Beckett Selection 1: World and Pants

Author: Samuel Beckett [France]
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: On April 13 this year, it was the 100th anniversary of the birth of the world-famous writer Samuel Beckett. Hunan Literature and Art Press launched "Beckett's Selected Works." The entire set consists of 5 volumes and 1.25 million words, collecting all of Beckett's works written in French after he settled in Paris, France, in chronological order. It was translated primarily by Yu Zhongxian, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and editor-in-chief of "World Literature." Samuel Beckett won the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his novel and dramatic works, which with their peculiar form give modern man a new impetus in the face of spiritual exhaustion." However, in China, many people's understanding of him is limited to his famous work "Waiting for Godot." It is reported that Beckett's formal literary career began with novel writing and poetry, and he wrote far more novels than plays. From the perspective of literary expression, Beckett excelled in portraying the elusive and delicate inner world. The novel, as a more personalized form, was particularly suited to him. His trilogy of novels in French, "Molloy," "Malone Dies," and "The Unnamable," broke tradition by, focusing only on monologues. This writing style directly led to literary experiments by the French New Novel movement. Many critics believe that this trilogy is more powerful and significant than "Waiting for Godot," and few modern literary works offer such a profound understanding of human experience. During his lifetime, it was widely said internationally that Borges, Nabokov, and Beckett were the three greatest living writers. However, in China, Beckett's novels were largely ignored, which can be considered a great loss for the Chinese translation community. This 5-volume "Beckett's Selected Works" published by Hunan Literature and Art includes the "Molloy" trilogy, which can be said to largely compensate for this gap.