MS-HRC-SB-5-10

[0903] I've had e^Enough of acting the infant who has been told so often he was found under a v^cabbage[p. 41r] that in the end he remembers the exact spot in the vegetable garden and the kind of life he led there before coming into the world. [0904] There will be no more from me about bodies and trajectories, sky and earth, I don't know what it all is ^{it's all about [they] are}. [0905] They have told me, explained to me, described to me, what it all is, ^{they are,} what it ^they looks like, what its uses are ^{they're for}, one after the other, thousands of times, in tho^usands of connexions, until I must have begun to look as if I understood. [0906] Who would ever think, to hear me, that I've never seen anything, never heard anything but their voices? [0907] And man, the lectures they've given me on man, before they even geban began trying to assimilate me to him! [0908] What I speak of, what I speak with, all comes from them. [0909] I don't mind ^{It's all the same to me}, but it's no use ^good, there's no end to it. [0910] It's of me now I must speak, even though it be ^{if I have to do it} with their language, it will be a start, a step towr^ards silence and the end of the madness, the madness of having to speak and not being able to, except of things that do not ^don't concern me, that don't count, that I don't believe, that they have crammed me full of to prevent me from speaking saying who I am, where I am, and from doing what I have to do in the only way that can put an end to it, from doing what I have to do. [0911] They can't like me. ^{How they must hate me.} [0912] Ah they have me in a nice mess, but they haven't got me, not quite, not yet. [0913] To be their witness, until I die in a ditch ^{my last gasp}, ^{I'm finished,} as if there was any dying ^finishing with that tomfoolery, that's what they want of me. [0912] ^{Ah a nice mess they've made of me, but they haven't got me down, not quite, not yet.} [0913] ^{To testify to them, until I die, as if there [were] was any dying with that tomfoolery, that's what they've sworn I'll do} [0914] Not to be able to open my mouth without proclaiming them, and our fellowship, that's what they imagine they have me reduced to. [0915] It's a poor trick that consists in ^their ramming a set of words down your gullet on the principle that you can't bring them up without branding being branded as belon^ging to their clan ^{one of their breed}. [0916] But I'll fix their jargon ^{gibberish drivel} for them[p. 42r] fort for them for them. [0917] I never understood a word of it in any case, not a word of the stories it spews, like clo gobbets in a vomit. [0918] My inability to absro absorb, my genius for forgetting, are for ^more than they reckoned for ^with. [0919] Dear incomprehension, it's thanks to you I'll be myself, in the end. [0920] Noy^thing will remain of all the lies the^y have stuffed ^glutted me with. [0921] And it's then ^then I'll be myself at last, as a starveling belches his insipid ^odourless wind, before the bliss of coma. [0922] But who, they? [0923] Is it really worth while inquiring? With my faked ^cogged means? [0924] No, but that's no reason not to. [0925] On their own ground, with their own weapons ^arms, I'll scatter them, them and their miscreated puppets. [0926] Perhaps I'll find traces of myself by the same occasion. [0927] That's decided then. [0929] What is curious ^strange is that they haven't been pestering me of late for some time past, yes, they've inflicted the notion of time on me too. [0930] What conclusion, using their methods, am I to draw from this? [0931] Mahh^ood is silent, h^that is to say his voice continues, but is no longer replenished. [0932] Do them^y consider me so plastered with their rubbish that I never extricate myself, never make a gesture but their statue ^cast comes to life? [0933] But inside my shell ^within, motionless, I can live, and give utterance ^{utter me,} to myself, for no ears but my own. [0934] They loaded me down with their attrin^butes and stoned me through the carnival. [0935] I'll sham dead now, whom they couldn't bring to life, and my monster's carapace wil will rot off me. [0936] But it'se entirely a matter of voices, no other metaphor is appropriate. [0937] They've blown me up with their voices, like a balloon, and even as [x] ^I deflate ^collapse it's them I hear. [0938] Who, they? [0939] And why nothing more from them lately? [0940] Can it be they have abandoned me, saying, Very well, we can make nothing of him, let's leave it at that, he's not dangerous. [0941] Ah but the little murmur of a ^unconsenting man under duress (against his will), to murmur the thing ^{what it is} that their humanity stifles, the little gasp of the condemned to life, rotting in his dungeon garrotted and racked, to gasp what it is to have to celebrate banishment ^proscription, beware. [0942] No, they have nothing to fear, I amm walled round with their vociferations, who one ^none will ever know what I am, no one ^none will ever hear me say it, and I won't say it, I can't,[p. 43r] it, I can't, I have no language but theirs, no, I'll say it perhaps, even in ^with their language, for me alone, so as not to have not lived in vain, and so as to go silent, if that is what confers the right to silence, and it's unlikely, it's they who dispose of silence,they who decide, the same old gang, between ^among themselves, no matter, to hell with silence, I'll say what I am, so as not to have not been born for nothing, I'll fix their jargoⁿ for them, and after ^then that I'll say no matter what, whatever they want, with a will, till time is done, at least with a good grace. [0943] First I'll say what I am not, that's the way ^how they taught me to proceed, then what I am, , it's already under way, I have only to resume at the point where I let myself be cowed. [0944] I am neither, need I say, Murphy, nor Watt, nor Mercier, nor — no, I can't even bring myself to speak their names ^{name them}, nor any of the others whose very names I g^forget, who told me I was they, who I must have tried to be, underd duress, of^r through fear, or to avoid acknowledging myself, not the slightest connexion. [0945] I never knew anything about all that, never wang^ted it, ^{I never desired, never sought, never suffered, nev} never ^[sp] looked for it nor looked for it, nor suffered it, ^{never experienced anything of that kind} never knew what it was to have, things, adversaries, mind, senses. [0946] But enough about that. [0947] There is no use denying, har^^ping on the same old thing, I know so well, and so easy to say, and which amounts simply amounts in the end to speaking yet again in the way they mean ^intend me to speak, namely ^{that is to say} about them, even with execration and disbelief. [0948] Perhaps they exist in the way they have decreed will be mine, it's possible, I don't know and I don't care, if they had taught me how to wish I would wish they did. [0949] They^re's no getting ridding of them without naming them and their contraptions, that is the thing to be considered. [0950] I might as well tell one of Mahood's stories and no more about it, to be understood ^{taken understood} as it was given to me, in the sense I received ^{was given to understand it} it, namely as being about me. [0951] That's an idea. [0952] To add to ^{enhance heighten} my disgust. [0953] I'll recite it. [0954] R^This will leave me free to considere how I may best proceed with my own business, beginning again at the point where I had to interrupt it, under duress, or through fear, or out of ignorance. [0955] It will be the last story. [0956] I'll ^{try and} look as if I was telling it[p. 44r] telling it willingly, [0957] that will ^to keep them quite ^quiet in case they should feel like refreshing my memory, on the subject of my behaviour up there ^above in the island, among my compatriots, contemporaries, coreligionists and cronies (chums) ^comrades.^{companions in distress.} [0958] This will leave me free to consider how to set about showing myself forth. [0959] They'll be none the wiser. [0960] But who are these lunatics ^maniacs let loose on me from on high for what they call my good? good, let us first try and throw a little light on that. [0961] To tell the truth — no, first the story. [0962] To cosu consi^ummate my nausea. [0963] [A. Chicago Review extract begins] ^[The island, I'm on the island, I've never left the island, God help me. [0964] I was under the impression I spent my life spiralling ^{in a spiral} round the o^world ^earth. [0965] Wrong, it's on the island I wind my unending ^endless ways. [0966] That The island, that's all ^{the world earth} I know. [0967] I don't know it either, never having had the strngth ^{strength stomach} to look at it. [0968] When I reach the coast I turn back, towards the interior^inland. [0969] My ^{And my} course is not a spiral, I got that wrong too, but a series of irregular loops, now sharp and short, as in the walr^tz, now of a parabolic sweep that embraces entire boglands, and now between the two, somewhere ^{or other}, and invariably unpredictable in direction, that is to say subject to the panic of the moment. [0970] But at the period I refer to this active life is a thing of the past ^{past and gone}, I do not move and shall never ⁽mi^ove⁾ again, unless it be under the impulsion of a third part^y. [0971] For of the great traveller I had been, on my hands and knees in the later stages, then crawling on my belly or rolling on the ground, only the trunk remains (in sorry ^{poor trim} condition), surmounted by the head with which we are already familiar, that is the part of myself the description of which I have best assimilated and retained. [0972] Stuck, like a sheaf of flowers, in a deep jar, the ^its neck of which is level ^{on a flush} with my mouth, on the side of a quiet street neaer the shambles, I am at rest, at last. [0973] If I turn, I shall not say my head, but my eyes, free to roll as^t they will, I can see the the statue of the apostle of horse's meat, a bust. [0974] His pupilless eyes of stone are fixed upon me. [0975] That makes four, with those of my creator, omnipresent, do not imagine I flatter myself that I am privileged. [0976] Alt^Though I am not exactly in order, ^{[⁁] I am tolerated by} the police^. tolerate me. [0977] They know I am ^]

[45r—47r MISSING]

[p. EXTRACT1-01r]
^{Sent to John Fleb, Chicago Review,
Chicago, University of Chicago,
Chicago 37, Illinois
20.[1].58} Extract from THE UNNAMABLE
Samuel Beckett

^{= pp. 45—47}

[0963] The island, I'm on the island, I've never left the island, God help me. [0964] I was under the impression I spent my life in spirals round the earth. [0965] Wrong, it's on the island I wind my endless ways. [0966] The island, that's all the earth I know. [0967] I don't know it either, never having had the stomach to look at it. [0968] When I come to the coast I turn back inland. [0969] And my course is not a spiral, I got that wrong too, but a series of irregular loops, now sharp and short as in the waltz, now of a parabolic sweep that embraces entire bogh^lands, now between the two, somewhere or other, and invariably unpredictable in direction, that is to say subject to the panic of the moment. [0970] But at the period I refer to now this active life is past and gone, I do not move and never shall again, unless it be under the impulsion of a third party. [0971] For of the great traveller I had been, on my hands and knees in the later stages, then crawling on my belly or rolling on the ground, only the trunk remains (in sorry trim), surmounted by the head with which we are already familiar, this is the part of myself the description of which I have best assimilated and retained. [0972] Stuck like a sheaf of flowers in a deep jar, its neck flush with my mouth, on the side of a quiet street near the shambles, I am at rest at last. [0973] If I turn, I shall not say my head, but my eyes, free to roll at will, I can see the statue of the apostle of horse's meat, a bust. [0974] His pupilless eyes of stone are fixed upon me. [0975] That makes four, with those of my creator, omnipresent, do not imagine I flatter myself I am ^^privileged. [0976] Though not exactly in order I am tolerate^d by the police. [0977] They know I am speec^h[⁁]less and consequently incapable of taking unfair advantage of my situation to stir up the population against its governors, by means of burning orator during the rush hour or subversive slogans whispered, after[p. EXTRACT1-02r] nightfall, to belated pedestrians the worse for drink.