Samuel Beckett: His Quest for Direct Self-Expression
Abstract
My interest in Samuel Beckett was sparked while I was
studying at l'Universite de Clermont-Ferrand in the winter
of 1981. I was intrigued by the universal qualities of En
attendant Godot and I wanted to discover why Beckett wrote
in French. I set out to answer this question and then to
compare Beckett's English fiction to his French fiction in
order to establish the personality of each. The French translation
still follows this line. However, in translating my
criticism, I realized the trend in Beckett's work as a whole.
The criticism then became an attempt to explain Beckett's
ahistorical, apolitical, asocial literature. It became a
study of Beckett's selfish quest.