Samuel Beckett, 1906-1989

“His argument,” Hugh Kenner, critic, said, “was with the Book of Genesis.”

Last heroic modernist: captain-general in the struggle that began with Beaudelaire, included Joyce, Eliot, Kafka, Balanchine and Picasso. Suburban origin; transcendent sensibility. Work more real--if what is real is true--than stuff by all the tenders of that literary flame. Molloy, Malone, Godot--a rebuke to all beaters of drums and bearers of banners.

“We live by exile, stealth and cunning,” James Joyce, comrade, said.

Born in Dublin, decaying provincial capital of dying empire. Anglo-Irish--there’s a clue! People deprived by history of race and place. Protestant. Unshakeable unbeliever, the consciousness of mortal sin become a mortal angst . The consequence of all: a penitential journey into the desert wilderness, in this century an emigre by choice, in Paris. Austerities of a pilgrim life. Renunciation of the language drunk as mother’s milk, twin occasions of Irish sin.

“At the end of my work,” Beckett, writer, said, “there is nothing but dust.”

Long struggle, final acclaim. Croix de Guerre and Nobel Prize. Resistance fighter against fascism and fame. Annihilator of precedence and hierarchy. Enemy of puffed up meaningless meanings. Drawer of distinctions with a difference. Poet, novelist, playwright, prophet with honor in all countries. None of these--and more. Rumpled old man at the back table in a cafe, watching.

“Blessed art thou, Arsenius,” a friend at the deathbed of an ancient anchorite said, “who hath kept this moment ever before your eyes.”