Samuel Beckett
Digital Manuscript Project
Molloy

MS-BRML-NWWR-22-546

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[by 11 picas] Born in Dublin, in 1906, of Irish parentage, Samuel Beckett went to Trinity College in Dublin. He has lectured at the École Normlale Supérieure in Paris, and has taught French at Trinity. In 1938, he settled in France as James Joyce's secretary. He began to write in French in 1945, and has since then written three novels, one play, poetry, and criticism. He is also the author of two novels in English —[] MURPHY sc and WATT sc[] and various other books, including a collection of short stories entitled MORE KICKS THAN sc PRICKS sc. An examination of Mr. Beckett's worxk appears immediately after this opening section of Mr. Beckett's nov his novel, MOLLOY sc, to be published in the United States by Grove Press in 1954.

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Copyright, 1954, by Samuel Beckett)

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"MOLLOY" by Samuel Beckett

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I

[0001] [] I am in my mother's room. [0002] It's I who live there now. [0003] I don't know how I got there. [0004] Perhaps in an ambulance, certainly a vehicle of some kind. [0005] I was helped. [0006] I'd never have got there alone. [0007] There's this man who comes every week. Perhaps I got here thanks to him. [0008] He says not. [0009] He gives me money and takes away the pages. [0010] So many pages, so much money. [0011] Yes, I work now, a little like I used to, except that I don't know how to work any more. [0012] That doesn't matter, apparently. [0013] What I'd like now is to speak of the things that are left, say my good-byes, finish dying. [0014] They don't want that. [0015] Yes, they're more than one, apparently. [0016] But it's always the same one that comes. [0017] You'll do that later, he says. [0018] Good. [0019] The truth is I haven't much will left. [0020] When he comes for the fresh pages he brings back the previous week's. [0021] They are marked with signs I don't understand. [0022] Anyway I don't read them. [0023] When I've done nothing he gives me nothing, he scolds me. [0024] Yet I don't work for money. [0025] For what then? [0026] I don't know. [0027] The truth is I don't know much. [0028] For example my mother's death. [0029] Was she already dead when I came? [0030] Or did she only die later?

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[p. 02r] 477 [0031] I mean enough to bury. [0032] I don't know. [0033] Perhaps they haven't buried her yet. [0034] In any case I have her room. [0035] I sleep in her bed. [0036] I piss[?] and shit[?] in her pot. [0037] I have taken her place. [0038] I must resemble her more and more. [0039] All I need now is a son. [0040] Perhaps I have one somewhere. [0041] But I think not. [0042] He would be old now, nearly as old as me. [0043] It was a little chambermaid. [0044] It wasn't real love. [0045] The real love was in another. [0046] We'll come to that. [0047] Her name? I've forgotten it again. [0048] It seems to me sometimes that I even knew my son, that I helped him. [0049] Then I tell myself it is impossible. [0050] It is impossible I could ever have helped anyone. [0051] I've forgotten how to spell too, and half the words. [0052] That doesn't matter apparently. [0053] Good. [0054] He's a queer card who comes to see me. [0055] He comes every Sunday apparently. [0056] The other days he isn't free. [0057] He's always thirsty. [0058] It was he who told me i'd begun all wrong, that I should have begun differently. [0059] He must be right. [0060] I began at the beginning, like an olfd fool, can you imagine that. [0061] Here's my beginning. [0062] Because they're keeping it apparently. [0063] I took a lot of trouble with it. [0064] Here it is. [0065] It gave me a lot of trouble. [0066] It was the beginning, you see. [0067] Whereas now it's nearly the end. [0068] Is what I do now any better? [0069] I don't know. [0070] That's besides[?] the point. [0071] Here's my beginning. [0072] It must mean something, since they're keeping it. [0073] Here it is.

[0074] This time, then once more I think, then perhaps a last time, then I think it'll be over, with that world too. [0075] Premonition of the last but one but one. [0076] All grows dim. [0077] A little more, and you'll go blind. [0078] It's in the head. [0079] It doesn't work any more, it says, I don't work any more. [0080] You go dumb as well and soulnds fade. [0081] The threshold scarecely crossed that's how it is. [0082] It's the head.

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[0082] It must have had enough. [0083] So that you say, I'll manage this time, then perhaps once more, then perhaps a last time, then nothing more,. [0084] You are hard set to formulate this thought, for it is one, in a sense. [0085] Then you try to pay attention, to consider with attention all those dim things, saying to yourself, laboriously, [lc] It's my fault. [0086] Fault? [0087] That was the word. [0088] But what fault? [0089] It's not good[|=|]bye, and what magic in those dim things to which it will be time enough, when next they pass, to say good[|=|]bye. [0090] For you must say good[|=|]bye, it would be folly not to say good[|=|]bye, when the time comes. [0091] If you think of the forms and light of other days it is without regret. [0092] But you seldom think of them, with what would you think of them? [0093] I don't know. [0094] People pass too, hard to distinguish from yourself. [0095] That is discouraging. [0096] That's how I sayw A and B going slowly towards each other, unconscious of what they were doing. [0097] It was on a road remarkably bare, I mean without hedges or ditches or any kind of border, in the country, for cows were chewing in enormous fields, lying and standing, in the evening silence. [0098] Perhaps I'm inventing a little, perhaps embellishing, but on the whole that's how it was. [0099] They chew, swallow, then after a short pause effortlessly bring up the next mouthful. [0100] A neck muscle stirs and the jaws betgin to grind again. [0101] But pehrhaps I'm remembering things. [0102] The reoad, hard and white, seared the tender pastures, roxse and fell at the whim of hills and hollows. [0103] The town wasn't far. [0104] It was two men, unmistakably, one short and one tall. [0105] They had left the town, first one, then the other, and the first, weary or remembering a duty, had

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[0105] had retraced his steps. [0106] The air swas sharp, for they wore greatcoats. [0107] They looked alike, but no more than others do. [0108] At first a wide space lay between them,. [0109] They couldn't have seen each other, even had they raised their heads and looked about, because of this wide space, and then because of the undulating land, which caused the road to be in waves, not ddeep, but deep enough, deep enough. [0110] But the moment came when together they went down into the same trough and in this trough finally met. [0111] To say they were acquainted, no, nothing warrants it. [0112] But perhaps at the sound of their steps, or warned by some obscure instinct, they raised their heads and observed each other, for a good fifteen paces, before they stopped, breast to breast. [0113] Yes, they did not pass each other by, but halted, face to face, as in the country, of an evening, on a deserted road, two wayfaring strangers often do, without there being anything extraordinary about it. [0114] But they knew each other perhaps. [0115] Now in any case they do, now I think they will know each other, greet each other, even in the depths of the town. [0116] They turned towards the sea which, far in the east, beyond the [] fields, climbed high in the waning sky,. and they exchanged a few words. [0117] Then each went on his way. [0118] Each went on his way, A towards the town, B by ways he seemed hardly to know, or not at [] all, for he went with uncertain steps and often stopped to look about him, like someone trying to fix landmarks in his mind, for one day, perhaps, he may have to retrace his steps, you never know. [0119] The treacherous hills where fearfully he ventured were no doubt.[]

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