Samuel Beckett, página 3 de 8

These four last prose fictions by Samuel Beckett were originally published individually, and their composition spanned the final decade of his life. In Company a solitary hearer lying in blackness calls up images from the far-off past. Ill Seen Ill Said meditates upon an old woman living out her last days alone in an isolated snow-bound cottage, watched over by twelve mysterious sentinels. In Worstward Ho, a breathless speaker unravels the sense of things, acting out the unending injunction to Try again. Fail again. Fail better. And Stirrings Still, published in the Guardian a few months before Becketts death in 1989, is the last prose work and testament of this great soothsayer of the age, and of the aged (Christopher Ricks).The present edition includes several short prose texts (Heard in the Dark I & II, One Evening, The Way, Ceiling) which represent work in progress or works ancillary to the composition of these late masterpieces.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. Well, thought Belacqua, its a quick death, God help us all.It is not.Dante and the Lobster is the first of the linked short stories in Samuel Becketts first book, More Pricks Than Kicks. Published in 1934, its style was recognisably indebted to that of his mentor, James Joyce, and crammed with linguistic texture and allusion that Beckett later shed. The book baffled many critics and sold so few copies that several batches were pulped.Decades later, this story was hailed as the Nobel Prize-winners earliest important work.

Written in Roussillon during World War Two, while Samuel Beckett was hiding from the Gestapo, Watt was first published in 1953. Beckett acknowledged that this comic novel unlike any other has its place in the series - those masterpieces running from Murphy to the Trilogy, Waiting for Godot and beyond. It shares their sense of a world in crisis, their profound awareness of the paradoxes of being, and their distrust of the rational universe.Watt tells the tale of Mr Knotts servant and his attempts to get to know his master. Watts mistake is to derive the essence of his master from the accidentals of his being, and his painstakingly logical attempts to know ultimately consign him to the asylum. Itself a critique of error, Watt has previously appeared in editions that are littered with mistakes, both major and minor. The new Faber edition offers for the first time a corrected text based on a scholarly appraisal of the manuscripts and textual history.

Written in French in the late forties before Waiting for Godot, Eleutheria is about a young man at odds with his middle-class family, living alone in a bedsit and refusing to take part in normal life while accepting handouts from his mother. Often richly comic, it contains elements of high farce and draws on the traditions of French boulevard comedy and melodrama. This new edition includes the notice by Jerome Lindon, in its original French, which accompanied the first edition in 1995, explaining the circumstances under which the play was first published.

Well, thought Belacqua, it's a quick death, God help us all. It is not. 'Dante and the Lobster' is the first of the linked short stories in Samuel Beckett's first book, More Pricks Than Kicks. Published in 1934, its style was recognisably indebted to that of his mentor, James Joyce, and crammed with linguistic texture and allusion that Beckett later shed. The book baffled many critics and sold so few copies that several batches were pulped. Decades later, this story was hailed as the Nobel Prize-winner's earliest important work.

Becketts first stage play portrays two tramps, trapped in an endless waiting for the arrival of a mysterious personage named Godot, while disputing the appointed place and hour of his coming. They amuse themselves with various bouts of repartee and word-play.

" Los días felices " es una pieza clave en el teatro de Beckett, que, continuando el proceso de depuración escénica de sus obras precedentes, presenta también características fundamentales de sus piezas posteriores. Winnie, torturada por una luz cegadora y semienterrada en un monticulo calcinado, se arropa en un ritual de gestos cotidianos y encuentra siempre motivos, por insignificantes que estos sean, para considerar sus dias felices.

Deutora de la primera etapa de Beckett, d'experimentació literària, "Mercier i Camier" subverteix en molts aspectes el gènere novel·lesc. En aquesta brillant obra mestra de l'humor, s'hi narra un via

Cuando en 1953 se estrenó en París Esperando a Godot, casi nadie sabía quien era Samuel Beckett, salvo, quizá, los que ya lo conocían como ex secretario de otro irlandés, no menos genial, James Joyce. Por aquellas fechas, Beckett tenia escrita ya gran parte de su obra literaria ; sin embargo, para muchos, paso a ser el autor de Esperando a Godot. Se dice que, desde aquella primera puesta en escena -que, realizada por el gran Roger Blin, causo estupefaccion y obtuvo tanto exito- hasta nuestros dias, no ha habido año en que, en algun lugar de nuestro planeta, no se haya representado Esperando a Godot. ¡Mas de cuarenta años en los escenarios del mundo ! El propio Beckett comento en cierta ocasion, poco depues de recibir el Premio Nobel de Literatura en 1969, que Esperando a Godot era una obra horriblemente comica. Si, todo lo horriblemente comica que puede resultar, a fin de cuentas, la angustiosa situacion limite de dos seres cuya vida y grotesca solidaridad se forjan el la absurda y vana espera de ese quien sabe que (o quien) al que llaman Godot

Il volume raccoglie una scelta dei testi piu importanti di Samuel Beckett in una nuova cura, con introduzione di Paolo Bertinetti e traduzioni curate da Carlo Fruttero e firmate dallo stesso Fruttero, da Floriana Bossi, John Francis Lane, Franco Lucentini. Queste le opere raccolte: Aspettando Godot, Finale di partita, Tutti quelli che cadono, L'ultimo nastro di Krapp, Giorni felici, Parole e musica, Commedia, Di' Joe, Respiro, Non io, Quella volta, Dondolo.

* Roman écrit en français en 1949. « De même que Dante chemine de cercle en cercle pour atteindre son Enfer ou son Paradis, de même Samuel Beckett situe-t-il, chacun dans un cercle bien distinct, les