J. Knowlson의 S. Beckett 전기 "Damned To Fame"

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James Knowlson, "Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett" (1996)

 

 

작가의 생애를 다룬 전기가 이보다 더 내용이 충실할 수 있을까.

책 중간 부분은 많이 건너뛰며 읽었다. 소설보다 재밌다.

 

Samuel Beckett과, 내가 읽은 것은 희곡

Waiting for Godot 고도를 기다리며뿐이지만,

그의 작품에 대해서도 대강 알 것 같다.

 

이 책에 이런 일화도 나온다:

그가 1969년 노벨문학상 수상자로 발표된 직후 Beckett은

파리의 M. Georges Godot로부터 기다리게 해서

무척 미안하다는 엽서를 받고는 고맙다고 곧장 답장했다.

 

 

본문에서 몇 구절만 인용한다:

 

Beckett wanted to meet Joyce, mainly because of his intense

admiration for Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,

Ulysses, and some of his poems.... They both adored words --

their sounds, rhythms, shapes, etymologies, and histories...

They shared, too, a fervent anticlericalism and a skepticism

in all matters to do with religion, although ... their knowledge of

the Scriptures was almost word-perfect. (p. 105)

 

"I [Beckett] remember him [Hemingway] saying, which I

didn't like at all, 'We mustn't be too hard on the old man [Joyce].

Ulysses tired him out.'" Beckett never had the slightest desire

to meet Hemingway again. (p. 254)

 

Why did Beckett accept the Nobel Prize at all? Certainly not

for the money. since he gave the sum ... away very quickly...

One of the chief beneficiaries was the library of Trinity College,

Dublin ,,, One very real reason for Beckett accepting the

Nobel Prize was that he did not wish to be publicly

discourteous (Sartre had earlier caused something of

a public scandal by turning it down). Another was that

he wanted the publishers who had shown faith in his work,

especially in the early days, to be rewarded with

an increase of the sales of his books. (p. 507)

 

Catastrophy was dedicated to the Czech dissident writer Václav

Havel... After his release from prison, Havel wrote a play in

response, which he dedicated in his turn to Beckett. It was called

The Mistake. "The two plays together added to each other and

were supportive of each other, " Havel told the American civil

libertarian Martin Garbus, adding modestly, "I hope by saying

that, I am not suggesting that I am equal as a playwright

to Samuel Beckett."(pp. 595-598)

 

 

아래는 Wikipedia에서:

 

Samuel Barclay Beckett (/ˈbɛkɪt/; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989)

was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet,

and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak,

impersonal and tragicomic experiences of life, often coupled with

black comedy and nonsense. His work became increasingly minimalist

as his career progressed, involving more aesthetic and linguistic

experimentation, with techniques of repetition and self-reference.

 

Of all the English-language modernists, Beckett's work represents the

most sustained attack on the realist tradition. He opened up the

possibility of theatre and fiction that dispense with conventional plot

and the unities of time and place to focus on essential components of

the human condition. Václav Havel, John Banville, Aidan Higgins,

Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter and Jon Fosse have publicly stated

their indebtedness to Beckett's example.

 

 Some early philosophical critics, such as Sartre and Theodor Adorno,

praised him, one for his revelation of absurdity, the other for his works'

critical refusal of simplicities; others such as Georg Lukács

condemned him for 'decadent' lack of realism.

 

 

 

Samuel Beckett이 태어나고 자란 집의 현재 모습 (사진: 인터넷에서)

2층 왼쪽 'bow window' 방이 사무엘 어머니의 방이었다는 걸 본문에서 읽었다.