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SAMUEL BECKETT: less equates to MAS in December 1999 is the tenth anniversary of

the death of Samuel Beckett, Irish writer and playwright who adopted French as
their homeland and secretly vowed to defeat the shadows and night. To pay tribut
e, Rafael Pérez Gay and decryption has translated the poems which Beckett wrote
in the periods 1937-39 and 1947-49, full of Paris, its people and its streets.
SAMUEL BECKETT: POEMS 1937-1939
Introduction, translation and notes by Rafael Pérez Gay
According to his biographer Deirdre Bair, in late 1933, one night
wrapped ending the life of Samuel Beckett (1906-1989). The family physicians had
clashed unsuccessfully abscesses, boils, flu and sore joints Beckett threw over
several days in bed. Geoffrey Thompson, Beckett family doctor was convinced tha
t the rash had a psychosomatic origin, but this symptom was only the beginning.
In the middle of the night Beckett woke drenched in sweat, my heart disorderly c
harging all outstanding accounts. The panic was not lower than the choking and t
he certainty of death. In those days, Beckett could not sleep if his brother Fra
nk was not with him in the torment of a lost night sailing in storms of the worl
d. In early 1934, Samuel Beckett made his debut on the couch of Wilfred Ruprecht
Bion doctor and put your house in 48 Paulton Square, near King's Road in Chelse
a. While some magazines published his earliest translation work, Beckett became
friends with writer Tom MacGreevy. As if the evening had agreed a truce with his
twenty-eight years with his resignation from Trinity College, Dublin, and with
his literary failures, Beckett published in May of that year, More Pricks Than K
icks. The book was banned in Ireland by the sexual allusion of the title ("more
whistles flutes?). Beckett ordered a bottle into the sea of James Joyce, "Becket
t published his book More Pricks TAHN Kicks. He had not read it but I did in Par
is. Beckett has talent ...". Talent and very few readers of the edition of 1500
copies, the book sold five hundred. Samuel Beckett did what he had to do: sleep
little, handed to drink like an Irish sailor and engage in literary journalism f
or support in London. Despite the night, urinary problems that prevented him fro
m urinating without pain and skin rashes, Beckett was guided in the darkness by
a handful of poems that ended that same year, Echo's Bones, thirteen poems darke
st night , a scholarship in his references impregnable secret and private. If wr
iters could be divided into day and night, Beckkett would be a radical represent
ative of the latter, an obscure writer, in many senses purified by night and fai
lure. This is the last fiber of Eco Bones "Da TAGT is" in the original German, "
Then it dawned," says the passing of a man lost in the night and
dawn, "Alba" and "Dortmunder" are flashing in the darkness under the triumph of
the night. The other dark poetry itself is detached from the two themes of Becke
tt Beckett: night and death. "Dortmunder" is the hull of a sailing ship lost in
the night, "Alba" in Italian in the original, is the great theme of death as the
awakening: he dies, he wakes up. Between these two banks, Beckett put it in his
poem "Malaconda 'two main obsessions: Scarmillon Malaconda and the devils of He
ll Dante. The book Eco bones appeared in November 1934 in an edition of the auth
or. Beckett was paid to George Reavey, director of a small publishing company, E
uropa Press, the costs of publishing. The curse Beckett with publishers just beg
inning. A few months ago, pursued by shadows, Beckett began to write the story o
f a young writer who lives with a prostitute. The narrative outline of this stor
y would become his first novel, Murphy. Beckett had reached thirty-three session
s with his psychoanalyst Ruprecht Bion and felt sicker than ever. At night many
tricks that used against him, Beckett said cardiac disorders and pains in the ch
est as plausible that the doctors had to revise it several times to conclude tha
t his heart would beat more nervous than seventy years. Dominated by an obsessio
n to become an Irish writer, Beckett sent the English publisher Lovat Dickinson
Murphy's unfinished manuscript. It was immediately rejected. It is likely that M
urphy has broken a record in the history of literature: the novel received forty
and two negative editorials. All respondents agreed that the novel was dark are
too many, in fact€paramount theme of the story was one: how to light up the ni
ght in the world of madness? In 1937, Beckett broke his covenant with all forms
of the night he had ever known: Ireland, English, and his mother. Then he escape
d to Paris, writing in French forever. Twenty years later, readers learned that
Murphy was one of the most complete novels of Beckett, a structure even higher t
han the French trilogy Molloy (1951), Malone Dies (1952) and The Unnamable (1953
). The gateway to the French language was contained in a brief farewell Poems, 1
937-1939 later resume at Six Poemes, 1947-1949. I offer the reader my versions o
f that farewell to Ireland with which Beckett got into a new life. The first wer
e published in Les Temps Modernes in 1946 and were written in 1937-39. The Six p
oems were first published in Transition Forty-Eight in 1948 and in Cahiers de Sa
isons in 1955, were written between 1947 and 1949. ***
Come
other and the same with each one is different and the same with each one the abs
ence of love is different with each one the absence of love is the same in the y
ear 1937, Beckett had been to Paris a desperate escape from the shadows, but esc
ape the fate of that would be the darkness of the Second World War. This poem ha
s been read as an image of unhappy love, but in reality is a statement of hatred
of the night, the shadows come, others and themselves, in
absence of love. The night inside the night is the central theme of the French p
oetry of Samuel Beckett. ***
For her quiet act
pores free sex wise not too slow waiting not very long laments the absence in th
e service of some shreds of blue presence in the heart overturning head finally
killed all the grace of a late rain interrupted one night when he fell empty it
in August for her pure love The January 7, 1938 Beckett went out for coffee with
friends Alan and Belinda Duncan. While walking through the streets of Orleans,
a man came to borrow money. Given the refusal of Beckett, the man plunged a knif
e into his chest. The Duncan asked for help through the dark streets of Paris wh
ile the writer was bleeding. A woman opened the door of his house. Minutes later
, an ambulance picked up Beckett between life and death. The woman, a pianist de
dicated to the teaching of music, it was Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil. So Beckett
met the woman he would share his life the next forty years. "For her quiet act"
could be read as a poem dedicated to the hard years Suzanne French. An unusual
love poem. ***
Being there without jaws or teeth
where will the pleasure of losing to win and just under Roscelin and look oh gif
t adverb empty empty except for a few pieces of song my father gave me a husband
or to arrange flowers to wet as much as you want to chose the shod hoofs still
far from Les Halles
or water pipes or stinking rabble-wetting without further because it is so super
fluous polish and come with mouth and hand idiot crawling to the bottom of the e
ye that hears from afar the silver scissors This is perhaps the most French poem
between the dark poetry dark Beckettian. In its Spanish version, Jenaro Talens
proposes "shod clogs far from Les Halles" and "the water of the kids cursing in
the pipes." I preferred a more literal transfer "branded helmets" and "stinking
mob water pipes." Ascension
Through the crack
that day in which a prodigal child returns to his family as I hear his excited v
oice says World Cup soccer always too young at the same time through the open wi
ndow the air silently without the surge of his blood splashed true abundance on
the sheets on the plants on your body with fingers closed eyelids repulsive abou
t the great wheel light green eyes astonished air on my grave With the theme of
the split, a mixture of dream and speculate revelation, Beckett wrote two poems,
"Ascension" and "Lutetia Amphitheater." In the case of this poem, the excited v
oice of a child who says the 1934 World Cup is the central character of the poem
. In the end, "light wheel / air on my tombstone," alludes to the same subject:
"voice light wheel" as he is locked outside. Perhaps one might think that "the w
ave of the faithful" refers to a manifestation of religion in Ireland. *** The F
ly
Between the scene and I
the glass empty except for her belly to earth encircled by their black wings cra
zy guts antennas curved legs tangled in a vacuum sucking mouth hitting the blue
invisible crashing helplessly under my thumb disturbs the sea and the sky serene
The smallest act can upset the universe. This is one of the central themes of B
eckett's work. A fly helplessly under the thumb can disrupt the sea and the sky
serene. ***
Music indifference
fire heart airtime sand covers loves silent ruin their voices and I do not hear
more silent indifference Music: Molloy motionless in his room, waiting to die wh
ile Malone has different histories, The Unnamable who does not know his name con
stantly because becomes something else, Bom and Pin crawling in the dark. All th
ese characters are not heard more silent, and the ruin of love. ***
Drink only
burning comic fornicates bursts just as the absent are dead before these suck ou
t your eyes Bring it back reeds are angry or lazy is not worth the wind and inso
mnia French Poetry prefigures Beckett Beckett character developed later in narra
tive: a man alone in the darkness of a room wondering how you got there. It's Mo
lloy, Malone. The Dante's Belacqua, at the gates of Hell would not expect anythi
ng except memory. ***
Thus despite
for good weather and bad locked in his home and other
remember it like yesterday's mammoth first kisses the dinoterio glacial periods
do not bring anything new the great heat of the thirteenth year of his was smoke
hung over Lisbon Kant coldly generations of oaks dream and forget their eyes if
the father had a mustache if it was did he die not good so we are no less hungr
y eat bad weather and the worst locked in his house and the other in December 19
37, Beckett took his suitcase of bad luck and literary ambitions to the hotel in
Liberia. The affection of his friends Brian Coffey, the Duncan and Richard Thom
as, hinted fleeting contact havens. This poem is a tribute to friendship, but ce
rtainly not for the warm reception of his Parisian friends, "we eat with less ap
petite bad weather and worse." *** Dieppe
The last trip
the stone turned and killed the steps to the old lights "Dieppe" was written fro
m Der Spaziergang poem, "The Walk", one of the late poems of Holderlin signed by
Scardanelli: "Oh, beautiful forests everywhere / in painted the green hill, / s
ometimes where I head with sweet peace rewarded for every spine of my chest, / w
hen my spirit is in shadow, / for art and thought / deep pain have cost / my lif
e from the beginning / (...) turn, returns / and say goodbye to all that "(trans
lation Silvetti Norberto Paz). From Dieppe, the French city in front of the Unit
ed Kingdom, on the beach, Beckett says goodbye to Ireland, London, of English an
d his mother, May. In the original version of this poem the last line said: "tow
ards the lights of the city." Rue de Vaugirard ***
Halfway up
I stop and candor stunned the plate exposed to light and the shade after my retu
rn strengthened by a negative way damning Some interpretations French have tried
various philosophical explanations to "clarify" this poem. I still find simpler
and more complex: Beckett, or his poetic voice, an X-ray observed after visitin
g the doctor in the hospital
located at No. 396 Rue de Vaugirard. The hospital occupied the former school bui
lding in the reign of Louis Philippe. At number 20 on that street, where the cof
fee was gathered Tabourey Baudelaire, Leconte de Lisle, Banville and Barbey D'Au
revilly, the French Symbolists. Lutecia Amphitheater
From where we sit higher than the stands
come see us on the side of the Rue des Arènes, doubting, quick look, then come
to us heavily through the sand dark, ugly house again, as ugly as the others, bu
t dumb. A green dog runs along the Rue Monge, she stops, it continues with a loo
k, the dog crosses the sand and disappearing behind the pedestal of the scholar
Gabriel de Mortillet She turns, I I'm gone, ascend the stairs only rustic I play
with the left hand rough ramp is concrete. She certainly takes a step off the R
ue Monge, then follow me. I shudder, I who meets with me, now look with new eyes
the sand, puddles of water in the drizzle, dragging a girl a ring, a partner wh
o knows if some lovers, holding hands, the stands empty the tall houses, the sky
shines too late. I turn, I am embarrassed to find there her sad face.€Arena we
re called to the old Roman amphitheater. The splitting and sleep in Lutetia, anc
ient name for Paris. It is conceivable that the couple, who are dreamlike shadow
s themselves are Beckett and Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil. A dream, absurd as all
dreams: an ancient amphitheater, a green dog, a girl with a hoop, a pair of lov
ers, the rain and the character in the midst of all this. It is known that the M
onge street near the Square des Arenes, at number 57, Emile Faguet lived in a sm
all apartment, buried in books and documents. Charmes, director of the Revue des
Deux Mondes that when he visited Faguet, I was struck by the number of articles
that Faguet had written without a specific destination, just for the pleasure o
f having written a bit like Beckett late thirty. Both the poem "Rue Vaugirard" a
s in "Amphitheatre of Lutetia," Beckett takes over Paris, its streets and its hi
story. ***
Up in the sky and ground cave
and one by one the old voices from beyond the grave
and slowly the same light as on the plains of Enna in long macerated violations
since the capillaries and the same laws since then, and slowly die out far and A
tropos Proserpina vacuum adorable mouth still doubtful shadow shadow's mouth is
entrance to the cave, an issue that Beckett collected from Plato and Dante and u
sed as an emblem narrative in stories like "The Expelled" and "First Love." Divi
nity Roman in origin, Proserpina was identified after the Greek Persephone acqui
red a hellish associated Libitina, a funerary deity. Atropos can refer to the pl
ural of Atropos (indeed, a typo in the French edition makes in Antropos Atropos)
, known as the Fates, the spirits of birth, the newborn who attributed the lot w
as his due. Hesiod makes them daughters of Night, although they also appear as d
aughters of Zeus and Themis and sisters of the Hours. Their names were Clotho (t
he spinning), Lachesis (which assigns the batches) and Atropos (the inflexible).
If so, this poem is an allegory of birth, death and destiny.
SIX POEMS 1947-1949
Well good a country
where forgetfulness which weighs gently forgotten worlds silent unnamed there he
ad and the head is moved known not to die nothing is known about the singing of
the dead mouths made his voyage on the sand there is nothing to mourn my solitud
e I know I know I have good time bad that's what I tell myself I have time but h
ow long time avid bone dog constantly pale sky my sky grain amounts Ocellated ra
y microns trembling of the years of darkness want to be from A to B. I can not I
can not go I'm in a country without a trace yes it is a beautiful thing that th
ere are a beautiful thing what further questions do not make me dust spiral whic
h is the same moments of calm love hate calm calm
It is more than probable that this poem is apparent from the years of political
activism of Beckett and a serious period of literary sterility. "He fought the G
ermans turned the lives of my friends in hell. Never fought for the French natio
n," said Beckett many years after the 1940 recall and nights of work for the Res
istance. Beckett and Suzanne were part of the group Gloria. Underground, their m
ission was to concentrate on his apartment on rue de Favorites all propaganda an
d messaging Resistance to distribute, translate it into English and make it know
n outside France. Then Beckett was known by the nickname Sam, or the Irish. The
Gestapo discovered his communication network, and Suzanne Beckett hid in the hou
se of the writer Nathalie Sarraute. Days later, with false identification fled t
o Toulon. They lived hidden in Rousillon. Years later, Charles de Gaulle awarded
to Beckett with the Croix de Guerre. The most expensive cross his life: at Rous
illon, Beckett suffered the most serious breakdown of its history, the beginning
of schizophrenia detached from the novel he tried to write: Watt. "Personally I
regret it all," says Watt in desperate * * * Death of A. D.
And then be still there still there
gripping my old rotten table of days and nights there blindly be crushed not to
flee to escape and be there leaning to the confession of a dying time have been
what he was doing what he did to me of my friend died yesterday shiny look long
teeth in his beard eagerly devouring the lives of the saints one day of living l
ife at night reliving his black sins died yesterday while I lived there drinking
and being higher than the storm to blame for the unforgivable time clung to the
old saw wood items returns witness Gloria group would not be the last political
work of Samuel Beckett. The Ministry of Reconstruction in France asked the Iris
h unit of a hospital facility in Saint-Lo. Beckett joined the group landed in Ch
erbourg. From that trip were two poems, one English and one French: "Saint-Lo",
known as the martyred city during the war and "Death of AD", a tribute, he chose
an Irish doctor who helped install the hospital and died there of tuberculosis.
***
Viva killed my only station
chrysanthemum white lily leaves in April sludge beautiful days of frost gray
Beckett In the vast territory it appears that there is no good that is not appar
ent from a disgrace. A riddle without a solution runs through the work of Becket
t: people and things always come back. In one of his poems minimum in the sevent
ies he wrote: "what the eyes / good / not see good / finger left / right to spin
/ grab it well / fingers and eye / back as good / better." ***
I'm the course of sand slips
between the song and the dune the summer rain rains on my life about my life on
the run and chasing me and end on the day of its inception moment you wanted to
see in the curtain of mist where not to step away these long shifting thresholds
and live time a door opens and closes according to legend, Beckett himself was
responsible for credit, one night in March 1946 under a storm, put an end to the
darkness of his forty years. Later, Beckett used the episode to the last tape t
o give to life dramatic intensity Krapp destroyed: "Intellectually a year of dee
p gloom and indigence until that memorable night in March, at the foot of the pi
er, including wind-ever outrageous forget it, "where everything was clarified."
For Harold Bloom and Richard Ellman that night set at the time the true beginnin
g of the play Beckettian. It is likely that this has been true since then Becket
t wrote without pause or rest their key works. In 1946, Mercier and Camier wrote
his first French novel, began Molloy (1951) and finished a play Eleftheria (Fre
edom). Between October 1947 and January 1948, Beckett wrote a new play. At that
time, was hired by Editions de Minuit, teamed up with Roger Blin and met the fur
y of chance. The play was published in 1952 called Waiting for Godot. This poem
illustrates how the history of this superb lighting. ***
What would I do without this world without a face no questions asked
where being only lasts an instant where every instant turns the vacuum into obli
vion have been without this wave where in the end body and shadow are confused w
hat would I do without this silence rumors abyss of panting furiously toward sal
vation to love without this sky that rises above its ballast dust what would I w
ould like yesterday and today looking through my slit if I'm not alone
to wander and get away from all life in a fake space among the voices voiceless
locked me Beckett's work and especially his poetry, propose this equation: the l
anguage is unable to impose order and clarity to the absurdity of the world, but
the language itself is the only weapon we have for the endless search for meani
ng in reality. "What would I do without this world without a face, without quest
ion," is the poetic image of this equation that Beckett disturbed until the day
of his death in a nursing home, in the year 1989. ***
I want my love die
it rained on the cemetery and the streets crying, which I love me who believed t
hat risk an interpretation: "I want my love to die" is a poem to the mother. For
Ms. May Beckett, his son has always been the source of innumerable pains and em
barrassments. Mrs Beckett never understood the list of goodbyes that his son bec
ame ill his life was dismissed from Trinity College, family, his brother Frank,
Ireland, London. ***
Just inside the skull
somewhere like anything ever last refuge skull taken from outside as Bocca in th
e mirror to the minimum eye opening huge alarm is nothing more reseals so someti
mes like anything in life not necessarily This poem announces the beginning of p
art of the narrative that Beckett wrote late in his life, strange scene instruct
ions, loose sentences. "So sometimes / like anything / of life is not necessaril
y" little book reminds Mirlitonnades, 1976-78. This latest foray into poetry is
made of "poemÍnimos", so to speak to these small revelations, illuminations at
night. The name, mirlitonnade, flute or whistle comes in French, but also of mir
liton verse, bad verse, written on napkins, cards loose pieces of paper. They ar
e judgments
tuneless tones like this: "In front / horrible / laughable to do" or "no one / w
ill have been / to all / both been / anything / anyone," or this one: "the worst
/ that the heart knew / the head / imagined / resucÍtalo / becomes worse / muc
h worse. " "Out of the skull just in" is constructed with fabric, or paper, mirl
iton. In this poem one could say what Borges said in the preface to the figure "
does not mean anything and how the music says it all." Moreover, Beckett would n
ot have displeased that all his poetry Mirlitonnades bear the title, 1937-1978.
and waiting for Mr. Knott.

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