Samuel Beckett
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Samuel Barclay Beckett (April 13 1906 – December 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".
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Selected works by Beckett
Dramatic works
Theatre
- Human Wishes (c. 1936; published 1984)
- Eleutheria (written 1947 in French; published in French 1995, and English 1996)
- En attendant Godot (published 1952, performed,1953) (Waiting for Godot, pub.1954, perf. 1955)
- Acte sans Paroles I (1956); Act Without Words I (1957)
- Acte sans Paroles II (1956); Act Without Words II (1957)
- Fin de partie (published 1957); Endgame (published 1957)
- Krapp's Last Tape (first performed 1958)
- Fragment de théâtre I (late 1950s); Rough for Theatre I
- Fragment de théâtre II (late 1950s); Rough for Theatre II
- Happy Days (first performed 1961); Oh les beaux jours (published 1963)
- Play (performed in German, as Spiel, 1963; English version 1964)
- Come and Go (first performed in German, then English, 1966)
- Breath (first performed 1969)
- Not I (first performed 1972)
- That Time (first performed 1976)
- Footfalls (first performed 1976)
- Neither (1977) (An "opera", music by Morton Feldman)
- A Piece of Monologue (first performed 1979)
- Rockaby (first performed 1981)
- Ohio Impromptu (first performed 1981)
- Catastrophe (Catastrophe et autres dramatiques, first performed 1982)
- What Where (first performed 1983)
Radio
- All That Fall (broadcast 1957)
- From an Abandoned Work (broadcast 1957)
- Embers (broadcast 1959)
- Rough for Radio I (published 1976) (written in French in 1961 as Esquisse radiophonique)
- Rough for Radio II (published 1976) (written in French in 1961 as Pochade radiophonique)
- Words and Music (broadcast 1962)
- Cascando (broadcast:1963 French version; 1964 English translation)
Television
- Eh Joe with Jack MacGowran (broadcast 1966)
- Beginning To End with Jack MacGowran (1965)
- Ghost Trio (broadcast 1977)
- ... but the clouds ... (broadcast 1977)
- Quad I + II (broadcast 1981)
- Nacht und Träume (broadcast 1983); Night and Dreams, published 1984
- Beckett Directs Beckett (1988/92)
Cinema
- Film (1965)
Prose
Novels
- Dream of Fair to Middling Women (written 1932; published 1992)
- Murphy (1938); 1947 Beckett's French version
- Watt (1953); 1968, Beckett's French version
- Molloy (1951); English version (1955)
- Malone meurt (1951); Malone Dies (1956)
- L'innommable (1953); The Unnamable (1958)
- Comment c'est (1961); How It Is (1964)
- Mercier and Camier (1970); English translation (1974)
Short prose
- More Pricks Than Kicks (1934)
- "L'Expulsé", written 1946, in Nouvelles et Textes pour rien (1955); "The Expelled" Stories and Texts for Nothing (1967)
- "Le Calmant", written 1946, in Nouvelles et Textes pour rien (1955); "The Calmative", Stories and Texts for Nothing (1967)
- "Le Fin" or "Suite", written 1946, in Nouvelles et Textes pour rien (1955); "The End", Stories and Texts for Nothing (1967)
- "Texts for Nothing", translated into French for Nouvelles et Textes pour rein (1955); Stories and Texts for Nothing (1967)
- "L'Image" (1959) a fragment from Comment c'est
- '"Premier Amour" (1970, written 1946); translated by Beckett as "First Love", 1973
- Le Dépeupleur (1970); The Lost Ones (1971)
- Pour finir encore et autres foirades (1976); For to End Yet Again and Other Fizzles (1976)
- Company (1980)
- Mal vu mal dit (1981); Ill Seen Ill Said (1982)
- Worstward Ho (1983)
- "Stirrings Still" (1988)
- "As the Story was Told" (1990)
- The Complete Short Prose: 1929-1989, ed S. E. Gontarski. New York: Grove Press, 1995
Non-fiction
- Dante...Bruno. Vico..Joyce (1929)
- Proust (1931)
- Three Dialogues (with Georges Duthuit and Jacques Putnam) (1949)
- Disjecta (1929–1967)
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