On Beckett's Continental (and Irish) Education

The Irish Times considers Samuel Beckett's relationship with France (and other nations "on the continent") in an article entitled "Samuel Beckett: European Irishman?" Beginning the article, Declan Kiberd writes, "One is not born, but becomes, a European – and the apprenticeship can be arduous and prolonged, as many people are discovering all over again." Picking up from there: 

At Trinity College Dublin in the 1920s, Samuel Beckett chose to study French and Italian. As a young poet, he placed some lyrics in a volume titled The European Caravan: An Anthology of the New Spirit in European Literature, which appeared in 1931. Yet when he used his college French to purchase a packet of cigarettes at a Parisian kiosk, he received a sardonic reply only in English. He stalked angrily away saying: “All right then, I won’t speak their fucking language”. Less than two decades later, he would be celebrated as a French master.

Irish people have always existed at a certain angle to the European mainland; yet, by virtue of that edginess, they have also been freer to contribute at moments to its developing narrative.

That edginess has been conducive to freedom of thought. Being in a place far from the “centre” allowed Irish people to experiment . A letter written by Cummian in 631AD said that the islanders were at the outer reaches of the known world, so Beckett was by no means the first Irish person to locate himself near the void.

Irish holy men travelled as missionaries across Europe over many centuries. There are churches in Lisbon and Prague whose mortuary stones contain inscriptions in the Irish language. James Joyce said his exile made him a successor not just to Columbanus but also to the Wild Geese.

Beckett, on arrival in Paris in the later 1920s, felt like he was “coming home”. But he also understood that European modernity had proved a mixed blessing. He was, for instance, appalled by the number of armless, legless veterans of the first World War on every boulevard, figures who would feature in his future texts.

Read on at the Irish Times.