Portal:Samuel Beckett
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Introduction
Samuel Barclay Beckett (/ˈbɛkɪt/; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, poet, and literary translator who lived in Paris for most of his adult life. He wrote in both English and French.
Beckett's work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human existence, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humor, and became increasingly minimalist in his later career. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd".
Selected general articles
- The "fizzles" are eight short prose pieces written by Samuel Beckett:
- Fizzle 1 [He is barehead]
- Fizzle 2 [Horn came always]
- Fizzle 3 Afar a Bird
- Fizzle 4 [I gave up before birth]
- Fizzle 5 [Closed place]
- Fizzle 6 [Old earth]
- Fizzle 7 Still
- Fizzle 8 For to end yet again
Some fizzles are unnamed and are identified by their numbers or first few words, which appear above in brackets. Read more... - Stirrings Still is the final prose piece by Samuel Beckett, written 1986–89 to give his American publisher, Barney Rosset, something to publish. First published in a signed limited edition, it was later republished in the posthumous edition As The Story Was Told (1990).
The piece was published in its entirety in The Guardian on 3 March 1989. This edition also included a review of the limited edition by Frank Kermode, and a piece on the history of the work's publication by John Calder. Read more... - All That Fall is a one-act radio play by Samuel Beckett produced following a request from the BBC. It was written in English and completed in September 1956. The autograph copy is titled Lovely Day for the Races. It was translated, by Robert Pinget, as Tous ceux qui tombent.
When the germ of All that Fall came to him, Beckett wrote to a friend, Nancy Cunard: Read more... - Catastrophe is a short play by Samuel Beckett, written in French in 1982 at the invitation of A.I.D.A. (Association Internationale de Défense des Artistes) and “[f]irst produced in the Avignon Festival (21 July 1982) … Beckett considered it ‘massacred.’” It is one of his few plays to deal with a political theme and, arguably, holds the title of Beckett's most optimistic work. It was dedicated to then imprisoned Czech reformer and playwright, Václav Havel. Read more...
Neither is the only “opera” by Morton Feldman, dating from 1977. Its “libretto” is a 16-line poem by Samuel Beckett. Composer and librettist had met in Berlin two years earlier with plans for a collaboration for Rome Opera, but in their encounter Beckett had told Feldman that he himself did not like opera, and Feldman had echoed Beckett’s sentiment, so that the work emerged in Rome as a setting for soprano soloist only, accompanied by orchestra. It could theoretically be termed a “monodrama,” but given the creators’ disdain for opera, the label “anti-opera” fits better. Read more...- Cascando is a radio play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in French in December 1961, subtitled Invention radiophonique pour musique et voix, with music by the Franco-Romanian composer Marcel Mihalovici. It was first broadcast on France Culture on 13 October 1963 with Roger Blin (L'Ouvreur) and Jean Martin (La Voix). The first English production was on 6 October 1964 on BBC Radio 3 with Denys Hawthorne (Opener) and Patrick Magee (Voice).
“The play was originally to be called Calando, a musical term meaning 'diminishing in tone' (equivalent to diminuendo or decrescendo), but Beckett changed it when ORTF officials pointed out that calendos was the slang word for camembert in French." The term ‘cascando’ (‘cascades’) involves the decrease of volume and the deceleration of tempo. Read more... - Rough for Theatre II (also known simply as Theatre II) is a short play by Samuel Beckett. “Although this discarded piece of theatre is dated ‘circa 1960’ in End and Odds, a manuscript from two years earlier exists in Trinity College, Dublin, Library. This situates a first version, written in French [as Fragment de théâtre II] and different from that eventually published in 1976 as between the English plays Krapp's Last Tape and Embers.” Read more...
- Ohio Impromptu is a "playlet" by Samuel Beckett.
Written in English in 1980, it began as a favour to S.E. Gontarski, who requested a dramatic piece to be performed at an academic symposium in Columbus, Ohio in honour of Beckett’s seventy-fifth birthday. Beckett was uncomfortable writing to order and struggled with the piece for nine months before it was ready. It was first performed on 9 May 1981 at the Stadium II Theater; Alan Schneider directed with David Warrilow as "Reader" and Rand Mitchell as "Listener". Read more...
Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil and Samuel Beckett.
Suzanne Déchevaux-Dumesnil (1900 – 17 July 1989) was the lover and later wife of Samuel Beckett.
In the 1930s, Beckett chose Déchevaux-Dumesnil as his lover over the heiress Peggy Guggenheim. Six years older than Beckett, Déchevaux-Dumesnil was an austere woman known for avant-garde tastes and left-wing politics. She was a pianist. Read more...- Imagination Dead Imagine is a short prose text by Samuel Beckett first published in French in Les Lettres nouvelles in 1965. Its first English publication was a translation in The Sunday Times in 1965 followed by a trade edition by Beckett's London-based publisher, Calder and Boyars, later that year. Read more...
- Notfilm is a 2015 feature-length documentary, directed by Ross Lipman on the production of playwright Samuel Beckett's only film, an experimental short entitled Film starring Buster Keaton.
While conducting preliminary research to restore Film, filmmaker and restorationist Ross Lipman visited Grove Press founder and Film producer Barney Rosset at his apartment, where Lipman discovered reels of film and audio. This material contained outtakes from Beckett's 1965 production, including a prologue long-thought lost. Read more... - What Where is Samuel Beckett's last play produced following a request for a new work for the 1983 Autumn Festival in Graz, Austria. It was written between February and March 1983 initially in French as Quoi où and translated by Beckett himself. Read more...
- Breath is a notably short stage work by Samuel Beckett. An altered version was first included in Kenneth Tynan's revue Oh! Calcutta!, at the Eden Theatre in New York City on June 16, 1969. The UK premiere was at the Close Theatre Club in Glasgow in October 1969; this was the first performance of the text as written. The second performance, and the English premiere, was at a benefit held at the Oxford Playhouse on March 8, 1970. “The first accurate publication appeared in Gambit 4.16 (1969): 5–9, with a manuscript facsimile.” Read more...
Waiting for Godot (/ˈɡɒdoʊ/ GOD-oh) is a play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), wait for the arrival of someone named Godot who never arrives, and while waiting they engage in a variety of discussions and encounter three other characters. Waiting for Godot is Beckett's translation of his own original French play, En attendant Godot, and is subtitled (in English only) "a tragicomedy in two acts". The original French text was composed between 9 October 1948 and 29 January 1949. The premiere was on 5 January 1953 in the Théâtre de Babylone [fr], Paris. The English language version was premiered in London in 1955. In a poll conducted by the British Royal National Theatre in 1990 it was voted the "most significant English language play of the 20th century". Read more...- Act Without Words I is a short play by Samuel Beckett. It is a mime, Beckett's first (followed by Act Without Words II). Like many of Beckett's works, the play was originally written in French (Acte sans paroles I), being translated into English by Beckett himself. It was written in 1956 following a request from the dancer Deryk Mendel and first performed on 3 April 1957 at the Royal Court Theatre in London. On that occasion it followed a performance of Endgame. The original music to accompany the performance was written by composer John S. Beckett, Samuel's cousin, who would later collaborate with him on the radio play Words and Music. Read more...
- Quad is a television play by Samuel Beckett, written and first produced and broadcast in 1981. It first appeared in print in 1984 (Faber and Faber) where the work is described as "[a] piece for four players, light and percussion" and has also been called a "ballet for four people."
It consists of four actors dressed in robes, hunched and silently walking around and diagonally across a square stage in fixed patterns, alternately entering and exiting. Each actor wears a distinct colored robe (white, red, blue, yellow), and is accompanied by a distinct percussion instrument (leitmotif). The actors walk in sync (except when entering or exiting), always on one of four rotationally symmetric paths (e.g., when one actor is at a corner, so are all others; when one actor crosses the stage, all do so together, etc.), and never touch – when walking around the stage, they move in the same direction, while when crossing the stage diagonally, where they would touch in the middle, they avoid the center area (walking around it, always clockwise or always anti-clockwise, depending on the production). In the original production, the play was first performed once, and then, after a pause, an abbreviated version is performed a second time, this time in black and white and without musical accompaniment. These are distinguished as Quad I and Quad II, though Quad II does not appear in print. Read more... - :This article is about the play. For the restriction enzyme NotI, see restriction enzyme.
Not I is a short dramatic monologue written in 1972 (March 20 to April 1) by Samuel Beckett which was premiered at the "Samuel Beckett Festival" by the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, New York (22 November 1972). Read more... - ‘Echo's Bones’ is a short story by Samuel Beckett. Originally written in 1933, the story was unpublished until 2014.
The title is an allusion to the myth of Echo and Narcissus, in the version told in Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book III. In particular, the line "Echo's bones were turned to stone" is in Beckett's Dream of Fair to Middling Women notebook. Read more...
Manuscript of Embers from Trinity College Library
Embers is a radio play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in English in 1957. First broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 24 June 1959, the play won the RAI prize at the Prix Italia awards later that year. Donald McWhinnie directed Jack MacGowran – for whom the play was specially written – as "Henry", Kathleen Michael as "Ada" and Patrick Magee as "Riding Master" and "Music Master". Robert Pinget translated the work as Cendres and "The first stage production was by the French Graduate Circle of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Festival, 1977."
The most recent version of Embers was broadcast in 2006 on BBC Radio 3 and directed by Stephen Rea. The cast included Michael Gambon as Henry, Sinéad Cusack as Ada, Rupert Graves, Alvaro Lucchesi and Carly Baker. This production was rebroadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 16 May 2010 as part of a double bill with a 2006 production of Krapp's Last Tape. Read more...- The Lost Ones is the English translation of Le Dépeupleur, a short story abandoned by Samuel Beckett in 1966 and completed in 1970. The Lost Ones was published in French in 1970 and translated by the author in 1971.
In remarkably dense but spare prose, Beckett describes a small world consisting of a flattened cylinder and its pitiable inhabitants. There is no plot, and Beckett frequently repeats certain phrases and bits of information. He abandoned the story in 1966 because of its "intractable complexities", and the basic idea was reused in "Bing" (1966, translated as "Ping"). Beckett wrote, "'Bing' may be regarded as the result or miniaturization of 'Le Dépeupleur'..." The story comes from a period where Beckett was implementing the architectural theories of Mies van der Rohe and Adolf Loos, who said that "ornament is a crime". This post-How It Is prose is largely fixated on the interior landscape of the mind. As Beckett noted in the typescript for Watt, "the unconscious mind! What a subject for a short story!". Read more... - Samuel Beckett wrote the radio play, Words and Music between November and December 1961. It was recorded and broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 13 November 1962. Patrick Magee played Words and Felix Felton, Croak. Music was composed especially by John S. Beckett. The play first appeared in print in Evergreen Review 6.27 (November–December 1962). Beckett himself translated the work into French under the title Paroles et Musique (Minuit, 1972). Read more...
- All Strange Away is a short prose text by Samuel Beckett first published in English in 1964. A special signed edition with illustrations by Edward Gorey was published in 1976, and in a trade edition by Grove Press (New York) of collected texts titled, Rockaby and Other Short Pieces in 1981. Beckett's British publisher, John Calder, also printed the work independently in 1979 and again, in 1990, in a collection of late prose works under the title, As the Story was Told. Read more...
- For the song "That Time" by Regina Spektor see Begin to Hope
That Time is a one-act play by Samuel Beckett, written in English between 8 June 1974 and August 1975. It was specially written for actor Patrick Magee, who delivered its first performance, on the occasion of Beckett's seventieth birthday celebration, at London's Royal Court Theatre on 20 May 1976. Read more... - The Old Tune is a free translation of Robert Pinget’s 1960 play La Manivelle (The Crank) in which Samuel Beckett transformed Pinget’s Parisians, Toupin and Pommard into Dubliners, Cream and Gorman. Its first radio broadcast was by the BBC on 23 August 1960. Barbara Bray directed Jack MacGowran (Cream) and Patrick Magee (Gorman).
For the unspecified old tune played by Gorman on the barrel organ Beckett selected The Bluebells of Scotland, suggested by the bank of bluebells mentioned near the start of the play. Read more... - From An Abandoned Work, a "meditation for radio" by Samuel Beckett, was first broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Third Programme on Saturday, 14 December 1957 together with a selection from the novel Molloy. Donald McWhinnie, who already had a great success with All That Fall, directed the Irish actor Patrick Magee.
The work began as "a short prose piece, written about 1954-55, a step towards a novel soon abandoned" and Beckett's "first text written in English since Watt." Though initially published as a theater piece by the British publisher Faber and Faber following its performance on the BBC, it is now "generally anthologized with Beckett's short fiction". Read more... - Happy Days is a play in two acts, written by Samuel Beckett.
Winnie, buried to her waist, follows her daily routine and prattles to her husband, Willie, who is largely hidden and taciturn. Her frequent refrain is “Oh this is a happy day.” Later, in Act II she is buried up to her neck, but continues to talk and remember happier days. Read more... - Footfalls is a play by Samuel Beckett. It was written in English, between 2 March and December 1975 and was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre as part of the Samuel Beckett Festival, on May 20, 1976 directed by Beckett himself. Billie Whitelaw, for whom the piece had been written, played May whilst Rose Hill voiced the mother. Read more...
- ... but the clouds ... is a television play by Samuel Beckett. Beckett wrote it between October–November 1976 “to replace a film of Play which the BBC had sent [him] for approval (and which he had rejected)” due to “the poor quality of the film”. Donald McWhinnie directed Billie Whitelaw and Ronald Pickup. It was first broadcast on 17 April 1977 as part of a programme of three Beckett plays entitled ‘Shades’ on BBC2. It was first published in Ends and Odds (Faber) 1977. An early title for the piece was Poetry only love. Read more...
- The Journal of Beckett Studies publishes academic articles relating to the work of Samuel Beckett, (1906–1989), the Irish poet, dramatist and playwright. Published twice yearly by Edinburgh University Press in April and September, it was established in 1976, under the editorship of John Pilling and James Knowlson. It was edited from 1989 by Stan Gontarski and is now edited by Anthony Uhlmann (University of Western Sydney). Each issue contains an introduction, essays or notes, review essays and reviews of books and performances. The journal alternates between themed issues overseen by guest editors, and general issues. Read more...
- Murphy, first published in 1938, is an avant-garde novel as well as the third work of prose fiction by the Irish author and dramatist Samuel Beckett. The book was Beckett's second published prose work after the short-story collection More Pricks than Kicks (published in 1934) and his unpublished first novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women (published posthumously in 1992). It was written in English, rather than the French of much of Beckett's later writing. After many rejections, it was published by Routledge on the recommendation of Beckett's painter friend Jack Butler Yeats. Read more...
- Samuel Beckett's essay Proust, from 1930, is an aesthetic and epistemological manifesto, which is more concerned with Beckett's influences and preoccupations than with its ostensible subject. Read more...
- Play is a one-act play by Samuel Beckett. It was written between 1962 and 1963 and first produced in German as Spiel on 14 June 1963 at the Ulmer Theatre in Ulm-Donau, Germany, directed by Deryk Mendel, with Nancy Illig (W1), Sigfrid Pfeiffer (W2) and Gerhard Winter (M). The first performance in English was on 7 April 1964 at the Old Vic in London. Read more...
2016 Gustavus Adolphus College production of Endgame
Endgame, by Samuel Beckett, is a one-act play with four characters. It was originally written in French (entitled Fin de partie); Beckett himself translated it into English. The play was first performed in a French-language production at the Royal Court Theatre in London, opening on 3 April 1957. It is commonly considered, along with such works as Waiting for Godot, to be among Beckett's best works. Read more...
LÉ Samuel Beckett (P61) is a Samuel Beckett-class offshore patrol vessel (OPV) of the Irish Naval Service. The ship was launched in November 2013 and commissioned in May 2014. She is named after Irish playwright and author Samuel Beckett.
Like other OPVs in the Irish Naval Service, the ship's primary mission is fisheries protection, search and rescue, and maritime protection
operations, including vessel boardings. Read more...- Originally published in transition 49 in 1949, Three Dialogues represents a small part (fewer than 3000 words) of a correspondence between Samuel Beckett and Georges Duthuit about the nature of contemporary art, with particular reference to the work of Pierre Tal-Coat, André Masson and Bram van Velde. It might more accurately be said that beneath these surface references may be found an invaluable commentary on Beckett's own struggle with expression at a particularly creative and pivotal period of his life. A frequently quoted example is the following recommendation, ostensibly for what Tal Coat's work should strive towards: "The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express."
A great strength of these dialogues is the wit of both participants, combined with Duthuit's persistent and intelligent challenges to Beckett's pessimism, as in his reply to the above recommendation: "But that is a violently extreme and personal point of view, of no help to us in the matter of Tal Coat." Beckett's only answer to that is, appropriately enough, silence. Read more...
Krapp's Last Tape is a one-act play, in English, by Samuel Beckett. With a cast of one man, it was written for Northern Irish actor Patrick Magee and first titled "Magee monologue". (Patrick Magee is familiar to many moviegoers as the writer who Alex cripples while invading his home and raping his wife in A Clockwork Orange.) It was inspired by Beckett's experience of listening
to Magee reading extracts from Molloy and From an Abandoned Work on the BBC Third Programme in December 1957.
The play was first performed as a curtain raiser to Endgame (from 28 October to 29 November 1958) at the Royal Court Theatre, London, directed by Donald McWhinnie and starring Patrick Magee. It ran for 38 performances. Read more...- More Pricks Than Kicks is a collection of short prose by Samuel Beckett, first published in 1934. It contains extracts from his earlier novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women (for which he was unable to find a publisher), as well as other short stories.
The stories chart the life of the book's main character, Belacqua Shuah, from his days as a student to his accidental death. Beckett takes the name Belacqua from a figure in Dante's Purgatorio, a Florentine lute-maker famed for his laziness, who has given up on ever reaching heaven. The opening story, 'Dante and the Lobster', features Belacqua's horrified reaction to the discovery that the lobster he has bought for dinner must be boiled alive. 'It's a quick death, God help us all', Belacqua tells himself, before the narrator's stern interjection to the contrary: 'It is not.' Read more...
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Selected images
Tomb of Samuel Beckett at the Cimetière de Montparnasse
Caricature of Samuel Beckett by Javad Alizadeh
Portrait by Reginald Gray
Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil and Samuel Beckett
Caricature of Beckett by Edmund S. Valtman
Portrait of Samuel Beckett by Reginald Gray, painted in Paris, 1961 (from the collection of Ken White, Dublin).
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