major Research Paper Topic: Women’s Autobiography and Life Writing

Undergraduate Degree: Brock

Julie Morris

M.A. Specialization: English Language and Literature

Site Task: Happy Days

Area of Research/Major Research Paper Topic: John Milton and Trauma Theory

Undergraduate Degree: Nipissing

Jon Parsons

M.A. Specialization: English Language and Literature

Site Task: Rockaby/Text for Nothing

Area of Research/Major Research Paper Topic: Postmodernism and Literature of Newfoundland

Undergraduate Degree: Memorial

Cassandra Scavetta

M.A. Specialization: English Language and Literature

Site Task: Company/Worstword Ho

Area of Research/Major Research Paper Topic: Contemporary Canadian Fiction

Undergraduate Degree: Toronto

Jeffrey Sinibaldi

M.A. Specialization: English Language and Literature

Site Task: Rough For Radio I/Rough For Radio II/Cascando

Area of Research/Major Research Paper Topic: Niagara Borderlands Literature

Undergraduate Degree: York

Trevor Tamlin

M.A. Specialization: Studies in Comparative Literature and Arts

Site Task: Words and Music/A Piece of Monologue

Area of Research/Major Research Paper Topic: History of Burlesque Performance

Undergraduate Degree: Brock

Vanessa Wosik

M.A. Specialization: English Language and Literature

Site Task: Catastrophe/What Where

Area of Research/Major Research Paper Topic: Contemporary Irish Literature

Undergraduate Degree: York

2009-10-02T19:50:00.001-07:00

Happiest moment of the past half million

Beckett Biography
The story of the Apmonia -- the vain attempt to blend the opposites in the heart of Samuel Beckett -- begins with a case of pneumonia. So afflicted, William (Bill) Beckett, Jr. was sent to Adelaide Hospital, Dublin, at the turn of the century and was nursed there by a strong-minded woman named Maria (May) Roe. They married in a Protestant ceremony in 1901, and would together raise two sons with four years between them, Frank and Sam.
Samuel Barclay Beckett was born -- depending on who you ask, for Beckett's claims on this issue differ from those of legal documents -- on April 13, 1906 in Foxrock, south of Dublin. Later in life, however, Beckett would purport to have memories prior to this event, memories of being in his mother's womb: a situation less blissful than stifling, readily associable with the tight enclosures pondered by the characters and voices in so many of his works. Anthony Cronin describes young Sam as

if anything, an outdoor type rather than an indoor one. He enjoyed games and was good at them. He roamed by himself as well as with his cousin and brother; and though he often retreated to his tower with a book and was already noticeable in the family circle for a certain moodiness and taciturnity, he could on the whole have passed for an athletic, extrovert little Protestant middle-class boy with excellent manners when forced to be sociable.

In short, Beckett inherited his father's sportsmanship and penchant for long walks as well as his mother's severity and skill at the piano.
Beckett studied for his Bachelor's degree in French and Italian at Trinity College, Dublin, in the years 1923-27. Under the tutelage of such influential teachers as Thomas Rudmose-Brown and Bianca Esposito, Beckett absorbed the history and a love of Romance languages and poetry. During a stint in Paris after his degree's completion, Beckett was introduced by his friend the poet Tom MacGreevy to James Joyce, by this time quite famous for his novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses, both of which Beckett greatly admired. In the years to come Joyce would have an "overwhelming" (Beckett's adjective) effect on his fellow Irishman. As James Knowlson relates, the two men took to each other quickly because they had much in common:

They both had degrees in French and Italian, although from different universities in Dublin. Joyce's exceptional linguistic abilities and the wide range of his reading in Italian, German, French, and English impressed the linguist and scholar in Beckett, whose earlier studies allowed him to share with Joyce his passionate love of Dante. They both adored words -- their sounds, rhythms, shapes, etymologies, and histories -- and Joyce had a formidable vocabulary derived from many languages and a keen interest in the contemporary slang of several languages that Beckett admired and tried to emulate.

Besides becoming his friend, Beckett became directly involved in Joyce's life in two ways. First, he became one of the intimates in the Joyce "circle" (the creative circle, not just the social one) and contributed time and effort to Joyce's work, on occasion taking dictation for what would become Finnegans Wake as well as writing an important essay, "Dante ... Bruno . Vico .. Joyce," for a collection of writings explicating Joyce's method in his last book. Second, his proximity to Joyce brought him to the attention of the writer's schizophrenic daughter, Lucia, whose designs on him eventually became discomfiting for both men.
By the end of the 1920s Beckett had begun to publish his own work. "Assumption," his first published short story, appeared in Eugene Jolas's influential avant-garde serial transition in 1929, and in the next year Beckett's arcane poem on Descartes, "Whoroscope," won a contest held by The Hours Press. Proust (1931), an intriguing and often overlooked work, was Beckett's first and only published critical study of any substantial length. And it was at this time, too, that Beckett started, with little satisfaction, a novel to be called Dream of Fair to Middling Women.
For a short time, Beckett taught Romance languages, but the appeal of academia was short-lived. Beckett's pupils at Campbell College, Belfast, evidently unaccustomed to the kind of hard grading they faced in his classes, made complaints, and Beckett was on several occasions reprimanded by the headmaster who asked whether he understood that the school's students were "the cream of Ulster." They were, Beckett agreed, "rich and thick." On another occasion, Beckett presented a paper to the members of the Modern Languages Society on the avant-garde movement "Le Concentrisme" led by the French poet Jean du Chas -- all of which was pure invention. Several in attendance confidently averred du Chas's importance, without observing the fact of his non-existence. These kinds of incidents led to Beckett's disavowal of teaching as a profession and certainly coloured his attitude in his own dealings with critics.
After acquiring his Master's degree from Trinity, Beckett settled in Paris in 1937. On his way home with some friends one night in January 1938, Beckett was stabbed by a pimp in the street. The blade just missed his heart, but one of his lungs was perforated and he was rushed to hospital. He awoke to find James Joyce at his bedside with his personal physician in tow, who was now under instructions to care for the great author's young friend. Beckett became, in his own words, "the proud possessor of a pleural barometer," and his inner organs became even more sensitive to the climate of the outside world. Beckett's assailant, improbably named Prudent, met his victim during his criminal trial and said in polite French that he did not know why he had done it, and that he was sorry. It was as ludicrous and bizarre an exchange as any in Beckett's own writings.
During his stay in hospital recovering from the attack, one of Beckett's visitors was Suzanne Descheveaux-Dumesnil, a thirty-seven-year-old French woman whom he had met before socially. They grew very close after that and began to meet regularly. Suzanne was a very disciplined woman and dedicated herself to helping Beckett get his work published, and, later, to protecting him from the prying reaches of journalists, hangers-on, and opportunists. Eventually they married in 1961, in Folkestone, England.
1941 brought new grief: news of the death of Joyce, and the invasion of the Nazis. When the German occupation began, Beckett was ostensibly neutral as an Irishman, but he joined the resistance. Beckett became active in the localized intelligence network known as "Gloria." Although he would later dismiss his work with the resistance as "boy scout stuff," the man referred to by that group of operatives as l'Irlandais would be awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1945 for "extreme bravery" for having had "to endure a hard and clandestine life."
Works produced by Beckett in these years -- books like More Pricks Than Kicks (1934), Murphy (1938), and Mercier and Camier (1946) -- while full of interest and appeal, are ostentatious in their literary devices and represent an author still unsure of himself, still too swayed by the encyclopaedic example and influence of Joyce. After the war, a breakthrough was reached. The "siege in the room," as Beckett characterized it, occurred in the years 1946-50, when his focus shifted to ideas of the essential, the minimal, the unadorned. French became his written language, and the problem of expressing -- expressing anything -- became central to his aesthetic. His trilogy of novels, Molloy (1951), Malone Dies (1951), and The Unnamable (1953), written at an altogether remarkable pace in French and later translated into English by Beckett himself, is among the greatest prose writings of the century, and these books mark out in their pages a very grim but ridiculously circuitous and laboured path of human life.
When Waiting for Godot first appeared on the stage in the small Théâtre de Babylone in Paris in 1953, the world of theatre was startled (and perhaps a little resentful) to find itself changed. Didi and Gogo, music hall clowns complete with bowler hats, do very little in the course of two acts but wait, wait, wait, for someone named Godot, who may or may not be coming. While many audiences and critics jeered or shrugged and turned away, a perceptive few found a very human drama pared down to its most necessary gestures: expectation, companionship, abuse, hope. The plays which followed -- Endgame (1958), Happy Days (1961), and Play (1963) -- similarly used abstraction as a means to explore the most powerful themes, and to question whether they have any value or meaning.
Death and sorrow are not conjectured upon in these works, but are responses to experience. Beckett kept vigil by both his mother, who died in 1950, and his brother Frank, who fell victim to lung cancer in 1954. Both passings weighed very heavily on Beckett's heart, and he would remember them particularly in the ghostly voices of his later fiction and drama, in the dread of waiting and the search for comfort.
Fame and accolades began to come in the 1960s. Beckett returned to Dublin in 1959 to receive an honorary doctorate from Trinity College, and two years later he won, with Jorge Luis Borges, the Prix International des Editeurs (or Prix Formentor), valued at $10,000. But the biggest surprise came on October 23, 1969, when Suzanne picked up the first in what was quickly to become a persistent series of telephone calls. Her reaction to the news it brought was to exclaim, "Quelle catastrophe!" Beckett had won the Nobel Prize for, in the words of the Academy's citation, "his writing, which --- in new forms for the novel and drama -- in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation." Having remarked that Joyce ought to have won it, Beckett gave much of the Nobel money (over $70,000) away to charities and needy writers (among them, Djuna Barnes and B. S. Johnson).
From Godot onwards, Beckett often found himself sought after by devotees in the forms of actors, readers, artists, performers, publishers, and academics. Privacy was difficult to retain, particularly after the Nobel Prize, but Beckett measured his time and appointments strictly, did not like to give interviews, and avoided talking about his work. All the same, he sometimes found himself in extraordinary situations. In 1955, a German prisoner inspired by an inmates' production of Godot broke his parole and journeyed to Paris to find his master. Roger Blin, the playwright's actor-director collaborator and friend, was forced to accommodate this potentially dangerous man while persuading him that Beckett, who willingly offered to pay the convict's expenses to return to Germany, was unavailable. Told by one admirer on another occasion that he had been reading Beckett's works for years, the author drily replied, "You must be very tired."
Beckett wrote less and less in the 1970s and 1980s, whittling down even more rigorously his work to the barest essentials of expression. Rockaby and Ohio Impromptu (both from 1981) are even more phantasmal and tightly orchestrated than his previous plays. After the first foray into television drama, Eh Joe (1967), he wrote more scripts, including Ghost Trio (1976) and Quad (1984). Upon retiring with no great enjoyment to a nursing home called Le Tiers Temps, Beckett received occasional guests, who were always amazed at his intellect's continued alacrity. Although he continued translating some of his works in his final years, he found writing painful and could do little of it. Suzanne died on 17 July 1989. On December 22, 1989, Beckett died in Paris. They are buried together in Cimitière du Montparnasse, Paris.

Further Reading
There have been three full-length Beckett biographies published, and each of them has its particular strengths. Bair's early effort is admirable for its ambition; Knowlson's is probably the most thorough, though perhaps a little too loyal; Cronin's provides a very Irish flavour and perspective. You can purchase any of the below titles at Apmonia's Bookstore.

Deirdre Bair, Samuel Beckett: A Biography (Simon & Schuster, 1978).
James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (Simon & Schuster, 1996).
Anthony Cronin, Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist (HarperCollins, 1996).

Biografía en A MEDIA VOZ.COM

2009-09-21T13:00:00.001-07:00

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. ©

EN YOUTUBE

2009-09-21T04:38:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06i1CgcHxD8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdz70qt9rrw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVI5cz8H0M4&feature=related

Beckett in Poetry Foundation org.

2009-09-20T08:47:00.000-07:00

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.

Samuel Beckett - English encyclopedia.

2009-09-20T08:15:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-18T09:25:00.000-07:00

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.

Esperando a Godot - wikipedia

2009-09-18T09:13:00.000-07:00

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