Samuel Beckett
Digital Manuscript Project
L'Innommable / The Unnamable

MS-HRC-SB-5-9-1

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Segment 1

[0810] losing ground.[0811] Ptoto set their minds
at rest.
[0812] I had moved, no further proof
was required.
[0813] I had been drawing near for
so long now that there was no cause for anxiety
so long as I didn't remain rooted to the spot.

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Segment 2

[0814] I was launched, there was no reason why
I should suddenly begin to retreat,
I wasn't made that way.
[0815] Then
having kissed all round and wished one
another happy dreams and sweet repose
they all retired, with the exception naturally
of the watch.
[0816] What about hailing him?

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Segment 3

[0817] Poor
papa, he would have liked to encourage me
vocally.
[0818] Stick it, lad my boy, it's your last winter.
[0819] But in view of the trouble I was having,
the trouble I was taking, they prevented
him, pointing out that it wasn't the moment
to give me a shock.

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Segment 4

[0820] But what where my
own feelings at this time,
[0821] what was I thinking
of?
[0822] With what?[0823] Was I having difficulty
with my morale?
[0824] The answer to all that
is this, I quote Mahood, that I was
entirely absorbed by the business on hand
and not in the least concerned to know in what
precisely, or even approximately, it consisted.

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Segment 5

[0825] The only problem for me was how
to continue, since I could not do otherwise,
to the best of my declining powers, in the
motion that had been imparted to me.

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Segment 6

[0826] This obligation, and the virtual impossibility
of fulfilling it, engrossed me in a purely
mechanical way, excluding notably the
free play of my intelligence & sensibility,
so that my situation rather resembled that
of an old broken-down

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Segment 7

[0826] cart or bathorse which
can receive no
information either from its instinct or its
observation as to whether it is
moving towards its stable or away from
it, and does not greatly care.

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Segment 8

[0827] The question,
among others, of how such
things are possible had long since
ceased to preoccupy me.

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Segment 9

[0828] This
touching picture of my situation I found by
no means unattractive and as I recall it
I find myself wondering again if I
was not in fact the creature revolving in that
yard, as Mahood assured me.
[0829] Well
supplied with painkillers I used them freely,
without however permitting myself the lethal

Transcription
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