Warten auf Godot production notebook : Berlin [19]75 II

BC MS 1396/4/4

1975

Samuel Beckett was born in Foxrock, County Dublin on Good Friday, 13 April 1906. Although throughout his life he had the reputation of being sombre, mysterious and reclusive, this popular myth hid a very private, yet immensely generous, gracious and caring person. On entering Trinity College, Dublin, Beckett developed his interest in art, music and literature. He was a gifted linguist who also enjoyed vaudeville theatre and the films of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers. An academic career seemed to be the obvious option on graduating but, after spells teaching in Paris and Dublin, Beckett realised he was more suited to the artistic lifestyle he had encountered in Paris in the company of James Joyce. Having witnessed the intolerance of the Nazi regime towards writers and artists in Germany in 1936, Beckett famously decided that he preferred France at war to Ireland in peace, opting to live in France for the rest of his life. However, this bold decision was more than a mere gesture. Beckett was forced to spend much of the war on the run from the Nazis in the South of France working with the French Resistance, for which he was later awarded the Croix de Guerre. The end of the war marked a burst of literary activity for Beckett, who began writing, in French, a dense prose trilogy comprising Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable. As a relaxation from this project, between October 1948 and January 1949, Beckett worked on a play entitled En attendant Godot - the work which brought him international fame and recognition and which redefined modern theatre. Further literary success ensued, culminating in him being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. As the years progressed, Beckett's prose and drama decreased in length, as he found increasingly successful ways to express the inexpressible. Yet throughout his career, he remained a bilingual author, creating French and English versions of almost all his work. During the 1970s Beckett directed his major stage plays in Berlin in German, exhibiting another side of his character. His success in this field led him to direct his own plays created specifically for television - a medium which seemed perfect for the stark, imposing images of these later, minimalist pieces. Samuel Beckett died on 22 December 1989 and was buried in a private ceremony in the Cimetière de Montparnasse in Paris.

Holograph with handwritten alterations by the author.Red notebook, with hard board covers, containing 200 pages of squared paper (p.110-200 blank). Front cover is inscribed "Godot Berlin 75. II" by Beckett.Notebook contains notes and diagrams written in English by Beckett in preparation for his German production of Warten auf Godot at the Schiller-Theater, Berlin, in March 1975.Published as a facsimile in: Waiting for Godot : with a revised text / Samuel Beckett ; edited with an introduction and notes by Dougald McMillan and James Knowlson, London : Faber & Faber, 1993, p.[173]-395.Former reference number: BECKETT COLLECTION--MSS DRAMA/ENA 04Production notebook II for Warten auf Godot at the Schiller Theater, Berlin, 8 March 1975. 21 x 13 cm. 100 leaves (ff. 56-100 blank). Squared paper, red boards. Inscribed on front cover by Beckett. ‘GODOT Berlin 75 II’. This notebook is very closely related to Notebook I (MS 1396/4/3) and the two annotated texts used by Beckett in his direction of this production (MS 1481, MS 1482). Written in black and red ink, with additions in black felt-tip pen. This notebook is a more legible and organised version of the material to be found in Notebook I. The material which is duplicated in this book is written very neatly on the recto pages in a single style and type of black ink. Corrections are made to these notes in red ink, and fresh material is to be found on the facing verso pages, written in the same red ink, which indicates a secondary and continuous working progress. The notebook conforms to the organisational system established in Notebook I, in having the play divided in sections ‘A’ 1-6 and ‘B’ 1-5, followed by a sequence of group or thematic headings. This item, however, features twenty such groupings, three fewer than in MS 1396/4/3. Two of these are unique to this item, and this means that it loses five of the original twenty-three groups. The two new headings are ‘LIGHTING’ AND ‘TREE’. The format of notes within the ‘A’ and ‘B’ sections remain the same as in the earlier notebook, observing the sequence of a quotation in German from the play followed by directorial notes in English and, in the majority of cases, a small sketch to illustrate position and any movement at the relevant moment. The material in red ink seems to represent additions and revisions which suggested themselves to Beckett via the practical experience of rehearsing the play in the theatre. For example, on verso f.23, we find a long and complex listing relating to the cross structure formed by Estragon, Pozzo and Vladimir in Act II. This list of seventeen entries is headed ‘TRIO’. The arrangement and detail of this list is characteristically meticulous. The entire list is, however, crossed through by a single stroke of Beckett’s red pen and marked ‘Unrealisable’. On the opposite recto, f.24, the note ‘P. wearing overcoat’ is encircled with red ink and a large ‘YES’ is inserted above it. Thus we see that the red ink is used to expand, modify and confirm the material common to this Notebook and Notebook I. The ‘A’ and ‘B’ sections run from ff.2-27 (Beckett’s pp.3-53), and the thematically grouped sections run from ff.28-55, Beckett’s pp.54-109. There is an index page for this Notebook on f.1.

1 item ; 21 cm.

English

file

Samuel Barclay Beckett, 1906-1989, Schiller-Theater (Berlin)

En attendant Godot, Dramatic production, Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc

The copying of any of Beckett’s handwriting and sketches, or any unpublished letters, typescripts, manuscripts or draft versions of his work that differ from the final published version is not permitted.

BC VHS 5