"The Capital of the Ruins" is a short piece of reportage by Samuel Beckett written in 1946.
"The Capital of the Ruins" is a short piece of reportage by Samuel Beckett written in 1946.
Originally written for broadcast by Irish radio, it deals with the Irish hospital in St. Lô. [1] The title of the piece derives from a booklet of photographs of the bombed-out city entitled St. Lô, Capitale des Ruines, 5 et 7 Juin 1944.
The text is dated 10 June 1946 signed by Samuel Beckett, but there remains a controversy whether it was broadcast or not. It was discovered among the archives of Radio Telefís Éireann in 1983 and published in 1986 by Eoin O'Brien in The Beckett Country, and later that same year in As No Other Dare Fail: For Samuel Beckett on His 80th Birthday by His Friends and Admirers. It is also collected in Beckett's Complete Short Prose 1929–1989 , published in 1995.
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish novelist, playwright, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. A resident of Paris for most of his adult life, he wrote in both French and English. During the Second World War, Beckett was a member of the French Resistance group Gloria SMH.
Waiting for Godot is a play by Samuel Beckett in which two characters, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), engage in a variety of discussions and encounters while awaiting the titular Godot, who never arrives. Waiting for Godot is Beckett's translation of his own original French-language play, En attendant Godot, and is subtitled "a tragicomedy in two acts". The original French text was composed between 9 October 1948 and 29 January 1949. The premiere, directed by Roger Blin, was on 5 January 1953 at the Théâtre de Babylone, Paris. The English-language version premiered in London in 1955. In a poll conducted by the British Royal National Theatre in 1998/99, it was voted the "most significant English language play of the 20th century".
Breath is a notably short stage work by Samuel Beckett. An altered version was first included in Kenneth Tynan's revue Oh! Calcutta!, at the Eden Theatre in New York City on 16 June 1969. The UK premiere was at the Close Theatre Club in Glasgow in October 1969; this was the first performance of the text as written. The second performance, and the English premiere, was at a benefit held at the Oxford Playhouse on March 8, 1970. “The first accurate publication appeared in Gambit 4.16 (1969): 5–9, with a manuscript facsimile.”
John Boynton Priestley was an English novelist, playwright, screenwriter, broadcaster and social commentator.
Act Without Words I is a short play by Samuel Beckett. It is a mime, Beckett's first. Like many of Beckett's works, the play was originally written in French, being translated into English by Beckett himself. It was written in 1956 following a request from the dancer Deryk Mendel and first performed on 3 April 1957 at the Royal Court Theatre in London. On that occasion it followed a performance of Endgame. The original music to accompany the performance was written by composer John S. Beckett, Samuel's cousin, who would later collaborate with him on the radio play Words and Music.
Ohio Impromptu is a "playlet" by Samuel Beckett.
Krapp's Last Tape is a 1958 one-act play, in English, by Samuel Beckett. With a cast of one man, it was written for Northern Irish actor Patrick Magee and first titled "Magee monologue". It was inspired by Beckett's experience of listening to Magee reading extracts from Molloy and From an Abandoned Work on the BBC Third Programme in December 1957.
Not I is a short dramatic monologue written in 1972 by Samuel Beckett which was premiered at the "Samuel Beckett Festival" by the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, New York.
Quad is a television play by Samuel Beckett, written and first produced and broadcast in 1981. It first appeared in print in 1984 where the work is described as "[a] piece for four players, light and percussion" and has also been called a "ballet for four people."
Watt was Samuel Beckett's second published novel in English. It was largely written on the run in the South of France during the Second World War and was first published by Maurice Girodias's Olympia Press in 1953.
From An Abandoned Work, a "meditation for radio" by Samuel Beckett, was first broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Third Programme on Saturday, 14 December 1957 together with a selection from the novel Molloy. Donald McWhinnie, who already had a great success with All That Fall, directed the Irish actor Patrick Magee.
Rough for Radio I is a short radio play by Samuel Beckett, written in French in 1961 and first published in Minuit 5 in September 1973 as Esquisse radiophonique. Its first English publication as Sketch for Radio Play was in Stereo Headphones 7. It first appeared under its current title in Ends and Odds.
All That Fall is a one-act radio play by Samuel Beckett produced following a request from the BBC. It was written in English and completed in September 1956. The autograph copy is titled Lovely Day for the Races. It was published in French, in a translation by Robert Pinget revised by Beckett himself, as Tous ceux qui tombent.
Ghost Trio is a television play, written in English by Samuel Beckett. It was written in 1975, taped in October 1976 and the first broadcast was on BBC2 on 17 April 1977 as part of the Lively Arts programme Beckett himself entitled Shades. Donald McWhinnie directed with Ronald Pickup and Billie Whitelaw. The play's original title was to be Tryst. "On Beckett’s notebook, the word was crossed out vigorously and the new title Ghost Trio written next to it. On the title page of the BBC script the same handwritten title change can be found, indicating that it must have been corrected at the very last minute."
Nacht und Träume is the last television play written and directed by Samuel Beckett. It was written in English (mid-1982) for the German channel Süddeutscher Rundfunk, recorded in October 1982 and broadcast on 19 May 1983 where it attracted "an audience of two million viewers." The mime artist Helfrid Foron played both parts.
Literature written in the English language includes many countries such as the United Kingdom and its crown dependencies, Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. The English language has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon invaders in the fifth century, are called Old English. Beowulf is the most famous work in Old English, and has achieved national epic status in England, despite being set in Scandinavia. However, following the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the written form of the Anglo-Saxon language became less common. Under the influence of the new aristocracy, French became the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite society. The English spoken after the Normans came is known as Middle English. This form of English lasted until the 1470s, when the Chancery Standard, a London-based form of English, became widespread. Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales, was a significant figure in the development of the legitimacy of vernacular Middle English at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were still French and Latin. The invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439 also helped to standardise the language, as did the King James Bible (1611), and the Great Vowel Shift.
The réseau Gloria SMH was a French Resistance network under the German occupation of France during World War II.
The Battle of Saint-Lô is one of the three conflicts in the battle of the hedgerows, which took place between July 7 and 19, 1944, just before Operation Cobra. Saint-Lô had fallen to Germany in 1940, and, after the Invasion of Normandy, the Americans targeted the city, as it served as a strategic crossroads. American bombardments caused heavy damage and a high number of casualties, which resulted in the martyr city being called "The Capital of Ruins", popularized in a report by Samuel Beckett.
This article is focused on English-language literature rather than the literature of England, so that it includes writers from Scotland, Wales, and the whole of Ireland, as well as literature in English from former British colonies. It also includes, to some extent, the United States, though the main article for that is American literature.
Leslie Herbert Daiken was an Irish-born advertising copywriter, editor, and writer on children's toys and games, in his youth in the 1930s a poet active in leftist politics and editor of the duplicated circular Irish Front.
Davies, William (2020). Samuel Beckett and the Second World War. London: Bloomsbury.