Samuel Beckett

El clásico indiscutible del teatro del siglo XX ahora en Austral en traducción de Ana María MoixCuando en 1953 se estrenó en París Esperando a Godot, pocos sabían quién era Samuel Beckett, salvo, quiza, los que ya lo conocias como ex secretario de otro irlandes no menos genial: James Joyce. Por aquellas fechas, Beckett tenia escrita ya gran parte de su obra literaria; sin embargo, para muchos paso a ser el autor de Esperando a Godot. Se dice que, desde aquella primera puesta en escena que causo estupefaccion y obtuvo tanto exito hasta nuestros dias, no ha habido año en que, en algun lugar del planeta, no se haya representado Esperando a Godot. El propio Beckett comento en cierta ocasion, poco despues de recibir el Premio Nobel de Literatura en 1969, que Esperando a Godot era una obra horriblemente comica. Si, todo lo horriblemente comica que puede resultar la situacion de dos seres cuya grotesca vida se funda en la vana espera de ese ser al que llaman Godot.

«Uno dirá: "No puedo ver el objeto, para representarlo, porque el objeto es lo que es". El otro: "No puedo ver el objeto, para representarlo, porque yo soy quien soy".Siempre ha habido estas dos clas

La última novela escrita por Samuel Beckett, 'Cómo es' (1961), es una obra de gran complejidad que supuso un esfuerzo de composición titánico para el autor, que llevó hasta el último extremo el objetivo de privar al lenguaje de las estructuras de significacion habituales que nos conducen por caminos de comunicacion trillados. La novela es un interrogante sobre el hecho mismo de la existencia en este planeta, aunque en esta ocasion Beckett indaga en la naturaleza del ser humano desde una perspectiva sorprendente, imaginando un viaje por un perturbador inframundo que debe mucho al infierno descrito por Dante en la 'Divina Comedia'. Un ser sin nombre se arrastra por el lodo, encuentra a un semejante con el que se comunicara por medio del tormento y sera posteriormente abandonado por su victima. El mismo personaje sera a su vez sometido a las torturas de otro en un angustioso mundo intestinal en el que, a pesar de todo, prevalece un tipo de justicia, pues victimas y verdugos intercambian sus papeles mientras se desplazan infatigablemente por el fango. En la estructura de la narracion es donde se encuentra la mayor muestra del talento y originalidad del autor. Fiel a su empeño por desmantelar nuestros esquemas de pensamiento, inventa una nueva forma de escribir en la que prescinde de la sintaxis convencional y de los...

Subtitled A tragicomedy in two Acts, and famously described by the Irish critic Vivien Mercier as a play in which nothing happens, twice, En attendant Godot was first performed at the Théâtre de Baby

Cuando en 1955 la editorial Minuit publicó los 'Relatos y Textos para nada', en su versión original en francés, Samuel Beckett ya había sorprendido al mundo con la originalidad y el ingenio de 'Esperando a Godot' (estrenada en 1953). La produccion de nuevas obras de teatro, todas ellas de gran calado existencial, haria que en las siguientes decadas el autor irlandes se convirtiera en el dramaturgo mas influyente del siglo XX.Sin embargo, su obra narrativa no es en absoluto desdeñable y, en la opinion de muchos criticos, la profundidad alcanzada en sus novelas y relatos es muy superior a lo conseguido en teatro. Los 'Relatos' de Samuel Beckett, por ejemplo, muestran a un Beckett en plena madurez creativa, presentando con toda crudeza a un tipo de personaje caracteristico de su universo literario: un ser desamparado que deambula por escenarios inhospitos y cuyas peripecias reflejan, parcialmente, las penalidades sufridas por el autor durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial.Los 'Textos para nada', por su parte, constan de 13 fragmentos en los que Beckett despoja a la literatura de todo artificio y se aproxima, en una busqueda obsesiva, como ningun escritor habia hecho antes, a lo que yace detras de las palabras, ya sea la verdad o el vacio.Fue el propio Beckett el que tradujo al ingles todas las secciones que conforman el libro hasta que se publico en esta lengua en 1967. Esta es la version que ha sido traducida por primera vez al castellano por Jose Francisco Fernandez para JPM ediciones.

In the first of these two plays, an old man records his comments as he listens to a tape recording of his own observations on how life felt when he was 39. In the second, a man walking along the seashore recalls his dead father while other familiar voices speak to him from the past.

Published in French in 1961, and in English in 1964, How It Is is a novel in three parts, written in short paragraphs, which tell (abruptly, cajolingly, bleakly) of a narrator lying in the dark, in the mud, repeating his life as he hears it uttered - or remembered - by another voice. Told from within, from the dark, the story is tirelessly and intimately explicit about the feelings that pervade his world, but fragmentary and vague about all else therein or beyond.Together with Molloy, How It Is counts for many readers as Becketts greatest accomplishment in the novel form. It is also his most challenging narrative, both stylistically and for the pessimism of its vision, which continues the themes of reduced circumstance, of another life before the present, and the self-appraising search for an essential self, which were inaugurated in the great prose narratives of his earlier trilogy. she sits aloof ten yards fifteen yards she looks up looks at me says at last to herself all is well he is working my head where is my head it rests on the table my hand trembles on the table she sees I am not sleeping the wind blows tempestuous the little clouds drive before it the table glides from light to darkness darkness to lightEdited by Edouard Magessa OReilly

It was as a poet that Samuel Beckett launched himself in the little reviews of 1930s Paris, and as a poet that he ended his career. This new selection, from Whoroscope (1930) to what is the word (1988), describes a lifetimes arc of writing. It was as a poet moreover that Beckett made his first breakthrough into writing in French, and the Selected Poems represents work in both languages, including the sequence of brief but highly crafted mirlitonnades, which did so much to usher in the style of his late prose, and come as close as anything he wrote to honouring the ambition to bore one hole after another in language, until what lurks behind it - be it something or nothing - begins to seep through. Also included are several of Becketts translations from contemporaries - Apollinaire, Eluard, Michaux, Montale - in versions which count among his own poetic achievements. Edited by David Wheatley

Echos Bones was intended by Samuel Beckett to form the recessional or end-piece of his early collection of interrelated stories, More Pricks Than Kicks, published in 1934. The story was written at the request of the publisher, but was held back from inclusion in the published volume. Echos Bones has remained unpublished to this day, and the present edition will situate the work in terms of its biographical context, its Joycean influences, and as a vital link in the evolution of Becketts early work.The editor, Mark Nixon, is director of the Beckett International Foundation at the University of Reading.

These four stories or nouvelles date from 1945, though all were published much later, in French and subsequently in English. All make use of a first-person narrator, and relish its vagaries - the inability to remember facts, the uncertainty as to why he is speaking in the first place, the loss of heart when explanations seem called for... Above all, the stories crisply plot the narrators plotless descent into vagrancy, the steeper as it approaches The End. Out of these short works and their patient procedures grew the large canvases of Molloy and Malone Dies.My bench was still there. It was shaped to fit the curves of the seated body. It stood beside a watering trough, gift of a Mrs Maxwell to the city horses, according to the inscription. During the short time I rested there, several horses took advantage of the monument. The iron shoes approached and the jingle of the harness. Then silence. That was the horse looking at me. Then the noise of pebbles and mud that horses make when drinking. Then the silence again. That was the horse looking at me again. Then the pebbles again. Then the silence again. Till the horse had finished drinking or the driver deemed it had drunk its fill. Edited by Christopher Ricks

The present volume gathers all of Becketts texts for theatre, from 1955 to 1984. It includes both the major dramatic works and the short and more compressed texts for the stage and for radio.He belie

This new edition brings together all of Becketts dramatic writings for radio, television and film, offering works which range from eloquent comic naturalism to an eviscerated and pared-down symbolism

Happy Days was written in 1960 and first produced in London at the Royal Court Theatre in November 1962.WINNIE: [ . . .] Well anyway - this man Shower - or Cooker - no matter - and the woman - hand in hand - in the other hands bags - kind of big brown grips - standing there gaping at me [...] - Whats she doing? he says - Whats the idea? he says - stuck up to her diddies in the bleeding ground - coarse fellow - What does it mean? he says - Whats it meant to mean? - and so on - lot more stuff like that - usual drivel - Do you hear me? He says - I do, she says, God help me - What do you mean, he says, God help you? (stops filing nails,raiseshead, gazes front.) And you, she says, whats the idea of you, she says, what are you meant to mean?

The iconic trilogy of novels by the era-defining Nobel laureate, relaunched for a new generation.I cant go on, Ill go on. Molloy: a sordid vagrant riding his bicycle through the countryside, sucking stones, on a quest for his mother. Moran: a private detective sent on his trail, investigating his crimes - but soon to deteriorate alongside him.Malone: an octogenarian man on his deathbed, naked in piles of blankets, wiling away the time with stories - writing, reminiscing, raging, surviving.The Unnameable: an armless and legless creature from a nameless place, weeping and watching in his urn, orbited by visitors outside a chop-house.Together, these selves speak, debate, exist: the prose as alive, or more, than them.The master innovator of them all.Guardian

Written over three months in 1946, Mercier and Camier was Becketts first post-war work, and his first novel in French. He came to regard it as a practice piece, and set it aside to write his trilogy. Mercier et Camier was finally published in 1970, and in Becketts English translation four years later. The eponymous heroes tramp around a city, then out of it, then back again. They are aimless, but there is something elusive that they should be doing. They arrange meetings, they drink, they argue, they discuss being shot of each other. They are preoccupied by the weather, by provisions, by a raincoat, by an umbrella, by a bicycle...All of these ingredients in the later work are accompanied here, fleetingly, by those things in Beckett that we know but cannot really name, those things that occupy so much of the trilogy. Intangible things, traps in the mind, that voice we hear, the stop-start understanding, the ongoing bewilderment, the fear. (Keith Ridgeway). George, said Camier, five sandwiches, four wrapped and one on the side. You see, he said, turning graciously to Mr Conaire, I think of everything. For the one I eat here will give me the strength to get back with the four others. Sophistry, said Mr Conaire. You set off with your five, wrapped, feel faint, open up, take one out, eat, recuperate, push on with the others. For all response, Camier began to eat. Youll spoil him, said Mr Conaire. Yesterday cakes, today sandwiches, tomorrow crusts and Thursday stones. Mustard, said Camier.

Becketts first literary landmark (St Petersburg Times) is a wonderfully savoury introduction to the Nobel Prize-winning author. Written in 1932, when the twenty-six-year-old Beckett was struggling to make ends meet, the novel offers a rare and revealing portrait of the artist as a young man. When submitted to several publishers, all of them found it too literary, too scandalous or too risky; it was only published posthumously in 1992. As the story begins, Belacqua - a young version of Molloy, whose love is divided between two women, Smeraldina-Rima and the little Alba - wrestles with his lusts and learning across vocabularies and continents, before a final "relapse into Dublin" (New Yorker). Youthfully exuberant and Joycean in tone, Dream is a work of extraordinary virtuosity.