Munich Bloömsday - DIF Bayern




Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett was born on the 13th of April 1906. From 1919 to 1923 he attended the Portora Royal school in Enniskillen, where Oscar Wilde had also studied. He then began a BA in French, Italian and English at Trinity College Dublin. In 1927 he graduated at the top of his class and briefly took up a job as a teacher in Belfast. Shortly afterwards he obtained a post as an English teacher at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.

In Paris he made the acquaintance of James Joyce and became his assistant while Joyce was working on Finnegans Wake.

The years 1929 and 1930 also saw Beckett's first publications - an essay on Joyce and a poem called 'Whoroscope'.

He then returned briefly to Trinity College for a spell in academia but was unhappy there. On a visit to Kassel in Germany he resigned his post in Trinity and travelled again to Paris where he wrote his first novel 'Dream of Fair to Middlling Women'.

After the death of his father and a cousin with whom he was in love Beckett underwent two years of psychotherapy in London where he wrote 'More Pricks then Kicks' and began his second novel 'Murphy'. He completed 'Murphy' upon returning to Dublin.

1937 saw Beckett back in Paris where he was seriously injured in a stabbing incident.

During the German occupation of France Beckett and his girlfriend the pianist Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil joined the resistance and eventually had to flee to unoccupied southern France after some members of their group were arrested.

In the years 1943-44 he worked on his novel 'Watt' which was only published in 1953.

In 1946 Beckett returned to Paris where he began to write in the French language. Works during this period included 'Molloy', 'Malone Dies', 'The Unnameable' and 'Waiting for Godot'.

Beckett's works are largely concerned with the human condition and absurdity.

In 1959 Beckett received an honorary doctorate from Trinity College Dublin whilst in 1969 he was awarded the Nobel prize for literature.

In 1988 Beckett wrote his last poem and he died on the 22nd of December 1989.