Samuel Beckett  

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Samuel Barclay Beckett (April 13 1906December 22 1989) was an Irish dramatist, novelist and poet.

Beckett's work is stark, fundamentally minimalist, and, according to some interpretations, deeply pessimistic about the human condition. His work grew increasingly cryptic and attenuated over his career.

The perceived pessimism in Beckett's work is mitigated both by a great and often wicked sense of humour, and by the sense, for some readers, that Beckett's portrayal of life's obstacles serves to demonstrate that the journey, while difficult, is ultimately worth the effort. Similarly, many posit that Beckett's expressed "pessimism" is not so much for the human condition but for that of an established cultural and societal structure which imposes a stultifying will upon otherwise hopeful individuals; it is the inherent optimism of the human condition, therefore, that is at tension with the oppressive world.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969 "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".

Contents

Selected works by Beckett

Dramatic works

Theatre

Radio

Television

Cinema

Prose

Novels

Short prose

Non-fiction

Poetry collections

  • Whoroscope (1930)
  • Echo's Bones and other Precipitates (1935)
  • Poems in English (1961)
  • Poèmes (1968)
  • Collected Poems in English and French (1977)
  • What is the Word (1989)
  • Selected Poems 1930–1989 (2009)

Translation collections and long works

  • Anna Livia Plurabelle (James Joyce, French translation by Beckett and others) (1931)
  • Negro: an Anthology (Nancy Cunard, editor) (1934)
  • Anthology of Mexican Poems (Octavio Paz, editor) (1958)
  • The Old Tune (Robert Pinget) (1963)
  • What Is Surrealism?: Selected Essays (André Breton) (various short pieces in the collection)

See




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