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Samuel Beckett citations
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Samuel Barclay Beckett, né le 13 avril 1906 à Foxrock et mort le 22 décembre 1989 à Paris, est un écrivain, poète et dramaturge irlandais d'expression principalement française et anglaise, récipiendaire du prix Nobel de littérature en 1969.

Il est l'auteur de romans, tels que Molloy, Malone meurt et L'Innommable et de poésies en prose, mais il est surtout connu pour son œuvre théâtrale. Sa pièce de théâtre la plus célèbre est En attendant Godot, chef-d'œuvre du théâtre de l'absurde. Son œuvre est austère et minimaliste, ce qui est généralement interprété comme l'expression d'un profond pessimisme face à la condition humaine. Ce pessimisme n'exclut cependant pas l'humour, omniprésent chez l'auteur, l'un étant au service de l'autre, pris dans le cadre plus large d'une immense entreprise de dérision.

Avec le temps, il traite ces thèmes dans un style de plus en plus lapidaire, tendant à rendre sa langue de plus en plus concise et sèche. En 1969, il reçoit le prix Nobel de littérature pour « son œuvre, qui à travers un renouvellement des formes du roman et du théâtre, prend son élévation dans la destitution de l'homme moderne ». Wikipedia  

✵ 13. avril 1906 – 22. décembre 1989
Samuel Beckett photo
Samuel Beckett: 128 citations0 J'aime

Samuel Beckett citations célèbres

“Oh le beau jour encore que ça aura été, encore un! (Un temps.) Malgré tout. (Fin de l'expression heureuse.) Jusqu'ici.”

Samuel Beckett Oh les beaux jours

Oh les beaux jours, 1963

“Maximum de simplicité et de symétrie. Lumière aveuglante.”

Samuel Beckett Oh les beaux jours

Description du décor.
Oh les beaux jours, 1963

“Ces Murphy, Molloy, et autres Malone, je n'en suis pas dupe. Ils m'ont fait perdre mon temps […] Ils n'ont pas souffert mes douleurs, leurs douleurs ne sont rien, à côté des miennes, rien qu'une petite partie des miennes, celle dont je croyais pouvoir me détacher, pour la contempler.”

Samuel Beckett livre L'Innommable

L'Innommable, 1953

“Je sentais l’âme qui s’ennuie vite et n’achève jamais rien, qui est de toutes peut-être la moins emmerdante.”

Samuel Beckett livre Premier Amour

Premier Amour, 1946

“Les larmes ruissellent le long de mes joues sans que j'éprouve le besoin de cligner les yeux. Qu'est-ce qui me fait pleurer ainsi? De temps en temps. Il n'y a rien ici qui puisse m'attrister. C'est peut-être de la cervelle liquéfiée.”

Samuel Beckett livre L'Innommable

L'Innommable, 1953

“Ce qui fait le charme de notre pays, à part bien entendu le fait qu’il est peu peuplé, malgré l’impossibilité de s’y procurer le moindre préservatif, c’est que tout y est à l’abandon sauf les vieilles selles de l’histoire.”

Samuel Beckett livre Premier Amour

Premier Amour, 1946

Samuel Beckett: Citations en anglais

“To go on means going from here, means finding me, losing me, vanishing and beginning again, a stranger first, then little by little the same as always, in another place, where I shall say I have always been, of which I shall know nothing, being incapable of seeing, moving, thinking, speaking, but of which little by little, in spite of these handicaps, I shall begin to know something, just enough for it to turn out to be the same place as always, the same which seems made for me and does not want me, which I seem to want and do not want, take your choice, which spews me out or swallows me up, I’ll never know, which is perhaps merely the inside of my distant skull where once I wandered, now am fixed, lost for tininess, or straining against the walls, with my head, my hands, my feet, my back, and ever murmuring my old stories, my old story, as if it were the first time.”

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Samuel Beckett livre L'Innommable

The Unnamable (1954)

“I, of whom I know nothing, I know my eyes are open, because of the tears that pour from them unceasingly.”

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Samuel Beckett livre L'Innommable

The Unnamable (1954)

“I tried to groan, Help! Help! But the tone that came out was that of polite conversation.”

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Samuel Beckett

The End (1946)

“What can it matter to me, that I succeed or fail? The undertaking is none of mine, if they want me to succeed I’ll fail, and vice versa, so as not to be rid of my tormentors.”

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Samuel Beckett livre L'Innommable

The Unnamable (1954)

“My keepers, why keepers, I'm in no danger of stirring an inch, ah I see, it's to make me think I'm a prisoner, frantic with corporeality, rearing to get out and away.”

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Samuel Beckett livre Texts for Nothing

Texts for Nothing (1955)

“We are no longer the same, you wiser but not sadder, and I sadder but not wiser, for wiser I could hardly become without grave personal inconvenience, whereas sorrow is a thing you can keep adding to all your life long, is it not, like a stamp or an egg collection, without feeling very much the worse for it, is it not.”

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Samuel Beckett livre Watt

Part I, p. 50
Watt (1943)

“I get up, go out, and everything is changed. The blood drains from my head, the noise of things bursting, merging, avoiding one another, assails me on all sides, my eyes search in vain for two things alike, each pinpoint of skin screams a different message, I drown in the spray of phenomena.”

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Samuel Beckett livre Molloy

Molloy (1951)

“Hamm: What's he doing?(CLOV raises lid of NAGG's bin, stoops, looks into it. Pause.)Clov: He's crying.(He closes lid, straightens up)Hamm: Then he's living.”

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Samuel Beckett

Endgame (1957)

“Perhaps it's done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.”

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Samuel Beckett livre L'Innommable

The Unnamable (1954)

“At no moment do I know what I’m talking about, nor of whom, nor of where, nor how, nor why, but I could employ fifty wretches for this sinister operation and still be short of the fifty-first, to close the circuit, that I know, without knowing what it means.”

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Samuel Beckett livre L'Innommable

The Unnamable (1954)

“But he had turned, little by little, a disturbance into words, he had made a pillow of old words, for his head.”

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Samuel Beckett livre Watt

Part II, p. 117
Watt (1943)

“They never lynch children, babies, no matter what they do they are whitewashed in advance.”

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Samuel Beckett

The Expelled (1946)

“Tears, that could be the tone, if they weren't so easy, the true tone and tenor at last.”

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Samuel Beckett livre Texts for Nothing

Texts for Nothing (1955)

“A mask of dirty old hairy leather, with two holes and a slit, it was too far gone for the old trick of please your honour and God reward you and pity upon me. It was disastrous.”

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Samuel Beckett

The End (1946)

“Yes, yes, I am mistaken, I am mistaken.”

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Samuel Beckett livre Three Dialogues

Three Dialogues (1949)

“Yes, in my life, since we must call it so, there were three things, the inability to speak, the inability to be silent, and solitude, that’s what I’ve had to make the best of.”

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Samuel Beckett livre L'Innommable

The Unnamable (1954)

“Yes, there were times when I forgot not only who I was, but that I was, forgot to be.”

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Samuel Beckett livre Molloy

Molloy (1951)

“Memories are killing. So you must not think of certain things, of those that are dear to you, or rather you must think of them, for if you don’t there is the danger of finding them, in your mind, little by little.”

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Samuel Beckett

The Expelled (1946)

“The time-state of attainment eliminates so accurately the time-state of aspiration, that the actual seems the inevitable, and, all conscious intellectual effort to reconstitute the invisible and unthinkable as a reality being fruitless, we are incapable of appreciating our joy by comparing it with our sorrow.”

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Samuel Beckett livre Proust

Proust (1957), p. 4

“Krapp: Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now.”

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Samuel Beckett Krapp's Last Tape

Krapp's Last Tape (1958)

“Let me go to hell, that's all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss.”

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Samuel Beckett From an Abandoned Work

From an Abandoned Work (1957)

“Hamm: There's something dripping in my head. A heart, a heart in my head.”

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Samuel Beckett

Endgame (1957)

“It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible.”

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Samuel Beckett

The End (1946)

“For the only way one can speak of nothing is to speak of it as though it were something, just as the only way one can speak of God is to speak of him as though he were a man, which to be sure he was, in a sense, for a time, and as the only way one can speak of man, even our anthropologists have realized that, is to speak of him as though he were a termite.”

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Samuel Beckett livre Watt

Part II, p. 77
Watt (1943)

“Hamm: Look at the ocean!(Clov gets down, takes a few steps towards window left, goes back for ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window left, gets up on it, turns the telescope on the without, looks at length. He starts, lowers the telescope, examines it, turns it again on the without.)Clov: Never seen anything like that!Hamm (anxious): What? A sail? A fin? Smoke?Clov (looking): The light is sunk. Hamm (relieved): Pah! We all knew that. Clov (looking): There was a bit left. Hamm: The base. Clov (looking): Yes. Hamm: And now? Clov (looking): All gone. Hamm: No gulls? Clov (looking): Gulls! Hamm: And the horizon? Nothing on the horizon? Clov (lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, exasperated): What in God's name could there be on the horizon? (Pause.) Hamm: The waves, how are the waves? Clov: The waves? (He turns the telescope on the waves.) Lead. Hamm: And the sun? Clov (looking): Zero. Hamm: But it should be sinking. Look again. Clov (looking): Damn the sun. Hamm: Is it night already then? Clov (looking): No. Hamm: Then what is it? Clov (looking): Gray. (Lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, louder.) Gray! (Pause. Still louder.) GRRAY! (Pause. He gets down, approaches Hamm from behind, whispers in his ear.) Hamm (starting): Gray! Did I hear you say gray? Clov: Light black. From pole to pole.”

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Samuel Beckett

An explanation of the universe outside the room of Endgame
Endgame (1957)

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