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About Samuel Beckett (1906-1989):
This really is a true
European author, this is why we French claim him for ourselves. He indeed wrote
a lot in French and lived most of his life in Paris from 1937 onwards. His
family was well-off protestant and Irish. He did all his studies in Ireland and
graduated from the Trinity college in Dublin in 1927. In 1928, he went to Paris
as an exchange teacher at the ENS, our most renowned tertiary school. He
rapidely took part in the intellectual life of the capital, city, since he
published essays and poems as soon as 1929 and also became a member of James
Joyce's literary circle). In 1930, he returned to Dublin to lecture. His first
play, Le Kid, was a parody of Corneille,
performed in Dublin. From then on, he was a very active writer, but not always
finished his plays. And his works were a little shunned by the critic and the
public. In 1937, he met his wife-to-be in a Parisian hospital, where he was
treated for being stabbed by a pimp.
When the war and the Occupation came,
he joined the French Résistance movement, eventually immigrating in the South of
France, because it was getting too dangerous. There, he wrote Watt and
some poems in French. In 1946, the couple were back in Paris, where Beckett
began to write regularly in French; the works that made him famous were written
then: Malone Meurt, L'innomable (both published in 1951). En
Attendant Godot, his most famous play, was originally written in French, and
published in 1952. After its Première, the play became a European success, and
then a worldwide one, after his translation into English in 1954. He wrote many
more plays, actually writing their first version most of the time in French.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1969, at a time when
writing about absurd was trendy and the existantialism genre was at its peak.
His work is qualified of minimalist, and actually evolved in a defined genre at
the time, with many of the French playwrights I know dealing with the absurdity
of existence and making it funny (Ionesco, Gary, Giraudoux...). His plays were
published mainly in Great Britain, Ireland or France and performed all over
Europe. His fame was so great that his plays were performed all over the world
in festivals and theatres in 1986 to celebrate his 80th birthday. He wrote one
last play, L'Image, in 1988, one year before he died.
He can be
qualified of a true European and his work fits nicely into both cultures; his
works are extremely popular today among the French intelligentsia, and his
humour is widely appreciated. You can even see the English version of Waiting
for Godot in Paris today; that's a bit ironic, isn't it?
Friday, 22nd December, 2000:
que ferais-je sans ce monde (what would I do without this world)
French version: que ferais-je sans ce monde sans visage sans questions où être ne dure qu'un instant où chaque instant verse dans le vide dans l'oubli d'avoir été sans cette onde où à la fin corps et ombre ensemble s'engloutissent que ferais-je sans ce silence gouffre des murmures haletant furieux vers le secours vers l'amour sans ce ciel qui s'élève sur la poussieère de ses lests que ferais-je je ferais comme hier comme aujourd'hui Samuel Beckett, Collected poems in English and French, London, 1977, John Calder (Publishers) |
Translation: what would I do without this world faceless incurious where to be lasts but an instant where every instant spills in the void the ignorance of having been without this wave where in the end body and shadow together are engulfed what would I do without this silence where the murmurs die the pantings the frenzies towards succour towards love without this sky that soars above its ballast dust what would I do what I did yesterday and the day before Translated by Beckett himself (Samuel Beckett, Collected poems... Ibid.). That's pretty rare to have a bilingual poet... Let's make the most of it...
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