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  I can’t go on, I’ll go on

  Works by Samuel Beckett published by Grove Press

  COLLECTED POEMS IN ENGLISH AND FRENCH

  COLLECTED SHORTER PLAYS

  (All That Fall, Act Without Words I, Act Without Words II, Krapp’s Last Tape, Rough for Theatre I, Rough For Theatre II, Embers, Rough for Radio I, Rough for Radio II, Words and Music, Cascando, Play, Film, The Old Tune, Come and Go, Eh Joe, Breath, Not I, That Time, Footfalls, Ghost Trio,... but the clouds..., A Piece of Monologue, Rockaby, Ohio Impromptu, Quad, Catastrophe, Nacht and Träume, What Where)

  COMPLETE SHORT PROSE: 1929-1989

  (Assumption, Sedendo et Quiescendo, Text, A Case in a Thousand, First Love, The Expelled, The Calmative, The End, Texts for Nothing 1-13, From an Abandoned Work, The Image, All Strange Away, Imagination Dead Imagine, Enough, Ping, Lessness, The Lost Ones, Fizzles 1-8, Heard in the Dark 1, Heard in the Dark 2, One Evening, As the story was told, The Cliff, neither, Stirrings Still, Variations on a “Still” Point, Faux Départs, The Capital of the Ruins)

  DISJECTA:

  Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment

  ENDGAME AND ACT WITHOUT WORDS

  HAPPY DAYS

  HOW IT IS

  I CAN’T GO ON, I’LL GO ON:

  A Samuel Beckett Reader

  KRAPP’S LAST TAPE (All That Fall, Embers, Act Without Words I, Act Without Words II)

  MERCIER AND CAMIER

  MOLLOY

  MORE PRICKS THAN KICKS

  (Dante and the Lobster, Fingal, Ding-Dong, A Wet Night, Love and Lethe, Walking Out, What a Misfortune, The Smeraldina’s Billet Doux, Yellow, Draff)

  MURPHY

  NOHOW ON (Company,

  III Seen III Said, Worstward Ho)

  PROUST

  STORIES AND TEXTS FOR NOTHING

  (The Expelled, The Calmative, The End, Texts for Nothing 1-13)

  THREE NOVELS (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable)

  WAITING FOR GODOT

  WATT

  HAPPY DAYS:

  Production Notebooks

  WAITING FOR GODOT:

  Theatrical Notebooks

  I can’t go on, I’ll go on

  Samuel Beckett

  A Selection from Samuel Beckett’s Work Edited and Introduced by Richard W. Seaver

  Copyright © 1976 by Grove Press, Inc.

  Introduction copyright © 1976 by Richard W. Seaver

  Copyright © 1957, 1961, 1963, 1965, 1967, 1970, 1973, 1976 by Samuel Beckett

  Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1964, 1969, 1972, 1974 by Grove Press, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

  “Dante... Bruno. Vico... Joyce.” from James Joyce—Finnegans Wake: A Symposium, originally published as Our Exagmination Round His Factifacation For Incamination Of Work In Progress, copyright © 1929 by Sylvia Beach. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.

  CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that the plays in this collection are subject to a royalty. They are fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and all British Commonwealth countries, and all countries covered by the International Copyright Union, the Pan-American Copyright Convention, and the Universal Copyright Convention. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound taping, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved.

  First-class professional applications for permission to perform them, and those other rights stated above, for all plays in this volume must be made in advance to Georges Borchardt, Inc., 136 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022.

  Stock and amateur applications to perform them, and those other rights stated above, for all plays except Waiting for Godot and Not I, must be made in advance, before rehearsals begin, with Samuel French, Inc., 45 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10010. For amateur rights to Waiting for Godot and Not I, apply to Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 440 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Beckett, Samuel, 1906-

  I can’t go on, I’ll go on: a selection from Samuel Beckett’s work/Samuel Beckett; edited and introduced by Richard W. Seaver.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references (p.)

  eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9840-2

  1. Seaver, Richard. II. Title.

  [PR6003.E282A6 1991]

  848′91409—dc20 91-21178

  CIP

  Grove Press

  an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  841 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  Nothing is more real than nothing.

  —Democritus*

  Where you are worth nothing, there you should want nothing.

  —Geulincx*

  The danger is in the neatness of identification.

  —Dante . . . Bruno. Vico . . Joyce (1929)

  The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express.

  —Three Dialogues with George Duthuit (1946)

  ESTRAGON: I can’t go on like this.

  VLADIMIR: That’s what you think.

  —Waiting for Godot(1948)

  only dust and not a sound only what was it it said come and gone was that it something like that come and gone come and gone no one come and gone in no time gone in no time.

  —That Time (1975)

  Contents

  Introduction

  PART I—­Early Works (1929-­1946)

  FICTION

  Dante and the Lobster

  From Murphy

  From Watt

  POETRY

  Whoroscope

  From Echo’s Bones

  The Vulture

  Serena I

  Serena III

  Sanies I

  Sanies II

  Da Tagte Es

  Echo’­s Bones

  Cascando

  Saint-­Lô­

  CRITICISM

  Dante .­ .­ .­ Bruno.­ Vico .­ .­ Joyce.­

  PART II—­The Post-­War Years (1946-­1960)

  FICTION

  First Love

  From Mercier and Camier

  The Expelled

  Molloy (Part1)

  From The Unnamable

  Texts for Nothing 11,13

  DRAMATIC WORKS

  Waiting for Godot

  Krapp’­s Last Tape

  PART III—­Later Works (1960-­1975)

  FICTION

  How It Is (Part1)

  Imagination Dead Imagine

  Lessness

  DRAMATIC WORKS

  Cascando

  Eh Joe

  Not I

  That Time

  Selected Bibliography

  Introduction

  Samuel Beckett is, in my opinion, one of the two or three most important writers of the twentieth century. Further, he will, I am convinced, u
ltimately be ranked as one of the giants not only of contemporary but of all literature. If that assessment strikes one as rather weighty and forbidding, let me hasten to add that he is also—despite various efforts to bury him beneath an intolerable burden of analysis and erudition—one of the most accessible writers of the age. And one of the funniest. How many writers have you ever read who make you laugh out loud even as they edify? True, the laughter often dies aborning, and tears can mingle before you know it, but laughter there is, in great Irish abundance. For like Chaplin—a tiny, vulnerable figure in a scarcely fathomable landscape—Beckett’s characters, however dimly or acutely aware of the Void and all its terrors, are also clowns.

  If my stated prejudice seems excessive, at least it has the merit of durability. In 1952, when I was a Sorbonne student, I wrote a piece in the Paris-based English-language quarterly Merlin, entitled “Samuel Beckett: An Introduction,” which began:

  Samuel Beckett, an Irish writer long established in France, has recently published two novels which, although they defy all commentary, merit the attention of anyone interested in this century’s literature. . . .

  The two novels in question were Molloy and Malone meurt, which had just been published, in French, by Les Editions de Minuit. If one excepts the phrase “although they defy all commentary,”* that opening sentence is one I still stand by.

  Geography

  Fortuitous contiguity. Or do we make our own geography? Be that as it may, the early fifties found me in Paris, fresh out of college, in search of I’m not sure what gods or ghosts but convinced they could be discovered only in that magic city. I had found quarters, if that term can be applied to an abandoned warehouse, on the rue du Sabot, a tiny street directly behind St.-Germain-des-Prés. The owner was a Swiss dealer in primitive art. In return for my tending the shop a few hours a week, he gave me free lodging in an empty ground-floor warehouse at the end of the courtyard. I mention the geography because this dépôt —which, my Swiss landlord proudly informed me, had once been a banana-drying shed—was destined to become the headquarters of the magazine and book-publishing enterprise known to history as Merlin and also because it was a scant fifty yards from the offices of the most daring and perceptive French publisher of the time, Les Editions de Minuit.

  There were two routes from my warehouse-home to the bright cafés of St.-Germain-des-Prés, one by the rue du Dragon, the other by the rue Bernard-Palissy, and since I took at least two trips to St.-Germain every day, and always tried to avoid taking the same route twice in a row, it happened, almost inevitably, that I passed Number 7 of the latter street at least once a day. Number 7, a bordel until the puritanical wrath of a famous female Gallic zealot of the period. Marthe Robert, caused these dens of iniquity to close in 1948, now housed Les Editions de Minuit. The grilled peephole was still on the thick wooden door. To the right of the door was a tiny display window set into the wall, which in times past had housed God knows what bawdy come-ons. Now, in the winter of 1951-2, it housed two works, whose blue titles stared out at me each day as I passed: Molloy and Malone meurt. Closer scrutiny revealed the name of the author: Samuel Beckett. I passed that window several times before I made the connection. I was then very deeply into Joyce, and remembered that it was Beckett who, twenty-odd years before, had contributed the opening essay to that collection of twelve odes to the Master, Our Exagmination Round His Factification For Incamination Of Work In Progress. It was Beckett, too, I recalled, who had with French writer Alfred Péron translated the “Anna Livia Plurabelle” episode of Finnegans Wake into French.* What was this Irishman, whom I had also heard referred to as “Joyce’s secretary,” doing writing in French? Or were the Minuit books translations from novels Beckett had written in English? If so, I had never heard of them.

  Finally, curiosity won out over avarice: one morning, on my trek to St.-Germain-des-Prés, I went into Number 7 and bought both books. Later that day I opened Molloy and began to read: “Je suis dans la chambre de ma mère. C’est moi qui y vis maintenant. Je ne sais pas comment j’y suis arrivé . ...” Before nightfall I had finished Molloy. I will not say I understood all I had read, but if there is such a thing as a shock of discovery, I experienced it that day. The simplicity, the beauty, yes, and the terror of the words shook me as little had before or has since. And the man’s vision of the world, his painfully honest portrayal thereof, his anti-illusionist stance. And the humor; God the humor. ... I waited a day or two, then reread Molloy, tempted to plunge into Malone but resisting the temptation, as one resists the seductive sweet. The second reading was more exciting than the first. I went on to Malone. Full worthy of the first. Two stunning works. Miracles.

  The following morning I walked over again to Number 7, and asked an employee if Minuit had published any more works by Beckett. “Who?” was the answer. “Samuel Beckett,” I said. “The man who wrote Molloy and Malone Dies.” I motioned to the back of the display case in which the two masterpieces were still standing. The man shrugged and gestured me upstairs.

  In a second-floor office I repeated my question to a lady at a typewriter. “I don’t think so,” she said, “but let me check.” She picked up an antiquated telephone and dialed. The person she called, I later learned, was Jérôme Lindon, owner and editor of Minuit, a man I would soon meet and come to admire beyond measure. “No,” the secretary informed me, “although another work is in preparation.* But,” she went on, “there is another Beckett novel available from another publisher, Bordas, which I believe is still in print. It is called Murphy.” Murphy, Molloy, Malone. . . . Decidedly, Beckett had a thing about Ms. I thanked her, went outside, and bicycled directly over to Bordas, a stone’s throw away on the rue de Tournon. Not only was Murphy still in print (it had been published in French, in Beckett’s own translation, five years before, in 1947), but by the look of the stock in the back of the shop (Bordas was primarily a bookseller who published occasional works himself), the original printing was all but intact. (According to A. Alvarez,†­ ninety-five copies had been sold by 1951.) I presume, from the delighted reaction of the clerk to my request, that my copy was ninety-six. I took my new treasure home and read it that same night. The comedy was fully as strong as in Molloy and Malone, the sense of the grotesque, the unfailing gift for dialogue, but the magic fusion of comedy and tragedy, of form and content, had not, I felt, yet wholly occurred. I would await L’lnnommable.

  While waiting, I was informed by a Parisian actress-friend that the French radio was scheduled to record part of an as yet unproduced Beckett play. I went to the taping. Rumor had it that Beckett would be present. In all, there were about a dozen of us in the studio, including the actors; like Godot, however, Beckett did not come. Instead he sent a note of apology which Roger Blin, who was not only to direct but to perform in the original stage production of Waiting for Godot the following year, read prior to the taping itself. I do not know whether that “note” still exists in any form, but I remember the gist of it clearly: after apologizing for his absence, Beckett went on to say that, since he knew little or nothing about the theater anyway, he could not see how his presence would add anything to the occasion. Blin, a remarkable actor, was plagued offstage with a pronounced stutter, and had considerable difficulty reading Beckett’s note. Thus it was with a certain trepidation that the hardy handful of Beckett fans and friends gathered in the RTF studios watched as the actual taping began. For Blin was playing Lucky, and though I do not think any of us present had read the as yet unpublished play, we had heard that Lucky’s part contained a tongue-twisting monologue that would tax the talent of the most accomplished actor. When Blin, for the first time anywhere in the world, at least publicly, launched into the French original of these lines:

  Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension . . .

  there was incredible tension in the room. But on-mike, as on stage, Blin was a professional, an
d as such he delivered the monologue beautifully, without the least hitch.

  Over the next month or so I uncovered two other Beckett pieces, both short stories, or, to be more exact, one complete story and a portion of another. The latter, called “Suite,” had appeared in Sartre’s Les temps modernes half a dozen years before, in 1946. Not unusual for France in those days, the offices of the magazine still had copies of the issue. I read it with the same pleasure with which I had consumed Molloy. And yet it seemed strangely incomplete. Still, with Beckett, I reasoned, his ideas of “complete” or “incomplete” doubtless had little to do with those with which I had been inculcated. It was only later that I learned, from Beckett himself, that my first reaction had not been all that wrong: “Suite” represented only the first part of the story “La Fin.” In sending it to Les temps modernes, Beckett rightly or wrongly assumed that at some later date the magazine would publish the rest of the work. But when he sent it on, Simone de Beauvoir returned it with a note indicating it was not the magazine’s policy to publish sequels. She, or Sartre, had presumably thought that what Beckett had sent them first was the complete work. Or perhaps they thought Beckett was putting them on, testing their ability to tell a part from a whole. I’m not sure Beckett ever forgave the pair for their myopia. In any event, the story was not published in its entirety till the following year, in Merlin, in my translation. Well, sort of my translation. About which more later.

  The second story, also extraordinary, was called “L’Expulsé,” which had been published in Fontaine, an influential literary periodical of the time, in 1947.

  Until En attendant Godot was published later in 1952, these comprised the Beckett oeuvres complètes on which I could lay my hands. While I talked, apparently obsessively, about it to all who would listen, I also decided that I would try to write a critical essay imparting my “discovery” to the world. A magazine called Points, published sporadically by Sinbad Vail, the son of Peggy Guggenheim, operated out of a top-floor sublet in the same building that housed Les Editions de Minuit. It was for this magazine, for want of a better outlet, that I decided to write the piece. But before I had finished it a new English-language magazine had sprung up, as literary mushrooms had been doing for decades in the fertile Paris soil: Merlin, run by an impressively serious, craggy-featured young Scotsman, Alexander Trocchi. I met Trocchi, liked him, and talked to him at length about Beckett. “Stop talking, Mon, and put it on paper!” he said at last. “There’s a deadline next Thursday!” Within a week I had put my notes into shape and written the piece which appeared in the second issue of Merlin.