Queueing rest of Beckett post-Wittgenstein, Hume, Locke, Malebranche
Mr. Hackett turned the corner and saw, in the failing light, at some little distance, his seat. It seemed to be occupied. This seat, the prperty very likely of the municipality, or of the public, was of course not his, but he thought of it as his. This was Mr. Hackett's attitude towards things thaat pleased him. He knew they were not his, but he thought of them as his. He knew they were not his, because they pleased him.
All Rights Reserved
Originally published by The Olympis Press, Paris, 1953
First American Edition published 1959
Tenth Printing
No part of this book may be reproduced, for any reason, by any means, including anymethod of photographic reproduction, without the permission of the publisher.
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Distributed By Random House, INC., New York
alone in the mud yes the dark yes sure yes panting yes someone hears me no one hears me no murmuring sometimes yes when the panting stops yes not at other times no in the mud yes to the mud yes my voice yes mine yes not another's no mine alone yes sure yes when the panting stops yes on and off yes a few words yes a few scraps yes that no one hears no but less and less no answer LESS AND LESS yesso things may change no answer end no answer I may choke no answer sink no answer sully the mud no more no answer the dark no answer die no answer DIE screams I MAY DIE screams I SHALL DIE screams goodgood good end at last of part three and last that's how it was end of quotation after Pim how it is
and this life in the dark and mud its joys and sorrows journeys intimacies and abandons as with a single voice perpetually broken now one half of us and now the other we exhale it pretty much the same as the one he had devisedand of which untiringly every twenty or forty years according to certain of our figures he recalls to our abandoned the essential featuresand this anonymous voice self-styled quaqua the voice of us all that was without on all sides then in us when the panting stops bits and scraps barely audible certainly distorted there it is at last the voice of him who before listening to us murmur what we are tells us what we are as best he can
and to whom given our number not unreasonable to attribute exceptional powers or else at his beck assistants innumerable and to whom in pursuance of the principle of parsimony not excessive at times ten seconds fifteen seconds to assign the ear which Kram eliminated our murmur demands otherwsie desert flower
such an acervation of sacks at the very outset that all progress impossible and no sooner imparted to the caravan the unthinkable first impulsion than arrested for ever and frozen in injusticethen from left to right or west to east the atrocious spectacle on into the black night of boundless futurity of the abandoned tormentor never to be victim then a little space then his brief journey done prostrate at the foot of a mountain of provisions the victim never to be tormentor then a great space then another abandoned and so on infinitely
the fuck who suffers who makes to suffer who cries who to be left in peace in the dark the mud gibbers ten seconds fifteen seconds of sun clouds earth sea patches of blue clear nights and of a creature if not still standing still capable of standing always the same imagination spent looking for a hole that he may be seen no more in the middle of this faery who drinks that drop of piss of being and who with his last gasp pisses it to drink the moment it's someone each in his turn as our justice wills and never any end it wills that too all dead or none
and that there be never offered to the eyes of
of whom
of him in charge of the sacks
to his eyes the spectacle on the one hand of a single one among us towards whom no one ever goes and on the other of a single other who never goes towards anyone it would be an injustice and that is above in the light
in other words in simple words I quote on either I am alone and no further problem or else we are innumerable and no further problem either
save that of conceiving but no doubt it can be done a procession in a straight line with neither head nor tail in the dark the mud with all the various infinitudes that such a conception involves
nothing to be done in any case we have our being in justice I have never heard anything to the contrary
with that of a slowness difficult to conceive the procession we are talking of a procession advancing in jerks or spasms like shit in the guts till one wonders days of great gaiety if we shall not end one after another or two by two by being shat into the open air the light of day the regimen of grace
a slowness of which figures alone however arbitrary can give a feeble idea
all longitudeswhat men all colours black to white tried them all then gave up no worse too vaggue padron pity home to native land to die in my twenties iron consstitution above in the light my life my living m aade my living tried everything building mostly it was booming all branched plaster mostly met Pam I thinklove birth of love increase decrease death efforts to resuscitate through the arsse joint vain through the cunt anew vain jumped from window or fell broken column hospital marguerites lies about mistletoe forgiveness
God on God desperation utter confusion did he believe he believed then n ot couldn't any more his reasons both cases my GodI pricked him how I pricked him in the endlong before purely curiosity was he still alive thumpthump in the mudvile tears o f unbutcherable brotherif he heard a voice if only that if he had ever heard a voice voices if only I had asked him that I couldn't I hadn't heard it yet the voice the voices no knowing surely not
those dragging on in front those dragging on behind whose llot has been whose lot will be what your lot is endless cortege of sacks burst in the interests of allor a celestial tin miraculous sardines sent ddown by God at the news of my mishap wherewith to spew him out another weeksemi-side right left leg left aerm push pull flat on the face must imprecations scrabbe in the mud every half-yard eight times per chevron or three yards of headway clear a little less the hand dips clawing for the take instead of the familiar slime an arse two cries one mute end of part one before Pim that's how it was before Pim
raise the eyes look for faces in the sky animals in the sky fall asleep and there a beautiful youth meet a beautiful youth with golden goatee clad in an alb wake up in a sweat and have met Jesus in a dream
quick the head in the sack where saving your reverence I have all the suffering of all the ages I don't give a curse for it and howls of laughter in every cell the tins rattle like castanets and under me convulsed the mud goes guggle-guggle I fart and piss in the same breathblessed day last of the journey all goes without a hitch the joke dies too old the convulsions die I comeback to the open air to serious things had I only the little finger to raise to be wafted straight to Abraham's bosom I'd tell him to stick it up
on the muddy belly I saw one blessed day saving the grace of Heraclitus the Obscure at the pitch of heaven's azure towering between its great black still spread wings the snowy body of I know not what frigate-bird the screaming-albatross of the southern seas the history I knew my God the natural the good moments I had
others knowing nothing of my beginnings save what they could glean by hearsay or in public records nothing of my beginnings in life
others who had always known me here in my last place they talk to me of themselves of me perhaps too in the end of fleeting joys and of sorrows of empires that are born and die as though nohing had happened
how it was I quote before Pim with Pim after Pim how it is three parts I say it as I hear itNo part of this book may be reproduced, for any reson, by any means, including any method of photographic reproduction, without the permission of the publisher.
Though, it is not a description he would
have accepted, Beckett can justly be called a philosophical
writer, one whose works can be read as a
series of sustained sceptical raids on Descartes
and the philosophy of the subject that Descartes founded.
In his suspicion of Cartesian axiomatics Beckett aligns himself
with Nietzsche and Heidegger, and with his younger
contemporary Jacques Derrida. The satiric interrogation to
which he subjects the Cartesian cogito (I am thinking,
therefore I must exist) is so close in spirit to Derrida's
programme for exposing the metaphysical assumptions
behind Western thought that we must speak, if not of
Beckett's direct influence on Derrida, then of a striking case of
sympathetic vibration.
And so, while I loved Altensam more than anything in the world, because Altensam has always been closer to me than anything in the world, because I've always a foreign element there from the outset, and all my life, my whole existence, my deathward existence, had always been determined by that circumstance, causing a monstrous waste of all my energies. The question has always been only, how can I go on at all, not in what respect and in what condition, so Roithamer.
The truth is that you are going to perish in obscurity and be buried in a nameless hole in a corner of the racecourse, transport to the acres of Woltemade being out of the question nowadays, and no one is going to remember you but me, unless you yield and at last open your mouth. I appeal to you, Michaels: yield!
