SAMUEL BECKETT (Dublin 13 April 1906 - Paris 22 December 1989)

LIFE:

He comes from an Anglo-Irish protestant family. He studies at the Portora Royal School in Enniskillen and then at the Trinity College and writes in English his books among which a poetry collection and the novel Murphy, 1935. He's friend and co-worker of James Joyce and in 1938 He moves to France, in Paris. From 1945 he begins to write in French, language in which he has composed all his most important works. Between 1951 and 1953 publishes a sort of novelistic trilogy of inner monologues composed by Molloy (1951), Malone meurt (1951) and L'innomable (1953) whose personages mysteriously ill and reciting despairing monologues embody the horrible loneliness of the contemporary man who is not in position to know himself and who is divided in two: a conscience that observes and an object that is observed. With Waiting for Godot (En attendant Godot, 1952) he begins, in the same years as Ionesco, the so-called theatre of the absurdity. In the following years though not abandoning narrative (Nouvelles ET textes pour rien, 1955 and Comment c'est, 1961), he especially works for theatre, reproposing with evidence gradually more clean, until silence and pure mimic representation, the fundamental topics of his search: Fin de partie, 1957, Acte sans paroles, 1957, Oh les beaux jours, 1963. In 1969 He receives the Nobel prize for literature. The work of Beckett is characterised by a deeply pessimistic image of the man condition in today's civilisation and his style is essential and crossed by lightning bolts of tragic humour.

SUGGESTED WORKS:

Waiting for Godot (En attendant Godot, 1952)
Largest success in Paris and then all over the world. The two main characters wait for an enigmatic personage who perhaps symbolises the unattainablenness or the non-existence of God.
Two wanderers, Vladimir and Estragon, wait for a mysterious personage, Godot; but they do not know neither the hour neither the place in which they should meet him, but above all they do not know what to make in the meantime. Suddenly someone arrives on the scene, but he's Godot: an old man, Lucky, laden with baggage and kept on a lead by his master, Pozzo, that wants to sell him at the market. Later a child announces that Godot will not arrive this evening but the next day.
In the second act reappear all the personages of the first one: Pozzo is blind and Lucky dumb. Pozzo would want to know what time it is and where he is but he does not receive answer. Darkness falls down: arrives the boy and he announces that Godot will not come neither this evening, but sure tomorrow. But it's obvious that wait will be vain tomorrow, will be vain always.

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