His two tramps, indecisive and incapable of action, wait hopefully for help which never comes. The play revolutionized modern drama, abandoning “conventional structure and development in both plot and dialogue in order to present a dramatic vision of the human predicament in a world in which mankind seems to have no place. By the end of the decade, the play was seen in London and later New York in Beckett’s own translation as Waiting for Godot.
Josette and Henri went out to dinner with Sam and Suzanne to celebrate the 30th performance, but even then they did not foresee the extent of the success, which was gathering momentum… Godot changed everything for him… But, above all, Godot forced people, as Kenneth Tynan put it later, to ‘re-examine the rules which have hitherto governed the drama and, having done so, to pronounce them not elastic enough” (Knowlson, 49).
After the premiere of the play, “Josette Hayden remembered how at first numbers dropped off after the first night and how they felt they needed to drum up support for it among their friends. That is why what it has to offer is a landmark in life” ( New York Times). 3, 1953-would be pricked out in gold in the annals of the stage…There is something of everyone in this play, and something of everywhere, too. Although he finished En attendant Godot in 1946, the play was rejected by six Paris publishers before its publication in this 1952 first edition of 2500 copies. After World War II Beckett began to write in French, a language he felt was better suited than English to his vision of literature. Godot would become “one of the most influential plays of the post-war period,” earning Beckett worldwide acclaim (Drabble, 1038). This exceptionally rare presentation/association of En attendant Godot is testament to that extraordinary friendship in its inscription by Beckett to Henri and Josette Hayden, inscribed within weeks of publication and two months prior to the play’s Paris premiere. If Estragon and Vladimir are constantly “contradicting each other simply to fill the time? Are they Beckett and Henri Hayden doing the same, as they meet regularly for chess? Common sense suggests that snatches of dialogue did emerge from similar little ‘canters… Beckett has conceded as much privately to friends” (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 192-343). Life improved “considerably with the arrival of two further refugees from Nazism: the Polish-born French painter Henri Hayden, and his much younger French wife, Josette.” Beckett quickly “warmed to the quiet elderly painter with his more voluble, lively companion… Soon Beckett was meeting Hayden fairly regularly in the café for a drink and it was not long before the two men found that they shared a love of chess as well as of painting… This marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship… Some of his purest pleasure came from art… since Henri Hayden’s arrival, there was some contact at least with art… Often Hayden would paint close where Beckett was working, so that they could talk or share a picnic lunch of food and wine.” Many see, in Estragon and Vladimir of En Attendant Godot, traces of the friendship between Beckett and Hayden. Hiding from the Gestapo during the Occupation, Samuel Beckett found refuge in the small French village of Roussillon in 1942, where he survived by working in the fields. Beckett and the Haydens met while hiding from the Gestapo in France, and the intimate decades-long friendship between artist Henri and Beckett is said to be a likely inspiration for Estragon and Vladimir in Beckett’s “epoch-making play.”
Housed in a custom clamshell box.įirst trade edition of Beckett’s masterpiece, an exceptional presentation/association copy inscribed on the half title within weeks of publication by Beckett to close friends Henri and Josette Hayden, “A Henri et Jossette affecteusement Sam Paris Nov 1952,” with Beckett’s inscription preceding the premiere of Godot in Paris in January 1953. Small octavo, original white paper wrappers, uncut. “SAM PARIS NOV 1952”: RARE PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION COPY OF EN ATTENDANT GODOT, INSCRIBED WITHIN WEEKS OF PUBLICATION BY BECKETT TO FRIENDS HENRI AND JOSETTE HAYDEN-WITH THE FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN BECKETT AND HENRI SAID TO INSPIRE ESTRAGON AND VLADIMIR IN GODOTīECKETT, Samuel.
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