Alfred Péron 1904 - 1945

Born 22.9.1904 in Lyon
Died 12.5.1945 in Samedan

Biography

The index card for prisoner no. 37801 is filed under the name Alfred Péron. Alfred Péron displayed no distinguishing external features: he was of medium build, his nose was straight, his face oval. This not yet forty-year-old’s hair was already grey however, and his teeth, the index card informs us, were in poor condition.

Information relating to more than just the external appearance of this Alfred Péron can be found in James Knowlson’s wide-ranging biography of Samuel Beckett. Péron, who had studied classics and then English at the École normale supérieure took up a post at Trinity College Dublin in 1926 as an exchange lecturer, where he became Beckett’s French teacher.

Alfred Péron was an elegant, intelligent and charming young Frenchman.

A friendship developed between Beckett and Péron which, according to Knowlson, became an ‘educational experience that broadened his horizons’ for Beckett. Péron helped the later Nobel Prize winner, who would write some of his works in French, to perfect his written and spoken French. In 1930 the two worked on the first French translation of ‘Anna Livia Plurabelle’, an excerpt from James Joyces’ Ulysses and in his first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, Beckett refers to his friend in his reflections on French poetry.

Alfred Péron was very well read.

In the years before the outbreak of war, Péron was the person closest to Beckett. Together he and Beckett translated his novel Murphy, among other things. Every Tuesday the two would dine together and play tennis afterwards.

Alfred Péron was a good tennis player.

During the war years the Murphy translation served as a credible reason for making regular visits to Beckett’s apartment. Péron had recruited Beckett for the resistance and, from 1940, both were members of the ‘Gloria SMH’ cell. Péron brought Beckett information, which he was then to type up and translate into English. ‘Gloria SMH’ was betrayed and Alfred Péron was arrested on 16 August 1942 in Anjou. He was deported to Mauthausen.

Georges Loustaunau-Lacau wrote two works on his experiences in the Mauthausen camp. Alfred Péron is also mentioned in them:

Alfred Péron was a good-natured and gentle person.

Péron knew many of Baudelaire and Verlaine’s poems by heart. It is said that the starved and exhausted Péron recited poetry to himself. Sometimes also his own love sonnets.

Alfred Péron was an excellent poet.

His poetry made an impression: a former pimp called Polo became his protector and guarded over his ‘Orpheus in hell’. One night a brutal Kapo by the name of Otto wanted to know where ‘the poet’ was because there was something to celebrate in the block.

Alfred Péron survived until the liberation of the camp but died on 12 May 1945 on the way back to his home in Swiss Samedan.

Péron’s wife Maya was familiar with Loustaunau-Lacau’s memoirs. Since she was in close contact with Samuel Beckett after the war it can be assumed that she gave him these to read. It was at that time that Beckett wrote what was perhaps his most famous play, Waiting for Godot. It is tempting to see his friend in the mistreated Lucky, while the brutal Kapo Otto might be recognised in the sadistic Pozzo: Pozzo’s lyrical moods when describing the twilight or the part where he asks those waiting what Lucky should do: ‘What do you prefer? Shall we have him dance, or sing, or recite, or think, or…’ – both match the perverse pleasure the Kapo Otto took in literary entertainment. It is the abuse in the camps that comes to mind on reading Pozzo’s instructions that Lucky should be given ‘a taste of his boot, in the face and the privates as far as possible’.

Perhaps Beckett was thinking of his friend and former tennis partner when he ended Lucky’s long monologue with the words: ‘tennis … the stones … so calm … Cunard … unfinished …’

A comforting thought:

Alfred Péron’s tragic fate was perhaps the inspiration for one of the most significant plays of the postwar era.

 

Florian Gantner

Translation into English: Joanna White

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