Samuel Beckett
Digital Manuscript Project
L'Innommable / The Unnamable

MS-HRC-SB-5-9-3

X
Segment 1

[2206.5] I stop doing my best, I can't do my
best, I've had enough, poor darling [place = supralinear] wretch,
so have they, let them say [place = supralinear] tell me what they want,
give give me something to do, within my
power to do, poor wretches, they can't, they
don't know, they're like me, more and more,
no more need of them, no more need of
anyone, no one can do anything, it's I am

X
Segment 2

[2206.5] talking, thirsting, starving, in the xxx
ice and in the furnace, you feel nothing,
strange, you don't feel a mouth, you don't
feel
on you, you don't feel the mouth any
more, no need of a mouth, the words
are everywhere, in me, outside within
me, outside me, well well, listen to that,
a minute ago I had no thickness, I hear

X
Segment 3

[2206.5] them, no need to hear them, no need of
a head, impossible to stop them,
impossible to stop, I'm inside of
words
in words, made of words, others'
words, what others, the place too, the
air too, xxx the walls, the ground, the
floor, the ceiling, words, the whole
universe is here, with me, I'm the air,

X
Segment 4

[2206.5] the walls, the walled-in one, everything
gives way, opens, flows, ebbs, flows,
flakes, I'm all these flakes, meeting,
mingling, falling asunder, wherever I
go I find myself, leave myself, go towards
me, come from me, nothing but me ever
but me, a particle of me, retrieved,
lost, gone astray, [2206.6] words, I am all these

X
Segment 5

[2206.6] words, all these strangers, this dust
of word dust,
dust of words, with no
ground to settle on, no sky to scatter
through
for their settling, no sky for
their dispersing, meeting to say coming
together to say, fleeing one another to say,
that I [place = supralinear] am they, all of them, those that mingle,
those that part, those strangers among

X
Segment 6

[2206.6] strangers, and nothing else nothing but them,
yes,
nothing else, yes, something else, [place = supralinear] that I'm some-
thing quite different, a quite different
thing, a dumb thing in an hard place,
empty place, a hard, shut, dry, cold,
black
[place = facing leaf] [ADDITION]Addition on page 16van empty
an empty, closed,
a hard, shut, dry, fxxx [place = supralinear] cold
black
place, where nothing stirs, nothing
speaks, and that I listen, and that I seek,
like caged beasts born of caged beasts born

X
Segment 7

[2206.6] of caged beasts born of caged beasts born of
caged beasts born in a cage and dead in a
cage, born of caged beasts born and dead in
a cage, born and then dead, born in a xx cage
and then dead in a cage, in a word like
a beast, in one of their words, like such
a beast, and that I seek, like such a

Transcription
  • Segments