Introduction to Samuel Beckett, "Le Concentrisme" and "Jean du Chas"

In November 1930, shortly after Beckett returned from two years as exchange lecteur at the ENS in Paris to take up a teaching post at his alma mater Trinity College, Dublin, he gave an address in French to the Modern Languages Society in the form of a spoof lecture, which seems to have much amused the academic community.¹ Much of the material, though, especially those portions of it which obliquely show Beckett struggling with his own demons, must have passed over most of their heads.

These translated extracts were published by the Menard Press as MenCards no. 93 and no. 118, in 1986 and 1990 respectively. They were undertaken on behalf of Antony Rudolf, who wished to mark, in the case of the first, the eightieth birthday of Samuel Beckett, whom he greatly admired, and, in the case of the second, to mark the twenty-first birthday of Antony's Menard Press, which is still going strong, and is now twice as old as it was in 1990. Thanks are due to Antony for permission to reprint these, to Edward Beckett, Rosica Colin Ltd., and Faber and Faber for waiving fees for them, and to Dr. Peter Fifield for thinking them worth giving a more general airing. A portion of one of them is quoted in James Knowlson's Damned to Fame: the life of Samuel Beckett (Bloomsbury, 1996). There is as yet no complete translation of the lecture published with the agreement of the Estate of Samuel Beckett, which holds all the appropriate copyrights.