Samuel Beckett was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1906, the
second son of comfortable middle-class parents who were a part of the
Protestant minority in a predominantly Catholic society. He was provided with
an excellent education, graduating from Trinity College, Dublin, with a major
emphasis in French and Italian. His first job was as a teacher of English in
the Ecole Normale Superiéure in Paris. In 1931, he returned to Ireland as a
lecturer in French literature, and he received his masters degree in French from
Dublin and subsequently returned to Paris as a teacher in 1932. He has made
Paris his home since that time, except for visits abroad and a retreat to the
Unoccupied Zone in Vichy, France, during 1942–44.
Beckett found teaching uncongenial to his creative
activities and soon turned all of his attention to writing. During the 1930s
and 1940s, his writing consisted of critical studies (Proust and others),
poems, and two novels (Murphy and Watt), all written in English. In the late
1940s, he changed from writing in English to writing in French. Part of the
reason for this was his basic rejection of Ireland as his homeland. When asked
why he found Ireland uncongenial, he offered the same explanation that has been
given by other famous Irish expatriates, such as Sean O'Casey and James Joyce.
He could not tolerate the strict censorship of so many aspects of life,
especially the arbitrary censoring of many works of literature by the Catholic
clergy. In addition, the political situation created an oppressive anti-intellectualism.
Even after he became famous, he refused to allow some of his plays to be
presented in Ireland. In 1958, during the International Theater Festival in
Dublin, a play of his compatriot O'Casey was banned, and Beckett, in protest,
withdrew his plays, which have not been seen in Ireland since then.
Since the major portion of his dramas were composed in
French and first presented in Paris, many critics find difficulty in
classifying Beckett's works: should he be considered a French or an Irish
writer? The nature of' his characters, even when named Vladimir and Estragon,
seems to be more characteristically Irish than any other nationality.
Essentially, it should be a moot question because Beckett, when composing in
French, was his own translator into English and vice versa. Thus his works do
not suffer from another translator's tampering with them, and his great plays
now belong to the realm of world literature.
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His Works
Whoroscope - in 1930 was his debut. It was a poem, poem with seventeen footnotes. Rene Descartes is protagonist of it.
Proust - in 1931, collection of essays about Marcel Proust
More pricks than kicks - in 1934, novel
Murphy - novel in 1938
Molloy (novel) - 1951
Malone Meurt (novel) - 1951
En attendant Godot (play in two acts) - 1952
L'innommable/The Unnamable (novel) in 1953
Nouvelles et Textes Pour Rien/Stories and Texts for Nothing - 1955
Fin de Partie/Endgame (one-act play) , Acte sans Paroles I/Act without Words in 1957
Comment C'est/How It Is (novel) - 1961
Têtes Mortes (D'un ouvrage abandonné/From an Abandoned Work, Imagination Morte Imaginez/Imagination Dead Imagine, Bing/Ping) - 1967
Premier amour/First Love (novel) 1970
Ends and Odds: Plays and Sketches 1977
Pas, suivi de Quatre Esquisses/Steps, followed by Four Sketches (plays) 1978
Poèmes/Poems, All Strange Gone Away 1979
Company 1980?
The Expelled 1980
Rockaby and Other Pieces, 1981
Three Occasional Pieces 1982
Disjecta, Worstward Ho 1983
Nohow On (short stories) 1989
As the Story Was Told: Uncollected and Late Prose, 1990
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