In praise of cultural diversity
An exhibition in Nicosia looks at the life and work of the influential Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize of Literature in 1969 for a body of work that includes novels, essays, poems and plays. His best known play, Waiting for Godot is a comic study of philosophical uncertainty and, like much of his work, focuses on the absurdity of human existence. Considered one of the most important European writers of the 20th century for his influence on modern literature and for his ability to impress, shock and confound, Beckett is being remembered and honoured at the Leventis Museum in Nicosia.
“As part of our events involving different European countries and cultural diversity, the Irish Embassy decided to present the works of this marvellous writer, Samuel Beckett,” explained curator at the museum Loukia Hadjigavriel. “Photographic material, various awarded works and projections of Beckett’s plays will be presented and visitors will be able to obtain a great deal of information about Beckett.”
Writers like Aidan Higgins have publicly stated their indebtedness to Beckett’s example but he has had a much wider influence on experimental writing since the 1950s from the Beat generation to the happenings of the 1960s and beyond. Many major 20th century composers have also created musical works based on his texts.
Beckett studied French, Italian and English at Trinity College in Dublin from 1923 to 1927. While there, he was introduced to renowned Irish author James Joyce. He would later go on to assist Joyce in various ways, most particularly by helping him research the book that would eventually become Finnegans Wake. In 1929, Beckett published his first work, a critical essay defending Joyce’s work and method, chiefly from allegations of meaningless obscurity and dimness. In 1930, he returned to Trinity College as a lecturer but soon became disillusioned with his chosen academic career however and expressed his aversion by playing a trick on the Modern Language Society of Dublin by reading a paper in French on an author who founded a movement called Concentrism. It was however, pure fiction that had been invented by Beckett to mock the pedantry. He resigned at the end of 1931and commemorated this turning point in his life by composing the poem Gnome, which was eventually published in the Dublin Magazine in1934.
After leaving Trinity, Beckett began travelling Europe. He spent some time in London, where in 1931 he published Proust, his critical study of French author, Marcel Proust. In 1932 he wrote his first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women but after many rejections from publishers, decided to abandon it although the book would eventually be published in 1993, four years after his death. By 1936, he had also finished his novel Murphy and departed for extensive travel around Germany, during which time he filled several notebooks with lists of noteworthy artwork that he had seen but also noting his distaste for the Nazi savagery that was then overtaking the country. After a falling out with his mother, the writer decided to settle in Paris, where in 1938 he was stabbed in the chest by a notorious pimp.
Beckett is most renowned for the play Waiting for Godot. In a much-quoted article, the critic Vivian Mercier wrote that Beckett ‘has achieved a theoretical impossibility – a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What’s more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice.’
His singularity as a writer has to do with his relationship with language, or languages, as Beckett wrote in both French and English and translated most of his works. As one of the most widely discussed and highly prized authors of the 20th century, early philosophical critics such as Sartre and Theodor Adorno praised him on his revelation of absurdity. Beckett died from emphysema and possibly Parkinson’s disease in December of 1989.
Samuel Beckett exhibition
Until May 6. Leventis Museum, Hippocrates Street, Nicosia. Tel: 22-661475
