Eleutheria is a play by Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

, written in French in 1947. It was his first completed drama

Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

tic endeavor (after an aborted effort about Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

). Roger Blin

Roger Blin

Roger Blin was a French actor and director notable for directing the first production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot....

 considered staging it in the early fifties

1950s

The 1950s or The Fifties was the decade that began on January 1, 1950 and ended on December 31, 1959. The decade was the sixth decade of the 20th century...

, but opted for Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's...

, because it was easier to stage. At this point, Beckett suppressed the manuscript. Beckett later recycled the name "Krap" (with two Ps) for his play Krapp's Last Tape

Krapp's Last Tape

Krapp's Last Tape is a one-act play, written in English, by Samuel Beckett. Consisting of a cast of one man, it was originally written for Northern Irish actor Patrick Magee and first titled "Magee monologue"...

.

Publishing history

In 1985, Beckett's longtime American publisher, Barney Rosset

Barney Rosset

Barnet Lee Rosset, Jr. is the former owner of the publishing house Grove Press, and publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Evergreen Review. He led a successful legal battle to publish the uncensored version of D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, and later was the American...

, was fired after a buyout of Grove Press

Grove Press

Grove Press is an American publishing imprint that was founded in 1951. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an alternative book press in the United States. The Atlantic Monthly Press, under the aegis of its...

. Beckett offered to help Rosset, and proposed translating Eleutheria into English for him to publish, and gave him a copy of the manuscript. But according to the American edition of the play, Beckett was clearly reluctant to sanction publication of the work, and Rosset held off publication.

After Beckett's death in 1989, Rosset set out to publish Eleutheria in English. It was his view that, like 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

Literary executor

A literary executor is a person with decision-making power in respect of a literary estate. According to Wills, Administration and Taxation: a practical guide "A will may appoint different executors to deal with different parts of the estate...

, was against publication. After much wrangling and some legal threats, Lindon and the estate reluctantly allowed Rosset to publish, and issued their own edition 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 first English translation had a mixed reception; one critic wrote "the new translation of the long unavailable play will delight Beckett scholars and aficionados alike" (playwright and journalist Jack Helbig writing in Booklist

Booklist

Booklist is a publication of the American Library Association that provides critical reviews of books and audiovisual materials for all ages. It is geared toward libraries and booksellers and is available in print or online...

), but as might perhaps be expected the French publisher criticized the translation as "too American." It contained a few translation errors, such as the phrase Ton canotier avait un couteau, which 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

Faber and Faber

Faber and Faber Limited, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T. S. Eliot. Faber has a rich tradition of publishing a wide range of fiction, non fiction, drama, film and music...

, translated by Barbara Wright

Barbara Wright

Barbara Wright was an English translator of modern French literature.Wright, born in Worthing, studied music and art in Paris in the years before World War II...

.

Plot

The plot concerns the efforts of a young member of the bourgeoisie, Victor Krap, to cut himself off from society and his family--while at the same time accepting hand-outs from his mother. The title, eleutheria

Eleutheria

Eleutheria is an ancient and modern Greek term for, and personification of, liberty. Eleutheria personified had a brief career on coins of Alexandria.I.F...

(ελευθερία) is Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 for "liberty".

Performance history

Eleutheria went on stage for the first time in 2005, performed by Naqshineh theatre

Naqshineh Theatre

Naqshineh Theatre is a group of Iranian performance artists who mostly work in the genre of Theatre of the Absurd.The first show performed by Naqshineh was Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, staged at the City Theatre of Tehran in 1998. After 30 shows they received an invitation to an...

, as translated by Vahid Rahbani and directed by Vahid Rahbani and Mohammadreza Jouze at the City Theatre of Tehran

Tehran

Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...

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