Digital Manuscript ProjectL'Innommable / The Unnamable

[1765] And worn out at last, or feeble with old
age, and my cries having ceased for want of
nourishment, they could pronounce me dead,
with every appearance of veracity.
[1773] These
millions of different sounds, always the
same, recurring without pause, are all one needs
for a head to sprout, a bud to begin with,
finally enormous, originally a silencer, then
an extinguisher when the eye joins in, and worse
than the evil, its storehouse.
[1780] He knows they are words, he is not
sure they are not his, that's how it begins, with
such a start no one ever looked back, one day he'll
make them his, when he thinks he is alone, far from
all men, out of range of every
voice, and come to the light of day they tell him of.
[1783] In their
shoes I'd be content with my knowing what I
know, I'd demand no more of me than to know
that what I hear is not the innocent and necessary
sound of dumb things in their need to endure, but
the terrified babble of the condemned to silence.
- Segments
L'Innommable / The Unnamable © 2013 Samuel Beckett Digital Manuscript Project.
Editors: Dirk Van Hulle, Shane Weller and Vincent Neyt