Samuel Beckett
Digital Manuscript Project
L'Innommable / The Unnamable

MS-HRC-SB-5-9-2

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Segment 1

[1638] have to come and stick into me, as they did into their unfortunate
Jesus.
[1639] No, I need nobody, they'll start
sprouting up under my arse, unaided,
some day when I feel myself soaring above
my condition.
[1640] A billy bowl
of thorns, and the air sweet smelling.

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Segment 2

[1641] But not too fast.[1642] I still leave to be
desired, I have no technique, none.
[1643] For example, in case you don't believe me,
I don't yet know how how to move, either
locally, in relation to myself, or bodily,
in relation to the shit.
[1644] I don't know how to
want to, I want to in vain.

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Segment 3

[1645] What doesn't
come from me has come to the
wrong address.
[1646] Similarly my understanding
is not sufficiently well-oiled to function
without the pressure of some critical
circumstance, as a sudden
violent pain felt for the first time.

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Segment 4

[1647] Some
nice point in semantics, for example, of a
nature to to accelerate the march of the hours,
could not retain my attention.
[1648] For others
the [] [ADDITION]Addition on page 21vtime-abolishing [] joys of impersonal and disinterested
speculation.

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Segment 5

[1649] I only think, if that is the
name for this vertiginous panic as of
hornets smoked out of their
nest, once a certain degree of terror has been
exceeded.
[1650] Does this mean that I am less and
less exposed to it, by the grace of inurement?

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Segment 6

[1651] To think so would be to underestimate the
extent of the repertory in which I am
plunged and which, it appears, is nothing
compared to what is waiting for me at
the conclusion of my novitiate.
[1652] These lights,
gleaming low afar, then rearing up,
in a blaze and sweeping upon me, blinding,
to devour me, are merely one example.

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Segment 7

[1653] My familiarity with them avails me nothing,
each time they give me to reflect.
[1654] [ADDITION]Addition on page 21vEach time up to now
at the last moment, just as I am beginning
to sizzle, they go out, smoking and hissing,
I know, and nevertheless each
time my phlegm is shattered.

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Segment 8

[1655] And in my head, which I am beginning
to locate to my satisfaction, above and a
little to the right, the sparks spurt and
dash themselves out against the walls.

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Segment 9

[1656] Sometimes I say to myself that I too am in my
head, it's terror makes me say it,
and the longing to be in safety, surrounded
on all sides by massive bone.

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Segment 10

[1657] And I add
that I am foolish to let myself be frightened
by another's thoughts, lacerating my sky
with harmless gleams and besieging me
with noises signifying nothing.
[1658] But one thing
at a time.
[1659] And often all sleeps, as when
I was really Worm, except this voice

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