(Samuel Beckett, 1906-1990)
We owe to Samuel Beckett perhaps the most impressive and most original dramatic works of our time.
Peter Brook
Samuel Beckett - Franco-Irish writer, playwright, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1969). He wrote in English and French, he himself translated his plays from English into French. Beckett was born in Foxrock, County Dublin on April 13, 1906 to a Protestant middle-class family. In 1917 he entered the Portora Royal School. There he began to learn French. In 1923, at the age of 17, Beckett entered Trinty College, where he continued his studies foreign languages, as well as literature, which he calls his first "passion", and gives preference to French literature. He reads Pascal, Helinx, Vico, Schopenhauer. The ideas of these philosophers had a great influence on the formation of Beckett's spiritual world and subsequently found reflection in his work. In 1927, in the last semester before graduating from college, he met a Frenchman, Alfred Puron, who almost immediately became his friend. In 1928 (1929) Beckett went to Paris to lecture in English. There he began to drink, and the problem with alcohol, which greatly undermined his already poor health, remained with him for the rest of his life. In the same year he met James Joyce, his compatriot. Joyce's influence on Beckett's early work is undeniable. Beckett was greatly impressed by Joyce's "Ulysses", he was attracted by the artistic experiment carried out in this novel - the "stream of consciousness" method. In Paris, for about two years, Beckett was Joyce's secretary. However, Beckett, like, indeed, Joyce himself, had too independent a character to be under someone's influence for a long time, he soon begins to search for his own independent path in literature, breaks up with Joyce and returns to Dublin. Back in Dublin, Beckett began lecturing at Trinty College and writing short stories.
In 1929, Beckett's first significant work was published - a critical study of "Dante ... Bruno, Vico ... Joyce", in which the attraction to ontological issues characteristic of all Beckett's work was manifested. "Individuality is the concretization of universality, and every individual action is at the same time supra-individual," Beckett writes of Vico's philosophical system. The idea of the indissolubility of the individual and the universal (“the individual as universal”) becomes an element of Beckett’s own worldview; in his work, human experience is presented in the most universal form.
Hell (evil) - Paradise (good), both are static. Earth - Purgatory, i.e. movement that results from the union, the interaction of good and evil. In a real earthly existence, good and evil are inseparable.
1930 - Beckett's first independent book - the poem "Bloodoscope".
1931 essay "Proust". Beckett dreams of an "ideal real", and he finds an example of its realization in Proust. In the cycle “In Search of Lost Time”, Proust organically combined the ideal, spiritual and physical, material through memory, i.e. he connected real being in its momentary manifestation with the past, which exists only in consciousness and has thus become already ideal. In each of his phrases, Proust restores the integrity of the "I" - this is "I", as it exists at a given moment in time, and its essence lost in the course of time.
After several operations and the death of his father in June 1933, Beckett, fleeing depression, left for London in December of the same year to consult with psychoanalysts, since their practice in Dublin was banned. In 1934-36. Beckett is working hard German and even tries to write short stories on it.
1934 - Sat. short stories (novel) “More pricks than kicks”, another translation is “More barking than biting”. The stories are united by the figure of the central character Belacqua Shua. The name of the anti-hero is taken from the Divine Comedy (Fourth Canto of Purgatory) by Dante, who placed the Florentine Belacqua, who in earthly life was engaged in the manufacture of parts for musical stringed instruments, like a lazy person in purgatory. These are the "anti-history" of the "anti-hero". Beckett's Belacqua is even lazier than Dante's hero of the same name. He is a real anti-hero - any action is alien to him, he desperately fights for his niche in life, where he can comfortably exist for the prescribed period, and crawls out of it only for the sake of another marriage. With this flight from people and events, Belacqua Shua affirms the “right of a person to solitude”, but not just to solitude, but to lazily stay in himself: he runs away from familiar intellectuals, from girlfriends, brides and wives. All the other heroes of the novel are only engaged in chasing him "without sleep and rest." Both in flight and in pursuit, Beckett's characters reach the point of absurdity. Belacqua does not act, he "barks" at those who try to violate his "privacy". However, “it barks more than it bites.” Action is replaced by intellectual games.
Already in this early text, features inherent in Beckett's style appeared:
literary reminiscences (influenced by Joyce) and a synthesis of high and low culture tendencies. For example, Beckett uses various forms comic: from naive folk-style jokes to ironic play with literary reminiscences and allusions (a parody of classical-romantic European literature of the 18th-19th centuries). He also introduces the "text within the text" technique, for example, his Belacqua reads the Second Ode of Dante's "Paradise";
undeveloped (rudimentary) plot, because there are no conflicts and conflicts in the work. The unity of the text is formed due to the consistent connection of small everyday episodes, as well as the unity of place and time;
fragmentation, which is directly related to the theme of human loneliness and isolation. The hero, or rather the "anti-hero", of Beckett is always lonely and aloof;
the unity of context in Beckett's works gives rise to numerous echoes between his works, reminiscences, repetitions, which form an intertextual space and create the effect of a single text, in relation to which individual works seem to be parts or variants;
versatility. Beckett conveys the experience of man XX in a universally generalized form.
In 1938, the novel "Murphy" was written, which on the whole still has a traditional form. The hero of this novel is trying to withdraw into himself and live in a world of pure consciousness, he is alienated and withdrawn. Murphy's escape from life is only possible thanks to an accident, as a result of which he literally passes away. Dylan Thomas on Murphy: "The Ostrich-Individual in the Desert of Mass Production". Beckett could not find a publisher who would agree to publish the novel for a long time. The publishers did not like the amorphous character of the hero and the structure of the novel, they demanded to redo all this. As a result, the novel was published with the help of Beckett's friends.
Difficulties with the publication of the novel only strengthened Beckett's decision to leave Ireland forever, along with its intolerance for artistic experiments and the dictates of the church. Since 1938, Beckett has been living permanently in France, in Paris. In early 1938, he met Suzanne Deschevaux-Dusmesnil, with whom he lived for the rest of his life. Samuel and Suzanne officially registered their relationship only in 1961, but the marriage ceremony was held in the strictest confidence. They say that Beckett, shortly before his death, went to a nursing home so as not to burden his wife with himself, and then every day he ran to her on a date.
During the war in occupied France, Beckett takes part in the resistance movement (he is a member of the group "The Gloria SMH") and miraculously escapes arrest in 1942. His friend, Alfred Puron, did not succeed, and he died in a concentration camp on May 1, 1945 After the failure of the group, Beckett is forced to hide in Roussillon, and he knows firsthand the feeling of fear, hopelessness, a state of forced inactivity. The tragic experience of the world war confirmed for Beckett his idea of the world as a source of violence that man is powerless to resist. Man is mortal (finite). From this follows the meaninglessness of all human efforts, because they all end in failure. Beckett's understanding of being has something in common with the concepts of Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger and is connected with the ideas of the existentialists. However, Beckett does not have some provisions of existentialism - the category of responsibility of the individual and the situation of choice. The fate of a man doomed to defeat in a hostile world where he is thrown is presented by Beckett in a synthetic image that is universal in nature.
After the war, after a trip to Ireland to visit his mother, Beckett began to translate his previously written works from English into French, in particular, the novel "Murphy". Since 1946, he began to write directly in French, having managed to transfer the charm of a non-native language to his works, preferring the language of the street, which is spoken by the first comer.
From 1946 to 1950 Beckett writes exclusively in French a number of novels, plays, short stories, poems. In 1947 (1951 - French edition, 1955 - English) he wrote the novel Molloy, which later became the first part of a trilogy. The second part is the novel “Malone (Malone) is dying” (“Malone meurt”; French ed. - 1951, English - 1956). The third part is the novel "Nameless" ("L" innommable"; 1953, 1958)., 1951). All three novels combine the image of the road, which is understood as the road of life, the road of self-knowledge, so the space in the novel gradually loses its specificity and becomes abstract, conventional, symbolic.
In 1953, the novel "Watt" was published, written in English. This novel was begun in Roussillon and completed in 1945. Beckett could not publish it for a long time. Characters Watt (What) and Nott (No), which together means - “what is not there”, “is not enough”. Strict logic, well-thought-out form and at the same time absurd grotesque-comic content.
Beckett turned to drama at the end of the forties. His first 3-act play "Eleftheria" (from Greek - freedom), written in 1947, remained unpublished. Beckett began working on the tragicomedy En attendant Godot, written in French in 1950 and staged in Paris at the Babylon Theater in January 1953, as early as 1948. The place of action is the road. Under a lonely tree in an open, empty space, two heroes are sitting - Vladimir and Estragon. Their meeting is only a point, a moment in the present between the no longer existing and the not yet existing. They do not know where they are coming from and have no idea of the real course of time. The heroes are powerless to change the course of time, and the helplessness of the heroes is emphasized by their weakness and sickness. Godot's name is similar to the German word for "God". Therefore, often Godot is identified with God or some hypostasis of God. The structure of Beckett's text suggests ambiguity, and such an interpretation is possible, but cannot be the only one. Regarding religion, Beckett was skeptical. Religion is present in his texts as a source of imagery, an element of the Christian culture in which Beckett lived, and not as a source of faith. Beckett said: “I am familiar with Christian mythology. Like all literary devices, I use it where it suits me. But to say that it had a profound effect on me through daily reading or otherwise is pure nonsense.” Godot is "Nothing", he symbolizes in the play the secret of being, the penetration into which is the meaning of the characters' path. But Vladimir and Estragon do not know Godot and do not know what he is. False messengers appear on the stage, filling the void of the present and in no way bringing the heroes closer to comprehending the mystery. One day, Beckett received a letter from prison: “Your Godot is our Godot... We are all waiting for Godot and we don't know if he has already arrived. Yes, he's already here. This is my neighbor in the next cell. We ought to do something to change his shoes, which are rubbing his feet.”
In almost all of Beckett's works, the same theme is repeated - the relationship between time and man, expressed either by expectation or by the search for something. All his characters seem to be motionless, their consciousness is confused, contradictory and constantly moving in a vicious circle. But the closed world in which they live is the whole Universe. Through the individual experience of an outwardly apathetic hero, Beckett showed the dependence of man on nature and the world of people. The author himself says: “There is no time in this obscured consciousness. Past, present, coming. All at once." The author portrays the characters with a considerable amount of irony and sarcasm, but at the same time does not hide sympathy and sympathy for them.
1957 - the play "Endgame", where the hero Hamm is not able to move independently and is chained to a wheelchair. The action of the play is limited to four walls of one room, which emphasizes the hopelessness of the situation.
1960 - play "Theatre 1".
1981 - play "Kachi-kach".
All these pieces are united by the image of “stationary movement”, which is transmitted, for example, with the help of a rocking chair (“Kachi-kach”), because it is constantly moving and at the same time remains in place, as a result, dynamics is equal to statics.
1961 - play "Oh happy days". The action of this play is placed on a completely deserted space (an empty stage). The heroine Winnie is literally chained to one point in this open space. In the first act, she is covered up to her waist with earth; in the second, only her head is visible. Critics wrote about Winnie - "a truncated creature." The basis of the image is a realized metaphor. The point to which the heroine is attached is a grave, death, which everyone carries in themselves from birth, not noticing her presence for the time being. Winnie is half consumed by her grave. She is always doing something: rummaging in her purse, looking around, but her freedom is only an appearance, an illusion. In the second act, Vinnie can only speak. The spiritual blindness of the heroine determines the comically pointed image of the image and the situation as a whole, but the grotesque is combined with tragedy. Winnie is not aware of what is happening, which makes her funny and pathetic, but this is what allows her to continue to live despite the evidence of death.
1964 - the play "Comedy" (in English version"Game", or "Play"), where the characters are placed in vessels that look like coffin urns.
1972 - play "Not me". On an empty dark stage, the spotlight highlights only one mouth, which endlessly pronounces words. The idea - a life devoid of meaning, has finally lost even its material shell, its bodily beginning. The gap between the physical and the spiritual in Beckett's play becomes apparent. The speech flow conveys the state of mind of the hero at a certain moment in his life, and Beckett always correlates this moment with the idea of the nearness of death.
In the 1970s in the work of Beckett, both in drama and in prose, there is an increase in the lyrical beginning. His texts of this time are characterized by a special structure, gravitating by its nature to the lyrics. For the first time, such a poetic structure was realized in the play "The Last Tape of Krepp" (French version - "The Last Tape of the Tape Recorder", 1957, 1959). Beckett's plays of the 70-80s, in which the lyrical element is strengthened, are called monodramas. These are the plays "Communication" (1980), "Poorly seen, poorly said" (1981), "Kachi-kach" (1981) and others. In the 70-80s. in Beckett's works there is a movement of the hero towards the "Other", but, based on the general evolution of the writer, this movement was also a movement towards death. Beckett: “At the end of my work there is nothing but dust /…/, complete decay. There is neither "I", nor "being", nor "to have" /…/. Can't move on. In my work I strive towards impotence, towards ignorance. /…/ The experience of the not-knowing, not-powerful /…/”.
IN last years During his lifetime, Beckett wrote a series of groundbreaking works for radio, television and film, in some cases directing them.
In 1964, Beckett travels to New York for a film festival. Marin Karmitz - producer, having met Beckett on the set of the film "Comedy" (1966), later recalled in his book "Separate Gang":
“Beckett never threw away manuscripts - he lived by selling them to an American university. ...He loved Closri de Lila; I used to go there on foot and order Irish whiskey. He spoke in broken sentences. The word was rare, but significant. In his speech, he strove for silence. He complained that he was losing his sight ... The windows of his room overlooked the Sante prison. On the walls of the apartment are paintings by his friend Bram van Velde. The only artist he liked. He said that there could be no painting, that it was necessary to write in black and white paints. Brahm's best paintings were very picturesque. ... He seemed to have two streams of visitors: those who came to his wife, he did not see, and his guests never met her ... Passion - rugby. He was watching the Five Nations Cup competition on a small TV. Shouted, stamped his feet. And he kept a close eye on the ball. Sometimes very close to the screen. He said he was blind. On the set, where he came, exhausted, he sat in the front row with the words: “I don’t see.” ...He was friends with a rose saleswoman. Strange - close, very cordial relationship. Beckett was huge, magnificent ... And similar to the statues of Giacometti.
In 1966, doctors diagnosed Beckett with a double cataract, and in April 1968 he became seriously ill with pneumonia. In 1970-71. he underwent eye surgery twice, but his vision continued to deteriorate. Beckett's wife Suzanne died on June 17, 1989, Beckett died on December 22, 1989. Both were buried in Paris at the cemetery in Montparnasse.
Literature:
1. Beckett S. Molloy. Malone is dying. St. Petersburg, "Amphora", 2000.
2. Beckett S. Barks more than bites. Kyiv: RKHGI Publishing House, 1999.
3. Beckett S. Waiting for Godot // IL, 1966, No. 10.
4. Beckett S. Exile. Plays and stories. - M., 1989 ("Library "IL").
5. Esslin Martin. Poetry of moving images // Art of Cinema, 6/1998.
Samuel Beckett was awarded the prize for innovative works in prose and drama, in which tragedy modern man becomes his triumph. Beckett's deep pessimism contains a love for humanity that only grows as one goes deeper into the abyss of vileness and despair, and when despair seems limitless, it turns out that compassion has no limits.
Beckett agreed to accept the award only on the condition that Beckett's French publisher, the well-known Jerome Lindon, would receive it, which was done.
In recent years, Beckett has led an extremely secluded life, avoiding any comments about his work. Samuel Beckett died in Paris on December 22, 1989 at the age of 83, a few months after the death of his wife Suzanne.
Beckett and music
Barrett, Richard / Barrett, Richard (1959)- "Nothing Else" for viola (1987-2005)
- "I open and close" for string quartet (1983-1988)
- "Another Heavenly Day" for instruments and electronics (1990) based on plays by Beckett
- Sinfonia for 8 voices and orchestra (1968) based on the play "Nameless" / "Unnamable" (1953)
- Music for the play "The Game" / "Play" (1965) based on the play of the same name (1963)
- Quartet N2 (1984), based on Beckett's story "Interlocutor"/"Company" (1979)
- Ballet "Beckett short" (2007) based on the plots of Beckett's plays
- "Two French Poems by Beckett" / "Due poesie francesi di Beckett" for voice, bass flute, viola and percussion (1995)
- "Pas si"" for accordion and 2 voices (1998) to texts by Beckett
- "Waiting for Godot" for four soloists and chamber orchestra (1986) based on the play of the same name (1952)
- "Samuel Beckett: what is the word" / "Samuel Beckett: what is the word" op.30b on texts by Beckett for reciting alto, voices and chamber ensemble (1991)
- «…pas à pas - nulle part…» op.36 on texts by Beckett for baritone, string trio and percussion (1997)
- "Memo 2" for trombone solo (1973) based on the structure of "Not I"/"Not I" (1972)
- version of "Memo 2B" for trombone and female pantomime (1980)
- "Memo 2D" version for trombone, string quartet and female pantomime (1980)
- «…among the voices…» / «…among the voices…» by Beckett for choir and harp (1988)
- concert "Five Views of a Mouth" for flute and orchestra (2007) based on Beckett's play "Not I" / "Not I" (1972)
- "Your Lullaby"/"Your Rockbaby" for saxophone and orchestra (1993) using "rhythmic" elements from "Lullaby"/"Rockbaby" (1981)
- "anti-opera" "Neither ..." / "Neither" based on the libretto by Beckett (1977)
- music for the American version of Beckett's radio play "Words and Music" for two reciters, two flutes, vibraphone, piano and string trio (1987)
- "To Samuel Beckett" for orchestra (1987);
- unrealized idea for music for Beckett's radio play "Cascando" (1961)
- "Enough" / "Enough" for piano (2001) based on the text of the same name (1966)
- "anti-opera" in one act "Game" "Spiel" (1968) based on the play of the same name (1963)
- opera "Come and Go" / "Come and Go" for 9 voices and 9 instruments (1976) based on the play of the same name (1965)
- "Not I" / "Not I" for soprano and tape (1980) based on the play of the same name (1972)
- opera "What Where" / "What Where" (1988) based on the play of the same name (1983)
- opera based on the play "Endgame" / "Fin de partie" (1957) - Salzburg Festival, premiere scheduled for 2013
- opera based on the play "Waiting for Godot" / "En attendant Godot" (1952) - Alla Scala, Milan, premiere scheduled for 2015
Samuel Beckett is a playwright and writer whose plays forever changed the theater and whose prose changed literature. The author of "Waiting for Godot" and "Molloy", he went down in history as a misanthrope who never lost his grim Irish sense of humor.
Start
Beckett was born April 13, 1906 near Dublin. Subsequently, the writer said that he saw the light and cried out at that hour when Christ, "crying with a loud voice, gave up his spirit" (Matthew 27:50).
He studied at the same school as Oscar Wilde - Portora Royal School. In 1923, the future writer entered the famous Dublin Trinity College, whose graduates were Wilde, Oliver Goldsmith, and Jonathan Swift, whom Beckett always treated with deep respect. At the university, he studied Romance languages and played cricket: Beckett is the only Nobel Prize winner whose services to this sport are noted in the "cricket bible" - the Wisden Almanac.
In 1928, Beckett went to teach English to students of the famous Parisian university - Ecole Normale Superieure. In the same year, the poet Thomas McGreevy introduced Beckett to the circle of people who helped James Joyce work on his book "Finnegans Wake" (then "Thing in the Work"): Joyce's eyesight worsened, and young writers wrote down under the master's dictation. According to legend, the neat Beckett, listening to what Joyce was saying, introduced his question "Who's there?" to the visitor who knocked on the door. Beckett was commissioned to translate one passage from "The Thing" into French. In 1929, McGreevy, Beckett, and ten other members of Joyce's "circle", including the great American poet William Carlos Williams, published a collection of essays on "Thing in the Work" under the difficult-to-translate title "Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress" .
In 1930, Beckett published the Whoroscope, a collection of poems inspired by reading René Descartes, another lifelong admiration for Beckett. In his old age, he said about himself then: "A young man who has nothing to say, but wants to do something."
Contrary to popular belief, Beckett was not Joyce's literary secretary. He often visited the house of his great compatriot and up to a certain point literally bowed to him: he smoked cigarettes in the same manner, drank the same drinks and even wore the same shoes (enduring all sorts of inconveniences).
Then, at the turn of the 20s and 30s, Joyce's mentally unstable daughter fell in love with Beckett. Nora, the wife of the master, vigorously wooed Lucia for the young writer, but he was able to get rid of this marriage, not without difficulty and at the cost of abandoning the Joyce house. Lucia was diagnosed with schizophrenia shortly after her breakup with Beckett, tried to be treated by Carl Jung, but was eventually placed in a mental hospital, where she died in 1982. Beckett destroyed his correspondence with Lucia shortly before his death in 1989, but he kept one strange photograph showing Joyce's young daughter dancing in his archive.
In the early 1930s, Beckett briefly returned to Ireland and then embarked on an extended tour of Europe, finally settling in Paris in 1937. He managed to visit the beloved of the famous American philanthropist Peggy Guggenheim, who called him Oblomov. The strange threads that connected Beckett and Russia do not end here: in 1936, he asked Eisenstein and Pudovkin to accept him to study at VGIK. By an absurd coincidence, Beckett's letter did not get to the addressees in time, and this magnificent idea ended in nothing.
In 1938, Beckett published his first novel, Murphy (in English; almost all of his later writings were in French). The hero of this book, in order to avoid marriage, gets a job in a hospital for the insane. In the novel, the hero plays chess with a patient who is almost in a state of catatonic stupor, and Murphy admires the pointlessness of this activity. In the same year, Beckett himself faced a manifestation of monstrous worldly nonsense: he was seriously wounded with a knife by a certain Parisian pimp. Later, when Beckett asked him about the reasons for this act, the man replied: "I don't know, monsieur. I'm sorry." The writer withdrew his statement from the police.
In the hospital, he met 37-year-old Suzanne Deshevo-Dumesnil (Descheveaux-Dumesnil). Beckett survived his future wife (they officially formalized their relationship only in 1961) by a few months.
When it broke out World War, Beckett, as a citizen of a neutral state, remained in Paris. He helped "Gloria", one of the local cells of the Resistance: he translated reports on the movement German troops for the English. When the Gloria failed, Beckett and Suzanne fled to the south of France, where they settled in the village of Roussillon (Department of Vaucluse). There they also helped the anti-fascists to the best of their ability. After the war, Becket was presented with the French state awards for courage, and he modestly said that his help to the Resistance was pure "Boy Scouting".
Zenith
In Roussillon, Beckett worked on Watt, the publication of which was delayed until 1953. On his return to Paris after the war, he wrote the so-called trilogy of novels Molloy, Malone Dies, and Nameless, but none of these things saw the light of day until 1951. In 1946, he sent Sartre the story "La Fin" to his magazine Les Temps Modernes. Half of it was published, and Sartre was sure that he had printed the whole thing. When the misunderstanding came to light, Sartre's friend and co-publisher Simone de Beauvoir refused to print the sequel.
Through the efforts of Suzanne Decheveaux-Dumesnil, by the early 1950s, it was possible to find a publisher for Beckett's novels. French critics highly appreciated "Molloy", and paid attention to the author. But he waited for a triumph only in 1953: the play "Waiting for Godot" made a splash. The remark of one of the heroes "Nothing happens, no one comes, no one leaves - it's terrible" became calling card Beckett. Harold Pinter said that "Godot" forever changed the theater, and the famous French playwright Jean Anouille called the premiere of this play "the most important in forty years."
In "Godo" they see the quintessence of Beckett: behind the longing and horror of human existence in its most unsightly and honest form, an inevitable irony emerges. The heroes of the play are reminiscent of the Marx brothers, the great comedians of silent films. It should be noted that Beckett was very fond of other geniuses of old comedies: Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. The writer's only film experience is the 1963 short "Film" with Keaton in leading role(the last in his life).
Other acclaimed plays followed Godot: Endgame (1957), Krapp's Last Tape (1958), Happy Days(1960). In parallel, Beckett wrote small productions for radio and television, and also prepared his radical text "As Is", published in 1964.
Outcome
In 1969, Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Suzanne, after reading the telegram from the publisher, said shortly: "This is a disaster." World fame threatened to disrupt the couple's secluded lifestyle. As a result, Beckett thanked the Swedish Academy for the honor, but did not go to the ceremony and hid in Portugal from persistent fans. One of them, however, touched the hermit: a Parisian named Jacques Godot sent the writer a letter of apology, which made him wait a long time.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Beckett wrote less and less, and more and more hermetically. In a conversation with his biographer about Joyce, Beckett said: "He is a 'synthesizer': he brought as much as possible into the text. And I am an 'analyzer', I try to cross out as much as possible." At the end of his life, the internal editor prevailed over the writer: every word seemed to him "an unnecessary stain on silence." He spent time in his Paris apartment, watching rugby matches, rereading his favorite books and smoking despite the prohibitions of doctors (he suffered from emphysema).
After the death of Suzanne in July 1989, Beckett moved to one of the Parisian hospices, where he died on December 22 of the same year. He, who had striven for silence for so long, could not speak at all in the last months of his life due to illness. He and Suzanne are buried in the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris. Next to a simple granite slab over their grave grows a lone tree, as in the play "Waiting for Godot".
***
Descartes, beloved by Beckett, belongs to the famous maxim "I think, therefore I am." "To capture the essence of being, he [Beckett] sought to capture the essence of consciousness that exists in man," one of his biographers wrote about him. The writer analyzed this essence to the very bottom, to the formless fundamental principle, to the total existential nightmare and the realization of the complete absurdity of human existence. But he said at the same time that "it rarely happens that a sense of absurdity is not accompanied by a sense of necessity" ("Watt").
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Samuel Barclay Beckett is an outstanding Irish writer. One of the founders (along with Eugene Ionesco) of the theater of the absurd. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969.
Samuel Beckett was born April 13, 1906 in Dublin, Ireland. Father - William Beckett, mother - Mary Beckett, nee May. The Becket family supposedly moved to Ireland from France after the Edict of Nantes, in the original their surname looked like "Becquet".
Beckett received a strict Protestant upbringing, studied first at a private school, then at the Earlsford boarding school. From 1920 to 1923 he continued his education at the Portor Royal School in Northern Ireland. Finally, from 1923 to 1927 Beckett studied English, French and Italian at Trinity College Dublin. After receiving a bachelor's degree, he worked briefly as a teacher in Belfast, then received an invitation to take up a position as an English teacher in Paris, at the École Normale Superior.
In Paris, Beckett meets the famous Irish writer James Joyce and becomes his literary secretary, in particular, helping him to work on the book "Finnegans Wake" (Finnegans Wake). His first literary experience was a critical study of "Dante ... Bruno, Vico ... Joyce."
In 1930, he returned to Trinity College and received a degree there a year later. In 1931, Beckett published the critical essay "Proust" on the work of Marcel Proust, and later the dramatic allegory "Bloodoscope", written in the form of a monologue by Rene Descartes.
Beckett's father dies in 1933. Feeling the "oppression of Irish life", the writer leaves for London. In 1934, he published his first collection of stories with a common character, More Barks Than Bites, and began work on a novel called Murphy. In 1937, the writer moved to France and a year later "Murphy" was published. The novel was received rather reservedly, but was positively evaluated by Joyce himself and Dylan Thomas. Despite this, Beckett is going through a severe crisis - the commercial failure of the novel, coupled with a severe stab wound that he received in street fight, force him to undergo treatment with a psychoanalyst, but nervous breakdowns haunted him all his life. During World War II, Beckett became a member of the French Resistance, and in 1942 was forced to flee to the village of Roussillon, in Southern France. He was accompanied by a close friend, Suzanne Domeni. The novel "Watt", published in 1953, was written there.
After the war, Beckett was finally successful. In 1953, the premiere of his most famous work, the absurdist play Waiting for Godot, written in French, took place. The play, written in 1949 and published in English in 1954, brought the writer international recognition. From now on, Beckett is considered the leading playwright of the theater of the absurd. The first staging of the play in Paris is carried out, in close cooperation with the author, by director Roger Blain.
Having exhausted the prose with a brilliant trilogy, he took his thought to the stage. Drama helps the author to say what he himself does not know.
Beckett is a writer of desperation. He does not go to self-satisfied epochs. In any case, historical cataclysms help critics interpret Becket's incomprehensible masterpieces, about which the author himself never spoke. Thus, "Waiting for Godot" was considered by many to be a military drama, allegorically describing the experience of the French Resistance, in which Beckett took part.
From his actors, Beckett demanded strict adherence to stage directions, which occupy almost half of the text in the play. A faithful gesture was more important for the author than words.
Beckett's character is a man who is unsteady on his feet. It is understandable. The earth pulls him down, the sky - up. Stretched between them, as if on a rack, he cannot get up from all fours. The ordinary fate of everyone and everyone. After all, Beckett was interested in exclusively universal categories of being, which equally describe any rational individual. As the encyclopedia would say, Beckett was preoccupied with "the human situation." And for this, the minimum inventory that the Cherry Lane Theater provided its actors with is enough.
A trilogy was published from 1951 to 1953, making Beckett one of the most famous writers XX century - the novels "Molloy", "Malon Dies" and "Nameless". These novels were written in the non-native French language of the writer and later translated into English by him. In 1957, the drama The End Game was released. The works of Beckett's late period (such as "Come and Go", "Littleness", "Scene Without Words", "Kach-Kach") are, on the one hand, concise in text, while maintaining bright saturation. On their example, one can once again be convinced of the correctness of the ingenious phrase: "Brevity is the sister of talent."
In his mature works, Beckett has shown himself to be a master of form, and he works with no less ease and no less virtuosity. a wide range various genres. For example, the radio play "About all those who fall" (1957) is an example of an organic combination of speech, music, and various sound effects. The short TV play "Hey Joe" (1967) shows the possibilities and techniques, and human face making the most of the opportunities big plans on the small screen. And in the screenplay "Film" (1967), we see a mastery of the art of editing the sequence of episodes.
The last novel of the writer is "How is it". In recent years, Beckett has led an extremely reclusive life, avoiding any commentary on his work.
In 1969, the writer was awarded Nobel Prize on literature. In its decision, the Nobel Committee noted: “Samuel Beckett was awarded the prize for innovative works in prose and drama, in which the tragedy of modern man becomes his triumph. Beckett's deep pessimism contains a love for humanity that only grows as one goes deeper into the abyss of vileness and despair, and when despair seems limitless, it turns out that compassion has no limits.
Beckett agreed to accept the award only on the condition that Beckett's French publisher, the well-known Jerome Lindon, would receive it, which was done.
On February 7, 2007, in connection with the opening of the public Center for Tolerance in the Saratov Regional Universal Scientific Library, the opening of the exhibition "Samuel Beckett" took place, which was a joint project of the Embassy of Ireland in Russia and the All-Russian State Library for Foreign Literature. M. I. Rudomino. The exposition of the exhibition includes 19 photographic plates and publications telling about the life and work of the Nobel laureate.
Samuel Beckett was born April 13, 1906 in Dublin, Ireland. Father - William Beckett, mother - Mary Beckett, nee May. The Beckett family supposedly moved to Ireland from France after the Edict of Nantes, in the original their surname looked like "Becquet". Beckett received a strict Protestant upbringing, studied first at a private school, then at the Earlsford boarding school. From 1920 to 1923 he continued his education at the Portor Royal School in Northern Ireland. Finally, from 1923 to 1927 Beckett studied English, French and Italian at Trinity College Dublin. After receiving his bachelor's degree, he worked briefly as a teacher in Belfast, then received an invitation to take up a position as an English teacher in Paris, at the École Normale Superior.
In Paris, Beckett meets the famous Irish writer James Joyce and becomes his literary secretary, in particular, helping him to work on the book "Finnegans Wake" (Finnegans Wake). His first literary experience was a critical study of "Dante... Bruno, Vico... Joyce". In 1930, he returned to Trinity College and received a degree there a year later. In 1931, Beckett published a critical essay "Proust" on the work of Marcel Proust, later - a dramatic allegory "Bloodoscope", written in the form of a monologue by Rene Descartes. Beckett's father dies in 1933. Feeling the "oppression of Irish life", the writer leaves for London. In 1934, he published his first collection of short stories with a common character, More Barks Than Bites, and began work on a novel called Murphy. In 1937, the writer moved to France and a year later "Murphy" was published. The novel was received rather reservedly, but was positively evaluated by Joyce himself and Dylan Thomas. Despite this, Beckett is going through a severe crisis - the commercial failure of the novel, coupled with a severe knife wound that he received in a street fight, force him to undergo treatment with a psychoanalyst, but nervous breakdowns haunted him all his life. During World War II, Beckett became a member of the French Resistance, and in 1942 was forced to flee to the village of Roussillon, in southern France. He was accompanied by a close friend, Suzanne Domeni. The novel "Watt", published in 1953, was written there.
After the war, Beckett was finally successful. In 1953, the premiere of his most famous work, the absurdist play Waiting for Godot, written in French, took place. From 1951 to 1953, a trilogy was published that made Beckett one of the most famous writers of the 20th century - the novels Molloy, Malone Dies and The Nameless. These novels were written in the non-native French language of the writer and later translated into English by him. In 1957, the drama "The End Game" was released. Published after 8 years last novel writer "How is it." In recent years, Beckett has led an extremely reclusive life, avoiding any commentary on his work. In 1969, the writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In its decision, the Nobel Committee noted:
"Samuel Beckett was awarded the prize for innovative works in prose and drama, in which the tragedy of modern man becomes his triumph. Beckett's deep pessimism contains such a love for humanity, which only increases as it deepens into the abyss of vileness and despair, and when despair seems limitless, it turns out that compassion has no limits."
Beckett agreed to accept the award only on the condition that Beckett's French publisher, the well-known Jerome Lindon, would receive it, which was done.
Samuel Beckett died in Paris on December 22, 1989 at the age of 83.
Published in Russian:
Beckett, S. Barks more than bites. - Kyiv: Nika-center, 2000. - 382 p.
Beckett, S. Dreams of women, beautiful and so-so. - M.: Text, 2006. - 349 p.
Beckett, S. Murphy. - M.: Text, 2002. - 282 p.
Beckett, S. Watt. - M.: Eksmo, 2004. - 416 p.
Beckett, S. Worthless texts. - St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2003. - 338 p. - ("Literary monuments").
Beckett, S. Exile [Endgame. About all those who fall. Happy Days. Theater I. Dante and the Lobster. Exile. First love. End. Communication]. - M.: Izvestia, 1989. - 224 p.
Beckett, S. Trilogy [Molloy. Malone is dying. Nameless]. - St. Petersburg: Chernyshev Publishing House, 1994. - 464 p.
Beckett, S. Theater [Waiting for Godot. Endgame. Scene without words I. Scene without words II. About all those who fall. Krapp's last tape. Theater I. Theater II. Ash. Happy Days. Cascando. A game. They come and go. Eh, Joe? Breath]. - St. Petersburg: ABC; Amphora, 1999. - 345 p.
Beckett, S. Waiting for Godot. - M.: Text, 2009. - 286 p.
Beckett, S. Fragments. - M.: Text, 2009. - 192 p.
Beckett, S. Poems. - M.: Text, 2010. - 269 p.
Beckett, S. Three dialogues // As always - about the avant-garde: Sat. - M.: TPF "Soyuzteatr", GITIS, 1992. - S.118-127.
Beckett, S. Poems // Modern Dramaturgy. - 1989. - No. 1. - P.201
Beckett, S. Krapp's Last Tape. Ash. Cascando. Eh, Joe? Steps. Impromptu in the style of Ohio // Foreign. lit. - 1996. - No. 6. - P.149-173.
Beckett, S. Not me // Range. - 1997 (special issue). - P.125-131.
Beckett, S. Company // Star. - 2005. - No. 9. - P.146-161.
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