Samuel Beckett

Quotes
THE CALMATIVE:

from

The Calmative

I'll tell my story in the past none the less, as though it were a myth, or an old fable, for this evening I need another age, that age to become another age in which I became what I was. The fringe was near, a light less green and kind of tattered told me so, in a whisper. He might have simply told me the story, he knew it by heart, so did I, but that wouldn't have calmed me, he had to read it to me, evening after evening, or pretend to read it to me, turning the pages and explaining the pictures that were of me already, evening after evening the same pictures, till I dozed off on his shoulder. . . . it would be a sad state of affairs if in that unscandalizable throng I couldn't achieve a little encounter that would calm me a little, or exchange a few words with a navigator for example, words to carry away with me to my refuge, to add to my collection. . . . for there are scenes that call for strange farewells. But it was nothing, mere speechlessness due to long silence, as in the wood that darkens the mouth of hell, do you remember, I only just. Into what nightmare thingness am I fallen? It is not my wish to labour these antimonies, for we are needless to say in a skull, but I have no choice but to add the following remarks. How tell what remains. But it's the end. Or have I been dreaming, am I dreaming? No no, none of that, for dream is nothing, a joke, and significant what is worse. I hugged the walls, famished for shadow.