Auden and Beckett - Works

Wystan Hugh Auden and Samuel Beckett

He was a critic and a poet. His work is important for its immense technical virtuosity and his wide range of intellectual interests. He used Marxism, Freudianism and later religions ideas to interpret his age, the age of Auxiety. He was influenced by German culture and political tradition. His literary production can be divided into 2 periods before and after he sailed in America the works of the first period are more imbued with social, economic and political problems of the time.

In the works of the second period (after 1939). He was disillusioned with Marxism and as he was more interested in religions and philosophical question.
TRAMA
Museè des Beaux Art. It is a poem of 21 lines. In it there are some references to Brueghel’s paintings. The Old Masters of painting understood well the indifference of some people in front of the miracles of the life. For example in a painting of the Nativity of Christ (a Brueghel’s painting) the old are waiting for Christ’s birth while the young are skating on a pound totally indifferent or on one side a terrible martyrdom on the other hand a dog or a horse go on their life. In another Brueghel’s painting Icarus is falling down and a ploughman goes on his work and life.
Samuel Beckett
He is considered the most important dramatist of the “Theatre of the Absurd” it is a kind of Drama that portrays and analyses the exsential question of the meaning of life when realigious explenetions have stopped to be valid. The man is unable to find any purpose in his actions, the existentialism. These qualities are embodied in Waiting for Godot (1954) built around the central theme of waiting for an even that never happens. It is divided into 2 acts. In the first one 2 tramps Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for a mysterious Mr. Godot (the name suggests God). They are hungry and cold. They quarrelled but nothing happens apart from the arrival of two men Lucky and Pozzo, Pozzo is rich and he treats bad Lucky as he were an animal. In the second act same situation same place Vladimir and Extragon go on waiting for Godot. Pozzo and Lucky return, now Pozzo is blind and Lucky is drawn. Godot will not came: maybe tomorrow. The play ends with the two friends still waiting unable to move away. The main themes are: waiting, sterility because of the absence of women, monotony of life and incommunicability and preoccupation with time.