The Irishman Beckett Samuel represents among the Nobel laureates the so-called literature of the absurd. Acquaintance with his work, in which he uses English and French, in the Russian translation began with the play "Waiting for Godot." It was she who brought the first success to Becket (in the 1952-1953 season). Currently, the well-known playwright is Samuel Beckett. The plays of different years created by him are staged in many theaters of the world.
Features of the play "Waiting for Godot"
The first analogue that you are trying to grab while reading Beckett is the symbolic Meterlink Theater. Here, as with Meterlink, an understanding of the meaning of what is happening is possible only if you do not try to proceed from the categories of real life situations. Only with the translation of the action into the language of characters do you begin to capture the author’s thought in the scenes from Godot. However, the rules of such a translation in themselves are so diverse and obscured that it is not possible to find simple keys. Beckett himself pointedly refused to explain the hidden meaning of the tragicomedy.
How Beckett evaluated his work
In an interview, Samuel, referring to the essence of his work, said that the material with which he works is ignorance, powerlessness. He said that he is conducting reconnaissance in an area that artists prefer to leave aside as something incompatible with art. Another time, Beckett said that he was not a philosopher and never reads the works of philosophers, since he does not understand anything of what they write. He said that he was not interested in ideas, but only in the form in which they were expressed. Beckett and systems are not interested. The artist’s task, in his opinion, is to find a form adequate to the confusion and mess that we call being. It is the problems of the form that emphasize the decision of the Swedish Academy.
Beckett's Origin
What are the roots of Beckett's views, which led him to such extreme positions? Can a brief biography clarify the writer's inner world? Samuel Becket, I must say, was a difficult person. The facts of Samuel's life, according to researchers of his work, do not shed too much light on the origins of the writer's worldview.
Samuel Beckett was born in Dublin in a family of devout and wealthy Protestants. The ancestors of the writer, the French Huguenots, as early as the 17th century moved to Ireland, hoping for a comfortable life and religious freedom. However, Samuel from the very beginning did not accept the centuries-old religious foundation of a family worldview. “To my parents, ” he recalled, “their faith gave nothing.”
The period of study, teaching
After studying at an elite school, and then at the same Jesuit Trinity College in Dublin, where Swift once studied, and then Wilde, Beckett spent two years teaching in Belfast, then moved to Paris and worked as an intern-teacher of English in Higher Normal School, and then at the Sorbonne. The young man read a lot, his favorite authors were Dante and Shakespeare, Socrates and Descartes. But knowledge did not bring reassurance to the troubled soul. About his youthful years, he recalled: "I was unhappy. I felt it with all my being and put up with it." Beckett admitted that he was increasingly moving away from people, did not participate in anything. And then came the time of Beckett's complete disagreement with both himself and others.
Reasons for Disagreement with the World
What are the roots of the irreconcilable position that Samuel Beckett held? His biography does not really clarify this point. You can refer to the sanctimonious atmosphere in the family, the Jesuit dictatorship in college: "Ireland is a country of theocrats and censors, I could not live there." However, in Paris, seething with subversions and rebels in art, Becket did not escape from a feeling of irresistible loneliness. He met Paul Valerie, Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington, but none of these talents became spiritual authority for him. Only becoming the literary secretary of James Joyce, Becket found in his boss a "moral ideal" and later spoke about Joyce that he helped him understand what the purpose of the artist was. However, their paths diverged - and not only because of everyday circumstances (the unrequited love of Joyce's daughter for Beckett made it impossible to visit Joyce's house more, and he left for Ireland), but also in art.
This was followed by useless feuds with his mother, attempts to cut himself off from the outside world (he did not leave his house for days, hiding from bothersome relatives and friends in an office dulled up by curtains), meaningless trips to European cities, treatment for depression in a clinic …
Literary debut, first works
Beckett made his debut with the poem "Fornication" (1930), then appeared an essay about Proust (1931) and Joyce (1936), a collection of short stories and a book of poems. However, these compositions that Samuel Beckett created did not succeed. Murphy (the review of this novel was also unflattering) is a work about a young man who came to London from Ireland. The novel was rejected by 42 publishers. Only in 1938, when in desperation, suffering from endless physical ailments, but even more with the consciousness of his worthlessness and material dependence on his mother, Becket Samuel permanently left Ireland and settled again in Paris, one of the publishers accepted Murphy. However, this book was met with restraint. Success came later, Beckett Samuel did not immediately become famous, whose books are known and loved by many. Before that, Samuel had to go through wartime.
War time
The war found Becket in Paris and tore him from voluntary isolation. Life has taken a different shape. Arrests and killings have become commonplace. The worst thing for Becket was the reports that many former acquaintances began to work for the invaders. For him, the question of choice did not arise. Beckett Samuel became an active participant in the Resistance and worked for two years in the underground groups "Star" and "Glory", where he was known under the nickname Irish. His duties included collecting information, translating it into English, microfilming. I had to visit the ports where the naval forces of the Germans were concentrated. When the Gestapo discovered these groups and the arrests began, Becket had to hide in a village in southern France. Then he worked for several months as a Red Cross translator in a military hospital. After the war he was awarded the medal "For Military Merit". The order of General de Gaulle noted: "Becket, Sam: a man of great courage … he performed tasks, even when in mortal danger."
The war years, however, did not change Beckett's gloomy outlook, which determined the course of his life and the evolution of his work. He himself once said that in the world there is nothing worthwhile except creativity.
Long-awaited success
Beckett's success came in the early 1950s. In the best theaters in Europe began to put his play "Waiting for Godot." In the period from 1951 to 1953 he published a prosaic trilogy. The first part is the novel "Molly", the second - "Malon dies" and the third - "Nameless". This trilogy made its author one of the most famous and influential word masters of the 20th century. These novels, the creation of which used innovative approaches to prose, bear little resemblance to the usual literary forms. They are written in French, and a little later Beckett translated them into English.
Samuel, following the success of his play "Waiting for Godot, " decided to develop as a playwright. The play "About All the Fallen" was created in 1956. In the late 1950s - early 1960s. The following works appeared: "The End of the Game", "The Last Ribbon of Crapp" and "Happy Days". They laid the foundation of the theater of the absurd.
In 1969, Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize. It must be said that Samuel did not tolerate the heightened attention that always accompanies fame. He agreed to accept the Nobel Prize only on condition that he did not receive it, but the French publisher Becket and his longtime friend Jerome Lyndon. This condition has been met.
