Chapter 1: What is the significance of Samuel Beckett's birth anniversary?
Drama on 1.
Drama on 1 is offered as a podcast at rte.ie forward slash drama on 1 and of course here on Sunday nights on RTE Radio 1. This year we're celebrating the 120th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Beckett. And tonight we'll hear a special omnibus edition of Bowman's Sunday 8.30 featuring a treasure trove of commentary from the archives on Beckett's life and work. The presenter is John Bowman.
Samuel Beckett was born in Dublin on the 13th of April 1906. He died in December 1989. Beckett's work is minimalist, considered deeply pessimistic about the human condition, though leavened by humour and wit. And a question, was Samuel Beckett all that reclusive? He was in the public, doing rehearsals in the theatre. He was in pubs. He was socialising with various people in Thorn.
German theatre director Walter Asmus... As long he was left alone, he was quite a normal person. He simply didn't give interviews and didn't appear on television and didn't want to be filmed and so on and so on. So if you see this as a public, or only this as a public appearance, he was forbidding. But his social contacts were very normal, I think.
I said to him about... this recent play, that I said, how do you think they'll take it? And he said, oh, I think that they will be tolerant but mystified.
Dr Geoffrey Thompson, a lifelong friend since Beckett's school days.
I don't think he is obscure just for the sake of obscurity. I think that's his mode of expression. I don't think he could express himself in any other way. And the more clear he became, if it's possible to conceive such a thing, I think the less he would have to say.
he has told me on several occasions that his actual method of writing has changed a lot over the years that it's become more and more laborious and more and more difficult and more and more slow that he wrote Godot Godot was produced here this is a copy that he gave me at the time that was produced first it was produced in 1953 in Paris and I think it was a first published in 1952.
I think he wrote it in the winter of 51, 52. And he wrote that in an exercise book, he told me, straight off like that, starting at the beginning of the book and writing just on one side of the page, right through to the end, turned the book over and wrote back again on the other side of the pages and with very, very few corrections and completed it in a very short time.
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Chapter 2: How did Beckett's writing style evolve over time?
A Buddhist might sit down at the crossroads with his begging bowl and enjoy an inner peace, an inner nothing. But that, of course, would not make such a good drama. Beckett's world is really a satire on the hopeless enterprise of man. Dr Geoffrey Thompson, another friend of Beckett's in his Dublin days, shared with Beckett an interest in the theatre.
I cannot identify two clearly particular goings to the theatre with Sam, except one, where he and I, I'm sure he was with me, but certainly he made this comment on this particular play. We went to a play called Autumn Fire. which was by T.C. Murray. It was a very good play of its kind and, of course, it was brilliantly acted.
And one of the famous Abbey actors, Michael Dolan, carried the part of a middle-aged farmer who was full of strength and virility and who had a young wife. And then he met with an accident and his virility disappeared disappeared and tragedy overtook his family as a result of his ageing rapidly.
And I remember Sam remarking at that time, seeing Michael Dolan acting, about how much his hands came into expressing his feelings when, as a man who was maimed and stricken, he had all these tragic occurrences falling upon him.
Another friend, and to remain a close friend for the rest of their lives, was the writer and critic A.J. Conn-Leventhal. He recalled their first meeting as students. Fairly clearly, it was in Duke Street, at the top of what at one time was a French bookshop, where...
one forgets names unfortunately but this man wrote a work on Irish archaeology and he lived there and had an evening in those days one had evenings it wasn't just confined to Russell or to Yates but people did have evenings and on this evening all sorts of people turned up and he was there with quite a number of other people student in Trinity.
He certainly took a tremendous interest in what was happening. I think he once told me he contributed some money for the starting of a paper, which of course never started at all. Those things, those days, one always had projects. Projects rarely came to anything, or if they ever came, they lasted for about six months or a year. And that, anyway, was the time I met him. He
He behaved like most students. He was an interest in things. And since I met him, you see, through Trinity later, that thing I always remember. That's really how I got to know him for the first time. Some people still remembered him. As a colleague and even as a pupil.
Professor Arnaud, sometime professor of French at TCD, recalling Beckett's reputation, not high, for his work, which he finally quit as a lecturer in French at Trinity College. And one important, one well-known pupil of Beckett's, as far as I remember, was dear old Shears-Kevington. And what I remember is that Owen, as I called him naturally... of whom I had great admiration.
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Chapter 3: What comparisons are made between Beckett and St. Francis of Assisi?
That is, apart from being of immense interest to scholars, looking at first drafts and changes of ideas and so on, I suppose that if you look at it in a monetary way, it must be worth at least Ā£1,000, I think. Without exaggeration. So that, I thought, was very generous. RBD French. The popular image we have of Samuel Beckett is that of a recluse, living and writing away from the public gaze.
But this is one-dimensional. He had a wide circle of friends. What he did want was to control his working day, to remain a private person, and not to find himself with any obligation to explain his work. It spoke for itself.
For a photographer, he's a dream. The man has a fantastic eagle-shaped face, a very Irish face.
Beckett, who did not allow his voice to be recorded, did allow himself to be photographed, famously by Jane Bonoth, the observer, and, as you hear here, by John Minahan from Athai. the distinguished photographer whose iconic images of Beckett are known around the world and have been seen nationally on billboards during the Beckett centenary.
I mean, there's great photographs of Beckett, but he's a very easy man to photograph and indeed likes the camera. I suspect he probably likes the camera more than his own voice, which he still has that slight Dublin look to it. I found the man very giving. He was very hospitable to me because I don't talk to him about his work. I'm not a Becketian scholar. I'm a photographer. He's an Irishman.
I'm an Irish photographer. And I wanted to photograph him. He'd seen my work, Inner Thigh. And from that moment on, the relationship was based on, like, what's the price of a pint of Guinness in Dublin? Have you been back lately? He helped me and that was great. I mean, that was nice.
Beckett was difficult to reach. He had a telephone but gave nobody the number. His phone did not ring. It made outgoing calls only. There is a third man besides the public and the private and that is the media image of Beckett. This is Colm O'Brien, recalling a period when he was director of the Arts Council. But it's an entirely media construct.
It doesn't relate to the man, it doesn't relate to his works, because his lifestyle wasn't such that gave the tittle-tattle, the kind of bric-a-brac of modern journalism about his private life, about his work, about so forth, where he was mixing what parties he was at. The media had to construct this austere man. But he was not austere. Was he not? You met him, Colm, didn't you? Once.
I imagine once in 1983. And I believe he was very accommodating to people who visited or wrote to him. Well, I wrote to him saying I was coming to Paris and I'd like to have a discussion with him about Estona, which was what I wanted to discuss with him. And when I arrived in Paris, he phoned me in the hotel and said, come around in the morning. He phoned you? Yes.
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Chapter 4: What insights do actors provide about working with Beckett?
Well, it's a few of the difficulties I went through to find him. This was 1958. Nobody had ever seen Beckett at that time, as far as I knew. And he had a reputation for never answering letters. On the way to Paris, I had read a French detective story and learned in the detective story about the pneumatic. You could buy a form at a post office.
It went through a pneumatic tube, through the series of powers, and a boy on a bicycle delivered it to the addressee and said, will there be any reply? I thought this might get him around the block about answering mail. So I did exactly what the man in the detective story did. I went into the post office, I recited the proper line, was given a form, and wrote a letter.
handed her over the counter, went back to my hotel and waited. About three hours later, a pneumatic arrived in the unforgettable bleak Beckett handwriting, which you read by holding the page... sideways and citing along the letters. And this gave me a telephone number that I was to call at 5 p.m. And the digits were 0011, perfect Beckett number.
I called this number precisely at 5, and a charming Irish voice wanted to know would he come to me or would I come to him, which was amazing. I thought I'd inspect him in his habitat, so I went there. During the conversation, I said, I don't know if you realize how difficult you are to get in touch with. And he said, yes, I find that rather useful.
It was some time before Hugh Kenner began writing about Beckett. When I did start writing about him, he wrote to me through the publishers offering the loan of three unpublished manuscripts, which I had never heard of and would never have been able to ask him about because I didn't know they existed. So he was ultra-cooperative.
Apart from the fact that he would not supply information, he would supply material. He would volunteer material.
Hugh Kenner outlined how Beckett would cooperate with the scholar.
He would answer questions with great precision. He would answer questions about his books if they are the kind of question that a very careful reader could answer. He would say, the situation appears to be... And it would be as if one scholar were reporting results to another scholar. It is not the authority of the author which he disclaims.
He will talk about James Joyce, an almost obsessive topic. I've heard him tell three times In absolutely identical words, on three different occasions, the terrible story of his meeting with Ezra Pound in the 1930s and how Pound insulted him. That's something that left a deep wound. He would talk about Paris. He would make pleasant and perfectly agreeable small talk.
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