Samuel Beckett: 1906-1989

Brief Chronology

Life

1906-30: Samuel Barclay Beckett, b. Good Friday, 13 April, 1906 [erron. registered 14 June], son of Bill Beckett, a quantity surveyor (b.1871), of Huguenot descent, at ‘Cooldrinagh’, Foxrock, S. Co. Dublin, built by his father (whose own father was a successful contractor and builder of the National Library of Ireland), with Maria (called May; née Roe; ed. Moravian Mission School, Gracehill, nr. Ballymena, Co. Antrim; m. 31 Aug. 1901); named after the home of Samuel Robinson Roe, maternal grandfather, a successful miller at Celbridge, residing in a former Cooldrinagh in Leixlip; ed. by Ida Elsner and her sister, Leopardstown Rd., later at Earlsfort House, a prep. school on Earlsfort Tce., then at Portora Royal Sch., in Enniskillen, 1920 - there joining his br. Frank (b. 26 July 1902); taken by his father with Frank to view O’Connell St. burning from Glencullen Rd. during 1916 Rising; reads Keats; participated with Claud [C. E. R.] Sinclair in persecution of a schoolmaster, Thackaberry and suffers animosity from another, W. R. Tetley [of whom he later wrote ‘For Future Reference’]; distinguishes himself as all-round cricketer; proceeds to TCD, 1923-1927 on Foundation Schol.; assigned to A. A. Luce as tutor; shares rooms with Gerald Stewart, also from Portora; drives his father’s car in Dublin; comes first in his year; attends ‘at homes’ chez T. B. Rudmose-Brown (Prof. of French) at Malahide, and with the Starkies; attends premier of Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock (March 1924) and The Plough and the Stars (Feb. 1926); also Yeats’s Oedipus the King (Dec. 1926) and Oedipus at Colonus (Sept. 1927) and revivals of Synge; learns of Dante through language lessons from Bianca Esposito (Ottolenghi in “Dante and the Lobster”); plays cricket for TCD, touring in England in 1926-27 seasons and gaining citation in Wisden’s Cricket Almanac; sees T. C. Murray’s Autumn Fire, Synge’s Well of the Saints, and the Dublin plays of O’Casey at the Abbey, being present in the balcony with Geoffrey Thompson during the Plough and the Stars riot, 1926; reading Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, and contemporary French poets; visits Loire, meeting Charles C. Clarke, 1926;

1927-29: BA (1st; Gold Medal and £50 prize), 1927; visits Florence, summer 1927, staying at pension run by Signora Ottolenghi (via Campanella 14), piazza Oberdam; undertakes to write MA on ‘Unanisme’ at Rudmose-Brown’s instigation; spent two terms teaching French at Campbell College, Belfast (‘rich and thick’), 1928; visits the Sinclair household at Kassel (Cissie being his paternal aunt, married to William [‘Boss’] Sinclair); appt. lecteur at École Normale Sup., Paris, Oct. 1928-30 [‘I slept through the École’], arriving 1 Nov. 1928; forms friendship with Tom MacGreevy, previous - and tenaciously still - holder of the ENS scholarship, and intro. by him to James Joyce, whose secretary Beckett is sometimes called; part of transition circle; contrib. essay ‘Dante… Bruno. Vico.. Joyce’ to Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (June 1929), with Frank Budgen, Stuart Gilbert, MacGreevy, Elliot Paul, John Rodker, and William Carlos Williams; partial rift with Joyce over Lucia Joyce’s unrequited infatuation with him, 1929; contrib. “Che Sciagura” [“What a misfortune” - viz, castration in its Dantean context] to TCD Miscellany (14 Nov. 1929); subscribes to “Revolution of the word” manifesto (transition, 1929) and contrib. “Assumption” to transition, 16/17 (June 1929); travels to Dublin and Kassel, Christmas 1929; develops interest in theories of motion; issue Whoroscope (1930; ltd. edn. 300), based on Descartes’s life, winner of Hours Press (Paris) prize on subject of ‘Time’, judged by Richard Aldington and Nancy Cunard; socialises with Cunard and her boyfriend Henry Crowther;

1930-32: publishes ‘For Future Reference’ in transition (June 1930); visits Joyce’s in order to disillusion Lucia about his attachment to her, 1930; engages in translating Joyce’s “ALP” with Alfred Péron; poem refused by AE (George Russell); reading Arthur Schopenhauer; jun. lect. TCD, 1930-32, initially on 3-year appointment; passes Christmas and New Year in Kassel, 1930-1931; taught four terms at TCD under Prof. Rose, occupying rooms at No. 39 [New Square], and resigning afterwards because ‘he could not bear the absurdity of teaching to others what he did not know himself’; contrib. poetry to New Review, 1931; writes and produces Le Kid, at Players Theatre, TCD, Feb. 1931, a pastiche of Corneille’s Le Cid, not extant; gave mock-serious lecture in French to Modern Languages Society as invented poet, Jean du Chas, Oct. 1931; contrib. “Alba” to Dublin Magazine (Oct. 1931); friendships with Mervyn Wall, Cecil Salkeld, and others; introduced to Jack B. Yeats by MacGreevy in Killiney, Co. Dublin, 1932; publication of Proust (5 March 1931), written 1930 at instigation of Nancy Cunard and Richard Aldington, 2600 of 3000 printed copies sold by 1937; did not travel, Summer 1931; MA, Dec. 1931; catatonic episode in rooms; contrib. to European Caravan, ed. Samuel Putnam, Maida Castelhun Darnton, George Reavey and Jacob Bronowski (1931), providing his own ‘blurb’ to the effect that he had ‘adapted’ the Joyce method to his poetry with original results’ (Caravan, p.475); establishes friendship with Jack Yeats; publishes “Text”, a poem, in The New Review, 11, No. 5 (April 1932; later included in Dream); moves out of home and takes rooms in Trinity, late 1931; completes Dream of Fair to Middling Women (unpublished till 1992), later presented to Lawrence Harvey and described by self as ‘immature and unworthy’; writes “Dante and the Lobster”, set on date of hanging of Henry McCabe in Dublin for murder (10 Dec. 1926), printed in Edward T. Titus’s Putnam review (This Quarter, V, Dec. 1932), and later as first story in More Pricks than Kicks; subscribes to “Poetry is Vertical” manifesto, in transition (March 1932); moves back to Paris and sends letter of resignation to TCD from there (latter admitting that he had ‘behaved very badly’), arriving just after the assassination of Paul Doumer by White Russian Gorguloff; hides in rooms of Jean Lurcat while police checked residence papers; contracts to trans. Rimbaud’s Le bateau ivre for Titus’s magazine (700 frs.); returns to London to avoid deportation; stays at 4 Ampton Rd., nr. Gray’s Inn Rd., in rooms rented by Mrs Southon (17s. 6d. p.w.); seeks work as schoolmaster; attempts to place Dream with Rupert Grayson (Cape); undertakes literary criticism but makes no progress with journals; exhorted by his mother to return to Dublin; ; sees Ibsen’s The Wild Duck (Abbey 1932), and Mac Liammóir-Edwards’s Romeo and Juliet (Gate 1932); “Gnome” written Jan. 1932 (printed in Dublin Magazine, July-Sept 1934); reading Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones; visits Galway and Arran with Frank;

1933-34: stays unhappily in London, 1933-35; enters hospital; death of Peggy Sinclair, 3 May 1933 - same day has his own operation; proposes to vote for de Valera in 1933 elections, but accepts his father’s ‘bribe’ of £1 to vote for Cosgrave’s party’ (or did he?), 24 Jan. 1933; does not renew acquaintance with Ethna MacCarthy at this period; works at writing in attic room of father’s premisses at 6 Clare St., dismembering Dream to make More Pricks Than Kicks, a collection of stories centred on Belacqua Shuah, a Dantean TCD student, and based on the Purgatorio, Canto IV, ll.130ff (‘Shuah’ being Hebrew word for ‘depression’ - a ‘barely fictionalised Beckett’ acc. Deirdre Bair [1978, 130ff.]); adds further stories following the Dantean plot to a scabrous ending for Belacqua on the operating table; death of father following heart-attack, 26 June 1933; receives annuity of £200 from his father’s estate of £35,000; More Pricks than Kicks accepted by Charles Prentice at Chatto & Windus (24th May 1934); a final story at first solicited but ultimately refused by Prentice on grounds that ‘people would shudder and be confused’ at the resurrection of Belacqua; initially sells only 500 copies; meets Nuala Costello, a friend of Lucia Joyce and embarks on ‘an affair, such as it was’ (but more a dining friendship) till December; applies for post at National Gallery, London, Oct. 1933, but not shortlisted; contemplates seeking work as copy-writer; consults Geoffrey Thompson, by then a psychologist; travels to England, 20 Jan. 1934; “Gnome”, written Jan. 1932, printed Dublin Magazine (July-Sept 1934); “Home Olga”, a poetical tribute to James Joyce, appears in Hours Press anthology Negro (Jan. 1934); settles at 48 Paultons Sq., nr. King’s Rd., Chelsea, and within range of MacGreevy at Cheyne Gdns.; underwent intense sessions with Wilfred Bion at Jungian Tavistock Clinic, London, 1934-35; contrib. “A Case in a Thousand”, story, to The Bookman (1934); castigates ‘antiquarianism’ of Irish literature in “Recent Irish Poetry”, pseud. as Andrew Belis, in The Bookman, No. 86 (1934), dismissing ‘the altitudinous complacency of the Victorian Gael’ and literary revival poets who ‘flee from self-awareness’, while aspersing Austin Clarke’s ‘prosodoturfy’ in particular; publication of More Pricks than Kicks (24 May 1934; 1,500 copies); reviewers incl. Edwin Muir (Listener, 4 July 1934); contrib. review of Feuillerat on Proust to Spectator (ed. Derek Vershoyle), 23 June 1934; changes accommodation to 34 Gertrude St. on returning to London, Aug. 1934, resuming sessions with Bion in Oct.; returns to Dublin, Christmas 1934;

1935-37: Sinclair family, now living at Howth, offended by the inclusion of Peggy’s letter in More Pricks (also in Dream); returns to London, Feb. 1935, resuming psycho-analysis (now at session 133); reading Jane Austen; receives and ignores letters from Lucia Joyce, from Zurich and London; reads The Imitation of Christ in copy lent by MacGreevy; returns to Dublin for 3 weeks, late April 1935; taken by Bion to C. J. Jung’s lecture at Institute of Psychological Medicine and hears him speak of girl who ‘had never really been born’; completes ‘Censorship in the Saorstat’, 1935 (orig. commissioned for The Bookman, by then defunct); Reavey publishes Echo’s Bones and Other Precipitates (Dec. 1935), based on Ovid’s version of the story of Narcissus; proceeds rapidly with Murphy, the initial inspiration being based on episode of the kites; ‘Censorship in the Saorstat’ commissioned by The Bookman 1935, though unpub. until 1983 (Disjecta); notes that by 30 Sept. 1935, the Board has banned 618 books of which More Pricks than Kicks was No. 465; returns to Dublin with intention of remaining, Dec. 1935; reviews Jack Yeats, The Amaranthers (“An Imaginative Work”, Dublin Magazine, 1936); purchases a painting by Jack Yeats (“Morning”) at £30 on down-payment of borrows £10; meets Clarke and finds him oblivious to his 1934 Bookman review; reading Geulincx in TCD Library (‘Ubi nhil vales, ibi nihil velis’); contrib. to Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War (1936); continues writing Murphy at Clare St., completing it in June 1936; sends typescript to Chatto & Windus; hands over agency for the book to Reavey, who offers it to Dent, Faber, Hogarther Press, et al.; infatuation with Betty Stockton, summer 1936, producing poem in Dublin Magazine (Dec. 1936); departs for Wanderjahr in Germany, 29 Sept. 1936; by plane from Dublin to Amstersdam and onwards by boat, visiting Hamburg, Dresden, Berlin (at New Year), Potsdam, Munich via Würzburg and Nuremburg, travelling by foot and train and keeping a diary of ideas in six notebooks, now held in Reading (discovered by Edward Beckett in his uncle’s trunk after his death, and made available to James Knowlson); returns to London by Lufthansa, 2 April 1937; returns to Ireland; refuses suggested agency to Lord Rathdowne; begins work on play about Samuel Johnson and Mrs Thrale (“Human Wishes”), postulating Johnson’s impotence (‘the time I spent on that red herring’); travels by boat to England, 16 Oct. 1937, and proceeds to Paris, 26 Oct. 1937; returns to give evidence at the Gogarty-Sinclair libel trial, and cross-examined by J. M. Fitzgerald, KC; reported in The Irish Times as ‘the bawd and blasphemer from Paris’; leaves Dublin immediately after without visiting his mother, on his br. Frank’s advice, Nov. 1937;

1938-39: finds accommodation at The Liberia Hotel [hôtel Liberia]; Murphy accepted by T. M. Ragg at Routledge through good offices of Herbert Read; contrib. poem “Ooftish”, to final issue of transition (1938), along with review of Denis Devlin’s current collection; became friends with Geer and Bram van Velde, Alberto Giacometti, Marcel Duchamp and Peggy Guggenheim; studies psycho-analytical texts by Freud, Jung, Adler and Rank; turns to writing in French, to ‘cut away the excess, strip away the colour’; stabbed by Robert Jules Prudent, a pimp, in the street, on leaving a film with Alan and Belinda Duncan, 7 Dec. 1938, and removed to the Broussais hospital; visited in hospital by Joyce, and also by Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil (d.1989), an acquaintance from 1929, and a pianist, with whom he lives in a companionate relationship for fifty-two years thereafter; stabbing reported in Irish Times, 8 Jan. 1929; corrects proofs of Murphy in hospital; infuriated by blurb; discharged 23 Jan, 1938; approached by Jack Kahane (f. of Maurice Girodias) to translate marquis de Sade’s Les cent-Vingt Jours de Sodom, and decides against though attracted by the work; commences writing poetry in French, 1938; commences French trans. of Murphy, with Péron, March 1938; visits Dublin, Nov. 1938-New Year 1939; read and impressed with La Nausée; photographed with Robbe-Grillet, Claude Simon, Mauriac, Robert Pinget, Claude Ollier, Nathalie Sarraute and the publisher Jérôme Lindon of éditions de minuit, as ‘Nouveau romanciers’; commences writing poetry in French, 1938 (‘plus facile d’écrire sans style’; remarks to Niklaus Gessner); Proust (1939), French edn., trans by Edith Fournier with Beckett’s permission;

1940-49: visits Joyces at Saint Gerand-le-Puy, Feb. 1940; quit Paris for Ireland, June 1940; returns to Paris (‘war Europe preferable to peace in Ireland’); became active in Paris Resistance, collating information on Germany troop movements; Alfred Péron arrested, 16 Aug. 1942 (d. Red Cross camp, Switzerland, June 1945); escapes Nazi round-up in Paris, first hiding in the Bois de Boulogne; 1942; briefly hides in home of Nathalie Sarraute; took refuge in Unoccupied France at Roussillon in the Vauclose, behind Avignon, 1942, and registers there as originating in ‘Dublin, England’; writing Watt, begun in Paris 11 Feb. 1941; stalled at Hôtel Escoffier, and resumed at La Croix [Roussillon], 1 March 1943; continued evenings in Roussillon, and finishes 1945 in Dublin and Paris; engages in night missions with the local resistance; friendly with Noelle Beamish, a 60 yr.-old Irish lesbian residing there with her Italian companion; also with Henri Hayden, a painter, and his wife Josette, who arrives from Paris in Dec. 1942; Roussillon liberated by Americans (i.e., one non-commissioned officer in a jeep), 1943; reaches Paris with Suzanne, Nov. 1944; settles at Liberia Hotel, Suzanne joining her mother at Troyes; First Love, written in French as ‘Le Premier Amour’ during 28 Oct.-12 Nov. 1946 (pub. 1970; English 1974), while writing at about the same time as “L’Expulsé”, “Le Calmant” and “La Fin” (all in Textes pour rien); awarded Croix de Guerre, and Médaille de la Résistance, 1945; travels to see his mother, 1945; experiences vision of darkness in his mother’s room, Foxrock (narrated in Krapp’s Last Tape and assigned to anemometer on Dublin Laoghaire pier); contrib. “Dieppe” to Irish Times, 9 June 1945 (written in French, 1937; rev. vers. in Collected Poems, 1977); spent some months as volunteer in Irish Red Cross hospital established in Saint-Lô [St.-Lô], Normandy, working as storekeeper and interpreter, August 1946; makes a broadcast, “The Capital of the Ruins”; transfers his writing prose into French; “Saint-Lo” printed The Irish Times (24 June 1946); began Mercier et Camier, July 1946 (publ. 1970; English trans. 1974); writes Eleutheria, a play dealing with the household of one burgher Krap and his worrisome son Victor; Jan.- Feb. 1947; Molloy commenced in French at his mother’s house and continued in Paris and Menton at the house of ‘an Irish friend’ (his cousin Maurice Sinclair), “I would like my love to die” [poem], appears in transition forty-eight (Jan. 1948); Malone meurt [Malone Dies], orig. called “L’absent”, written between Oct. 1948 and Jan. 1949; began En Attendant Godot, 9 Oct. 1948-28 Jan. 1949, as ‘a relaxation from the awful prose I was writing at that time’, and ‘an attempt to escape from the wildness and rulelessness of the novels’ (Fletcher, 1971); rents room in farmhouse at Ussy-sur-Marne, 1949; gave three-part interview with George Duthuit, speaking of Tal Coat, Masson, and Bram van Velde, the last an artist who has interested him for 20 years (“Art has always been bourgeois”); printed in transition forty-nine [49], No 5 (1949, pp.97-103); began l’Innommable [The Unnamable], 29 March 1949, and continued through Winter 1950; death of mother, 25 Aug. 1950, with Beckett in her presence; began Textes pour rien, Dec. 1950 (publ. Nov. 1955);

1950-59: Molloy submitted by Suzanne to Jérôme Lindon at Edition de minuit (corner of bvds. St.-Germain and St-Michel), autumn 1950 [‘I read Molloy in a few hours as I have never read a book before ... a sacred masterpiece’); Lindon offers contract for all three novels, 15 Nov. 1950; Molloy published, 15 March 1951; photographed by Gisele Freund; settles in a house built with the legacy in mother’s will, at Ussy-sur-Marne, nr. Paris, 1952; Jerôme Lindon publishes En attendant Godot in his éditions de minuit (17 Oct. 1952); comes to public prominence with Paris staging of En attendant Godot, dir. Roger Blin - also acting the part of Pozzo with Lucien Raimbourg as Vladimir, Pierre Latour as Estragon, and Jean Martin as Lucky, at Théâtre de Babylone (bvd. Raspail, Montparnasse), 19 Jan. 1953; Watt published by Olympia Press (Paris), 1953, later trans. into French as Watt by Ludovic and Agnès Janvier in collab. with the author (publ. 1968); Mitchell moves to Paris, 1954; death of Frank Beckett, Sept. 1954; Fin de partie, first version, 1955; one-act version, June 1956, trans. into English as Endgame (1958), premiered at Royal Court, Oct. 1958, and widely staged thereafter, and called ‘more inhuman than Godot’ by Beckett; trans. Godot, 1953, the English version being published as Waiting for Godot (Feb. 1956); opens disasterously in Miami, dir. Alan Schneider, 3 Jan. 1956 [‘we always want to do what you want’]; Beckett withdraws mimes from Dublin Theatre Festival in protest against supposed censorship of O’Casey’s Drums of Father Ned and a dramatisation of Joyce’s Ulysses by McClelland, imposing an embargo on performance of his works in Dublin, 1958-60; first radio play, All that Fall (BBC, 3 Jan. 1957), based on the biblical text, ‘The Lord upholdest all that fall and raiseth up all those that be bowed down’; gives financial assistance to Douglas Rick Cluchey, San Quentin inmate, to produce Waiting for Godot there, 1957; issues Embers (1959), also for radio, and deemed unsuccessful; writes Krapp’s Last Tape (1959), for Patrick Magee and a tape-record, beginning Feb. 1958; performed Royal Court London (28 Oct. 1958; publ. 1959); commences work on Comment c’est [How It Is] as “Pim”, Dec. 1958-summer 1960; receives D. Litt. from TCD, June 1959;

1960-69: Krapp’s Last Tape translated into French by author with Pierre Leyris, performed Théâtre Recamier (Paris, 22 March 1960); joined in Paris by Barbara Bray (b. 1924), a BBC script-editor whom he met in London in 1958; Bray moves Paris and resumes relationship, 1961; m. Suzanne, Folkestone, Kent, March 1961; Prix International des Editeur, with Jorge Luis Borges, may 1961; writes Cascando, radio play in French, Dec. 1961; Krapp’s Last Tape, with Cyril Cusack (Dublin 1960); premiers Happy Days (NY 1961; London 1962), his first play written in English, trans. into French as Oh les beaux jours; writing Play, in English, 1961-1962; premiered as Spiel at the Ulmer Theater, Ulm-Donay (14 June 1963); first performed as Play in Britain at Old Vic (7 April 1964), and in France at Pavillion de Marson (Paris, 11 June 1964); first published in German as Spiel in Theater Heute (July 1963); publ. in English (1964) and in French (1964; author’s trans.); travels to America to make Film (1965) with Buster Keaton, enacting Berkeley’s precept ‘esse est percipi’, summer 1964; wins Prix Filmcritica, Venice 1965 and Special Jury Prize, Tours 1966; writes and issues Imaginez morte imaginez (1965); his first TV play; another follows, Eh Joe (BBC2, July 1966); glaucoma diagnosed, 1967; writes Assez and begins Le dépeupleur, Autumn 1965; trans. Textes pour rien as Texts for Nothing (1966); notified of his election by Nobel panel in telegram from Lindon (‘Dear Sam and Suzanne. In spite of everything, they have given you the Nobel Prize - I advise you to go into hiding. With affection’); receives the Prize, Oct. 1969 (with commendation for ‘sounding liberation to the oppressed and comfort to those in need’); shelters in Tunisia from world acclaim;

1970-97: undergoes first operation for glaucoma, Oct. 1970; second operation, Feb. 1971; Mercier et Camier and Premier amour issued by Lindon (1970); More Pricks than Kicks reprinted (1970); writes Not I, 1970 (publ. 1973), in which the part of Mouth is brilliantly played by Billie Whitelaw to his coaching, Jan. 1973; trans. Not I into French as Pas Moi, 1973; trans. and revises Mercier Et Camier, Aug. 1973; That Time written June 1974-Aug. 1975 (publ. 1976); directed Godot in German, Berlin March 1975; writes Footfalls, 1975; directs Pas Moi, Paris (April 1975); issues Mirlotonnades (1978), poetic sequence; issues Company/Compagnie (1979; written May 1977-Aug. 1979; performed 1980); begins Mal vu mal dit, 1980; writes Worstward Ho!, 1981; late works incl. Rockaby and Ohio Impromtu, Catastrophe, and Nacht und Träume, and ‘dramaticules’ such as Come and Go, Breath, &c.; responds to Deirdre Bair’s request for permission to write a biography with the statement that he would ‘hinder nor help’; besides his Paris flat, he spent much time away from Paris in a two-room apartment at Ussy-sur-Marne, 40 miles from Paris; latterly drank in the Falstaff, in Montparnasse; elected Saoi of Aosdána, 1984; Stirrings Still, a last prose work, printed in The Guardian (Friday, 3 March 1989, p.25); Suzanne d. 17 July 1989; Beckett moves to Tiers Temps retirement home, Montparnasse; completed 19 plays; d. 22 Dec.; bur. Montparnasse, in a small funeral; an authorised edition of the letters was undertaken by Martina Fehsenfeld and Lois More Overbeck; a Beckett archive was established by James Knowlson, authorised biographer, with Prof. John Pilling, at Reading University; a two-part ‘Bookman’ programme on Beckett was commissioned from Sean Ó Mórdha; the Beckett home, Cooldrinagh, sold for £898,000 in Summer 1996; the standard academic biography is James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (1996), appearing in the same year and season as Anthony Cronin’s The Last Modernist (1996); 680 letters from Beckett to Barbara Bray were sold to TCD Library for an estimated £200,000 in early 1997; a Journal of Beckett Studies has appeared from Florida State University since 1976; Beckett always refused to appear on radio or television, with the result that his voice is unrecorded; survived by his br. Edward. NCBE DIW DIB OCEL DIL KUN OXTH FDA HAM DUB OCIL WJM

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Works

Plays
First performances, Waiting for Godot (Paris 1953; London Arts Theatre, 1955; [simultaneously] Dublin, Pike Theatre 1955; Miami 1956); All that Fall [for radio] (BBC 1957); Endgame (London 1957, in French; NY and London 1958, in English); Act Without Words I (London 1957); Act Without Words II (pub. 1959; performed London 1960); Krapp's last Tape (London 1958); Embers (BBC 1959) [provisional title "Ebb"]; Happy Days (NY 1961; London 1962); Words and Music [for radio] (BBC 1962); Cascando [for radio] (Paris 1963; London 1964); Play (Ulm 1963, in German; London 1964); Ping (1967); Come and Go (Berlin 1966, in German; Dublin and London 1968) [called a dramaticule, English 1965, drafted as Good Heavens, ded. Calder]; Eh Joe [for TV] (Suddeutscher Rundfunk 1966, in German; BBC 1966); Breath (NY and Glasgow 1969); Lessness (1970) [written as Sans (1967); BBC reading]; Not I (NY 1972; London Jan. 1973; “Auditor” taken out of 1975 French production but given greater prominence in 1978 production]; That Time (London 1976 with Patrick Magee]; Footfalls (London 1976); Ghost Trio [for TV] (pub. 1976; BBC 1977); ... but the clouds ... [for TV] (BBC 1977); A Piece of Monologue (NY 1979; Edinburgh 1984); Company (1980) [written May 1977-Aug 1979]; Rockaby (Buffalo 1981; London 1982); Ohio Impromptu (Columbus 1981; Edinburgh 1984); Quad [TV mime] (Suddeutscher Rundfunk 1981; BBC 1982); Catastrophe (Avignon 1982, in French; Paris 1982, in French; Edinburgh 1984); Nacht und Traume [TV mime] (Suddeutscher Rundfunk 1983); What Where (Graz 1983, in German; Edinburgh 1984).

Published Editions, En Attendant Godot (Paris: Editions de minuit 1952), English trans. by Beckett as Waiting for Godot, A Tragicomedy in Two Acts (NY: Grove 1954; London: Faber 1956; rep. 1961); Nine Dramatic Pieces (NY: Grove 1954); All that Fall [radio play] (London: Faber 1957; NY: Grove 1960), French trans. by Beckett as Tous ceux qui tombent (Paris: Editions de minuit 1957); Fin de Partie suivi de Acte sans Paroles I (Paris: Editions de minuit 1957), 124pp., English trans. by Beckett as Endgame, a Play in One Act, followed by Act Without Words I, a Mime (NY: Grove 1958; London: Faber 1958; rep. 1968), and Do., French original ed. Beryl S. Fletcher & John Fletcher (London: Methuen 1970); Krapp's Last Tape (London: Faber 1959; NY: Grove 1960), French trans. by Beckett and Pierre Leyris as La Dernière Bande (Paris: Editions de minuit 1959); Embers (London: Faber 1959), rep. in Krapp's Last Tape and Other Dramatic Pieces (NY: Grove 1960); Happy Days (NY: Grove 1961), Do., (London: Faber 1962; rep. 1966; 1968), 48pp., Do., French trans. by Beckett as Oh les beaux jours (Paris: Editions de minuit 1963), and Do. [bilingual edition], ed., James Knowlson (London: Faber 1978); Words and Music, in Play and Two Short Pieces for Radio (London: Faber 1964), rep. in Cascando and Other Short Dramatic Pieces (NY: Grove 1969), French trans. by Beckett as Paroles et Musique, in Comédie et Actes Divers (Paris: Editions de minuit 1966; rep. 1972; 1990); Play and Two Short Pieces for Radio (London: Faber 1964; rep. 1968; 1969); Acte sans Paroles II, in Dramatische Dichtungen, Band I (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag 1963); rep. in Comédie et Actes Divers (Paris: Editions de minuit 1966; rep. 1972; 1990), English trans. by Beckett as Act Without Words II, rep. in Eh Joe and Other Writings (London: Faber 1967); Film in Cascando and Other Short Dramatic Pieces (NY: Grove 1969); rep. in Eh Joe and Other Writings (London: Faber 1967); Assez (Paris: Editions de minuit 1966), rep. in Têtes-Mortes (Paris: Editions de minuit 1967), English trans. by Beckett as “Enough” in First Love and Other Shorts (NY: Grove 1974); Eh Joe and Other Writings (London: Faber 1967) [Eh Joe, Act Without Words II, Enough, Ping, and Film]; Cascando in Comédie et Actes divers (Paris: Editions de minuit 1966; rep. 1972; 1990), and Do., trans. by Beckett as Cascando, in Play and Two Short Pieces for Radio (London: Faber 1964), rep. in Cascando and Other Short Dramatic Pieces (NY: Grove 1969); Not I (London: Faber 1973), 16pp., rep. in First Love and Other Shorts (NY: Grove 1974); Footfall (London: Faber 1976), 12pp.; That Time (London: Faber 1976), 16pp.; Ends and Odds (NY: Grove 1976) [That Time, Not I, Footfalls, Radio I, Radio II, Theatre I, Theatre II and Tryst]; Rockaby and Other Short Pieces (NY: Grove 1981) [Rockabye, Ohio Improptu, All Strange Away, A Piece of Monologue]; Three Occasional Pieces (London: Faber 1982), 32pp. [Monologue, Rockaby, Ohio Impromptu, Footfall, Not I, Ends and Odds]; Eleutheria (Paris: Editions de minuit 1995), English trans. by Michael Brodsky as Eleutheria: A Play in 3 Acts (NY: Foxrock 1995), 196pp., Do., (London: Faber 1996), 170pp.; Also trans. Robert Pinget, La Manivelle [The Old Tune], play, with translation by Beckett (Paris: Editions de minuit 1960), 62pp

Fiction
 Shorter Fiction, More Pricks than Kicks (London: Chatto & Windus 1934); Do., special typescript facs., edn. ‘Hors Commerce for Scholars' (London: Calder & Boyars 1966; 1967; 1970), 107pp.; Do. [in Collected Works of Samuel Beckett] (NY: Grove 1970), 190pp.; Do., new edn. (London: Picador 1974; 1977); Premier Amour [written 1946] (Paris: Editions de minuit 1970), English trans. by Beckett as First Love (London: Calder & Boyers 1973; rep. London: Calder 1999); another edn., preface by Christopher Ricks (London: Syrens [Penguin] 1994), v-viii, 35pp.; and Do., rep. in First Love and Other Shorts (NY: Grove 1974); Nouvelles et Textes pour Rien (Paris: Editions de minuit 1955), English trans. by Beckett as Stories and Texts for Nothing (NY: Grove 1967), collected ed. under title of No's Knife (London: Calder & Boyars 1967; 1975) [with English translations of parts in No's Knife]; From an Abandoned Work (London: Faber 1958), 22pp.; rep. in Krapp's Last Tape and Other Dramatic Pieces (London: Faber 1959; NY: Grove 1960), and in First Love and Other Shorts (NY: Grove 1974; and in First Love and Other Novellas, ed. Gerry Dukes (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1999; 2000); Comment c'est (Paris: Editions de minuit 1961), translated by Beckett as How It Is (NY: Grove 1964; London: Calder & Boyars 1964; rep. London: Calder 1996), 160pp.; Imagination morte imaginez (Paris: Editions de minuit 1965), English trans. by Beckett as Imagination Dead Imagine (London: Calder & Boyars 1966); Do., rep in First Love and Other Shorts (NY: Grove 1974); Bing (Paris: Editions de minuit 1966), English trans. by Beckett as Ping (London: Calder & Boyars 1967), rep. in First Love and Other Shorts (NY: Grove 1974), rep. as First Love and Other Novellas, ed. Gerry Dukes (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999; rep. 2000); Têtes Mortes (Paris: Editions de minuit 1967), 66pp.; No's Knife: Collected Shorter Prose, 1945-1966 (London: Calder & Boyars 1967); Sans (Paris: Editions de minuit 1969), English trans. by Beckett as Lessness (London: Calder & Boyars 1970); Le Dépeupleur (Paris: Editions de minuit 1970), English trans. by Beckett as The Lost Ones (NY: Grove 1972; London: Calder & Boyar 1972); Breath and Other Stories (London: Faber 1971), 48pp.; First Love and Other Shorts (NY: Grove 1974); Fizzles (NY: Grove 1976); For to End Yet, and Other Fizzles (London: Faber 1977); Four Novellas (London: Calder 1977); Companie (Paris: Editions de minuit 1979), English trans. by Beckett as Company (NY: Grove; London: Calder 1980), rep; as Samuel Beckett's Company/Companie and A Piece of Monologue/Solo: A Bilingual Variorum Edition, ed. Charles Krance (NY/London: Garland 1993); Collected Shorter Prose 1945-1980 (London: Calder 1984) [First Love, The Expelled, The Calmative, The End, Texts for Nothing, From an Abandoned Work and ‘Head in the Dark 2' being a para. from Company, here pp.205-07]; Worstward Ho (NY: Grove 1983; London: Calder 1983; rep. 1999), 47pp.; Stirrings Still (NY: Blue Moon; London: Calder 1988), lim. edn.

Novels: Murphy (London: Routledge 1938); Molloy (Paris: Editions de minuit 1950, 1970, &c.), 272pp.; English trans. by Beckett & Patrick Bowles (Paris: Merlin/Olympia 1955), 241pp., and Do. (NY: Grove 1955), 241pp.; Do. [another edn.] (London: John Calder 1993); Malone Meurt (Paris: Editions de minuit 1951), 217pp.; Do., English trans. by Beckett as Malone Dies: A Novel translated by the Author (NY: Grove Press 1956), 120pp.; Do. (London: Calder & Boyars [1956], 1958), 120pp.; l'Innommable (Paris: Editions de minuit 1953), 212pp.; English trans. by Beckett as The Unnamable (NY: Grove 1958); Watt (Paris: Merlin/Olympia 1953; NY: Grove 1959; London: Calder & Boyars 1961; rep. 1998), trans. into French by Agnès & Ludovic Janvier as Watt (Paris: Editions de minuit 1968), 272pp.; Comment c'est (Paris: Editions de minuit 1961), and Do., trans. by Beckett as How It Is (London: Calder & Boyars; NY: Grove Press 1964) [var. 1966]; Mercier et Camier (Paris: Editions de minuit 1970), English trans. by Beckett as Mercier and Camier (NY: Grove; London: Calder & Boyars 1974; rep. Calder 1999); Eoin O'Brien & Edith Fournier, eds., Dream of Middling to Fair Women (Monkstown [Dublin]: Black Cat Press 1992), xvii, 241pp., Do., (London/Paris: Calder; NY: Riverrun 1992) [written 1932; withdrawn in London due to legal action].

Murphy (London: Routledge 1938); another edn. (NY: Grove 1957); Do. [Jupiter Edn.] (London: Calder & Boyars 1963); Do., another edn. (London: Picador [Pan Books] 1973); Do., another edn. (London: Calder 1993); in French trans. by Beckett & Alfred Péron, as Murphy (Paris: Bordas 1947; rep. Paris: Editions de minuit 1953).

Miscellaneous, contrib “Che Sciagura” [“What a misfortune” - viz, castration in its Dantean context] to TCD Miscellany (14 Nov. 1929, p.42; “Opening Section of Molloy”, in Fifth Mentor Selection (NY: New American Library 1954), 337pp. [with work by Sean O’Faolain, Niall Montgomery and Maurice Meldon].

Bibliographical details

Murphy, French trans. by Beckett & Alfred Péron (Paris: Bordas 1947; rep. Paris: Editions de minuit 1953): Edition de minuit wrappers round sheets of Bordas issue, Bordas having sold only 95 copies of 3,000 printed before transferring the stock to Jérôme Lindon. (Peter Ellis, Bookseller, Cat. 20; 2004).

Poetry
Whoroscope (Paris: Hours 1930); Echo's Bone's and Other Precipitates (Paris: Europa 1935); Poems in English (London: Calder & Boyars 1961); Collected Poems in English and French (London: Calder 1977; rep. as Collected Poems 1930-1978 London: Calder 1984); Zone, by Apollinaire, with English trans. by Samuel Beckett (Dublin: Dolmen 1972), 23pp.; Barbara Wright, trans., Eleutheria [1st edn. France 1995] (London: Faber 1996), 176pp.

Limited Editions, Poème [‘je voudrais que mon amour meure'], MS engraved in four colours and signed by Stanley Hetyer [q.d.; ltd. 50 copies]; Pour finir encore (Paris: Editions de minuit 1976), ltd. 100.; Beckett, Samuel, Poems 1930-1989, with Previously Unpublished Poems and Translations (London: John Calder Publ. 2002), 226pp. [ltd. edn. 100 with liths. by Louis le Brocquy; bound by Gerard Kenny; €650 each copy.]

Miscellaneous Prose
‘Dante ... Bruno. Vico .. Joyce', Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (London: Shakespeare & Co. 1929), 194pp.; Proust (London: Chatto & Windus 1931; NY: Grove 1957); published ‘Text', in The New Review 11, 5 (April 1932), p.57 [a poem based on plays of John Ford, et al.]; [as Andrew Belis] ‘Recent Irish Poetry', Bookman 86 (August 1934); rep. in Michael Smith, ed., The Lace Curtain 4 (Summer 1971), pp.58-63; ‘Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit', transition forty-nine 5 (December 1949), pp.97-103, rep. in Ruby Cohn, ed., Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment (London: John Calder 1983; rep. 1986), pp.138-45 [note]; Do., (NY: Grove 1984); ‘Censorship in the Saorstat' [commissioned by The Bookman 1935; publ. 1983], Disjecta (1983), pp.84-88, and rep. in Julia Carlson, ed., Banned in Ireland: Censorship and the Irish Writer (London: Routledge 1990); John Pilling, ed., Beckett's Dream Notebook (Reading: Beckett International Foundation 1999), xxiii, 173pp. Also, Stirrings Still, a last prose work, printed in The Guardian (Friday, 3 March 1989, p.25).

Compilation Editions, Krapp's Last Tape and Embers (London: Faber 1958; rep. 1959; 1965; 1968), 39pp.; Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable, trans. [in English] by Patrick Bowles & Beckett [Travellers Companion Series, No. 71] (Paris: Olympia 1959), 479pp.; Do. (London: Calder & Boyars 1959; rep. 1973), 418pp.; and Do., as The Beckett Trilogy: Molloy - Malone Dies - The Unnamable (Paris: Olympia Press 1959), pp.579, and Do. (London: Calder 1959, 1976), 418pp.; Do [rep. edn.] (London: Picador [Pan Books] 1979, 1995, &c.), 382pp. [infra]; Calder, ed., A Samuel Beckett Reader (London: Calder & Boyars 1967), 192pp.; Eh Joe and Other Writings (London: Faber 1967) [“Eh Joe”, “Act Without Words II”, “Enough”, “Ping”, and “Film”]; Beginning to End: Selection from the Works of Samuel Beckett, adapted by Beckett & Jack MacGowran (NY: Gotham Book Mart 1968) [ltd. edn. 300 copies]; Comédie et actes divers (Paris: Editions de minuit 1966; rep. 1972; 1990), 133 pp. [“Comédie”, “Va-et-vient”, “Cascando”, “Paroles et musique”, “Dis Joe”, “Actes sans paroles - I et II”, “Film”, “Souffle]”; The Collected Works of Samuel Beckett, 19 vols. (NY: Grove 1970) [infra]; Richard Seaver, ‘I Can't Go On, I'll Go On': A Selection from Samuel Beckett's Work (NY: Grove 1976); Four Novellas (London: Calder 1977), 95pp. [ 1. First Love; 2.The Expelled; 3.The Calmative; 4.The End]; The Complete Dramatic Works (London: Faber & Faber 1986; 1990, &c.), 476pp. [infra]; Three Occasional Pieces (London: Faber 1982), 32pp. [Monologue, Rockaby, Ohio Impromptu, Footfall, Not I, Ends and Odds]; As The Story was Told: Uncollected & Late Prose (Cambridge: Rampant Lions 1987), Do., (NY: Riverrun 1990; London: Calder 1990; rep. 1999); Nohow On (London: Calder 1989) [1. “Company”; 2. “Ill Seen Ill Said”; 3. “Worstward Ho!], rep. as Nohow On: Three Novels, intro. S. E. Gontarski (NY: Grove Press 1996); James Knowlson, gen. ed., The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber & Faber; NY: Grove Press 1992-1999) [infra]; S. E. Gontarski , ed., & intro. Samuel Beckett: The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989 [with notes] (NY: Grove Press [1995]), xxxii, 294pp. [infra]; Collected Shorter Plays (NY: Grove 1984; London: Faber 1984; rep. 1999), 316pp., [infra].

Scholarly editions, Carlton Lake, ed., No Symbols Where None Intended: A Collection of Books, Manuscripts, and Other Materials (Austin: Humanities Research Center 1984); Mary Bryden, James Knowlson & Peter Mills, eds., Beckett at Reading: Catalogue of the Beckett Manuscript Collection at the University of Reading (Reading: Whiteknights/Beckett International Foundation 1998).

The Beckett Trilogy (London: John Calder, 1959 [1960] 1976; rep. Pan Books [Picador] 1979), 382pp., comprises Molloy [pp.7-162], trans. by Samuel Beckett and Patrick Bowles [originally Paris: Olympia Press; London: France Features 1955], being a trans. of Molloy (Paris: Editions de Minuit 1950); Malone Dies [pp.163-264], trans. by Samuel Beckett [orig. NY: Grove Press 1956; London: J. Calder 1958] being a trans. of Malone meurt (Paris: Editions de Minuit 1951); The Unnamable [pp.265-382], trans. by Samuel Beckett [orig. NY: Grove Press 1958; London: J. Calder 1959], being a trans. of L’Innommable (Paris: Editions de Minuit 1952); 8pp. pls. between pp.192-93 [See title verso Calder 1960]

The Complete Dramatic Works (London: Faber 1986), 476pp. [1. Waiting for Godot; 2. Endgame; 3. Happy Days; 4. All That Fall; 5. Act Without Words I; 6. Act Without Words II; 7. Krapp's Last Tape; 8. Rough for Theatre I; 9. Rough for Theatre II; 10. Embers; 11. Rough for Radio I; 12. Rough for Radio II; 13. Words and Music; 14. Cascando; 14. Play; 15. Film; 16. The Old Tune; 17. Come and Go; 18. Eh Joe; 19. Breath; 20. Not I; 21. That Time; 22. Footfalls; 23. Ghost Trio; 24. ...but the clouds...; 25. A piece of Monologue; 26. Rockaby; 27. Ohio Impromptu; 28. Quad; 29. Catastrophe; 30. Nacht und Träume; 31. What Where].

The Collected Works of Samuel Beckett, 19 vols. (NY: Grove 1970), [1. Murphy; 2. Poems in English; 3. How it Is; 4. Watt; 5. Waiting for Godot; 6. Proust; 7. Krapp's Last Tape; 8. Cascando; 9. More Pricks than Kicks; 10. Molloy; 11. Stories and Texts for Nothing; 12. The Unnamable; 13. Film; 14. Happy Days; 15. Malone Dies; 16. Endgame; 17. Act Without Words].

Collected Shorter Plays, ed. S. E. Gontarski (NY: Grove 1984; London: Faber 1984; rep. 1999), 316pp., [1. “Waiting for Godot; 2. “Endgame”; 3. “All That Fall”; 4. “Happy Days”; 5. “Krapp's Last Tape”; 6. “Cascando”; 7. “Eh Joe”; 8. “That Time”; 9. “Not I”; 10. “Rockaby”]. See also, S. E. Gontarski, ed. & intro. The Shorter Plays: with revised texts for “Footfalls”, Come and go”, and What where” The theatrical notebooks of Samuel Beckett, Vol. 4 (London: Faber & Faber; NY: Grove Press 1999), xxxviii, 474pp., ill. [contains text in German].

Samuel Beckett: The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989, ed. & intro. S. E. Gontarski [with notes] (NY: Grove Press [1995]), xxxii, 294pp. Contents: “Assumption”; “Sedendo et quiescendo”; “Text”; “A case in a thousand”; “First love”; “Stories. The expelled ; The calmative ; The end”; “Texts for nothing”; “From an abandoned work”; “The image”; “All strange away”; “Imagination dead imagine”; “Enough”; “Ping”; “Lessness”; “The lost one”; “Fizzles. [He is barehead] ; [Horn came always] ; Afar a bird ; [I gave up before birth] ; [Closed place] ; [Old earth] ; Still ; For to end yet again”; “Heard in the dark 1”; “Heard in the dark 2”; “One evening”; “As the story was told”; “The cliff”; “Neither”; “Stirrings still”].

The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett, gen. ed.,, James Knowlson, gen. ed., (London: Faber & Faber; NY: Grove Press 1992- ). Vol. 1: “Waiting for Godot”, with a revised text, ed., intro. & notes by Dougald McMillan & James Knowlson (London: Faber & Faber 1993; NY: Grove Press 1994), xxxiii, 472pp. [dates sic]; Vol. 2: “Endgame”, with a revised text, ed. intro. & notes by S. E. Gontarski (NY: Grove Press [1992]), xxviii, 276pp. ; Vol. 3: “Krapp’s Last Tape, with a revised text, ed. intro. & notes by James Knowlson (London: Faber & Faber 1992), xxxiii, 286pp.; Vol. 4: The Shorter Plays, with revised texts for “Footfalls”, “Come and Go”, and “What Where”, ed., intro. & notes by S. E. Gontarski (London: Faber & Faber 1999), xxxviii, 474pp. ill.

Discography, Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, performed by Cyril Cusack, dir. Howard Sackler (Caedmon n.d.), [mono audio-cassette; 90 min.]

Correspondence
Maurice Harmon, ed., No Author Better Served: The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider (Harvard UP 1999), 458pp.; Martha Fehsenfeld and Lois More Overbeck, eds., The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett [forthcoming].

Film, TV & Audio-versions
Films, Waiting for Godot, with Zero Mostel and Burgess Merdith (NTSC, 102 mins. 1976); Happy Days, with Irene Worth and George Voscovek (1980; 90 mins in NTSC & PAL); Rockaby (NTSC, 58 mins., 1982), with Billie Whitelaw [behind the scenes look at Beckett's production of the play]; Beckett, Film (NYSC, 21 mins. 1965), with Buster Keaton [everyman attempting to evade observation by all-seeing eye]; Krapp's Last Tape, dir. Alan Schneider, with Jack MacGowran, (NTSC, 54 mins.); Michael Colgan & Alan Moloney, prod., Beckett on Film Project [Blue Angel Films/Tyrone Productions for RTÉ & C4] (2001) [10 hours, 37 mins.].

TV versions Incl. Beginning to End, dir. Chloe Gibson (1966); Happy Days, dir. Chloe Gibson (1967) [see Helena Sheehan, Irish Television Drama, RTE 1987].

Audio-recordings (Selected), MacGowran Speaking Beckett (Claddagh Records CCT3); A Tribute to Beckett: Barry MacGovern Reads ‘Dante and the Lobster' from ‘An Abandoned Work' (Dublin Abbey Cassettes, ABB 013). See also National Public Radio, Washington DC for audiocassettes including Embers (1989).

Summaries
Molloy (1955): Molloy is in his mother’s room, not knowing how he got there, writing a statement in instalments which are collected each week; recalls watching two men from hill outside town, moving in opposite directions; he questions his memory and the number of occasions involved; recounts setting out to see mother on a bicycle; gives description of methods of propulsion; runs over small dog, gets arrested, and is rescued by Miss Lousse and coddled by her; escapes from her house on crutches; recalls a previous affair; finds himself beside the sea making a store of sucking stones; reflects on possible rotation of suckings stones from pocket(s) to mouth; is reduced to crawling; crawls on back [‘plunging my crutches wildly [...] I was on my way to my mother’]; crawls through forest, ends in ditch; seemingly kills a charcoal burner. Moran, a detective, instructed by Gaber who is subordinate in turn to Youdi; gives accounts of his house, his garden and a son, whom he bullies and mistreats in various ways; also Martha, maid and cook; mentions his church and priest; heading for Bally in townland of Ballyba with his sick son; sleeps out; suffers pain in knee; sends son to town for bicycle; a man with a ‘pale and noble face’ asks him for bread; suspects it could be Molloy; puts bread in different pockets; kills another man who turns up, without disclosing how; reaches Ballyba district; his son deserts him with the bicycle; Gaber turns up and orders him home; spends a whole winter on the journey; finds his bees and hens dead, and Martha gone; ‘Then I went back into the house and wrote. It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight, It was not raining’ [End].

Malone Dies (1956), An old man near death, in apartment block, is writing in an exercise book; he relates stories and makes an inventory of his possessions; expresses contempt for story-telling and its tedium; introduces Sapo, the son of the Sapsocats, whose impecunious father continually thinks of getting a job; quiet boy with streak of indiscipline; throws the master’s cane through window at school; mysteriously not expelled (suggesting that Malone is ‘inventing’ these details); contradictions mount; Sapo has no friends but also ‘on good terms with his little friends’; he loves nature; meets the Lamberts on walk, a squalid family; Big Lambert, a pig bleeder and disjointer; the pigs are blind and feeble; Lamberts bury a dead mule clumsily; Sapo becomes Macmann, and is ‘found’ again (according to Malone, who wonders how he could stick the name of Sapo for so long; Macmann becomes a vagrant; ends up in the House of St John of God, asylum for alcoholics, where he is looked after by Moll who sports with crucifixes for earrings and a carved crucifix on single tooth [cf. Golgotha]; towards the close of their idyll, Macmann writes poems about love as ‘lethal glue’; one Lemuel then tells Macmann that Moll is dead; Malone’s visitor gives him a blow on the head, whistling on the stairs after; Lemuel takes Macmann and others to see druid remains on an island; he kills and maims them there; the story ends with Malone’s implied death.

The Unnamable (1958): ‘Where now? Who now? When now?’ (opening sentence); the speaker cannot be silent; he speaks out of nothing, and speaks of Malone ‘his mortal likeness’; Malone has gone past, so he is at the centre, or may be in motion instead; hears sounds; remembers visitors, though how can be be visited, being nowhere himself?; a visitor called Basil has imposed on him; Murphy, Molloy, Malone are all tracings; nothing to be said of that; the narrator is like a talking ball; believes silence would be better; Basil returns as Mahood; Mahood invents stories stories of narrator’s childhood, falsifying details; the narrator is a trunk ot jar near shambles opposite a steak-house, which is emptied weekly by proprietoress, using his filth on lettuces; possible identity of Mahood and Unnamable discussed; emergence of Worm, possibly a stage of development towards Unnamable; threatens (hopes) to go silent; fears to be punished; fixates on a ‘small voice’; desires to be punished; imagines he will recover senses (sight, hearing, &c; reduce to pure narrative, variable and speculative fictions (I’m still in it, I left myself behind in it, I’m waiting for me there, [...] perhaps it’s a dream [...], a dream of silence, full of murmurs’); feels abandoned; feels himself carried to the ‘threshold of his story’ amid self and silence, distant cries and the threatening nameless other; can he go on?: ‘I can’t go on, you must go on, I’ll go on ... you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on’ [End].

Whoroscope: The Notebook held in the Reading Archives incl. notations of the physics of motion from various philosophers and physicists, as well as citations from Dante: ‘My master leads me by another road / out of that serenity to the roar / and trembling air of Hell.' (Cited by Thomas Cousineau, in Beckett and Beyond, 1991; q.p.)

Disjecta (1983), incls. letters to Thomas MacGreevy, George Reavey and Sigle Kennedy dealing with the plot and construction of Murphy (1938). Writing to MacGreevy, he speaks of the character of Murphy involving a ‘mixture of campassion, patience, mockery [...] with the sympathy going so far and no farther. ’ (p.102.) Writing to Reavey of the chess game with Endon, for instance, he says: ‘And I refuse to touch the game of chess [...] Do they understand that if the book is slightly obscure it is because it is a compression and that to compress it further can only result in making it more obscure?’ (p.103; both quoted in David Hollywood, UG Essay, UUC 2003.)

People
Tom MacGreevy, friend and correspondent, appears to have supplied the inspiration for Beckett's line, I ‘wish that my love were dead ... [&c.]', in his own earlier lines: ‘I knew if you had died that I should grieve / Yet I found my heart wishing you were dead. / We loved excessively. ...' (‘Exile', in Poems, 1934).

Brendan Behan: ‘When Samuel Beckett was in Trinity College listening to lectures, I was in the Queen's Theatre, my uncle's music hall. That is why my plays are music hall and his are university lectures'. [q. source.] Note that Alec Reid tells a story of Beckett bailing Behan out in prison, lecturing him on the evils of drinking, giving him a double brandy, and a hundred francs. (See All I Could Manage, More than I Could.)

John Calder, letter to the Times Literary Supplement (23 April 1964), writes: ‘Since although the present editions of Beckett's play Play state ‘repeat play exactly' your readers might be interested to hear that during the London rehearsals Beckett made a number of changes in the order of the cues so that although each actor has his lines in the same order as the light interrogates him, the light interrogates in a different order. This makes it impossible for the actors to take cues from each other but only from the light and lets us assume that on a third round many things might be different.' (Cited in Stan E. Gontarski , ‘A Hat Is Not a Shoe: The Theatrical Notebooks of Samuel Beckett and Postmodern Theories of Texts and Textuality', in Beyond Beckett [Princess Grace irish Library], Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1999.)

Linda Ben-Zvi, the author of ‘Feminine Focus in Beckett', a lecture and essay noticed dismissively by "NB" in The Times Literary Supplement (22 Oct. 1993), was the recipient of Beckett's rejoinder on the impossibility of women acting Godot: ‘Women don't have prostates'. Nevertheless, she find him feminine in his subversion of hierarchy [&c.]. The essay in question is taken seriously by Mary Bryden, who answers back: ‘There is no reason for this malfunction alone to dictate casting' (Women in Beckett, Performance and Critical Perspectives, Illinois UP 1990).

James Joyce (parodied): ‘the rain fell in a uniform untroubled manner. It fell upon the bay, the littoral, the mountains and the plains, and notably upon the Central Bog it fell with a rather desolate uniformity.' (More Pricks than Kicks, 83 [edn. supra.]; quoted in John Harrington, The Irish Beckett, 1991, p.66; cf. last sentenceof “The Dead” in Dubliners.) According to Harrington, Beckett’s story ‘A Case in a Thousand’ printed in The Bookman [Irish Number] (1934), and never republished, was modelled on Joyce’s Mr Duffy in Dubliners.

Jerome Lindon, founder of Le Nouveau Roman [the New Novel]; Grand, mince, distingué, discret, fougueux et opiniâtre; died 2001, of cancer, aged 75.

Lorna Reynolds [in Galway], writes of the launch of the unpublished poems of Samuel Beckett never seen before and now published in collaboration between Kennys and John Calder on 12th April 2002, and quotes epigraphically: ‘Go where never before / No sooner there than there always / No matter where never before / No sooner there than there always’. Further quotes “Brief Dream” with permission of Calder publications: ‘go end there / one fine day / where never till then / till as much as to say / no matter where / no matter when’ (The Irish Times [Weekend] 13 April 2002.)

Ne timere: Beckett's father had a romance in young manhood with the mother of Doreen Hogan and daughter of William Martin Murphy which was terminated on denominational grounds by both their families; as Lady Chance, on marrying Sir Arthur, she became step-mother to seven children and ‘adopted' Noel Browne. [acc. Mary Campbell; cf. Anthony Cronin, Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist, 1997, p.6.]

James Knowlson remarks on the revelation of Beckett's breadth of detailed knowledge of Dutch painting and other classic paintings in his German diary of 1936-37: ‘The images in Beckett's stage work bear extraordinary resemblances to image of the old masters, Rembrandt and Caravaggio in particular' [...]. Further, ‘Figures such as the Rembrandtesque duo in black costumes in Ohio Impromptu. The image in Not I was partly inspired by Caravaggio's Beheading of St John. In the manuscript of Waiting for Godot, Beckett wrote “KDF”, a direct reference to the painting by Kaspar David Friedrich, Two Men Observing the Moon. / His memory of paintings was almost photographic. He was able to remember in great detail paintings he had not seen for many years. In one of the first of the formal interviews I did with him in 1989, for example, he described a figure peeing against a fence in a painting in the National Gallery of Ireland. he hadn't seen the painting in donkey's years. I realised he held in his mind a vast gallery of images which he was able to draw on at any point in his career. [...] Certain of [Jack] Yeats's images are identifiable in Beckett's work. [...]. The figure in Yeats's “Sleep”, for example was probably inspirational of Rockaby. (See John Carey, feature-review of Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 1996, in The Sunday Times, 15 Sept. 1996.)

The epigraph of Chap. 6, ‘Amor intellectualis quo Murphy se ipsum amat', is parody of Spinoza's commentary on God combining Prop. XXXV and XXXVI of the Ethics (V, 35). Note also typographical errors in the 1963 and 1973 Edns. of Murphy incl. ‘semed’ for ‘seemed’ [6] and ‘Clonmachnois’ with superfluous ‘h’ [150].

Beckett sent a letter to Thomas MacGreevy in which he writes of undertaking ‘Surréalistes inédits for Nancy’s [Nancy Cunard] nigger book’, commencing with ‘René Crevel’s La Négresse du Bordel’ which he characterises as ‘miserable rubbish’. (See Phil Baker, Notice of Alen W. Friedman, ed., Beckett in Black and Red: The Translations for Nancy Cunard’s Negro, in Times Literary Supplement, 2 June 2000, p.7.)

John HURT played Krapp’s Last Tape at the Gate Theatre (Dublin), in Sept. 2001. SUSAN SONTAG directed a production of Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo during the Serbo-Croat conflict in the Balkans [former Yugoslavia]; see David Bradby, Waiting for Godot (Cambridge UP q.d.) DONALD HOWARTH directed Godot using black actors for the tramps, and a white man for Pozzo.

The victim of capital execution in Beckett’s opening story of More Pricks Than Kicks was one Henry McCabe: hanged by Pierrepont in Dublin after sentencing for murder, on quaky evidence, of murdering the McDonnell family and afterwards setting their home La Manca in Malahide, of which he was the gardener, on fire - the bodies being recovered by the fire-brigade before the house burnt down. The circumstances and outcome of ‘this dreadful happening on the 31st March 1926’ - a house ‘in flames and six bodies on lying on the lawn!’ - are dealt with in Kenneth Deale, Memorable Irish Trials (1960). See Brian Inglis, Downstart (Chatto & Windus 1990), pp.30-31. Note that there appears to be a variant account of McCabe’s identity and crime in a biography (qry) of Beckett suggesting that the executed man was an Irish soldier convicted for the murder of his wife and hanged on 10 Dec. 1926.

In a study of the 1955 movie that Beckett produced with Buster Keaton, Katherine Waugh and Fergus Daly called Film ‘the greatest Irish film', remarking that the work involved a revival of [Bishop] Berkeley's philosophical outlook. For Beckett, Keaton represents a character ‘in search of non-being, in flight from extraneous perception breaking down in the inescapability of self-perception'; throughout Film, Keaton (or ‘O') is pursued by ‘E' or camera-eye. Directed by Alan Schneider under supervision of Beckett, the film was premiered at the NY Film Festival (1959), and remade [i.e., restored] for the British Film Institute in 1979. (See Katherine Waugh & Fergus Daly, ‘Film by Samuel Beckett', in Film West, 20, Spring 1995, pp.22-24.)

Self-portrait: see Beckett's note on himself in George Reavey’s The European Caravan (1931): ‘the most interesting of the younger Irish writers [...] adapted the Joyce method to his poetry with original results.’ [8]

Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day Company 1991): Vol 3 selects "Dante and the Lobster", from More Pricks than Kicks [238-44]; "Recent Irish Poetry" (Bookman 1934) [244-48]; from Collected Poems, "Gnome", Echo"s Bones", "Dieppe", "Saint-Lô", "I would like my love to die" [248-250]; from Murphy [250-56]; "Letter to Axel Kraun" [256-59]; from Endgame, Embers (1959), Enough (1967), Ping (1967), Come and Go (1968), Lessness (London: Calder & Boyars 1970) [written as Sans in French; given BBC reading], Not I (1972), That Time (1976), Company (1980) [256-311]; and see bibl. notes infra passim. Editorial essay by J. C. C. Mays, ‘Samuel Beckett: 1907-1989’ (pp233-238); BIOG [311-13]. Editorial remarks on Beckett: ‘linguistic performer’, with other Anglo-Irish writers; ed. [2]; Yeats and Beckett almost completely ignored in Ireland, c.1930 [90]; in biog. of MacGreevy, Paris acquaintance [169]; Godot first performed in Dublin 1955 [175-76]; Lennox Robinson, friend of [444n]; experimental tradition distinct from Yeatsian inheritance; ed. Deane [611; see also, remarks on Synge’s sweet-tongued vagrants as memorable Irish versions of the Baudelairean ‘poéte maudit - healthier, folksier, but estranged in a similar way]; rejected myths of Literary Revival, Kearney, ed. [630]; politics regarded as threat to artistic integrity, ibid. [631]; reads Joyce and Beckett in the light of Derrida and the structuralists, ibid [633]; David Lloyd, ‘Writing in the Shit, Beckett. &c.’ (see supra), dealing with ‘questions of exile and translation in their relation to the formation of the subject’, in Irish Review, Spring 1988 [634-35]; Kiberd, Beckett’s translation to French, a language in which it ‘plus facile d’écrire sans style’, betokens a critique of Irish wit and wordplay’, in ‘Anglo-Irish Attitudes’, Field Day pamphlet 1984 [639]; name only, in Sean Golden, Crane Bag polemic, 1979 [675]; exile-at-home, ed. Deane [684]; gives lie to theory about exclusive dominance of Irish short tradition; J. W. Foster, ed. [937]; left and prospered artistically; ibid. [939]; particularly Irish modernism in recycling of Irish modes and materials; ibid. [942]; Absentee, Beckett’s play at Pike, 1955; D. E. S. Maxwell, ed. [1137]; emigrated to continent with bleak assertion that he preferred France at war to Ireland at peace; Kiberd ed. [1309]; Derek Mahon, ‘An Image from Beckett’ [1382]. J. C. C. Mays’s "Bibliographical & Introductory Notes" cite "Gnome", written Jan. 1932; printed Dublin Magazine, July-Sept 1934; "Dieppe", written in French, 1937; English trans. in Irish Times, 9 June 1945; collected with French original in Poems in English (1961); revised for Collected Poems (1977); "Saint-Lô" [commemorating time spent in devastated Normandy town with Red Cross], printed Irish Times, 24 June 1946; revised for Poems in English ([London: Calder & Boyars] 1961); ‘I would like my love to die’, first appeared in transition 48 in French; revised in French but unrevised English form collected in Poems in English (1961), finally revised for Collected Poems. Murphy (1938), classed by Joyce with Flann O’Brien’s At-Swim-Two-Birds (1939) as ‘Jean qui pleure’ and ‘Jean qui ri’; Murphy’s attempt intellectual ambition to attain ‘matrix of surds’ which the narrative demonstrates, comically and tragically, he cannot attain (Murphy, Chp. 13); Murphy accepted by Routledge; ‘Amor intellectualis quo Murphy se ipsum amat’ (epigram Chp. 6, parody of Spinoza’s Ethics, V, 35, on God). Beckett later dismissed his letter to Axel Kaun [translator] (collected in Ruby Cohn, Disjecta) as ‘German bilge’; reference to ‘Peintres de l’Émpechement’ and ‘Three Dialogues with George Duthuit’ [French art critic], contemporary with The Unnamable, and interviews with Israel Shenker (1956) and with Tom Driver (1961), reprinted in Graver and Federman, The Critical Heritage (1979) [and prefatorily cited in extenso in McMillan and Fehsenfeld, 1988]. Lists Dramaticules, Embers (1959), Enough (1967), Ping (1967), Come and Go (1968), Lessness (1970) [written as Sans, French; given BBC reading], Not I (NY 1972; London Jan. 1973); French production of Not I in 1975 eliminated Auditor, while the 1978 production gave Auditor more prominence; That Time (1976) [written June 1974-Aug. 1975; performed in London 1976 with Patrick Magee], Company (1980) [written May 1977-Aug 1979]; later dramatic pieces include Footfall, Breath, &c. including Company (1979), Mal Vu Mal Dit (Paris 1981); Têtes Mortes (1967); No’s Knife (1967); Collected Plays [32 plays] (London: Faber 1986) [reprints expurgated and superseded version of Godot], also called Complete Dramatic Works [FDA3 308 n.30].

Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day Co. 1991), Vol. 2: Declan Kiberd, editorial remarks: [Beckett’s] cult of elegant desperation, as well as his assertion that it is the shape of a sentence that counts, may be traced to his doomed precursor at Portora and TCD [i.e., Wilde]. (p.372). Further, W. J. McCormack; ed.: '[Beckett] encountered the war as a challenge to a host of untested assumptions about identity national and personal; about responsibility in its moral and aesthetic forms (Ibid., p.853). Also, Augustine Martin; ed., calls him a second-generation Irish exponent of revolution in prose fiction (p.Ibid., 1027). [For further bibliographical remarks, see biblio-quandary in Notes, infra.]

The Modern World Website Page on Samuel Beckett

Peter Fallon & Seán Golden, eds., Soft Day: A Miscellany of Contemporary Irish Writing (Notre Dame/Wolfhound 1980), ‘The Old Tune’.

Andrew Carpenter & Peter Fallon, eds., The Writers: A Sense of Place (Dublin: O’Brien Press 1980), incl. ‘Heard in the Dark’ [extract from Company, ‘a novel’] with photo-port, pp.16-18.

John Montague, ed., Faber Book of Irish Verse (London: Faber & Faber 1974) selects ‘Gnome’, ‘Alba’, and ‘I would like my love to die’; also prose from Watt and Word and Music.

Dermot Bolger, ed., Picador Contemporary Irish Fiction (London: Picador 1992), incls. extracts.

 

Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)