Selected Works of Beckett 4 - How

Author: Samuel Beckett [France]
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: On April 13th of this year, it was the 100th anniversary of the birth of the world-famous writer Samuel Beckett, and Hunan Literature and Art Press launched Beckett's Selected Works. The entire collection consists of 5 volumes and 1.25 million words, compiling all of Beckett's works written in French after he settled in Paris, France, arranged chronologically. 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 novels and plays, in which he with a new and original style evokes the existential situation of the modern man." 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 a literary expression perspective, Beckett excelled in portraying the elusive and delicate inner world. As a form with stronger individuality, the novel was more suitable for Beckett. His trilogy of novels written in French, Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable, broke tradition by downplaying plot and characters, leaving only monologues of rambling inner thoughts. 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 Chinese translation circles. The 5-volume Beckett's Selected Works launched by Hunan Literature and Art this time includes the Molloy trilogy, which can be said to largely compensate for this gap.