Samuel Beckett
Digital Manuscript Project
L'Innommable / The Unnamable

MS-HRC-SB-5-9-3

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Segment 1

[2330.4] admit it, after all, I deny nothing, I
admit nothing, I say what I hear,
I hear what I say, I don't know, one
or the other, or both, that makes three
possibilities, pick your fancy,
all these stories about travellers, these
stories about paralytics, all are mine,
I must be extremely old, or it's memory

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Segment 2

[2330.4] playing tricks, if only I knew if I've
lived, if I live, if I'll live, that
would simplify everything, impossible
to know, that's where you're buggered,
I haven't stirred, that's all I know, no,
I know something else, it isn't I, I always
forget that, [2330.5] I resume, you must resume,
never stirred from here, never stopped telling

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Segment 3

[2330.5] myself stories, hardly hearing them, hearing
something else, listening for something else,
wondering now and then where I got
them, was I in the land of the living,
were they in mine, and where, where do
I keep them, in my head, I don't feel a
head on me, and what do I tell them
with, with my mouth, same remark,

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Segment 4

[2330.5] and what do I hear them with, and so
on, the usual rigmarole, it can't be I,
or it's because I don't
pay attention, it's such an old habit,
I do it without minding what I'm doing,
or as if I were elsewhere, there I am
afar again, there I am the absentee,
it's his turn now, he who neither speaks

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Segment 5

[2330.5] nor listens, who has neither body nor
soul, it's something else he has,
he must have something, he must be
somewhere, he is made of silence, there's
a pretty analysis, he's in the silence, he is
the one to be sought, he the one to be,
he the one to speak of, but he cannot speak,
then I could stop, I'd be he, I'd be the

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Segment 6

[2330.5] silence, I'd be in the silence, we'd be
reunited, his story the story to be told,
[2330.6] but he has no story, he hasn't been in
story, it's not certain, he's in his own
story, unimaginable, unspeakable,
that doesn't matter, the attempt must
be made, in the old stories incompre-
hensibly mine, to find his, it must

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Segment 7

[2330.6] be there, it must have been, before being
his, I'll recognize it, in the end I'll
recognize it, the story of the silence that he
never left, that I should never have left,
that I may never find again, that I may

Transcription
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