Playwright buried in strict secrecy

Press, 28 December 1989, Page 9

Playwright buried in strict secrecy

NZPA-Reuter Paris Samuel Beckett, one of the world’s most startling post-war playwrights, was buried in strict secrecy in a Paris cemetery on Tuesday, four days after he died at the age of 83, his publishers said. “Editions de Minuit,” the French publishing house which turned the spotlight on Beckett after printing “Waiting for Godot,” said the death of the Dublin-born dramatist on Friday had been kept quiet to respect his lifelong desire for privacy. “It was his wish,” said the daughter of Jerome Lindon. Lindon published the enigmatic play in 1952, a year after agreeing to print one of Beckett’s first novels, “Molloy,” a difficult text turned down by established publishers. Beckett changed the shape of twentieth century theatre with tragicomic plays of brooding despair. His plays became ever shorter and contained little or no conventional action or plot. His most famous play, “Waiting for Godot,” about two tramps in a noman's land of the spirit, influenced a generation of writers with its stark poetic pessimism and bleak humour. First produced in 1953, it slowly brought Beckett fame that culminated in the award of the Nobel literature prize in 1969. Before “Godot,” he wrote novels of increasing introspection. Afterwards he worked mainly in the theatre. A Beckett play is a synonym for a work of difficult brevity, a cry of pain from an almost bare stage. One, “Breath,” lasts only 35 seconds and consists of light and breathin “At the end of my work, there is nothing but dust,” Beckett once said. Beckett was born in Dublin of Protestant parents on April 13, 1906. His

father was a quantity surveyor. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, lectured at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris and later at Trinity College. He published his first book, a poem called “Whoroscope” in 1930. He made his home in Paris in the late 1930 s and came under the influence of an Irish novelist, James Joyce, author of “Ulysses,” for whom he carried out research. Joyce’s novels were wordy and lengthy, the total opposite of Beckett’s mature work. Beckett was quoted by a theatre critic, Martin Esslin, as saying: “Joyce was a synthesiser, trying to bring in as much as he could. I am an analyser, trying to leave out as much as I can.” In 1938, the year he published his novel “Murphy,” Beckett was stabbed in the chest in a Paris street by a man who asked him for money. A young woman he had never met stopped to help him to hospital. This started a relationship between Beckett and the woman, Suzanne Des-chevaux-Dumesnil, that led to their marrying secretly in Folkestone, England, in 1961. During World War 11, Beckett stayed in France and joined the Resistance against the German occupation.

“I was so outraged by the Nazis, particularly by their treatment of the Jews, that I could not remain inactive,” he said. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his war qprviCPS Beckett later began writing in French, translating his own works into English from the original. In 1948, while still primarily a novelist, he began to write “Godot.” It was a relaxation, he said later, “from the awful prose I was writing at the time.” Produced five years later, Godot received mixed reviews round the world. But, in time, it came to be held as a masterpiece, influencing younger playwrights, like Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard and Edward Albee. Its two characters, Chaplinesque tramps, wait for Godot, who never comes. The audience never learns who Godot is, and the play has no traditional action or framework of time. Among other plays were “Endgame” and “Krapp’s Last Tape,” produced in 1958 and heralding plays that got shorter and shorter, often with just one character. Beckett returned to prose in the late 19705, alternating his theatrical output with a series of compact poetic texts with such titles as “11l Seen 11l Said” and “Worstward Ho.” At the age of 81 he completed three short texts under the title “Stirrings Still.” In awarding him the Nobel literature prize, the Swedish Academy said he was being honoured for his new forms of the novel and drama about “the destitution of modern man.” Beckett, who often staged his own plays, always guarded his privacy. Friends shielded him from prying outsiders, and his wife, who died in July 1989, often represented him on social occasions.