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Eleuthéria
The abandoned manuscript of Samuel Beckett's first play, Eleutheria has finally found its way into print after a highly dramatic legal and literary battle. It is clear that Eleutheria merits both publication and production, but it must be placed into perspective. Waiting for Godot is revolutionary; Eleutheria is evolutionary. The play, a valuable addition to Beckett's body of work, will be of interest to anyone concerned with the author's art and with exploratory theater.
196 pages, Paperback
First published February 17, 1995
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203 people want to read
About the author
Samuel Beckett
915 books6,549 followersNovels of Samuel Barclay Beckett, Irish writer, include
Murphy
in 1938 and
Malone Dies
in 1951; a wider audience know his absurdist plays, such as
Waiting for Godot
in 1952 and
Krapp's Last Tape
in 1959, and he won the Nobel Prize of 1969 for literature.
Samuel Barclay Beckett, an avant-garde theater director and poet, lived in France for most of his adult life. He used English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black gallows humor.
People regard most influence of Samuel Barclay Beckett of the 20th century. James Augustine Aloysius Joyce strongly influenced him, whom people consider as one modernist. People sometimes consider him as an inspiration to many later first postmodernists. He is one of the key in what Martin Esslin called the "theater of the absurd". His later career worked with increasing minimalism.
People awarded Samuel Barclay Beckett "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".
In 1984, people elected Samuel Barclay Bennett as Saoi of Aosdána.
Samuel Barclay Beckett, an avant-garde theater director and poet, lived in France for most of his adult life. He used English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black gallows humor.
People regard most influence of Samuel Barclay Beckett of the 20th century. James Augustine Aloysius Joyce strongly influenced him, whom people consider as one modernist. People sometimes consider him as an inspiration to many later first postmodernists. He is one of the key in what Martin Esslin called the "theater of the absurd". His later career worked with increasing minimalism.
People awarded Samuel Barclay Beckett "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".
In 1984, people elected Samuel Barclay Bennett as Saoi of Aosdána.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
November 22, 2024
This is an essential piece of Sam’s canon, one whose developmental role has been sadly, prejudiciously overlooked. Quick context: Dream of Fair…; More Pricks; Echo’s Bones; Murphy; Watt; First Love; Mercier; Texts for Nothing; Eleutheria; Three Stories…MOLLOY/Godot, etc.
The issue is publishing chronology. As France was hipper than the English-speaking world (shocker), the Americano-Brit-et. al. tends to see a purely Surname Sam that, like a Dead set, runs Murph > Watt > Molloy > Malone > The Unnameable. Sure, it’s sleek and nifty, not to mention easy to remember, but it discounts a few things. Principally, that Mercier & Camier is BEFORE Molloy (thus, his first true French-written novel)—why do you think Molloy, Malone, Mahood & Young continually refer to Mercier? Second prime actor: this. Without it there’s no Godot. Yes, Godot is sure as shit the more bafflingly brilliant bow (intentional), but Eleutheria is Sam’s first French-written play. Fact. It birthed all of Godot’s successes having borne its own relative failures upon its back.
But there are those fuckers that would have their drinks, hair, and oeuvres neat. Bah. Messy is great! This is messy, ridiculously 4th wall busting shit. All the better for it. Yes, Act III isn’t what one expects from Beckett insofar as that someone sees Beckett as a po-faced existentialist/Absurdist amicus theatrum. Which, no. Should you find yourself leaning toward this impression, trust me when I say it’s only optics. Read his letters, interviews, and, above all, read his work as a bolt of cloth whose interconnectedness is essentially situational in its self-referentialism. Call it a labor of love worth doing right; the experience is all the richer for it.
The issue is publishing chronology. As France was hipper than the English-speaking world (shocker), the Americano-Brit-et. al. tends to see a purely Surname Sam that, like a Dead set, runs Murph > Watt > Molloy > Malone > The Unnameable. Sure, it’s sleek and nifty, not to mention easy to remember, but it discounts a few things. Principally, that Mercier & Camier is BEFORE Molloy (thus, his first true French-written novel)—why do you think Molloy, Malone, Mahood & Young continually refer to Mercier? Second prime actor: this. Without it there’s no Godot. Yes, Godot is sure as shit the more bafflingly brilliant bow (intentional), but Eleutheria is Sam’s first French-written play. Fact. It birthed all of Godot’s successes having borne its own relative failures upon its back.
But there are those fuckers that would have their drinks, hair, and oeuvres neat. Bah. Messy is great! This is messy, ridiculously 4th wall busting shit. All the better for it. Yes, Act III isn’t what one expects from Beckett insofar as that someone sees Beckett as a po-faced existentialist/Absurdist amicus theatrum. Which, no. Should you find yourself leaning toward this impression, trust me when I say it’s only optics. Read his letters, interviews, and, above all, read his work as a bolt of cloth whose interconnectedness is essentially situational in its self-referentialism. Call it a labor of love worth doing right; the experience is all the richer for it.
July 26, 2022
(Part of my current project of reading everything Beckett published in precise chronological order.)
Beckett's first complete play is a mixed bag. You can't help but read Eleutheria and think about how Beckett wrote it in a period of desperate poverty, yet on the cusp of becoming hailed as one of the luminaries of world literature: within the next two years after writing it, he wrote his Trilogy of novels as well as Waiting for Godot, which launched him into international stardom.
There are prefigurations of this sea change in Eleutheria. It contains many of Beckett's hallmarks, executed brilliantly - the hauntingly strange family farce, the man who wishes nothing more than to attain complete self-erasure.
However, most of Act III is tedious: meta-theatrical chaos ensues as an audience member, a prompter, and the script of the play itself appear on the stage, and the characters break the fourth wall. I got the sense that Beckett was trying to stage something like the play itself turning against the main character Viktor - urging him to make a decision about his life, just as his family members were. Although Viktor's final decision at the end stands up with some of Beckett's finest moments, the rest of Act III leading up to it was really not up to the standard of the kind of work Beckett was otherwise doing at this point in his career.
Beckett's first complete play is a mixed bag. You can't help but read Eleutheria and think about how Beckett wrote it in a period of desperate poverty, yet on the cusp of becoming hailed as one of the luminaries of world literature: within the next two years after writing it, he wrote his Trilogy of novels as well as Waiting for Godot, which launched him into international stardom.
There are prefigurations of this sea change in Eleutheria. It contains many of Beckett's hallmarks, executed brilliantly - the hauntingly strange family farce, the man who wishes nothing more than to attain complete self-erasure.
However, most of Act III is tedious: meta-theatrical chaos ensues as an audience member, a prompter, and the script of the play itself appear on the stage, and the characters break the fourth wall. I got the sense that Beckett was trying to stage something like the play itself turning against the main character Viktor - urging him to make a decision about his life, just as his family members were. Although Viktor's final decision at the end stands up with some of Beckett's finest moments, the rest of Act III leading up to it was really not up to the standard of the kind of work Beckett was otherwise doing at this point in his career.
February 22, 2024
no está mal para ser su primera obra, se ve donde quiere romper con lo anterior pero aún no ha dado el paso del todo.
May 24, 2017
I understand now why Beckett didn't want this published. It meanders around, tries to reform itself, drags the audience into the action, resorts to threats of torture, and in the end circles back on itself. It's long, but he did write a conclusion that satisfied no one. But it was his first foray into theater. His later efforts sleeked down and he found his way forward.
What I did appreciate about this play was seeing that first drafts and beyond can be without hope of redemption. Even by authors that have success otherwise. It stands as a cause for encouragement for those of us that limp along with our own projects. A poor start doesn't mean total failure.
What I did appreciate about this play was seeing that first drafts and beyond can be without hope of redemption. Even by authors that have success otherwise. It stands as a cause for encouragement for those of us that limp along with our own projects. A poor start doesn't mean total failure.
January 4, 2023
This was an early draft, in so many words, of Waiting for Godot from the late 40s, around the same time as Beckett's Tales For Nothing and First Love, when he first began writing in French and shifted away from his more verbose, ironic style of More Pricks and Murphy. It was never staged and in fact not published until a legal battle that, judging from the proud description written by the editor here, was actively hostile to Beckett's intentions and estate. All the same it was no 'closet drama', clearly designed to be staged: the action of the play, for the first two acts, has its counterpart in a second stage (to be placed beside the first) depicting the non-actions of the the characters not present in an attempt to demonstrate the relationship between motion and stasis that Beckett's later plays depict.
Of course, this play is only a draft for Godot symbolically, and the plot is totally unrelated. It is about the appearance of a deranged Doctor who advocates severely unhealthy behaviors (including something as close to 'bug catching' as could be found in the 40s, if you know what that is) among an epoch of dull upper-middle class well-to-do people; from there the real protagonist, the ambivalent Victor, and his glass-maker friend are mixed in ... after members of the audience intrude on the play, complaining of its total lack of any action other than Irish gab, Dr Piouk convinces Victor to commit suicide via pills. Fin. Beyond little wisps of Beckett's later favorite motifs (characters non-responding to one another, puns exaggerating minute platitudes, the introduction of banal irrelevances) the plot at least attempts to demonstrate the general ethos that Beckett worked most of his life towards: the inherent paralysis of most noise (the chatter of the normies), and the occasionally profound motion of non-being (Victor's suicide).
The audience member (a character in the play who interrupts; we can suppose that in a staging the actor would have hidden in the audience until his scripted appearance) reminds me of a comment Beckett makes of abstract art in Disjecta, that a true abstract impressionism is a fundamentally different conscious experience than traditional representative art; the criticisms leveled by the audience member at the dramatic imperfections of the play reduce the formal components of art to a mere matrix of preferences. In contrast, the suicide of Victor almost seems like a Christ narrative in comparison, sacrificing himself to the bewilderment of his audiences and for the sake of attaining a purity of non-being vastly more profound (in some ways) than the illusory fictive being of his compatriot characters. Indeed, while the first two acts had the second stage depicting the non-being of action in contrast to the trivial being of the main action, the third act was to be performed on a single stage and required no counterpart, given the analogous 'transcendence' of the 'action' (to misuse such a word) there.
Still, this is fairly characteristic of Beckett's early works: while he had begun removing the Shandyesque chatter from his prose works, he had not yet come up with the purer version employed in Godot and Endgame, and much of it still reads more madcap than the unique absurdism of Beckett's finest works. I keep thinking about how Flann O'Brien had published several books in the early 40s and seemed the obvious successor to late Joyce, being much better at the alchemy of Irish nonsense than Beckett's first novels ever were; if you were to take Murphy, More Pricks, and this together as Beckett's entire ouevre, you would have a vastly different portrait of a young man, intensely creative but mentally disorganized, throwing together vast sums of near-gibberish for obscure purposes. While Beckett's path of development was very clear and even these earliest works contain the obsessions with motion, expression and distorted faces as the later works, reading them as middling to fair attempts at continuing Finnegans Wake opens them up in another way that I think is necessary to appreciate them.
Of course, this play is only a draft for Godot symbolically, and the plot is totally unrelated. It is about the appearance of a deranged Doctor who advocates severely unhealthy behaviors (including something as close to 'bug catching' as could be found in the 40s, if you know what that is) among an epoch of dull upper-middle class well-to-do people; from there the real protagonist, the ambivalent Victor, and his glass-maker friend are mixed in ... after members of the audience intrude on the play, complaining of its total lack of any action other than Irish gab, Dr Piouk convinces Victor to commit suicide via pills. Fin. Beyond little wisps of Beckett's later favorite motifs (characters non-responding to one another, puns exaggerating minute platitudes, the introduction of banal irrelevances) the plot at least attempts to demonstrate the general ethos that Beckett worked most of his life towards: the inherent paralysis of most noise (the chatter of the normies), and the occasionally profound motion of non-being (Victor's suicide).
The audience member (a character in the play who interrupts; we can suppose that in a staging the actor would have hidden in the audience until his scripted appearance) reminds me of a comment Beckett makes of abstract art in Disjecta, that a true abstract impressionism is a fundamentally different conscious experience than traditional representative art; the criticisms leveled by the audience member at the dramatic imperfections of the play reduce the formal components of art to a mere matrix of preferences. In contrast, the suicide of Victor almost seems like a Christ narrative in comparison, sacrificing himself to the bewilderment of his audiences and for the sake of attaining a purity of non-being vastly more profound (in some ways) than the illusory fictive being of his compatriot characters. Indeed, while the first two acts had the second stage depicting the non-being of action in contrast to the trivial being of the main action, the third act was to be performed on a single stage and required no counterpart, given the analogous 'transcendence' of the 'action' (to misuse such a word) there.
Still, this is fairly characteristic of Beckett's early works: while he had begun removing the Shandyesque chatter from his prose works, he had not yet come up with the purer version employed in Godot and Endgame, and much of it still reads more madcap than the unique absurdism of Beckett's finest works. I keep thinking about how Flann O'Brien had published several books in the early 40s and seemed the obvious successor to late Joyce, being much better at the alchemy of Irish nonsense than Beckett's first novels ever were; if you were to take Murphy, More Pricks, and this together as Beckett's entire ouevre, you would have a vastly different portrait of a young man, intensely creative but mentally disorganized, throwing together vast sums of near-gibberish for obscure purposes. While Beckett's path of development was very clear and even these earliest works contain the obsessions with motion, expression and distorted faces as the later works, reading them as middling to fair attempts at continuing Finnegans Wake opens them up in another way that I think is necessary to appreciate them.
April 13, 2023
Esta obra fue la primera escrita en francés por Beckett, en la década de los 40. Durante toda su vida, se negó rotundamente a su publicación y a cualquier representación de la misma. Tras varias trifulcas entre el propietario de los derechos sobre la obra póstuma y terceros ávidos de aprovecharse de la tensión mediática, finalmente fue publicada en versión original en contraposición a las versiones inglesas que se publicaron sin permiso.
No sabría hacer un sumario de lo que he apuntado sobre Eleutheria, sigue dando reparo dar cualquier interpretación de un autor como Beckett, que ha conseguido separar la palabra del trono en que se la había resituado tras el proceso de fetichización del arte. Aquí encuentro la palabra imbécil, la palabra que inevitablemente se ofrece al desilusionamiento que arrastra consigo el concepto de lo poético, como diría Adorno. Víctor no es más que este proceso repitiéndose una y otra vez, ajeno a cualquier hermenéutica, a cualquier verdad. No tener nada que decir.
El deseo del público es un deseo castrado, el de la complacencia leve que se resigna a aplaudir de pie, bobalicona. Pero también adquiere un polo paranoico cuando no puede extraer la ansiada comprensión. Creo que algo de esto hay en Eleutheria.
Victor es la contradicción constante del escritor solitario que sólo puede desaparecer poniéndose en juego constantemente. La nada que necesita objetivarse, pero que nunca lo hará por completo. Por eso toda la obra es una mentira y, en palabras de Beckett, un fracaso. Para Blanchot, la obra del escritor solitario no puede funcionar.
No sabría hacer un sumario de lo que he apuntado sobre Eleutheria, sigue dando reparo dar cualquier interpretación de un autor como Beckett, que ha conseguido separar la palabra del trono en que se la había resituado tras el proceso de fetichización del arte. Aquí encuentro la palabra imbécil, la palabra que inevitablemente se ofrece al desilusionamiento que arrastra consigo el concepto de lo poético, como diría Adorno. Víctor no es más que este proceso repitiéndose una y otra vez, ajeno a cualquier hermenéutica, a cualquier verdad. No tener nada que decir.
El deseo del público es un deseo castrado, el de la complacencia leve que se resigna a aplaudir de pie, bobalicona. Pero también adquiere un polo paranoico cuando no puede extraer la ansiada comprensión. Creo que algo de esto hay en Eleutheria.
Victor es la contradicción constante del escritor solitario que sólo puede desaparecer poniéndose en juego constantemente. La nada que necesita objetivarse, pero que nunca lo hará por completo. Por eso toda la obra es una mentira y, en palabras de Beckett, un fracaso. Para Blanchot, la obra del escritor solitario no puede funcionar.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 17, 2020
3½. A lot of brilliance is contained within this play but it is far too long, and has its moments of excessive wackiness (something I didn't expect from Beckett). Still worth reading.
July 29, 2020
Eleuthéria
: Beckett’s first completed play, published after his death; a lengthy legal battle between Beckett’s American publisher, Barney Rosset, and his French publisher and literary executor, Jérôme Lindon, kept the play from the public for years; performance licenses will not be issued, but a few private shows have been done
: i absolutely love how Beckett has extremely specific stage directions for the play; his note that what the actor does outside the script - entirely their choice - is genius
: i find the constant entering and exiting of actors rather intriguing, reminds me of some of Beckett's prose, with its short, rhythmic sentences
: the staccato dialogue echoes the rapid-fire personnel changes
: a play about not all that much on the surface, but ultimately swollen with commentary; very Beckett-ian
: odd mention of “taylorizing” - refers to the concept of taylorism (F.W. Taylor), in which society would be improved through efficiency and standardized practices; an interesting thing to put in, which brought to mind for me the post-WWII ennui, people looking for purpose in life outside of standard choices (marriage, family, work)
Beckett is not most people’s cup of tea. I think most readers just can’t figure out what he is doing, which, as a huge fan of Beckett, I know is partly the point of what he does. Besides being a sublime and rare writing talent, his work for the stage is brilliant, albeit at times rather obtuse, even nonsensical.
This play is simple - a man, Victor Krap, seeks to escape his family and live as he chooses, while still collecting funds to live said life - but how it plays out has some of the hallmarks of a Charlie Chaplin film - comedic, lascivious, tart, dark, rather circular mostly, a sort of a what-am-I-reading? feel to the scenes.
Serious issues are discussed - the argument-debate between the Glazier and Dr. Piouk is rather involved, equal parts smart and silly - amid chaotic ramblings, artsy staging choices - the Audience Member interjections - and general familial dramatics.
If you’re looking for deep meaning in this play, you can find it (there is rarely a shortage of smartyness from Beckett), though I see this less of a thinking piece and more of a dramatic-emotive one, and believe it would work all the better staged instead of simply read like a book, as I have consumed it. Honestly. I was simply overjoyed to finally find the text of this play and see where Beckett’s stagecraft began. He is always essential reading for me, as I find all of his works absolutely brimming with effort and emotion.
: Beckett’s first completed play, published after his death; a lengthy legal battle between Beckett’s American publisher, Barney Rosset, and his French publisher and literary executor, Jérôme Lindon, kept the play from the public for years; performance licenses will not be issued, but a few private shows have been done
: i absolutely love how Beckett has extremely specific stage directions for the play; his note that what the actor does outside the script - entirely their choice - is genius
: i find the constant entering and exiting of actors rather intriguing, reminds me of some of Beckett's prose, with its short, rhythmic sentences
: the staccato dialogue echoes the rapid-fire personnel changes
: a play about not all that much on the surface, but ultimately swollen with commentary; very Beckett-ian
: odd mention of “taylorizing” - refers to the concept of taylorism (F.W. Taylor), in which society would be improved through efficiency and standardized practices; an interesting thing to put in, which brought to mind for me the post-WWII ennui, people looking for purpose in life outside of standard choices (marriage, family, work)
Beckett is not most people’s cup of tea. I think most readers just can’t figure out what he is doing, which, as a huge fan of Beckett, I know is partly the point of what he does. Besides being a sublime and rare writing talent, his work for the stage is brilliant, albeit at times rather obtuse, even nonsensical.
This play is simple - a man, Victor Krap, seeks to escape his family and live as he chooses, while still collecting funds to live said life - but how it plays out has some of the hallmarks of a Charlie Chaplin film - comedic, lascivious, tart, dark, rather circular mostly, a sort of a what-am-I-reading? feel to the scenes.
Serious issues are discussed - the argument-debate between the Glazier and Dr. Piouk is rather involved, equal parts smart and silly - amid chaotic ramblings, artsy staging choices - the Audience Member interjections - and general familial dramatics.
If you’re looking for deep meaning in this play, you can find it (there is rarely a shortage of smartyness from Beckett), though I see this less of a thinking piece and more of a dramatic-emotive one, and believe it would work all the better staged instead of simply read like a book, as I have consumed it. Honestly. I was simply overjoyed to finally find the text of this play and see where Beckett’s stagecraft began. He is always essential reading for me, as I find all of his works absolutely brimming with effort and emotion.
June 16, 2019
Beckett fue reacio a publicar Eleuthéria desde finales de los años cuarenta -cuando la escribió- hasta el final de sus días. No obstante, la querella iniciada por un editor estadounidense junto con su obstinación por contradecir al autor irlandés en sus intenciones, llevó finalmente a la publicación de la primera obra de Beckett escrita en francés en 1995. Ante la impotencia de truncar estos planes Jérôme Lindon, editor y amigo de toda la vida de Beckett, decide publicar el original en francés. Y no queda más que sentirnos agradecidos, aunque la culpabilidad de contradecir las intenciones del autor nos ponga en un lugar donde nos abalanzamos como caníbales sobre cualquier resto brotado de sus manos; tal vez más que complices seamos también unos descarados.
Porque Eleuthéria es una puerta desde donde entender el edificio bekettiano, un sendero por donde seguir los pasos del minimalismo y la sencillez hechos claustrofobia, el absurdo devenido cotidianidad, la sociedad y sus instituciones transformadas en camisas de fuerza, y el aislamiento convertido en la vecindad más próxima del hombre contemporáneo. Sin la genialidad y la contundencia de un "Esperando a Godot", Eleuthéria aparece como una reflexión sencilla sobre el dar, el recibir y la búsqueda de la libertad en una sociedad autoritaria que graba nuestro destino en marmol, una sociedad opulenta, clasista y despilfarradora donde las apariencias lo son todo, un lugar en el cual se vive sin un sentido por norte y, por ello mismo, no se está preparado para morir, resultando los últimos momentos de una vida en situaciones desoladoras repletas de desconsuelo y desesperanza.
Las preguntas sobre la natalidad, el engendrar, la muerte y el vivir son aquí recurrentes, así como las insinuaciones sobre una sexualidad insatisfecha y contenida. Beckett supo ver la herida supurante de la aristocracia y la burguesía europea occidental del siglo XX como pocos. También es de destacar el juego con esa cuarta pared que Beckett quiso derribar; algunos de sus protagonistas se ubican en el palco, entran y salen de escena desde allí, el libreto y el nombre del autor se pisotean y son objeto de mofa en el acto final, en ciertos apartados el protagonista pretende hablar impotentemente con el público. En resumidas cuentas, un ejercicio filosófico, formal y teatral del que habría sido una pena vernos privados.
No es genial, pero es la obra de un genio, y en ella se dejan entrever destellos de su genialidad.
Porque Eleuthéria es una puerta desde donde entender el edificio bekettiano, un sendero por donde seguir los pasos del minimalismo y la sencillez hechos claustrofobia, el absurdo devenido cotidianidad, la sociedad y sus instituciones transformadas en camisas de fuerza, y el aislamiento convertido en la vecindad más próxima del hombre contemporáneo. Sin la genialidad y la contundencia de un "Esperando a Godot", Eleuthéria aparece como una reflexión sencilla sobre el dar, el recibir y la búsqueda de la libertad en una sociedad autoritaria que graba nuestro destino en marmol, una sociedad opulenta, clasista y despilfarradora donde las apariencias lo son todo, un lugar en el cual se vive sin un sentido por norte y, por ello mismo, no se está preparado para morir, resultando los últimos momentos de una vida en situaciones desoladoras repletas de desconsuelo y desesperanza.
Las preguntas sobre la natalidad, el engendrar, la muerte y el vivir son aquí recurrentes, así como las insinuaciones sobre una sexualidad insatisfecha y contenida. Beckett supo ver la herida supurante de la aristocracia y la burguesía europea occidental del siglo XX como pocos. También es de destacar el juego con esa cuarta pared que Beckett quiso derribar; algunos de sus protagonistas se ubican en el palco, entran y salen de escena desde allí, el libreto y el nombre del autor se pisotean y son objeto de mofa en el acto final, en ciertos apartados el protagonista pretende hablar impotentemente con el público. En resumidas cuentas, un ejercicio filosófico, formal y teatral del que habría sido una pena vernos privados.
No es genial, pero es la obra de un genio, y en ella se dejan entrever destellos de su genialidad.
May 28, 2025
Pese a ser una obra imperfecta, como lo reconocía el propio Beckett, el valor histórico de esta obra es inapreciable: ayuda a comprender mejor los procedimientos de las obras posteriores, así como las problemáticas y dilemas que acosaban al autor. Se entiende que el arte dramatúrgico de este autor parte del principio de la supresión de lo anecdótico para llegar a la esencia misma de la subjetividad moderna. Recomendable para los interesados en adentrarse al universo del famoso escritor irlandés.
December 28, 2025
The one Beckett play I have never read until now. Untranslated till 1996 and never performed in the author’s lifetime, it reads like an extended notebook of ideas that would emerge properly formed in the shockingly great plays that follow hard upon. Lots to enjoy and to quote, a little too ‘meta’ for its own good, and no surprise that Beckett was never satisfied with it (if the letters are to be believed). Still, I found it resonated horribly and wonderfully with my own existence and my dreams of a tiny pill from Dr. Piouk. Although I would probably piouk it back up.
March 18, 2020
La primera obra de teatro escrita por Beckett (aparte de un intento juvenil, perdido), y que durante la vida del autor este se negó a publicar, pese a haber sido escrita al tiempo que Esperando a Godot.
Una novela que se relaciona mejor con el teatro del absurdo, pero que es un punto de arranque de la obra dramática de Beckett.
Una novela que se relaciona mejor con el teatro del absurdo, pero que es un punto de arranque de la obra dramática de Beckett.
November 20, 2025
Me and Victor both depressed after reaching the end. This feels like the kind of book where you know it's funny and smart, and you are engaged and entertained, but you feel like you're just a tad too stupid for it's actual message...
October 21, 2019
the best play about doing nothing and throwing shoes out of your apartment window out of pure boredom that i have ever read.
March 3, 2023
Martirio de libro.
September 11, 2024
Of course Beckett would encapsulate everything I’m feeling and going through. I’m glad.
November 30, 2011
One of Beckett's least "absurd" and most philosophical plays. I find it better than his "Godot" and "Endgame". Those were highly "beckettian", meaning they had that characteristic trademark of master and slave dialogue, of BDSM despair and cynicism. "Eleutheria" reminds me more of Ionesco, with his satire of bourgeois society and impression of mechanical gestures and eternal return of nothingness from "The Bold Soprano". Very funny (of course in a sad way, beyond the sadness somehow), containing nihilistic traits and the subsequent pastiche of that nihilism. A masterpiece and a great introduction to Beckett's theater. Very existential as well: if we take away the absurd, we have an atmosphere reminiscent to Sartre and Camus.
December 28, 2014
My play-reading group and I couldn’t really get ourselves to finish this example of Theater of the Absurd, and ruefully mocked the person who suggested it, then left while we were struggling through it.
January 8, 2008
I agree with the rather low rating given this play by other readers. It was creepy and strange and very Un-Beckettian. Still, I love the word "Eleutheria." :-)
January 14, 2008
Beckett is so deliciously insane!
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July 24, 2011One of Beckett's best plays. I laughed a lot, but I found it profound as well.
April 9, 2014
Positively action packed compared to Waiting for Godot. An interesting look at the way humans interact, preconceptions are formed, and the traditional expectations of theater.
February 6, 2015
It was a decent read, but the ending was definitely disappointing. It was way longer than it needed to be. Now, I understand why it was not published at the time.
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