The
Early Fiction of Samuel Beckett: A Selection
MORE PRICKS THAN KICKS
(1934) |
«Dante and The Lobster», It was morning
and Belacqua was stuck in the first canti of the moon. He was
so bogged that he could move neither backward nor forward. Blissful
Beatrice was there, Dante also, and she explained the spots
on the moon to him [...; 9]; He leaned back in his chair to
feel his mind subside and the itch of his mean quodlibet die
down. Nothing could be done until his mind got better and was
still, which it gradually did. [10]; For the tiller of the field
the thing was simple, he had it from his mother. The spots were
Cain with his truss of thorns, dispossessed, cursed from the
earth, fugitive and vagabond. The moon was that countenance
fallen and branded, seared with the first stigma of Gods
pity, that an outcast might not die quickly. It was a mix-up
in the mind of the tiller, but that did not matter. It had been
good enough for his mother, it was good enough for him. [11];
The rather handsome face of McCabe stared up at him [...] Now
the barrel-loaf came out of its biscuit-tin and had its end
evened off on the face of McCabe [10]; the Malahide murderers
petition for mercy, signed by half the land, having been rejected,
the man must swing at dawn in Mountjoy and nothing could save
him. Ellis the hangman was even now on his way. Belacqua, tearing
at the sandwich and swilling his precious stout, pondered on
McCabe in his cell. [15]; Why not mercy and piety both, even
down below? Why not mercy and Godliness together? A little mercy
in the stress of sacrifice, a little mercy to rejoice against
judgement. He thought of Jonah and the gourd and the pity of
a jealous God on Nineveh. And poor McCabe, he would get it in
the neck at dawn. What was he doing now, how was he feeling?
He would relish one more meal, one more night. [18] |
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«Fingal», Belacqua & Winnie -
a very sad animal [23; ] a sad animal again [26]; They considered
Fingal for some time together in silence. Its coast eaten away
with creeks and marshes, tesserae of small fields, patches of
wood springing up like a weed, the line of hills too low and
close to view. [24]; disimproved [11] misremembered [26]; his
feet in ruins [13] ruined voice [16] the high ruin [23] the
lovely ruins [27] abstract the asylum and there was little left
in Portrane but ruins [28] what the ruins are [30]; Belacqua
asked if the tower was an old one, as though it required a Dr
Petrie to see that it was not. [26]; His mind subside [9] He
had allowed himself to get run down, but he scoffed at the idea
of a sequitur from his mind to his body. [28] nature outside
me compensating for nature inside me. [28]; Surely it is in
such little adjustments that the benevolence of the first cause
appears beyond dispute [30]; DESCRIPTIONS:
there was nothing at all noteworthy about his appearance [26]
Winnie still sees, as vividly as when they met her anxious gaze
for the first time, his great purple face and white moustaches
[30] a brief satirical description of Belacquas person
(given by Sholto, not repeated here) [31]; little fat Presto
(Swift) [31]; enlivened the last phase of his solipsism before
he toed the line and began to relish the world with the belief
that the best thing he had to do was to move constantly from
place to place [...] it was not thanks to his preferring one place
to another [...] being by nature however sinfully indolent, bogged
in indolence [...] he was at times tempted to wonder whether the
remedy were not rather more disagreeable than the complaint
[...] boomerang, out and back [...] his contrivance did not proceed
from and discrimination [35] between points in space [...; 36];
I know all this because we were Pylades and Orestes for a period,
flattened down into something very genteel [...] He lived a Beethoven
pause, whatever he meant by that [...] He was an impossible person
in the end. I gave him up in the end because he was not serious
...moving pauses [...] a strong weakness for oxymoron
[...] Exempt from destinations, it had not to shun the unforeseen
nor turn aside from the agreeable odds and ends of vaudeville
that [36] are liable to crop up [37]; |
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«Ding-Dong», Emerging [...] from the
underground convenience in the maw of College St. [...] Tommy
Moores plinth [...] loll against the plinth of this bullnecked
bard and wait a sign [...] //signs on all hands [...] big Bovril
sign to start with, flaring beyond the Green. But it was useless.
Faith, hope and - what was it - Love, Eden missed, every ebb
derided, all tides ebbing from the shingle of Ego Maximus, little
me [...] What he would not give now to get on the move again!
Away from ideas! [37]; ACCOUNT OF PEARSE ST. - most pleasant,
despite its name, to be abroad in, full it as always was with
shabby substance of coming a going [38] DESCRIPTION OF THE PUB:
a great major symphony of supply and demand, effect and cause,
fulcrate on the middle C of counter and waxing [...] the charming
harmonies of blasphemy and broken glass and all the aliquots
of fatigue and ebreity [...] where [...] all the wearisome tactics
of egress and dud Beethoven would be done away with [...] [...]
the old itch and algos crept back into his mind [41]; DESCRIPTION
OF WOMAN: her speech was that of a woman of the people, but
of a gentlewoman of the people. Her gown had served its time,
but yet contrived to be respectable. He noticed with a pang
that she sported about her neck the insidious little mock fur
so prevalent in tony slumland [...] She was of more than average
height and well in flesh. She might be passed middle age. But
her face, ah her face [...; was] brimful of light and serene,
serenissime, it bore no trace of suffering [...; all this in
‘sweet style; 41]; unforeseen with a vengeance,
if not exactly vaudeville [42]; the fitness of Moores
bull neck, not a whit too short, with all due respect to the
critics [...] Tommy Moore with his head on his shoulders [47]. |
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«A Wet Night», Doubt, Despair, and
Scrounging, shall I hitch my bath-chair to the greatest of these?
. Christian scrounging [47]; [...] then to pass by the Queens,
home of tragedy, was charming at that hour, to pass between
the theatre and the long line of poor and lowly queued up for
thruppence worth of pictures. [...] the Fire Station opposite
which seemed to have been copied here and there from the Palazzo
Vecchio. In deference to Savonarola? Ha! ha! [48]; The Frica,
‘briefless martyress in rut; Alba; P.B. [Polar
Bear]; the homespun Poet and his little saprophile, an anonymous
politico-ploughboy [50]; shabby hero [70]; When with indifference
I remember my past sorrow, my mind has indifference, my memory
has sorrow. The mind, upon the indifference which is in it,
is indifferent; yet the memory, upon the sorrow which is in
it, is not sad [73]; But the wind had dropped, as it so often
does in Dublin when all the respectable men and women whom it
delights to annoy have gone to bed, and the rain fell in a uniform
untroubled manner. It fell upon the bay, the littoral, the mountains
and the plains, and notably upon the Central Bog it well with
a rather desolate uniformity. [after Joyce; 75]; |
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«Love and Lethe», ‘Reader, a
gloria is coffee laced with brandy [...] We know something of
Belacqua, but Ruby tough is a stranger to these pages. Anxious
that those who read this incredible adventure shall not pooh-pooh
it as unintelligible we avail ourselves now of this lull, what
time Belacqua is on his way. [80]; Perugino Pièta in National
Gallery [see ftn. on ‘glittering vitrine preventing
total statement; 81] Also, «Walking Out», «What a Misfortune»,
«The Smeraldina»s Billet Doux», «Yellow», and «Draff»; END.) |
FIRST
LOVE [1946] (1973; Syrens Edn. 1994) |
‘I
associate, rightly or wrongly, my marriage with the death
of my father, in time. That other links exist, on other
levels, between these two affairs, is not impossible.
I have enough trouble as it is in trying to say what I
think I know. / I visited, not so long ago, my fathers
grave, that I do know, and noted the date of his death,
of his death alone, for that of his birth had no interest
for me, on that particular day. I set out in the morning
and was back by night, having lunched lightly in the graveyard.
(p.3; on title, see note, infra.) |
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Personally
I have no bone to pick with graveyards, I take the air
there willingly, perhaps more willingly than elsewhere,
when take the air I must. The smell of corpses, distinctly
perceptible under those of grass and humus mingled, I
do not find unpleasant, a trifle on the sweet side perhaps,
a trifle heady, but how infinitely preferable to what
the living emit, their feet, teeth, armpits, arses, sticky
foreskins and frustrated ovules. And when my fathers
remains join in, however modestly, I can almost shed a
tear. The living wash in vain, in vain perfume themselves,
they stink. Yes, as a place for an outing, when out I
must, leave me my graveyards and keep - you - to your
public parks and beauty-spots. My sandwich, my banana,
taste sweeter when Im sitting on a tomb, and when
the time comes to piss again, as it [4] so often does,
I have my pick. Or I wander, hands clasped behind my back,
among the slabs, the flat, the leaning and the upright,
culling the inscriptions. Of these I never weary, there
are always three or four of such drollery that I have
to hold on to the cross, or the stele, or the angel, so
as not to fall. Mine I composed long since and am still
pleased with it, tolerably pleased. My other writings
are no sooner dry than they revolt me, but my epitaph
still meets with my approval. There is little chance unfortunately
of its ever being reared above the skull that conceived
it, unless the State takes up the matter. But to be unearthed
I must first be found, and I greatly fear those gentlemen
will have as much trouble finding me dead as alive. So
I hasten to record it here and now, while there is yet
time: / “Hereunder lies the above who up below So
hourly died that he lived on till now.” / The second
and last or rather latter line limps a little perhaps,
but that is no great matter, Ill be forgiven more
than that when Im forgotten. (pp.4-5.) |
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[...]
in reality she was a most tenacious woman. She came back
next day and the day after and all went off more or less
as before. Perhaps a few words were exchanged. The next
day it was raining and I felt in security. Wrong again.
I asked her if she was resolved to disturb me every evening.
I disturb you? she said. I felt her eyes on me. They cant
have seen much, two eyelids at the most, with a hint of
nose and brow, darkly, because of the dark. I thought
we were easy, she said. You disturb me, I said, I cant
stretch out with you there. The collar of my greatcoat
was over my mouth and yet she heard me. Must you stretch
out? she said. The mistake one makes is to speak to people.
You have only to put your feet on my knees, she said.
I didnt wait to be asked twice, under my miserable
calves. I felt her fat thighs. She began stroking my ankles.
I considered kicking her in the cunt. You speak to people
about stretching out and they immediately see a body at
full length. What mattered to me in my dispeopled kingdom,
that in regard to which the disposition of my carcass
was the merest and most futile of accidents, was supineness
in the mind, the dulling of the self and of that residue
of execrable frippery known as the non-self and even the
world, for short. But man is still today, at the age of
twenty-five, at themercy of an erection, physically too,
from time to time, its the common lot, even I was
not immune, if that may be called an erection. It did
not escape her naturally, women smell the rigid phallus
ten miles away and wonder, How on earth did he spot me
from there? One is no longer oneself, on such occasions,
and it is painful to be no longer oneself, even more painful
if possible than when one is. For when one is one knows
what to do to be less so, whereas when one is not one
is any old one irredeemably. What goes by the name of
love is banishment, with now and then a postcard from
the homeland, such is my considered opinion, this evening.
When she had finished and my self been resumed, mine own,
the mitigable, with the help of a brief torpor, it was
alone. I sometimes wonder if that is not all invention,
if in reality things did not take quite a different course,
one I had no choice but to forget. And yet her image remains
[...] (pp.13.) |
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It
was in this byre, littered with dry and hollow cowclaps
subsiding with a sigh, at the poke of my finger, that
for the first time in my life, and I would not hesitate
to say the last if I had not to husband my cyanide, I
had to contend with a feeling which gradually assumed,
to my dismay, the dread name of love. What constitutes
the charm of this country, apart of course from its scant
population [16], and this without the help of the meanest
contraception, is that all is derelict, with the sole
exception of historys ancient faeces. These are
ardently sought after, stuffed and carried in procession.
Wherever nauseated time has dropped a nice fat turd you
will find our patriots, sniffing it up on all fours, their
faces on fire. Elysium of the roofless. Hence my happiness
at last. Lie down. all seems to say, lie down and stay
down. I see no connection between those remarks. But that
one exists and even more than one, I have little doubt,
on my part. But what? Which? Yes, I loved her, its
the name I gave, still give alas, having never loved before,
but of course had heard of the thing, at home, at achool,
in brothel and at church, and read romances. [...].
(pp.16-17; quoted [in part] in Colm Tóibín, ‘New
Ways to Kill Your Father: Historical Revisionism,
in Karl-Heinz Westarp & Michael Böss, eds., Ireland:
Towards new Identities?, Aarhus UP 1998, pp.28-36;
p.34; citing First Love and Other Shorts, London:
Calder 1973, pp.1-30; p.21.) |
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Lovers
groans are so alike, and lovers giggles. [...] A
fat lot of help it was when, having put the question to
her, I was told they were clients she received by rotation.
I could obviously have got up and gone to look through
the keyhole. But what can you see, I ask you, through
[3 I ] holes the likes of those? So you live by prostitution,
I said. We live by prostitution, she said. You couldnt
ask them to make less noise? I said, as if I believed
her. I added, or a different kind of noise. They cant
help but yap and yelp, she said. Ill have to leave,
I said. She found some old hangings in the family junk
and hung them before our doors, hers and mine. I asked
her if it would not be possible, now and then, to have
a parsnip. A parsnip! she cried, as if I had asked for
a dish of sucking Jew. I reminded her that the parsnip
season was fast drawing to a close and that if, before
it finally got there, she could feed me nothing but parsnips
Id be grateful. I like parsnips because they taste
like violets and violets because they smell like parsnips.
Were there no parsnips on earth violets would leave me
cold and if violets did not exist I would care as little
for parsnips as I do for turnips, or radishes. And even
in the present state of their flora, I mean on this planet
where parsnips and violets contrive to coexist. I could
do without both with the utmost case, the uttermost ease.
One day she had the impudence to announce she was with
child, and four or five months gone into the bargain,
by me of all people! She offered me a side view of her
belly. She even undressed, no doubt to prove she wasnt
hiding a cushion under her skirt, and then of [3I] course
for the pure pleasure of undressing. Perhaps its
just wind, I said, by way of consolation. She gazed at
me with her big eyes whose colour I forget, with one big
eye rather, for the other seemed riveted on the remains
of the hyacinth. The more naked she was the more cross-eyed.
Look, she said, stooping over her breasts, the haloes
are darkening already. I summoned up my remaining strength
and said, Abort, abort, and theyll blush like new.
She had drawn back the curtain for a clear view of all
her rotundities. I saw the mountain, impassible, cavernous,
secret, where from morning to night Id hear nothing
but the wind, the curlews, the clink like distant silver
of the stone-cutters hammers. Id come out
in the daytime to the heather and gorse, all warmth and
scent, and watch at night the distant city lights, if
I chose, and the other lights, the lighthouses and lightships
my father had named for me, when I was small, and whose
name I could find again, in my memory, if I chose, that
I knew. From that day forth things went from bad to worse,
to worse and worse, Not that she neglected me, she could
never have neglected me enough, but the way she kept plaguing
me with our child, exhibiting her belly and breasts and
saying it was due any moment, she could feel it lepping
already. If its lepping, I said [33] its
not mine. [...] (pp.32-34.) |
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What finished
me was the birth. [...] It went to my heart to leave the
house without being put out [...; 34] As long as I kept
walking I didnt hear them, because of the footsteps,
But as soon as I halted I heard them again, a little fainter
each time, admittedly, but what does it matter, faint
or loud, cry is cry, all that matters is that it should
cease. For years I thouht they would cease. Now I dont
think so any more. I could have done with other loves
perhaps. But there it is, either you love or you dont.
(End; pp.34-35.) |
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Note:
Christopher Ricks observes that Belacqua, in More
Pricks Than Kicks (1934), quotes the first line
of Tennysons verse: Deep as first love,
wild with all regret;/O Death in life, the days that
are no more! (See Ricks, Preface, First Love,
1994 Edn., pp.vii-viii.)
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