Samuel Beckett
Digital Manuscript Project
Molloy

MS-BRML-NWWR-2-38

X
Segment 1

[0669] too difficult to say, for me. [0670] And even my sense of identity was
veiled in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just
seen I think.
[0671] And so on for all the other things which mocked my
senses.
[0672] Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and
particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no
names but thingless names.

X
Segment 2

[0673] I say that now, but after all what
do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon
me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named.
[0674] All
I know is what the words know, and the dead things, and that makes
a handsome little sum, with a beginning [place = inline] , a middle [place = inline] , and an end as in
the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.
[0675] And truly
is [place = supralinear] t little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing.

X
Segment 3

[0676] Saying is inventing. [0677] Wrong, and rightly so. [0678] You invent nothing,
you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all
you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum [place = rightm argin] [?] one
[place = leftma rgin] [17] day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is
wept.
[0679] To hell with it anyway. [place = inline] []] [0680] Where was I.

X
Segment 4

[0681] Unable to remember
the name of my town, I resolved to stop by the kerb [place = supralinear] curb, to wait for
a passer-by with a friendly and intelligent air, and then to take
off my hat and to say, with my smile, I beg your pardon, Sir,
excuse me [place = inline] , s [place = overwritten] Sir, what is the name of this town, if you please?

X
Segment 5

[0682] For
the word once let fall I would know if it was the right word, the
one I was seeking, in my memory, or another,
[0683] and so would know
where I stood.
[0684] This resolution, actually formed as I rode along,
was never to be carried out, an absurd mishap prevented it.

X
Segment 6

[0685] Yes,
my resolutions were remarkable in this, that they were no sooner
formed than something always happened to prevent their execution.

[0686] That must be why I am even less resolute now than then, just as
then I was less so too, than I once had been.
[0687] But to tell the

X
Addition 1
[?]
X
Addition 2
[17]
X
Addition 3
22
Transcription
  • Segments
  • Marginal Additions