Samuel Beckett
Digital Manuscript Project
L'Innommable / The Unnamable

MS-HRC-SB-5-10

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Segment 1

[2206.5] devil, so have they, let them tell me what they want, give me
spomething to do, within my power something doable to do, poor devils, they can't,
they don't know, they're like me[;], more and more, no more need of
them, no more need of any one, no one can do anything, it's I am
talking, thirsting, starving, in the ice and in the furnace, you
feel nothing, strange, you don't feel a mouth on you, you don't
feel your mouth any more, no need of a mouth, the words are every-
where, within me, outside me, well well, listen to that[,], a minute

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Segment 2

[2206.5] ago I had no thickness, I hear them, no need to hear them, no need
of a head, impossible to stop them, impossible to stop, I'm in
words, made of words, others' words, what others, the place too,
the air, the walls, the floor, the ceiling, words, the whole
universe is ghere,with me, I'm the air, the walls, the walled-in
one, everything yields, opens, ebbs, flows, like flakes, I'm all these
flaskes flakes, meeting, mingling, falling asunder, wherevr I go,
wherever I go I find myself me, leave myself me, go towards [/]me, come from

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Segment 3

[2206.5] me, nothing ever but me, a particle of me, retrieved, lost, gone
astray, [2206.6] words, I am all these words, all these strangers, this
dust of words, with no ground for their setting, so sky for their
dispersing, coming together to say, fleeing one another to say,
that I am they, all of them, those that merge, those that part,
those strangers never meet, and nothing else, yes, something else, that
I'm something quite different, a quite different thing, a dumb
thing in an empty place, a hard shut dry cold black place, where

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Segment 4

[2206.6] nothing stirs, nothing speaks, and that I listen, adnd that I seek,
like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beatsts
borns of caged beasts born of caged beasts born in a cage and dead
in a cage, a caged beast born of caged beatsts born and dead in
a cage,
born and then dead, born in a cage and then dead in a
cage, in a word like a beast, in one of their words, like such
a beast, and that I seek, like such a beast, with my feeble
strength, such a beast, with nothing left of its species but

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Segment 5

[2206.6] fear and fury, no, the fury is past, nothing but fear, nothing
left of all its due but fear, centupled, fear of its shadow, [2206.7] no,
blind from birth, of sound then, if you like, we'll have that,

Transcription
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