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اعظم 100 كتاب في التاريخ: ما سر هذه العظمة؟- دراسة بحثية
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مراقب عام سابقا
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Sep 2009
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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.
[2]
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 Absurd
". His work became increasingly
minimalist
in his later career.
Beckett was awarded the 1969
Nobel Prize in Literature
"for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".
[3]
He was elected
Saoi
of
Aosdána
in 1984.
Life and career</SPAN>
Early life and education</SPAN>
The Becketts were members of the Anglican
Church of Ireland
. The family home, Cooldrinagh in the
Dublin
suburb of
Foxrock
, was a large house and garden complete with tennis court built in 1903 by Samuel's father, William. The house and garden, together with the surrounding countryside where he often went walking with his father, the nearby
Leopardstown Racecourse
, the Foxrock railway station and Harcourt Street station at the city terminus of the line, all feature in his prose and plays.
Samuel Beckett was born on Good Friday, 13 April 1906 to William Frank Beckett, a 35-year old
quantity surveyor
, and May Barclay (also 35 at Beckett's birth) a nurse.
[4]
They had married in 1901. Beckett had one older brother, Frank Edward Beckett (born 1902). At the age of five, Beckett attended a local playschool, where he started to learn music, and then moved to Earlsfort House School in the city centre near Harcourt Street. In 1919, Beckett went to
Portora Royal School
in
Enniskillen
,
County Fermanagh
(which
Oscar Wilde
had also attended). A natural athlete, Beckett excelled at cricket as a left-handed batsman and a left-arm medium-pace bowler. Later, he was to play for
Dublin University
and played two
first-class
games against
Northamptonshire
.
[5]
As a result, he became the only Nobel laureate to have an entry in
Wisden Cricketers' Almanack
, the "bible" of cricket
[6]
Early writings</SPAN>
Beckett studied French, Italian, and English at
Trinity College, Dublin
from 1923 to 1927 (one of his tutors was the eminent
Berkeley
scholar
A. A. Luce
). Beckett graduated with a BA, and—after teaching briefly at
Campbell College
in Belfast—took up the post of
lecteur d'anglais
in the
École Normale Supérieure
in Paris. While there, he was introduced to renowned Irish author
James Joyce
by
Thomas MacGreevy
, a poet and close confidant of Beckett who also worked there. This meeting had a profound effect on the young man. Beckett assisted Joyce in various ways, one of which was research towards the book that became
Finnegans Wake
.
[7]
In 1929, Beckett published his first work, a critical essay entitled "Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce". The essay defends Joyce's work and method, chiefly from allegations of wanton obscurity and dimness, and 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
, and
William Carlos Williams
). Beckett's close relationship with Joyce and his family cooled, however, when he rejected the advances of Joyce's daughter
Lucia
owing to her progressing
schizophrenia
. Beckett's first short story, "Assumption", was published in Jolas's periodical
transition
. The next year he won a small literary prize with his hastily composed poem "Whoroscope", which draws on a biography of
René Descartes
that Beckett happened to be reading when he was encouraged to submit.
In 1930, Beckett returned to Trinity College as a lecturer, though he soon became disillusioned with the post. He expressed his aversion by playing a trick on the Modern Language Society of Dublin. Beckett read a learned paper in French on a
Toulouse
author named Jean du Chas, founder of a movement called Concentrism. Chas and Concentrism, however, were pure fiction, having been invented by Beckett to mock pedantry. When Beckett resigned from Trinity at the end of 1931, his brief academic career was terminated. He commemorated it with the poem "Gnome", which was inspired by his reading of
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
's
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship
and eventually published in the
Dublin Magazine
in 1934:
Spend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through a world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning
[8]
Beckett travelled in Europe. He spent some time in London, where in 1931 he published
Proust
, his critical Schopenhauerian study of French author
Marcel Proust
. Two years later, following his father's death, he began two years' treatment with
Tavistock Clinic
psychoanalyst
Dr. Wilfred Bion
, who took him to hear
Carl Jung
's third Tavistock lecture, an event which Beckett still recalled many years later. The lecture focused on the subject of the "never properly born." Aspects of it became evident in Beckett's later works, such as
Watt
and
Waiting for Godot
.
[9]
In 1932, he wrote his first novel,
Dream of Fair to Middling Women
, but after many rejections from publishers decided to abandon it (it was eventually published in 1993). Despite his inability to get it published, however, the novel served as a source for many of Beckett's early poems, as well as for his first full-length book, the 1933
short-story
collection
More Pricks Than Kicks
.
Beckett published a number of essays and reviews, including "Recent Irish Poetry" (in
The Bookman
, August 1934) and "Humanistic Quietism", a review of his friend Thomas MacGreevy's
Poems
(in
The Dublin Magazine
, July–September 1934). They focused on the work of MacGreevy,
Brian Coffey
,
Denis Devlin
and
Blanaid Salkeld
, despite their slender achievements at the time, comparing them favourably with their
Celtic Revival
contemporaries and invoking
Ezra Pound
,
T. S. Eliot
, and the
French symbolists
as their precursors. In describing these poets as forming "the nucleus of a living poetic in Ireland", Beckett was tracing the outlines of an Irish poetic
modernist
canon.
[10]
In 1935—the year that Beckett successfully published a book of his poetry,
Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates
—Beckett worked on his novel
Murphy
. In May, he wrote to MacGreevy that he had been reading about film and wished to go to Moscow to study with
Sergei Eisenstein
at the
Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography
in Moscow. In mid-1936 he wrote to
Sergei Eisenstein
and
Vsevolod Pudovkin
to offer himself as their apprentices. Nothing came of this, however, as Beckett's letter was lost owing to Eisenstein's quarantine during the smallpox outbreak, as well as his focus on a script re-write of his postponed film production. Beckett, meanwhile, finished
Murphy
and then, 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 noted his distaste for the
Nazi
savagery that was overtaking the country. Returning to Ireland briefly in 1937, he oversaw the publication of
Murphy
(1938), which he translated into French the following year. He fell out with his mother, which contributed to his decision to settle permanently in Paris. Beckett remained in Paris following the outbreak of World War II in 1939, preferring, in his own words, "France at war to Ireland at peace".
[11]
His was soon a known face in and around
Left Bank
cafés, where he strengthened his allegiance with Joyce and forged new ones with artists
Alberto Giacometti
and
Marcel Duchamp
, with whom he regularly played
chess
. Sometime around December 1937, Beckett had a brief affair with
Peggy Guggenheim
, who nicknamed him "Oblomov" (after the character in
Ivan Goncharov
's
novel
).
[12]
In January 1938 in Paris, Beckett was stabbed in the chest and nearly killed when he refused the solicitations of a notorious
pimp
(who went by the name of Prudent). Joyce arranged a private room for Beckett at the hospital. The publicity surrounding the stabbing attracted the attention of
Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil
, who previously knew Beckett slightly from his first stay in Paris. This time, however, the two would begin a lifelong companionship. At a preliminary hearing, Beckett asked his attacker for the motive behind the stabbing. Prudent replied: "Je ne sais pas, Monsieur. Je m'excuse" ["I do not know, sir. I'm sorry"].
[13]
Beckett eventually dropped the charges against his attacker—partially to avoid further formalities, partly because he found Prudent likeable and well-mannered. Beckett occasionally recounted the incident in jest.[
citation needed
]
World War II</SPAN>
Beckett joined the
French Resistance
after the 1940 occupation by Germany, in which he worked as a courier. On several occasions over the next two years he was nearly caught by the
Gestapo
. In August 1942, his unit was betrayed and he and Suzanne fled south on foot to the safety of the small village of
Roussillon
, in the
Vaucluse
département
in the
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
region. There he continued to assist the Resistance by storing armaments in the back yard of his home. During the two years that Beckett stayed in Roussillon he indirectly helped the
Maquis
sabotage the German army in the Vaucluse mountains, though he rarely spoke about his wartime work in later life.
[14]
Beckett was awarded the
Croix de guerre
and the
Médaille de la Résistance
by the French government for his efforts in fighting the German occupation; to the end of his life, however, Beckett would refer to his work with the French Resistance as "boy scout stuff".
[15]
[16]
While in hiding in Roussillon, he continued work on the novel
Watt
(begun in 1941 and completed in 1945, but not published until 1953, though an extract had appeared in the Dublin literary periodical
Envoy
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