Life and Works of Samuel Beckett- For APPSC JL DL 

 

 

Samuel Barclay Beckett (born April 13, 1906, Foxrock, County Dublin, Ireland—died December 22, 1989, Paris, France) was an Irish playwright, poet, novelist, and literary critic. Writing in both English and French. As a major figure of Irish literature, he is best known for his tragicomedy play Waiting for Godot (1953). He received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature. He accepted the award but declined the trip to Stockholm to avoid the public speech at the ceremonies. Samuel Beckett also became one of the first absurdist playwrites to win international fame.

His pen name is “Andrew Belis.” He belongs to “The theatre of Absurd”. Nobel Prize in 1969 (in French Language).

He was born in the Dublin suburb of Foxrock on 13 April 1906, the son of William Frank Beckett (1871–1933), a quantity surveyor of Huguenot descent, and Maria (“May”) Jones Roe Beckett, a nurse. Like his fellow Irish writers George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and William Butler Yeats, he came from a Protestant, Anglo-Irish background. At the age of 14 he went to the Portora Royal School in Enniskillen (in what became Northern Ireland), a school that catered to the Anglo-Irish middle classes, the same school that Oscar Wilde attended.

Beckett is known to have commented, "I had little talent for happiness." This was evidenced by his frequent bouts of depression, even as a young man. He often stayed in bed until late in the afternoon and hated long conversations.

From 1923 to 1927 he studied Romance languages at Trinity College Dublin, where he received his bachelor’s degree. After a brief spell of teaching in Belfast, he became a reader in English at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris in 1928. There he met the self-exiled Irish writer James Joyce, the author of the controversial and seminally modern novel Ulysses (1922), and joined his circle. He soon respected the older writer so much that at the age of 23 he wrote an essay defending Joyce's magnum opus to the public.  Contrary to often-repeated reports, however, Beckett never served as Joyce’s secretary.

He returned to Ireland in 1930 to take up a post as lecturer in French at Trinity College, but after only four terms he resigned, in December 1931, and embarked upon a period of restless travel in London, France, Germany, and Italy. In 1937 Beckett decided to settle in Paris. Shortly after moving there, he was stabbed in the street by a man who had begged him for money. After the recovery from a perforated lung in the hospital, Beckett visited his assailant in prison. When Beckett demanded to know why the man had attacked him, he replied "Je ne sais pas, Monsieur." (I don't know, Sir) This attitude about life comes across in several of the author's later writings.

As a citizen of a country that was neutral in World War II, he was able to remain there even after the occupation of Paris by the Germans, but he joined an underground resistance group in 1941. When, in 1942, he received news that members of his group had been arrested by the Gestapo, he immediately went into hiding and eventually moved to the unoccupied zone of France. Until the liberation of the country, he supported himself as an agricultural laborer.

In 1945 Beckett returned to Ireland but volunteered for the Irish Red Cross and went back to France as an interpreter in a military hospital in Saint-Lô, Normandy. In the winter of 1945, he finally returned to Paris and was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his resistance work.

All of Beckett's major works were written in French. He believed that French forced him to be more disciplined and to use the language more wisely. However, Waiting for Godot was eventually translated into the English by Beckett himself. His works have been translated into over twenty languages.

Beckett continued to live in Paris, but most of his writing was done in a small house secluded in the Marne valley, a short drive from Paris.

Beckett is considered to be one of the last modernist writers and a key figure in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd."  Confined to a nursing home and suffering from emphysema and possibly Parkinson's disease, Beckett died on 22 December 1989 and was buried at the Cimetière du Montparnasse.

Works

Theatre

1.      Human Wishes (c. 1936; published 1984)

2.      Eleutheria (written 1947 in French; published in French 1995, and English 1996)- young man's efforts to cut himself loose from his family and social obligations. This has often been compared to Beckett's own search for freedom

3.      En attendant Godot (published 1952, performed 1953) (Waiting for Godot, pub. 1954, perf. 1955)- great success- Although critics labeled the play "the strange little play in which 'nothing happens,'" it gradually became a success and ran for four hundred performances at the Theatre de Babylone. Originally written in French as En attendant Godot. Its subtitle (In English) “a tragicomedy in two acts”.  It made him the leader of “The theatre of Absurd”. It is a play in which“Nothing happens, Nobody Comes. Nobody goes, it’s awful”.

Act-I: Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), two tramps are waiting for “Godot” who doesn’t come. They come and stand under a leafless tree, waiting for Godot, indulge in senseless activities. Two travelers Pozzo (master) and Lucky (a slave) who is tied at the end of the rope arrives and diverts them. Pozzo says that he is on the way to the market, to sell Lucky for profit. At the end, a boy (messenger of Godot) arrives and says that Godot will not be arriving tonight, but surely tomorrow. Vladimir and Estragon keep on waiting for a whole day, decide to begin a fresh next morning, announces to leave, but remain on stage without moving. They symbolize the human condition as period of waiting.

Act-II is the mere replication of the first act with one or two changes. Vladimir and Estragon are again waiting near the tree, which has grown a number of leaves. In act-I, Pozzo is master, Lucky is a slave (in second act it is reversed). Lucky(dumb) is the master, Pozzo is the slave (who is blind) now. Pozzo cannot recall ever having met Vladimir and Estragon too do not recognize the travelers. The boy re-appears, stating that Godot will not be arriving. The boy states that he has not met Vladimir and Estragon before and he is not the same boy who talked to Vladimir yesterday. At the end they want to commit suicide by hanging. As they do not have a rope, they want to return tomorrow with a rope, but remain on stage without moving. The climax indicates the eternal hope that ‘tomorrow everything will be better.’

The two tramps were influenced by J.M. Synge.

4.      Acte sans Paroles I (1956); Act Without Words I (1957)

5.      Acte sans Paroles II (1956); Act Without Words II (1957)

6.      Endgame (published 1957)- Fin de partie (published 1957);  an absurdist, tragicomic one-act play about a blind, paralyzed, elderly man, Hamm, a master,; and his servant, Clov. They inhabit a circular structure with two high windows—perhaps the image of the inside of a human skull.

7.      Krapp's Last Tape (first performed 1958)- one-act, one man play- an old man listens to the confessions he recorded in earlier and happier years. This becomes an image of the mystery of the self, for to the old Krapp the voice of the younger Krapp is that of a total stranger. Krapp, on his 69^th birthday, sits at a cluttered desk and listens to tape recordings he made on 39^th birth day.

8.      Fragment de théâtre I (late 1950s); Rough for Theatre I

9.      Fragment de théâtre II (late 1950s); Rough for Theatre II

10.  Happy Days (first performed 1961); Oh les beaux jours (published 1963)- a play in two acts -Winnie, buried to her waist, follows her daily routine and prattles to her husband, Willie, who is largely hidden and taciturn. Her frequent refrain is "Oh this is a happy day." The woman, literally sinking continually deeper into the ground, nonetheless continues to prattle about the trivialities of life. Later, in Act II, she is buried up to her neck, but continues to talk and remember happier days.

11.  Play (performed in German, as Spiel, 1963; English version 1964)

12.  Come and Go (first performed in German, then English, 1966)- a playlet, or “dramaticule,” as he called it, contains only 121 words that are spoken by the three characters, in about 60 sentences, each of which occurs twice. 

13.  Breath (first performed 1969)

14.  Not I (first performed 1972)

15.  That Time (first performed 1976)

16.  Footfalls (first performed 1976)

17.  Neither (1977) (An "opera", music by Morton Feldman)

18.  A Piece of Monologue (first performed 1979)

19.  Rockaby (first performed 1981)- brief play, ends just in 15 minutes

20.  Ohio Impromptu (first performed 1981)

21.  Catastrophe(Catastrophe et autresdramatiques, first performed 1982)

22.  What Where (first performed 1983)

Radio

1.   All That Fall (broadcast 1957)

2.   From an Abandoned Work (broadcast 1957)

3.   Embers (broadcast 1959)

4.   Rough for Radio I (published 1976) (written in French in 1961 as Esquisse radiophonique)

5.   Rough for Radio II (published 1976) (written in French in 1961 as Pochade radiophonique)

6.   Words and Music (broadcast 1962)

7.   Cascando (broadcast:1963 French version; 1964 English translation)

Television

1.   Eh Joe with Jack MacGowran (broadcast 1966)-  exploits the television camera’s ability to move in on a face and the particular character of small-screen drama.

2.   Beginning To End with Jack MacGowran (1965)

3.   Ghost Trio (broadcast 1977)

4.   ... but the clouds ... (broadcast 1977)

5.   Quad I + II (broadcast 1981)

6.   Nacht und Träume (broadcast 1983); Night and Dreams, published 1984

7.   Beckett Directs Beckett (1988–92)

Cinema

1.   Film (1965)- creates an unforgettable sequence of images of the observed self trying to escape the eye of its own observer.

Novels

1.      Dream of Fair to Middling Women (written 1932; published 1992)- his first novel in 1932, but it was not published until 1992, three years after his death.

2.      Murphy (1938); first published novel -1947 Beckett's French version- concerns an Irishman in London who escapes from a woman he is about to marry to a life of contemplation as a male nurse in a psychiatric institution.

3.      Watt (1953); 1968, Beckett's French version- second published novel in English, the last of Beckett’s novels written in English- Watt, the hero, takes service with a mysterious employer, Mr. Knott, works for a time for this master without ever meeting him face to face, and then is dismissed.

4.      How It Is (1964)- Comment c'est (1961); -divided into three parts, written in short, unpunctuated paragraphs or "fragments".

5.      Mercier and Camier (written 1946, published 1970); English translation (1974)

The Trilogy of Novels or 'the Beckett Trilogy:

1.   Molloy (1951); English version (1955)- about an Irishman’s escape from a girl he is about to marry. became commercial success- after many refusals, Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil (later Mme Beckett), Beckett’s lifelong companion, finally succeeded in finding a publisher for Molloy.

2.   Malone Dies (1956)- Malone meurt (1951);

3.   The Unnamable (1958)- L'innommable (1953);

 

Non-fiction

1.      "Dante...Bruno. Vico..Joyce" (1929)- his first work to be published

2.      Proust (1931)

3.      Three Dialogues (with Georges Duthuit and Jacques Putnam) (1949)

4.      Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment (1929–1967)

Short prose

1.      More Pricks Than Kicks (1934)- 1.         first collection of short prose- contains 10 stories describing episodes in the life of a Dublin intellectual, Belacqua Shuah

2.      "Echo's Bones" (written 1933, published 2014)

3.      "L'Expulsé", written 1946, in Nouvelles et Textes pour rien (1955); "The Expelled" Stories and Texts for Nothing (1967)

4.      "Le Calmant", written 1946, in Nouvelles et Textes pour rien (1955); "The Calmative", Stories and Texts for Nothing (1967)

5.      "La Fin", written 1946, partially published in Les Temps Modernes in 1946 as "Suite"; in Nouvelles et Textes pour rien (1955); "The End", Stories and Texts for Nothing (1967)

6.      "Texts for Nothing", translated into French for Nouvelles et Textes pour rien (1955); Stories and Texts for Nothing (1967)

7.      "L'Image" (1959) a fragment from Comment c'est

8.      "Premier Amour" (1970, written 1946); translated by Beckett as "First Love", 1973

9.      Le Dépeupleur (1970); The Lost Ones (1971)

10.  Pour finir encore et autresfoirades (1976); For to End Yet Again and Other Fizzles (1976)

11.  Company (1980)

12.  Mal vu mal dit (1981); Ill Seen Ill Said (1982)

13.  Worstward Ho (1983)

14.  "Stirrings Still" (1988)

15.  "As the Story was Told" (1990)

16.  The Complete Short Prose: 1929–1989, ed S. E. Gontarski. New York: Grove Press, 1995

Poetry collections

1.   Whoroscope (1930)- He won his first literary prize for his poem entitled "Whoroscope", a French philosopher René Descartes.

2.   Echo's Bones and other Precipitates (1935)

3.   Poèmes (1968, expanded 1976, 1979, 1992)

4.   Poems in English (1961)

5.   Collected Poems in English and French (1977)

6.   What is the Word (1989)

7.   Selected Poems 1930–1989 (2009)

8.   The Collected Poems of Samuel Beckett, edited, annotated by Seán Lawlor, John Pilling (2012, Faber and Faber, 2014, Grove Press)

Translations

1.   "Anna Livia Plurabelle" into French (James Joyce, from Finnegans Wake) (1931)

2.   selections from Negro: an Anthology into English (Nancy Cunard, translations into English) (1934)

3.   Anthology of Mexican Poems into English (Octavio Paz, editor) (1958)

4.   The Old Tune into English (Robert Pinget) (1963)

5.   selections from What Is Surrealism? Selected Essays into English (André Breton) (1978)