Collection of Beckett's letters to be auctioned today

A COLLECTION of more than 240 letters, postcards and notes from Samuel Beckett to two close friends, spanning several decades of the writer’s life, are to be auctioned at Sotheby’s in London today.

The letters to painter Avigdor Arikha and his wife, the poet and writer Anne Atik, are described by the auction house as an “invaluable literary and biographical source” for Beckett scholarship, and have a guide price of between £200,000 and £300,000 (€225,000 and €337,000).

Beckett’s correspondence with the Arikhas, written in his distinctive sloping scrawl, reveal a warm and playful author, but also one who was frequently despondent at the slow pace of his work.

Arikha struck up a conversation with Beckett backstage at a theatre in Paris in 1956, following a performance of Waiting for Godot, without initially realising who he was talking to.

The chance meeting proved to be the start of a lifelong friendship between the writer and the artist, said to involve many “drink-fuelled lunches and evenings” spent discussing their shared passion for art and German literature.

The first letter in the series, dated September 4th, 1956, alludes to a visit by Arikha to Beckett’s country retreat in Ussy, near Paris, where the artist was shown an untitled “petite pièce”, an early version of one of Beckett’s most famous stage plays, Endgame.

The letter reads: “I’m very touched that the short play stays with you so. The problem of the title still bothers me. I have the feeling I should avoid the word ‘End’ . . .”.

Another amusing note reads: “. . . Received a card . . . of congratulations from a man called Georges Godot, with an address in the 17th , telling me that he hates keeping people waiting. I thanked him for having announced himself so promptly.”

Arikha drew artistic inspiration from the friendship, drawing a sequence of intimate portraits of Beckett, some of which were exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1976, as a tribute to the playwright on his 70th birthday.

The letters give rare glimpses of Beckett’s personal life, as he relays news of his travel plans and holiday routines – spent walking, swimming, learning Portuguese, playing chess and chasing down bottles of Johnny Walker Black Label or Tullamore Dew.

The author’s good-humoured generosity is also evident; after sending the cash-strapped Arikhas a cheque for 1,000 francs in 1962, he urges them: “. . . Cash the damn cheque, for God’s sake, I don’t need the money . . . You seem to be in difficulties. Don’t tell me off. This rotten cash. I have too much of it . . . I dreamt you were broke. Don’t reproach me . . .”

Sotheby’s modern literature expert Peter Selley said the series was “comparable” to some of the great collections from modern writers sold in recent decades.

Copies of many of the letters have been given to the editors of Beckett’s Letters, the second volume of which is due to be published in two years.

Two rare annotated typescripts of the third chapter of the second book of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, dating from 1936 and 1937, are also up for auction, with a guide of £70,000-£100,000.

The typescripts, which are revised by Joyce and his close friend, the poet Paul Léon, in black ink and pencil, are described as being “from the climactic period of the composition” of the novel, which the writer took 17 years to compose.