Beckett, Samuel (Barclay) - Introduction

Samuel (Barclay) Beckett 1906–

Irish-born dramatist, novelist, short story writer, scriptwriter, poet, essayist, and translator.

One of the most celebrated authors in twentieth-century literature, Beckett is especially recognized for his significant impact on contemporary drama. His play En attendant Godot (1953; Waiting for Godot) is a seminal work of Theater of the Absurd, a post-World War II trend in drama characterized by experimental techniques and philosophical nihilism. In his works, Beckett expounds a philosophy of negation through characters who face a meaningless and absurd existence without the comforts of religion, myth, or philosophical absolutes. Through economical, fragmented language and stark images of alienation and absurdity, Beckett creates art out of minimal material. His preoccupation as a writer has been to experiment with language in order to present truths that are pure of rhetorical embellishment. Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in literature for contributing a "body of work that, in new forms of fiction and the theatre, has transmuted the destitution of modern man into his exultation."

Beckett was born and raised in Ireland. He traveled to Paris in the late 1920s and became associated with James Joyce, whom he regarded as a consummate artist. Beckett's first volume of fiction, More Pricks than Kicks (1934), won modest critical attention. This book, which can be considered a novel or a collection of interrelated short stories, reflects Joyce's influence in its embellished prose and is considered atypical of Beckett's work. The novel Murphy (1938) initiated Beckett's use of a spare prose style and presents a greater emphasis on the Cartesian mind-body dualism, which had been touched upon in his earlier work.

During World War II Beckett collaborated with the French Resistance and had to flee Paris in order to avoid capture by the Nazis. In the years immediately following the war, Beckett returned to Paris and created what many consider his finest prose achievements. The novels Molloy (1951), Malone muerte (1951; Malone Dies), and L'innomable (1953; The Unnamable) introduced into Beckett's writing two important developments: he began writing in French rather than English, finding that he could write with greater austerity, and the novels are narrated as first-person monologues. Although these novels generated little interest upon publication, they have become widely recognized as among his most significant works. These novels, which can be considered a trilogy, are narrated by a succession of characters who might all be variations of a single individual. Several of these narrators have names that begin with the letter M, and it has been suggested that M is a cipher for man. The narrators suffer rapid physical decay while their minds reassure them of their existence. In The Unnamable, the physical decay culminates in a being composed only of a mind and a mouth. This being, like many of Beckett's characters, creates stories and contrives long, rambling monologues as a means of counteracting the pervasiveness of silence and nothingness.

Dissatisfied with the progress he was making on his prose works, Beckett experimented with drama. He wrote Waiting

Samuel (Barclay) Beckett 1906–
Samuel (Barclay) Beckett 1906– © Jerry Bauer
for Godot in the late 1940s, but the text of the play was not published until 1952. First performed in Paris, Godot became an immediate success. The play concerns two down-and-out characters, Vladimir and Estragon, who await the arrival of a Mr. Godot with whom they apparently have an appointment. While waiting for Godot, these characters pass the time by engaging in pointless activities and by musing upon existence. Their attempts to stay amused are played out against a bare stage setting. The actions, gestures, and words of the characters are usually taken to represent the human condition. Godot has been interpreted in many ways, from a parable of Christian salvation to a depiction of the meaninglessness of life, but such interpretations are often considered to limit the full implications of the play. In its deemphasis of plot, scenery, dramatic action, and character psychology, Godot defies conventional forms of drama. Such innovations by Beckett, Jean Genet, Eugène Ionesco, and others, who have been categorized as dramatists of the Theater of the Absurd, have had a major influence on contemporary drama.

Beckett's next play, Fin de partie (1957; Endgame), like Godot focuses on a pair of characters faced with nothingness as they attempt to find meaning for their existence. Critics have noted that the characters of this play resemble chess pieces playing an "endgame" in which the outcome has already been determined. The black humor and pathetic circumstance of these players is grimmer and more intense than the plight of Vladimir and Estragon. In Endgame and subsequent plays, Beckett further develops his innovative theatrical techniques and metaphysical concerns. Krapp's Last Tape (1958) depicts a single character who, with the aid of a tape recorder, relives the past that has led to his present, alienated state. Winnie, the protagonist of Happy Days (1961), continues to perform her daily rituals while sinking into the earth. Beckett's later drama becomes even more minimalistic, often displaying striking technical virtuosity by forcing the audience to concentrate on a single fully developed image, such as the raving, disembodied mouth in Not I (1972). Many critics consider Rockaby (1980) one of the most striking achievements of his minimalization of drama. Rockaby is built on the image of an old woman in a rocking chair listening to a recording of what seems to be her life story. Most critics praise the mixture of poetic language and dramatic image as powerful and lyrical. Although some critics judge these minimal dramas as a whole to be a waste of Beckett's talent, many others find his work to be continually fresh and innovative and praise him for achieving forceful dramatic statements with increasingly less material.

Beckett's prose work since the trilogy mirrors the increasing fragmentation and the inclination toward brevity apparent in his later drama. Comment c'est (1961; How It Is) was his first "full-length" piece to appear since The Unnamable. In his prose, Beckett has been steadily omitting the use of various grammatical elements; in How It Is he abandons almost all forms of punctuation. In later works, which consist almost entirely of collections of fragments and short stories, Beckett projects intense, often painful images through rhythmic language that stresses and repeats individual words or phrases. Beckett's most recent prose echoes themes and techniques that have been evolving in his work, with special emphasis on the narrative aspect of storytelling. Compagnie (1979; Company), generally regarded as the most successful of these later pieces, concerns a voice telling a life's story to a being lying alone in the dark. The theme of devising tales for the sake of companionship, or company, which Beckett has been developing throughout his career, becomes the main focus of Company.

Although Beckett's works are darkly comic, his characters often grotesque, and his themes usually absurdist, he is not generally considered a nihilist. Beckett is instead widely recognized as having a keen sense of the modern human condition, especially the impotence and ignorance of humankind. According to Robert Martin Adams, Beckett "has kept open the possibilities of humanity by cutting the throat of literature and forcing his readers to confront naked conditions of mere existence—without sham exhilaration or despair, but coldly, very coldly."

(See also CLC, Vols. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 14, 18; Contemporary Authors, Vols. 5-8, rev. ed.; and Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vols. 13, 15.)