Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett, born in 1906, was an influential Irish playwright, novelist, and poet. Renowned for his minimalist style and existential themes, Beckett revolutionized modern theatre with groundbreaking works like "Waiting for Godot" and "Endgame."
His writing often explores the absurdity of existence, human suffering, and the search for meaning in a seemingly meaningless world. Beckett's experiences during World War II, including his work with the French Resistance, profoundly shaped his perspective and artistic vision. He lived in France most of his life and wrote partly in French.
Despite his reputation as a reclusive figure, his profound impact on literature and theatre earned him numerous awards, including the
Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969.
Waiting for André
It's a story that is impossible not to love. A young man living in a French farming village in the 1950s undergoes an extraordinary growth spurt and becomes too ungainly to ride the bus to school. A neighbour with a convertible automobile steps in to help. The adult and the young man strike up an unlikely friendship on their morning car journeys, discussing the game of cricket and other subjects as they form a special bond with each other.
The older man with the car? He was Samuel Beckett, the Irish playwright and author of Waiting for Godot, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. The boy? André Roussimoff, who would eventually grow to a height of more than seven feet and become famous as André the Giant, a global superstar and icon in the world professional wrestling.
The story has most prominently been told by Cary Elwes, the English actor who played Westley in the 1987 film The Princess Bride and became close with André (who played Fezzik) during the production of that movie:
As the shoot continued I began to spend more and more time with [André]. And slowly he began to open up to me about his life. He told me he had two brothers and two sisters and that he was the middle child. That he grew up on a farm built by his father, Boris, in the small village of Molien, which was about forty miles from Paris.
He told me that by the time he was twelve he had already grown to a height of six feet two and 240 pounds and that he was so big that he could no longer ride on the local bus that transported the other children to school.
Sometime after that, the great Irish playwright, Samuel Beckett, bought some land in Molien and decided to move there (there is still a street named after him.) Being a handyman as well as a farmer, Roussimoff Sr. offered to help Beckett build his country cottage and eventually the two struck up a friendship. When the playwright learned of young André's issues with the school bus, he offered to drive the boy to school, explaining that he had a convertible -- the only one in town -- and thus, the only vehicle that could possibly accommodate André's size.
And so, for a time at least, the Nobel Prize-winning author of Waiting for Godot chauffeured the young man who would eventually become the most famous wrestler in history to and from school ... I asked André what he and the famous author talked about when they were together. "Mostly cricket," André recalled.
Cricket
A natural athlete, Beckett excelled at cricket as a left-handed batsman and a left-arm medium-pace bowler. Later, he played for Dublin University and played two first-class games against Northamptonshire. As a result, he became the only Nobel literature laureate to appear in Wisden Cricketer's Almanack!
Samuel Barclay Beckett, who died in Paris on December 22, 1989, aged 83, had two first-class games for Dublin University against Northamptonshire in 1925 and 1926, scoring 35 runs in his four innings and conceding 64 runs without taking a wicket. A left-hand opening batsman, possessing what he himself called a gritty defense, and a useful left-arm medium-pace bowler, he had enjoyed a distinguished all-round sporting as well as academic record at Portora Royal School, near Enniskillen, and maintained his interest in games while at Trinity College, Dublin. Indeed, Beckett, whose novels and plays established him as one of the important literary figures of the twentieth century, bringing him the Nobel Prize for literature in 1969, never lost his affection for and interest in cricket.
Wisden Cricketers' Almanack
Samuel Barclay Beckett was born on April 13, 1906, in Dublin, Ireland. His father, William Frank Beckett, worked in the construction business and his mother, Maria Jones Roe, was a nurse. Young Samuel attended Earlsfort House School in Dublin, then at 14, he went to Portora Royal School, the same school attended by Oscar Wilde. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Trinity College in 1927. Referring to his childhood, Beckett, once remaking, “I had little talent for happiness.” In his youth he would periodically experience severe depression keeping him in bed until mid-day. This experience would later influence his writing.
In 1928, Beckett found a welcome home in Paris where he met and became a devoted student of James Joyce. In 1929, Beckett published his first work, a critical essay titled "Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce". The essay defends Joyce's work and method, chiefly from allegations of wanton obscurity and dimness, and was Beckett's contribution to Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (a book of essays on Joyce). In 1931, he embarked on a restless sojourn through Britain, France and Germany. He wrote poems and stories and did odd jobs to support himself. On his journey, he came across many individuals who would inspire some of his most interesting characters.
In 1937, Beckett settled in Paris. Shortly thereafter, he was stabbed by a pimp after refusing his solicitations. While recovering in the hospital, he met Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnuil, a piano student in Paris. The two would become life-long companions and eventually marry. After meeting with his attacker, Beckett dropped the charges, partly to avoid the publicity, but also because he found the man honourable.
During World War II, Beckett’s Irish citizenship allowed him to remain in Paris as a citizen of a neutral country. He fought in the resistance movement until 1942 when members of his group were arrested by the Gestapo. He and Suzanne fled to the unoccupied zone until the end of the war. After the war, Beckett was awarded the Croix de Guerre for bravery during his time in the French resistance.
Beckett produced his most important works—four novels, two dramas, a collection of short stories, essays, and art criticism—during an intensely creative period in the late 1940s. Irishman Beckett had settled in France and wrote in both French and English. His experiences during World War II—insecurity, confusion, exile, hunger, deprivation—came to shape his writing. In his most famous work, the drama Waiting for Godot, he examines the most basic foundations of our lives with strikingly dark humour. Soon, En attendant Godot (as originally written), achieved quick success at the small Theatre de Babylone putting Beckett in the international spotlight. The play ran for 400 performances and enjoyed critical praise.
Beckett wrote in both French and English, but his most well-known works, written between WWII and the 1960s, were written in French. Early on he realized his writing had to be subjective and come from his own thoughts and experiences. His works are filled with allusions to other writers such as Dante, Rene Descartes, and Joyce. Beckett’s plays are not written along traditional lines with conventional plot and time and place references. Instead, he focuses on essential elements of the human condition in dark humorous ways. This style of writing has been called “Theater of the Absurd” by Martin Esslin, referring to poet Albert Camus’ concept of “the absurd.” The plays focus on human despair and the will to survive in a hopeless world that offers no help in understanding.
The 1960s were a period of change for Beckett. He found great success with this plays across the world. Invitations came to attend rehearsals and performances which led to a career as a theater director. In 1961, he secretly married Suzanne who took care of his business affairs. A commission from the BBC in 1956 led to offers to write for radio and cinema through the 1960s.
In 1969, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for the stated motivation -
“for his writing, which - in new forms for the novel and drama - in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation”
He declined accepting it personally to avoid making a speech at the ceremonies.
Beckett continued to write throughout the 1970s and 80s mostly in a small house outside Paris. There he could give total dedication to his art evading publicity.
Suzanne died on 17 July 1989. Confined to a nursing home and suffering from emphysema and possibly Parkinson's disease, Beckett died a few months later, on 22 December. The two were interred together in the cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris and share a simple granite gravestone that follows Beckett's directive that it should be "any colour, so long as it's grey".
Of all the English-language modernists, Beckett's work represents the most sustained attack on the realist tradition. He opened up the possibility of theatre and fiction that dispense with conventional plot and the unities of time and place to focus on essential components of the human condition. Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter and Jon Fosse have publicly stated their indebtedness to Beckett's example. He has had a wider influence on experimental writing since the 1950s, from the Beat generation to the happenings of the 1960s and after.