SAMUEL BECKETT |
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"Je ne sais pas" Samuel Beckett
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1906 Samuel
Beckett, the second and the younger son of a Protestand medium class family,
was born in Foxrock, near Dublin, the 13th of April of 1906. His father,
William, was an assistant architect, he used to go for a long walks with him
to the Foxrock surroundings or to the Leopardstown hippodrone. His mother
Mary, was very religious and she gave to her two sons a protestant education,
doing them to pray, sing hymns and read the Bible. 1913
Samuel went first to a Keepership in Stillorgan, at the South of Dublin too,
like Foxrock, and then, when he reached the scholastic age, in Earlsford
House, a private school of the irish capital. Immediately at the Keepership
he had started to learn french and at the school he still learning the
lessons with the director, who was french. After that, when he was fourteen
years old, he entered in the boarding school where was his brother, the
Portora Royal School, in Enniskillen, in the earldom of Fermanagh,
distinguished education centre which had betwixt his old students a Oscar Wilde.
During the three years he was in Portora, Samuel Beckett was a good student,
overtopping in inglish and french. He was so good at sports and take part of
the rugby and cricket school teams. According to his old school fellows, he
had a marvellous memory and a big critical sense. He was very introverted and
sometimes ill-humoured, but had sense of humor and was a good companion. He
habitualy kept sitting long moments, almost immobile and without
speaking, like his characters. 1923 In
october of 1923 he started the university career at the Trinity College,
the Protestant Major College of Dublin, at the age of seventeen years
old, and there he studied inglish, french and italian, obtainning a first
class title of «Bachelor of Arts» in 1927. During
his years at the Trinity College, Beckett assisted habituallyto the
Abbey Theatre of Dublin, and there he saw some of Sean O'Casey´s works,
author that he admired very much. It was in this period time when he began to
interested of Dante and he read "The Divine Comedy" ,work that
influenced him. He has like a teacher a Rudmose-Brown, who introduced him in
the french literature. 1926 In
the summer holydays of 1926 he did his first travel to France, visiting Tours
and running away the Loire castles by bicycle. 1927 He
visited Florencia and in decembre he obtains his licentation (Bachelor of
arts) in french and italian. After receive his title, Beckett taught during
the two quarters in the school of Belfast and then he went to Paris,where he
was two years of "inglish professor" at the High Normal School of
the Rue d´Ulm. In the library of that french institution, Beckett studied
Descartes and others philosophers, and he did a work about the "Unanimists". 1928 In
the autum of 1928, Beckett knew James Joyce and fastened with him a true friendship since the death of James in January of
1941. Isn´t true, however, the fact that Beckett was the Joyce secretary. Beckett
assistedto the commemorative banquet of the publication of
"Ulises"in France and the "Bloom day".This literary event
took place in the Leopol Hotel, near Versalles, the 27th of Juny in 1929,
although the "Bloom day" was the 16th of Juny of 1904. 1929 The
first published work by Samuel Beckett was an assay about Work in Progress,
the novel that Joyce as writing and after it named Finnegan´s Wake.
The study titled "Dante...Bruno. Vico, Joyce" and it was
included with others assays about the same tema in Our Exagmination,
published in Paris in 1929. 1930 In
1930 he collaborated in yhe first french traduction of "Anna Livia
Plurabelle", a passage of the Work in Progress, in
collaboration with Péron, Paul Léon, E. Jolas, Yvan Goll, and Philippe
Soupault.He composes "Whoroscope", a large poem in inglish,
based in Descartes´life,
and he added some explanation notes about the innumerable cryptic allusions
of the text. He frequents the surrealistics ambients and he works in the
study of the manifests about this movement. An
editorial of London recommended him to write a large assay about Proust, the most
important of his critical works. In September he came back to Dublin and
worked like an auxilliar professor he wrote, like a parody of drama of
Corneille, a short play, titled Le Kid, in which representation
intervened in person, interpretting with an umbrella the paper of Mr. Diego.
He studied Schopenhauer
and Kant, and read the Ethics
of Geulincx. 1931 He
publishes "Proust" in London in december of 1931, Beckett
obtained the title of "Master of Arts",and in January of 1932 he
left the professor´s chair of the Trinity College and renounced to teaching. 1932 He
did a large travel to Germany and then he tryed to settle in Paris, where he
published the Breton, Eluard and Crevel traductions, and wrote a manuscript
with 200 pages, a work where came from the first inglish novel, "More
Pricks than kicks", and the poems of the cicle Echo´s Bones.
In concequence of the wave of xenophobia that devastated France beyond the
murder of Paul Doumer, he had to go to London without money and finished in
Ireland, he paid the travel with the money he charged for a traduction of
Bateau ivre of Rimbaud
(disappearing text). 1933 In
Juny of this year dies his father and dem "was exited" ,to London
-according to his proper expresion- profondly affected for the losing (there
are allusions to it in Echo´s Bones). He stayed there some painful
years, living of a little month´s pay that his brother sent to him, like a
part of the paternal inheritance, and crossing a period of deep moral crisis. 1934 In
1934 he published some critical notes and recensions about Rilke, Ezra Pound,
Papini, McGreevy and O´Casey. He appears in London, his first book, "More
Pricks than Kicks" with no very good acceptation of the criticism. 1935 A
visit to the Bedlam Royal Hospital proportioned him a part of the material he
used in Murphy, his second inglish novel, wrote it in 1935. And also in this
year is publish in Paris his work Echo´s Bones and an article about
the painter Jack B. Yeats. 1936 He
went to Germany again in 1936 and stayed there some months, travelling around
the country sometimes on foot and visiting some cities like Hamburgo,
Lúneburg, Hannover, Berlin, Leipzig, Dresde, Wúrzburg, Nuremberg and Munich.
He publishes the poem "Cascando" in a Dublin Magazine. 1937
Beyond his months of " Wanderer" the beckettians characters alludes
more thanone time to that his author saw before, Beckett decided to settle in
Paris definitively doing traductions and critical notes to gain his life and
living an existence like "Oblomov" according to the good
comparation of Peggy
Guggenhenheim. He enters in contact with plastics artists with an undeniable
renown like Duchamp or Giacometti. Is this a fructiferous step in which he
starts to write french poems. The 7th of January, Beckett was stabbing in the
midle of the street by an unknown person who ask him for an alms. The writer
was very grave and the incident had so influence on him, and that explain the
violence attacks his heros characters suffer. When he left the hospital,
Beckett went to visit his agressor to the prision and he ask him what was the
reason of the attack:"I don´t know" said the agressor,condensing in
his laconic answer all the phylosophy and literature of the absurdity. 1939
When the Second World War started, Beckett was in Ireland, in one of his
visitings that he did regularly to his mother. Although he was
"neutral", becouse he´s Irish, he came back to Paris as soon as he
could. 1941
After the armistice franc-german, he consociatedwith a Resistence group and
in1942 was denuncied by a priest, he had to fleeof the Gestapo, which looked
for him in Paris, and attained to pass to the no busy France and takes refuge
in the Vaucluse. There he was working in the country and, like Vladimir and
Estragon, gathered the vintage of someone named Bonnelly. During the nights
"for therapeutics", wrote his third inglish novel, Watt. 1945 At
the end of the war, Beckett went to Ireland to visit his family, and then
came back to his flat in Paris, which he found ransacked. Start then the
period of five years - 1945 to1950 - during these the irish writer wrote in
french, his adoptive language, those works: Narratives: The
end (194546), The expelled (1946), First love (1946),
The lenitive (1946-47). Novels: Mercier and Camier (1946-47), Molloy (1947), Malone dies (1947-48), L´ Innombrable (1949-50). Theatre: Eleutheria
(1947), Waiting for Godot (194849). Texts: Texts
for nothing (1950 Assays: The
Van Velde´s painting or the world and the trousers (1945), Painters of the
impediment (published in
1948), Three dialogs with Georges
Duthuit (written in
inglish and published in 1949) Poetry: The
cicle «47-49» (published posteriorly with poems of the cicle «38-39» in Poémes, 1968). 1949 He
got married with his eternal companion Suzzanne Dumesnil and write L´Innomblable,
one of his works more significatives. 1950
Beckett had to live during some time of the traductions review. The principal
editorials refused his manuscripts and thanks only to the tenacity of
Suzzanne Beckett, the wife of the writer, and them were finally
published. In September of this year his mother died. 1951 In
the Spring of 1951, Jéróme Lindon, who had finished to recommed of " Les
Editions de Minuit ". He published Molloy that recive a good
critic of George
Bataille from the paiges of Critique (The Molloy silence, nş of
May). In Autum of the same year he published Malone dies. The next
year, in October, he published Waiting for Godot, and in the summer of
1953, L´Innombrable. After a
short time apeared, also in Paris, the original inglish version of the novel Watt, published by Olympia Press. Like
Gérard Durozoí signals in his volume about Beckett of the Collection
"Présence Littéraíre",although Les Editions de Minuit didn´t ruin -
Samuel Beckett feared it - neither won a lot of money with the publications
of his works. The new author didn´t fall, of course, inside the
existencialist literature so in bogue, worried with the temas of the
conscience politic-moral and of the engagement. He neither belong to the
course of the pure amusement, that emerged like a reaccion against the
anterior, and he centred around the La Parisienne review. 1953 But
the most important pole in the Beckett´s literary career was the first performance
of January of 1953, in the disappeared Babylon Theatre, in Paris, which
director was Jean-Marie Serreau. The play had a variable reception and the
night of the first performance it has compared with "The Hernani
battle" in 1830. But, contrary to what Beckett and Roger Bloom hoped,
the play persisted in bill-boerd more than a year and his fame did it
international, representing it posteriorly near 50 countries and being
traduced to twenty langueges. Betwixt the first supporters and fans of Waiting
for Godot had found Jean
Anouilh, Salacrou, Tristan Tzara,
Robbe-Grillet and
Jaeques Audiberti. The best description of drama remaining to the Jean
Anouilh, in an article published in Arts-Spectacles, when he said that he had
seen "a number of the Pensées de Pascal interpreting for the
Fratellini" with the play of Beckett finished all of a wise of
vanguardian theatre that had produced a lyric course, in one hand -Audiverti
and Pichette-; the theatre was generic of Jean Genet, but on the other, and
Ionesco, for the end. The bald head singer of Ionesco have been opened
in 1950; The lesson, in 1951 and The chairs, in 1952. The invasion
and The big and the small artifice, of Adamov, had had his first
performance in 1950, and The parody, in 1952. Waiting for Godot
set also the end to the absurdity theatre. 1954 It
publish in New York Waiting for Godot, the inglish traduction of the work did
it by Beckett, who have starting, ever since the death of his mother,in 1950,
the large tasck of translate to inglish all that he had wrote in french since
his back to Paris. Beckett started to write his second drama "Endgame",in
1954 (Eleutheria have been never opened nor published, becouse Beckett
didn´t want it). The work had a slow elavoration and difficult and it didn´t
reach its definitive redaction since 1956, in contrast to its careful composition
with the spontaneity of Waiting for Godot, written in four months.
Despite the efforts of Roger Bloom and the favourable antecedent of the
big issue of the anterior play,"Endgame" couldn´t open in
Paris and had to be presented for the first time in London, in April of 1957,
in a french language. 1955 It
had published in Paris the inglish traductions of Molloy and the
Novels volume and The texts for nothing,that included the three
narratives anteriors to the trilogy and thirteen short narratives he wrote to
continuation of The Innombrable.In
1956 he had wroten in french the two Acts wihtout words and a
radiophonic drama in inglish, AlI
That Fall, by command of the BBC
London.The most important thing of his work, therefore, it was already
written and published when it open "Endgame". Samuel Beckett
had assured the Nobel Prize he going to recieve in 1969. After the
mencioned radiophoic drama, the author of Waiting for Godot has
written all his dramatics-theatre works, radio, television and inglish
cinema,except Cascando, a play for the french radio, opened in 1963.
The list of works in inglish language written with posteriority to Endgame,
with date and city of the opens world, is thefollowing: All That Fall, BBC, London, 1957. Krapp's Last Tape, Royal Court Theater,
London, 1958. Embers, BBC, London, 1959. Happy Days, Cherry Lane Theater, New York, 1961. Words and Music, BBC, London, 1962 Play, Ulmer Theater, Ulm, 1963. Film, Venecia Festival, 1965 Come and Go, Sehiller Theater , Berlín, 1966. Eh Joe, Súddeutscher Rundfunk (television), Stuttgart, 1966. Breath, Eden Theater , New York, 1969. Not 1, Lincoln Center, New York, 1972. That Time, Royal Court Theater , London, 1976 Footfalls, Royal Court Theater , London, 1976. 1956
However,Samuel Beckett has continued writting in french his texts in prose,
most of them shorter, except How is, a short novel in three parts, and Le
dépeupleur, which had near 50 pages. All they have been published by Les
Editions de Minuit like all Beckett´s french works, and traduced to inglish
by the author. With the titles and years of publication of the last ones
texts, where the Beckett style have arrived to a maxim symplification,
finished this bibliography: Comment
c'est, 1961. Imagination
morte imaginez, 1965. Assez, 1966. Bing, 1966. Sans,
1969 Le
dépeupleur, 1970. Foirades (1 al V), 1972-73. Pour finir encore, 1976 1961
International Prize of the editors, with Jose Luis Borges. 1967 A
part of this texts - 2,3 and 4 - included it, with the french traduction of the
one abandoned work, in a small volume titled Tétes-mortes. The traductions to
inglish of themselfs texts, like the three french narratives - The Expelled,
The enitive and The End - and the original of From an Abandoned Work, it will find the Lector in No´s Knife
(London, 1967), an excellent complement of the Molloy Trilogy. Malone dies,The Unnamable, in a only volume (London, 1959),
to have in only two bulks almost all the novelistic work of the Literature
Nobel Prize in 1969 1969
Literature Nobel Prize. 1976
Seventieth of the aniversary of the Samuel Beckett birth, the Royal Court
Theater of London subjected a homepage to the author of Waiting for Godot
with a special sesion of eleven weeks, during those weeks showed up to the
public some important repositions, the first world performances of two
new plays - see the list of first performances - and Warten auf Godot
that Beckett directed in the Sehiller Theater, Berlin. In Barcelona published
it Galena de moribundos, Editorial Grijalbo, the first book in inglish about
Samiel Beckett, and in Paris apeared Pour finir encore et autres foirades,
volume formed by the texts of the title and the french traduction, The
Unnable, from an inglish text of 1975. 1989
Suzanne dies the 17th of July,and Beckett dies the 22nd of December in Paris.
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Academic year
2000/2001 |
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