Samuel Beckett
Digital Manuscript Project
Krapp's Last Tape / La Dernière Bande

MS-HRC-SB-5-4

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Segment 1

[0243] (Pause)

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Segment 2

[0244] Spiritually a year of profound gloom and indigence
until that memorable night in March, at the end
of the jetty, in the howling wind, never to be for-
gotten, when suddenly I saw the whole thing.
[0245] The
vision at last.

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Segment 3

[0246] This I fancy is what I have chiefly
to record this evening, against the day when my
work will be done and perhaps no place left in my
memory, warm or cold, for the miracle that...
(hesitates)...for the fire that set it alight.
[0247] What
I suddenly saw then was this, that the belief I had been
going on all my life, namely -

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Segment 4

[0248] (KRAPP switches off impatiently, winds
tape forward, mechanical winding - 2
secs. gabble, switches on again)

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Segment 5

[0249] - great granite rocks the foam flying up in the light
of the lighthouse and the wind-gauge spinning like a
propeller, clear to me at last that the dark I have
always struggled to keep under is in reality my most -

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Segment 6

[0250] (KRAPP curses, switches off, winds
tape forward. Mechanical winding - 3
secs. gabble, switches on again)

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Segment 7

[0251] - unshatterable association until my dissolution of
storm and night with the light of the understanding
and the fire -

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Segment 8

[0252] (KRAPP curses louder, switches off,
winds tape forward, mechanical winding -
4 secs. gabble - all other manipulations
manual. Switches on again)

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Segment 9

[0253] - my face in her breasts and my hand on her.[0254] We
lay there without moving.
[0255] But under us all moved,
and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side
to side.

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Segment 10

[0256] (Pause)

[0257] Past midnight.[0258] Never knew such silence.[0259] The earth
might be uninhabited.

[0260] (Pause)

[0261] Here I end -

Transcription
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