Digital Manuscript ProjectL'Innommable / The Unnamable

[1822] When later on on earth later
on the storms rage, drowning momentarily the
free expression of opinion, he'll know what's
happening, that the end of the world hasn't come.
[1823]
No, in the place where he is he cannot learn, the head
can't work cannot work, he knows no more than on
the first day, he merely hears, and suffers,
incomprehending, that must be possible.[1824] A head
has grown out of his ear, the better to xxx [place = supralinear] enrage him,
that must be it.
[1825] The head is there, glued to [place = supralinear] stuck on the ear,
and nothing in it other but rage, that's all that
matters, for the moment time being.[1826] It's a
transformer in which noise is turned, without the
help of reason, to rage and terror.[1827] That's all that
is required, for the moment.
[1828] The circumvolutionisation
will be seen to later, when he's brought to the surface.
[1829]
Why [place = supralinear] then the human voice,[1830] rather than a hyena's howls or the
clanging of a hammer?[1831] Answer, so that the shock
may not be too great, later on, when he sees the writhing
of contortions of real lips.
[1835] They wheel, in jerks, xx so that their words
come always from the same direction.[1836] But often they all
speak together [place = supralinear] at once, they all say simultaneously the same
thing precisely, but so perfectly together that one wo it
one would take it for a single voice, a single voice, if one
did not know that God alone can be everywhere, at the
same mo time.
[1839] While one ta speaks another
looks, he w the one no doubt whose turn it is to speak next
and whose remarks eventually [place = supralinear] possibly will not necessarily [place = supralinear] of necessity be
without xxx unrelated to what he may possibly have
seen, this dependent this depending on whether what he
has seen has aroused his interest to the extent of appearing
worthy of mention, even indirectly.
[1840] But what hope
has sustained them, all the time they have been thus
employed?[1841] For it is difficult not to suppose them
so animate sustained by some hope or another.[1842] And
what is the nature of the change they are on the look out
for, glueing glueing one eye to the hole and closing
the other?[1843] They have no pedagogic purpose in
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L'Innommable / The Unnamable © 2013 Samuel Beckett Digital Manuscript Project.
Editors: Dirk Van Hulle, Shane Weller and Vincent Neyt