October 24, 1969

Beckett Wins Nobel for Literature

Stockholm, Oct. 23--Samuel Beckett, the avant-garde writer acclaimed for his plays and novels of loneliness, despair and human degradation was announced today as the winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The selection committee, comprising members of the Swedish Academy, cited him "for his writing, which--in forms for the novel and drama--in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation."

Mr. Beckett, who was born in Dublin 63 years ago, but now lives in Paris, is best known for his play "Waiting for Godot," published in 1952, which evoked the futility of modern life.


There was conjecture here that Mr. Beckett would refuse to come to Stockholm to accept the award, as is customary, at formal ceremonies on December. 10. The Nobel laureate in literature has traditionally addressed the Nobel banquet, but Mr. Beckett has rarely granted so much as an interview.

Jean-Paul Sartre, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964, declined the award.

This year, the prize carries a cash award of about $73,000.

There are five Nobel Prizes established under the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swede who invented dynamite, and a sixth prize established in economics through a grant by the Bank of Sweden. The first economics prize is to be announced on Monday.

Last week, three United States scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries concerning viruses and viral diseases. On Monday, the International Labor Organization won the Nobel Peace Prize. Prizes for chemistry and physics will be announced next Thursday.

Yeats and Shaw Cited

It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Beckett should be regarded as an Irish or a French winner, although Nobel officials recognize the country of work and residence. Mr. Beckett has lived in Paris since 1937, and he has written mostly in French.

The only Irish Nobel winner in literature was William Butler Yeats, the poet, in 1923. George Bernard Saw, born in Ireland, was honored a few years later but as a British author.

The choice of Mr. Beckett delighted Stockholm literary circles, which had derided the literature award in recent years as being influenced more by political, geographic and religious factors than by literary merit and influence.

The winner is selected by the 18-member Swedish Academy, which represents the literary Establishment. In the past, the awards have gone to long-established authors, many beyond their prime.

In a radio commentary on the choice of Mr. Beckett, Karl Ragnar Gierow, secretary of the academy, possibly mindful of the injunction in Alfred Nobel's will to honor uplifting literary works, seemed at pains to bring out the positive aspects of the deeply pessimistic Beckett.

"The degradation of humanity is a recurrent theme in Beckett's writing," Dr. Gierow said, "and to this extent his philosophy, simply accentuated by elements of the grotesque and of tragic farce, can be said to be a negativism that knows no haven."

But, using a photographic analogy, Dr. Gierow said that when a negative was printed, it produced "a positive, a clarification, with the black proving to be the light of day, the parts in deepest shade, those which reflect the light sources.

The academy official continued: "The perception of human degradation is not possible if human values are denied. This is the source of inner cleansing, the life force in spite of everything, in Beckett's pessimism."

Praising Mr. Beckett for "a love of mankind that grows in understanding as it plumbs further into the depths of abhorrence," Dr. Gierow concluded rhapsodically:

"From that position, in the realms of annihilation, the writing of Samuel Beckett rises like a miserere from all mankind, its muffled minor key sounding liberation to the oppressed and comfort to those in need."

His Own Translator

The award covered Mr. Beckett's novels as well as his plays. He was a novelist before he became a playwright and he continues writing in both forms.

His first two novels, "Murphy" (1938) and "Watt" (1942), were written in English, and his trilogy, "Molloy" (1950), "Malone Dies" (1951), and "The Unnamable" (1952), and "How It Is" (1961), were written in French. Mr. Beckett translated them into English.

In his novels, as in his plays, there is a search for the self, and an achieving of nothing. Murphy, an Irishman living in London, finally dies in a fire. Malone also dies after undergoing nightmares and hallucinations. "The Unnamable" is a novel about a blob "whose identity is unproved, dying, or being born--it could be either," according to Stephen Spender in The New York Times Book Review.

In "How It Is," a humanoid looks for meaning while crawling through primeval ooze and discovers another creature, called Pim. Each may be the other's victim.

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