Samuel Beckett
Digital Manuscript Project
Malone meurt / Malone Dies

MS-WU-MSS008-2-47

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Segment 1

[0893] And yet no, I am in no hurry. [0894] Decidedly this evening I shall
say nothing that is not false, I mean nothing that is not cal-
culated to leave me[][me] in doubt as to my real intentions.
[0895] For it is
evening, even night, one of the darkest I can remember,
[0896] I
have a short memory.
[0897] My little finger glides before my pencil
across the page and gives warning, falling over the edge, that
the end of the line is near.

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Segment 2

[0898] But in the other direction, I mean
of course vertically, I have nothing to guide me.
[0899] I did not
want to write, but I had to resign myself to it in the end.
[0900] It is in order to know where I have got to, where he has got
to.
[0901] At first I did not write, I just said the thing. [0902] Then I
forgot what I had said.
[0903] A minimum of memory is indispensable,
if one is to live really.

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Segment 3

[0904] Take his family, for example, I
really know practically nothing about his family any more.
[0905] But that does not worry me, there is a record of it somewhere.
[0906] It is the only way to keep an eye on him. [0907] But as far as I
myself am concerned the same necessity does not arise, or does
it?
[0909] And yet I write about myself with the same pencil and in
the same exercise-book[] as about him.

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Segment 4

[0910] It is because it is no
longer I, I must have said so long ago, but another whose life
is just beginning.
[0911] It is right that he too should have his
little chronicle, his memories, his reason, and be able to recog-
nize the good in the bad, the bad in the worst, and so grow gently
old all down the unchanging days and die one day like any other
day, only shorter.
[0912] That is my excuse. [0913] But there must be others,
no []less excellent.
[0914] Yes, it is quite dark. [0915] I can see nothing. [0916] I

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Addition 1
me[]
Transcription
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  • Marginal Additions