Samuel Beckett

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Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, and literary translator.

He wrote in both French and English for the bulk of his adult life. Beckett's work gives a grim, tragic outlook on human life, often paired with black comedy and gallows hum, and he became more minimalist in his later years.

He is one of Martin Esslin's most popular writers and one of the key figures in "the Absurd's Theatre." "Beckett" received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969 "for his writing, which—in both novel and drama—in modern man's deposition, attains its prominence." In 1984, he was elected Saoi of Aosdána.

Early life

Samuel Barclay Beckett was born in Dublin's Foxrock suburb on April 13, 1906, the son of William Frank Beckett (1871–1933), a Huguenot descendant surveyor, and Maria Jones Roe, a nurse. He was both 35 when he was born and had married in 1901. Frank Edward (1902-1954), Beckett had one older brother named Frank Edward (1902–1954). He began to play music in Dublin at the age of five and then moved to Earlsfort House School in Dublin, where he learned to play piano. The Becketts were members of the Church of Ireland; as an Anglican, Beckett later became an agnostic, which informed his writing.

Beckett's family's home, Cooldrinagh, was a large house and garden with tennis court built in 1903 by Beckett's father. In his prose and performances, the house and garden, the Foxrock railway station, and Harcourt Street station will all be included. He went to Enniskillen's Portora Royal School, which Oscar Wilde had also attended around 1919 or 1920. He began in 1923 and attended Trinity College Dublin, where he studied modern literature and Romance languages, and received his bachelor's degree in 1927. He excelled at cricket as a left-handed batsman and a left-arm medium-pace bowler. He later played for Dublin University and appeared in two first-class games against Northamptonshire. As a result, he became the first Nobel literature Laureate to play first-class cricket.

Early writings

Beckett lived at Trinity College Dublin from 1923 to 1927 (one of his tutors was Berkeley scholar A. A. Luce, who introduced him to Henri Bergson's work. In 1926, he was named a Scholar of Modern Languages. Beckett earned a bachelor degree and went back to Campbell College in Belfast for a short time, then took up the post of lecteur d'anglais at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris from November 1928 to 1930. During this visit, Thomas MacGreevy, a writer and close confidant of Beckett who had also worked there, introduced him to renowned Irish author James Joyce. The young man's experience had a major effect on him. Beckett supported Joyce in a variety of ways, one of which was research into Finnegans Wake.

Beckett's first work, a critical essay titled "Dante... Bruno," appeared in 1929. Joyce, Vico. Joyce's work and method are defended in the article, mainly because of charges of wanton obscurity and dimness, as well as Eugene Jolas, Robert McAlmon, and William Carlos Williams' contributions to Our Exagmination Round. Beckett's close friendship with Joyce and his family ended when he refused Joyce's daughter Lucia's advances. "Assumtion," Beckett's first short story, was published in Jolas' periodical transition. Beckett's won a small literary award for his remarkably written poem "Whoroscope," which is based on René Descartes' biography that Beckett was encouraged to read when he was encouraged to submit.

Beckett returned to Trinity College in 1930 as a lecturer. He presented a paper in French to the Modern Language Society of Trinity in November 1930, on the author of a movement called Le Concentrisme. It was a literary parody because Beckett had in fact invented the poet and his movement, which claimed to be "at odds with all that is present and distinct in Descartes." Beckett later admitted that he did not mean to deceive his audience. Beckett's brief academic career came to an end when he resigned from Trinity at the end of 1931. He commemorated it with the poem "Gnome," which was inspired by Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Apprenticeship and eventually published in The Dublin Magazine in 1934.

Beckett travelled around Europe. He spent some time in London, where he published Proust, his critical analysis of French author Marcel Proust in 1931. Dr. Wilfred Bion, a psychologist who died after his father's death, began two years later. In Beckett's later works, such as Watt and Waiting for Godot, aspects of it became apparent. He wrote Dream of Fair to Middling Women in 1932, but after several rejections from publishers, he decided to abandon it (it was eventually published in 1992). Despite his inability to get it published, the book served as a source for many of Beckett's early poems, as well as his first full-length book, More Pricks Than Kicks.

Beckett wrote articles and reviews, including "Recent Irish Poetry" (in The Bookman, August 1934) and "Humanistic Quietism," a tribute to his friend Thomas MacGreevy's Poems, published in The Dublin Magazine, July–September 1934). Despite their slim debuts at the time, they concentrated on MacGreevy, Brian Coffey, Denis Devlin, and Blanaid Salkeld's work, comparing them favourably with their Celtic Revival predecessors and invoked Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, T. Eliot, and French symbolists as their predecessors. Beckett was tracing the outline of an Irish poetic modernist canon when describing them as "the nucleus of a living poetic in Ireland."

Beckett worked on his novel Murphy in 1935, the year he successfully published a book of his poetry. He told MacGreevy in May that he had been reading about film and wanted to go to Moscow to study with Sergei Eisenstein at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography. In mid-1936, he wrote to Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin to request him as their apprentice. Despite this, Beckett's letter was lost due to Eisenstein's quarantine during the smallpox outbreak, as well as his attention on a script rewrite of his postponed film production. A friend had suggested that we look at Arnold Geulincx's paintings, which Beckett did and took many notes. In Murphy, the philosopher's name is mentioned, and the reading appears to have left a positive impression. Murphy was finished in 1936 and Beckett departed for extensive travel around Germany, during which time he packed several notebooks with a list of famous artwork that he had seen and expressed his distaste for the country's Nazi savagery. He oversaw the publication of Murphy (1938), which he translated into French the following year, returning to Ireland for a short time in 1937. He and his mother died suddenly in Paris, which led to his decision to settle permanently in the city. Following the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Beckett remained in Paris, preferring "France at war to Ireland at peace." He became a household name in and around Left Bank cafés, where he strengthened his links with Joyce and established new ones with musicians Alberto Giacometti and Marcel Duchamp, with whom he also played chess. Beckett had a brief encounter with Peggy Guggenheim, who dubbed him "Oblomov" after the protagonist in Ivan Goncharov's book).

Beckett was stabbed in the chest and almost killed when he refused to request the solicitations of a notorious pimp (who went by the name Prudent). Beckett's private room was organized at the hospital by Joyce. Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil, who knew Beckett little from his first stay in Paris, was attracted by the media surrounding the stabbing. However, this time, the two will begin a lifelong friendship. Beckett pleaded with his killer for the stabbing motives at a preliminary hearing. Prudent replied, "Je sais pas monsieur monsieur." "I don't know," Je m'excites. Sir, I don't know, sir. "I'm sorry" says the author. Beckett eventually dropped the charges against his perpetrator, partly to avoid further formalities, partially because Prudent is likable and well-mannered.

Later life and death

Beckett's time in the 1960s marked a period of transition for him both personally and as a writer. In 1961, he married Suzanne in England at a private civil ceremony (due to reasons relating to French inheritance law). The success of his plays attracted invitations to attend rehearsals and performances around the world, leading to the discovery of a new career as a theatre director. In 1957, he received his first commission from the BBC Third Programme for a radio play called All That Fall. He continued writing on radio and television, and his focus widened to include cinema and television. He started writing in English again, but he also wrote in French until the end of his life. He bought some property in 1953 near a hamlet about 60 kilometers (40 miles) northeast of Paris and built a cottage for himself with the help of some locals.

Beckett had a connection with Barbara Bray, a widow who worked as a script editor for the BBC from the late 1950s to his death. "She was petite and pretty, but she was also highly educated and well-read," Knowlson wrote about them. Beckett seems to have been attracted straight by her and him. Both their encounters were significant because it was the start of a lifelong friendship, as well as Suzanne's. Barbara Bray died in Edinburgh on February 25, 2010.

Rosa von Praunheim, a feminist filmmaker from 1969, shot an experimental short film portrait of Beckett, which he named after the writer.

Beckett received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature while on holiday in Tunisia with Suzanne. Suzanne, anticipating that her intensely private husband would be crowned with a spotlight from this point forward, has dubbed the award a "catastrophe." Though Beckett did not devote much time to interviews, he did spend time with the artists, scholars, and admirers who followed him out in the Hotel PLM Saint-Jacques in Paris, where he gave his appointments and ate often his lunches, which is near his Montparnasse home. Despite the fact that Beckett was a personal man, a look at the second volume of his letters by Roy Foster on the 15th issue of The New Republic reveals him to be not only amiable, but also very willing to discuss his work and the process behind it.

Suzanne died on July 17, 1989. Beckett died on December 22nd, after being admitted to a nursing home and possibly Parkinson's disease. The two people were interred together in the cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris and shared a basic granite gravestone that follows Beckett's instruction that it should be "any shade so long as it's grey."

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Honours and awards

• Croix de guerre (France)
• Médaille de la Résistance (France)
• 1959 honorary doctorate from Trinity College Dublin
• 1961 International Publishers' Formentor Prize (shared with Jorge Luis Borges)
• 1968 Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature
• Saoi of Aosdana (Ireland)
• 2016 The house that Beckett lived at in 1934 (48 Paultons Square, Chelsea, London) received an English Heritage Blue Plaque
• Obies (for Off-Broadway plays):