Samuel Beckett

:For other things named Beckett, see Beckett (disambiguation)

Early writings

He studied French, Italian and English at Trinity College, Dublin from 1923 to 1927, graduating with a B.A. and shortly thereafter took up the post of lecteur d'anglais in the Ecole Normale Supérieure, rue d'Ulm Paris. While there he was introduced to James Joyce by Thomas MacGreevy. This meeting was to have a profound effect on the younger man. Beckett continued his writing career while assisting Joyce in various ways. In 1929 he published his first work, "Dante...Bruno.Vico..Joyce", a critical essay defending Joyce's work, chiefly from allegations of wanton obscurity and dimness. This was Beckett's contribution to Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress, a book of essays on Joyce which also included contributions by Eugene Jolas, Robert McAlmon, William Carlos Williams and MacGreevy, amongst others. His first short story, "Assumption", was published the same year in Jolas' periodical transition, and in 1930 he won a small literary prize with his hastily composed poem "Whoroscope", which draws from a biography of René Descartes that Beckett happened to be reading when he was encouraged to submit. Beckett's relationship with the Joyce family cooled when he rejected the advances of Joyce's daughter Lucia.

Related Topics:
Trinity College, Dublin - 1923 - 1927 - B.A. - Ecole Normale Supérieure - Paris - James Joyce - Thomas MacGreevy - 1929 - Eugene Jolas - Robert McAlmon - William Carlos Williams - ''transition'' - René Descartes

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He returned to Trinity College as a lecturer in 1930, but left after less than two years and began to travel in Europe. He also spent time in London, publishing his critical study of Proust there in 1931. Two years later, in the wake of his father's death, he began two years of Jungian psychotherapy with Dr. Wilfred Bion, who took him to hear Jung's third Tavistock lecture, an event which he would still recall many years later. In 1932 he wrote his first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, but after many rejections from publishers he decided to abandon it. The book was eventually published in 1992. Despite his inability to have Dream published, it did serve as a source for many of his early poems and for his first full-length book, More Pricks Than Kicks 1933. This was a collection of short stories or vignettes with several characters recurring.

Related Topics:
1930 - Proust - 1931 - Wilfred Bion - Jung - 1932 - 1992 - 1933

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Beckett attempted to publish a book of poems in 1934, with no success. He also published a number of essays and reviews around that time, including Recent Irish Poetry (in The Bookman August, 1934) and Humanistic Quietism (a review of MacGreevy's Poems in The Dublin Magazine, also 1934). These two reviews focused on the work of MacGreevy, Brian Coffey, Denis Devlin and Blanaid Salkeld, comparing them favourably with their Celtic Twilight contemporaries and invoking Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and French symbolists as their precursors. In describing these poets as forming 'the nucleus of a living poetic in Ireland', Beckett traced the outlines of an Irish poetic modernist canon. Unsurprisingly, these reviews were reprinted in the early 1970s in The Lace Curtain as part of a conscious attempt by the editors of that journal to revive this alternative tradition.

Related Topics:
1934 - The Bookman - August - The Dublin Magazine - Brian Coffey - Denis Devlin - Blanaid Salkeld - Celtic Twilight - Ezra Pound - T.S. Eliot - Symbolists - Modernist - 1970s - The Lace Curtain

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In 1935 he worked on his novel Murphy. In May of that year Beckett wrote to MacGreevy that he had been reading about film and wished to go to Moscow to study with Eisenstein; in the Summer of 1936 he wrote to Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin, offering to become their apprentices. Nothing came of this. He finished Murphy and in 1936 departed for extensive travel around Germany, during which time he filled several notebooks with lists of noteworthy artwork that he had seen, and also noted his distaste for the Nazi savagery which was then overtaking the country. He returned to Ireland briefly in 1937. During this visit, Murphy (1938) was published and the next year translated into French by the author. After a falling-out with his mother he decided to settle permanently in Paris. He returned to that city after the outbreak of war in 1939, preferring, in his own words, 'France at war to Ireland neutral'. Around December 1937, he had a brief affair with Peggy Guggenheim.

Related Topics:
1935 - Murphy - Sergei Eisenstein - Vsevolod Pudovkin - 1936 - Nazi - 1937 - 1938 - 1939 - Peggy Guggenheim

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In January of 1938, when refusing the solicitations of a notorious Parisian pimp, he was stabbed and nearly killed. Joyce arranged for a private room at the hospital he was taken to. The publicity attracted the attention of Suzanne Descheveaux-Dumesnil, who knew Beckett from his first stay in Paris, but this time, the two would become lifelong companions.

Related Topics:
1938 - Pimp

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When asked by Beckett for the motive, his assailant replied "Je ne sais pas, Monsieur": "I do not know, sir", and this statement by the attacker became an important, if not thematic line in several of his plays.

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