Behan, Brendan

(1923–1964) uninhibited Irish playwright who lived wildly. [Irish Lit.: NCE, 261]

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Behan, Brendan

Born Feb. 9, 1923, in Dublin; died there on Mar. 20, 1964. Irish writer.

Behan’s autobiographical works In the Penal Colony (1958) and Confessions of an Irish Insurrectionist (posthumous, 1965) tell of his participation in the republican underground during the 1930’s and describe the conditions in the English prison in which he spent nearly nine years. Behan’s plays Condemned to Death (1956) and The Hostage (1958; Russian translation 1968) are directed against the callousness and cruelty that reigns in the contemporary bourgeois world; they condemn the use of force against people no matter what ends are used to justify its use. S. O’Casey pointed out the humanism of Behan’s work.

WORKS

Brendan Behan’s Island. Illustrated by P. Hogarth. London, 1962.
The Scarperer. Garden City (N. Y.), 1964.
The Wit of Brendan Behan. London, [1968].

REFERENCES

Sofinskii, V. “On borolsia za svobodu Irlandii.” Literaturnaia gazeta, Sept. 3, 1969.
Simpson, A. Beckett and Behan and a Theatre in Dublin. London, 1962.
Behan, D. My Brother Brendan. London, 1965.
The World of Brendan Behan. Edited by Sean MacCann. London, 1965.

A. P. SARUKHANIAN