WEBVTT

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(Host) As a modernist, Samuel Beckett was to Irish

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literature what T.S. Eliot was to English literature.

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(Narrator) Like his literary mentor, James Joyce,

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Samuel Beckett sought to obliterate every

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convention of literature.

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And most importantly, obliterate every convention of the self.

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Beckett wrote,

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"The danger is in the neatness of the identification."

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Beckett's life began in the Dublin suburb

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of Foxrock in 1906.

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The family was well-to-do

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and he was able to attend Trinity College.

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After graduation he became a teacher.

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But a chance meeting in Paris with Ireland's acclaimed

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modernist, James Joyce, changed his life.

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From that moment on he became Ireland's man of letters,

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writing poetry, plays, short stories, novels and essays.

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But if you were to ask him, "Are you Irish? English?

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French?" His favorite reply was,

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"Au contraire. I'm a nobody from nowhere."

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Beckett's literary life is

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typically divided into three stages.

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The first stage finds his protagonists wandering from

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pub to pub through the streets of Dublin.

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In his novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women,

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no such place is found in Ireland.

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In Murphy, the title character escapes Ireland

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to roam the continent.

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He escapes the traps of nationality...

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Escapes the trappings of language...

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But finds no peace. Beckett writes:

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The last at last seen of him himself

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unseen by him and of himself. A rest.

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The last Mr. Murphy saw of Mr. Endon

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was Mr. Murphy unseen by Mr. Endon.

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This was also the last Murphy saw of Murphy. A rest.

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The relation between Mr. Murphy and Mr. Endon could not have

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been better summed up than by the former's sorrow at seeing

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himself in the latter's immunity from seeing anything

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but himself. A long rest.

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Mr. Murphy is a speck in Mr. Endon's unseen.

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Samuel Beckett, Murphy