Dark, minimal, existential – these words characterize the writing of Nobel Prize winning author, Samuel Barclay Beckett, born in 1906 in Dublin Ireland. Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for play writing and novel writing, and in the Nobel summary it states: “for his writing, which – in new forms for the novel and drama – in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation.”
In his youth, Beckett won various writing prizes and eventually published reviews and essays concerning major authors’ work, such as Marcel Proust and James Joyce, which were met with praise. Later Beckett studied English, Italian, and French at Trinity College in Dublin and became a devotee of the highly regarded experimental novelist, James Joyce. Later Beckett actually assisted Joyce in researching his most difficult and least understood novel, Finnegans Wake. He served in WWII with the French Resistance; and later developed an inclination for the French language, preferring to write his works in French, since he believed it helped eliminate all manner of ‘style’ from his writing.
In 1938 Beckett was badly stabbed in the chest by a pimp and nearly died. His good friend James Joyce paid for a private room in the hospital so he could recover. Later, after rejecting the advances of Joyce’s daughter and refusing to marry her, the friendship between Beckett and Joyce cooled considerably.
Beckett was once treated for depression and psychological problems by a Jungian psychologist. He heard many lectures given by the imminent psychiatrist, Carl Jung, which had a tremendous impact on his writings — in one of his books, Beckett quoted a large portion of one of Jung’s lecture almost word for word.
Some of Beckett’s major works include: Molloy – 1951, Waiting for Godot (play in two acts) 1952, The Unnamable – 1953, How It Is – 1961, First Love – 1970, Malone Dies – 1975, Poems – 1979, Ill Seen, Ill Said – 1982.
Samuel Beckett died in 1989. Below are selections from his books as well some of his quotes on various subjects.
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”
“Words are all we have.”
“I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.”
I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning.”
“All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.”
“It was morning and Belacqua was stuck in the first of the canti in the moon. He was so bogged that he could move neither backward nor forward. Blissful Beatrice was there, Dante also, and she explained the spots on the moon to him. She shewed him in the first place where he was at fault, then she put up her own explanation. She had it from God, therefore he could rely on its being accurate in every particular. –More Pricks than Kicks
“I am in my mother’s room. It’s I who live there now. I don’t know how I got there. Perhaps in an ambulance, certainly a vehicle of some kind. I was helped. I’d never have got there alone. There’s this man who comes every week. Perhaps I got here thanks to him. He says not. He gives me money and takes away the pages. So many pages, so much money.” -Molloy
“Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.”
“We are all born mad. Some remain so.”
“Empty them out in the mud the tins put them back one by one in the sack impossible too weak fear of loss.” -How It Is
“You’re on earth. There’s no cure for that.”
“We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?”
“Where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”
“What is the word. Folly from all this – given – folly given all this – seeing – folly seeing all this – this – what is the word – this this – this this here – all this this here.”
“Why are we here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come.” – Waiting for Godot
“Birth was the death of him.”
They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.
“Do we mean love, when we say love?”
“If I had the use of my body, I would throw it out the window.”
“In the landscape of extinction, precision is next to godliness.”
“It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories, his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the worst, and so grow gently old down all the unchanging days, and die one day like any other day, only shorter.”
“The tears of the world are a constant quality. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.”
“That’s how it is on this bitch of an earth.”
“Let me go to hell, that’s all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss.”
“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it’s the most comical thing in the world.”
“VLADIMIR: (hurt, coldly). May one inquire where His Highness spent the night? ESTRAGON: In a ditch. VLADIMIR: (admiringly). A ditch! Where? ESTRAGON: (without gesture). Over there. VLADIMIR: And they didn’t beat you? ESTRAGON: Beat me? Certainly they beat me.”
“Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile… a stain upon the silence.”
Sources:
Samuel Beckett, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Beckett
Samuel Beckett On-Line Resources, http://samuel-beckett.net/
