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Samuel Beckett
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Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in Paris for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.
Beckett is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Strongly influenced by James Joyce, he is considered one of the last modernists. As an inspiration to many later writers, he is also sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists. He is one of the key writers in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the ... more »
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Quotations
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''I know what darkness is, it accumulates, thickens, then suddenly bursts and drowns everything.''
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Irish dramatist, novelist. First published in 1953. Malone, in Malone Dies, p. 13, Grove Press (1970).
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''Watt's need of semantic succour was at times so great that he would set to trying names on things, and on himself, almost as a woman hats.''
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Irish dramatist, novelist. First published in 1953. The narrator, in Watt, p. 83, Grove Press (1959).
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''My notes have a curious tendency, as I realize at last, to annihilate all they purport to record.''
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Irish dramatist, novelist. First published in 1953. Malone, in Malone Dies, p., Grove Press (1970). 88.
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''His semen had never done any harm to anyone.''
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Irish dramatist, novelist. First published in 1953. Malone, in Malone Dies, p. 68, Grove Press (1970).
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''My dear parents, he said, and Mr and Mrs Micks, heroic figures, unique in the annals of cloistered fornication, filled the kitchen.''
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Irish dramatist, novelist. First published in 1953. The narrator, in Watt, p. 216, Grove Press (1959).
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no poems, here.. pity.. then I'm going to post a few lyrics by Samuel Beckett..
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Quatre Poèmes (translated from French by the author)
1. Dieppe
again the last ebb
the dead shingle
the turning then the steps
toward the lighted town
[Samuel Beckett]
2.
my way is in the sand flowing
between the shingle and the dune
the summer rain rains on my life
on me my life harrying fleeing
to its beginning to tis end
my peace is there in the receding mist
when I may cease from trreading these long shifting thresholds
and live the space of a door
that opens and shuts
[Samuel Beckett]
3.
what would I do without this world faceless incurious
where to be lasts but an instant where ebery 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 toward succour towards love
without this sky that soars
above it's ballast dust
what would I do what I did yesterday and the day before
peering out of my deadlight looking for another
wandering like me eddying far from all the living
in a convulsive space
among the voices voiceless
that throng my hiddenness
[Samuel Beckett]
4.
I would like my love to die
and the rain to be falling on the graveyard
and on me walking the streets
mourning the first and last to love me
[Samuel Beckett]