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The novels of Samuel Beckett
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The novels of Samtiel Beckett
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1965
THE NOVELS OF
SAMUEL BECKETT
By
JOHN FLETCHER
INC.
Booksellers
NEW YORK
Founded 1873
42 William IV Street
London W.C.2
*
Published in the United States
in 1964
by Barnes
&
Noble Inc
New York
**n,
/
JUT*^
.A
n^^
^^
-,
in>r-
,*
*
**
65411^0
CONTENTS
Preface and Acknowledgments
page
15
Belacqua
2 Murphy
58
Watt
4 The
I
First
59
French Heroes
The hero
II Mercier
5 Molloy and
of the Nouvelles
90
90
and Gamier
110
Moran
119
6 Malone
151
The Unnamable
179
195
CONCLUSION: The
Voice Continues
225
254
Index nominum
255
Index rerum
255
PREFACE
In the meantime the voice continues.
THE UNNAMABLE
s fiction,
is
tions I put to
him.
tion in any
Mme.
PREFACE
kinds. Moreover, the staffs of several libraries
have
assisted in
of rare material:
securing periodicals and furnishing photostats
F. Lissauer of
Mr.
thank
to
in this connection I especially wish
I
London and Miss R. Allen of Princeton. Finally owe much to
my wife
to
and to
my brother for
my own.
J.
F.
Thanks are due to the following authors and publishers for kind
as indicated:
permission to reproduce copyright material
Toulouse,
New Year
1965
10
Part
One
MURPHY
Before 1938
Chapter
BELACQUA
Ceux Centre nous dont la
interne.
loi
du dlveloppement
est
purement
M.
....
PROUST
KICKS
BORN in
and
Italian
evident by
and
by Beckett
as a
preliminary
me
abroad,
Summer
Florence.
15
trip,
Summer
1927,
French and
assistant to
the Professor of
Romance Languages
to last
in the
at
first
instance for three years, but he resigned after only four terms,
that is to say in December 1951. Earlier in the same year his
excellent study of Proust
lished
Assumption
first
is
piece of fiction. It
which for the first time introduced a young man called Belacqua.
This text was in fact an extract from a much longer work, Dream
of Fair to Middling Women, written in Paris about 1952 and sub
sequently laid aside in favour of the group of ten short stories
first
Shuah.
in Mr. Beckett
possession,
was written
14
is
BELACQUA
from Trinity, during the period lie spent travelling in various
countries in Europe before finally making Paris his home. It is
two long chapters, the first of which is set
Vienna
and
Paris, and deals with two women, the
largely in
and
Smeraldina-Rima
the Syra-Cusa; the second takes place in
Dublin, where the heroine is the Alba. The manuscript then tails
off, at the end of an episode which was to become the fourth story
(A Wet Night) in More Pricks than Kicks. Another passage from
the manuscript novel became The Smeraldinds Billet Doux, the
eighth story of the 1954 collection, and we have already noted the
excerpt that was published separately as Sedendo et Quiescendo in
a novel consisting of
Transition.
same passage occur, for instance, within fifty pages of each other)
and on the other occasional obscurity, as in certain passages like
Sedendo et Quiescendo, which is an impressionistic account, col
oured by neologisms and foreign expressions and written in a racy
rhythm, of the bustle following on Belacqua s arrival in Vienna to
visit his lady-love the Smeraldina-Rima. Those curious to do so
may look this episode up in Transition, where they will form an
adequate impression of the tone and style of the whole.
Together with much experimental material of this sort, several
interesting passages were also suppressed when the Dream was
re-written as
alone contains,
from the
man
in the
What a
formerly cicisbeo to
Land Commission,
is
many
the
title
tions.
it is
s
poem quoted
ment
of
and by but
):
is
is
titles
but
also
the
Tenny
son and Dante to which he refers were all on the syllabus of study
for the Examinations he took at Dublin between 1924 and 1927.
is
16
who
BELACQUA
canto of Dante s Purgatorio as one of the late-repentant, that is
one of those who have postponed until the last moment their
reconciliation with God. They have avoided hell by
doing so, but
mountain
has just explained to the weary Dante that he should not think
of resting until he has reached the end of the road, when a voice
is heard
saying in a mocking tone:
Forse
che di sedere in pria avrai distretta
- perhaps
before then
on their
left
self:
piu negligent
che se pigrizia fosse sua serocchia
se*
valente
much
What
Vintelligenza di Belacqua^ un po
sofistica e sterile,
ma
calls
natural-
recurs in
tradition that
17
More Pricks than Kicks has been out of print for many years,
and at the time of writing no reprint has as yet been announced. 1
It seems therefore indispensable before proceeding further to
give a fairly detailed synopsis of the narrative. After that I
shall briefly recount the story of Dream of Fair to Middling
Women before
together.
Dante and
same with a thick paste of Savora, salt and Cayenne The result
ing anguish of pungency will be sheer delight to him. On his
way to the public house where he is to eat his lunch he buys at a
.
small grocer
fill
the sand
Asylum in
particular, in
which
thus she
According to Messrs. Chatto and Windus, Mr. Beckett does not wish the
book to be reissued.
18
BELACQUA
having a friend, he his heart, in Portrane, they agreed to make
for there But Belacqua, who could on no account resist a bicycle ,
.
gone
as a result.
The next
story
city
phase of his
world On one of these excursions, these boomerangs,
out and back , whence he usually returns transfigured and trans
formed, very nearly the reverse of the author of the Imitation s
out and sad coming
he is approached by a strange
,
"glad going
last
relish the
in"
woman in
a public house
who
sells
him
seats in
dead porter.
and
finally turns
up soaked
to dry himself
long enough
all- "Vinegar",
*
it
him
and
feel
at his hostess
anguish
moaned Belacqua,
"on
He
s.
stays just
at the artificiality of
nitre"
-when
the
to see her
policeman.
Peeping
how
ever, they can marry and live very happily without the question
of cicisbeism ever
needing to arise: he finds in her big eyes better
worlds than this, [and] they never allude to the old days when she
had hopes of a place in the sun*.
The next story is entitled What a Misfortune, an expression
which Beckett took from Candida and which he has used more
than once, both in its original form in Italian (Che sciagura, the
title of a short text published in 1 929) and in its French
equivalent
quel malheur (in Malone meurt). Ironically enough, the story thus
entitled tells of Belacqua s marriage after Lucy s death to Thelma
murmured
all",
20
BELACQUA
and tone, harmonize to give a fairly coherent impression of a
certain man s life. (In the French Nouvelles we find the same
technique of a series of apergus combining to form a picture of
one existence.) Furthermore, the style throughout More Pricks
and Dream is characterized by a calculated and elaborate allusiveness, together with an extensively developed verbal irony at its
best this can give rise to suggestive and witty prose, at its worst it
is pedantry pure and simple, which,
arrogantly disdaining simpler
formulations, prefers to employ an esoteric manner more effec
5
tions, often in
which More Pricks than Kicks can be even remotely compared for
this systematic use of allusion to the literature of the past and to
historical and geographical data is The Waste Land, where, of
course, the intention is wholly different.) Here is a typical passage,
with some of the echoes indicated:
Moore there with
Bovril into Salome, thought Belacqua, and
head on his shoulders. Doubt, Despair [Bunyan] and Scrounging,
Tommy
his
my
insatiate,
soleil est
God will you not take a loiny cavalier servente and make me hornante rem and get some ease of the old pruritus and leave me in
peace to my own penny death and my own penny rapture.
of
mad
Paris, for it
to avoid
is
completely:
It was not when he ... er ... held her in his arms, nor yet when
he remained remote, and shared, so to speak, her air and sensed her
essence, but only when he sat down to himself in an approximate
silence and had a vision on the strength of her or let fly a poem at her,
anyhow felt some reality that somehow was she fidgeting in the cata
combs of his spirit, that he had her truly and totally, according to his
God.
a beautiful book, one that he loved, that he had stolen from shelves at
great personal risk, with pertinent dedication
from the
drawn by the
short hairs
text.
The time then comes round, after the receipt of the Smerals Billet Doux which is placed here in the
Dream, for his next
dina
22
BELACQUA
or can be
episodes/
comments
Beckett sardonically.
In the second chapter of the novel Belacqua returns to Dublin,
where he meets the Alba and enjoys many an intimate and sophis
ticated tete-&-tete with her (but never, the author insists, anything
that could be construed as a carnal relation). The Alba, a tired
valetudinarian, but also a
woman
in More
Belacqua s approval, and he, as far as can be, with hers. As
Pricks than Kicks, they leave the Frica s party together, then have
a drink chez elle, after which Belacqua comes out ( you didn t
we were going to allow him to
suppose, it is to be hoped, that
with the policeman on his
and
clashes
there
the
)
night
spend
comes to an end.
the
At
this
home.
manuscript
point
way
Both of these works are set largely in Dublin, and are per
meated with the atmosphere of the city: street-names, names of
the College, the monuments, all
bridges, the river, the canal,
of dialogue we hear the city s
snatches
In
recur.
continually
its low publics with their
brogue and feel the ambiance of
for the most part from
recruited
but
habitues,
kindly
rough
the
dole The working
on
and
joxers
vague
dockers, railwaymen
in preference
seeks
whose
of
Belacqua
company
Dublin,
people
to that of the incontinent bosthoons of his own class , the
aesthetes and the impotent , are affectionately observed, albeit
from a distance, for Belacqua is an outsider as far as they are con
cerned: he is idle, he is educated, and he is a Protestant, a dirty
.
low-down
city
and
its citizens
are contemplated in
23
is
these lines:
he delights in polishing
him
as
to
oeuvres in Ding-Dong;
lect
24
is
coupled
BELACQUA
with a faculty for acting with, insufficient motivation that his
creator maintains to be serious enough to make a mental home the
place for him. But what Belacqua (unlike Murphy) wants is not
the comfort of a padded cell but a return to the bliss of the womb:
*And then he
,
said, I
mugger, no
sweats
caul,
on my
devoted entirely to the living, by which is not meant this or that par
but the nameless multitude of the current quick,
ticular unfortunate,
life,
we
positive sin against God and Society. But Belacqua could not
he was alive to no other kind than this: final, uniform and
for
help it,
continuous, unaffected by circumstance, assigned without discrimina
tion to all the undead, without works. The public, taking cognisance of
it
no use for
25
of
grotesque by-product:
all
tained no injury, was sitting up against the kerb, for aU the world as
though a pair of hands had taken it up and set it down there.
.
In Walking Out,
neutral manner:
Lucy
accident
is
the wheels of the car jolted over what was left of the jennet,
expired there and then in the twilight, sans jeter un cri. Lucy
however was not so fortunate, being crippled for life and her beauty
.
who
dreadfully marred.
Belacqua s pity is, rather, for all the living [who] dare
continue full of misery It is for this reason that we find. in Dante
.
and
is
down below?
Why not,
he wonders,
together?
mercy in the stress of sacrifice, a little mercy to
rejoice against judgement. He thought of Jonah and the gourd and the
little
pity of a jealous
26
get
it
in
BELACQUA
Belacqua, for all his eccentricity, is therefore not lacking in
compassion either for the living dead in Hell or for the living
he appears
In his
is:
will
ally all
little
27
Sam
a dud mystic
Ms
He
meant mystique
ratd,
the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night, after music,
with the wine of music, Rhine wine, it was given to us to cotton on,
to behold him as he was, face to face, even as he sometimes contrived
to
behold himself.
flattened
content to remain
end. I gave
so,
and
so on.
28
BELACQUA
Ravenna! exclaimed the Countess, memory tugging at her care
fully cultivated heart-strings, did I hear someone say Ravenna?
Allow me said the rising strumpet: *a sandwich: egg, tomato, cu
cumber.
Did you know blundered the Man of Law, that the Swedes have
no fewer than seventy varieties of Smoerrbroed?
The voice of the arithmomaniac was heard: The arc he said, stoop
ing to all in the great plainness of his words, is longer than its chord.
Madam knows Ravenna? said the paleographer.
Do I know Ravenna exclaimed the Parabimbi. Sure I know
Ravenna. A sweet and noble city.
You know of course, said the Man of Law, that Dante died there.
Right, said the Parabimbi, so he did.
,
You know
of course,
that his
tomb
in the
is
Piazza Byron. I did his epitaph hi the eye into blank heroics.
You knew of course, said the paleographer, that under Belisarius
?
My
What
said the
dear,
declared, I
flair for
making people
himself
he expelled
his
as a
friend
Belacqua
grief modelled the features
finally Hairy,
).
They
he
are,
improving as
with
others, the
together
on the occasion of
his wedding:
bee, for their Bounty; the Maids, with special reference to Belle-Belle
29
friend
and
best of
small a
satirical
function of
Belacqua, let us examine the motifs that can be discerned not only
here, but ultimately in nearly all Beckett s writings: themes of
from
alienation
and
release.
With regard
to society, it should
He
we have
as
keeping to the
same grocer
to buttonhole
Wet Night we
character
is
frequently emphasized. In
intimidated he was rude
when
50
BELACQUA
In the same way,
Lucy s death he withdraws into his garden
and plays with the snapdragons:
after
To kneel before them in the dust and clay of the ground and throttle
was the recreation he
them gently until their tongues protruded
.
found best suited to his melancholy at this season and most satisfying
to that fairy tale need of his nature whose crises seemed to correspond
with those of his precious ipsissimosity, if such a beautiful word may
be
said to exist.
complete retreat
and
In
Dream of Fair
to halt in
pass, not
game
to
the
goes into a
sees
him to realize
his
own
class, it
that
He
never at any time did he mean anything at all to his inferiors.
make
some
to
same
store
the
at
same
hour
the
could enter
trifling
at the same hour in
indispensable purchase, he could receive his coffee
.
shame.
Here Belacqua s fear of his fellows and his preference for soli
tude is shown in conflict with a longing for recognition of some
kind from ordinary people, a recognition which in the Dream at
least he never obtains. It is doubtful whether he even achieves it
in More Pricks than Kicks, for all his assiduous frequenting of
back-street grocers shops and public bars, and despite his fas
cinated interest in pedlars, beggars and tramps, such as the
51
sells
him
seats in
who
It is
Women
We
his nose
- ah
solitude,
when
man
at last
Tom
in
ever, that Belacqua s perversion is that of being a peeping
on
in
lovers
the
on
one
woods
occasion
,
5
bicycle-clips
spying
and
to his fiancee
Lucy. The
latter bears
all
his
for life
is
him
them.
Belacqua has in fact a manifest horror of physical love. Early
52
BELACQUA
of
all
Dante
of course
it
rapt spirit
of
him, blithe and buxom and young and lusty, a lascivious petulant
virgin, a generous mare neighing after a great horse, caterwauling
after a great stallion, and amorously lay open the double-jug dugs.
Later, Belacqua asserts there is no such thing as love in a thalamus , and in More Pricks than Kicks the same idea of the incom
patibility of love
and sex
is
insisted upon.
Daphne.
women
is
counter-balanced by his
less
woman
and pain ,
in spite of her
youth she shows little interest in the pleasures of the appetite,
and since Belacqua is happiest in adoration felt at a distance, her
It is
full of lassitude
In
all
55
sinister
no interest in
imitable style to captivate all those who had curbed their instinct to
join in the vile necking expressly in order to see what they could make
of this pale little person so self-possessed
and urbane.
When
collection
Echo
first
pub
lished in 1955.
Ellis in
Open upon her concave breast as on a lectern lies Portigliotti s Penombre Claustrali, bound in tawed caul. In her talons earnestly she
grasps Sade
Such
is
He
many
54
BELACQUA
The
The
fragile dykes
and
thickets
mare.
instinct to
the
mind suddenly
reprieved, ceasing to be
an annex of the
restless
body, the glare of understanding switched off. The lids of the hard
aching mind close, there is suddenly gloom, in the mind; not sleep, not
nor dream, with its sweats and terrors, but a waking ultra-cerebral
obscurity, thronged with grey angels. ... In the umbra, the tunnel,
yet,
when
the
it
was
real thought
and
real
living, living thought. Thought not skivvying for living nor living
chivvying thought up to the six-and-eightpenny conviction, but live
cerebration that
slops.
55
split:
his
his
sudden
fits
of
enthu
siasm were an ailment resulting from his being run down. His
lunch, moreover, is ritualistic because his hunger is more of mind,
I need scarcely say, than of body $ in Murphy also the same idea
occurs:
a ritual vitiated
by no
Belacqua
56
BELACQUA
drowned by the wit and
particular quality
57
Chapter 2
MURPHY
There
is
man and
his stars.
MURPHY
AFTER the
London
he
told
own.
albeit
58
MURPHY
astrological nature. He is quite
or
virtue of
without profession, occupation
trade, and survives
an arrangement with his landlady, who fraudulently adds a supple
"by
ment
and then
hands
Murphy
Counihan
Murphy
failure.
Neary
to look for
Murphy and
after
destiny, Celia,
him to go back to her own. He, unable to live without her for long,
finally agrees to look for
of incentives based
work if she
felt the least confidence that is to say, get his horoscope from
swami in Berwick Market. This, once acquired, is found to
decree that not before the first Sunday in 1 956 to fall on the fourth
of the month will Murphy be able to seek work with the maxi
he
59
wort
for
seeking
Murphy
four.
him
Murphy,
struck
by
a sudden
he
at last a race of
where a man
that
before that
It is difficult for
him who
lives outside
40
MURPHY
and together double-crossed Neary, join in
Murphy s expense while Neary expresses his
witty exchanges
of
them both. The next day they all take a
tolerant contempt
s
Celia
taxi to
lodging, only to find that Murphy no longer lives
Celia has moved into a smaller room, formerly
and
that
with her,
an
old
butler who has cut his throat. Two days later
occupied by
word arrives from the Mercyseat that Murphy is dead. The gasfire he had had installed (neither he nor Ticklepenny having con*
sidered the safer possibilities of an oil-stove, or realized that chains
in lavatories are easily confused) had exploded after he had re
crossed each other
at
Lr.
whole
if possible
to be executed
and
be
Neary, relieved of his search, pays off Wylie and Miss Counihan,
will, we are given to understand, eventually get married,
faute de mieux. Cooper takes Murphy s remains, to scatter them,
who
The
plot of
Murphy,
as will
be seen from
floor,
this synopsis, is
came
41
be
killed
by a
The
new economy
scene
is
troubles):
his
head in
his hands.
said,
Wylie,
so kind?
A less economical writer might have filled this short passage out
with such transitions as Wylie called the waitress , The waitress
totted up the bill and said , and so on. The scene, lightened of
these superfluities, gains in vividness by the inclusion of the
waitress s actual mutterings as she makes out the bill, and at the
cafe*,
The leaves began to lift and scatter, the higher branches to complain,
the sky broke and curdled over flecks of skim blue, the pine of
smoke toppled into the east and vanished, the pond was suddenly a
little
42
sails.
MURPHY
And of the latter (Celia
Murphy has called while
He
wait.
silence,
ter.
Any message,
away
s
prose thus draws its strength both from its economy and
use of poetically-charged understatement. He never over
Beckett
its
not the case can be seen in the discreet sympathy of the passage
that closes the novel (Mr. Kelly, a frail old man, has lost his kite
in Kensington Gardens just before closing time):
Mr. Kelly tottered to his feet, tossed up Ms arms high and wide and
quavered away down the path that led to the water, a ghastly, lament
able figure.
Celia caught him on the margin of the pond. The end
of the line skimmed the water, jerked upward in a wild whirl, vanished
joyfully in the dusk. Mr. Kelly went limp in her arms. Someone
fetched the chair and helped to get him aboard. Celia toiled along the
narrow path into the teeth of the wind, then faced north up the wide
hill. There was no shorter way home. The yellow hair fell across her
face.
She closed her eyes.
.
All
out.
45
constantly informed
The bed was tiny. Miss Carridge could not imagine how the two of
them were ever going to manage. When not fired by cupidity, Miss
Carridge
as
well as by irony:
They belonged
to the
for
Irony of this sort runs throughout the book. The prose is more
over of such denseness that much of the humour can easily be
missed: Murphy indeed amply repays close reading. Attention to
the detail of the text will reveal stroke after stroke of wit as well
as unlock the intricate allusiveness of the writing, which adds
richness; for Beckett s prose
of a Christian nature:
those
echoes, especially
considerably to
its
is
charged with
it
to apt use:
Oh, if you have,* cried Miss Counihan, if you have news of my love,
She was an omnivorous reader.
resistive in particular
s soft
solicita
tions.
Places in
preceding books.
44
MURPHY
West Brompton Mew, the
is
that the
and the place in high society that she, in many ways a Madame
Verdurin manqu&e, covets so highly (though it is one of the little
mysteries of the book how she came to imagine the seedy solipsist a likely stepping-stone to the presidency of a coterie). Indeed
she would have all the cocktail-party hostess s sophisticated arti
education has been of the slight
ficiality but for the fact that her
est. She is the Smeraldina of the social gehenna, and where she
falls short of the robustness of the former s sensuality, she amply
compensates for it by her ambition and greed, vices of which the
45
we
do not wish to
too severe
Mr.
the
to her, we may say that she
Facing-both-ways of the
novel, and as such is constantly condemned out of her own mouth:
if
"be
is
She went on to say that she could not very well renounce a young
man, such a nice young man, who for all she knew to the contrary was
steadily amassing a large fortune so that she might not be without any
of the little luxuries to which she was accustomed, and whom of course
she loved very dearly, unless she had superlative reasons for doing,
such for example as would flow from
overwhelming evidence of
infidelity and economic failure. She welcomed the happy chance that
allowed her to communicate this er - modified view of the situation
to Mr. Neary, looking so much more - er - youthful without his
.
whiskers.
instructs in
Apmonia,
as when he wanted a drink and could not get one, or fell among Gaels
and could not escape, or felt the pangs of hopeless sexual inclination.
since it
is
usual with
as
moment s
Mr. Kelly
is
its
Malone
Dies:
He
lamp
did not look a day over ninety, cascades of light from the bedon the hairless domes and bosses of his skull, scored his rav
fell
He
found
it
hard to think,
his
body seemed
spread over a vast area, parts would wander away and get lost if he
did not keep a sharp look-out, he felt them fidgeting to be off. He was
vigilant and agitated, his vigilance was agitated,
darts in his mind at this part and that.
46
MURPHY
In a similar
Cooper
only visible
alcoholic depressant.
one-eyed man,
walk, like that of a
triorchous
Murphy s
sit
down and
take off
Among many
Carridge whose
end
affliction is acute
is
suffers
from duck
s disease,
one of the
sound of a
flute,
county, I
He
Celia,
sighed.
however,
is
is an attractive
green-eyed, yellowhaired Irish girl, lacking all guile. She goes off to live with Murphy
because she loves him, and she continues to love him to the last:
on the way to the post-mortem she feels nothing any longer, her
But earlier she
affective mechanisms seemed to be arrested
insists that he find a job to support them both (thus relieving her
of the need to continue in a profession she finds dull and dis
agreeable) and fails to see why work is anathema to him. Little
by little, however, she begins to recognize the force of his argu
ments: it struck her that a merely indolent man would not be so
and before long she
affected by the prospect of employment
.
nearby Market,
47
And
She got out of her clothes and into the rocking chair. Now the silence
silence, no longer strangled. The silence not of
of quiet air,
But in
so far as
her lover
her
efforts to
ever Murphy
is
make
all
man
to her.
Ireland
Like the
loosed her
tual like
is
a less significant
MURPHY
character than the protagonist. All Beckett s fictional works re
volve completely round their hero, and Murphy is to such an
he
suffers
from
that Neary
feet, like
of the caul
off
and
and
is
omy
now the
colour of verdigris,
of
He
he
is
interested
is
Murphy believes the future holds great things in store for him,
but
at present
He
is
tolerant
was profound
he
(
)
antithesis of his
is
a chronic emeritus
as indolent as Belacqua.
whole
practice, faith
and intention
).
He
is also
much
him
mimic
ridicule
as
ing Christ
parthian shaft: It
is finished
This
may
explain his
For Murphy,
therefore
like
more
rocking at speed.
The
mind
spinning away from his unquiet body, and by the time it stops
rocking, his body is still and he himself is far away in his Elysium,
in the freedom of that light and dark that did not clash, nor alter-
49
is
devoted
1
This
hollow sphere, a universe unto itself, excluding
nothing it does not itself contain. There is both a physical mode and
a mental mode, and the latter has three zones: the light, contain
ing forms with parallel in the physical mode 5 the half light, con
taining forms without such parallel 5 and the dark, a flux of forms
forms becoming and crumbling into the fragments of a new
becoming Murphy s metaphysic is therefore not so much Ideal
to a
deffence et illustration
of the
term Murphy
mind
pictures itself as a
to Leibnizian monadism
Murphy received,
1 It is
the mental
Murphy
50
MURPHY
here the whole physical fiasco became a howling success
gave
and here he can exact retribution for the world s blows and in
dulge in the pleasures of reprisal, by exposing Miss Carridge to
rape by Ticklepenny, and so on.
In the second zone, the half light, the pleasure was contem
plation 5 here he indulges in his Belacqua fantasy by virtue of
which he imagines himself in Antepurgatory with the late.
repentant,
down
looking
at
dawn
and the sun obliquing to the north as it rose, immune from expia
tion until he should have dreamed it all through again, with the
downright dreaming of an infant, from the spermarium to the crema
torium. He thought so highly of this post-mortem situation, its advan
tages were present in such detail to his mind, that he actually hoped he
might live to be old. Then he would have a long time lying there
dreaming, watching the dayspring run through its zodiac, before the
sea
toil
up
hill to Paradise.
The last zone is the dark, where he is no longer merely free and
sovereign, but a mote in the dark of absolute freedom ... a
point in the ceaseless unconditioned generation and passing away
of line
was pleasant
ing on the shelf beside Belacqua, watching the dawn break crooked. But
how much more pleasant was the sensation of being a missile without
is
is
He taught (ubi
the reasonable man, knowing he is
nowhere independent except in his own mind, and able to govern
and was deeply
51
own mental
states,
attempts to control any part of the external world, not even his
own body. Such a man, if he follows Geulincx, does not act against
passion,
but in indifference to
it.
ever before at his own little dungeon in Spain But the key-words
here are as he insisted on supposing 5 for Murphy over-simplifies
the matter, the patients are not as blissfully happy as he imagines,
.
hours he
of chess1
game
patient,
symmetry
The
realization that
unseen* determines
he
Murphy
to
is
1
Characteristically, Beckett lists the 86 moves of the game in the usual
way, under two columns, White (Murphy) and Black (Mr. Endon), and adds a
detailed commentary. Similarly, Celia is first introduced
by the enumeration
of her measurements.
52
MURPHY
return to Celia, after first returning to his garret to recuper
his
ate
energies by spending a few hours in his chair, but it is
is in his chair that he is tilled.
he
while
liaps
comments
55
We
and not the other way round. His love of solitude is most clearly
demonstrated by his nostalgia for the womb, which is insisted
upon (the padded cells of the Mercyseat he sees to be as cosy as
a womb), and by his tendency to look upon his birth as a calamity.
Even more lonely than Belacqua, Murphy seems nonetheless
to be free from the former s finicky refusal of sex. His enthusiasm
for music (by which he means quite the opposite from Belacqua)
is considerable, and Neary admits
regretfully that women find
but
Murphy s
series of
setting
defeated
dallies
MURPHY
than crushes him outright. Nor can it with justice be called sterile
stylistically, it is a rich and skilfully written book, and has as
many interesting characters as one can reasonably ask of such a
work. It is in fact as far as Beckett is prepared to go with the tradi
tional novel, and within that form it is, if not a great book, an
amusing and attractive one. Moreover, the note of horror and dis
gust which D. Powell remarked on when it was first published
becomes considerably less muted as Beckett s work develops, for
Murphy is the last of the heroes who can be described as a citizen
of the world; in Watt the tone comes much nearer to the strident
cry of loneliness and despair that is characteristically Beckettian.
For the present, moreover, the dualistic issue slips into the back
ground, and the main preoccupation now, at least for a while, is
with the terrors of exile, which means not only exclusion from
the world of men but also the painful bewilderment of inhabiting
a universe where little seems to make sense any longer and where
it is painfully difficult to decide what is, or is not, truly known.
55
Part
Two
A CASE IN A THOUSAND
About 1934
Chapter 5
WATT
Wown man
nicht
sprechen kann y
daruber
muss
man
schweigen.
WITTGENSTEIN
To know you
are beyond
is
when peace
enters in.
MOLLOY
of
fled
Merlin
Companion
series at
series.
first
59
but finding
and
less
by the
Mr. Hackett was not sure that it was not a parcel, a carpet for example,
or a roll of tarpaulin, wrapped up in dark paper and tied about the
middle with a cord.
This object turns out to be Watt, with
whom Mr.
Nixon, alone of
the party,
is
is still
McCann,
60
WATT
Knott. In a long speech Arsene introduces him to life at the
house,
and tells Watt that he willnot do the same for Azssuccessor. The first
part of the novel ends with Watt, Arsene having as mysteriously
vanished, watching the dawn light creep into the silent kitchen.
The next
Mr. Knott
chapter
tells of
house (the
called Erskine).
He
is,
Watt
service
on the ground
floor of
from the Galls, father and son, piano tuners, since this apparently
simple and straightforward incident soon loses all definite mean
ing for
ties.
him and
During
this period
Mr. Knott
food
when
telling
two men. Moreover, the only thing that Watt can clearly remem
ber to
tell
Sam
is
Sam
describes
Watt
61
is
coming Watt
.
arrives,
how long on
the
to
mean
so
Once
to
much,
clear of
him who
Mr. Knott
stays, to
s
house,
him who
Watt
goes
Mr. Gorman,
life isn t
He
raised high his hands and spread them out, in a gesture of worship. He
all is said and
then replaced them in the pockets, of his trousers.
When
done, he said.
And they
The
62
WATT
But there is so little com
outside
and
the
merce between the house
world, that it is as if it
its
even
stood nowhere on the known globe:
dependence on such
direct line to a city, probably Dublin.
preposterously unreal.
The minor characters of this novel are, perhaps deliberately,
more clearly delineated than the chief actors, Watt, Sam and Mr.
Knott. Arsene, the first servant, reveals a gloomy disposition in
his parting speech, for he regards life as an ordure, from begin
blush to say even blas
ning to end and mentions the bitter and I
outsiders as the
Lynch family
is
phemous words that have escaped him now and then during his
service. Arthur, on the other hand, is much more easy-going,
ready to gossip light-heartedly in the garden with Mr. Graves,
completely silent, rarely deigning to address
a single word to Watt while the latter serves under him on the
Catholic
ground floor. And Mr. Spiro, the talkative latitudinarian
Lady McCann the belligerent chatelaine and Mrs. Gor
is
layman,
man the fishwoman, all have their own characteristics, as do
the three railwaymen, Mr. Gorman fils the station-master, Mr.
Case the signalman and Mr. Nolan the porter. The Irish voices
of the latter, incidentally, ring as authentically true in Watt as
do those in the radio play All that Fall.
Watt himself, on the other hand^ is a much hazier character,
a deliberate enigma. Although it is stated explicitly that he is a
reincarnation of Murphy ( he had once known [the stars] famil
by name, when dying in London ) Watt, like all the
iarly
Beckettian heroes to
come
after
him,
is
in this
65
"be
fact that, as
and-three.
his right leg as far as possible towards the south, and then to turn his
bust as far as possible towards the south and at the same time to fling
first
The
bend.
inverted speech:
His progress was slow and devious, on account no doubt of his having
no eyes in the back of his head, and painful too, I fancy, for often he
struck against the trunks of trees, or in the tangles of underwood
caught his foot, and fell to the ground, flat on his back.
This boot Watt had bought, for eight pence, from a onelegged
who, having
and a fortiori
64
his foot, in
man
an accident, was
WATT
happy to realize, on his discharge from hospital, for such a sum, his
unique remaining marketable asset. He little suspected that he owed
this good fortune to Watt s having found, some days before, on the
sea-shore, the shoe-, stiff with brine, but otherwise shipshape.
(Let us note in passing that the play on boots that is an important
feature of Waiting for Godot is thus foreshadowed in Watt.)
is
man
of
some bodily
a teetotaler,
much
So
an experienced
which whisper
Now
murmured,
understood
The
all,
Watt
existence as mental
s district,
voice of a
woman
telling him
named Price
in the dust
tion
65
so on)
The purpose
course.
of this motif
is
separateness
ment:
Watt
absence.
suffered neither
relief,
him
again.
his
on his bum.
time below
stairs,
WATT
voice both rapid and low, and that the
years to tell, then
whole
tale took
some
difficulties experienced in
not
such
matters
as
those
here in question, but the
only
formulating,
entire body of Watt s experience, from the moment of his entering
Mr. Knott
Sam
establishment to the
story,
and
this in itself
have left out some of the things that Watt told me, though
was most careful to note down all at the time, in my little notebook.
It is so difficult, with a long story like the story that Watt told, even
when one is most careful to note down all at the time, in one s little
notebook, not to leave out some of the things that were told, and not to
foist in other things that were never told, never never told at all.
I
may
tion,
He and Watt only meet when the weather is right for them both,
since
But whereas
for
whom
would come
flocking
67
our breasts.
sit
down
its sister,
or to
To
think,
when one
is
was, the pain pain because it shall be; the glad acts
the panting the tremb
grown proud, the proud acts growing stubborn;
true true no longer,
and
the
to
towards a being gone, a being
come;
pleasure because
it
ling
true not yet. And to decide not to smile after all, sit
the cicadas, wishing it were night, wishing
ting in the shade, hearing
it were morning, saying, No, it is not the heart, no, it is not the liver,
and the
false
no,
it is
in the hollow, at the foot of all the hills at last, the ways down,
the ways up, and free, free at last, for an instant free at last, nothing
one
is
at last.
From this it would seem that Sam, although at first sight a mere
onlooker and recorder of events, has the resigned pessimism of
Arsene, who had been driven to say:
And yet it is useless not to seek, not to want, for when you cease to
seek you start to find, and when you cease to want, then life begins to
ram her fish and chips down your gullet until you puke, and then the
and then the puked
puke down your gullet until you puke the puke,
it.
The
to
like
glutton castaway, the drunkard
puke until you begin
in
lecher
the
in the desert,
prison, they are the happy ones. To hunger,
thirst, lust,
every day afresh and every day in vain, after the old prog,
68
WATT
the old booze, the old whores, that s the nearest we ll ever get to
felicity, the new porch and the very latest garden. I pass on the tip for
what it is worth.
The bane,
as well as
the fascination, of
all
changes continually:
For one day Mr. Knott would be tall, fat, pale and dark, and the next
and fair, and the next sturdy, middlesized, yellow
and ginger, and the next small, fat, pale and fair, and the next middlethin and ginger, and the next tall, yellow, dark and
sized, flushed,
sturdy
light;
now
smart,
the passage ways of his home, a hat, or cap, or imprisoning his rare his
wanton hair, a net. And as often his head was bare.
out, in
its
corpulence,
complexion, height and even hair, and of course in its way of moving
and of not moving, that Watt could never have supposed it was the
same, if he had not known it was Mr. Knott.
Mr. Knott
s routine is a
rigid one, but inside that framework he
allows himself a certain freedom. His food is served to him cold,
being left in the dining-room. Mr. Knott can then either eat his
meal, or leave it, or eat only part of it, but whatever he does, the
same time-table of the serving and removal of his food is always
adhered to. If part, or whole, of his meal is left, it is given to a
69
much
first floor,
so that
in this long chain of consistence, a chain stretching from the long dead
to the far unborn, the notion of the arbitrary could only survive as the
first
There had been a time when they would have pleased him, and the
thought they tendered, that Mr. Knott too was serial, in a vermicular
series.
little
and
information.
He
changes of position, but for all that the empty hush, the airless
gloom that surrounds him is constantly maintained. Mr. Knott is
fair linguist
70
WATT
given to solitary dactylic ejaculations of extraordinary vigour,
accompanied by spasms of the members. The chief of these were:
Exelmans! Cavendish! Habbakuk! Ecchymose! However, he
never seems to engage in actual conversation with anyone. Watt
never heard him speak to Erskine, and between himself and his
master no conversation is ever exchanged. Knott is even such an
extraordinarily negative figure that Sam in the course of his
narrative occasionally confuses his name with Watt s, and by the
end of the novel we are successfully convinced that for all of us,
just as for
attainable.
The
novels.
There
is
or of the policeman
with
all
it,
summer the
doorstep.
71
On the other hand, and this is the important point, most events
in the hook are narrated at fussy, unnecessary
length:
side.
Watt s first care, now that he was safe and sound, with his
bags,
within the station, was to turn, and to gaze, through the wicket, the
so recently.
baroque
choice of language:
ears,
and a small
the exhaus
wooden bridge
is
anxiety lest
chain,
and
so got
(Watt knew
nothing about painting), a circle and its centre in search of each other,
or a circle and its centre in search of a centre and a circle
respectively,
72
WATT
and
or a circle
ively, or a
centre in search of
its
circle
and
a circle
respectively, or
circle respectively,
its
its
[and so on].
As we are thus told all the possible things this picture (the one in
Erskine s room) can represent, so too we are told all the many
ways in which the five members of a committee may look at each
other, all the different movements and variations of movements
that Mr. Knott can make from window, to door, to bed, to fire, and
all the changes of position he can subject his furniture to, the tall
boy, the washstand, the nightstool and the dressing-table. These
descriptions frequently stretch over many pages.
But detail of this kind is not the only means towards precision:
of a schoolmaster, is frequently em
repetition, very like that
ployed,
as,
by means
word
dish,
clasp in:
in:"
"^
known about it has notyet all been said. Much has been
but not all. Not that many things remain to be said, on the subject
of the Galls father and son, for they do not;
in:
Art and Con were great chewers of tobacco twist, and never had
enough, never never had enough tobacco twist, for their liking.
he was
told.
commas
Moreover, the careful use of subjunctives, and also of
illiterate
as
an
wherever
person would
possible (almost
placed
73
He could recall
and advantageous person, for she was amputated well above the knee,
whom he had pursued with his assiduities on no fewer than three
distinct occasions, unstrapped her wooden leg, and laid aside her
crutch.
The
Watt:
Had his
and
he
might have heard, behind the door, a disquieting sound, that of solilo
quy, under dictation, and proceeded with care. But no, he turned the
key and dealt, with his boot, the door a dunt that sent it flying inwards,
at a great speed.
Stylistic
humour
of this kind
God
Or
is
else
he
cried, as
of asides
God
is
is
accompanied by more
explicit
hand upon
it.
off
narrative:
references.
bad
humour
taste:
74
is
in
WATT
Watt s smile was farther peculiar in this, that it seldom came singly,
but was followed after a short time by another,
true. In this it resembled the fart.
Irony, too,
is
less
pronounced
it is
association (for it
tastes,
and even I fear practices, all too common in academic circles, and
now
so looking
have touched
it
with a
mad creature,
To
when shadows
fall
Jug-jug! Jug-jug!
I here in thrall
My wanton thoughts
do turn.
more a
Watt
is,
indeed, even
The
stylistic
literary allusions
75
make
all
Watt s eyes filled with tears that he could not stem, and they
down his fluted cheeks unchecked, in a steady flow, refreshing
him greatly.
flowed
is
noticeable,
Watt might have broken the door down, with an axe, or a crow,
small charge of explosive, but this might have aroused Erskine s
picions, and Watt did not want that.
or a
sus
what
MS
haemophilia is,
enlargement of the prostate, an exclusively male disorder.
But not in this work He repeats himself endlessly; and all this in
continual mockery of a craft in which he is, for all that, well
skilled, for if this book cannot be described as highly readable,
it can certainly be said to contain
interesting and original prose.
the
deliberate
of
the logical sequence which is
Besides,
flouting
of
the
traditional
usually required
novel, and which Beckett res
with
pected
tongue-in-the-cheek punctilio in Murphy, shows that
he has broken with the conventional form, with the Vulgarity of
a plausible concatenation of which he speaks impatiently in his
monograph on Proust. Watt, as Christine Brooke-Rose has
pointed out, is in fact an anti-novel in the tradition of Cervantes,
like
76
WATT
Furetifcre
as
to tell a
as dig
and
book; moreover,
we now turn.
The jtnost obvious theme of Watt} the one that strikes the
reader at once, is that of the alienation of the hero from the rest
of humanity. At the very beginning, he appears as a mysterious
and uncertain person to his fellow men - Mr. Hackett and Mr.
and Mrs. Nixon cannot decide who he is or what he does, and Mr.
Hackett himself is almost frantic in his wish to gain some informa
tion about Watt:
He did not know when he had been more intrigued, nay, he did not
know when he had been so intrigued. He did not know either what it
was that so intrigued him. What is it that so intrigues me, he said
.
burn with
Watt
is
curiosity,
therefore an
unknown
Mr. Nixon
to us?
for no reason except that she dislikes the look of him walking along
the public road, and the railwaymen at the end of the book injure
him with their slop-bucket. When he comes round, they feel
impelled to ask him who the devil are you, and what the hell do
you want? , but Watt s only form of reply is to put his hat on. In
fact he behaves everywhere as if oblivious of the people around
him: only when he sees a face on the other side of the ticket-
window
tion around
lar
way,
at the
with the hat and bags and in Mr. Micks, his successor, he in
spires nothing but terror.
Watt is indifferent to this situation of exile. Why should he
5
care about
it,
since his
own body is
deserting
him?
was now fully two hours since Watt had passed water ... he who
hourly passed an urgent water, a delicious water, in the ordinary way.
This last regular link with the screen, for he did not count as such his
weekly stool, nor biannual equinoctial emission in vacuo, he now
envisaged its relaxation, and eventual rupture, with sadness, with
It
gladness.
tion, in
Watt
78
WATT
which takes him a step further in the dolorous calvary that is the
way of the Beckettian hero from Belacqua s Dublin to the muddy
netherworld of Pirn.
*
More
gives
copy-writer
Further than
this, it will
Gorman
trail,
is not
necessary to suppose so. For
and
Mrs.
Gorman had not the time, indesstrength,
pensable to even the most perfunctory coalescence. The irony of life
Of life in lovel That he who has the time should lack the force, that
sweet, so frail? It
she
who
such
as
79
We
simp
are, in
The
whether he
is
him
the long blue days, for his head, for his side, and the little
paths for his feet, and all the brightness to touch and gather , and
at night rest in the quiet house ... by a window opening on
refuge, the
little
Knott
being
comes
s as
and candour,
all
the old
soil
man
harmony
80
WATT
which in fact seem to have become oneself. One s
euphoria is not
for
dissipated by the fact that one has to work at Mr. Knott
s,
any
he
working not merely for Mr. Knott in person, and for Mr. Knott s
establishment, but also, and indeed chiefly, for himself, that he may
abide, as he is, where he is, and that where he is
abide about him,
is
may
as it
is.
Unable to
lively at
first,
resist
all is well,
softly, into
And
wedge
it was, as it were,
$
the reversed metamorphosis, the Laurel into
Daphne, the old
thing where it always was, back again 5 it was a realization that
attainment is far less agreeable than
longing (the drunkard in
the desert is the happy one), and an intuition of the
presence of
what did not exist Arsene ends his speech (after much
digression)
with the implication that Watt s experience will be like his own:
For in truth the same things happen to us all,
especially to men
in our situation, whatever that is, if only we chose to know it*.
.
It
s house funda
mentally for religious reasons $ he explains his quest to Sam later
in these terms (I transcribe his inverted
jargon):
Abandoned my little to
little
find him.
To
love
homeless. This
heart.
Of nought.
F
81
The resemblance
to the
nought that
is
without precedent at
accepts his
He had
fifteen, of
names and
last
his categories:
to say,
That is what
happened then;
for things do not yet show any tendency to vanish in the farce of
their properties But Watt has not long served at Mr. Knott s
before there occurs the incident to which he is unable to attach
.
An old man and a middle-aged man call at the house, and intro
duce themselves as the Galls, father and son, piano-tuners. The
younger man carries out the work, both men then exchange
gloomy comments on the fate of the piano, its tuner, and its
as the incident
pianist, and finally take their leave. But simple
sounds, it is not at all simple for Watt: it gradually lost, in the
nice processes of its light, its sound, its impacts, and its rhythm,
all
literal
and
a]! his
He
adult
feels
life,
this
need
is
incident
82
WATT
what they might be induced to mean For what really dis
tresses him is that a thing that was nothing had happened, with
with aUthe clarity and solidity
the utmost formal distinctness
of something^, and his distress is constant, as it was also for his
predecessors, Erskine, Arsene, Walter and Vincent, in the same
predicament. When he manages to evolve a hypothesis to dispel
into
evolved lost
its
virtue, after
occurrence? Especially as
so
Watt
is
we
obliged,
many
feels,
.
the entire body of
experiei^ced in formulating
experience at Mr. Knott s establishment.
Such incidents as these are only the beginning of Watt s
troubles. He needs someone to apply words to his situation,
difficulties
Watt
because
now he found
A pot, for some reason, ceases, for Watt, to be a pot any more, and
soon he discovers that of himself too he could no longer affirm
anything that did not seem false His need of semantic succour
.
though (as for Murphy) things have always been his best friends
on the whole, however, he does long for a voice, if only Erskine s,
to speak of the little world of Mr. Knott s establishment, with
the old words, the old credentials , at least before his world has
become unspeakable and he grown used to his loss of species
When Watt does learn to bear the fact that a nothing had hap
and even, in a shy way, to like it , it is by then too
pened
5
late
Watt
is,
in
is
in ruins.
85
he
is
even described
as
meagre
two seemed
to
Watt to merit
heard
it,
smelt
it,
tasted
it,
touched
man in
a stupor he saw
it,
it.
the same
He
little by little Watt abandoned all hope, all fear, of ever seeing...
Mr. Knott face to face , and, at about the same time, when a
friend of Mr. Knott s telephones to enquire after his health, Watt
troubles himself no further with finding a formulation that will
fit the facts of the incident. Only too
frequently has he opened
tins with his blowlamp to find them empty. When he eventually
leaves his service on the ground floor on Arthur s arrival, he is
( it is
rare that
On the first floor, where his duties bring him into daily contact
with Mr. Knott, he remains in particular ignorance of Mr. Knott
himself who lives in hush and gloom dimming all, dulling all,
stilling all, numbing all, where he passed Watt summarizes his
relationship with Mr. Knott in these terms (I again transcribe
.
his jargon):
84
WATT
by side, two men. All day, part of night. Dumb, numb, blind.
Knott look at Watt? No. Watt look at Knott? No. Watt talk to Knott?
Side
all day.
He
therefore depends
upon
per
ception of
being is
with his
his servants
him
own
constantly altering.
Knott,
he leaves the house: he sheds tears, but calculates that these must
soon evaporate, and as Arsene had clearly foretold, the knowledge
of the nature of ... the
at Mr. Knott s partakes
Watt
.
acquires
the figure appeared to be, in reality , but apart from this lapse,
he behaves with more reserve vis-ct-vis the tactile and olfactory
stimuli of the station waiting-room than he would have done
at Mr. Knott s: for this stay has destroyed his inno
before his
stay
may
85
own
Hamm
hopes and fears of Vladimir and Estragon. Knott, too, plays with his servants. For them, his house is
haven, approached with awe, but their stay is of finite duration.
for
what is this shadow of the going in which we come ... if not the
shadow of purpose? ) but his dreams of peace are nonetheless des
troyed and he leaves embittered and hopeless. As for Arthur, he
is both drawn and repelled by Mr. Knott, who is at once the
object
and the derision of his servants quest, and who can never be
known, although at one point Sam suggests that something might
be discovered if it were ever possible to collate all the experiences
of all the servants who had ever worked for him: that would have
been a very interesting exercise , he says, but they all vanished,
long before my time In any case, Mr. Knott is inexpressible
.
ineffable
):
tries to tell
point: Knott
when
Berkeley
is
calls
WATT
the contented realism of the railwaymen contrasts sharply with
the sombre uncertainties of the house and with the strangeness of
to which Watt eventually
(In a similar way, the
the
goes.
asylum
world of Jacques Moran is contrasted with the dark forest inhabited
Knott results merely in a
Molloy.) The negative vision of Mr.
by
where
rearrangement of things, the old thing
it
always was
experiences,
in deep pain, to an asylum, and wanders aimlessly in the grounds,
a bizarre and even terrifying figure.
This* novel, clearly a somewhat uncertain and transitional
extended doodle in words, leads us never
composition, a sort of
theless into unfamiliar country, the land of windy heaths and
and Gamier undertake their journey
lonely roads, where Mercier
crawls in search of his mother, and introduces us to
and
Molloy
new kind
as follows:
sentences of Wittgenstein s Tractatus Logico-Phtiosophicus,
me
understands
who
are elucidatory in this way: he
propositions
out
as senseless, when he has climbed
through
finally recognises them
on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder,
My
them,
these propositions,
after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount
thereof
then he sees the world rightly. Whereof one cannot speak,
one must be
silent.
87
joke
two years
2.
how
far Beckett
Cohn
Eugene, Oregon, Spring 1961, sees in both The Castle (the only large
work of Kafka s that Beckett says he has read in the original German)
and in Watt further manifestations of the theme of the quest, which is
such a
common one
in European literature.
In both novels
Ruby
Cohn
is
between The Castle and Watt^ but whether this means direct
influence of the former on the latter is another matter. At one point,
however, the expression of the two books is too close for there to be
ities
much
first
The
Es war
(Das
vergessen.
Schloss,
1951
ed., p. 76)
There are however important differences between the two books. The
theme of guilt for instance does occur in Watt (c p. 127) but never is
it of such importance as in The Castle. Guilt in Kafka, of course, extends
to the whole situation in which the hero finds himself; his liability is as
extensive as that of Oedipus. Beckett s situations are quite different
this, for Watt is never held to be undergoing punishment in Mr.
from
Knott
house. Moreover,
Mr* Knott,
which Ruby Cohn points out, is not like Klamm, who is an object of
terror, alarmingly masked by a harmless exterior and by physical in-
WATT
accessibility:
through
mares everyone
is
seem to
fail
toms
who truly
Knott, Godot
exists,
but because
in our frenzy to
we
clutch at
know, to hope, to
phan
and
believe,
we
suffer ludicrously as
Castle,
seen, far less evident in Watt, for within the admittedly symmetrical
framework of four chapters, and two phases, ground floor and first
floor (cf. the two acts of Godot and Happy Days), incongruous matter
abounds.
Both novels are however similar in that they are myths, the inter
pretation of which must be a subtle and complex affair, for they have
the power of haunting the mind on many levels without being explicit:
they fulfil the functions of a symbol of unassigned value: it is we who
lend the symbol meaning, from our own hopes and fears.
The last word on this subject should go, perhaps, to Maurice Nadeau:
La creature de Kafka supporte le
qu
elle
<jui
le
monde au
desastre.*
89
Chapter 4
is
matters.
TB.EHEE.OOF1HENOUFELLES
first
which
affability
Borges in 1961.
This recognition was not, however, easily come by: the printing
history of Beckett s post-war work written in French is a record of
struggle and slow acceptance. Soon after the war, in the tenth
number of Jean-Paul Sartre s review Les Temps Modernes (July
1946), there appeared Beckett s first piece of fiction written
90
why it was
months
French version of
Murphy
chapter.
La
Fin
(as Suite is
now
entitled), secondly,
may
91
PFatt, gallicisms
style.
(French arretfacultatif).
Certain fish, in order to support the middle depths
(French
supporter).
own
(French embrasser).
.
dives
pittain).
92
1946: je
oblige* pour ces
suis
vous
1955: je
reconnaissant;
un
un
1946:
1955:
petit gargon
petit gargon
v Elements;
possible;
1946:
il
1955:
il
comme
il
si
1955:
1
il
rpeta
histoire
je 1 avais
fois;
(m&me
oubliee, c 6tait
alors
comme
si je
left out.)
amical et hospitaller;
1946:
il
etait tres
1955:
il
an
this context.)
tains anglicisms that ten years later, when he was much surer of
his new medium, he took good care to eradicate. In the translation
of
Murphy,
style that
too,
still
we
find (as
we might
naturalized. In
Murphy, however,
this
its
EUe
were quenched
quitta le Jdosque
hanches,
affam&s
etc.
as tow.
en coup de
vent,
d amour.
95
In
La
stories,
intended to write: but the clever prosateur that he is could not long
remain simple even in a foreign language, so in his French writ
ing we usually find that ars est celare artem, although he eschews
the verbal play, the intricately-contrived allusiveness and surface
wit of the English novels.
A study of the
Review, 1960) provides useful insight not only into the way
Beckett carefully works over his prose, but also into the evolution
of his French style from somewhat hesitant beginnings into the
story, as in
has pointed out, the stronger oaths and vulgar expressions in the
French, as opposed to the English text, as in this tirade:
My God, how I hate the charVenus and her sausage and mash sex.
.
que tu
FAIS?
Much
we
and in the
the more precise peu apres cette transaction (with the Greek
woman) instead of the neutral peu
apres cet evdnement; and,
this time more pedantically, fenfourchai Vdne (1955) instead of
.
The
Beckett
hundred paintings and gouaches, creation is just as difficult, just as total a form
of self-involvement and self-betrayal, as it is for Beckett
at least, so the
tration
95
much
tellementfaible queje ne pouvais plus me lever, etj aurais certainement perdu connaissance sans la vache is pruned drastically to:
unjourje ne pus
much
particularity
and
definiteness to his
1946
story, are
s
Cross-Islington area.
modifications arises from a more
and je me mis
elegant je finis de
les
more
2
possible to study variants in Beckett
it
1 Mr. Beckett
wrote to me that this occurred due to a misunderstanding with
the redaction^ who thought the first half, sent separately, I
forget why, was the
whole story, and declined to publish the second half in the next issue - for
reasons I could not understand; something to do,
according to S. de Beauvoir,
with the "tenue de la revue". . . .
2
The two versions of UExpidst also differ considerably from each other; in
fact all the observations here made
concerning changes between Suite and La
Fin apply equally well to this noiwelle.
96
clearly that
to
we
find
etrange lumi&re qui cl6t une journ6e de pluie persisque le ciel s ^claircit trop tard pour
Moreover,
we
correctly (as
Watt
whom
feriez mieux de rester chez vous. This device gives rise to a certain
amount of humour. When, however, the hero does express him
self vulgarly or with violence, the effect is doubly striking:
On
mem6s, nounous,
ballons, tout
humour
is
97
common expressions
jesting is from now onwards
distort
(si
fose
dire, et fose).
But
if
such
envy of
is
longer
the aloof and rather disdainful intellectual who had conceived
Belacqua and Murphy), things about exile and the self, about
death, about the body and the mind, and since, perhaps as a result
of suffering under the Occupation, he felt this need
he
strongly,
realized that
clipped
La Fin (The End} tells - in the first person, for as has been said,
all Beckett s French fiction (except Mercier et Camier] is written
- of the nameless hero s expulsion
from the point of view of
from a charitable institution He is given money to start him on
his way, and a dead man s set of clothes still reeking of fumiga
tion: shoes, socks, trousers, shirt, coat and bowler hat. When his
bed is broken up he throws a scene to avert expulsion, but he is
soon cowed and warned never to attempt to return. Allowed to
wait awhile in the cloister for the rain to stop, he is then ordered
on and finds the town unrecognizable. Despite his elaborate
manners, he cannot secure a lodging, until he finds a basement
where he lives contentedly enough, having his food brought to
him and his chamber pot emptied once a day by his Greek (or
which he makes his bed. He can feel the end drawing near: he
goes out less and less, feeling too weak and indolent to stir. He
begins to have visions, and sees himself gliding out to sea in his
boat, opening a hole to let the water in, and then swallowing the
sedative which he has been carrying in a phial. The sea, sky,
mountains and islands seem as in a huge systole to close and com
press him, and then to scatter to outer space. He thinksfaiblement
et sans regret of the story he
might have told, the true one (or
rather just a slightly truer one, since this is a world of the mind
and there are no absolutes) in which his life, instead of ending
dramatically as he has told, merely dwindles away, sans le courage
definir ni la force de continuer^ a slow transformation through
cold and inanition, into the shadowy state in which he finds him
may even tell of a return to earth after his death, except that
he does not think it likely he would return to earth after his
death. The story he decides to tell will therefore take
place in fact
at the moment of its telling, but he will nonetheless tell it in the
it
historic.
He
100
The
he
other story,
tells it as if it
(he gives his age as being between forty and fifty in the
Fontaine version) he is ejected from a house which he has known
since childhood and they throw his hat after him, the same hat
life
that his father bought him when he was a boy$ he then hires a
cab for the day to look for a lodging, and, not being able to find
one, accepts the cabman s offer of shelter, and spends the night
in the latter s stable, leaving at dawn without paying either for
possesses
some money,
forgotten.
left
because
it is
s fiction.
101
It
young
after it has transpired that the boy s mother, Mrs. Bray, is Nye s
old nurse. The doctor sees her frequently in the course of his
attendance on her son and both are embarrassed by an unexormemory, behind which Dr. Nye s trauma seems to lie. The
cized
grow up
so that
relates
a matter connected with his earliest years, so trivial and intimate that
need not be enlarged on here, but from the elucidation of which Dr.
it
The trauma at the root of Dr. Nye s childhood attachment for Mrs.
Bray no doubt sprang from the nostalgia for the womb that afflicts
so many of the Beckettian heroes in one form or
another, and that,
in this case perhaps, caused erotic feelings in the child which the
nurse indulged but the memory of which troubles them still in
later life, until chance brings them
together again, allowing them
to exorcize it. The mamours of which the French hero
speaks
seem therefore to be a clear echo of the something that occurred
in another story written over ten years previously.
And
also in
L Expulse,
102
Le Calmant
and
return for a
kiss),
except that in the latter story there is still only one pustule, which
has developed into several by The End. Furthermore, the setting
of the stories is practically identical, consisting of a town which
he has known from his youth, and which he describes as a walled
cite
tiy,
with
Although
the hero, in
man in the prime of life to the lonely pathetic beggar of The End.
The former
103
temperament that
manner there
for irony, as Swift was well aware in the Modest Proposal, and it
is this irony of literalness that Beckett
perfects in the Nouvelles.
is
to say that
104
The
is
latter s narrative
But generally speaking it was a quiet corner, busy but not over
He must have been a religious fanatic, I could find no
crowded.
.
He had
a nice
at that
orator
and,
by
105
so often ready to
and
consummately imitated, whereas in the Nouvelles
neutrality
Beckett
is
The
Nouvelles hero
is
nevertheless allowed to
s tale.
make
several
it).
after
to
he
says,
lefameux
we
main road
to the town,
other with as
est-ce
and in The
They
connection as in a dream
The
place,
little
(est-ce
quefai reve*,
asks).
robbing him
106
of the
accuse
the hero of disturbing the peace, of obstructing the sidewalks, and
of being a suspicious character who needs to be watched. The
hero responds to hatred with hatred, contemplates with a sombre
5
ma
putain as he
calls
with artificial light where he can be snug and warm and have his
meals brought to him, and from which he will not have to stir
abroad: *I did not need affection fortunately. When obliged to
communicate with others he finds it difficult, for his speech is
strange, all vowels and no consonants, and he frequently fails to
understand the ways of the world: a solicitor s secretary seems to
him to be a woman for hire. Nevertheless he shows even in his
alienation an incompatible desire for human contact such as we
remarked in Belacqua also; even a seaman s words addressed to
him would be a precious gain, and he goes so far as to feign a ficti
tious citizenship, saying to a stranger to the town vous pensez
demeurer longtemps parmi nous? dis-je. Cette phrase me sembla
particidierement bien tournde. Generally speaking, towns are hos
and unfamiliar, the open sky and the countryside being more
bearable (although they too form part of the merde universelle},
but even so he never has more than the quasi-certitude of being
tile
of this world:
life as
107
and unknown
is
the body,
we
are told
it
has five or
six legs.
for
Malone
As blurred
is
life
and
girls,
Lucy
What
especially, hal
tombe (those
who
listen to
them
are addressed as
this helps to explain the odd pointlessness of the stories: for once tout
est dzt, tout sera &
recommencer, as the hero says in The Sedative,
clearly foreshadowing the whole theme of The Unnamable. So
that he
may have
comes into
his
brightly-lit
108
well knows.
It is quite natural that,
tell stories,
should
lie
are frequent
enough
worn
out*
but
when he
form
His art
grief.
its
once said in
it to
it, continually liable to bring
in fact self-destructive, liable to be consumed on
as Nadeau has said of it, la negation triomphante
constantly threatening
own
pyre
is
a Vintdrieur de Vczuvre meme et la dissout dans un brouila mesure qifelle se crie - but only from the
conflagration can something of value emerge, that which para
doxically remains said when all the saying has destroyed what
has been said.
Only one further matter needs to be remarked upon in connec
tion with the Nouvelles: that they are haunted by the figure of the
Galilean, not the Christ of the Resurrection but an eternally
crucified Jesus. One remembers Estragon s words: toute ma vie
Nouvelles hero does the same,
je me suis compart a lui, and the
s installe
lard
d insignifiance
Jerusalem:
referring unconsciously to the triumphal entry into
The
stones here
is
these
crucified
109
the beggar,
as:
you
d immole, which
crucified bastard
The above
developments in Beckettian
fiction;
and
as applications, conscious
II
J ai
Mercier
et
Gamier is,
like
INNOMMABLE
The author
be respected, and if I
intentions concerning
it
should therefore
the
fore to confine
an inappropriately de
to remain an
unpublished novel.
*
110
the story opens he has already taken the decision to abandon his
profession, and soon afterwards tears all the leaves from his calepin and throws them away (calepin is not the ordinary French
word for notebook, it is, rather, the sort that detectives use, and
usually one that buttons up. Gaber also carries one, in his work as
messenger). Gamier
The first mishap that occurs in their journey is that they waste
nearly an hour round their rendezvous looking for each other,
Mercier standing at the spot while Gamier is looking in vain for
him elsewhere, and vice-versa: and in a 7Fa#-like piece of precise
detail
we
their arrivals
is also
Madden who insists on telling them his life-story. They get off at
a village halt and put up at the local inn, only to leave again before
dawn and sit in a field where Gamier jettisons bis notes and they
abandon their only raincoat. They decide to go back to town to
look for their other possessions, haversack, bicycle and umbrella
(they only have one of each between them -their persistent
111
s flat.
From
at last,
make
to
move
off
Why do we
persist,
Do you
dreams of freedom?
They
direct
lande
bar,
and there
aux
chiottesl).
Mercier and Gamier rush out into the street, leaving him to the
fury of the bar-people. It is dark, it is raining: Mercier tries to
Qa va, a
Je te
Et
toi? dit
Non
Gamier.
as it
112
and return:
a fatigue.
on s assoyait, cela
Tu veux dire s asseyait, dit Mercier.
Je veux dire s assoyait, dit Gamier.
Si
Mercier says that his father always told him to show respect to a
stranger, quelqu humble que fut sa condition, and Camier com
ments: quelqu humble, que cela sonne drdlement. Thus the pos
sibilities of humour in French are exploited in this novel with a
zest which confirms what was said above about Beckett s virtuosity
in French being as marked as his virtuosity in English, although
the different genius of the former naturally makes manifestations
of this quality different in kind, for we now find syntactical games
rather than recondite puzzles of echo and allusion.
Other parallels with En attendant Godot can be remarked in
this work: Mercier, like Estragon, forgets things that
have hap
pened before, and the two men indulge here also in the
familiar cross-talk of the play:
This
is
worth looking
now
To do
that
we need
to
be in complete possession of
And
faculties, said
115
Gamier.
all
our
many
said
Gamier,
The events, too, often recall those of the play: the need to embrace
on the part of the one, followed by the refusal to do so on the part
of the other; the unwillingness to listen to accounts of dreams;
the exchanges like qu avons-nousfait a Dieu? nous Vavons renid^
the question on ne fa pas battu?^ and finally, a reference to Christ
than
on
sait
a quoi on
engage lorsqu on fait de la litterature, a des dcepau peintre ses pinceaux dans le cul,
114
tout, c estfini, a
On
Camier
sieur Conaire,
who is
so like
One
how
Watt
the
the Nouvelles hero, although they are irritated by parkkeepers, barmen, and, of course policemen; but their situation is
one that results rather from their opting out of society than from
lot of
115
they
who
rudely ignore
if
situation:
They
eventually
it
may suggest)
116
Watt
is
wearing this time a huge bowler hat and a heavy
which he is probably naked. In the bar to which
under
greatcoat
he takes his companions he summarizes the vain search that is
recounted in Watt: moi aussi, f ai cherche, tout seul, seulement moi
be born of them, is
je croyais savoir quoi and adds that he will
born of them, who having nothing will wish for nothing, if only
that he be left the nothing he has. Perhaps Watt is referring here
to Molloy, or Malone, certainly to one of the later heroes. Then
he shouts two insults against life: the first is excused, the second
causes uproar. Mercier and Gamier escape with Watt s last words
vive Quinl ringing in their ears. Soon afterwards Mercier tells
Gamier that he met Watt near a hospital for skin diseases; and
there ends Watt s last reappearance outside the novel of which he
is the hero. But he is to be mentioned a few times more, notably
by Molloy and by Moran.
There is no call to strive for a simple explanation of this pheno
menon, for one accepts easily that in the special world of Samuel
Beckett s fiction, it is not only natural, but appropriate and even
inevitable that the successive heroes should know each other and
sometimes converse. The books thus linked by the inter-reference
of names (with Belacqua s recurring, as has been said, even in
1935).
Comment C
est)
form a
we
117
Murphy. In
the same hard pure note of solitude as the Nouvelles, and con
stituted a kind of hiatus between the latter and Molloy, a hiatus
that this novelist, seized with what has been called an amour fou
la beautd formelle, was unwilling to tolerate. It is, in fact,
neither Mercier nor Gamier who is the true prototype of Molloy,
pour
sick
118
Chapter 5
myself the
my
last of
this
is
a nursery tale.
IBID
ceuvre,
This
119
today
still
which in
spite of
numerous saisies,
La Gangrene and La
Question,
said that
Kafka s
been able
Accordingly,
after
who
what the public will or will not take, that this is the concern
only of
his editeur. Thus he sees his role almost as a
one
he
was
missionary
;
Molloy, as
also includes
and Godot
also,
composed. The
and
at the
order, accord
120
we
of the
have become
legend (which
so
(A and C
much
is said
ambiguously
also suggest,
as rnes
whom
them un
deux larrons.)
The man C
which Molloy
calls
my
on waking he determined
to go and see
needed, before I could resolve to go and see that
woman, reasons of an urgent nature , and the reasons that now
impel him are connected with the need to establish our relations
his mother.
declares that
*I
concern to discover
initial
its
indifference.
his departure,
Hugh
tions to
and
is
122
while he
is
giving an
enema to
employment, we
Moran
tions;
tell
his
town
to
buy
leg.
125
or of one
who
The
from
man,
description, sounds so like Mercier that per
haps it is he. Moran gives him a piece of bread, and in return asks
to be allowed to feel the
weight of the man s stick. The latter then
this
departs:
the middle of a desert, under the midday sun, to look after him till he
was only a dot, on the horizon. I stayed out in the air for a
long time.
Next day Moranbreaks himself off aheavy stick like C s club and is
poking the fire with it when another very different man accosts him:
He was
side,
but thick-set.
know
He
Moran if he
be witty. [The
Moran, trembling
all
over
normally
again.
nothing of these
already disappeared.
is
accomplishing a
Madonna
his
mentioned both
at the
beginning and
We
125
iers:
has said, of the wake and the Sheela-na-gig, mocking death and
sex respectively through the comic grotesque) and which draws
its expression and form from the land of
adoption.
Secondly, there is the significant dissimilarity in setting en
by the fact that the place which Molloy describes as a fairly
large region of hills, forest, plain, sea and distant islands, exists
tailed
for
than a
village.
theme
Beckettian heroes he
ironically
is
an
126
Moran
is
sensitive to dress
collection of hats,
127
and black
possible, for
conspicuousness
About Moran
height
we
is
the
A B C
of
my
it
profession
seems he
is
on
the short
as he.
altogether. It
is
impor
personality
has written.
The
Molloy
wanderings
was from this nucleus that the rest grew, a conclusion borne out
by the fact that Part I shows several points of resemblance to the
nouvelles which preceded it. In matters of detail, in fact, it often
echoes these stories: both Molloy and the hero of the latter possess
a sucking-stone and a hat fixed to their buttonhole with string
or shoelace^ both wander aimlessly from town to country, clash
with policemen, suffer eviction and expulsion, meet with shep
herds or goatherds, run dogs or old ladies down, and not knowing
where they are, enquire of strangers the name of their town.
These events form as integral a part of the French hero s life as
the gags do in a clown s act. The comparison is not in fact far
fetched: the various episodes occurring in his history constitute
the Beckettian clown s performance, each incident having become
128
in tone,
but I paddled
ever came
-with an old bit of driftwood. And I sometimes wonder
the long
back, from that voyage. For I see myself putting to sea, and
hear
do
not
and I
hours without landfall, I do not see the return
and
I too once
went forth on
it,
in a sort of oarless
skiff,
if I
the
frail
follows
more
closely
Moran
is
novel.
to derive from two
Mercier et Camier and
the Nouvelles, which were the occasion of an early working-out
themes of the novel that followed. In fact when
of the
seem therefore
ing
foreseen: the
think
T
it ll
too.
129
last time,
then I
as
original in that
its
it
conception. It
surpasses
is
to its predecessors, it is
fully
moreover the
first
of Beckett
novels to be
his
what Wayne
who
C.
It
was he
differently.
ballocks,
In Moran
s case, it is
a task that
grit
and defiance:
rect
any
lapses
he
may make:
my
if
nag^ make no
mistake,
it will
am
His lapses in fact are frequent: I had forgotten who I was (excu
sably) and spoken of myself as I would have of another 5 and he
150
adds
pages
to say, in
and helps
Much of the
stand in counter
Bowles has
said,
chapters, which as P.
is achieved by an elaborate
This
other.
each
to
counterpoint
point
which must have
system of parallels and echoes from part to part
into
two
duality of Molloy.
Very few events or items
with no
from Part
when
fulfilling
litarery quotations in
Molloy speaks,
somewhere, and then mentions that the
pages every Sunday
is
visitor
151
who
collects his
Moran tells us of
also
which hang a
heads
little
when
Molloy
significant difference,
tatters en route.
But both
occasion
says
152
Molloy
Molloy
fore.
Pilgrim
or of
En
creative
On
attendant Godot.
Moran s
Condom
bilingual joke
est
why
not occur in the French: the English, for instance, has as to her
address, I was in the dark, but knew how to get there, even in the
How
154
hideous
the narrative:
so,
commas draw
closer
The paragraphing
Molloy
ramparts
155
s jibes at
with loathing.
will
my
that
into nothing:
other,
it
though
stiffening,
facts,
impotent,
mad
old
He
woman, who
alone, I - no,
me Dan
called
I can t say
and
whom
I called
it.
156
said
(1949):
I speak of an art ... weary of pretending to be able, of being able,
same old thing, of going a little further along
a dreary road
is nothing
with which to express, nothing from which to
express, together with the obligation to express.
.
to express, nothing
who
is
choose between the things not worth mentioning and those even
went back into the house and wrote, It is midnight. The rain
beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining.
I
scruples:
truly
is
it little
less
misery
This monumental disdain for literature (which can, paradoxi
cally, give rise to good writing) does not preclude ironic witticisms
of the following kind, indulged in largely for their own sake:
.
Yes, the confusion of my ideas on the subject of death was such that
me or not, if it wasn t a state of being
Remarks like this are found throughout the book, which moreover
157
Dean
like
ironical technique:
lies
not with
me
but
with
this subject I
that I was in
notions,
which means
what bothers
me
sometimes.
What
I do
know
for certain
is
that
In this
158
is
last
few words.
human
nature, but so
it
falls
unhappily
entirely of this opinion. ... I do not yet see the absolute necessity of
extirpating the Christian religion from, among us. ... [The Turks
of Christians. (From
italics).)
Greatly shortened as, for reasons of space, these extracts must be,
they should show that Swift s ironical techniques foreshadow
some of Beckett
most
he
Molloy
is
is
also just as
I know, compounded of
he can freely indulge in
man to
me.
He
didn
understand
is
159
part. They do
for lynching, for sleep is sacred.
most
nothing
else.
Day is the
time
end, Molloy
you have
to try everything
a
complete picture of the resources
once, succour included, to get
of their planet .
ironically
I suppose
Mercier s and Camier s, is more a selfimposed alienation: I don t like men, he says, and I don t like
animals/ Moran s love is devoted entirely to his piece of land, my
he is terri
trees, my bushes, my flower-beds, my tiny lawns and
Moran s
exile, like
from
with
try any
more
he
fowls:
I recognised them
and
the year.
by
far the
.
there were days when my legs were the best part of me, with
the exception of the brain capable of forming such a judgement.
.
fact
a place with neither plan nor bounds and of which I understand noth
It is not the
ing, not even of what it is made, still less into what. ,
.
. .
was, nor any upright thing, nor any true foundation, but only these
leaning things, forever lapsing and crumbling away, beneath a sky
without memory of morning or hope of night.
as adumbrated
no need to point
out: the seeds of the entire Beckettian concept of mind were first
sown in that book, the hero of which, however, refused the oppor
tunity (so precious to Moran) of wandering in his mind Moran
Dream of Fair
in
to
Women there
Middling
is
sea
Here, like
retires
far
[to] pass
bound.
It is in
quarry
And
apart. ... I
all I
need
is
to be found
that his
is
this.
object
my
never took
feet
me
definite order to do
so
to
my
7
.
This body decays steadily as the story proceeds, in the case both
of Moran and of Molloy: the latter has a stiff leg when Part I
begins, and like Belacqua a tendency to cramp in the toes. When
it ends, both
legs are stiff and very sore , and the toes of the right
foot have gone; he is reduced therefore to crawling along:
Flat on
ahead of
I pulled
And
effort of
the wrists.
homeward
if
journey.
its
of Swift.
The
dualistic obsession
which accounts
between a
agile as ever it
off:
since
on
my eyes, or seldom
his side
behind my closed
$
when he does perceive something, that is to say when something
recognizable to him can be induced from disordered phenomena,
it is always after a time-lapse. As for Moran, he drown[s] in the
spray of phenomena , since each pin-point of skin screams a
different message 5 ensconced, then, within the castle of his mind,
the Beckettian hero is with difficulty made aware of events around
him, and since his memory too is uncertain (Molloy cannot even
remember the name of his town), he is liable to confuse several
of being
fines of
beyond [one]
my
my
my
were
my
and where had
( what had happened to those fourteen days
matters
of
flown?
).
derisory
Only
importance, such as the fact
they
that small windows are lavatory lights, from time to time
impose themselves on the understanding with the force of axioms $
and so it is better not to care: to know you are beyond knowing
anything, that is when peace enters in , and Molloy s monumental
.
is
145
And the
solution to
now
.
to
in one pocket,
now
in another,
And
as swiftly as
day-fly.
But the
idea of ageing was not exactly the one which offered itself to me. And
what I saw was more like a crumbling, a frenzied collapsing of all that
But what
and bulk, with a
The
over
would flood
and tendrils
ferred to
144
he
as
power
whom
sees is Gaber:
What I d like now is to speak of the things that are left, say my good
byes, finish dying.
apparently. But
later, he says.
it s
They pay him for writing his story, or alternatively scold him,
through Gaber, when he fails to do so. At one point therefore
Molloy directly addresses these overlords:
During
his journey
forest at the
know why.
Proust,
born:
Birth, being a sin, is therefore a calamity for the person
her
him
failed
to
s
mother
pregnancy
during
dislodge
Molloy
me
145
I also give
thanks to
More
me
her credit
it
again,
precise information
fault .
but what
are serving the heroes do not obtain. It s
fault? asks Molloy, and crave forgiveness, forgiveness for what?
asks Moran. The latter has a more specific assignment from his
my
tyrant, Youdi, than Molloy has from his nameless overseers, but
. was in its essence
he nevertheless speaks of it as a cause which
.
insubordination:
I wondered, suddenly rebellious, what compelled me to accept this
commission. But I had already accepted it, I had given my word. Too
late. Honour. It did not take me long to gild my impotence.
at
.
calm.
*
But he does not always show this courage: Youdi will take care of
me , he whimpers, he will not let me be punished for the murder
in the woodj why should Youdi not protect him, since even
described as his prot^g^?
Moran writes out his pensum, accomplishes
this paltry scrivening that is not of
province : he asked for
Molloy
is
Grimly, doggedly,
my
a report, he
it heard. For it is
end the faithful servant
not mine.
is
at
the end
it is
me things.
it
me to write the
report.
shall learn.
this
mean
s voice
gives him practical instructions of the sort get out
of here, Molloy when he is at Lousse s, and reassures him at the
edge of the forest, but he insists that this is not an ordinary voice,
Molloy
The
novel
is
lished
must have thought she had left nothing to chance, so far as the
safety of her dog was concerned, whereas in reality she was setting
the whole system of nature at naught
The presence of a metaphysician like Leibniz need cause no
the
surprise in a work that is to a large extent a meditation on
circumstances of human existence. Where Watt explores the
deals rather
epistemological poverty in which we live, Molloy
with the issue of personal regeneration and spiritual renewal,
through the medium of a fable, or of a myth, which tells of a
man who went in search of another and found no one.
There is no point in trying to assign precise meaning to the
.
inevitable. I
147
God , and that Gaber lives in the same close dependence on Youdi
shown by the fact that his recall is so sudden after he has
visited Moran that he forgets the second glass of beer he had asked
is
who
him.
He
ation, I
was almost
sorry.
my
covered.
feels that all
Molloy
mother
my life,
think
my
when
my
148
it is
already
and so,
just as
much of a pessimist
to believe in
his success
is sterile,
twilight
world that
We
said B.
own shadow
it is
display: it
is
oblivion
and impotence.
rizes his
his
Professor
Mayoux
calls it
rfussie;
that, far from being a merely
transitional novel, Molloy stands apart from the rest of Beckett s
aeuvre, a book which can, in terms of scope and power, be con
sidered a great novel.
but
it
150
Chapter 6
MALONE
Hinds dismembered by their sexual part Balthazar had said once,
never find peace until old age and failing powers persuade them
,
L.
DURRELL,
Justine
IT
is
perhaps
accompany it,
for the fact that it has received relatively little critical attention.
On closer
however, it appears as a cleverly written
examination,
heard between the andante of Molloy
a
book,
perfect andantino
Unnamable.
The
of
assai
the
and
allegro
The
pattern of
Malone Dies
What he writes,
free
is
from
all
explanation or addition,
as
is
he
dies.
what we
working:
effort.
But
it is just as
We
rushing things.
recall that
is
a reincarnation
While
Death,
and dolorous
is
now
him
after
existence.
he decides
to tell himself
respectively).
151
new scheme
to live,
and cause to
his
and
is
die alive
This
is
what
does not.
His programme is clear enough: first the stories (of a man and
woman, of a thing and of an animal) and then an inventory of his
possessions (when he will draw the line and make the tot ); if
after that any time remains I shall take the necessary steps to
ensure my not having made a mistake Needless to say, this pro
gramme is not satisfactorily carried out. We are told nothing
either about the thing or the animal, and the inventory, intended
for the end, creeps in at various odd moments: for Malone has
.
152
MALONE
His present situation, too, is simple enough: he lives in an
ordinary house, not a hospital; when he is not too deaf he hears
sounds that are quite normal, and he can see from his window
roofs and sky, as well as into a room of the house opposite, where
a couple lives. The six planes of his own room seem often, how
ever, to "become the outer wall of a skull inside which he roams,
The
"brain
seems to be
my skull.
(T. s.
ELIOT, Ash-Wednesday)
nothing
are the poles . The events that occur as he dies are few in number
but serious in purport: first, the old woman unexpectedly stops
his pots, thus ensuring that he
and
his
renewing
soup
emptying
will die of inanition, next, his stick, with which he has been
his bed out of the room, slips from his grasp,
trying to manoeuvre
Mm. marooned in his bed; and lastly, he receives the visit
leaving
of a mysterious stranger whom he takes at first to be the under
taker s man come too soon. This person strikes him on the head
to rouse him, then watches over him for a long time ( I think we
for hours ... he probably imagined
gazed at each other literally
he could stare me down ), rummages in his possessions and even
155
his lips
worked, but I
These three occurrences apart, Malone is free to
tell his stories in which figure a boy called Saposcat, Sapo for short,
who later becomes an old man named Macmann, and an old
woman called Moll who takes Macmann as her lover.
Sapo, the great hope and eldest child of poor and sickly
parents is a self-willed dunce, due cruelly to disappoint the
expectations placed in him. For instead of working at his examina
tions in order, with the least possible delay, to be in a position to
help provide for his younger brothers and sisters, he broods upon
himself, struggling with the babel raging in his head and won
dering how he was going to live, and live vanquished, blindly, in
speaks to
Mm,
heard nothing
that
is
his
mad
last:
nothing
he
believes, can
be imagined than
this
tenuous
air, far
During the
country and occasionally visits the Lamberts (les Louis), a povertystricken peasant family consisting of an elderly but still active
father, a young mother suffering from an unnamed but painful
disease, and a son and daughter. Sapo says little to them, however,
and yet regularly leaves behind him a few humble gifts in return
for their hospitality. He seems to be most interested in the daugh
ter who looks after the goats, for it is to her alone that he confides,
during a tryst one moonlit night, that he is going away for ever.
The prototype of Sapo was the landowner Madden of Merrier et
Cornier) who unsuited for intellectual exertions
was removed
from school at the age of thirteen and boarded with neighbouring
farmers from whom he had in haste to take his leave, having
had the misfortune to impregnate a milkmaid The fate of Sapo s
goatherdess is not however to bear his child but rather, it is
hinted, her father s, for incest was in the air and Mrs. Lambert
saw it coming with indifference
When Malone next runs Sapo down, to employ his expression,
it is to find an aged, homeless tramp
sitting on a bench in the
his
heart of the town
back
to
the
river
whose name Malone
.,
.
154
MALONE
compelled to change to Macmann. Having lost sight of him
again, he next discovers him lying prostrate on the ground,
exposed far from shelter to the driving rain, from which painful
feels
the
as
forest.
when
We
incompetent
are told,
as
his crawling
was Madden
later in a
my voice has gone dead, the rest will follow ), his pains increase
incandescent
almost unbearable, upon my soul
sharply
(
migraine ), he exhales with labour and can soon turn his head
no longer. Writing becomes impossibly difficult: try and go on
... on ... a last effort and finally, in sight of the end, he
announces I shall say I no more Lemuel has Macmann beaten
for tearing a branch from a dead bramble, and inflicts other
brutalities on the patients in his charge. One day a Lady Pedal
to the islands for Lemuel s party,
organizes an excursion by boat
and on arrival there the male nurse s violence erupts suddenly
and he slaughters the two sailors with a hatchet. After sunset,
a broken hip, he pushes
leaving Lady Pedal on the island with
the boat off with his charges in it, and they all float into the night,
.
155
anyone any more - the two words that end the novel. Malone s
pencil, of which only the lead remains, no doubt wears out at last
at the moment when he dies. His hero is left, like the hero of
La Fin, drifting at the end on the open sea.
It is left a mystery who Lemuel is and what he
represents, but
this is only one of many enigmas that occur in Beckett s fiction.
What, for instance, did the gong signify which Molloy heard in
the forest? Or the blow which Malone thinks he remembers as
the last thing that happened to him before he found himself in
his room? Does Macmann* mean son of man and Malone
me
alone? - even if correct, these surmises do not enlighten us much.
Beckett s novels are thus charged with matters inexplicable:
therein lies part of their fascination. Their mysteries can, how
ever, be circumscribed to some extent by a careful noting of
recurrent elements, however trivial these may at first sight seem.
5
gazing at [the
Is it possible I
by a hair s-breadth.
there was the old butler too, in London I think, there
again ... it seems to me he had a name.
.
I failed,
London
Mercier
Dreamt
all
man Quin
said.
Mr. Quin,
1
156
MALONE
acquainted with him. Only Beckett himself knows who they are
or
des
abandoned
presumably they figured in work of his, since
1
troyed.
also
as
La Fin:
My photograph.
hand.
an
It is
ocean,
it is
The now
ass,
me it is
the ocean.
is
naturally not
the hat
pills.
last
by a
topmost
among my possessions
taining
This
attached,
I once
had a little
phial, unlabeUed,
con
item
at
once recalls
Le Calmant,
as does
tails of
yes
How great is my
debt to
knife-rest
my
Much
as
Mr. Beckett
says not.
He
claims not to
157
can exert a certain force For all contact with objects beyond the
reach of these arms, of course, he relies on his stick. His sight and
hearing are very poor; he is toothless but very hairy; his clothes
vanished long ago, so he lies naked between the blankets. ( I
.
his soup
as
demise he has long been awaiting; the loss of his stick is a disas
ter which he treats with irony. His complete solitude does not
cause him any feelings of loneliness, and the visitor who gazes at
him in anger and disgust does not unduly perturb him. Being
an intellectual, he has the resources of his mind at his disposal:
he can compare Macmann s posture on the bench to that of the
*
Colossus of Memnon, dearly loved son of Dawn ; quote Lucretius
mart magno}^
see a parallel
ceiling at
The place where this novel is set is once more Ireland (again
referred to as the island ), and more specifically the immediate
is Macmann s
Stillorgan asylum; there
the Glasnevin cemetery, whither (in the
French text only) Macmann dreams love leads Moll and him
self; and there (as Hugh Kenner first pointed out), in the hills
west of Carrickmines, live the generations of stonecutters, the
vicinity of Dublin,
There
is
158
MALONE
Dun
Liffey, the warehouses on its bants, and Butt Bridge all figure in
this book. But although, even in the French text, Malone thinks
The
festivals of
year: St. John the Baptist s day, the quatorze jwllet, Assumption
and All Saints day with its traditional chrysanthemums. Sapo has,
too, all
on
live.
it
clear
where
Among French
scraps
and
kill
peasants it is customary to
them in December or January:
He would set forth, hugging under his arm, in their case, the great
knives so lovingly whetted before the fire the night before, and in Ms
pocket, wrapped in paper, the apron destined to protect his Sunday
suit
while he worked.
From
the night, drunk and exhausted by the long road and the
tions of the day.
late in
home
emo
Louis drunkenness
mauvais marchd
as far as
he
is
buying
his
to death,
people s
that Maupassant so well describes as the leading traits of his
country
folk.
159
of French
The
pan
the author regularly plunges for his most deeply felt and significant
- thus it quite naturally occurs that Sapo and his world
episodes
should be French, but Macmann and his territory Irish.
This book too is marked with emblems by now familiar, the
some of Lemuel s
charges:
[cell] a young man, dead young, seated in an old rockingMurphy], his shirt rolled up and his hands on his thighs,
would have seemed asleep had not Ms eyes been wide open.
The
second cell
contained one whose only really striking features were
his stature, his stiffness and his air of perpetually looking for something
while at the same time wondering what that something could possibly
be. ... He was called the Saxon [in French V Anglais] though he was
far from being any such thing. ... In the third a small thin man was
pacing up and down, his cloak folded over his arm, an umbrella in his
hand. Fine head of white flossy hair. He was asking himself questions
in a low voice, reflecting, replying.
In the first
chair [like
so patiently observed or so
hard not to think of the well-known
passage in Tale of a Tub which must surely have been in Beckett s
mind when he wrote the above:
faithfully described. It
is
acquirements amount
his brethren!
to, if
Behold a fourth, in
among
conversation with
160
MALONE
Ms
wrong
application
(A
But where Swift compares the insane to the sane to ridicule the
antics and conceit of the latter, Beckett is interested in the insane
in their own right: for him, as we had occasion to see in Murphy,
they have a kind of honesty and innocence that those with pre
tensions to sanity completely lack: they are men who,
living
absorbed in their own world, are uncorrupted by the world of men.
Sordello of
o artirna lombarda,
come
ti
Sordello
a guisa
di lean
quando
si
posa
solo
on Beckett
sguardando
the youth had thrown himself down in the shade of a rock, like
Sordello, but less noble, for Sordello resembled a lion at rest.
Cain, too, broods over this novel:
how is
sheds
it
its
the
light
on
my face?
we
and the
thieves, usually
could not this song have simply been to the honour and glory of him
first to rise from the dead, to him who saved me, twenty
centuries in advance?
Did
The
final
to this view.
For
why be
generous percentage.
161
is
two
thieves)
drill
solitary tooth,
Alleluiah Christ
is
TTtieux le gdnie
difficult to render:
pouvais
vouloir, si
French only],
And if I
tell
of
significant?
rnangerai commefai
is
my little one,
et
que je
MALONE
Since V Anglais becomes the Saxon in English, two sentences
which are relevant only to the former are naturally omitted in
There
translation.
and some
But what it is all about exactly I could no more say, at the present
moment, than take up my bed and walk [addition in italics];
his front, no, his back, white with, no, front was right, his front white
with dust.
In the
last
Malone s
an apergu pris sur le vif of his actually writing this story down.
to give an
Occasionally the French meaning is considerably altered
c est le flot des emmerdes,
English of greater force: tout autour
lit oh il nefaut pas becomes
dternellement
billets
des
prenant
the stench of their harassed mobs scurrying from cradle to grave
to get to the right place at the right time , and ayant traverse un
mardcage & pied, on $e met tout simplement & tousser et & Iternuer
.
Men
more
deft
them
part
bound up together, at
and well cadenced: these are
.
yet than
il
en
sometimes
than
than
silvery with
It is
than the
indissolubly
biens matfriels,
luit encore,
my sliver of sky is
mon filet
all
vantage
other hand, the clever little phrase ci-gtt un pauvre con, tout ha
in here lies
fut aquilon does not find an equally good rendering
a ne er-do-well, six feet under hell ; andfAaisfoutue comme un
to people would run a mile from me and & malin
magot
pales
of that .
trans
leave
to
content
gallicisms in his
occasionally
serious.
or
numerous
either
are
these
not, however,
lation;
and nervousness
Regretting his pipe for missing his pipe
malin
et
Beckett
is
165
tons,
translation.
same language.
any of its
slightly
predecessors. It
marred in
can
translation,
image,
but the following comes over well
even in English:
The water
rose,
pools spreads
Beckett
them bright
again.
its ruffles
is
of the spoken
good:
word
in
much
the same
way
as the
And their
guard of a train makes use of his flags, or of his lantern
son once signalled, they wondered sadly if it was not the mark of
and cover them
superior minds to fail miserably at the written
paper
selves
164
MALONE
But he
is
own
skill:
So he went, limp,
after a halt,
images.
(whereby a decrepit
book
is
founded on an
it is
the
artifice
trick indeed
is
mind
as
Malone meurt:
heart. I glance at the
chest and feel
are
corner
of
which
the
in
a
mirror-wardrobe,
hypodermic syringe, the
be
would
needed should a crisis
that
of
amyl nitrate, everything
phial
I place
my
hand on
my
my
it
a dressing-gown.
My little
my
165
of my schooldays
.* The
in the fact that the author lends
his ostensibly unsuspecting hero his own talent: in Malone Dies
the sleight-of-hand is more subtle: Malone knows that he can
put to
it
artifice
to
in Mauriac
novel
lies
just as
what half-truths,
they are no shoddier than what they peddle
*what truth is there in all this babble? - the list of
my God
such self-deprecatory phrases scattered through the book could be
extended indefinitely. The writer feels himself pilloried on words
that betray the hopes he places in them: Invent. It is not the
word. Neither is live. No matter. Writing therefore becomes
mortal tedium and one writes frenziedly, in a hurry to be done
Sometimes Malone cannot continue with the pretence of story
- no, I can t do
telling any longer: in his country the problem
it 5 and elsewhere he laments to himself how false all this is
Despise one s work as one will, one is compelled to write (as van
Velde to paint) for no easily stated reason: the activity merely
seems obscurely necessary to life, for when we cease speaking we
are extinguished, as the Unnamable is painfully aware, Madden
too for that matter ( I cling to existence by talking, every day a
little more, every day a little better ). The endless discourse of the
Beckettian hero yields, in spite of all, its crop of wit:
.
me
so,
the
named;
and of macabre:
For he knew
might
how
drowned;
166
MALONE
and of paradox:
The end
of a
life is
always vivifying;
sustained badinage:
Given their age and scant experience of carnal love, it was only
natural they should not succeed, at the first shot, in giving each other
the impression they were
heart they warmed to their work. ... So that Moll exclaimed, being
(at that stage) the more expansive of the two, Oh would we had but
met sixty years agol But on the long road to this what flutterings,
But it can
this
in
I
No, all is for the best,
not have time to grow to loathe each other, to see our youth
... in a word to get
slip by, to recall with nausea the ancient rapture
to know each other.
we
shall
167
s last entry.
Secondly, Malone s thoughts about himself are governed by the
principle of random association, whereas his tales move forward in
more
rational
difference of pace.
to
I choose those
is
association.
s fiction;
can in fact safely be said that the last novels are chiefly con
cerned with the investigation of the pronoun T.
Malone shows already a longing, very similar to that of the
nameless hero of the Textespour rien^ to lose his own persona com
pletely in someone else s; in Sartrian terms, we have here an
instance of the pour-soi seeking metamorphosis into an en-soipour-soi that will give it permanence: what Malone calls the
brave company I have always longed for, always searched for, and
which would never have me , adding that he has sought all his
it
life
168
M ALONE
to live, to invent.
my shadows as to
than
created
Macmann in
him
... in the
among
self is
its
ruins
) is
off,
from
made
it
my
far
yet more
mind
wandering
senses:
Dark and
silent
and
stale,
pains:
am far from the sounds of blood and breath, immured [au secret in
them
.
my
my witless remains;
Somewhere
mark.
It too seeks
me
feebly in
is
that
it suffers
strange transmutations:
the sensation
my particles
169
be no other
Malone
I
don
mud-bath
I shall
be better able to
my presence.
is
t like
[Sapo
s]
gull
eyes ... I
know it is a
am
into
its
dark.
But, for all that, he makes his self-appointed task all the harder by
breaking off every so often to reminisce: a dangerous indulgence,
memories are contagious and can infect one s fictions with the
virus of autobiography; at one point, for instance, Malone recalls
for
being with his mother and seeing the very first aeroplane in
to keep such reminiscences separate
flight He does, however, try
from his stories of Sapo and Macmann, and affects to mock his
.
than a
little
nothing of his
in
Yes, a little creature, I shall try and make a little creature, to hold
arms, a little creature in my image, no matter what I say,
my
MALONE
as I
like
his present painful realities, and, like the Unnambay the fearful silence of which the universe is
Le Calmant,
able, to
keep
at
made*.
This does not
be almost as
171
He would be
pensioned
rain.
little
special pencil,
words which
irresistibly recall
T.
S. Eliot
s,
inspired
by a similar
disgust:
Which
still
.)
The
Beckettian hero
ter, charity
is
from shel
glad of his long immunity
content
in
*the
black
,
joy of
.
MALONE
well beguiled with
the solitary way yes, those were the days,
. those brief
the search for warmth and reasonably edible scraps
years when bakers were often indulgent, at close of day*. His
attitude has changed slightly from the Nouvelles hero s rancour,
for all he asks is to be left alone. But too often the grown-ups
pursued me, the just, caught me, beat me, hounded me back
.
The hero is
as
game, the
jollity
he
is lost
to travel
a succession of local
phenomena
all
my Me
by
parrot (perhaps
that can never progress beyond nihil in intellectu in the Scholastic
saw. When he does state a traditional philosophical proposition,
such as the following one (in
italics), he does so ironically:
my
possessions have
I
shall weaken again, for the
again
It is
my
effects.
175
lie
speaks of
Macmann
cylinder
cism: perhaps justifiably, he holds his body in low esteem and does
not consider it capable of much: I shall . give
body the old
.
orders I
stick, it
my
in Malone
s existence
analogous to that occupied in Molloy s by
the bicycle, the body not being viable without some
non-fleshly
appendage:
I have
demanded
movements
certain
of
my legs
and even
feet. I
know them well and could feel the effort they made to obey. I have
lived with them that little space of time, filled with drama, between the
message received and the piteous response.
Descartes would no doubt have been surprised to see the conse
of the
Mr. Kelly of
My feet, which even in the ordinary way are so much farther from
me than aU the rest, from my head I mean, for that is where I am fled,
away. And to call them in, to be cleaned for ex
ample, would I think take me over a month, exclusive of the time
required to locate them.
My fingers too write in other latitudes
and the air that breathes through my pages turns them without my
knowing.
The
extinguishing of
able
life
more
defin
time to die properly, even after his soup has been stopped.
The sexual appetites of this body are exposed in this novel to
the familiar ridicule: Macmann and Moll are
grotesque carica
tures of people in love - the spectacle was then offered of Mac-
174
MALONE
mann trying to bundle his sex into his partner s like
- this
a pillow into
a pillow-slip
savage humour,
lubricious, was bound to come sooner or later in Beckett s writing,
for it lies potentially in the less overt account of the unconsum-
mated affair between Watt and Mrs. Gorman. Malone might well,
in fact, have taken as his motto, had he known them, the words
of disillusionment uttered by DurrelTs Balthazar.
Malone Dies
as a critique of
is to
society, identity, knowledge and the body, all that remains
note that this novel is more marked by autobiographical elements
than
is
usual in Beckett
that Watt
is
set
room
at
night to
the outcry without, the leaves, the boughs, the groaning trunks, even
the grasses and the house that sheltered me. Each tree had its own cry,
air was still. I heard afar the
just as no two whispered alike, when the
iron gates clashing and dragging at their posts and the
between their bars.
wind rushing
so little difference
if I
lucky Since this is not the first time Beckett
galleries, ...
has appeared in his own novels, the foregoing need hardly sur
however are the words said of Lemuel as
prise us j more surprising
.
175
on the
sailors
and
his
as
Hamm
s bravado
reality of death and extinction as Fin de Partie:
in longing to stamp out the last vestiges of life on the planet and
Malone s perseverance in writing until death stays his hand, both
one
we
shall
- death is the
last
enemy,
never conquer.
It
176
Part Three
INNOMMABLE
About 1949
COMMENT
C EST
1959-1960
Chapter 7
THE UNNAMABLE
Trahissons, trahissons, la trattre pensee.
MOLLOY
1
rien.
RACINE
THE
stripped
away
who
pretend that
its
is
made
exists,
and
clear:
is
the Unnamable
is
des
who have enlightened him about the world of men and their ways.
One of these delegates is named Basil, although before long the
hero changes his name to Mahood:
It was he told me stories about me, lived in my stead, issued forth
from me, came back to me, entered back into me, heaped stories on iny
head. ... It
is
his voice
which has
it
often, always,
completely,
in which he describes
179
Mahood next
appears,
flowers in a deep jar
7
him into
existence,
even
The Unnamable
tries
Worm,
strength:
know they
are there
what I
THE UNNAMABLE
is
this
sublime:
will be the silence, for a moment, a good few moments, or it will be
mine, the lasting one, that didn t last, that still lasts, it will be I, you
must go on, I can t go on, you must go on, I ll go on, you must say
it
words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me,
Malone
there.
is
passes before
before him.
Of
He
me
.
Sometimes I
from whom there is nothing further to be hoped.
wonder if it is not Molloy. Perhaps it is Molloy, wearing Malone s
Two shapes
hat.
oblong like men, entered into collision before
.
me
I naturally
Ana
I clothed?
tion,
determined to
dissociate himself
from
nor Watt, nor Mercier, nor even bring myself to name them, nor any of the others
whose very names I forget, who told me I was they, who I must have
I
no, I can t
181
"under
duress, or
through
fear, or to avoid
acknowledging
slightest connection,
fresh
I think Murphy spoke now and then, the others too perhaps, I don
remember, but it was clumsily done, you could see the ventriloquist;
others and of
novels
le
move
portrait de tous
et
The netherworld
de personne.
inhabited by the
Unnamable
is
hardly an
my
182
it 5
He
he occasionally sees
THE UNNAMABLE
lights
a sound as
inexplicable as
est
outright
close as
they once
Malone had
said
member
by
Mahood,
it
when he
whereas
Worm
intelligence,
him to count,
185
at
human
laugh
happiness He
inconstancy in order, he
.
They love each other, marry, in order to love each other better,
more conveniently, he goes to the wars, he dies at the wars, she
weeps,
with emotion,
The
venge
pumping
I like to fancy,
my
likes, I tried to
he adds, that
it
take
was in mother
my
re
entrails
my
feels
Heppenstall, I discovered that there was formerly an eatinghouse called the Ali-Baba with, appropriately
enough, a thief
outside it, fixed in a jar,
the
menu.
Beckett
supporting
places it in
the novel (without naming it) in the rue
Brancion, facing the
bust of the propagator of horse-meat, Emile
Decroix; this bust
is set over the eastern entrance of the
Vaugirard abattoirs in the
fifteenth arrondissement. The real Ali-Baba
in
stood,
however,
the rue de Dantzig, on the western side of the
abattoirs, near a
dilapidated round wooden building inhabited by artists (La
Ruche) which may well have suggested the windowless rotunda in
THE UNNAMABLE
on hard times and had to close about ten years ago. Beckett
would have known it since he lived at one time in the rue des
fell
college which manifests itself to the Unnamable: perhaps they are watching me from afar , he thinks,
. that s what
for to testify to them, until I die,
they ve sworn
and
tyrants,
it is this
liable to
of duty:
they ll go silent perhaps and go, one day, one evening, slowly, sadly,
in Indian file, casting long shadows, towards their master, who will
punish them, or who will spare them, what else is there, up above, for
those who lose, punishment, pardon, so they say. What have you done
He will have little patience with their plea that they have carried
out the operation as well as might be expected:
may come
For they
He
him
is
given
to the
Unnamable
expiation:
this is
judge
me
185
me in a dungeon, I m
I want all to be well with you, do you hear me, that s what he keeps
on dinning at me. To which I reply, in a respectful attitude, I too,
your Lordship. I say that to cheer him up, he sounds so unhappy.
.let him
What he wants is my good. I know that, at least I say it
I
least
s
I
so
that
at
have
all
that
the
satisfac
ask,
may
enlighten me,
tion of knowing in what sense I leave to be desired.
.
I done to God,
it s
nobody
fault ....
he
says,
there
is
who
drops his
sweep under cover of night and crawls between the thwarts, towards
the rising sun, unseen by the guard, praying for storm. ... I am he
who will never be caught, never delivered, who crawls between the
thwarts, towards the
THE UNNAMABLE
The punishment
inflicted
Between me and the right to silence, the living rest, stretches the
same old lesson which he has never recited perhaps for fear of
silence
silence being literally his mortal foe: and yet I do not
me, without going silent He thinks of
not be better if I were simply to keep
on saying babababa? but has to reject it: *it seems impossible to
speak and yet say nothing, you think you have succeeded, but you
despair of one day sparing
a possible solution: would
it
... it issues
from me,
it fills
He
187
all
m in words,
these strang-
of words:
I seek, like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beasts
born of caged beasts born in a cage and dead in a cage.
.
learn something
wonder that he
it is little
porary halts:
The fact would seem to be, if in my situation one may speak of facts,
not only that I shall have to speak of things of which I cannot speak,
but also, which is even more interesting, but also that I, which is if
possible
shall
it goes on by itself, it
drags
on by itself, from word to word, a labouring whirl, you are in it
somewhere , and what does it all matter, anyway: it is some con
siderable time now since I last knew what I was talking about.
Bah, no need to worry, it can only have been one thing, the same
as ever Literature is an insult to this hero for whom it represents
slavery:
How,
my
came
am the angel,
my
the
manual
who cannot
cross, before
here.
188
silence.
THE UNNAMABLE
One
of the
first
who
tinctness either
account:
AH these Murphys, Molloys and Malones do not fool me. They have
made me waste my time, suffer for nothing, speak of them when, in
order to stop speaking, I should have spoken of me and of me alone.
.
my
my
the others, those I have used and those I have not used,
and vanish, from my life
There,
give me back the pains I lent them
them and
all
now there
The
is
scheming perpetually to
effect his
fered after his fashion, the space of an instant. Then they uncorked
real little
the champagne. One of us at last! Green with anguish
I
terrestrial!
been he an
instant.
a
is
first
lot to expect of
behave
as if he
permits
189
He is,
How many
forth at the
And who
is
holding
are futile
teasers.
The way
with insidious
insistence, is
But my dear man, come, be reasonable, look, this is you, look at this
photograph, and here s your file, no convictions, I assure you, come
now, make an effort, at your age, to have no identity, it s a scandal
.
here
it s
till
m tempted;
no, all lies, they know it well, I never understood, I haven t stirred.
I can t go to them, they
Mahood won t
get
me
ll
have
out, nor
to
if
Worm either.
I,
far,
am
pronoun
for
me,
all
there
is
no name
190
for
me, no
THE UNNAMABLE
He
therefore properly unnamable , unassignable and unassimilable to anyone or anything, lost in a netherworld where no
is
days here
his
so that
own existence:
No,
as
long as I
Madeleine
it
s,
will
be impossible for
pursue
my
If the
Unnamable seems
others,
Worm is in the
act,
His senses
the
rest,
and
nothing, he
conceive
me
to believe, sufficiently to
tell
him
opposite predicament:
this distinction is
exists nevertheless,
Worm is,
From the
on
its
He
that this hero raises most of the disputed issues of technical philo
feel the presence of
sophy and poses them in dramatic terms.
We
Hume
that waits, sinister and menacing, behind the elements of our dis
course,
fall
strangers
from our
lips as
soon as uttered.
increase, and give a hectic, almost frenzied air to the closing sec
tions of the book; at one point one is even reminded of Lucky s
desperate speech:
has not yet been our good fortune to establish with any degree of
accuracy what I am, where I am, whether I am words among words,
or silence in the midst of silence, to recall only two of the hypotheses
it
launched in this connection, though silence to tell the truth does not
appear to have been very conspicuous up to now, but appearances may
sometimes be deceptive, I resume, not yet our good fortune to establish,
among other things, what I am, no, sorry, already mentioned, what I m
doing, how I manage, to hear.
.
This
is,
A.
he was dead, second verse, Then all the dogs came crawling and dug the
dog a tomb.
.
This novel
is as
couldn
doctor
who
do
it )
and humour
held that
( when Mahood
scientifically
192
it s
they build up
human, a
I once
lob
knew
THE UNNAMABLE
could only issue from the fundament
metaphors are well-chosen:
)j
furthermore the
Ah if only this voice could stop, this meaningless voice which pre
vents you from being nothing, just barely prevents you from being
nothing and nowhere, just enough to keep alight this little flame
feebly darting from side to side, panting, as if straining to tear itself
from its wick.
.
The
said, of
rammed down my
rrfaurait inflige le
The Unnamable
to say, as
is
it
to find
something
In Ruby Cohn s book The Comic Gamut (p. 521, note 15), which I received
that Mr. Beckett claims that
only after completing my own, I read, However,
these changes are errors, and not deliberate.
1
195
says
own fabrication.
ment
in 1956:
The French work brought me to the point where I felt I was saying
the same thing over and over again. For some authors writing gets
easier the more they write. For me it gets more and more difficult.
For me the area of possibilities gets smaller and smaller. ... At the end
of my work there s nothing but dust. ... In the last book, Ulrmomcomplete disintegration. No T, no have no being
nominative, no accusative, no verb. There s no way to go on.
mdble, there
No
How
the
last chapter.
Chapter 8
c est
le
Pfawm
lafange.
MOLLOY
chum of stale words in the heart again/ love love love thud of
the old plunger/ pestling the unalterable/ whey of words
the
CASCANDO
BECKETT
most recent
II
fiction seeks a
way
when
solutions, inadequate
because they merely avoid the issue: suicide, or silence. As he has
said: There are others, like Nicolas de Stael, who threw them
we
that
imposed
itself
The
Hume
easily
events as duration
is
absurde, of man who will cease as totally to exist when his voice
dies into silence as the perceptum vanishes with the departure of
eternal,
The
which
epic,
reflects
in a universe
silence
side.
his text 5
his hero,
We
pieces he adds
little
new to
but tries
would-be ideal
form and style
have to devote most of our attention.
or nothing that
is
his vision,
we
Such content as there is can only be hinted at, and since there
is no one
being, human or subhuman, in these texts, but only a
bodiless and self-less voice (or voices), I shall have to use the neuter
pronoun
it
196
of a
to go on.
It often
remembers, or thinks
it
remembers, previous
exis
a father to a
little
same series, I
under various false appella
don t make me laugh, if only I could laugh, all would vanish.
Pozzo
it
more than
once,
name
also occurs:
make me
forget I
he had a
castle
and
retainers. Insidious
am the accused.
hero.
197
The
it says, is
quite out of
the question, as is death also, and comme nature c*est vague: parhaps the ground is dry, or wet, or muddy; perhaps it is inside a
head, the darkness lends support to such a hypothesis. Most likely,
however, the voice exists beyond all material kingdoms: in the
depths of this place which is not one, which is only a time for the
called here
- the
voice is defined by
which
is an enormous
now
the
two
coefficients,
present
only
second and space which is infinite It exists only as an abstract,
as it were mathematical entity, which seeks continually to take on
concrete existence, and if the Textes pour rien can be said to be
about* anything, they are the devious chronicle of these unsuc
is
cessful attempts.
The
is
occasionally recalls
familiar country:
I
in
had heard
tell,
distant sea
smoke of the
city, it
was
all
on every
tongue.
In the sixth text the voice speaks of the bathroom in the childhood
home
(at Foxrock?):
the bathroom, with, a view of the sea, and the lightships at night,
and the red harbour light.
.
198
life
les
murs.
The world
of
hope, in spite of
A pity hope is
men
all,
is
survives as
dead. No.
it
where
How one
am here for ever, with the spiders and the dead flies, dancing
that
it s
done with.
This voice
of words, here as always, nothing else. But they are failing, yes, that
s
Or it s the fear of
changes everything, they are faltering, that bad.
coming to the last, of having said all, before the end, no,
be the end, the end of all, not sure.
Here once again is the Unnamable s fear, and his solution, namely
that it matters little what one says, for tout se vaut. Words are a
babble in one s mind, they are written down with no under
or even of what they are: avec quels
standing of what they mean,
mots? asks the voice; and how
innommables
mes
les
mots
nommer,
199
it
slow, slow
?
It
The homeless, mouthless voice (yoix sans bouche} has only the
dust of dead words 5 from the very beginning, nothing but that:
il
rien
and
of
make
its
own
is
obliged to speak,
again, I
200
Having postulated
says to
I ll wait for
I alone
this
am,
it as its
you here, my mind at ease, at ease for you, no, Fin alone,
I who must go, this time it s I;
it s
it
it:
it
an
if it adopts
while
it
combs
What
does
calls it
its
it
is,
mon
what one
Jesus.
says
But
one
is,
have tried
the voice
tells us,
to
make me
fall
from
cliffs,
in
its
don t know, I
here, that s all I know, and that it s still not me,
with that I have to do the best I can. There is no flesh anywhere,
nor any means of dying. Give it up, the will to give it up, all that, not
I
it s
knowing what
is
meant by
vain, nothing has stirred, no one has spoken. Here, nothing will happen
here, there will be no one here, for many a day. The departures, the
stories,
And
201
The
stantly
And when
my mouth
opens again
it
identifiable existence:
will be,
who knows,
to tell a
Je cherche h etre, says the voice. Is it I, this man sitting stiff and
upright on a bench on South-East Station, holding his ticket
between thumb and forefinger? No, I am here, waiting for a train
that will never
on a
come in nor go
caf^ terrace or
on the
steps of
refused
it.
have the
The self is, however, what it calls le mSme inconnu que toujours,
what Proust termed that stranger, oneself. This self has further
more an unnerving habit of dividing up into two selves:
I
was
had it told to
me
faithfully, faithfuUy.
One
may wander
is it really he, is
before leaving in the company of the same friends,
abandoning its other half, like Mercier and Gamier separating at
the forking of the ways.
among
friends, shaking
it possible
its
Does
it is
is
The
what
- have they
a little recreation? The Unnamable
it calls its
guardians
am not in his head, nowhere in his old body, and yet I am there,
I am there, with him, whence all the confusion. It should be
for
him, to find me absent, but no, he wants me there, with a
enough
form of my own, a world of my own, like him, in spite of him, me who
am all, like him who is nothing. And when he feels I have no existence,
it s of his he would have me bereft, and vice versa, mad, mad, he s
mad. The truth is he is looking for me to kill me, so that I may be dead
like him, dead like the living.
He thinks he is at a loss for words, he
I
for
him
my silence, go silent
foist
one on me.
because
it
The last text puts the matter correctly, or as correctly as may be:
nous sommes finis, qid ne J times jamais.
In the dimension inhabited by the voice, nothing can be said,
nothing can be named: rien rfest nommable, rien rCest dicible.
Truth
is
a dirty word, so
why
feel
ashamed of
so
many lies,
tant
temps
s estfait espace),
205
if
comprenne qui
pourra!
texts,
as
their elegance, but they vanish once we have laid the book down.
Beckett has reached in literature the limit of the rarefied. Having
204
irais,
mots
& Tissue,
t6t
ou tard,
si je
la disais 1&,
quelque part,
les autres
et passer
aller,
k travers, et voir les belles choses que porte le ciel, et revoir les
Voiles. 1
pen to write the French play Fin de partie at the turn of the year
(1955-1956)$ and in 1957 a piece washed up from the wreck of the
English vessel appeared in the Evergreen Review.
This fragment covers three days in the life of the hero, who
does not give himself a name, but describes himself as old and
weak he was young then and his mother used to hang out of
window waving goodbye to him on his departure from the
,
the
day he
is
attacked
third he meets a
country, crashing his way through the great ferns And that is all.
He is, like his predecessors, a vagrant: I have never in my life
.
been on
my way
little else
The wording
e grand!
uscimmo a riveder
205
le stelle.
Inferno:
it s
of me, I
often
is as futile as
s:
so often.
Feeling
And
as in
even of Beckett
Fortunately
my
father died
when
might
have been a professor, he had set his heart on it. A very fair scholar I
was too, no thought, but a great memory. One day I told him about
Milton s cosmology, away up in the mountains we were, resting against
a huge rock looking out to
sea, that
No
who
died some
One week it would be exercises, and the next prayers and bible reading,
and the next gardening, and the next playing the piano and singing,
that was awful, and then just lying about and resting, always changing.
This text has thus the same quality of nostalgia and regret, the
same controlled pathos that makes the play so good. The tech
nique of recall is comparable in both, although it is undeniable
that the play, which exploits the dramatic possibilities of the
is the more powerful and impressive work of the
One can hardly regret the abandoning of this novel, since
thereby was made possible the transmutation of its best features
tape-recorder,
two.
207
one hear you, I often thought of that up in the mountains, no, that is a
went on, my body doing its best without me.
Euphony
is
echoing sense:
with
why
the curses
effect:
fire
to bits.
was hardly
to be
powerful expression.
*
208
It Is -
even the
title is
for
This need not surprise nor unduly mystify us, since we are
familiar with Beckett s voices of unexplained proven
by now
ance.
something wrong
In the
first part,
conditions in
209
is as
follows:
table of basic stimuli one sing nails in armpit two speak blade of opener
in axse three stop thump of fist on skull four louder handle of opener
on kidney
five
not
same
so
loud index in anus six bravo slap athwart arse seven bad
same as one or two depending
Bom, who,
into
self
after
which
Pirn took to a
go to
all I
wanted
I got it
nothing
left
but
heaven
The hero
tions to
We
God, Pirn, and Bom, even the idea of tins of food to keep them
all that subsists is the mud, the dark
alive, are swept dean away
210
down,
until
he invents
Pirn.
if
determines moreover
of fiction:
the
resources
to outdo even Malone and live without
,
life
211
woman
little
as a
animal here
spirit is indispensable
wise too great an honour
Time here
it
is
since there
means of measuring
is at least
certain that
it
is
and
represent as much for him as the long stick does for Malone;
he takes great pleasure in the simplest things, as in the smell of
a freshly opened tin of tunny.
because he is so unsure of his own existence, he in
Perhaps
activities,
Kram, and a
transcriber of these,
Krim, both of whom are swept away at the end, there is therefore
little call to take them seriously. They seem to be mere survivals
of the more substantial employees of the mysterious master in
his childhood
to go back
je cherche une
tie
home
212
enfin
.
he
says,
and hopes
is
littered
ectual
geographie.
Like the
Unnamable he
is
in
me
all sides
then in
tell
y
a
prised at them: they are imposed on him (voild la parole qu on
donnee), he hears them imperfectly and therefore no doubt
la
mme chose
on ne pent con-
Putting questions to itself at the end, the voice learns that its
situation can never change and that the moment will never come
is
especially
speaking or
Bom remembering even in the fairly straightforward second part.
When to this difficulty is added that of the images in Part I, and
of the final clearing of the decks in Part III, it becomes evident
213
identity
On
may lead
us.
in the light
first
and
said
and
me
or said to myself I
with
I cut
scissors
first
one
wing then the other sometimes for a change the two concurrently
set free the body in the middle never so good since
relives his
image a woman
raises
own
death on earth:
is
well he
is
me fifteen
it as I
hear
me
it
I see
all is
working
my head lies on the table my hand trembles high wind the little clouds
move
fast
the table
slips
over she stoops blindly to her work again the needle falters in
the cloth and stays she draws herself up and looks at me again she has
it isn t
only to
call
my stillness she more and more uneasy suddenly leaves the house and
goes to friends
214
are
on a
tiles
good God
its
my
eyes
isn t over she drones a belief of the Apostles Creed I look at her
lips
t see me
up mine
wrong
but this image fades in
over
it s
it
the space of a
on
little rat
its
turn:
that
is
yet to come:
figments that old time part one vast stretch of time when I drag myself
and drag myself amazed that I can the cord sawing my neck the sack
jolting at
never come
says to
me
figments like that dead head the hand alive still the little table tossed
by the clouds the woman springing to her feet and rushing out into
the wind
that
endure
Although
we
bud here
already. It will
no
are
still
we have
less
We
215
its
its
rapid
decline.
c
The most
significant
as the hero of La
namely
only companion was a
image
Fin
who lived in
flower:
Another image forcibly recalls the ironical tone of the short story
of 1954, Fingal, which told of Belacqua s sortie with Winnie:
suddenly we are eating sandwiches alternate bites I mine she hers and
exchanging endearments my sweet girl I bite she swallows my sweet
boy she
.
fields
bites I
swallow
hand
in
hand
we
smaller and smaller out of sight first the dog then us the scene
is
rid of
us
In Part
II,
Pirn
another
way
tired of
The
and
efforts
pour
216
is little
for his
vents
way
my
thought even
if
you
like
my
words (my
millions
in,
game away
in the following
italics):
my
Bom
The
Christian
novel, but he
God
is
217
enough
God
to enable
him
chief function
is
is
then
one of us there
listens to
that ours
But
lui
aussL
is
as
an embodiment of
its
author
for instance.
One feels
however a certain relief that Beckett decided against a blocktext before he sent in his final version, for without the verses the
novel would certainly take some time to decipher.
This typographical innovation is not gratuitous. It responds to
a genuine need, that of transcribing as faithfully as possible a
voice that can only speak words when it stops panting. A new
syntax answers to the same need: main verbs and conjunctions
218
le sac [est]
ici je le
liche [car
ai]
la]
ment dits
deux ou
[;]
mais
trois
[voici]
quelques precisions
d abord
[,
au nombre de]
[.]
which
is
quite authentic;
it
to the
naval service:
Monsieur
le Ministre
Je vous prie de
vie terrestre
ma
postes
me
trompent
ai des
travaux pour
si les lettres
ne sont pas
[sic] ici la
because they have not been drilled in the conventions and contri
vances of literary composition, the language employed therein
being naturally different from that of colloquial speech: this is, of
1
Quoted from the section headed Le style des illettres^ in Andr Moufflet s book
le massacre de la languefrangaise, Toulouse et Paris, 1930, page 40.
Centre
219
We
When
do not
recoil.
220
sometimes so eccentric
than French:
[il]
put enfin
as to
les voir
un peu avant
ses ongles sa
mort
In colloquial French the order would be, after one had put in the
commas, il put enfin les voir, ses angles, un peu avant sa mort.
Liberties of this kind are taken to make possible poetry of quality,
as
in this quotation:
h.
la
iles
s style can throw
up words or combinations of words of
such beauty that one is occasionally reminded of certain lines by
Saint- John Perse, such as:
Beckett
...
so
much
les milices
da vent dans
les sables
de
exiL
written by Perse:
les
The rhythm
of the sentence
is
humour, on
the hero:
.
stabbed
this Pirn
The
damn
fact
in.
it all
so,
he
221
is
is
The
Surrealists
222
CONCLUSION:
La marche
de
la
artistiaue se fait
BECKETT,
Proust
dans
qui ne nous soit pas fermee, ou nous puissions progresser, avec plus
de peine il est vrai, pour un resultat de verite*
MARCEL PROUST
THESE two
fiction
vinces) is
it
We
must
strength and consistency.
ceuvre, seek to assess
it
Throughout
and
texts.
been made
s fiction
gradual
225
justified.
once
witch
rags, is
why we
find such
im
is
the Smeraldina could always appear as she did when he first set
eyes on her, rapt, like the spirit of the troubadour, casting no
shade, herself shade , and only receives his last mention in
224
Beckett
from
skilful, clever
lectual
while
still
of all
who
he mil seek,
He
is
He puts
repeated humiliation in accepting contemptuous charity.
us inside the skin of the aged vagabond in filthy rags, evil-smelling
P
225
friends,
ill-paid staff.
whom
Beckett
lives
on its
fringes, these
whom
he places
interested, in
he opens to utter his voice. His
is
mouths
from sentimentality, for he lets them re
veal themselves often in an unflattering light, but he treats them
with compassion. The compassion lies in the plunge which the
in his sufferings, and
author makes with his hero, joining
then it leaps from the derelict character to man in general, of
Mm
whom
the hero
man
of cities
lusts
who
is
a resemblance
outcast,
state his case.
London
party by an
intellectual,
dealt in misery, patronizingly
imputing
(Beckett) always
this to an unhappy child
*I
don
this
means
is,
of course,
little
226
his
Tony Parker s
book of conversations with an inveterate criminal: I don t want to
mix at all with people who have what might be called "suburban
or respectability/ the latter says 5 I don t like them,
pretensions"
I actively dislike them. He resents the sort of patronizing you
get
say.
"In
Molloy
ironical reflections
the hero of
to
upon the
police-station incident, or
day world} his novels would be of minor interest only if they did
the outcast. He
nothing but depict the condition of the tramp and
uses his understanding of the human bundle of rags asleep on a
metro grating to create works that are independent of their occa
that goes beyond it. like
sion, and which possess a significance
several other writers, however, he refuses to explain himself, even
maintains that there is nothing to explain: we have no elucida
tions to offer , he wrote to the American director Alan Schneider,
of mysteries that are all of their [journalists ] making.
a matter of fundamental sounds (no joke intended)
is
My work
made
as
fully as possible,
exegetical
227
rigour
standing of them, there
as
livened
by humour,
languages
literary traditions.
to
Dante,
probably
school,
new
list
228
The
in particular. This
of this doctrine,
to
Middling
Women
haviourists in psychology
Kyle
Concept
offered to it in
of Mind
modern
people remain
fore a lively doctrine, and it is hardly too much to say that it haunts
the thought of Samuel Beckett and lies behind much of his work.
229
much
consists in
as possible
continues:
Murphy fails to
Attunement
not be
made
peace only
apply Neary
to his
to
Neo-Pythagorean technique of
is a dualist, his
body can
of harmony with his mind, and
5
work in any
lies for
own organism he
him
sort
and
250
each, of
us lives the
solitude is
consistent
whelming sense
Hume
the cross
A case
could even be
made
251
that there
is
religious nos-
his
talgia present in
system. I can t see any trace of any system anywhere , and he did
not (on the subject of God s existence) give Driver the impression
that he cared very much either way. If his work reveals any posi
Hamm
he doesn t
God
exist!
Professor
as a sad
neglected as worthless: I
working with impotence, ignorance ,
he has said. I don t think impotence has been exploited in the
is
252
troublesome shadow.
We
which
flickers on,
somehow
resisting
assault:
Mahood is
come
to life?
ears but
my
silent, that is to
I can live,
for
(The UimamabU)
255
no
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. Published
I.
Works
of Samuel Beckett
English
Works
.
1929 Dante .
Bruno. Vico
Joyce
in
Progress. First published in Our Exa&~
Essay on Joyce s Work
.
rrdnation
his Factification
New York,
1939.
1929 Assumption
Short story. Published in Transition, nos. 16-17, pp. 268-271,
New
York, 1949.
Thursday, 14 November
1929.
June
1930.
1930
From
Crowder to Sing
Poem of 17 lines (p. 6),
set to
music
(pp. 12-14),
by H. Crowder.
254
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1930 Whoroscope
Poem
Hours
Time
poemes.
We
acted]; as such
we
it.
publish
1931 Proust
Study of
1931
1.
(pp. 475-476);
2.
Mandarin
[i.e.
the Smeraldina]
(pp. 476-478);
Text
3.
(pp.
478-480 - this
4.
(p.
New
Review,
Yoke of Liberty
480)
235
New
Review,
from
An
International Note
August-October 1951.
[sic]
1932 Text
Prose fragment written in imitation of Joyce s Work in Progress
manner. Published in The New Review, vol. 2, no. 5, p. 57,
April 1932. (Another excerpt from Dream}.
1932
Home Olga
A 10-line acrostic on the letters of James Joyce s name, referred
by Joyce in a letter of 22 July 1932 and printed in full in
Contempo, III, p. 3, Chapel Hill, N.C., 15 February 1934, and in
Richard Ellmann s book, James Joyce, p. 714, New York, 1959.
to
A collection of 10
1.
2. Fingal, p. 21.
3.
Ding-Dong, p.4L
4.
A Wet
5.
The
Walking Out,
7.
What a Misfortune, p.
8.
The Smeraldina
9.
YeUow,
Doux,
Night, p. 59.
p. 115.
p. 139.
6.
159-
s Billet
p. 215.
p. 227.
reprinted in New
November 1956.
New York,
By R. M.
Rilke; published in
1934.
236
The
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1934 Review of Poems
by Thomas McGreevy; published in Dublin Magazine,
vol. ix,
1934
review
Gnome
Poem of 4 lines. Published in Dublin Magazine, w\. ix, no. 3, p.
8,
July-September 1934.
1934
Case in a Thousand
Short story. Published in The Bookman, London, vol. 86, no. 515,
pp. 241-242, August 1934.
1934
1. Ex Cathezra
Review of Make it New by Ezra Pound;
2. Papini s Dante
Review of Dante Vivo by G. Papini;
3. The Essential and the Incidental
Review of Windfalls by Sean O Casey.
All three reviews published in The Bookman,
1935 Echo
14
1934.
respectively, Christmas
and 111
collection of thirteen
lished
From
pp.
this collection
Pub
Mala-
by
Enueg II and Dortmunder were reprinted in Transition,
The Hague, no. 24, pp. 8-10, June 1936; ten were reprinted
coda,
with German
published by Limes Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1959,
as
in Poems in
as
well
translations facing the English text,
in
Dublin
Mag
London, 1961. Alba was first published
English,
azine, vol. 6, no. 4, p. 4,
October-December 1931.
1936 Cascando
Poem. Published in Dublin Magazine,
October-December
editions.
257
19381. Ooftish
19-line
2.
poem;
Denis Devlin
A review of Intercessions,
by D. Devlin.
1946
Poem
By Samuel Beckett ( Oblomov
in
1953 Watt
Olympia
Press, Paris,
1953 (ddpot
Companion series,
Olympia Press, Paris, 1958, and by Grove Press, New York, 1959.
Extracts were published in the following reviews:
Envoy, Dublin,
vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 11-19,
258
BIBLIOGRAPHY
All differ slightly from the 1958 text. There is,
according to Mr.
Beckett, no truth in the assertion that some extracts were pub
lished during the war. (Reprinted
Jupiter Books, Calder, 1963).
fall
1957
and Grove
Press,
New York,
1957, 59 pp.
Magee.
News,
vol. 5, no.
17, p. 4, 1956.)
letter dated
27 December 1955,
1959
1.
Krapp
last letter
New York, p. 8,
19
March
1958.
Last Tape
Embers
November-December 1959.
Krapp s Last Tape and Other Dramatic Pieces, Grove Press
New York, 1960, also contains the mime Act Without Words II;
text originally written in French about 1956 and translated by
259
1961
New
Happy Days
Play in two acts for two characters. First performance at Cherry
Lane Theatre,
Schneider;
first
New
November 1962,
Press,
British performance at
New York,
director
1962
End of Day
An entertainment from
Per
Octo
1962
November
1963 Play
Play in one act for three characters. World premiere at Ulm,
Germany, 14 June 1963. Publication: Faber and Faber, 1964.
1947
Works
Murphy
First published in the
Collection
Les Imaginaires
no. 5,
whom it is
dedicated.
240
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1959 La Deraiere Bande
The
suivi
de Cendres
translated
first
published in Les Lettres NouveUes (n.s.) no. 1, pp. 5-15,4
mars 1959 and no. 36, pp. 344, 30 decembre 1959.
1963
Oh
les
Beaux Jours
d imprimer,
1963), 89 pp.
II.
French Works
Article occasioned
Galeries
Monde
et le Pantalon
Art, Paris,
1946 Suite
Short story. First published in Les Temps Modernes, Paris, no.
10, pp. 107-119, juillet 1946. A completely revised version pub
lished as
1946
La Fin in
(q.v.).
L Expuls^
Short story. First published in Fontaine, Alger (later Paris), tome
collection
Le Monde en
XHI
(there
is
no
Gedichte,
collected in
241
1951
MoUoy
Novel in two
parts,
272
1952
En Attendant Godot
Play in two acts for 5 characters. Published by Editions de Minuit,
Paris, 1952 (ddpdt Idgal, octobre 1952). Abridged version broad
cast by the Club d Essai of the R.D.F. in 1952. First theatrical
performance, Th&Ltre de Babylone, 5 January 1953, director
Roger
1953
Blin.
L lnnommable
Novel, 262 pp. Editions de Minuit, Paris, 1953 (ddpdt legal, juin
1953). Extract entitled Mahood, published in the Nouvelle
N.R.F., pp. 214-234, fevrier 1953.
1954
Hommage a
Jack B. Yeats
Art criticism. Published in Lettres Nouvelles, Paris, no. 14, pp. 619620, avril 1954.
La Fin.
The
nouveau
first
242
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1957 Fin de Partie
suivi
Play in one act for 4 characters; and mine in one act for one
character, accompanied by a musical score by John Beckett. Both
plays performed at Royal Court Theatre, London, 3 April 1957,
director Roger Blin. Published by Editions de Minuit, Paris,
1957 (depot Ugal, fevrier 1957). Acte sans paroles, 8 pp.; Fin de
Partie, 102 pp. ; latter reprinted in O. Asian, 20 Pieces en un acte,
Seghers, Paris, 1959, pp. 67ff.
1959
L Image
Text, 5 pp. Published in X, London, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 35-57,
November 1959. Early version of the image in Comment C etf,
pp. 33-38.
1961
Comment C
Novel in 3
est
text, appeared in
1,
(dpdt
from published
pp. 9-13,
Summer
1960.
1950
Two
1.
Fragments
Minuit
2.
text, pp. 97
(Editions de
ff.).
(first
paragraph).
and
La
Fin (1955).
version,
conforming more
243
by
series,
Olympia
Press, Paris,
1955 (241 pp.) and by Grove Press, New York, 1955. Extracts,
showing variants, published in: Merlin, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 88-103,
Autumn 1955; Paris Review, no. 5, pp. 124-155, Spring 1954;
New York,
1956; John Calder, London, 1958; Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1962. Extract published in Irish Writing, Spring 1956.
1958
Endgame
followed
1,
pp. 5-7,
Winter 1958.
21-24,
Summer
vol.
1959.
no.
244
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1960
Comment C^est
by the author.
III.
Translations
by
Beckett,
6, no. 22,
pp. 8-
and Miscellaneous
19301. Delta
(Poem), by Eugenio Montale, p. 630.
2.
Landscape
(Prose),
3.
by Raffaelo Franchi,
p. 672.
The Home-Coming
pault,
reprinted in
1932 Poetry
is
Vertical
1934
1.
(Prose),
2.
Jazz Orchestras
Louis Armstrong
Hot Jazz
(Prose),
by Robert Goffin,
pp. 378-9.
245
etc.
Summary
(Prose),
by Jenner
Uhnamable>
A Note on
(Prose),
6.
The Bang
(Prose),
7.
in
Guadeloupe
by E.Flavia-Leopold,
pp. 497-500.
by
Murderous Humanitarianism
(Prose),
by the
Surrealist
Eluard, B. Peret,
11.
pp. 471-475.
(Prose),
10.
by Jacques Boulenger,
(Prose),
9.
of Gonaives
The Child
(Prose),
8.
Haytian Culture
by L. M. Lacombe, pp. 470-471.
Group
574-575.
etc., pp.
(Prose),
by L. Pierre-Quint,
12.
The Negress
13.
pp. 575-580.
in the Brothel
R.
Crevel, pp. 580 ff.
(Prose), by
(Prose),
14.
J. J.
(Prose),
15.
by
by Charles Ratton,
Africa
pp. 684-686.
(Prose),
16.
Magic and
Initiation
Ubanghi-Shari
by B. P. Feuilloley,
(Prose),
Among
the Peoples of
pp, 754-758.
17.
246
BIBLIOGRAPHY
18.
(Prose),
19.
by E.
Stiers, pp.
795-801.
French Imperialism at
(Prose),
by G. Citerne and
Work
in
Madagascar
lished
compiled 1931-33).
lations
1958
S.
French
articles
on van Velde.
by Grove
Press,
New York,
1960.
M. Bowra,
introduction
by
O. Paz.
Beckett. Preface
UNESCO
by
publication:
1958; reprinted by
1959. Translation carried out
247
March-
April 1961.
B.
Known
1.
Dream
of Fair to Middling
Premier Amour
c.
1945.
Mercier et Gamier
Women
1932,
c.
1945.
c.
Hetitheria
c.
1947-48.
New
York,
1957
and
3,
(see
Profile,
1958.
A. de Say:
Roussillon
(Beckett in 1943), in
L Arc,
Aix-en-
248
New York,
in
1959.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1961 G. d Aubarede: interview with. Beckett, Nouvelles Litteraires,
Paris, 16 fevrier
Tom F. Driver:
1961.
Beckett by the Madeleine in Columbia Univer
,
ledge
the Dublin University Calendar, Dublin, 1924-33, is a mine of
information about Beckett s undergraduate and post-graduate
career.
The
of Beckett
consulting also for mentions
ties
is
well worth
extra-curricular activi
of
(Golf Club, Cricket XI, music, etc.) and for an impression
as a lecturer, to undergraduates (see especially
how he appeared,
3 November 1933,
by
father.
I.
1960
J.-J.
Vurdvers parodique.
Books
Mayoux: Vwants
Lettres
Samuel Beckett
et
1960.
1961
Beckett,
Critical Study.
list
Grove Press,
omit
previous articles I
below.)
II.
Articles
in The Listener,
1934 Edwin Muir: review of More Pricks than Sicks,
4 July 1934.
p. 42,
249
p. 8, 13
March
1938.
Le
1951 G. Bataflle:
396,
15mai
silence de
Molloy
1951.
24
8,
avril
1951.
1951.
in
Mercure
1951.
1951
J.
Pouillon:
mars 1956.
London, 1956.
1958 Anon: review of Watt, in Times Literary Supplement,
March
28
p. 168,
1958.
How
1958 P. Bowles:
in
The
Listener,
in
in Perspective,
1960 V.
S. Pritchett:
Irish
Oblomov
in
New
March
Statesman, p. 489, 2
April 1960.
1961
M.
Chapsal:
Janvier 1961.
1961 R. Cohn:
Le jeune roman
Samuel Beckett,
hi
L Express,
self-translator
Paris, p. 31, 12
in P.M.L.A., vol.
76, no. 5, pp. 613-621, December 1961. (See also her article
Watt, cited pp. 88-9 above.)
250
on
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1961
J.
Fletcher: review of
Comment C
est,
C est,
avril 1961.
comparee
in Awiales de la Facult
une etude
Statesman, p.
Some Background
E.
Here
is
a short
New
list
Materials
him
in following
D.
J.
(Geulincx especially).
The Irony
of Swift
Oxford,
1954.
W.
C. Booth:
Tristram Shandy
1952.
251
INDEX NOMINUM
Beckett
B
Beckett,
Samuel
(details of bio-
251-2, 248-9
1
passim, 58,
49-51, 55-4, 64, 66; 79, 98,
107-8 115, 117, 121, 140-2,
Belacqua, Chapter
Hero of
(anony2
mous ^Nouvettes
/;^
/^ ^^ ^ ^ ^ ^
*&
>>
216
144 149,
14Q 160-1,
160 1 182,
182 211,
211 21o,
144,
*.
Bom/Pirn,
fin
Bunyan, John, 21, 46, 152-5, 250
201, 224
Joyce, James, 14, 25, 98, 155, 204,
228, 254, 256, 245, 248
,
138? 161 2 , 171, 186, 188, 195,
174
2
Kelly, Mr., Chapter passim,
Knott, Mr. f Chapter 5 passim,
Dante, Chapter
256, 251
Descartes, Ren6, 56, 51, 107, 140,
142, 174, 199,211,228-51,251
E
172
Endon, Mr., 49, 52, 86
Macmann,
Madden,
255
202,211-12,225,230
Mauriac, Frangois, 135, 165-6,
225
Mercier and Camier, 87,
Chapter 4 Part II passim, 121,
123, 126, 129, 140, 181, 202
228
Swift, Jonathan, 21, 27, 76, 98,
233, 250-1
Murphy,
Unnamble, The,
N
Neary, Chapter 2 passim, 94,
197, 230
Nye, Dr., 102
W
Watt, 24, 32, 55, Chapter 3 pas
P
Price, Mrs., 65, 108
Proust, Marcel, 13, 14, 76, 196,
254
INDEX RERUM
Fictional
B
Beckettian Hero, Evolution
223
K
Knowledge,
ff.
4 (Part II)
and 5 passim, 157, 174
Boots and Shoes, 24, 64-5, 99,
n
U
"TF20,
217
IJuaKsm (Body and mind), 36-7,
""
St.
F
and Social Alienation, 23,
30-2, 34, 53-5, 77-9, 98, 106-7,
110, 115-16, 118, 139-40, 149,
23 1
Exile
216, 231
Speech, Voices
and Silence,
60,
255
Self-
Style, Bilingualism
Womb,
Tyrants and Deities, 27, 53,
256
187
Inc.
10005
02420