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SAMUEL BECKETT
Samuel Barclay Beckett was born on April 12, 1906 (Good Friday), in Foxrock, Ireland. He was the second son of his parents, Mary and William Beckett. At the age of five, he began attending kindergarten. A year later, he began studying languages and learned to play the piano. As a youth, he participated in many sports and also began writing. In 1920, he began publishing stories in a school newspaper. Eventually, he attended Trinity College in Dublin, studying literature.
After securing his B.A. degree in 1927, he took up a two-year fellowship at L'Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. He befriended the writer James Joyce there. His fiction and criticism was published in Transition. In 1930, he won his first prize in a poetry contest. That same year he translated the "Anna Livia Phirabelle" section of Joyce's Work in Progress into French with Alfred Peron. The next year, with George Pelorson, he wrote Le kid. It was a parody based on Corneille's Cid. He was attacked by the Trinity College newspaper for this piece of work. During this time, he was working as an Assistant in French in the Trinity College. In December 1931, he took his M.A. degree, and a month later resigned from the college. After returning to Paris from Germany in March 1932, he began writing on Dream of Fair to Midding Women. Simultaneously, he translated surrealist poems into English. He returned to Foxrock and a few months later his father died. His brother assumed control of his father's firm.
In 1934, he published More Pricks Than Kicks, a work which was later banned. He also began working on Murphy. Four years later, he traveled to Paris and renewed his friendship with his long time friend Joyce. He wrote his first poems in French. He somehow never appreciated the Nazi oppression of Jewish intellectuals. During the Second World War, he joined the resistance network. He fled to the free areas of France and survived mainly by doing agricultural work. He wrote Watt during this period. After a visit to Ireland in 1945, it became difficult for him to return to France.
He joined The Red Cross to help war-affected people and worked as an interpreter and storekeeper in a field hospital. Eventually he made it back to France and lived through what many call his most creative period, in which he wrote such works as Waiting for Godot and Endgame. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970.
Samuel Barclay Beckett was born on April 12, 1906 (Good Friday), in Foxrock, Ireland. He was the second son of his parents, Mary and William Beckett. At the age of five, he began attending kindergarten. A year later, he began studying languages and learned to play the piano. As a youth, he participated in many sports and also began writing. In 1920, he began publishing stories in a school newspaper. Eventually, he attended Trinity College in Dublin, studying literature.
After securing his B.A. degree in 1927, he took up a two-year fellowship at L'Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. He befriended the writer James Joyce there. His fiction and criticism was published in Transition. In 1930, he won his first prize in a poetry contest. That same year he translated the "Anna Livia Phirabelle" section of Joyce's Work in Progress into French with Alfred Peron. The next year, with George Pelorson, he wrote Le kid. It was a parody based on Corneille's Cid. He was attacked by the Trinity College newspaper for this piece of work. During this time, he was working as an Assistant in French in the Trinity College. In December 1931, he took his M.A. degree, and a month later resigned from the college. After returning to Paris from Germany in March 1932, he began writing on Dream of Fair to Midding Women. Simultaneously, he translated surrealist poems into English. He returned to Foxrock and a few months later his father died. His brother assumed control of his father's firm.
In 1934, he published More Pricks Than Kicks, a work which was later banned. He also began working on Murphy. Four years later, he traveled to Paris and renewed his friendship with his long time friend Joyce. He wrote his first poems in French. He somehow never appreciated the Nazi oppression of Jewish intellectuals. During the Second World War, he joined the resistance network. He fled to the free areas of France and survived mainly by doing agricultural work. He wrote Watt during this period. After a visit to Ireland in 1945, it became difficult for him to return to France.
He joined The Red Cross to help war-affected people and worked as an interpreter and storekeeper in a field hospital. Eventually he made it back to France and lived through what many call his most creative period, in which he wrote such works as Waiting for Godot and Endgame. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970.
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