Beckett, Samuel - Life

Samuel Beckett was born April 13, 1906 in Ireland, Foxrock, a small town near Dublin, where he spent a quiet childhood, not marked by special events. Like all boys his age in high school but is fortunate to access the Port Royal School, the same school that hosted a few decades ago by none other than Oscar Wilde.

The character of Samuel, however, differs markedly from that of the average peers. As a teenager, in fact, shows signs of an inner exasperated, marked by an obsessive search of solitude, then it highlighted so well in the first novel-writer's masterpiece, the hallucinated "Murphy".

But the deep unease dig it relentlessly and mercilessly. And 'hypersensitive and overly critical, not only to others, but also to himself. Are the recognizable signs of unease that accompanied him throughout his life. It begins to isolate themselves more and more, to lead a life as a true hermit, as far as is possible in a modern society. Does not go out, you stay at home and "snubs" completely those around him. Probably, it is a syndrome that now call, with language savvy and forged by psychoanalysis "depression". This corrosive evil forces him to bed whole days: often, in fact, can not get up until late afternoon, so it feels threatened and vulnerable to external reality. During this rough period, his love for literature and poetry keeps growing.

The first important change takes place in 1928, when he decided to move to Paris following the award of a scholarship by the Trinity College, where he studied French and Italian. The transfer has been positive effects: it is not long since the boy see in the new city a sort of second home. Also, starting an active interest in literature: he attended the literary circles of Paris, where he met James Joyce, who acts as his master.

Another landing important is the finding that, in some way, the practice of writing has a beneficial effect on their status, managing to distract him from the obsessive thoughts and providing a creative channel in which to vent his feelings on, and the imagination. In a few years, thanks to the intense pace of work that you submit, and especially intuition heavily guarded it treats the texts, it is stated as an important emerging writer. Won a literary prize for a poem entitled "Whoroscope", centers on the transience of life. It begins at the same time a study of Proust, author of beloved. The reflection on the French writer (then led in a famous essay), illuminate the reality of life and existence, concluding that the routine and habit, "are not the cancer of time." A sudden awareness that will allow him to make a decisive impact on his life.

In fact, filled with renewed enthusiasm, begins to travel aimlessly through Europe, attracted by countries like France, England and Germany, not to mention a complete tour of his homeland, Ireland. Life, the awakening of the senses seem to overwhelm him in full: drink, harlots and leads a life of excess and debauchery. It is for him to matter pulsing, glowing, energy flow that allows him to compose poems but also short stories. After this long pilgrimage, in 1937 he decided to move permanently to Paris.

There he meets Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil, a woman several years older who becomes his lover and only several years later his wife. In parallel to the seismic changes more or less transient marking his private life, there are those generated by the machine of history, that little care of individuals. Then World War II broke out and Beckett opt ​​for interventionism, actively taking part in the conflict and offering himself as an expert translator for the fringes of the resistance. Soon, however, he is forced to move away to avoid the danger that looms over the city and moved to the country with Suzanne. Here he worked as a farmer and for a short time in a hospital, finally returned to Paris in '45, after the war, where he finds waiting for substantial economic difficulties.

In the period between '45 and '50 composed several works, including the novels "Malloy," "Malone Dies", "The unmentionable", "Mercier et Camier," and some plays, in fact nothing new in his catalog. It is the same in practice, which has given him everlasting fame and so it is also known to the general public. There appears, for example, the famous play "Waiting for Godot", acclaimed by many as his masterpiece. And 'the inauguration, in the same years in which Ionesco (another leading member of this "genre"), the so-called theater of the absurd.

The work, in fact, sees the two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, waiting for a mysterious employer, Mr. Godot. The story we do not know anything, nor where they are exactly the two travelers. The viewer knows only that beside them there is a weeping willow, symbolic image that condenses everything and nothing. Where do the two characters and especially how they waiting for? The text does not say it but most do not even know themselves, who are reliving the same situations, the same dialogues, gestures, endlessly, without being able to respond even to the most obvious questions. The other (few), the characters of the story are equally enigmatic ....

Instead it dates back to 1957 the first performance of "Endgame" at the Royal Court Theatre in London. All the works of Beckett are extremely innovative and diverge profoundly shaped and stereotypes of traditional drama, both as regards style, for both issues. They are banned twists, suspense, plot and practically everything that usually rewards the audience to focus on the issue of the loneliness of modern man or the issue of so-called "lack of communication" that locks down the conscience of human beings in an exaggerated individualism and inevitable, in the sense of an inability to bring their own unfathomable consciousness "in front of" the Other.

To all these rich topics it interweaves also the reason for the loss of God, his nihilistic annihilation at the hands of reason and history, awareness anthropological throwing the man into a state of resignation and impotence. The style of the great author here is characterized by phrases dry, sparse, molded on the progress and needs of the dialogue, often acrid and crossed by a blow irony. Descriptions of characters and environments are reduced to essentials.

They are technical and poetic that will not fail to arouse the interest of the music world, attracted by the many affinities with the research carried out on the sound until then. Over all, it is worth mentioning the work done on and around the writing beckettina American Morton Feldman (estimated by the Beckett).

In 1969 the size of the Irish writer is "institutionalized" through the award of the Nobel Prize for literature. Later, he continued to write until his death on December 22, 1989.