Never but dream the days and nights made of dreams of other nights better days. He will live again the space of a step it will be day and night again over him the endlessness. Beckett’s writings as antidote to the modern world Sometime around 1802, that’s to say 220 years ago, William Wordsworth wrote: […]
All posts found when searching for samuel beckett
Breath by Samuel Beckett (1969)
In 1969 Kenneth Tynan wrote to Beckett asking for a contribution to his hit stage revue, Oh! Calcutta!, which made headlines because of the extensive use of full-frontal nudity. Beckett replied with the stage directions for what must be one of the shortest plays ever written. Some versions barely last a minute. Longer ones stretch […]
Posted by Simon on January 6, 2021
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2021/01/06/breath-samuel-beckett/
Eh Joe by Samuel Beckett (1967)
Beckett wrote his first play for television, Eh Joe, in May 1965. The first English broadcast of Eh Joe was on BBC2 on 4 July 1966, with Jack MacGowran playing Joe and Siân Phillips as Voice. The play is another of Beckett’s ‘skullscapes’ in the sense of being entirely about an older male figure ‘trapped’ inside […]
Posted by Simon on January 4, 2021
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2021/01/04/eh-joe-samuel-beckett/
Come and Go by Samuel Beckett (1965)
Come and Go is an example of the form Beckett came to call ‘dramaticules’ for the simple reason that they are very short. Come and Go consists of a set of very precise stage movements and just over 120 words of dialogue, and is about seven minutes long in performance. As with most of Beckett’s […]
Posted by Simon on January 1, 2021
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2021/01/01/come-and-go-samuel-beckett/
Ping by Samuel Beckett (1966)
Ping is a very short text, just 908 words long. Beckett wrote it in French with the title Bing then translated it into English. It is in one continuous block of prose, like The Unnamable. It uses a fanatical amount of verbal repetition like How It Is does, taking a handful of key phrases and repeating them […]
Posted by Simon on December 30, 2020
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2020/12/30/ping-samuel-beckett/
Books & Boots 
How It Is by Samuel Beckett (1964)
warmth of primeval mud impenetrable dark Although he is meant to be the poet laureate of impoverishment and paucity and minds reduced to tatters, it never ceases to amaze me how much Samuel Beckett managed to write on more or less this one subject, and how ironic it is that he was so copiously prolific […]
Posted by Simon on December 25, 2020
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2020/12/25/how-it-is-samuel-beckett/