Eleutheria (play)

"Eleutheria" (some times rendered "Eleuthéria": see image) is a play by Samuel Beckett, written in French in 1947. It was his first completed dramatic endeavour (after an aborted effort about Samuel Johnson). Roger Blin was considering staging it in the early fifties, but opted for "Waiting for Godot", because it was so much cheaper. At this point, Beckett suppressed the manuscript, as was his custom for many of his lesser works.

Publishing history

In 1985, Beckett's long term American publisher, Barney Rosset, was fired after a buyout of Grove Press. Beckett offered to help Rosset, and proposed translating "Eleutheria" into English for him to publish. In the end, Beckett couldn't bring himself to do so, and offered other works.

After Beckett's death in 1989, Rosset still favored publishing "Eleutheria" in English. It was his view, that like so much other work that Beckett suppressed but eventually published, he would have changed his mind again had he lived. But Jérôme Lindon, Beckett's French publisher and literary executor, was against publication. After much wrangling and some legal threats, Lindon and the estate reluctantly allowed Rosset to publish, and issued their own in the original French. The estate will not grant performance licenses, however, a few private shows have been done.

The American edition, published in 1995 by Rosset's new company Foxrock, is translated by Michael Brodsky, himself a novelist and playwright. The English has been criticized as too "American", and thus not appropriate for Beckett. It also contained many basic errors of translation, as when the phrase "Ton canotier avait un couteau" is rendered as 'Your oarsman had a knife'; a "canotier" is a straw hat and "couteau", here, means 'osprey feather'. A British edition was published in 1996 by Faber and Faber, translated by Barbara Wright.

Plot

The plot concerns the efforts of a young man, Victor Krap, to cut himself off from society and his own family; the title reflects this: "eleutheria" ("ελευθερία") is Greek for "liberty".

Performance history

"Eleutheria" went on stage for the first time in 2005, performed by Naqshineh theatre, as translated by Vahid Rahbani and directed by Vahid Rahbani and Mohammadreza Jouze at the City Theatre of Tehran.

Trivia

* Beckett later recycled the name "Krap" (with two Ps) for his play "Krapp's Last Tape".