Samuel Barclay Beckett (April 13, 1906 - Dec. 22, 1989) was born in Ireland. He attended the elite secondary school Portora Royal School (of which Oscar Wilde is an alumnus) and Trinity College, where he studied French, Italian and English. While at Trinity, Beckett was introduced to James Joyce. Beckett achieved some literary notoriety for his first published work Dante... Bruno... Vico... Joyce, a critical essay defending Joyce’s work, in particular from accusations of obscurity and idiocy. However, Beckett’s relationship with Joyce cooled when he rejected the advances of Joyce’s daughter Lucia.
In 1936, Beckett finished his novel Murphy, and departed for extensive travel around Germany. During that time, he noted his distaste for the Nazi savagery that was then overtaking the country. Beckett went to Paris after the outbreak of war in 1939, preferring, in his own words, “France at war to Ireland neutral.”
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 to which he was taken. The publicity attracted the attention of Suzanne Descheveaux-Dumesnil. The two would become lifelong companions.
Following the 1940 occupation by Germany, Beckett joined the French Resistance, working as a courier. During the next two years, he was almost caught by the Gestapo on several occasions. In August 1942, his unit was betrayed by a former Catholic priest. He and Suzanne fled south on foot to the safety of the small village of Roussillon, in the Provence Alpes Cote d’Azur region, where he continued to actively assist the French Resistance by storing armaments in the back yard of his home. For his efforts in fighting the German occupation, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille de la Résistance by the French government. However, even to the end of his life, Beckett would refer to his laborous efforts for the French Resistance as “boy scout stuff.”
During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Beckett wrote his best known novels, the series written in French (often referred to, against Beckett’s explicit wishes, as “the Trilogy”) and later translated into English, mostly by the author: Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable. Despite the widely held view that Beckett’s work is essentially pessimistic, the will to live seems to win, as The Unnamable ends with the words “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”
Beckett is most famous for the play Waiting for Godot, which was described by the critic Vivian Mercier as “a play in which nothing happens, twice.” The success of the play opened up a career in theatre, and Beckett went on to write numerous successful plays, including Endgame, Krapp’s Last Tape, and Happy Days. In general, the plays of this period reflect the same themes as the novels: despair and the will to survive in the face of an uncomprehended world.
In 1961, Beckett married Suzanne in a secret civil ceremony in England. The success of his plays led to a new career as a theatre director. He soon began writing for radio and film and, in the mid 1970s, for television. He also started to write in English again, although he continued to do some work in French until the end of his life.
His newfound fame, coupled with the Nobel Prize, meant that broad interest in Beckett’s life and work grew. There followed a series of short minimalist plays and prose works exploring themes of the self confined and observed. His last work, the poem What is the Word, was written in bed in the nursing home where he spent the last period of his life, suffering from emphysema and possible Parkinson’s disease.
Suzanne died on July 17, 1989. Beckett died on December 22 of the same year and was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris, France. His gravestone is a massive slab of polished black granite. Chiseled into its surface is “Samuel Beckett 1906-1989” below the name and dates for Suzanne, who is buried with him. At the foot of his grave stands one lone tree, a reminder of the stage set for his most famous play, Waiting for Godot.