Samuel studied at Earlsfort House in Dublin , and then at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen (where Oscar Wilde also attended). It was there that he first began to learn French, one of the two languages in which he would write. A well-rounded athlete, Beckett excelled in cricket, tennis, and boxing in his school days. He was in his second year at Portora when Ireland was partitioned.

           In 1923 at age 17, Samuel entered Trinity College, in Dublin, choosing French and Italian as his subjects. Beckett enjoyed the vibrant theater scene of  post- independence Dublin . Moreover he had the opportunity to watch American films and discover the silent comedies of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin that would crucially influence his interest in the vaudevillian  tramp.

              In 1926 Beckett began to suffer from insomnia, and soon after also began to be afflicted with heart palpitations  that often led to night sweats and panic attacks. Although he eventually sought medical assistance for the problem it persisted for many years following.

             During his final session at Trinity, Beckett met Alfred Peron, a student who had  once shared a study with  Jean-Paul Sartre at the Ecole Normale Superieure, in Paris. The two quicly became friends, Peron helped Beckett extensively with both his spoken and written French. It was during this period that Beckett firsts comes to grips with the issues of pain and suffering that would influence his work enormously throughout his life : his roommates recall an evening in which Beckett returned to the apartment "with an aluminium strip from one of the printing machines which used to grace the platforms of railway stations, on which he had inscribed the words 'PAIN PAIN PAIN' and which he affixed to the wall"

              After graduation in 1927, Beckett traveled to Paris in 1928, taking a job lecturing on English at the Ecole Normale Superieure. He began to drink during his first year in Paris (having avoided alcohol for most of his previous life); within two years he was drinking heavily, but only after five o´clock in the evening, a custom that will remain with him all his life. During 1928 he met the fellow Dubliner who become a seminal influence and close friend, James Joyce. In addition to acting as one of Joyce´s favored assistants in the construction of the  'Work in Progress' ( later to be tittled 'Finnegans Wake'), Beckett began writing himself, inspired by the vibrant Parisian literary circle. 

         In 1930, he published his first poem ,Whoroscope', winning an award of ten  pounds in a poetry competition. Shortly  afterward, his study, 'Proust', was published to critical acclaim for the Dolphin Book series. The work was a study of the recently deceased author  whom Beckett admired so much; the work at once illuminated its subject but also helped the fledling and unsure artist shape his own aesthetic. When he returned to Dublin later that year to lecture at  Trinity,  Beckett was writting his first stories which  would later comprise 'More Pricks Than KicKs' (1934).

       Beckett was restless in his teaching posts, and his reluctance to settle down in a respectable career worried his family, especially his mother from whom he became estranged for several years. At that time  Samuel began to wrestle with the symptoms of deep depression, as well as feeling frustration with the profession of teaching, he resigned his position at Trinity in December of  1931.

            Beckett´s father died of a heart attack on 26 June,1933. His last words to his son were "Fight fight fight" and "What a mourning". Beckett´s own health problems,as well as his depression , grew more serious with the passing weeks . A phisicyan friend recommended that he sought  psycoanalysis, and, as the practice of psychoanalysis was not legal in Dublin at the time, Beckett traveled to London in December of  1933, and began undergoing sessions with  Dr Wilfred Bion that continued over the span of two years.

          Beckett traveled to Germany in 1936, met and associated with several painters in Hamburg. While there, Beckett began  to solidify his negative peceptionsof the Nazi party, witnessing numerous examples of the Nazi persecution of Jewish citizens during his stay.

          In 1937, Beckett settled permanently in Paris. In December of that year, on Twelfth Night, in fact, while walking home, Beckett was nearly killed when he  was stabbed by a "pimp". In hospital, Joyce looked after his young friend, paying his expenses and bringing around numerous visitors. 'Murphy' was published while Beckett was still in the hospital. Soon after released froom the doctros immediate care, Beckett engaged in a brief affair with the American heiress, Peggy Guggenheim, but broke it off when he realized that does not reciprocate the depth of her affections. Recuperating, Beckett also receives attention from a French acquaintance, Suzanne Deschevaux- Dusmenil who would  soon become his life companion (and wife, though not until 1961)

         When Paris is invaded in 1940, Beckett and Suzanne joined the Resistance, recruited by Beckett´s old friend, Alfred Peron. In September 1941, Beckett and Suzanne Deschevaux joined the Gloria SMH cell of network. The Majority of their work for the Resistance cell consisted of passing on to Allied Forces in London information  sent in from all over France regarding German military activities and positions.

       Alfred Peron was arrested in Paris and deported to a concentration camp: he died on May 1, 1945, shortly after being freed by the Swiss Red  Cross. 

            The prisoner related how he had heard from a French friend about the pay that was taking Paris by storm and had the first editionsent to him in prison; he had read it over again and again, then had translated it himself into German.... he obtaine permission to put the play on in the prison, had cast it himself, rehearsed it and acted in it. the first night had been on November 29, 1953.

            The effect on the prisoners was electric; the play was a triumph. "Your Godot was our Godot," the prisoner wrote to Beckett. He explained that every inmate saw himself and his own  predicament reflected  in the characters who were waiting for something to come along to give their lives meaning. He then offered his own interpretation of the play seeing in it a  lesson  of fraternity even in the worst of conditions.

            In the 1950's and 1960's, Beckett's playwriting continued with a series of masterpieces, including 'Endgame', ''Happy days',and Krapp's Last Tape', in 1956 wrote 'Act Without words'. 'Krapp' was written in early 1958, inspired partly by memories of Ethna MacCarthy, whom Beckett had loved deeply (and  unrequitedly), and who had been diagnosed with terminal throat cancer in December of 1957. Samuel Beckett created remarkably innovative prose fiction, including the epic 'How It Is' (1961) and the haunting 'The Lost Ones'(1970)

Academic year 2000/2001                        
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López                                                                          
© Jorge Escrihuela Busutil
Universitat de València Press