Samuel Beckett
Digital Manuscript Project
L'Innommable / The Unnamable

MS-HRC-SB-5-10

X
Segment 1

X
Segment 2

[1578] That's to lull me, till I imagine I hear myself saying, myself at
last, to myself at last, that it can't be they, speaking thus, that
it can only be I, speaking thus.
[1579] Ah if I could find a voice of
my own, in all this clamour, it would be the end of their troubles, and
of mine.
[1581] That's why there are all these little silences, to make
me break them.
[1582] They think I can't bear silence, that [] some day, somehow, my horror of
silence will force to break.

X
Segment 3

[1583] That's
why they are always breaking off, to try and drive me to that extremity.
[1584] But they don't dare be silent for long, the whole fabric might
collapse.
[1585] It's true I hate these chasms they all bend over, on
the alert for the murmur of a man.
[1586] It isn't silence, it's pitfalls,
into which nothing would please me better than to fall, with the
little cry that might be taken for human, like a wounded ouistiti,
the first and last, and vanish for good and all, having sqeaked .

X
Segment 4

[1587] Well, if they ever succeed in getting me to give a voice to
Worm, in a moment of euphoria, who knows, perhaps I'll make it
mine, in a moment of confusion.
[1588] There we have the stake.[1589] But they
won't.
[1590] Were they able to get Mahood to speak?[1591] It seems to
me not.
[1592] I think Murphy spoke now and then, the others
too perhaps, I don't remember, but it was clumsily done, I could
see the ventriloquist.
[1593] I feel it's about to begin.

X
Segment 5

[1594] They must con-
sider me sufficiently stupefied, with all their balls about being
and existing.
[1595] Yes, now that I've forgotten who Worm is, where
he is, what he's like, I'll begin to be he.
[1596] Anything rather than these
college quips.
[1597] Quick, a place.[1598] With no way in, no way out,
a safe place.
[1599] Not like Eden.[1600] And Worm inside.[1601] Feeling nothing,
knowing nothing, capable of nothing, wanting nothing.
[1602] Until the
instant he hears the sound that will never stop.
Then it's the

X
Segment 6

[1603] Then it's the

Transcription
  • Segments